It’s like sophie’s choice but for geeks. After purchasing emmeee, I’ve had my mind set on buying some extravagant instead of focusing on the ickle things, so I’m stuck with 2 objects of desire, an Apple Mac Pro 2.26ghz 8 core desktop computer or a Canon 5d mk ii Full Frame DSLR camera. If you know neither of these products you might as well stop reading now.

Both have their advantages; the Mac Pro will get me into the world of Apple and play around with resource hungry apps like Photoshop and Lightroom with lickerty lightning speed whilst the Canon 5d Mkii will help me substancially for low light gig photography with it’s awesome lack of noise at high iso’s and its full frame architecture, my second reason also being it being able to record in HD.

The funny thing is that Mac Pro will help me out most when I actually have the Canon 5d since I would be shooting in crazy 21 megapixel resolutions in RAW meaning it would sure help to have a beef PC handling those images. I would also be able to start doing some proper music with pro tools and whatnot since I have all the gear I need, just not much time to play around with it.

Man so much geekiness in this post. Photography or Geekery? The question is obviously which one i need out of the two, the answer being neither because I already have a desktop PC and a DSLR camera, it’s just nice to have some proper high end gear to make things a little bit awesome, so uhm… yeah.. here’s a poll (really need to use this option more)

stuff you might also like

• Emmeee the great (my new netbook)
• One point five bytes of TERROR
• 6 Million Dollar Home Crumpler Bag
• 320 gigalobytes of fun!
• Finally a new lens to shoot in wide!

She’s called Emmeee after the late great Emmy the Great (she’s not dead but I love using that phrase to describe people). So yeah, if you catch me mentioning the name Emmeee, you’ll know its her

Caution: Geeky stuff
I also called her Emmeee because she’s an Asus EEE PC 901 netbook. I got the Linux edition which comes with 20gb SSD, 1.3mega pixel webcam, Intel Atom 1.6ghz CPU, 802.11b/g/n wifi and loads moar! I upgraded her a few days later with 2gb ram and have installed Windows XP (nLited for that extra lightweight goodness) on her as well as reenable boot booster (which shaves 5 seconds off boot time making it load up in 25 seconds). She’s loaded up with all the opensource/freeware apps I’ve grown to love including Pidgin for IM, Firefox and Chrome for browsing, dropbox for file synching, notepad++ for blogging, VLC for videos and music, picasa 3 for photo browsing and google desktop for widgets and whatnot. It’s all nice and light and perfect for blogging or browsing on the go (mainly blogging since it’s rare getting free wifi). There’s also other apps including Skype and Microsoft Office for the proprietary goodness.

The battery life on it is amazing (can take it out and use it for a proper day without worrying that the battery will die on you). I’m still coming to terms with the teeeny tiny keyboard, I get loads of typos but most of the time I’m pretty good and all. Multitouch is also a good addition to the netbook since I can do all those flashy things I love in the macbooks like going forwards and backwards pages using a 3 finger swipe, rotating and other bits and bobs.

I’ll write more about it when I’ve got to know it a bit more, but for now, that’s about it

stuff you might also like

• 6 Million Dollar Home Crumpler Bag
• Apple Mac Pro vs Canon 5d mk ii
• Camera Obscura at The Lexington
• Hauschka at Bandstand Busking
• The Acorn at Brixton Windmill

That’s not the hard drive I’m getting btw, but yes! On Friday I ordered myself a lovely 1.5 terrobyte (mmm terror) for my PC. It seems that going to so many gigs can really put a strain on my hard disk, especially when I come home with 4gb of RAW photos. They take up quite a lot of memory so yeah, rather than trying to find something to delete everytime I upload something, I best get myself a meaty new hard disk to solve this problem once and for all. Will be doing some late night blogging to make sure I’m up to date. I’ve realised that it really looks like I haven’t done much due to lack of blogging activity but nope, been gigging like crazy and had no time to write about it. Except loads of updates in a bit!

stuff you might also like

• Apple Mac Pro vs Canon 5d mk ii
• Emmeee the great (my new netbook)
• 6 Million Dollar Home Crumpler Bag
• 320 gigalobytes of fun!

I’ve had my twitter account quite a long time ago but on private, it has it’s advantages but I thought making it public will allow me to integrate stuff with my site and whatnot, so i pretty much deleted my entire account and started anew.

So yes, add me on http://twitter.com/crazybobbles! If you haven’t tried twitter, give it a go, it’s pretty ace for micro blogging.

stuff you might also like

• No to shopping bags
• Paris to do list
• Use quidco more often
• My desk
• Self Portrait?

Amazing, absolutely amazing. Apparently they make war for business. This is “Speak” a random Hungarian Rapper, his lyrics are truly inspiring and heartwarming. I’ve been singing this with my coworkers all day long. Good times.

Update: Just managed to learn how to play this brilliant tune on guitar, though someone has already covered it

stuff you might also like

• Ane Brun - True Colours
• Howling Bells playing in a lift!
• Lisa Hannigan - I don’t know
• Emmy the Great at Bandstand Busking
• of Montreal - An Eluardian Instance

Happy New Year folks
Hope everyone is enjoying their first day into year 2009. This year I’m going to join the herd and start on project 365. Looking at my photo folders I pretty much saw a daily stream of photos so why not turn this into a committed photography project. The community feels friendly and cheery so I’m definitely going to enjoy meeting other fellow 365′ers along the way. I think most of my 365 photos will be pretty much focused on music, movies, books, things i buy, places i go and food i eat (and then pretty much whatever comes my way).
So yes! Lets start fresh with a nice countdown shot.

This shot was taken literally at midnight, I took a lot of practice runs to ensure the watch was in focus (f4 to be sure and trying out my external flash to give the hand some tone) and it came out pretty good. The problem was obviously showing that it was midnight on my watch, I tried illuminating the watch but that lost all the blue and dark coolness of the shot so there wasn’t much to do. I like this shot because it was one of those “you only get one shot at this” shots where if I missed (or in this case mess up with the dark watch face), then I’d have to accept the mistakes and consequences. Hopefully this is what the year is going to be about, not trying to achieve perfection and just experiment with whatever I have already.

Some more rambles about this shot, yes, whilst everyone was partying it up, enjoying fireworks or celebrating with others, I was sat in my room taking this shot. Nobody’s home so it was pretty much on my own (and I decided against going to a party to avoid being alone in a crowd). But I made the most of it and spent the rest of the evening watch DIE HARD 4.0 on bluray with the sound system turned up to the max (sorry neighbours!) I stopped halfway to watch the rest in the morning since it was 2am.

Happy new year everyone! If you’re a fellow photographer who hasn’t done project365, I recommend you do it.

random stuff you might like

• 2046
• Amanda Palmer live at Electric ballroom
• Review: Muse HAARP at the cinemas
• B and the Medium Sized Pizza
• Tickets come in, photos come out

From the lovely Dueling Analogs. Finished watching the finale of Heroes Season 3…. not impressed. I’ll leave it at that before someone goes “SPOILER ALERT”. Hmm, i might make a spoiler tag for the blog haha, but I doubt I’d be talking about Heroes all the time.

stuff you might also like

• little BIG planet
• An abundance of cosplay and free hugs
• Video Games Live 08 = Geeky music heaven
• Camera Obscura at The Lexington
• Hauschka at Bandstand Busking

Some other news, my internet is currently borked since somebody tripped over the phone line cable so it needs replacing. no idea when it will be fixed (since i’m not in the house much after work (gigs and all)) so it’s kind of tricky haha. i guess it’s god’s way of saying i need a break from the interweb anyway i’ve got books, photos, music, videos and blog entries to write offline so it should be fine (plus I can occasionally go online with my mobile if i felt like it), just don’t expect any photos for videos uploaded for a bit (a bit = 1 day - 1 week i’d say). Feel free to write me emails so I can write from time to time

stuff you might also like

• Ane Brun - True Colours
• Howling Bells playing in a lift!
• Lisa Hannigan - I don’t know
• Emmy the Great at Bandstand Busking
• of Montreal - An Eluardian Instance

Moo mini cards!

Hopefully you’ve all read the October summary post, life has been pretty hectic, I’ve met quite a lot of new people when I go out gigging and it’s come to a point where I thought, “hmm i best get some business cards going on”. Now I already have a work business card but that doesn’t have my real mobile or any relations to what I do outside work and whatnot, so it’s a bit useless when I go out gigging (unless I’m actually meeting a bunch of crazy assed coders who work in the same industry as me where networking wouldn’t be such a bad idea). This is where moo cards come into play.

For those who don’t know much about moo.com, they’re a cute company from London who specialise in printing ickle cards and other bits and bobs for photographers and what have you. Their speciality are these 70×28mm mini cards which has your photo on it with a bit of text at the back. I spent a good amount of time contemplating whether I should get a business card by them or the mini cards but near the end decided to go with the mini cards because:

• They were so damn cute
• You get 100 of them
• The crazy narrow dimensions make it a challenge to compose a shot with existing photos
• They were so damn cute
• They’re smaller than business cards meaning you can technically put twice as many cards as you can in your wallet compared to business cards
• They were so damn cute

I wanted to showcase not only my gig photos, but other bits and bobs I took during my travels and whatnot (including the naive period where I shot all sorts of crap haha). The photos comes in packs of 100 and you are flexible in how many different photos you could have in the pack, I opted for 50 different photos (so two each) since I’m still in convincing mode and wanted to see which photos worked the best once printed for future reference. The cropping was pretty tough since it’s mainly good for wide shots, if that’s not the case then you had to be inventive in how you cropped the image, some of them didn’t come out too good but some worked really well (I love the howling bells shots :D).

Moo mini card scramble

The mini cards came in today and I was instantly chuffed with the quality of it, it came with a lot of cute bonus cards (for marketing innit) and was wrapped in a cute plastic box, I also bought a minicard holder which stores about 15 mini cards on the go. If you’re a fellow photographer, go grab yourself some mini cards! It’s nice to have them printed out to show off your crazy photography awesomeness (sometimes having it display on a monitor isn’t enough you need it physically there to appreciate it), they’re only £10 for 100 and are perfect for handing to strangers and whatnot.

Here’s a video of the mini cards I got in action:

Not convinced? Got a flickr pro account? Why not just buy a pack and see what you think! This promotion link will get you 10 free sample moo mini cards so you can see for yourself. Let me know what you think!

stuff you might also like

• Camera Obscura at The Lexington
• Hauschka at Bandstand Busking
• The Acorn at Brixton Windmill
• Vortex Tour East at Rough Trade… East
• Peter, Bjorn and John at Scala

Crazy calendar updates!

Time flies at a ridiculous rate when you’re busy. Already we’re in mid November and getting ready for the start of Christmas, winter coats, bankruptcy, roasted poultry, mind games and the lovely end to a crazy and eventful year. When peering at my Google Calender, I quickly skipped back to the previous month to see what I’ve been up to and boy was it a crazy month, though you’ve probably noticed that already with the sudden abundance of blog posts Since October was such an amazingly packed month I thought I’d write a big fat summary post of it all, kinda like a catch up post for those who check less frequently or for those who’ve just started reading. So yeah, lets rewind the tape and go back to first of October, 2008, no idea if you can click on all the links but I’ll take my time to link up to EVERYTHING so it all makes sense!

1st October: Lykke Li
Lykke Li was recommended to me by uka (well I just checked his last.fm and thought I’d give it a listen). Her tickets were sold out so I managed to buy a ticket from ebay and see her live at the Scala. Her voice was amazing and on par to her dancing (at one point she event started dancing right in front of me which was awesome (mmm private dances haha)). First time I used good old Eve, my compact camera to film a video of the performance. Favorite song: I’m good, I’m gone.

2nd October: Lost Coastlines:
I started writing a short story called “Lost Coastlines“. It was loosely based on a trip I made in September to the north. The story only has one character, but focuses on his mindset, thought process, and other subtle things. The story was told via a series of photos I took during my visit to the Four Rise Locks in Bingley. I slowly released the photo and passages bit by bit and eventually spilled the ending at some random point in the evening. Having an influence on certain games where they offer a good and bad ending depending on the actions you took, I gave this story a double sided ending where the readers need to search for happiness in order to find the good ending (Probably giving too much away here).

3rd October: Photography and regret:
That was fun, following from the Lykke Li gig and Lost Coastlines, I decided to write another quick monologue story type thing called “Photography and Regret“. This was based loosely on a livejournal comment I made about my insights on photography and the future, I write a dark side story about Mark, the photography with a flagship DSLR camera who was at the Lykke Li gig. Twas a fun write but then I think i totally lost the plot near the end haha. But yeah, just a complete ramble

4th October: Scottish Ballet:
One of the more diverse events in my calendar, I went to see a scottish ballet, the catch/gimmick here is that they were dancing to Radiohead. It was quite a fun show, though I actually enjoyed the last act more than the act that had the radiohead dancing, it was far too pretencious and I preferred some good old classical dancing with fancy pancy dresses and costumes.

5th October: Crazy ass coding:
I got really annoyed at the lack of search bar in my site so I started coding and added one in, that’s about it

6th October: CSS:
This was an impromptu gig, I pretty much bought the ticket the week before off ebay (it was cheaper than face value). I had emailed a fellow photographer about the security of Shepherds Bush and was told it was quite a strict place in terms of DSLR photography, I brought Eve along and stubbornly took my DSLR with me, they found my DSLR during the bag search but I eventually got the camera in after some sly words and ninja’ing. Traumatic experience but nonetheless a fun one, the gig was a fruity one, lots of jumping and balloons. Favorite song: Left behind

7th October:
Relaxing day for blogging and catching up sleep (Shepherds Bush gigs tend to make me end up sleeping at 4am) Near the evening Michelle updated that she had guestlists to CSS which she couldn’t attend, i took up the offer but needed to find a girl to go with.

8th October: Wine tasting and drunken CSS:
Spent entire morning and afternoon finding a plus one to go with, failed in epic proportions. Had a wine tasting session, learnt a bit about wine and left halfway. Michelle managed to get Silvia to come with me and woo, was able to smuggle the DSLR whilst slightly tipsy. Was glad I saw CSS once again because I felt the other gig wasn’t enough. Chuckled at the fact that the band gets free xbox360’s out of this gig (it was an xbox event). I had to squeeze through some ickle ladies to get through, later on after writing about it they manged to find my blog and comment on what i said about them teehee. Favorite song: Music is my hot hot hot hot hot sex

9th October: Emiliana Torrini:
After two crazy nights of CSS, I went to see Emiliana Torrini at an ickle Church near Soho. The performance was amazing and she was unbelievably cute! She constantly conversed with the crowd during intervals and explained how the songs were written or whatever crazy anecdotes she could come up with, you loved her gigs for that! Met up with some photographers too. Favorite song: Sunny Road

10th October: Diggnation:
A nerdy event with Stuart and Dip, after work I met up them two to see Diggnation live in London (apparently it only happens once every year). It was quite a fun show! The highlight was the vast amounts of free beer provided by Google, after the event we went to the Facebook aftershow and grabbed a lot of stuff, got to love free stuff.

11th October: Blog updates:
Updated a new feature for my blog which makes flickr integration awesome.

12th October:
Chillaxed, excited about Monday since I had a new 28mm lens and contemplating on see of Montreal play at an instore gig.

13th October: New wide lens and of Montreal acoustic set:
Coworker arrived with new lens I asked him to buy in New York, got well excited! Used the lens to shoot of Montreal who played live at Rough Trade East, was my first time there and I enjoyed the venue. of Montreal were amazing and their acoustic set was quirky and different from what they’d play at a proper gig. Met up with loads of old friends, got talked into seeing The Dears play on Wednesday, I sense crazy gigathon this week again (was SOOO tired from last week’s 3 gigathon) Favorite song: For our elegant caste

14th October:
Just to repeat last week, this day was spent relaxing and recovering from gigging. Probably wrote a lot of blog entries this night too! Went to pure groove records to try buy a tilly and the wall cd for tickets to an instore gig on 17th but found out it was closed after 6pm even though it said it closed at 7pm :(!

15th October: The Dears:
Turned up to see the Dears since had nothing better to do on a Wednesday, met up with people from of Montreal gig, then spoke to a guy because he had a crumpler bag (Just ordered a bag at work you see!), and finally spoke to Chalky from Terrible Love Songs. The gig was pretty fun, especally seeing the tension between the two band married band members Favorite song: Demons

16th October: of Montreal:
This was a horrible date, so many things clashed! I wanted to see Howling bells play but alas I had tickets to see of Montreal and it kinda took priority because I’ve never seen them play properly (acoustic one didn’t count). I acquired a spare ticket so I gave it to Chalky. Met up with more people from both gigs (including Anika) and even met up with a fellow photographer from flickr (preamble). Gig was amazing and theatrical, especially when Kevin Barnes gets naked and frolics around in hot pants, there was even a piledriver performed on stage! Favorite song: Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse.

17th October: Tilly and the Wall:
I managed to buy the Tilly and the Wall album online and it came with 3 guestlists, I invited some people from the CSS gig and even a coworker to the gig. The setlist was super short but it was an ickle gig and we were able to talk to the band about of Montreal (they were at the gig) and whatnot. Favorite song: Dust me off

18th October:
After 2 weeks of weekday non stop gigging, it was time to call it a rest! I believe lots of blogging was involved on Saturday, had a lovely meal out and did some chillaxing

19th October:
Got my haircut! It was getting far too long! Also started coding my site so it was 960px wide, made the sidebar all fancy looking

20-23rd October:
Quiet day of blog catching up (from September gigs), watching films about cyborgs and reading a book about super geeks who choose to fall in love with girls named Katherine. I enjoyed this week, it was nice and quiet for a change, but all the good stuff happened on the weekend hehe

24th October: Video Games Live 2008:
Went with jason and rachel to go see video games live 2008, where a live orchestra performs songs and tunes featured in famous and cult video games. It was a nerdy night, ate some steak before the show, took photos of lots of folks dressed up and enjoyed a slew of nerdy things, they played a lot of songs I loved and at the end of it all. I decided to go check out this cosplay exhibition on Sunday (was going to do Saturday but that was Tilly and the Wall day that me, jason and rachel had planned to go). Favorite Song: Castlevania

25th October: Tilly and the Wall:
Quite a hectic day I must say, Jason and Rachel weren’t able to come because Rachel wasn’t feeling too well. Was going to get their tickets to let someone else go but couldn’t find any one who were able to come so I eventually went solo. Met up Anika from various Rough Trade East gigs (she loves her free gigs), and met up with Preamble and another photographer I met at Emiliana Torrini too (called Lorne). Tilly and the Wall were amazing live, the lights were amazing and awesome for photography. Met up with a girl called Angela during the gig and had fun talking to a random drunk guy called Jeff with Angela, Angela had a chrome bag (I thought it was a crumpler bag :$) Favorite song: Tall tall Grasss (you can hear Angela in it)

26th October: London MCM Expo 2008:
The cosplay fest! Went there and saw loads of people dressed up as video games characters, bought loads of merchandise, mainly studio ghibli plush toys, phone charms and whatnot. There were signings but they cost £15 a pop for some C list celeb action (no way!)

27th October: Gabriel Kain:
Work colleague asked me if I wanted to go see a local band, it was his girlfriends’ coworker’s piano teacher that was playing at the gig. I said why not and went, the gig wasn’t that amazing, we laughed at the band after Gabriel kain and pretty much left afterwards. I took some shots and gave evils to a girl who took shots using flash!

28th October:
Another nice and chillaxed day, I managed to finish writing up on Tilly and the Wall entry, mainly talked about upskirts and whatnot haha.

29th October: Photomonth Preview:
Met up with my friend Malakai, went to the flickr photomonth preview event and had some free wine whilst enjoying some photos, then had a crazy night in London where we ate a Korean BBQ and did some crazy bumper cars and bowling, quite a jam packed night (the kind of nights I’m good at making for people who visit london)

30th October: Uka / Lomokev / Jonathan Coulton:
Crazy assed day where I managed to meet up with uka who was visiting for a few days, he dropped his bag off at my place, we had lunch at my local burger joint type place, then I stuffed him with loads of England based foods such as Krispy Kremes, Thorntons Chocolates and Fireflys (he could of drank imported ones but that’s not cool/it was expensive). After work I met up with uka and went to go see Lomokev at his signing. Was able to get two copies of his book hot shots signed (one for Inn) and take a photo of lomokev and uka together. We then swiftly left and I dropped uka off to Alice whilst heading off to a gig myself. Saw Jonathan Coulton, ninja’d a lovely seat near front and took loads of lovely photos (at Shepherds Bush! mwhaha) It was fun when he rick rolled us! Favorite song: Still alive

31st October:
Nope, no halloween for me, got some chocolate eyeballs from work but afterwards I felt like staying at home and just relaxing, it was pay day finally and all I could think about was getting some rest for such a crazy month I’ve had.

So that’s about it. That’s pretty much my month in a list format, hopefully you’ll read an article or two, doubt you’d click on all the links (please do, it took forever to link up!)! Thanks for your time here! Glad people actually take interest in what I get up to hehe!

stuff you might also like

• Camera Obscura at The Lexington
• Hauschka at Bandstand Busking
• The Acorn at Brixton Windmill
• Vortex Tour East at Rough Trade… East
• Peter, Bjorn and John at Scala