Thursday, April 30, 2009

Alvaro Bautista Grungy '09 Desktop Wallpaper


Even though I tend to stick away from my MotoGP geekdom and nerdity on this blog, there's times where it seems right to let the odd post slip through.
Like now...
I've just completed the first in a set of 2009 Alvaro Bautista desktop wallpapers which hopefully bring stylings and treatments on a big step from last year, whilst remaining stuffed with my basic design DNA.
The first one is now available for download, and comes in 1440x900 and 1280x800 widescreen options... A lush, deep and grungy treatment, finished off with a cracking action photo from the Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi, and a discreet rack of sponsor logos. I've tried to make the composition totally appropriate for both Mac and Windows desktop layouts.
Click here for the downloads...


Tuesday, April 28, 2009

H2G2=10


h2g2 is ten years old...
To go see it and to find out more about Life, The Universe, and Everything, click here - or to find out more about the late great Douglas Adams click here...


W4 5TS :: 7.30AM :: 28_04_09

Taken on the iPhone, early this morning at work.
What the hell happened to all that beautiful weekend sun?



Friday, April 24, 2009

Quote Of The Week: Werner Herzog


"Life on this planet has been a constant chain of cataclysms and extinctions. It is obvious that we are going to be next."
Legend Werner Herzog keeping things rosy in this excellent little piece in the New Statesman magazine, promoting his new film, Encounters at the End of the World, which opens in the UK today.


Thursday, April 23, 2009

Stuff About Aliens

(*I know which one I'd rather be stuck in a lift with...)


Although I'm not anything approaching a 'Trekkie' or whatever the term is, there's no doubt I'm a bit of a geek. And to be honest I'm kind of looking forward to the new Star Trek film.
Hanging off the edge of its release are many articles and bits of feature writing - like this quite good one in the Indy about Vulcans, and how they are a superior species to us. Although of course they're not superior, since they don't actually exist; something which surely has to be considered as a drawback in any species really...
It also discusses the concept of creating fictional races in sci-fi, and how they can be very human-like, or utterly horrifying (although they fail to mention how Jar-Jar Bloody Binks strangely manages to fit into both categories...)
It's also worth the read, if only for Patrick Moore's priceless quote:
"There isn’t a planet Vulcan, of course, otherwise I would have observed it."


Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Tube Strike On Beautiful Hot Sunny Day Shocker

(*Above: RMT workers struggling for justice. In the sun. Again.)


Okay, so I'm a commuter who lives on the Victoria Line and am having today's travel royally screwed over by the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) going on strike - but, not being in the slightest a cynical or sarcastic individual, I cannot begrduge them such a lovely day in the sun.

Not only is today "EARTH DAY" and so it's almost poetic that the RMT should choose on our behalf to celebrate the environmental event by not running any tubes on the Victoria Line (thereby saving a bit of energy, and forcing people into their cars so they end up using a lot more instead), but also they have managed to choose (at short notice, I'm guessing by looking at the BBC's excellent 5-day weather forecasts...) an absolutely perfect day for it.
The RMT and London Transport workers' unions in general, tend to be pretty good at picking strike days, although today seems something of an exception as they usually pick the Tuesday after a Bank Holiday to pad out a smashing weekend, or a convenient late-night shopping day in the run-up to Christmas.

But fairplay - it's a good call; lovely sunshine and a tremendous midweek break, and only a shame that the rest of us didn't think of something like this too.
The excuse (sorry... "reason") for the strike is apparently a claim that the trains need safety features to prevent doors from opening on the wrong side - something that I've never once experienced or even heard of in my many years living down here.

Enjoy the sun, chaps - and I look forward to everything being back to normal (ie: Shit) tomorrow.


Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Wookiees: The Iranian Army's Secret Weapon


News from Iran: Whilst the world's attention has been focused on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's verbal attack on Israel at the UN Racism conference (though Israeli heckling and disruption beforehand & the boycott of people like the USA is apparently perfectly okay... you can behave like total wankers and get away with it so long as you're not Iranian it would appear), few seem to have noticed that the Iranian army actually paraded Wookiee snipers through the streets of Tehran at the weekend on the country's annual Army Day.
This should be of far greater concern to Israel - as these fellas, particularly if combined with a crack-squad of Ewoks, are bloody dynamite.
Wookiees originate from Kashyyyk (which now that I think about it could possibly be an Iranian name) and contrary to the photo, tend to prefer the bowcaster over the AK47.
You can find out more about them at Wookieepedia. Naturally.


Sunday, April 19, 2009

Only A Part, Not The Whole


Lovers of fine music everywhere are of course furious that me and my mate Rob have decided to "re-form" our band Smallcreep to try and finish up a project that we worked on for about 6 or 7 years and completely gave up on (BACKLASH).
But in setting up my writing equipment again (basically a keyboard, some MIDI modules and my MacBook Pro) I accidentally wrote something today...
I was familiarising myself with Logic 8, which is the software we'll be using - and just through messing around and getting to know the interface and start seeing how you can play with sounds, MIDI arrangements, software instruments and FX processing etc, in the space of a few hours I wrote what I consider to be a basically "finished" piece of work. It's kind of ambient industrial jazz - very soundscapey and laid back but a bit dark. There's the odd fluffed note here and there but I don't want to lose any of the atmosphere by trying to perfect it.

It's called "Only A Part, Not The Whole" and you can download the MP3 here...
It's about 11Mb as it's almost 5 minutes long, and I've saved it down with the best possible sound quality encoding.

(The band is *the rain dogs* which is the name I give for my 'solo' work... and I've set the ID tags on the song to say it's from an album called "Music For Pictures 09" - which I'll use as a bucket title for any collection of works I build up over the coming months.)
All bodes pretty well for Smallcreep - although the fact that I recovered over *300* song files from the previous session archives suggests we have have our work cut out!


Friday, April 17, 2009

'Ello 'Ello 'Ello... Nicked My Son You Are...


One thing that *does* make me proud to be a Brit is the fact that some 390,000 declared our religion to be Jedi at the last national census.
It also appears, in what can only be a good thing, that a proportion of Scottish police officers are Jedi too...
(Insert joke about The Force here...)


Don't It Make You Proud...

Click here for the final, pitiful confirmation that the war on terror was a complete load of bollocks.
One of the few things that makes me proud to be a Brit right now is the outpouring of utter revulsion in all the responses to this news piece (which emerged from a letter in the paper yesterday).
Would be good if an incident as offensive, loathsome and unnecessary as this might finally trigger someone up top to wonder if policing and policing legislation aren't in dire need of change.
I'll leave that on the "unlikely" list though...


Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Steinberg Cubase Activation: What A Load Of Shite


Ironically enough, after completely trumpeting a fantastic application (the superb "Yep" - below...) I'm gifted the opportunity to slag one off as being a bag of shite. Thanks Steinberg, and step forward Cubase.
I have to say that there's not really anything wrong with Cubase on a technical level as a music programming and production system - far from it - but having spent my money to buy my own legitimate copy, and to go through a daft online activation process (involving a USB "dongle") and registering it, I've now just found that the application can NEVER be launched without the dongle taking up one of my two USB ports. EVER.

I have just the two ports and I have limited space and too much cabling already; I cannot add more and more shit to my setup just so it can actually function.
More crucially than this particular instance of annoyance though is the question "WTF????"
I mean, really, who uses bloody "dongles" nowadays? Nobody else I buy software from, that's for sure. Adobe, Apple, shareware companies - whoever - I buy the softawre and I run it. And if it's not a simple honest activation system, or it veers to stupid, contrived and paranoid then I stop using it. The last company that had stupid and confounding activation processes getting in the way of me just getting on and using it was Quark. That's one of the major reasons why I now use InDesign (and also a reason I know many other design professionals finally got fed up with Quark).
And it's the reason that I'm going to be working in either Logic or Garageband, or a combination of the two in pulling together the next Smallcreep album, and for any future projects.

As far as I'm concerned, "dongles" are a thing of the past - as are the companies that use them and force them on people who are spending their hard-earned dosh on BUYING legitimate copies of their precious software. If Steinberg had said in big clear writing on *any* of the online and promotional pre-purchase blurb for Cubase that it required one of my USB slots then I would have at least had the opportunity to think "well fuck off and die then... idiots..." before shelling out good money on a copy.
As it is, I feel more than a little aggrieved that such a glaring *down* in the product is kept quiet till you've bought it.

Anyway - Logic and Garageband it is then. And Cubase, and Steinberg can indeed fuck off.
Shame as it was quite a nice piece of software to work with. Something I think I also said about Quark, before I forgot all about it.


"Yep" - An iPhoto For PDFs. But Better.


Discovered a superb app that'll make a world of difference to me. It's one for Mac OSX, and it's called Yep - a kind of iPhoto for PDF files... Except better than iPhoto.

Fire it up for the first time and it rifles through your machine (well, where you allow it on your machine - that's up to you) and catalogues and tags all the PDFs it can find.
Once it's done that you effectively have your "library" and whilst things like iPhoto can behave like complete tossers over where stuff is stored, Yep doesn't care. It just knows, and it awlays reflects the locations correctly.
The main viewing panel gives preview or list views - and can also be used for actually browsing within PDFs - and you can use the lefthand column for navigating your entire PDF collection either by location on your Mac or by tagging. Oh, and you can add your own tags of course, on top of all the tagging data already existing in the documents.

PDFs have become a hugely prevalent document format of late. Not only are they often used for manuals and guides, they're often how download documents, press releases and much more are handled. Plus of course there's PDF previews from apps like Photoshop and Illustrator. I have oodles of PDFs around, stashed all over the place, so it's a real plus to find something that catalogues and manages them so effectively.

Yep lets you scan documents too; suggesting that you can just keep adding to your PDF stash forever with realworld documents - but I don't even feel the need to go into that area.
Just as a PDF database and 'management' app, it's absolutely superb.
A mere $34 and worth every cent, whatever a cent is worth these days...
Yep can be downloaded from here...


Tuesday, April 14, 2009

"Some Gitwit Lived Here"


Excellent to see Don't Panic sorting out a thoroughly well-deserved 'Blue Plaque' to recognise Jacqui Smith's eternal contribution to the quality of British politics...
Top work, chaps :-)


Thursday, April 9, 2009

Animal Rescue Kerala - Update

(*Rescued dogs chilling at the Centre. Pic from ARK's Flickr photostream)


I've had an update from Debbie, who prompted an earlier post regarding animal cruelty in the Indian state of Kerala, and the work of ARK (Animal Rescue Kerala) and its founder Avis Lyons in trying to prevent it. She went on a working/volunteer holiday to Kerala and has sent on an account of it all...


"Dog walking was one of the volunteers duties along with de-ticking, playing and fussing the dogs, bathing them if there is enough water and going along with Avis to any dog rescuing.

Giving leaflets out on the beach is another important job that needs doing as it makes other tourists aware of what the centre is about and where it is - you would be surprised how many people come up to the centre to see what its about. It also brings donations in as well, which Avis desperately needs. The running of the centre depends on donations - Avis isn’t allowed what they call foreign contributions so she can’t get any sort of sponsorship or donations from foreign companies.

Avis and her daughter Odette do an amazing job - Odette lives in France and is involved with the political side of things and believe me there are a lot. To cut it short the Trivandrum corporation have killed thousands of dogs in just that area and are still carrying that out. They pick them up off the streets and either strangle them or inject them.

I did see some awful sights in my short time there - but there were happy times as well. Volunteering was an amazing experience - it took me out of my comfort zone and into the unknown and I thoroughly felt good about it. I also met great people in the month I was there.

One day an orphanage came to visit ARK - the purpose of the visit is to educate the Indian kids to be kind to animals and to make them aware of the sterilisation programme that ARK are carrying out.
At ARK there are 3 staff that carry out cleaning duties, feeding, dog catching and dog walking when they have time and a nurse that assists the vet; therefore volunteers are very important.

The beach dogs nowadays have a good life - there’s not a lot on the beach now as the sterilisation programme is showing results, and by the way Lucy is still there. It’s the other dogs at the back of the beach that have problems. There is a lot of distemper disease which does kill a lot of them.
Parvovirus disease is also a massive killer, especially in puppies - a lot of them die at a few weeks old, and of course cruelty.

I hope that has painted a picture for you and if you return to Kerala you can find time to visit ARK and perhaps walk a few dogs - it would make your holiday."




If you want to find out more about Animal Rescue Kerala then check out the ARK website - and please sign their petition and if you can, make a donation. Also if you're a Facebook person, then join their Facebook page, to keep up to date with all their work.

Big thanks to Debbie for the update, and big thanks to ARK for all they do :-)
And glad to hear that Lucy - the dog we befriended on the beach at Kovalam - is still there. Very very happy to hear that.
Awesome.


Cartoonists On Tomlinson

Steve Bell in The Guardian

Dave Brown in The Independent



Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Backlash Back On Track


After much thought, Smallcreep has returned onto my "To Do" roster...
With Rob and me listening to more and more diverse stuff, and with a few nudges from friends and fans (yes - the band actually has fans...) we've agreed to go pick things up on our unfinished 3rd album, BACKLASH.
It was a project that went on for about 6 or 7 years, spawning so many ideas it became unmanageable. We threw out about 30 of them and started over. And the same thing happened again.
So we left it and carried on with our lives.

But lately, we've both discussed it and decided that we actually were incredibly proud of the stuff that was happening and coming out of the sessions, and so we aim to revisit the 60 or so remaining ideas (almost finished, semi-finished, rough sketchpads and more...) and try and nail the album we always meant to make.
There's studio setups to sort out and a shedload of files and roughcuts to review, but "THE MIGHTY 'CREEP" (© Kris Barford) are up for it and we're looking forward to doing great things again.
And bickering.
We always bicker.

We'll be putting out updates - and possibly some sneaky peeks of the new stuff here at the new Smallcreep '09 blog...


Monday, April 6, 2009

Somerset Town Twins With Fictional Universe


In one of those "It could only happen in England" stories, the Somerset town of Wincanton is twinned with Discworld.
It's actually slightly old news in a sense, the town originally twinning with fictional Ankh-Morpork back in 2002. But the latest development shows the line between reality and fiction getting ever more blurred as Pratchett paid a visit to the town to see new street names such as Peace Pie Street and Treacle Mine Road, which have just been named after places in his books.
Not entirely sure how this twinning arrangement pans out for exchange visits and the like, but nice to see some fun, imaginative thinking in the world of local councils - and hopefully a useful means to extending the popularity of Terry Pratchett and his wonderful creation.

And certainly sweeter than Grantham, who instead of going down the traditional twinning route, recently formed a suicide pact with the Kingdom of Mordor.
That's a lie of course.
Though not necessarily a bad idea.


Thursday, April 2, 2009

Paxman, Pots & Kettles...


BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman has made what is taken to be a thiny veiled attack on Channel 4 in Good Housekeeping magazine, saying "I find it disappointing that there are TV channels that started with noble ideals and have become freak shows"...

Interestingly, on BBC today you can watch Bargain Hunt, Bargain Hunt's Famous Finds, Flog It, Escape To The Country, Young Mums' Mansion, Gary: Young, Psychic and Possessed, The Real Hustle, and Two Pints of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please.
Are we *sure* he was talking about Channel 4?


Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Attention: This Is NOT An April Fool...

(*Lights on, nobody home... Miss Universe, Dayana Mendoza)


Okay, this has to be the best "NON April Fool" story in the papers today.
In what's probably the best bit of poor taste since "Springtime for Hitler", and possibly the most eloquent comment on the utter worhtlessness of Miss Worlds, Universes and Galaxies everywhere, the current Miss Universe - one Dayana Mendoza - appears to have been a bit too enthusiastic in blogging about a visit to Guantanamo.
As a result the papers and the web are full of reports about her pronouncing the infamous US detention centre "relaxing, calm, and beautiful". Apparently it was "It was a loooot of fun!" - and "We also met the military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills." (Their skills are probably usually more likely to focus on ripping the face off anybody in an orange jumpsuit, rather than delighting airheaded beauty queens, but still... lovely, eh...)

"I didn't want to leave," she coos, "it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful." There's probably an easy gag somewhere about whether she thinks waterboarding is like surfing, but I can't be arsed to work on that... (There's probably also one about other people not having the option to leave... Again, can't be arsed. Sorry).
Sadly her entry is no longer online, her blog now featuring instead a rather awkward "statement by Paula M. Shugart, President of the Miss Universe Organization regarding Guantánamo Bay blog entry by Miss Universe, Dayana Mendoza".

This genuinely had me wondering for a while - and to be honest it's far funnier than some real April Fools in the media today, but there are some things that are just that teensy bit too twisted to be made up.
Can't wait for her holiday report from Gaza.


Happy Birthday Apple Computer


Although there's bound to be plenty of April Fools stories out there (many may revolve around Gordon Brown saying that Jacqui Smith is doing "a great job"...) it's always sweet to remember that April 1st is also the birthday of Apple Computer (01_04_76) - although as you can see from their original logo above, they did well to have a new design by Rob Janoff.
Happy birthday, and big snogs to you Apple.
And many more...