here they are, my new little project. after a trip to the eden project i decided i really wanted to get myself a venus fly trap. sadly in the gift shop the traps were quite popular and i had to wait until a friend picked one up from homebase for me.

the first trap was quite small, but i did my research and was in full knowledge of what they wanted. they are bog plants so like to be wet, they prefer rain water and love the sun. the sun gives the traps their dark colour. they can survive cold weather and tend to hibernate in the winter and go black and nasty.

so i would leave the outside, then one morning i awoke the horror of my new plant being scattered accross the garden. glass dish and all. not sure what did it. the night after, a glove was found in the garden, and then a water bottle. so either there is some mutant magpie type fox thing that collects stuff and places them in the center of our lawn or its the cat toying with things

since christmas a little cat (named mr whiskerson) has been coming to our house. he started out as a kitten and was far away in the garden but gradually he came closer and now is very friendly with us (i think the milk helps)

anway, i had to scoop the dirt up and the try to plant the trap back in its pot. i was expecting it to die because it was quite a beating for such a picky plant. so i sought out a new trap. the new one is much larger with super large traps. i am however pleased to say the scooped up plant is doing better than alright. its nice and strong and it growing up towards the sun supporting itself (compared to growing along the ground). anyway the point of posting them is to see how they compare and how they develop.

they are quite slow growing plants, but i can see new traps and observe them growing and opening. they havent caught too many flies yet but from time to time i would see the plant with a trap closed. in fact the diddy plant has caught a tiny fly and is digesting it as we speak.

enjoy

I busted my wordpress.

not sure how i did it but im pretty sure it has something to do with my battle to be able to blog from my phone

i tried wp-mms with little sucsess, i think mainly sue to my mobile to being able to store the massive url. but after some research i found a wordpress plugin called postie (these thoughts came from using the initial “write by email” method built into wordpress)

the way these work is you create an email account, doesn’t have to be your blog domain. you send the emails to this address, the plugin then checks this account from the pop3 details, users and password details you provide it.

the checking is done by calling a url to a php file. so you also need to set up a cron command on your server to periodically calls this file to that it can login and download your emails to post them. luckily my hosting comes with the great cpanel and that included a nice interface to set up a cron.

worked ok

the way i send my email was as an mms, as the email software on my phone (k750i) does allow attachments. but when i send an mms t-mobile attaches its own branding and text for the message.

postie allows you to configure things further. allowing you to ignore certain images names and signatures so after a few tries you can give it enough data to present a clean t-mobilebrandingfree post.

i am having trouble getting a subject and body message separated, still having problems with random text that gets included. its not easy being me

and somehow with my fiddeling digicats.org/blog just did not work and when i tried to login into the admin side the styles were missing and link not pointing to the correct locations.

so i backed up everything and upgraded wordpress, and now its all ok

hurahh

this video is pretty hot

love the smile

i love macro photography, am always poking my camera in nice and deep (so to speak)

these are pretty awesome

http://pishmo.com/macro/

Ok, so its done.

Old job out of the way and new one in full swing. A big contrast to my last employment, which i think will take a little getting used to. The major difference is the type of place, one a big marketing agency with a small design department, the other a creative studio with only eight people in it and no account/project managers.

Is this a good thing, time will tell. It does help that the people talking to the clients are the ones who are doing the work. Things seems to get done quicker and easier this way. The other culture shock is the lack of interuptions. I sit at my desk and do my work, simple as that, no one coming over to ask me something every 10 minutes.

The organisation at the new place is excellent, i have had an induction into everything, the servers, the admin system, have a job description. Everything. Very refreshing.

The change in hours is great but still a little strange, i am home at 6.30, sometimes earlier. I just dont know what to do with myself in the evenings. But i have started to make more use of it, by 9 last night i had eaten a proper dinner and watched a movie and then some wow time before bed. Makes a change from eating at 9 or later. Good for the body and mind.

Work wise, its different, im designing and building this time opposed to just design. This breaks my days up quite nicely, but its still early and as they havent had a web person for a five weeks i am dealing with the backlog of small things at the moment, but next week i start designing on a proper project.

My high from the last couple of weeks at my previous place has been replaced with a realisation of the new job. Making new friends, getting comfortable with a new area and my surroundings. But im sure in no time i will be my bubbly, innuendo implying self again. I miss my friends from the bigger agency and miss knowing everyone and getting on well with my familar friends. I used to work in Covent Garden, and now work in Brixton. Again a massive contrast, but i live in south london anyway so its not too bad. Though i may give up smoking due to me getting fed up by the fact that i am smoking a ciggerette means that i have a load of “spares” just waiting to be distributed to anyone who asks.

If you cant afford to smoke, then dont smoke. Pretty simple.

I guess thats it for now, and roll on next week. It’s friday and no one is stressing around me, all is good and may it continue.

cya

xx

We had SkyHD installed last friday. Ordered in june i think.

The main reason for the HD is because Sky stopped selling the larger Sky+ boxes and if you wanted a lot of storage you had to go HD. Not complaining too much because we recently brought a projector that was HD ready, and whilst still aware that the HD pickup is slow, thought it was still worth a shot.

So it’s all working, and working well. Was a little worried that the HD difference would be lost in the projected image, but no. It’s still there. It’s a decent enough projector, normal dvds and sky looks great through it, and the HD looks even better.

The content is lacking though, only a few channels are HD, the Sky One HD is rubbish, most of the stuff they pump out is not in HD so its a bit confusing (Simpsons, Voyager etc). Also the HD movie channels, whilst they are better than the standard channels, I don’t think they are true HD. This is revealed in the Sky+ planner. A two hour HD movie took up six percent. But Hotel Babylon (an hour) also took up 6 percent.

I guess Hotel Babylon was shot in HD rather than a film being interpolated to a HD res.

So verdict: The quality is great but there is little decent content. It’s not an earth shattering experience, but you really notice it when you go back and watch a standard digital channel. The lines are crisp and textures detailed. The BBC preview and Discovery HD are better examples of true HD, the Sky offerings need to catch up a bit (I have no interest in sports so cant comment). But I guess that will all come with time. We are bit slow in the EU for HD, I remember going to the Sony building in NY in 1994 and seeing it demonstrated. Most US stuff is in HD (Lost, recent Friends, Prison Break etc)

cool video not sure if its a game, but looks cool.

vroom vroom

Yesterday I went to see Avenue Q. I was familiar with the show a year or so ago after listening to the cast recording. Excellent music with funny songs.

So when the I walked past a fish and chip shop in Covent Garden and saw the familar Avenue Q poster, I pee’d my pants.

A bit of background, the show is a puppet show (ish). It’s a mix between puppets and actors, but even with puppets the performer can be see at all time. This caused a bit of confusion, because you were not sure whether your supposed to watch the actor or the puppet, but I found a combination of the two worked well. After all, the actors where giving facial expressions while singing, this was also nice because if the actors were hidden behind walls with only the puppets showing you would not appreciate the actors doing the work. It’s kinda hard to explain but have a look at these pics on the offical site to see what i mean.

The show was a little rude, and very well presented. An impressive set that looked relatively static, was used very well with a few surprises. I loved the fantasy sequence between Nicky and Rod (the Bert and Ernie of the show). Between some of the scenes they had two big flat screens come down and show Sesame Street Parodies played on them, these were amusing and something I wasn’t expecting.

The story starts with Princeton ariving on Avenue Q and meeting the humans and monsters living on the street. You are soon thrown into a range of songs with such titles as “It sucks to be me” “if you were gay” “everyone’s a little bit racist” and “the internet is for porn” (more on the offical site).

Some of the lyrics were modified from the Broadway version, a whole verse when it came to introducing Gary Coleman, which i guess made sense as he was a bigger star stateside than over here, but I knew who he was. Also they cut a line out regarding the newly weds selling their wedding presents. I don’t know why they cut that line, it was worth a laugh and no americanisms in it.

Catchy songs, entertaining performances, good comedy an “up for it” crowd made a great evening. It was good to see the songs that I knew staged. The cast was relatively small, with actors playing many parts. An original concept executed well.

Yay after the hassle of getting my folio together, dealing with agencies and attending interviews i now have a new job.

Quite a contrast from my current position in a medium sized interactive marketing agency (50 people) in london. I am moving to a much smaller independent design agency in south london, and setting up and maintaining their needed online department. I am defiantly looking forward to it, it will be a big change in challenges and environment.

Previous job got me down due to the hours and constant pressure on every project. Shit happens, we all know that but this shit seemed to be constant and every project was apparently “urgent”

Had good times there (i know some of you will be reading) and learnt a lot about how to do things and observed how not to do things. But after two years it was time to make a move, the hours were getting me down and i didn’t feel i had much of a life outside work. Also two years on the same client is enough for any creative to start to go stale.

Oh well, will keep you posted, only three more days!

(yay)

I was looking to buy some tickets to see a couple of shows, mainly Avenue Q and Wicked. The prices are staggering.

Ok, so ticket prices are expensive, with most shows charging £50 for best seats. Wicked costs £55 for best seats. Fair enough, it’s a big show, big orchestra, sets etc. I went to one site www.londontheatreboxoffice.com and they were selling tickets for £90, a £35 mark up!!

I contacted to to ask if this was a mistake. No reply yet. Then i realised that i was looking at the rear seats price, for best seats they were charging £115!!! A ridiculous £60 booking fee, the booking fee costs more than than the tickets.

Then to top it off I saw that postage for these extremely heavy and valuable tickets was an additional £15

Shocking, thankfully this is not the average case, some sites were adding a £1.70 booking fee, but the average was £10.

I can’t see how the industry can moan about bums on seats in theaters when tickets cost the same as a cheap return flight in europe.

There, rant over.