Beverage 365 – 21/02/09

Beverage 365 - 21/02/09

Its been my last working day of my holidays today and being a weekend worker it was my first free Saturday for a while. So it was off into town with my gorgeous girl Em for some lunch and shopping.
We headed to a Turkish Restaurant Red Mezze in Newcastle City Centre to meet some friend. I have to say if was great (Ok not as good as the Turkish food made by my Girls Turkish Friend last night). If your not been before get yourself along or head to the website and try out the recipe of the month at www.redmezze.co.uk/.
After getting told off for asking Em to “think about it for a bit before buying that coat” it was the shopping done and home for a cup of tea.

What to 365? That is the question!

At the start of this year I made the very educated decision not to start the Flickr 365 project due to me not being able to commit that much time into the project.  Instead of committing each and every day to processing and uploading; never mind taking the actual picture I had to find me another plan.  That said I do know some people that have taken up the challenge with some quality images, Paul White is has some of my favorite with  some inventive subject images from Alistair UK.
So my second idea was to drop it back to the PIC 52 project.  One picture each week, simply.  My only problem is I tried it last year and it just didn’t happen; I only got to about week 6 before I called it a day, as I just didn’t have the pictures and didn’t want to cheat.  If you want to see someone that has made the most of the 52 PIC project check out Craig Rodway’s set with his genius Lego men on location.
My attempt at Pic 52 this years has also gone to the dogs, with only the first two weeks done.  I have to face it; my ability to fail at the task so far is great that my success. What I need is a way to get myself onboard with the task in hand.  A project that is easy to complete that will help me drive a behavior in myself to ensure that next time I start a 365 project I am more focused and used to taking pictures on a daily basis.
A quick sit back to look at the options; what do I do every day?  1 – Take a crap? Very wrong. 2 – Use my laptop?  I don’t think doing a screen dump everyday is going to get my inspired to move on to some quality photography at any point.  3 – Use my mobile phone? Well I have a camera on my phone so I could…. {Sips from cup of tea.}

Yes you’ve guest it – Beverage 365.  My plan is to take one photo of every (well just about every) drink I have everyday.  My promise is to not overload you with too much on my Flickr / Twitter feeds.  I will try to make my pictures as interesting as possible and give you (a best I can) an incite into what I’ve been up to;  I know none of you actually care about what I’ve been up to but that’s what I going to do… so 😛

Follow me on Twitter  – http://twitter.com/SMLP
Friend me on Flickr –  http://www.flickr.com/photos/biscuitsmlp/

@SMLP you are my hero, Love Michaela Strachan

Time to sit down a write another blog post. I’ve had a bit of busy few days recently so sitting down to write a post presents me with one big fat problem. What to write about?

I was going to do a little bit about what’s going on with @Twitchhiker over the last week. Maybe highlight the press coverage that he’s been getting and the fact that he missed out on a interview on BBC ONE’s “The One Show” or the fact that my tweetdeck “Twitchhiker” search has been going crazy since the first tweet about his plans were sent out.

But then I thought I would give it a rest for now and pull together another post closer to the 1st March.
But my final decision on what to post about is something that ran through my mind while on the bus on the way into Newcastle.

Michaela Strachan.

Yes you may remember her from such shows as “The Really Wild Show”, “Wacaday” and for the older readers “The Hitman and Her” and it is my mission (well until I give up) to get Michaela Strachan to sign up to tweet me the words “@SMLP you are my hero”.

Michaela Strachan

At 42 years young she is the girls off TV that you and your dad could happily watch while learning about animals. She was is still is the sexiest presenter on TV but do we really know what she’s all about and what she is doing? The girl deserves to have an a better online status and I think twitter is the way to do it. I want to see her presenting more mainstream prime time TV shows like “Big Cats” or even a total take over of Country File (Move over John Craven). She also lives in Cape Town, South Africa so her life has got to be more interesting than some of the celebrities out their, imagine some of the TwitPic’s she could be sending out. Lets tweet it out and tags it clearly Tweeter Tags #MICHAELASTRACHEN we want you on twitter.

Twitter hiking across the world

Imagine trying to hitchhike from Newcastle in the UK to New Zealand in… New Zealand; not an easy task. Well Newcastle blogger and media guru Paul Smith is going to do just that.

twitchhiker

The plan is to travel from Newcastle Tyne and Wear to the other side of the world with no other help than the kindness of the global network of twitter users. I have meet a number of people on my own doorstep using twitter and I believe that it is possible to complete such a mammoth task based on the kindness most twitter users give. The internet is an amazing place for making the maddest of tasks possible; remember “one red paperclip” and the Million dollar website. All became possible because people from all around the world talked about it, blogged about it and told their friends. The media circus that followed help drive what seemed like an impossible tasks to become possible. The task that Paul is going to undertake maybe an adventure for him; but more so, it is to raise awareness for a good cause – charity: water.

My idea to help the process along is to shout about it on twitter, I don’t just mean to re-tweet about it, but focus the shouts towards the twitter big guns. Celebrity’s like Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Kevin Rose and God! The more noise directed toward people like this will puch them to talk about it and the quicker the world will find out about and support such a great idea for such a good cause.

Please… if you do one thing today…. Donate towards this great cause

If you do two things today make the second to follow and tweet about Twitchhiker to any and all of the celebrity’s you follow on twitter.

http://www.twitchhiker.com/
http://www.justgiving.com/twitchhiker

Come on Cops check out my hard Drive!

The plan from the Home Office (driven by the EU) is to allow Police to remotely access peoples computers with out having to apply to the courts for the privilege.

Now I’m all for a easier and quicker way for the Home Office and the Police to track down things like Paedophilla and Terrorism while bypassing the court for the purpose of evidence collection.  The word is that they will have to get authorization from a Chief Constable before being allow to do this but the problem with this is the police having access to technology/software to access people’s computers remotely.  How do we know they aren’t going to be looking for naked pictures of peoples wife’s?

I’m not saying that the Police are going to be running around “looking though peoples windows from the helicopter” but giving them the tools to “hack” and lowering the rules on when and how they can do this; may open up a risk in peoples privacy that is not necessary.  Information released by the home office say that in 2007/8 the Police hacked into 194 computers in the UK, all of them with a court order.  What they haven’t released however is how many of these “Hacks” resulted in an arrest.  So why would they need to bypass the courts when in two years they have only needed to hack into peoples computer around 8 times per month.    Even if the number of times they need to do this triple in the next two years it will still be a small blip on the bigger picture.

Read the full storey at: http://tinyurl.com/9ytubw

Do you think the Police should be able to access people computers remotely and when is it right to do this?

Frozen New Year

The new year is here and lets be honest 2009 is going to be all about the money….. well lack of it.

Frozen New Year

As we land into 2009, House prices are falling, the UK VAT rate is all over the place, Banks are going under and retailers on the high street are going under like its going out of fashion.  While everyone is starting to thinking about how to achieve their New Year Resolutions I was wondering how many peoples New Year Resolutions are all about getting themselves sorted finically; instead of just ditching pork pies from their bellies.

Lets be honest if something’s going to go tits up in your finances its a high chance that its going to happen this years.  You could ether sort it out and get out of debt or you could just screw it; pretend that everything is going to be ok and prepare for the worst.

Personally I’m going to work my nuts off, make the most of my time and do it with a big fat smile on the face the whole time.

This year I am restarting my mission post one picture per week for the whole of the year.  Any one interested join in at http://www.flickr.com/groups/pic52/

52 Weeks – PIC 52

Happy New Year to you all – X

Frame it?

I was having a look round the Newcastle/Gateshead Glow Festival last weekend with the boys and girls from the Newcastle Photo Walk and I decided to put some frames on my images when editing.

Standing in Green Light Shopping Projection Looking at the Lights Glow

The comments I received from my images was that frames as part of the edit were not always a good thing; “Distracting” or “Pretentious”.

Knitting the Lights

I know a lot of photographers that use frames on their Flickr uploads and I always think that they look good.  So then what the crack, Frame it or not?

Empty Seats

  • How do you know if you should add a frame to your photos for digital viewing?
  • When is it OK to add a frame?
  • Should framing be kept for prints?

Show me your Flickr Fav

So you find a good picture on Flickr and “fav it”; then that’s it.  You don’t tell anyone about it, you don’t twitter about it and you probably don’t even look at it again.  Well I thought it was about time I shared some of my finds on Flickr with you all.  I got me 286 favorites’ across 8 pages so I thought I would pick one from each page and share them with you here and tell you why I have flagged them.

“smiling rust”

Image by: Werner Schnell

If I remember correctly I found this photo after looking over some of Dave Gorman “I see faces” set; which if you have not yet looked at; I would recommend it (See it here).  This I found by following some of the groups that Dave has his images link to.  I like just because of the texture of rusty metal and creative positioning of the nail.

“War Child”

War child by Brentjp99 (a bit out of it...).

Image by: visualworld

Around the time the smoking band came into play in the UK I was planning on setting up a photo with a Ash Tray, Cigarette and lighter but I always I got side tracked I never got it done.  When I remembered about it and was going to set the shot up I did a search to see what was already out there when I came across this shot.  The Vietnam Lighter just make the shot for me.

“Usina”

usina by DeniseSchwenck.

Image by: DeniseSchwenck

Usina (“Plant” in English) is just one of them photos that standout on Flickr.  When your looking thought pictures on Flickr its not that often that you come across a images that has been processed beyond the original camera shot.  When you do you can’t help but stop for a moment and look.  Can’t remember how I found this one but you have to admit there is just something about it.  Denise Schwenck has got some great shots I would recommend having a look over her photo stream.

“My Brain Hurts”

My Brain Hurts by aknacer.

Image by: aknacer

This is one of the most creative images I have seen and I just think that it deserves more attention… Please “Fav it”… I did. (click on the image above)

“Flamenco or Flamingo ?”

Flamenco or Flamingo ? by Andwan.

Image by: Andwan

I like girls!  My girl may not like it but I do and a do checked out a lot of “Fem Art” photos.  Sol Lang is one of the best Photographs on Flickr (In my opinion) for this kind of photo.  I often look for user links in with the comment on his photo to find other people that are into these kind of photos.  I found this little gem of a shot on one of my user hunts.  Check out the head on the left side of the shot.  Just Great.

“Shit Happens”

"shit happens" by lachance.

Image by: lachance

Like the Usina shot this stud out to me big time.  Just look at it.  God don’t you just love it.  Great processing.

“Amphetamine Com Tab 7.5MG”

Amphetamine Com Tab 7.5MG by jisanna.

Image by: jisanna

I was looking for a photo of some drugs for an Blog post sometime ago when I found this.  Colors are just unreal.

“Day 121 – Lazy bitch”

Day 121 - Lazy bitch. by like_shipwrecks.

Image by: like_shipwrecks

Cute girl, Great statement.  I do think all Flickr user should spend more time replying to comments on your Flickr stream.. Me included.

I’ve shown you mine, now you show me yours

I’d love to see what favorites people have in there list.  Blog some of what you’ve got or post your links in the comments below.