And the night before the awards… we went to the private view of JC’s mid-term show at the Truman Brewery. JC’s exhibit was a font he’d designed, Hamburgerfonts (the name comes from “hamburgervons”, the string of characters which were used by ITC to determine all of the characteristics of a font). He also had hamburgers and a microwave, and was serving up burgers cut into the shape of his letters. I took some snaps, so did Mark, and they’re all up on the FAD blog (and credited to Mark. Well, credit to Mark for uploading them when I couldn’t be bothered).
Archive for March, 2005
Last Friday night we went to the Revolution Awards, in the “Great Room” of London’s frighteningly expensive Grosvenor House Hotel. As I mentioned here previously, we were shortlisted for the “Best Public Service Online” award for So Safe. I didn’t hold out much chance of winning the award, partly because I know the site has many faults (although I knew the reason we had been shortlisted was far more to do with our working process than with the site: the fact that we engage young people by getting them directly involved with creating content for the site), partly because we are just a two-man band (well, three really as Gaz, who freelances for us, does much of the work) competing against behemoths such as the TUC, the Food Standards Agency and several major London web agencies.
Well, I was right, we didn’t win. But we were “commended” - effectively second place - within that category. There’s no nice trophy or piece of paper to go with it, not even a chance to go up on stage and meet the compere Jimmy Carr, but for us this was excellent news, the best we could have hoped for (we bucked the trend by going bezerk when our commendation was announced. People on the neighbouring table turned to us and said “calm down, it’s only a commendation”).
Other than that, it was the usual awards evening type of night: ultimately very shallow and depressing. I don’t think I can bring myself to go to another one of these again.
Rapidly jumping a year in my photo-processing, I’ve added another set of pictures to the site: aeroplane trails over Sheffield, these ones taken last Sunday. (Don’t worry: more intervening pics to come soon).
I am so happy! Gordon has turned his Demographic Shift column into a blog. I’ve often sung the praises of Demo Shift to people since Gordon started writing it a couple of years ago, but unfortunately as it was on the Brand Republic website, in a pay-subscription only section, it was a bit hard getting people to look at it. Now the whole world has a chance.
In the past I’ve compared Gordon to a male Bridget Jones, which is probably unfair and also probably the type of thing he’d have something to say about in Demographic Shift, but there’s a lot of truth in it: he’s 30-something, frustrated at getting older and his seeming inability to hold down a relationship, and he recounts his many failings and disasters in a way that has you pissing yourself laughing. Read it for yourself and see what you think.
I’ve been going through some of my old photos, and it struck me that hardly any of the ones I’ve taken this last year have been put online. I really ought to change that, especially as I’m starting to get the odd request for commercial use of my pictures (the disclaimer I added to all my life pages recently has helped a lot). So I made a start, and added some photos from the streets of London which I took very nearly a year ago; I’ll work through the rest of the intervening 12 months as soon as I can.
Meanwhile I’ve been testing photo library-type software: I’ve used Thumbs Plus for years now, and while it’s still the best for some things, I thought I ought to give Adobe Photoshop Album and Google Picasa a spin - both are really nice in the way they bunch all your pictures together by date, so you don’t miss anything out as I invariably do when scanning by directory, but it also annoys me that they take the “iTunes option” of almost pretending directories don’t exist, so when I’m trying to shift stuff about on my hard disk I have to switch to another tool (like Thumbs Plus). But what I really want to get into is tagging my pictures - so that next time somebody rings me up asking for pictures of Magna, I can find all of the millions that I’ve got at the click of a button, rather than having to trawl through everything on my hard disk.
I’ve just found the photo I always wanted to take - the view out from the Bolehills (5 minutes walk up the road from us), where I often walk Gizmo and which has featured in many of my blog posts.
You would have thought “Chocolate Syllogism” would be a Googlewhack, wouldn’t you? But no, 1,940 sodding matches.
We got a letter from Haiti! Wiston is OK!
Actually, there wasn’t much of a letter, just a photo with a few words from the nuns saying “this is a photograph of Wiston taken the last time we visited his village”, no explanation of how his family were found but looking back, I presume they just weren’t able to reach his village for some time after the devastation caused by the hurricane, and that’s why they said they’d lost touch with him.
Wiston looks a lot older. He must be about four or five now, but he has a jaded adult’s look in his eyes. I’d hate to think of the things he must have seen to make him grow up so quickly.
It was very appropriate that the letter should come on Red Nose Day. Although there are few things I hate more than slobbing out in front of the TV for the evening, we did exactly that yesterday and it felt right. I also made a post on the Sheffield Forum which seems to have influenced some peoples’ thinking and for me feels at least as good as any amount of money I could raise for charity (though we also did our bit in that respect).
Rowan went to school in my clothes today, she was sponsored to do it for Red Nose Day. She looks great but… my £500 Kenzo suit <sniff>
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