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:: urban75 blog :: |
Sunday, February 05, 2006
My New York Photos Are Pants!  Some time ago a Swedish company asked if they could licence some of my photos for an underwear range. I forgot all about them until I received a package containing no less than two pairs of underpants, two vests and a curious pair of longjohns, all with my photos on! I like 'em! Salming undies firm Monday, January 30, 2006
Country walk, drinking and a new camera  On Saturday I was charged with organising the January urban75 country walk, and am pleased to say that there was a healthy turn out and the walk was a good 'un.  We walked from Amersham through the Chilterns to the pretty village of Chalfont St Giles, grabbed a pint in a pub full of decidedly non-picturesque locals before taking the high road back.  It was freezing - and I mean really freezing - but the artic blast and nine mile walk was just what I needed to shake out the London cobwebs. Amersham to Chalfont St Giles walk  I took along a review model of the new Ricoh GRD - an intriguing new camera, offering fixed 28mm wide-angle lens, manual controls, minimalist old-school design, RAW shooting, 8 megapixels with a fast f2.4 lens - very much like my old beloved Olympus XA 35mm compact!. So far, I've been impressed: because of it's basic looks, people assume it's a crappy old cheapo camera (one person thought it was a disposable camera!) - which makes it very suitable for street photography (or, as another friend put it, "you don't want to be waving around camera bling in the ghetto!"). It's pretty nippy in operation and I love having direct control over shutter speed/aperture - no fiddling about in sub-menus here! Noise is smooth and film-like at 64 ISO and reasonable up to 200/400 ISO - way, way better than the Lumix LX1 that I really wanted to like. And the macro goes up to 1cm!!!! I think my quest for the ultimate street digicam could be over! In the evening, we went to a free night at The Prince and then on to PROD at the Canterbury Arms, Brixton. It was also an egagement party for my two mates Lee and Ailsa. There was a fabulous turn out and I felt well chuffed for them. :) Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Sven-Goran Eriksson goes! What an own goal! The best manager England's had for years has been hounded out by the English press in the name of pointless tabloid-shifting 'stings' while the team morale will no doubt plummet downwards as a result. Speaking as a Welshman, I wish this could have happened before the qualifiers, as we could have used a bit of disgruntlement in the England camp before our games! I wonder if the tabloids realise they have probably cost England their best shot at the World Cup for decades? And what new manager would want to get the same kind of grief dished out to Sven?!
FOPPED AGAIN! Once again, a "quick look" in Fopp record store in Cambridge Circus ended up being a shopping spree. I left with another huge pile of CDs including: Bowie: Alladin Sane Holland Dozier Holland: essential Motown Bright Eyes: Digital Ash Roots Manuva: Awfully Deep Vashti Bunyan: Lookaftering King Creosote: KC Rules Talking of records, I had fun playing Offline at Birkbeck College on Friday night. Feeling in an eclectic kind of mood, my DJ set included: Camera Obscura, Broken Social Scene, Damien Marley, Wilson Pickett, Marvin Gaye, Johnny Clash, Decemberists, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Belle and Sebastian, Jackson 5, Au Revoir Simone, Costello, The Who, Robyn Hitchcock, REM, Haircut 100, Dexys, Razorlight, Morrissey, XTC, Aztec Camera, Thin Lizzy, Bowie, Artic Monkeys, Alabama 3, Specials, The Sweet, The Beat, Rico, Cure, The Jags, Englebert Humperdink, Elvis, Magic Numbers, Nina Simone, Clor, Postal Service, The National, Strokes, Smiths, Bloc Party, Clash, Hard-Fi, the Pixies and The Cult. And a ton of other stuff. Best bit though was when some seriously pissed up bloke came up to request a song. He crashed across the stage, knocked the decks so hard that the music momentarily stopped, spilt beer all over the decks and himself and then asked for a tune seemingly oblivious to the sudden silence or the chaos he'd caused! Now that's drunk. Respect! Saturday, January 21, 2006
Lost pubs, theatres, shops and squats of Brixton There's another massive project underway - but it looks like being a good 'un! Lost Pubs  According to real ale advocacy group CAMRA, 26 pubs close forever every month, and 80% of those pubs are either demolished or converted into houses. Brixton has lost its fair share of pubs in recent years and we've posted up a tribute to those fallen boozers: Lost pubs of Brixton. Lost Theatres  Despite being famed for its long theatrical tradition, with productions rivalling the West End, Brixton now finds itself without a single theatre. We pay tribute to some of Brixton's lost cinemas and theatres. Brixton Lost Theatres Lost Brixton  Photos of long lost shops, abandoned stations, vanished squats and cafes Lost Brixton Saturday, January 14, 2006
Top freebie software for photographers! Just playing with these filters now and the quality is excellent for nowt! http://www.optikvervelabs.com/http://www.optikvervelabs.com/ virtualPhotographer lets you instantly apply high quality, professional photographic styles to your digital images, with just one click. Also check out these free Photoshop actions - the velvia- provia actions are particularly useful. Friday, January 13, 2006
New nav bar ahoy! I'm half way through the awesome task of implementing a newly redesigned nav bar across the entire site. With pages created over ten years over three domains, it's proving to be a real hands-on job replacing the old nav bar (of which there are several different versions scattered all over the site), so it's going to be a while before the whole site is updated. The new nav bar was needed as several new sections were more or less unfindable with the old navigation, so I've added new top nav buttons for Tech, Community, Offline, Panoramas, About us, Mailing List (coming soon!), London, New York, Chat, Sitemap and Festivals. I reckon by having search and sitemap buttons on every page it'll be easier for peeps to find stuff in the future. I've also created a whole new 'info' section https://www.urban75.org/info/ where I'm putting together all the FAQ, help, legal, history, and BB stuff . I'm still working through it (the site history ended up being 5 pages long!), and I'll be sorting out a proper updated 'credits' section soon. There's lots of other stuff to sort out too - the Mag/Action sections are all over the place (amongst others) and it's going to take time - but I'm working on it! I hope you like it! Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Bush makes anonymous flaming illegal! Look out flamers trollers and wind-up merchants - President Bush has made it a crime to post annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity! The law is designed to prevent cyberstalking, but an over-zealous lawyer could have fun with this: The law makes it illegal for anyone who: "utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person." So getting a good conviction is dependant on people agreeing on what is the meaning of the word annoying.Some comments from my bulletin board: Fridgemagnet: "It's a daft law, completely unworkable, and it's almost certainly unconstitutional as well - the First Amendment makes no mention of how "annoying" free speech is, and there have been legal decisions setting the precedent that one can exercise it anonymously." BMD: "The US would love to completely regulate the internet, instead they have to settle for stuff like this but I do wonder if this is their way of bringing in regulation gradually, first it's the cyberstalkers, which is fair enough (if they actually exist in meaningful enough numbers to have a law for) but I wonder who's next." |
