According to the audiobook* I’m reading at the moment, an old Djibouti proverb goes like this : “A man is only as rich as the number of children he fathers” and then, went on to the question “After all, what else does he leave behind?” I can answer that one for you – Nappies. If you consider the findings of a… Read more →
I’ve got a MacBook Air parked on my desk at work today. I wanted to type some stuff to try out the keyboard, so I thought what better place than dragondrop.org to absorb my words. I must say, it’s incredibly thin. The screen is sharp and the whole thing feels very solid. The keyboard though – so far, so good…. Read more →
By eck, it’s grand that is. Clair and Ben (wearing a splendid T-Shirt) stood in from of a STUNNING vista of The Grand Canyon in Arizona. Loads of DD club points for this one – iconic background (fo’ sho), wearing the tee (check) and a place that’s not been done before – Arizona. DragonDrop Adventure Club T-shirt Gallery .
It’s been a remarkable few days for technology. Google’s annual developer conference last week revealed yet another Star Trek tech ; “Hot Wording” – a device that constantly listening to you, waiting for you to say trigger words before it goes and does stuff for you. ‘Google Today’ has been enhanced also – a technology that preempts what you need… Read more →
A couple of years ago, Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia made a tough decision. He partnered with Microsoft – his former employer – to deliver the operating system for Nokia’s next generation of handsets. For the last two weeks, I’ve been trying out a Nokia that’s running Microsoft Windows 8 Mobile. Whilst there’s a lot about the phone I like,… Read more →
This post is in danger of being the thing I’ve tried to avoid so far with my blog 365 project – a blog about my lunch. Thing is though, I’ve not done a lot other than food today. After a bit of ball wanging for the dog on’t Stray I went to Waitrose for supplies and got a bit carried… Read more →
I’d asked twitter #harrogate if anyone had heard of the PIPS last night – they were billed to headline a free gig night at the Zoso late bar, Harrogate. Among the ensuing trickle of info I got back was a link -to a review from AMZ1981 which notes that PIPS are a “three piece outfit that are painfully difficult to describe”… Read more →
Tonight’s annual school disco at Grove Road School Harrogate, was the “Best Disco Ever” according the kid who wrote lovely note I found on the floor. If I was still an actual real kid I’d probably have thought the same. I’ts a bit of an institution, a real community event. We’ve been going every year for probably 10 years (we’ve… Read more →
For ages now, my follower count on twitter has floated at just under 500 followers. At the time of writing this, it’s on 500 (hoopla!). That’s around 100 followers per year, just over 1 new follower for every 12 tweets and a ratio of 2/1 follower/following ratio. I like twitter. It’s so simple yet you can drill down into the… Read more →
At just under 2 months, Annie Mo is now smiling properly. These are not windy smiles but genuine happy smiles. I captured this the other day and thought I’d share. I’m so glad I captured one of her first smiles on video – I love the way her whole face breaks into a beaming smile. You may spot the scrawls on… Read more →
Resumed progress on project finish kitchen. A project that started last October in a very intense fashion for a month – we swapped rooms around making our old dining room our new kitchen, which involved removing a skip full of chimney and re plumbing the boiler, rescuing our Belfast sink and digging new waste water channels and all sorts. We… Read more →
I visited The Atom this evening. In Wycoller, Lancashire, near a row of gnarled old trees wrapping their limbs around what looked like a row of gravestones – slabs of rock forming ancient ‘vaccary walling’ (a sight worth a visit in its own right) squats The Atom. It’s one of four art installations involving the construction of series of 21st-century landmarks called Panopticons. The whole landscape… Read more →
Walking down the paint isle in DIY shops can’t help but make you smile a bit when you’re called Matt. A whole selection of objects with my name in big letters, plastered on the front of them. Incidentally, I think the PC way of describing me should be ‘Caucasian’ though, for the record… sorry.. So today, I’ve put a bunch… Read more →
I got a film back from the lab today, which included the above image. The image is straight out of the camera – no digital trickery. I achieved it by using two techniques - double exposure and cross processing. I shot two photos on the the same piece of transparency film that I had processed through standard negative C41 processing (which is ‘the wrong’ process for transparency film) –… Read more →
I’ve been playing with a new (to me) photo technology called Cinemagraph. There’s an native app on the phone I’m running at the moment – a Nokia Lumia 920 with Windows8 – called Cinemagraph. It’s great fun. Here’s a selection of cinemagraphs from the last week.. Sleepy Elsie Bed time Elsie. Bed time. Dogs and Henge Dwellers More henge dwellers… Read more →
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