Those of you that have met me will know I tend to favour a big coat. It’s not to hide my ever growing and frankly ample belly, and neither is it to do with the elements, it is however all to do with pockets. Indeed, I’m carrying more and more stuff around with me that I really do need the extra storage.

As many men will tell you, they stick their wallet in one pocket, their keys in another and their phone in another. Call me stupid but that doesn’t seem like a good thing to do to prevent wear on your trousers or jeans, and neither does it seem to be practical. Let’s think of our keys a second, my keychain has my two front door keys, my key to the office, my office draws, a USB pen drive, and sometimes it includes my car keys. That’s quite a bit of bulk to be sticking into your pocket, and aside from the more obvious wear issues, it doesn’t exactly look like the type of bulge we all want on our pockets.

As well as that my wallet, despite being cut down in size rather dramatically, isn’t exactly small, add on my smart phone, and from top to bottom in it’s slimmest form, it’s the equivalent of putting a small mail parcel into your trousers.

There is however a solution, which thankfully, more and more people are starting to adopt and something that has become a standard in the far east. The ManBag.

If you go to Thailand or China, there are no shortage of men carrying small purse like items around their necks like the one on the left, yet in the UK most people choose to either carry everything in a rucksack, or tuck it into their laptop bag if they need to carry it with them, rather than actually constantly carrying a bag with them. Of course theres a social stigmata as well, many friends and people I have spoken to regard ‘manbags’ as items for homosexuals or things that look just plain silly.

For me I have two items that I wish I could carry around constantly but don’t. My iPad, and my SLR camera since I don’t have a compact. I also need to keep a spare pair of glasses with me, and if you ever go through my pockets you’ll see I tend to have painkillers stuffed in there as well. So for me, it would be a great idea to carry a manbag. Couple that with the painkillers I keep and the fact I almost always need a pen then it starts to become practical.

What I don’t understand is how other people don’t follow suit and carry one as well. As I’ve already said some of my friends think it’s purely for homosexual males to carry around their ‘guyliner’, or just for transvestites, but there is no reason why you can’t pick up a male bag that doesn’t look overly flamboyant, remains casual and looks appropriate even in business, take this messenger bag The bag comfortably holds a laptop, and your other gear, and is sufficiently casual and smart enough to wear every day or even with a shirt going to a meeting.

Smaller versions exist, ideal for carrying a netbook or iPad, with enough space for your every day items, leaving you free to carry your wallet, phone, keys, and other essentials whilst remaining dignified with this bag from TOM BIHN a great example.

For me personally I will be getting, and carrying one with pride since I really do need to carry quite a few things with me, and I can only hope that others will be willing to follow suit. If of course that leaves me being branded as a transvestite, then fine, I’ll be a transvestite, but face it, we’re getting to the point where we need to carry more and more things around with us, so someday we are going to have to let it all give.

I’m close to blowing up, and again I’m really close to blowing up. Virgin Media. Having sat on both sides of the table, I struggle to understand how you can provide such atrocious customer service, and how on earth no-one is capable of taking ownership or responsibility for a case, or someones actions.

But what I cannot stand more than anything, is people using any excuse to get you off the line. Look, If you’re due to go home, tell me, I’ll call someone else. If you’re late to your lunch break, tell me, I’ll call someone else, because frankly I know what it’s like to be on the other side and late for everything and getting pissed off. I understand.

But for gods sake, done use excuses to get me off the line or palm me off to someone else. Why, why is it in customer service, the front line, do we let these utter knob jockeys sit there and blast out customers because they ‘don’t feel like it’.

I can recall one time whilst working in LloydsTSB that a customer demanded to be put through to their branch, I duly did so, and just before the handoff where I took the time to explain the customers issue so they didn’t have to explain it all over again, the staff member blasted off, screaming about how she had just gotten back from their holiday and that it was their first day back and how I should have pawned the customer off. Sorry, I did what the customer had asked, that isn’t so wrong (since I couldn’t solve the issue myself, but I made sure the person I put them through to had enough information so that they could). 

People like that should not be in customer service. The fact remains that most customer facing roles like customer service call centres and branch staff, are paid the lowest, treated as expendable and generally not treated well. This needs to change.

At the end of the day an arrogant prick at the front line (whom is usually paid the lowest) treats one customer badly. That person decides to leave, and usually tells everyone else. The arrogant prick keeps treating people like crap and so more leave, as a result the low paid individual who frankly doesn’t care about his or her job ends up costing the company a small fortune, yet if companies were prepared to treat staff right, treat them better and pay them better the staff might just change their minds and attitudes toward customers.

And maybe for once, we might get a decent level of customer service. For now, I wish the Virgin Media call centre staff, the very worst, and I really hope that the many I have spoken too, either get re-educated the hard way about what they are doing wrong, or find a job where they are simply not allowed to talk to other humans.

The long overdue “dot com” side of my website has hit another snag. Initially I was very happy with the final design and layout thanks to some assistance in design from @staceyjenkins (a local designer) however two things have troubled me.

The current ‘proposed site’ has zero blogging facility, and while I don’t need a blog, the component can be used to provide news and updates in other ways.

It also has no category function, every post is a picture an that’s that, no “drill down” gallery for things like events, special features, and again, this isn’t major as it is meant to be a portfolio, but the problem with no categories is the fact that you need categories to implement a store function, something I’m keen to do.

Short of a complete code rewrite, I’m now on the hunt for a better CMS solution that will allow it, and a theme to rip apart / create from.

It’s a real blow and another huge setback but I am confident that when I finalise and release the design, it will be worth it. The only trouble is working out how long it’s going to take!

“…checking your email is now akin to brushing your teeth…”

So just how important is technology in our daily lives, and is it really akin to brushing your teeth? For me, daily life involves waking up, doing all the bathroom stuff, checking my email and maybe one or two RSS feeds, driving to work listening to a podcast on my iPhone plugged into my car stereo before getting into work, checking my works email and so on. Coming home is much the same, I listen to another podcast on my way home, get in and read more RSS feeds while checking on various technology sites, perhaps reading a book on my iPad or a magazine before going to bed (of course brushing my teeth first).

For me technology is everything. Of course it is, it’s my job, so perhaps I’m a little biased. I’m the type of person who instead of having a tv, had a windows media center pc hooked up so I can get a few extra benefits. I’m not your typical user or consumer, so for me technology is part of my life, and no I couldn’t live without it.

What about someone who doesn’t use technology that much, hard to believe in this day and age but let’s consider my mother or even my father. My mother has an iPhone, but does not technically own a computer, she has a works laptop. However my father has a computer, but only a basic “dumb phone”. Despite these two radical differences, both my mother and father check their email daily. They both always carry their phone with them, and they all go on the web.

My father checks his email on the computer, browses a few sites at least once a day, whereas my mother uses her iPhone for just about everything. I guess you could say that for both of them, technology is also akin to brushing their teeth. Of course it doesn’t help that their son is part of the technology world and is constantly trying to push at least one form of technology into their lives, be it willingly or not. But even for these people it’s still a daily routine.

What about a friend of mine, who isn’t in a techno oriented family? I won’t name any names, but all I’ll say is even he has a nokia smartphone. He checks his email at least once a day, browses ebay every few days, and whilst tech for him isn’t quite akin to brushing his teeth, it’s near enough.

In fact i cant actually think of a single person who doesn’t at least carry their phone with them every day or check emails on a regular basis, and studies have shown that I’m not alone. In fact a few reports have shown that more people now consider it “impossible” to continue their daily lives without some form of computer related technology than ever before.

So how about you? Are you the type that finds technology a necessary part of your life, or are you the type that could happily live without it? Of course the bigger question is a far simpler one, which concerns daily life and work.

Is it possible in this day and age to survive and continue without at least one piece of computer related equipment?

Although this brings up further questions it’s a good point, we could all theoretically survive without email, but could we really survive without the rest?

Tell me your story, and tell me just what makes you think you could or couldn’t survive without a computer.

But wait, read on, I want to explain that somewhat.

You see the thing is, I’ve never been one for “early adopting” yet there was something about the ipad that simply made sense to me right from the release date. Even if others didn’t agree, I for one saw the potential that the device had.

There is absolutely denying that in the short few hours I’ve had it, I am in love, and it really is brilliant, although I wouldn’t go as far as to say “magical” although it is fair to say it’s revolutionary. It is, in the way that it’s one of the few things to enter the tablet domain that doesn’t make me want to throw it across the room the moment I lay eyes on it (windows tablet PC edition is a prime example of this).

No, what prompted the “what have I done!?!?” comment is the sheer cost of the device. An eye watering £699 for the top of the range 3G model! Ok ok that’s for the 64GB model, and yes I know the cheapest one is still a hefty £429 for just wif-fi, but given this thing is supposed to be directly competing with net books, it’s a fairly heavy price tag, even worse when you consider that the keyboard dock is essentially another £50 on top and an application like Pages (a fully functional word processor) is another £5.99* again, and it starts looking even more expensive than it actually is.

On the downside, the iPad is priced out of the market for most people, on the upside, it,s smaller and easier to use than most net books. Lest I point out to you that this entire post is being written on an iPad, and that the keyboard is near enough full size. No I did not purchase the iPad keyboard dock, although I intend to, but I wanted to see just how usable the on screen keyboard is. And it’s safe to say that while it still suffers from the iPhones “I need to learn how you type before you can actually type” syndrome it is incredibly usable.

Speaking as an IT professional, I simply have no need for a netbook. They tend to be bulky, slow, and have no capacity to run any of the programs I use. That Is why I have a laptop, and a company provided one at that. What I do have a need for is a device I can comfortably lie on the sofa with and browse the web, go on twitter and MSN and do the occasional blog post. Granted I could do that with my current laptop, and for a long time I did, however it was still far too large to comfortably have on my lap.

Ok so yes I admit it, I could still quite comfortably use the laptop, however the iPad does make things a whole lot easier. I will post my thoughts and reviews after I have had an opportunity to really sit and play with it but for now I can tell you that the whole experience is a completely pleasurable one, and web browsing alone is an absolute dream.

This thing could very easily replace my laptop for most of the things I do in the evening, and some things in work as well!

*I originally had put £10 as the price for pages, it is infact 5.99 as Andy pointed out

Now I want to stress something, this website will not contain all of my pictures, it will contain a selection, and a very carefully picked selection that will be decided by me and other critics I have contact with, so I will after a while give you a link to my flickr site instead if you want to see all of them. It is however going to take me a few days to fully implement, but as of tomorrow at 12 midday thelongmile.com will go down, ready to be redirected into the new site, phwew, finally!,

By the way, if you want to critique the photos I have and suggest ones for my porfolio, go to flickr.com/thelongmile and let me know which ones you like!

Production of thelongmile.com photography site has pretty much ground to a halt since I’m having trouble finding a theme under the GPL to rip apart and customise into something of my own, not only that but I can’t exactly start from scratch since I’m not sure what I actually want, what I do know I want is some form of news page to update on photography, shopping cart integration so I can fulfil print orders and a large gallery that displays exif or at the very least allows me to put some comments about the photos I have taken.

So with that the project is on hold for a short while so that I can clear my head so to speak, however it’s still very much in progress since I am always looking for people to send ideas about sites they have seen, however this hasn’t gone as well as I hoped, since I wanted everyone to contribute and make it a site they would actually want to visit, ah well

Other than that for me personally I decided to take the plunge and upgrade teh server for the website with a little more ram, it’s a temporary thing to see if this actually makes any difference to the performance or crashing issues I’ve been having and more so because of the casimireffectfilm.com ‘s increasing web traffic, however at the moment I’ve experienced one lock up that doesn’t seem to have any justifiable cause, I may eventually get a second linode, and do some testing with another webserver platform, it’s all part of the learning but it’s definitely frustrating!

As for me as an individual I’ve decided to take another financial plunge and get shot of my car, you know the big silver mondeo that made me look like a taxi. Instead I’ve gone for something that was a little more… well me, despite this the transition has not been without hinderance, and unfortunately I can’t reveal details of this right now as there may be some legal issues involved, Yes THAT badly,

I’m also planning on doing a summer return to livevideo.com since I’ve actually missed vlogging, and well, need to get my creative feet back moving, Holiday plans for this year are again hindered by political situations all over the world and my job is slowly grinding away at my mind until such time as I get my head around what is going on and what I’m meant to be doing, In other words I’m still finding my feet, but it’s a million times better than the last place I was in thats for sure.

Apptacious.com has effectively seen a halt in all posts at the moment since no-one other than myself is contributing, and since it was supposed to be a user or community based contribution site, I’m a little disappointed that no-one else wanted to share their feelings on the applications they have purchased, especially with all the new hype about the iPad and the possibility of the iPhone 4G looming around the corner, so if you have an iPad, Mac, iPhone, iPod touch or even a humble PC but like following mac related news please do get in touch and drop an email to mark@apptacious.com as soon as you can

Cardifftweetups.co.uk has also seen a virtual stop on just about everything since again I’m the only one contributing, however I’m blaming part of this on the winter months that have come about and no doubt spayed a few people off meeting anyone, although I am a little surprised, hopefully people on twitter will actually read this part of the blog and start contributing or requesting a posting account

In other news I’ve recently started writing for the wonderful wales online blogs on their your cardiff section and it’s proving to be a very rewarding experience, hopefully I can continue on this and start posting something that people actually read and can contribute too, also my typing speed has improved to around 140 wpm, although accuracy leaves a little to be desired,

Anyway thats my smal-ish update that has actually turned out to be quite long, although I did write this in the space of about 10 mins, impressive nonetheless but no doubt I will read this over at a later stage and see just how many spelling mistakes there actually are, or that it probably doesn’t make much sense,

so what’s been going on your life’?

Try as I might, I simply could not get the computer to boot, I sat back in the chair with a horrifying realisation, my files, 8 years worth of them, were lost. Including all of the pictures I have ever taken with my SLR camera, my entire history of artwork, plus a load more all gone, replaced with a flashing cursor.

So, with me working in IT, you would expect me to have backups right? Well here’s the really ironic thing about it, I did keep backups, I even have an external hard drive that I keep attached to the computer for just that purpose, however, rather stupidly the week before I had wiped the drive, to backup another computer, and never got the chance to make another backup of the primary system.

So just like that, I learned the hard way, that I should NEVER go without a backup. In fact it’s taught me just how stupid it really was, not only that, but given I work in IT, I should have known better, I should have set an example, but heres a few things that might help you in the future, and yes, I am doing all of them.

It’s not the end of the world
Data recovery services do exist, and whilst it’s expensive, your data can usually be retrieved by these guys

Don’t go cheap on backups
Getting an external hard drive isn’t cheap, but it isn’t expensive either, spend some money on a suitably sized backup drive, and pay for some decent backup software, you’ll be glad you did

It’s expensive but it’s worth it
Most modern computers allow you to have more than one hard drive set up as something called a RAID array. There are many different types of RAID array, but the one we’re looking at here is called, Mirroring.
You buy two hard drives, both are the same size, e.g. 1tb each hard drive, put them in a new computer, now, this doesn’t mean you have 2tb of space, if you set up as a mirror that is,

Instead, all you ever see is 1 hard drive, however everything you do is copied, seamlessly to the other hard drive without you even knowing it, so if one goes, you can simply remove it, and replace it, with no loss to your data, couple that with an external hard drive and your in a pretty good position to safeguard against failure.

A bit of housework goes a long way
Windows has built into it a tool called Checkdisk, and I would advise you run a checkdisk once a week at a minimum, it ensures your hard drive is in good condition, and you can automatically correct certain errors as well

Believe it or not, none of this is hard to do
Buying an external hard drive is easy, plugging it in is easy, installing a tool to backup is easy, and setting it to do it automatically is easy as well, most of these things are really simple to setup, one click tends to do it all, and do it once a week, or if you hardly use your computer, once a month, if you use it daily, backup daily.

RAID is also easy to do if you are setting up from a fresh computer, before installing you’ll usually see something on your screen that says ‘Press Ctrl + F to enter fastbuild utility”, once you go in, it’s usually very easy to spot the option that tells you to set up mirroring, then you just install as normal, or if you’ve taken an image of your hard drive, just restore the image!

The housework is easy, windows lets you set up scheduled tasks in a really easy way, so set chkdsk to run every week automatically and you’ll never have to worry about it, ok so it’s a tiny bit more complex about this, but it’s actually quite easy to set all of this up, and it’s how I’m doing it.

For about 200 pounds, I’m able now to protect myself against this happening again, as for now, my hard drive is currently sat somewhere in amsterdam, being examined, and it could cost me in the region of £500 to repair. and thats a one off with no guarantee that the data I get back will be any good. £200 may seem a lot, but actually, it’s well worth it for a reliable and guaranteed backup solution.

So what do I have to show for it come the start of April. Well, my new car has a severe oil leak and has been in my possession for all of four days while garages try to identify the cost, my new job is, as any new job is, traumatic and stressful as I get my head around all the things I have to learn, and I have another raging ear infection which I’m currently treating with double the prescribed number of antibiotics as well as painkillers.

Not ideally a great start to 2010, although the job stress is perfectly normal and acceptable, I would in fact be worried about the job if there were no stress, so perhaps thats a positive.

This isn’t a rant though, more an, honest blog updating you on my life and my current ambitions. Providing things turn out ok on the car I should have some money left over for a holiday, perhaps even two, one to Thailand, and one to the States, providing of course that the repair bill to finally fix my car once and for all does not make me want to sell my kidneys or genitals on the black market.

Although those of you that do read this, might be surprised to know that this is probably the first real time I’ve talked about it, my near vice like grip on the obsession that is twitter has loosened somewhat, indeed in the last 30 days I must have posted, what, 100 times? if not slightly more. Don’t worry, there is no particular reason for this, I have simply been trying to be a good boy and not tweet much about work, while in work and I’m sure some people could use a break from my mini meltdowns for the time being.

As anyone knows, the internet has become more of an integral part of our daily lives than we first thought. In fact so integral is it, that a recent episode of House hi-lited one womans obsessions to simply blog everything might nearly have been the death of her, but its interesting in a way to see that popular TV shows now are demonstrating the internet more and more. Lord knows, if hollywood producers actually knew what you could do with the internet, we might see a whole host more TV shows and films that touch a little too close to home.

The episode of House did however get me thinking. If I were to blog on a daily basis about my predicaments, would I get more hits? would I have perhaps gotten useful feedback from someone who has actually had an oil leak on a 54 plate BMW 120d? Would I have gotten a lawsuit from potential slandering of the un-named garage I brought the car from and would have likely screamed about? Or would people turn around and read it, not give a crap and ignore the site once more.

it interests me. In fact my silence on twitter was more of an accidental experiment to see whether people noticed, or even cared.

There were, indeed, a few posts on twitter, asking of my whereabouts, but what really surprised me is that on this site alone, my visitor numbers briefly went up. At a low point I get 16 hits a day, on a high, over a thousand. In fact on the 10th of March I got a spike, of almost two and a half thousand visitors, it stayed fairly consistant after that, hovering around the one thousand mark until the 21st when they dropped back down to 600-ish. Strangely, it was only on the 21st that I got a text, asking if I was alright. Odd however that people check my twitter and then my site before texting or calling me to know if something is going on.

It does, however, give a good indication of just how integral the internet now is to peoples lives. I decided a while back that this website is becoming a blog, rather than a showcase of my photography work. I also decided that I would try to do more tech postings and talk less about my life and more about things people are interested in, but every now and then a regular blog can’t hurt.

In fact I would go as far as to say I need to update this far more often, given that people are now coming from twitter to read it (around 63%). I do however wish people would comment more, I like telling stories, even if they aren’t quite happy and jolly, but an accurate and public diary is still a part of me and life today as we know it.

Who knows, perhaps this story will generate some comments, perhaps I’ll have someone come along who has deconstructed the top half of a 120d engine and might offer some advice. Or maybe I’ll get some links to other peoples personal blogs and be able to comment directly on them.

This is now a life blog, more than anything else. But I do pause for a moment while I wonder just what impact technology has on your lives, and whether it is as integral to yours as it is to mine.

I want to start by explaining my utter foul hatred of the UK post office, and the postal system. We are continually plagued with stories about postal workers striking, and more often than not, lost letters, and misdirected post. I’ve never been a fan of the post office, and there are a number of reasons for it, but primarily, my hatred is based toward the postal staff rather than the service.

I have never once been served by someone who is helpful, happy, or even just ‘content’. Moreover every time I have been served, It’s been rude, aggressive, and in some cases, violent. I must also stress that I am never rude or aggressive when dealing with these people, as my father taught me “you will never get anything by being aggressive”.

Take one example, last night. For the first time in years I was faced with such despicable service that not only was I left enraged, but I was left feeling like I actually wanted to punch someone. Again, I stress I would never do it. I’ll talk about it, I’ll go outside sit in the car and vent my frustration by repeatedly smacking the steering wheel, but I would never EVER become physically violent.

The example of the other night, was where I wanted to tax my car. Now the post office themselves say that they do not normally accept self printed insurance certificates, however a post office worker is allowed to use their discretion. So I decided I would go and try, since my certificate had not arrived yet. I used dayinsure, and printed a perfectly legal, valid certificate.

I went, I queried and was immediately met with a hostile, aggressive natured staff member who, with a loud smack on the desk as she slammed her palm on it, screamed out “Why the HELL don’t you read the signs, we won’t take it, not now not ever!” I would love to say this is a one off, but sadly it’s not, on other occasions where I’ve come to send a letter I’ve been met with a similarly hostile attitude…. more on that in a moment.

I’d love to say that I was able to respond in kind and get a tax disk, unfortunately it wasn’t the case. Again, I’ll point out that I wasn’t unhappy with being denied the tax disk, they have a right to use discretion and they denied it, seems fair. To do it in that way however, isn’t right. I politely asked if there was any other way as I would have to drive the car untaxed or pay for a low loader to take the vehicle from the garage to somewhere off the road, at which point several other staff members did, what I can only describe as, ganged up on me. Four female staff members then proceeded to quite literally, throw various pieces of paper explaining about printed documents, one pristinely laminated sheet hit me square in the face.

At which point I picked up the paper, pointed out the part about discretion and then left. Two of the staff members remained silent, the other two instead of saying nothing, shouted after me by simply saying “yeah well f*** you!”.

How wonderful that such a thing could happen. As I said before, this is not a rare occurrence. I had to send a package not that long ago, quite a large one, and so paid for the postage online. With the post office themselves, that explained I could take the parcel to any post office with the notes. I promptly did this, following all of the instructions and took it to the post office.

The staff there repeatedly tutted and sighed, before shouting at me for giving them this strange thing to process. One attendant, after I had explained that I had paid online and was instructed to take to the nearest post office, sighed loudly, shouted “F***ing hell” and then threw her pen at the window with such force that ink actually splattered the inside of the screen”. She then tried to charge me the full amount and only after requesting to speak to the area manager, did she give in, ‘read’ the details and then take the package.

I’ve witnessed other similar things happen to other people, recorded delivery is apparently not the norm, and neither is taking money out of the post office bank. One poor elderly lady was shouted out for being “so far f***ing past it” when she was having trouble with the PIN entry pad and being told to “get a f***ing minder”.

Even on collection of parcels, I’m met with a hint of discontent, and an attitude that would not look out of place wearing an Umbro hoodie and Nike trainers.

Post offices in the UK also have a wonderful thing of ‘half days’ on thursdays. We live now in such a 24/7 world that the post office lags behind dramatically. Why is it the Post Office needs a half day? Why on earth is it that I send a first class letter, that it can take up to two weeks to arrive? and why is it that around my area the postman simply fails to show up on occasion, not just my house, but the entire area.

I’m very sorry to say this, but with the spate of post offices that are closing I can only say good riddance. Not only are they almost permanently vacant, but the staff are so foul and rude that the office is uninhabitable on account of the lack of space for you and their ego’s.

I know there is a valuable need for post offices, but please, I think it’s time a private service took over, one that isn’t afraid to discipline wildcat staff.

What really took me was just how easy it was. I don’t mean the technical aspect of the shot, but just how pleasant it was to work with the people who were essentially modelling for me. Everyone was co-operative and helpful, although I’ll say that I was more or less useless at directing them.

I’m surprised because of course I’ve heard all of these horror stories about difficult subjects or the more or less total control needed for the photographer. One photographer friend of mine has said ‘it’s essential to communicate‘ and that I should ‘take charge’ and ‘direct everyone’, In fact his exact words were ‘You need to be really good at directing people’. Of course after hearing that I more or less ended up crapping myself at the thought of trying to control or direct some very important people and of course in my case, a famous one.
Yet all I had to do was say to them both “just relax and do whatever feels right”, and whilst they picked up on the fact that I have never done any form of portrait work before, they did exactly as I said and just… relaxed! It was an incredible feeling building a rapport with them as I fumbled around with the studio lights, trying very hard to not burn either myself or the cast member I was shooting. Despite all this, they were great, helpful, kind and after a few nerves and a little uncertainly (on both their part and mine), I started taking shots and everything just flowed.

Shooting in a studio helped so much, this is the first time I was able to do this, but it gave a more professional environment, I was able to shoot easily and well with the camera and I think I got some fantastic shots as well (you will see some soon) but it’s left me with a completely different view of studio photography. Who knows, I might even get a huge amount of work from it, Maybe not. But there is the possibility!

Maybe this was just a really great first experience, maybe it’s all like this, but I now know for a fact that the profession I’ve always wanted to get into, really is what I want to get into.

I am more comfortable behind a camera, than I am anywhere else.

The time has come for me to trade in my car, but if I wait much longer I stand to loose thousands and thousands of pounds in depreciation. I have to get rid in the next two months or I may as well not sell. This is not such a good thing, especially when your happening to try and keep the whole ‘prestige car’ thing going and the only ones out there are high milers.

Frustratingly my current role means I can’t exactly be without a car, so I’m quite stuffed in a sense. But if I wait, I stand to loose around 3 grand, whereas if I change now, I don’t loose anything, nor do I have to spend anything at all, the current trade in value for my car is actually so good that I will more or less get a straight swap. Unfortunately that straight swap might mean getting a prestige car with everything I want, except it’s 143,000 miles, on a petrol or diesel. This is not good at all.

Oh dear. Out of interest I’ve looked at Audi A4′s, Volkswagen Golfs, BMW 1 Series and Mercedes C Class. Don’t get me wrong there are plenty about, although some are almost 200 miles away, but in the case of the 1 series, sure I can get exactly what I want, no question about it, except one of them has 114000 miles on a 2.0 diesel, now that’s a lot. The same with Audi A4′s. The only thing that doesen’t seem to have the miles, is the VW Golf, though I might have to travel to get one. Then of course theres the possibility that some little teenage f**kwit has ragged it to within an inch of it’s life, as is the case today with one example I looked at. It was perfect, aside from the blown head gasget!

Which leaves me with a very big problem, if I do it now, I wont have to pay a penny, if I don’t then I’ll have to pay thousands. Why is the used car market so atroctious in Cardiff? Why do the perfect ones have to be 178 miles away…. DAMNIT!

Whilst we’ve already missed the Cardiff leg of the tour, the rest of it is still in progress. You can click the youtube link below to see projects and features from “Valleys Kids”, some street dancers from community grouo “Urban Circle”, woodwork from “Construction Youth Trust” and life guards from “Aberavon Surf Lifesaving Club” (you can SURF in Aberavon??)

http://www.youtube.com/user/LotteryGoodCauses

I love charity events like this, I love charity full stop, especially when it goes to support things in the local community so it’s fantastic to see what the Lottery funded projects are getting up to. Look out for them in your local town, bring a camera and have fun! In the meantime if you wan’t to support the lottery fund, buy a lottery ticket! or support your local lottery funded projects

For someone like me who is relatively new to Mac (near a year) these things are invaluable to me since they let me know about fantastic applications that I’ve never heard of (or thought of).

Before you ask, I have not been asked to do this post, nor have I been paid to do it. I’m simply doing it because I wanted to tell you.

Last year MacHeist did a free nanobundle, with a small fortune of applications for free. This time, the nanobundle costs but has over $250 of applications, including the one I’m posting in now, macjournal. MarsEdit has long been my choice for blog entries while I’m offline so it’s a refreshing change. In case your wondering about the cost, its $19.95. Thats in dollars. That’s completely worth it in my eyes for applications I’ll actually use.

It’s only there for a limited time, so head on over to http://www.macheist.com and grab it while you can

The server experienced a catastrophic failure which was caused by a bad command in the system scripts. The system has now been restored with the help of the folks at linode.com and the server is performing normally. I apologise for any inconvenience anyone experienced

If we move back a week or so, the BBC got wind of the Apple iPad announcement. True to their current form not only was the announcement inaccurate but potentially misleading for potential buyers, here’s the catch line
If you want to view the article, click here. First of all, where did they get this piece of nonsense? and second of all, No it does not have iPhoto. Amongst other things iPhoto is an image editing suite as well as a gallery collection system, it syncs with most cameras, and includes the ability to work with and edit RAW files and pictures. The iPad version is nothing like that. It’s simply a gallery which supports GeoTagging and Facial Recognition. That isn’t iPhoto.

However the latest one is of course the computers in cars article. Which implies, amongst other things, that cars have about 9 computer units scattered throughout the car, see diagram below

What utter idiot came up with this diagram? First off, cars do have computers, but usually a limit of two or three. A car will consist of having an ECU, or control unit for the cars engine, and second of all internal electronics such as airbags, electric windows and locking, ABS, wipers and climate are controlled by an electrical control computer. Granted parking assistance may be controlled by a separate unit however this is usually controlled by the main electrical control unit as well.

I’m sorry but this ludicrous string of false information over and over and over again is getting ridiculous. I know i’ve only posted about two BBC news articles but please Fire your tech editor now! and recruit someone who actually knows what the hell they are talking about!

ARGH!

From this I saw an opportunity to invite everyone, just as @foomandoonian did, to invite people to a long term project where anyone can join, have fun creating something they can be proud of, and submit their best possible work. It’s a chance for everyone with a phone camera all the way up to professional equipment to get creative, including myself.

The alphabet project is, quite simply, the alphabet. 26 letters over 26 months. Just over two years where each month, you have that entire month to pick a photo you already have or to go out and take a new one that corresponds to a letter of the alphabet. A for January, B for February and so on all the way up to February 2012 when the project ends on Z.

The photo can be of anything, so long as it matches with the letter for that month, it can be of an object, a builder, a place or even a person. So long as it is a photo, it’s acceptable.

I’m starting this month, and since it’s a little late, entries are accepted until the 5th of February for the letter A.

At the end of each month a thread will be created to pick out some of the best ‘letters’ of each month, where everyone can comment, give critique and suggestions for the next month. It’s a long term project, clearly, but it should provide everyone with a little challenge and the the option to learn and develop their skills. Beginner to Pro. Everyone is welcome

If you want to join in, all you have to do is join and upload on flickr.
go to The Alphabet Project by clicking here or going to http://www.flickr.com/group/alphabetproject/ or a short URL of http://bit.ly/alphabetproject.

If you tweet about it, please use the hashtag #alphabetproject and help make this work. Even if your not interested, send it to your friends, tweet it, blog about it, and help make this the biggest and most ambitious project going, and help it grow. Spread the word!

It seems I’m not the only one! Almost everyone I know with some form of Apple product beyond the basic iPod usually spends an inordinate amount of time cleaning it with everything from micro fibre cloths and window cleaner to specialist Mac cleaning products like iKlear. I’ll confess I am somewhat of a cleaning nut, and I have been known in the past to physically take apart my keyboard and stick it in the dishwasher, or spend an hour with cotton buds getting rid of the crud that has built up in the corner of my monitor, but I have to say that I find myself paying more attention to cleaning my nearly newish Macintosh. Oh and yes, I have brought the iKlear package.

Just how far is too far? And why is it Apple products demand that kind of attentiveness from their owners. Should we simply just put a bit of polish on the old lump of metal and wipe it over or should we spend more time carefully cleaning our technology? After all, it’s not uncommon for someones iMac to be a centrepiece to an office. But does it extend to our iPhones, our laptops and if it does, then why are we not doing it to our televisions?

Alas most of this hasn’t happened, we’re still stuck largely where we were at the end of the 1980′s in terms of the actual world we live in. We still drive from A to B, flying is still prohibitively expensive for some and whilst advances have been made in your Television and Telephone, if you took the TV and mobile phone changes out, the most significant change over the last 20 years is the fact we no longer carry around a Sony Walkman cassette player for our music needs.

Of course I am being cynical, there have been a great number of advances in technology, I just can’t help but feel they have been significantly slower than they should have been. I once remember a child in my school, back when I was 10 or even 9 years old, saying “they would probably have flying cars by the time you learn to drive”. Whilst that might have been a bit ambitious for a 7 or 8 year time gap, if you think about it, we all really thought something like that would happen. Remember the Slug concept car? Apparently by 2001 we were all going to be driving these. Homes would be knocked down and rebuilt with new ultra modern, low cost eco friendly buildings with mountains of technology in them.

Fabulous blade runner esq high rise buildings for people rich and poor containing hi tech homes and doors that opened with speech recognition and the whole world would either be covered in a dense smog like in Blade Runner, or as clear as the air inside the dome from Logans Run.

Yet despite this, despite the hope that we would move with the advances of technology, I still come home to a sixty year old house, with the same plugs, the same wiring and even the same door locks as we had then. The technology has advanced, but not quite in the way we’ve hoped. I have a computer sat on my desk, it just happens to be more powerful. I write letters with it and play games, like most people. We did this 20 years ago with the ZX Spectrum or the Atari ST, just now we do it in richer colour and slightly faster. I pick up my iPod instead of a walkman and watch television that comes through a cable instead of an arial. Yes the advances are there, but they are all just, minor upgrades. The same as twenty years ago I could buy a cassette that was 70 or 90 minutes long. The technology is the same, but just, a little bit better, more convenient.

And so this is my problem, on coming into 2010, instead of creating new technology, instead of ploughing through and improving everything we already have, inventing new things and new technologies we’ve bumbled around with silly things. Take climate change for example. We’ve been focusing for years on how to reduce the buildup of climate change by adjusting the things we use in the home, like light bulbs. Instead of perhaps doing that, or even tearing down the old unfriendly things in favour or rebuilding it with clean new eco friendly things and then inventing a machine that cleans the air for us so that the eco change is really reversed. Why I ask, even now are we still not considering blasting things into the sun? The ultimate waste disposal and it provides our sun with fuel?

Oh I know I am being cynical and perhaps even very unfair, but if someone asked me where we would be in ten years time, I would probably say exactly where we are now. Perhaps my phone will be the size of my thumbnail or even implanted into my ear. Maybe there really will be a rapid change in technology so fast that we enter a real space age, that we start entering a massive form of silicon revolution, the same way the industrial revolution of steam changed the world in only a few years. It has happened before and it can happen again, but I have to ask why it hasn’t happened yet.

And so I leave this slightly longer than usual post aimed toward you, the readers. I ask you to be open, and honest, and to think just totally about this subject and whether it is really fair, what your thoughts are on the next year and indeed the next ten years. I invite you as the readers to indulge me in this article or brush it aside as cynicism or nonsense. But never forget, I love the technology we have now and truly admire the work that has been done, and I see huge potential for the technology we have in ways I can’t even begin to describe but I am disappointed, annoyed and even angry, that we have not pushed ourselves as a race to become more than we are and push the boundaries every day, so I ask you the readers to turn around and put me in my place, put me down, put me out, put me up but most of all just to think about the things you have already and what they have done for you.

Indulge me. I’ll be waiting.