Day in, day out

So I've been at home for a month now. Getting in the routine, go to work, eat, go out on my bike, sleep, go to work, eat, go out on my bike, sleep...and so on. Ive not really done as much as i should have done with my college work. I'll hopefully do some more research today.

My parents got a new car a couple of weeks ago and i got insured on it. So I'm a driver again after a year of being but a pedestrian.

Cat come over last week and left yesterday. Time went far too fast. We did all the tacky tourist stuff: pedal boats, electric tram, beaches, ice creams and the wild life park.

At the wild life park i took some photos of the the animals (finally).



























I been ridin quite alot lately. Untill i wrecked my knee again. More photos, look!


















thats your lot for now. cya round like a circle

As sure as eggs is eggs

Right.

I've not posted here for ages. My computer has decided that it doesnt want to be a computer anymore, and so has stopped being a computer.

Since my last post a have sat watching the rain, I've visited Norwich, I've come back to the Isle of Man, and I've become accostomed to 12 hours sleep. I started work to day. I love it. Thats a lie. Its not too bad though.

I have decided to start looking more closely at what I eat. Not for health reasons (im not gay...). I've just started to realise that alot of what you eat causes unnessesery (spelling...?) suffering. I have also decided that the majority of the consumer industry is f*cked up. I have decided to base my summer project on this.

I want to look at different part of the consumer industry (mainly food) such as eggs, meat, fair trade, organic, gm, alcohol. I want to find out where exactly your money goes, what it funds, and the process involved in producing it.

Ill use free range eggs for example. there are two types of free range (so it seems): theres free range, and there is traditional free range. Traditional free range is what most people think of when they think of free range hens, ie happy hens roaming round a farm and laying eggs in a hutch at night, which are collected by a jolly (probably whistling) farmer. Most free range farms are nothing like this. Standards which chickens can be kept and still be called free range are extremely low (there are, however, independant bodies, such as the Soil Association that have higher standards); birds beaks are allowed to be cut off without aneasthetic (spelling?) and dye put in the feed to make the egg yolks brighter and more 'free range looking'.

Hens normally live in social groups and form relationships with one another, as well as hierarchies. Cramming thousands of birds together like they do on alot of 'free range' farms is mentally distressing for creatures that need to live within a tight social group. Many birds are crushed to death or injured because of the large groups that they are kept in, as well as this many birds never actually see outside because only the dominant birds can make it through the doors of the barn. Its like comparing a small group of friends happily watching a football match in a pub to thousands of football fans rioting.

Because only the females lay eggs (duh), any males that are born are killed and because of the stressfull condotions that the hens are kept in they can only lay eggs for about two years, after which they may get sent to the abatoir (spelling, again) to be killed.

Its worrying to think that Free Range is one of the more moral ways of keeping animals.

Its been a while...

I've not posted on here for a couple of weeks, I've been busy with gettin my website working and the like.

So yeah. Had my final deadline on tuesday, and my end of year tuturial yesterday. I dont know what to do with myself now I got nothing to do.

Heres a series of post cards I made for my final brief. Enjoy.

And here is the back of the post card

Cheers to Andy, Kyle, Sally, Chloe, Sreet Dave and the beautiful Cat.

Q. But else have you been upto?

A. Can't Remember.

Let's think...

Erm, i managed to get a copy of the photo by Ricky Adam thats going to make me famous (I mentioned it a few posts ago).

I'm the one sitting down. Fit, aren't I?

Oh, yer. I almost forgot, I spent the weekend in Stamford with Cat, met her parents for the first time. I even had a shave before hand.

Her dad gave us a lift there. I think he asked me if I wanted a work placement at the design agency that he's the head honcho of. They do the interiors for Mini, Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Toyoto, etc. Anyways, I was sitting in the back seat, and didn't hear know what he was talking about.

This is what I heard:

"theidk theidkjenecei hglnbmfp kjdnbvovp nbdoioij....I'll make a few phone calls if you want?"

I didn't know what to say and so said nothing.

Were trying to design a new logo for LS6 BMX. This is the old one.

The main reason we want to change it is because it looks just like the logo from the Fit video.

I was thinking maybe Andy could do something with pixel art. Not too sure what though.

Also we're thinking of starting a zine this summer called Hate Zine. The idea being that people contribute stories of things that annoy them, or talk about what they don't like. The aim is to making it half serious and half funny, and trying to create something possitive from things that are negative.

It might work, or it might not.

What was that program called on TV one Christmas, was it Grumpy Old Men or something?

Anyways, if you hate stuff then tell me about it.

xXx

Maggie ruined my day

This week I done some stuff.

I spent most of my time getting annoyed with iWeb, and riding my bike. Got a few photos if your interested.



Merlin at Adul (spelling...) Wood on Wednesday (I think, Maybe Thursday).



This is Kyle the Gypo at Hyde Park on Friday.

I take quite a lot of riding photos, I've never really thought of posting them on here for some reason. Summer's on it way so I expect I be posting too many of the things soon.

This Bank Holiday Weekend I had planned to go to Chester Zoo with my lady friend to take some photos of the animals. However, I didn't take into account my lazyness. I left it too late to book the train and the price went up to a silly amount.

We decided to go to Flamingo Land instead, but we didnt take into account that we were competing with the remains of Thatcher's Britain. The train was late so we would have missed the only bus of the day to Flamingo land. Cheers Maggie.

We decided to get off at York instead, to see what we could find, and would you believe it, privatisation was a blessing in disguise. I had a really good day.

We started by going on the Northern version of the London Eye, it was a bit pricey but it was good.





Next we had a look in the National Train Museum. It was really impressing. I liked looking at the steam trains, compared to crappy electric trains that get you places late, these things massive mechanical beasts. I loved it. I think I was born to be a train spotter, but I was born too late.





The Mallard. This thing is amazing. The worlds fastest steam train. 126mph...can I get a hell yeah!

There was a lot of art work from the golden age of rail travel, to be honest most of it was horrible art deco, however,I really like some of the old adverts.





Next, we went on a tourist boat ride down the river, is it the Ouze, is that even now you spell the Ouze? Anyway, whatever river it was, it was quite good, if a bit cold. Cat really liked seeing the ducky/geesy things swimming in the river, and walking next to it, and nearly fell out with me when I wouldn't rob one for her.



It was crazy seeing all this old picturesque archetecture built around the river. Most of the old buildings had doors leading out directly into the river, I'm not sure how wise this is when the river is supposed to flood regularly.



We went for lunch next. It seems the attitude toward vegetarians is as old as most of the archetecture ('We got the carvery, or if your not that hungry we can do you a meat baguette.' I'm surprised theres any ducks left in the river.)

After finding somewhere to eat, we went for a walk through the park and had a look at the remains of an old abbey. It was quite strange just seeing bits of stunning archetecture poking out of the ground every now and then.



Next we walked around the old city wall, and back into the centre of town to get the train home. There is still a law in York (as in the Isle of Man), that says it is still legal to kill a Scotsman, within the city wall, on a Sunday. In fact you get a reward. I was gutted we went on a Saturday because I'm getting really short on money.

On Sunday I went to Leeds 'Slam Dunk Festival'



It was good. I drank far too much.

Beat Union were the first band we saw. I didnt like them. They were dressed fully punk, but their songs were aimed at like 10 year olds - really poppy.

Mad Caddies were on next, the band I came to see. They were really good, and they all looked really hungover/stoned/drunk/alloftheabove, which made it better.

Next was Failsafe. They were quite good. The singer's trousers were far too baggy for someone who is is a band.

Then Sonic Boom Six. They were really good as per usual.

Then Paramore played. I was unimpressed. It looked like they had spent all day in Tony and Guy making their hair look stupid, then got 'Generic Emo Loop' off Soundtrack, then just played Generic Emo Loop over and over again, and jumped around looking silly.

Headlining was Reel Big Fish. I only know about 2 of their songs. I had to wait through the whole set to hear Beer and Take On Me right at the end but it was well worth the wait.

The after party was really good too. We hung out with the guys from Reel Big Fish. I say hung out... I mean sat next to at the bar and tried to look cool.

A good time was had by all.

Suffice to say, Monday was a bit of a non event.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I had written a letter to the Police complaining about the way they handled the house party I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Anyways a got a letter off them today saying that its going to court, which is nice.

Peace, Love and Empathy,

Kurt Cobain.

x

HDR Photography and stuff

I've had this post written since Sunday, it's now Tuesday and I'm posting it cos I hate my computer and it hasn't been letting me put the photos on. Anyways, here it is. Finally. The HDR Special Edition...


Good Day.

I managed to hand in my Photography Elective work on Tuesday, so the pressure is off a bit now. Which is nice. I'll post some of my photos when I get them back, as well as photos of my print work. Bet y'all can't wait for that.

This week I have mostly been playing around with High Dynamic Range photography with Andy Cody.

Andy showed me these HDR photos of Hong Kong by a guy called Yong Fook. Unfortunately, I couldn't nick them off the site so you'll have to check them out at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yongfook/230852137/in/set-72157594263154572/

Seriously, have a look, they're amazing.

How they work is by taking a series of photographs of the same object at different exposures. For example, 3 stops under, 2 stops under, 1 stop under, the right exposure, 1 stop over, 2 stops over and 3 stops over. Then using either the merge to HDR option in Photoshop or using a program called Photmatix you marge all the photos together to make one stunning image.

Here is a photo in our car park done using Photoshop. Check out the detail in the car. Sexy shadows.




After we did this Andy downloaded a copy of Photomatix. Photomatix is apparently better than Photoshop for doing HDR because it does tone mapping, which Photoshop doesn't do. However, prefere the image above to the Photomatix version of the same photo.

Heres some images done on Photomatix.








I've just been informed of a maggot problem our kitchen. Yum

Another week goes by...

Well then...

This week I've been a busy little boy. On Friday I went to a house party and narrowly avoided getting beaten up by the testosterone filled riot police. If you havn't heard about the police overreaction in Hyde Park then check out this weeks 'MET' student paper. Its also on the BBC 'Look North' web site, although they dont give much away. If your on Facebook then check out the group Survivors of the peaceful party on 19 Hessle Terrace and 20 Hessle Avenue. It really was crazy watching people getting beaten up because of a peacefull house party.

I ran home near the end and got my camera but got there too late. Heres some photos though.






Sorry the quality is so bad, but you get the idea.

I spent the the weekend in Sheffield partying and riding with the boys. It was good. I was hung over.

On Monday and Tuesday I kicked off my modeling career by being photographed heckling girls with Kyle and Bing by Ricky Adam for his LS6 thing which should appear in Vice magazine some time soon. Im going to be so famous. Anonamous model today, who knows where tomorrow? I mentioned Ricky's LS6 photos on the last post. Again, check out www.rickyadamphoto.com. Its super.

Went to London on Wednesday with Cat. Was pretty good but rainy. We started off by going to the Tate Modern. If I remember right, there were four exhibitions that we looked at - Poetry and Dream, States of Flux, Idea and Object and Material Gestures.

To be honest, the majority of 'art' I can't relate to, and don't really want to. However, there were a few bits that i liked (unfortunately we got there as they were taking down the Gilbert and George exhibition, or there would have been alot more stuff there that I liked)

I liked the Francis Bacon stuff. I like the distorted and scary way that he paints his figures. I also liked the surrealist self-portrait photographs by Francesca Woodman. Also in the Poetry and Dream exhibition there was also a couple really simple canvasses that just has red paint dripping down them, that i really liked (aesthetically), however i cant remember the name of the artist.

In the States of Flux exhibition I really liked the 'USSR in construction' bit. I like the Russian Constructivist graphic style of photomontage, geometric shapes and bold sans-serif type.

I think my favorite part of the Tate is the shop. I was trying to find the Adbusters 'Design Anarchy' book but had no look, and narrowly escaped spending money on another David Shrigley book, a book of Gilbert and George postcards, and the book 'Geurilla Advertising', which is amazing. I settled for a couple of post cards.

Time to Choose by Shrigley (if you cant read it it says: TIME TO CHOOSE - Good. Evil. Don't Know)



and this one by R.Ortas, which says 'Greetings from out of space'



I really like the misaligned printing and home made feel as well as the slighlty childish illustration. Fantastico.

After the Tate we were going to go to London Zoo, because I wanted to get some photos of the animals. But because Camdon tube station was being fixed or something we couldn't get there. By the time we walked to Camdon it was getting late and it was pissing down with rain. We decided not to bother with the zoo in the end and just had a look around the market before it closed and got some dinner at a Wetherspoons.

Hopefully, I'll get to a Zoo soon and get some photos of the animals. I think my Dad has nicked my long lens though. O well, we'll see.

Got all my print stuff finished and handed it in on Thursday. Thats a relief. I made the book completely wrong and the screen printing is mediocre at best.

Here is a couple of photos of my book





it looks alright from the outside but the pages are all in the wrong order.

This weekend my parents were over so I got a few free meals, which is nice.

We had a look at the Henry Moore Institute's exhibition 'Towards a New Laocoon.' We ended up going in during the private viewing, but no one said anything. They might have done if we had started drinking the wine and eating the nibbles. It was only a tiny exhibition, but i was really impressed. It was all work based on snake like forms.



Wax Model of Laocoon, 17th century



Tony Cragg, Kahzernarbeit.



Richard Deacon, Laocoon, 1996

We also had a look at the Drawing on Sculpture exhibition. It said it was a 'graphic intervention on photography', or something like that. I didn't think much of it though. there was only one that I really liked.



Willi Baumeister, Drawing over a photograph of Arno Brecker’s ‘Der Rächer’ as reproduced in the exhibition catalogue for ‘The Great German Art Exhibition’ of 1941

Thats how for now.

Bye Bye

x