My Life on the Net

Now, I’m a mac user - but that doesn’t mean that I find the Get a Mac ads any more funny than they definitely aren’t. It’s the worse move for Apple in a long time, and Mitchell & Web don’t portray the characters well.

I’m not biased either way, but I found the parodies by Laurie McGuinness to be pretty funny, smashing the mac while showing that the PC still has dominance in the world.

Good work Laurie.

Citizens of Edinburgh! I call on you to jump out of your beds and come to help a worthy cause..

That’s right - a flashmob is happening in Edinburgh tomorrow, and should be great fun. I’ll be going along with my camera, and you can find out more by clicking here.

Come join me at 1pm tomorrow! Want to meet me? I’ll be wearing a suit jacket, jeans, and a t-shirt. Suit jacket will have 3 buttons on it, the most prominent being a button saying “I love the middle mind”.

I’ll see you there!

It’s true. I gave up podcasting a while back after not having much content, but didn’t tell anybody. Months later, I still find that I have loyal listeners waiting for a new show (That, or they forgot to delete their subscription).

This is just a little announcement saying that I’m considering bringing it back. I’m looking at a format and topics at the moment, and hope to provide another announcement in the near future.

Later.

No, not Google’s Summer of Code, my summer of code! Not only web development (of which I want to learn a few more languages a bit better), but building Coca apps too, fused with Applescript when needed.

I love the idea of the facade of Artificial Intelligence. Not one single teenage student, or any other human at this time, has managed to create a true form of Artificial Intelligence - and don’t worry, I know I won’t be able to. But voice feedback is something I love about OS X, and although the voices are a bit rubbish it does prove useful.

I remember the laughs I used to have with the voice features of OS X, mainly by saying “Computer, tell me a joke” or “Computer, what time is it?”, and conveniently get a response seconds later.

But how about extending that a little further? That’s what I’d love to do. Specifically, I’d like to set an automated wakeup feature of which I could have a little conversation before I go to bed and when I get up.

This is what I was thinking.

You’d set 2 user configurable variables. One for your name, and one for the computer. At default (if I make it publicly available, or if I ever finish it) it will simply be ‘Sir’ and ‘Computer’. But of course, in terms of my current macintosh it would be ‘Craig’ and ‘Eve’, or ‘Sephy’ in September (mmm… macbook…)

A simple alarm activation sequence would be as follows:

“Goodnight Eve”
“Goodnight Craig. Would you like me to wake you up in the morning?”
“Yes please”
“When would you like to be woken up?”
“7AM”
“So that’s 7 AM?”
“Yeah”
“Ok. Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning”

How awesome would that be.. Pretty awesome.

But it would even better in the morning:

“Good morning Craig”
“Good morning Eve”
“I just thought I’d tell you that it is 9AM, it’s cloudy, average temperature is about 12 degrees celcius and you have 2 new emails.
“Thank you Eve”
“Would you like me to play you some music to wake you up?”
“Yes please”
“Anything in particular?”
“Not really”
“Ok, I’ll just play something random”

Now, this isn’t just a few hours of coding.. Oh no.. It’s a hell load of work and there’s a reason that’s my main project in the SUMMER of code. There’s loads of problems which will hurt me from the start:

But imagine the end result - it would be a behemoth of applications, and although a little gimmicky it’d be fun and easy to use - and would be a lot better than the beep beep of a standard alarm clock. I’d keep it plugin friendly, open source and best of all… FREE!! (Well, donationware)

So, good idea or bad idea?

One thing I figured out starting out in photography is that what the photographer thinks is a good picture could be hated by the general public, and vice versa. It’s odd, but sometimes I think you need to understand the story behind a photograph before you decide whether or not you like it.

Now, before you finish reading this I want to think of your favourite photograph of mine. Contemplate on it and decide whether or not it is your favourite and why. Tell me in the comments, and I’d appreciate it.

I’m going to share my particular favourites since September 2005 [sheesh! has it been that long!], and tell you some of the stories behind them.. So sit down, relax and come on the cronological journey with me.

I loved this photo. When I was starting out I was into abstract, simplistic photography and this summed up just about what I was looking for. It was bright and vibrant, and nobody would notice that it was taken near Leith Docks.

This was considered as one of my best starting photos. It was taken at Elie, Fife in the autumm of 2005. It was great seeing all the machinery and argiculture of which a city guy like me doesn’t see that often. The reason why I didn’t like this photo much is because I’m quite a photo traditionalist, and had edited quite a few elements of this photo…

I liked this when I was starting out, but I don’t really like it anymore.. It’s just a little.. dunno. I just don’t like it. I was taking quite a few photos near the Scottish Parliament, and the sun went down really fast. My the time I reached South Bridge I saw the view of the Carlton Hotel - and without tripod I shot and hoped.

I loved this photo. I still love this photo. It’s rich and the interest is dead on to the cat’s face. In the whole of Lefkas island, on July 2006, this was the only one that seemed happy enough for me to approach it. The rest ran away as quickly as they saw me, unless I had food on my person. This one was just chilling out on top of a motorbike, so I just took a few photos, pet it a little and left it to rest.

Something just yells ‘yummy’ with me regarding this photo. I had this idea of shooting graveyards (of which proved to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated), and went to Starbucks afterwards to chill out and look through photos. I was thinking of trying out film, as I’ve heard that mastering the art of manual cameras and types of film, digital does improve. The only true reason for this particular ‘frame’ was the I knew the day was over and I wanted to finish off the roll - and Starbucks seats were better than anything else to take a photo of (It was just a test roll anyway).

Nobody seemed to ‘get’ this. I took it on purpose, and wasn’t just a snap as I was strolling by. I’ve always considered that beach as my safe haven, a place to relax. I went at night to shoot just to get the atmosphere of my current situation - to show how unsure I was about the future.

I loved this shot, and now - only a few months later I’m not so sure.. It’s good, but is it that good? It’s touristy. Dunno. The crowds like it.

This is my favourite at the moment. It’s just the sharp contrasts between white and black that gives it some life. I like it a lot.

Then I got my Sigma f1.4. I’m loving this lens to the end of the world. While it does have it’s querks it’s fine - and is one of the sharpest lenses I’ve had in a while.

See, how cool is that!? Also one of my favs right now.

But hey, I want to know what YOU like. Come on, I have a 75% returning visitor rate - so I know someone here must have a photo they particularly like of mine, don’t fear.

I used to have a podcast, but I had problems with the content. These people - the elite of the elite, are the people I listen to every week.

Just in case you didn’t know what a podcast is - it’s like a radio show, published by whoever wants to about whatever they want.

I thought I’d share some of my favourites - but if you have anything you’d like to share with feel, feel free to! I’m always on the prowl for good shows to listen to.

ExtraLife Radio
My favourite podcast by Scott Johnston and his co-hosts Obsidian a nd Brian Dunaway. They talk about different stuff every week, but are always funny to listen too.

The Twisted Pickle Show
A great podcast about this guys life, we hear about all the funny things going on about his life.

Barely Podcasting
It’s about the same content as the Twisted Pickle, but he does it in his own special way.

BoagWorld
A podcast about Websites and the stuff behind them.

Fireside Tales with Showbiz Dad
An interesting story telling podcast.

Digital Photography Tips from the Top Floor
This is a photography podcast detailed towards the beginner, but you sometimes find out about things you never thought of. Has some great content.

this WEEK in TECH
Aimed at the geek in some of us, tells the people about the lastest tech news each week.

The Mac Observer’s Mac Geek Gab Enhanced
Also aimed at the Mac Geek in me, tells about the latest Mac News.

The tartanpodcast
A great show about Scottish Podsafe music, showing off unsigned artists in Scotland.

I had the fortunate circumstances of being available for the local Japanese Blossom Festival last Sunday for a few shots with fellow flickr photographer David Reid. It was a nice day overall, althogh it was fairly child oriented. The heavans did decide to open on us - getting my camera and myself well and truly soaken.

View the entire set on flickr here.

They had a wonderful Japanese Garden right next to the castle, with little Japanese looking hut and bridge.

Haiku

I’m really starting to enjoy using my 50mm f1.4. Every time I use it my focusing becomes a little quicker and easier.

For example, here it’s only got about a few millimetres of focus. Love the bokeh in this one.

Yep. Kid oriented.

But some wonderful origami shown off.

A japanese dancer ended the day well, lightened the fact that it was raining.. badly.

Followed by Elvis, who learned Judo.

But well, there was only one way to describe the day…

Rain!

Hey guys,

Sorry for being non-operational for a little while.

While we aren’t perfect it’s online.  Some CSS errors and some php code in the wrong places, but it’s up.

Tell me what you think of, later.

This site will be non-operational around 12pm BST till who knows when. Why?

Well, my host has finally managed to get Ruby on Rails working on my server, and I have finished the design and code for my new Ruby enabled site.

Expect some pretty radical changes, hopefully for the better and if I have any good luck it will be up by the morning.

Don’t worry - this isn’t some get-quick-rich scheme brought together in the hopes to get all your money from you. It’s a program I found called The Perception Laboratory’s Face Transformer.

I tried it with an old passport photo taken for my student id (seen above), and these are some of the results.

Afro Caribean

East Asian

West Asian

Baby (or more like freak!)

Child (thankfully I didn’t look like this)

Old Man

Botticelli

El Greco

Manga

Modigliani

And last by not least…

Apeman!