In a saweet harmony

Rave Generator

Nice.

alight

alight, originally uploaded by *ade.

Taken from Commuting photoset

Indexhibit

I've been playing around with Indexhibit for a few hours and have cobbled together the bare bones of a photography portfolio. It needs a lot more work but I'm pleased with the result so far, after such minimal effort.

I don't know why I didn't look into using Indexhibit sooner. Now maybe I'll never get round to making that new portfolio in Flash. Maybe there's no need?

Something That She Said

A few weeks ago I did a photoshoot with the band Star Chamber (some photos here).

They were a very nice bunch of chaps to work with and, as such, I'm writing this post to support, in some small way, the release of their new EP Something That She Said. It's not the sort of stuff I'd typically listen to, but I really like both tracks.

You can buy the EP (and support their bid to get into the charts) here from TuneTribe.com or here from iTunes.

Night shots from Victoria Peak

Hong Kong, originally uploaded by *ade.

Victoria Peak is a vantage point in the west of Hong Kong island. It's the most popular tourist destination in Hong Kong as the views of the city are spectacular.

Here are my efforts with the camera, taken on the evening of Monday 19th November: View slideshow »   View set »

Also, I've posted one of the photographs at its original high resolution. Depending on your browser, you may need to click on the image to turn off image scaling.

Hong Kong

I just got back from a wonderful holiday with Rachael in Hong Kong, where we got engaged! Apart from the obvious, we had a really good time. It's a great place – highly recommended if you've not been.

I've got 15.5 gigabytes of RAW files shot with the Canon 5D that I've not even looked at yet. This will probably take weeks.

But I also took some snaps with the trusty Canon Ixus, including the one shown above. As usual, they're on Flickr. View the best shots or all of them.

Ominous smoke cloud over London.

Ominous smoke cloud over London., originally uploaded by *ade.

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Ade's musings on reality

Some thoughts I was having on the train earlier:

Ignoring uncertainties, it occurred to me that reality consists primarily of objects or, more simply, 'things that exist in some physical form'. And secondarily, reality contains events, or occurrences.

Logically, we can say that some objects exist and some objects do not exist. And, likewise, some events occur, and some events do not occur.*

So in this objects and events model, ignoring uncertainties, there are four logical combinations:

1. Events that occur involving objects that exist
2. Events that do not occur involving objects that exist
3. Events that do not occur involving objects that do not exist
4. Events that occur involving objects that do not exist

This can be represented by the following diagram:



Interestingly (perhaps) it would seem that events require objects, yet objects do not require events. Therefore three out of the four logical combinations are allowed. This, it occurred to me, was a strangely asymmetrical system. Or perhaps it only appears that way because of our blinkered three dimensional perception of time and causality.

That was about it really.


*Obviously, some objects are created by events and others are destroyed or modified by events.

Monument

Monument, originally uploaded by *ade.

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

River Thames

River Thames, originally uploaded by *ade.

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

Shibboleth

Shibboleth, originally uploaded by *ade.

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

dark morning

dark morning, originally uploaded by *ade.

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

New Tune

I've done a remix of the track that I made at the start of the year, and have also 'tweaked' the original a bit. Listen below, or download the mp3s here.

Remix
Firstperson – Day One (day 295 remix)

Re-edit
Firstperson – Day One (day 292 edit)

New old toy

new old toy, originally uploaded by *ade.

Rachael bought this for me from a market in Brussels. It's a pretty basic camera from the 1950s, with a fixed shutter speed and a choice of two apertures. It also has a brown nice leather case.

I'm looking forward to getting some 120 film for it and having a play.

'Most interesting by'

This PHP utility by Isaías González pulls out the most interesting photos by any given Flickr user.

I’ve set up that link with my username, though what it has highlighted is that people seem to like my old photos the best. There are only three photos in that list from 2007 (at the time of writing this).

Now, obviously Flickr’s ‘interestingness’ isn't necessarily a good measure of quality – put something racy, newsworthy or controversial (or indeed a cute kitten) up there and it’s likely that the image will appear in the Explore section before long. But it does tell you whether or not people are looking at and commenting on the photographs.

I’m going to put it down to the fact that I used to spend far more time actually interacting with Flickr than I do now. And a lot of the stuff I’ve been photographing this year has been for some less creative and more commercial purpose.

But my mission is to overthrow every one of the images in that current list. I'm bored of them now!

Footbridge (night version)

footbridge (night version), originally uploaded by *ade.

I was passing through so thought I'd take another one. It's not quite as good as the day version, but then that's my 5th most interesting photo, according to Flickr.

Electricity

Electricity is a new novel by Myke Bartlett, which is now available at Lulu.com. It's also available as a podcast.

The reason why I mention it here is that the cover is based on one of my photographs and, unlike some, Myke had the decency to ask for my permission to use the image. Thanks Myke!

Happyfour Twenty

Video by Brennan Stasiewicz for the track Happyfour Twenty by Christ.

Crofton Park

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Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

Jasmine Tea...

jasmine tea, originally uploaded by *ade.

...at the, apparently nameless, Thai restaurant at the bottom of Grove Lane in Camberwell. In a world where mediocre Thai food is available in every other pub, the food here definitely stands out.

</moblog>

As southbites rightly pointed out, I seem to have a serious obsession with creating new blogs. There's no reason why my cameraphone photos shouldn't just come here. So from now on, they shall.

Freelancing

So... lots has changed, really.

Firstly, I don't seem to be updating my blog any more (again). I think this is ultimately because the desire to share with the world 'what I'm doing' is now being satisfied by the rather lazier Twitter. Those micro-chunks of mundane information collectively form a sort-of-blog, though admittedly it's probably not going to appear in the shortlists for any literary awards any time soon. For those who have no desire to sift through what is effectively a massive collection of SMS messages, here's what else I've been doing.

I have departed from the mighty Dare (just in time to miss them winning an impressive five Campaign Digital Awards), and am now a freelancer once again. The last time I was a full time freelancer was back in 2002, when I had no portfolio, no client-list worth speaking of, and only a nifty little Flash game and a few mates' websites with which to prove my abilities. In fact, it was even before I started this blog (just).

This time round things seem to be completely different. The only real problem I seem to be facing at the moment (touch wood) is the risk of taking on too much work. I made that mistake recently and the result was more than a week of working 9-6 at an agency followed by, on average, an 8pm till 2am shift every evening. Still, it'll pay for some time off when the cheques turn up.

It's been good to work in a handful of different agencies, though I'm equally keen to escape the world of agency work wherever possible. This week and next I'm doing some photography and design work directly for a client. Cutting out the project manager, and account manager has its pros and cons but this client has been relatively well behaved so far, and it's nice having fewer cooks to spoil the broth.

In other news, I'm no longer living in Camberwell. I'll miss it in many ways, though there are clearly some aspects of SE5 that I'm glad to move on from – the immovable junkie collapsed in my doorway a few weeks ago, for example. The main reason for the move, though, is that fact that I've finally escaped the world of landlords and rent and have bought half of, and subsequently moved into, the house of my lovely girlfriend Rachael.

Fortunately, being in SE4, it's not too far away so I'll still be oft found slurping cold Heinekens in a Camberwell pub with superior blogger and old pal The Eyechild.

As for the blog: I'll try to post more often, though it's rather dependent on not having a hundred other things to do instead. I started writing this post over a week ago and have only managed to complete it today. Having a large to-do list keeps life interesting though, I find.

75

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Moblog

My new mobile photoblog, because I didn't have enough blogs already, right?

'This Exists' on Flickr

A This Exists Flickr Group now exists. Submit your own photos and they could receive a prestigious spot on the This Exists blog. How exciting!

Get joining »

Thirty Thousand Streets

I highly recommend Thirty Thousand Streets – peculiar short stories based around the experiences of a young man living in London. They are written by Zeno Cosini and feature excellent illustrations by The Eyechild.

There are only two installments so far, though I'm led to believe that more are on the way. Just the thing for your next tea break.

thirtythousandstreets.blogspot.com

Fire!

At about 6.45 this morning Rachael woke me up saying that something was burning. Something did smell a bit dodgy but I'd been ignoring it in my sleep.

As soon as I left the bedroom it was pretty obvious that something was on fire downstairs. I'd left the windows open in the living room and the air outside was thick with smoke, some of which was billowing into the flat. I shut the windows and Rachael called the fire brigade. Apparently they'd already had a few calls about it.



Anyway, the fire brigade shortly arrived. They took about 30 minutes to put it out. It was a garage two doors away. These photos were taken when it had pretty much been extinguished. Had I been able to take them earlier they would have looked like some grey smoke.

Anyway, thanks to Rachael for having such a keen nose. And nil points to the smoke alarm, which usually goes off at the faintest whiff of browning toast, yet failed to produce a single beep in the presence of a toxic fumes from a burning building.

My Twitter

Recent, strangely compelling discovery. Seeking fellow Twitterers.

I'm here: twitter.com/_ade.


If you have no idea what this is about then, well, don't worry about it.

Surrealist House

_MG_2725, originally uploaded by *ade.

Back in May, I photographed this strange unfinished building. It lies on a piece of wasteland, by the roadside, in a resort otherwise comprised of wealthy British golf enthusiasts' villas.

Strangely, I can't find anything about it on the web. I was told that it was a project by "the daughter of Van Gogh" to build a surrealist house. But a quick search tells me that he didn't have a daughter and, anyway, this looks like it was built in the 1960s so the dates clearly don't add up. Unless she was born in 1890 and built it in her 70s, I guess.

Anyway, I guess either the money ran out or they realised it was never going to work because it's still an empty concrete shell. I bet it would have been fantastic inside had they ever finished the roof and interior, but as it stands it's extremely barren and unwelcoming.

It's roughly here on the map.

View the photographs

Tour de France

I'm loving these posters – a clear reference to the sleeve design for Tour de France by Kraftwerk.

New Ventures

After seven years spent in full-time employment in the digital media industry, I'm going freelance again. I actually did a short stint working for myself in 2002 when I first moved to London, though at the time I had very few contacts, and in those days people were, understandably, being rather cautious when it came to investing money online.

But things are different now, and everyone seems to be busy. I certainly have been. So I'm going it alone again. Only this time I'm taking on photography work in addition to the Flash, video and web work. Within a year I aim to have developed the photography side of things to a level that I can get by on that alone. But for the time being I'll be frequenting the digital agencies of London for short-to-medium term project work.

I've still got a few weeks to go at Dare, where I've been since September 2005. It's a company of extremely talented, dedicated and busy people, and so it's no surprise that it's grown as much as it has in the last 18 months. So a big thanks must go to everyone at Dare. The standard excessive after-work drinking session will be arranged soon.

There's much to do in the meantime, starting with updating my CV and portfolio.

If you want to get in touch, you can find me here on LinkedIn or at my website.

Antique French single bedframe for sale

I'm selling this:



View on eBay »

New Minute

It’s been a while since I worked on the Minutes project. This is largely due to the failure of my compact camera, and my subsequent failure to replace it. I had been intent on investing in an HD camera but right now the budget doesn’t allow for one. So I replaced the defunct Canon Ixus 50 with a shiny new Ixus 75. And I must say that it’s a great little camera.

It arrived yesterday and, as I’m now living in a new flat with a decent view, I thought I'd point it out the window and capture one minute of the mostly unremarkable goings on in the street below.

If you have a spare minute you can watch it here.

Information Overload

No more Web 2.0 / social networking / community websites please. It's getting silly now. And besides, my toolbar is full.

Let's get back to monolithic, static Flash websites with long intros, pale grey pixel fonts made with GIFs, on a slightly paler grey background. And title bars [ :::::::::: that l00k l1ke th1s :::::::::: ]

Those were the days...

New London 2012 Brand

Oh dear. This is absolutely awful. And this video just makes things worse.

According to their news site: “The new Olympic emblem is based on the number 2012 - the year the Games take place and includes the Olympic Rings and the word London.”.

Yeah, we got that much. Now what's the rationale behind the mess you made out of it all ?

some nice pictures

I know, I've not written a blog post for ages. I've been really busy. I'm not going to write one now either. Here's a cool link though:

thecoolhunter.net/architecture/

News escalation on the web

I’m not going to comment on the story itself because that has been done to death, and the issue appears to have been resolved (at least with Flickr). But the series of events surrounding the alleged theft (and subsequent sale) of photographs from Flickr photographer Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir is a classic example of how the plight of one individual can end up on an international news site such as the BBC.

It started when Rebekka discovered that a company in the UK had been selling prints of her images without her knowledge or consent. In protest, she posted an image on her popular Flickr photostream and outlined her situation in the description.

There was an outpouring of support from the Flickr community who posted comments beneath the image. However, some apparently went to far with their use of language and threats were made toward the company at the centre of the row. Flickr staff subsequently deleted the photo as a result of the threatening comments.

To keep a long story short, suffice to say Rebekka was outraged at Flickr’s response. She posted this photo in protest, and the story was also picked up by blogger Thomas Hawk. This article was also submitted to Digg.com, one of several news sites where the more a story is read and given a ‘thumbs up’ by the reader, the higher up the news listings it moves. Within an hour or so it was on their homepage.

In addition to this, a thread was started on Flickr’s main forum, which again received hundreds of responses, and eventually there was an official response from Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield: “...we screwed up -- and for that I take full responsibility...”.

A couple of days ago I casually mentioned to a friend that this was the sort of thing that would end up on BBC News. This morning it has appeared in their technology section and I’d imagine it will be mentioned at some point on BBC News 24. Quite a lot of exposure starting with one photo on Flickr.

This sort of thing is happening all the time. Web 2.0 (I’m sick of that hearing name, but that’s the umbrella term) empowers the individual like never before. I think this means that companies and corporations need to be more careful with their dodgy dealings. Rather than just one disgruntled individual who is unable to afford a lawyer to deal with, the accused company, Only Dreemin, has been named on an international news website. That’s a whole lot of bad press.

This is a small company, and – I don’t know – they could be ruined by this. The question is, when it comes to larger corporations, do they really care about public opinion?

Red Bull Air Race 07

I’ve just bought tickets for the Red Bull Air Race 2007. I won’t repeat here the tale of woe that was my visit to the cancelled event last year, but the fact that it’s going to be in London this year (over the river between the dome and Canary Wharf) is definitely a massive bonus. Even if the British weather does its worst again, at least this time there won't be a wasted 12 hour round trip into the countryside.

And it is nice of the organisers to be offering a priority purchasing period to those of us who were disappointed by last year’s last minute cancellation.

I'll be taking a camera, of course, with the hope of getting some better shots than I did last year (we didn't see a single plane, even on the ground, and it was so wet that I feared the rain would ruin the camera if I took it out of the case).

I'll be overjoyed if I can take anything even nearly as good as these shots taken by Jim Skea at the event in Rio last month. These are awesome:

Red Bull Air Race Rio (3), originally uploaded by Jim Skea.

Red Bull Air Race Rio (6), originally uploaded by Jim Skea.

Red Bull Air Race (4), originally uploaded by Jim Skea.

MySpace cocks up my final, simple request

So, as you may know, I hate MySpace. This is about 60% to do with it being a kind of sad popularity contest, and 40% to do with it being (in my, considerably educated, opinion) utterly broken beyond hope. So when I came to delete my account earlier this morning it was both ironic and inevitable that it wouldn’t go so smoothly. It told me I would receive a confirmation email containing a link that I needed to kill the account. Two hours later the email has still not appeared.

It reminds me of past frustrations with Microsoft Windows when it wouldn't shut down. “All I want you to do is go away, and you can’t even manage that for me.”

And I’ve not come across the word berestored before. Maybe they should get someone to proof-read their copy before putting it live on a website used by millions of people? Just a thought.

QR Code

Thanks to Eduardo for the blog post about this.

This is the QR code of my photoblog's URL. It's essentially a 2D barcode for encoding information. You can read QR codes using your cameraphone with The Kaywa Reader.

QR Codes on Wikipedia

Cyprus Slideshow (large slides)

Khirokitia, originally uploaded by gridrunner.

View the slideshow »
Browse manually »
 

iAsda

My friend Dave made this short film:

Google Gadgets

I visited Google’s London headquarters today for some training relating to Google Gadgets. I signed a non-disclosure agreement so can’t go into details but, suffice to say, those Google people are rather jolly clever.

Anyhow, here’s a Google Gadget that I’ve just made. It’s based on the Flashteroids widget I made a few months ago to drive clicks to my game (I make a bit of beer money as a result). The Flash game itself is really old now but it seemed a good test.

The gadget itself was fairly quick and easy to create. If, like me, you still secretly remember a bit of HTML and such jiggery pokery, you shouldn't find it too taxing.

Agios Sozomenos

Deserted village in Cyprus. More photos »

Cyprus Snaps

Rachael and I went to Cyprus recently. We stayed with a friend of mine. As usual it's taking me forever to sort through the images (I fuss with them) but here's the holiday photos I've sorted out so far, if you're interested:

Condensed Set »
All photos so far »

There are no pissed-up-Brits-in-Ayia-Napa-style cameraphone arse shots, some will be sorry to hear.

This Exists

Taken from This Exists, which still exists.

Webby Awards (shameless commercial plug)

I work for digital marketing agency Dare. We have three nominations for the Webby Awards in the Website section:

Lynx Blow - Beauty and Cosmetics category
Mobile Office Solutions - ‘Desk Crusher’ - IT Hardware/Software category
Walkman Worlds - Telecommunications category

If you care about the success of my employer and, by association, my increased wealth, fame and general patted-on-the-backness then vote for us here.

New Google Maps feature

Google Maps have just added a 'my maps' feature. This is pretty cool - it means you can define your own routes (rather than using its automatic route finder). You can also add points of interest and photos to the route.

I tested it out by plotting the route I walk from Victoria Station to work.

Tescopoly

Andrew Simms has written a book about the semi-monopoly Tesco seems to have over retail here in the UK. Someone at work discovered, rather amusingly, that it's even available from Tesco.

Alternatively you could buy it from Amazon. Or even better, Get it from your local bookshop.

Reduced To This

I created this track back in 1995 on a Roland keyboard in the music department at School. It is one of three I did at the time. They had originally been recorded onto audio cassettes, then – a few years later while at university – I recorded them off the tapes and archived them onto a recordable CD.

I recently found the CD but unfortunately it seems to have decayed so most of the data is unreadable. I managed to get half of this track to load anyway, and have converted it to MP3. Here it is. A little bit naive, but nice...

If you can't get the player above to work then try this link:
Reduced To This on Last.fm

Obligatory Photobooth Image

So I got myself one of those shiny new MacBook Pro laptops. Here's the obligatory first Photobooth image, that one must post to one’s blog. It was taken early this morning after I got up early to play-with-new-gadget – hence the dressing gown and stubble.

London Things

Having moved house, I have a new route to work that includes a 25 minute walk. I have the option of taking a tube for two stops instead but much prefer to walk. Here are a some of the things I passed on my way in today:

Buckingham Palace
The Ritz Hotel
A Rolls Royce showroom
A man sleeping in the doorway of New Bond Street jewelers
A man dressed as a pirate

Along with the bobby on the beat, the black taxis, the red telephone box, the pigeons and the icy drizzle it couldn't really be any more stereotypically London.

Back in SE5

I love it how, when you move house, and it's going to take a few weeks to get a net connection set up, you usually find a handy wireless network nicely within range, and with an equally handy lack of security on it. Bonus...

I've finally got somewhere to live, and I moved in tonight. My very own (OK, rented) batchelor pad, back in Camberwell. Hurrah!

Now there's just the small matter of buying some furniture, getting some more things from my old place and setting it all up to deal with. That's my mission for the weekend.

But right now it's time to collapse.

Lost

Someone at work just sent this around - it's one of those annoyingly simple ideas: a game where you score points by getting other people to join via your unique invite.

This Guardian article is worth a read.

If you're interested, I urge you to join *cough* using this invite:

www.lost.eu/2f9a2

New Flickr Features

At long last, Flickr have added the much-requested sets of sets feature. And they've called it Collections. They've also added the ability for members to customise their homepage - you get the choice of showing small or medium photos, and also sets, collections or neither.

I've quickly thrown together some collections to try it out. I'll swap a lot of it around once I've given it more thought.

I like this update especially because I use Flickr for casual cameraphone / pub / night out / holiday photos as well as for more serious photography, and this allows me to further separate and organise the two.

Good stuff!

Moving Out

 
 

Moving out my flat in Clapham. Moving to... limbo. Following this week’s frustratingly bad news regarding the flat I had been trying to buy, I am now homeless. So a big THANKS must go to the vendor who messed the whole thing up after six whole months, by having it reposessed on the day we were due to complete. Fantastic. Really great. God, that’s annoying.

So now I’m staying at my girlfriend’s place, my belongings in randomly packed boxes and bin liners. And I’m writing this on my laptop using someone else’s unsecured wireless network. What I should really be doing is searching the web for a place to rent, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do right now.

I’m in ‘Le Cool’

Online magazine Le Cool stumbled across my photography work online and have featured me in their current issue. The cover image is one of mine and there’s a short interview which is linked to from the thumbnail at the bottom of the first page.

See the issue here or read the interview.