You’ve all heard the saying “if you can’t beat em’ join them!” – well this is how my wife has been feeling lately! She decided that instead of trying to get sense out of me of an evening it would be easier to run her own blog and interact with the peeps out there in internet land! So at her request I have set up MummyClover.com for her to use. Chloe is actually quite the writer and never shy to share her opinions (especially if they disagree with mine! lol) so I can’t wait to see how it evolves.

At the moment Chloe is using the blog to post general info about family events etc but in the next few months she is embarking on a huge big career change involving what could be 4 or more years study to become a qualified mid-wife, I’m sure this is going to give her plenty to write about. So if your interested check it out and make sure you subscribe to her feed. It’s certainly going to be an interesting insight into the other (not so known) private life of the infamous disco~stu!!

twinkini interface (not who I follow incidentally! lol)

Most of you have probably heard of twitter right? if you haven’t then where the hell have you been?

I’m a complete twitterholic. I love reading whats going on in the world of interweb via my friends tweets, I love sending out my random thoughts into the twittosphere especially when I’m on the bus! One thing though that bugs me about twitter is trying to find the perfect app. It isn’t an easy task and new ones pop up all the time. Some of them I’ve tried and I hate, some just plain don’t work, some come close, but most have flaws. [Read more...]

Soooo I’ve been fairly busy the last week or two dealing with various BIG issues at work (seriously BIG) and also building a new PC. Tonight I managed to finally get my old webcam installed on my new computer (running Vista 64bit). It was a bit of a messy process which involved editing some driver files to spoof the OS into thinking I have a different camera but it seems to work to a fashion, certainly beats having to go out and buy a new one in a hurry! anyhoo I thought I’d test it out with the 12 seconds website thing…Its kind if twitter for video [Read more...]

I thought It about time I finally got around to posting something about the project that consumed most of my spare time last month. Although connected to photography is was actually a web site  project……the new look website of London based photographer Nathan Pask.

If you don’t know Nathan’s work then I recommend you check him out, he’s got some crazy good photography skills. In fact it’s also worth reading this interview with him on photographywired which was posted a little while back. I’m lucky enough to know Nathan personally and I’ve had the pleasure of hangin’ with him and his homies on a few occasions. Through various conversations about problems with his old site I ended up with the opportunity to give his site a makeover and I have to say I’m pleased with the results.

Nathan has worked in the design industry for quite some time so compared to most other people I’ve worked on websites for he had a very clear vision of how he wanted his site to look visually (and that was both refreshing and at times challenging ). He also wanted something which he could easily update which was not where he was at with his current set-up which was purely a flash based gallery.

If I’d tackled this project a year ago I would most certainly of used drupal, but since using wordpress for photographywired I’ve been surprised and impressed by it’s versatility. I don’t want or need to get into which system is better but I think in this instance where a blog was going to be a major part of the project and I wasn’t having to deal with large amounts of site members and community functionality then wordpress seemed like a better choice and I knew it has a nice easy to use back end for posting straight out of the box.

I guess the biggest challenges were both theming the site and coding the portfolio sections. The theme was challenging from the point of view that I needed to implement a single wordpress installation but have a very separate blog and portfolio style. Luckily this can actually be achieved relatively easily in wordpress using the page templating system and conditional template tags. I learnt a lot of stuff about themes and wordpress that I didn’t know previously during this project but that’s one of the reasons for taking something like this on! [Read more...]

Today I got home from work to find my wife Chloe and daughter Robyn jumping up and down with excitement and giggling LOTS!!

It transpires that they were watching the well known kids television channel Childrens BBC (CBBC) which is now available to us on freeview after the uber cool digital switchover and it was dress like your parents day! Robyn and Chloe decided to email in a photo I’d taken of me and Robyn during my 365days project and hey presto half an hour later there is me and Robyn featured on the tele! CRAZY WORLD!

Anyway I missed the action but luckily our new digi box has a built in hard drive which allowed us to rewind and watch over and over (and over and over) again. lol!……below is a rather horrible vid of said TV moment of glory captured on Chloe’s IXUS.

Fame at last……hopefully fortune isn’t far behind!

http://www.vimeo.com/4549377

ok ok It’s been a long time coming but finally I’m pleased to share with you photo 2 in my series of 100 strangers! woohooo. I’ll try not to leave such a big gap between this and my next stranger but it all depends on what else I’m busy with and lately thats lots!!

I still find this whole talking to strangers thing hard but I am gaining confidence slowly. Todays stranger was completely unplanned and as usual I stumbled over my words and must of come across as a total nob but hey I got there in the end.

This is Dave….

Dave works in the passion and pain emporium in Weymouth who stock a range of cool clothing and also operate a tattoo studio.

Chloe had popped in to get a bar to put in one of her ear piercings and Dave (above) was busily sketching out some designs behind the counter. I always find people sketching and drawing fascinating, so he grabbed my attention. I managed to start off a short conversation and before I knew what had stumbled out of my mouth I was pointing my camera at him trying to get a half decent shot. I only shot about 3 or 4 frames but managed to faff about and get my flash out of my bag and on camera to get this frame above. Not perfect but I’m quite happy with it, I’m more happy with the fact I have got one more shot toward my 100 and that I plucked up the courage and even passed on a business card so Dave may even find this photo! (if he does I hope he likes it).

practice will make perfect.

www.100strangers.com