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’?

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!