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

• Howling Bells: Into the Chaos
• Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)
• …and you think Thom Yorke can dance
• Howling Bells: Now with more dancing
• Okkervil River @ Shepherds Bush feat. Lauren Gurgiolo

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

• …and you think Thom Yorke can dance
• Howling Bells: Now with more dancing
• Okkervil River @ Shepherds Bush feat. Lauren Gurgiolo
• Jonathan Coulton rickrolls us all!
• Shearwater and the love of birds

Today I went out and bought myself a copy of little BIG planet. It is quite an addictive game, such a simple 2d platformer with such immense graphics and customisation squeezed into it. Had to literally crowbar myself out to stop myself from playing it hehe. So yes, cute game and rediculously addictive. I just played with 3 german folks online trying to get through this stage, i nearly won but lost at the end

stuff you might also like

• An abundance of cosplay and free hugs
• Video Games Live 08 = Geeky music heaven
• Moo Mini Cards: Perfect way to say hi!
• Howling Bells: Into the Chaos
• Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)

Well, continueing from the epic meetup with uka, I head off to Shepherds Bush to check out the folk singer songwriter Jonathan Coulton. If you guys don’t know much about him, he’s the one who wrote the epic song “Still Alive” for the ending song of the video game “Portal”. He used to be a software developer (my roots) but now makes music and tours for a living. He income comes directly from his website www.jonathancoulton.com and you can download his tracks if you like it. He’s even nice enough to throw in some free tracks for you to download right now But yeah, if you like his stuff to buy them! Some tracks I’d recommend are (click on the links, some tracks you can download for free!) “Tom Cruise Crazy“, “You Ruined Everything“, “Skull Crusher Mountain” and “Code Monkey“. The lyrics tend to be passive agressive and involve zombies, crazy warlords, mad scientists and whatever geeky stuff he can imagine. So yes, on with the show!

Jonathan Coulton on guitar?

I was also armed with my long coat in my bag (best trick since it makes searching painfully long!) so immediately we have the perfect trap. A big bag distraction with the real loot hidden right behind my back. It was pretty maths to be honest, last time they didn’t do a body search so I’ve assumed that it isn’t really neccesary in this venue so having it strapped to my body whilst they focus on the bag was the best trick. After a few pats I was let in pretty easily and escourted to my seat….

Wait a minute I hear you say! SEAT?! You’re sitting down?!! Unfortunately, these gigs aren’t of the standing variety, it’s a folk artist, so you get comfty seats to relax instead of standing all night. It also probably made sense because most of the audience was made up of pasty skinny and/or slightly overweight greasy nerds :p (sorry nerds, I need to betray you to look cool haha!). Most of the folk probably spent their days sitting down so having it seated was a good idea (man I’m mean hehe). After a hectic day of work and getting things signed, I wouldn’t mind a nice chillaxed night of geeky folk music.

Pretty blue and green!

The support band Paul and Storm, were pretty cool, I actually missed half of the show but it was pretty easy to get in, it was clearly a mash up of folk music and comedians, their lyrics reached out to the fans with references only a pure bred (ie both parents are of geek bloodline) geek would understand. The mudbloods probably didn’t get a thing (me being a mudblood :D). Anyway, to give you an idea of what they did, here’s a video of their last song. You need to think like a pirate to be able to appreciate the jokes.

Judging from the seats you can tell that I wasn’t sitting particularly close to the band huh? Yeah my seats sucked, I was escorted to some shonky seating area near the left hand side of the show, though it was level 0 seats (ie ground floor), it was nonetheless shonky, the annoying thing was that it was a first come first serve seating arrangement when you booked your tickets, there were no premium seats and having your seats reserved was merely to avoid having people sitting alone from their friends (GO CRY BEHIND THE CORNER BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SIT NEXT TO YOUR FRIEND! CRY! CRY LIKE THE RAGE OF A BIBLICAL FLOOD) (ahem). Luckily for me, I’m used to going solo, and this is where solo missions pay off. After the interval (yes there’s an interval for these gigs, toilet breaks and people to catch their breath, being geeks and all ;)) I pretty much walked all the way to the front and sat in the most bestest (correct, bestest :P) most comfortablest (and correct, most comfortablest) seats there were, SORTED! Not only were the seats close to the band, it made ninja photographying inconspicuous and awesome (because I was shooting on the left).

Disco ball action!

Anyway after the interval, Jonathan Coulton appeared on stage and greeted us with a song about a certain swedish furniture company. The stage was pretty bare, and the sound isn’t as full as other bands (since it’s just vocals and an acoustic) but it was nonetheless an awesome show. The fact is, the entire show I was in giggles for the stuff he sang and did. Occasionally Paul and Storm came out to provide backing as well as ad lib and vamp up whilst Jonathan Coulton was tuning up. The audience was all rowdy and not afraid of heckling during his talks. The best heckle was when Jonathan said “this song is about two people arguing” and another guy said “no it isn’t”, the sheer cheek in saying that made Jonathan giggle at the response…. oh dear, rereading makes me wonder whether or not you’ll get any of this it’s probably far too geeky! Uhm *panics* just listen to some songs and it should hopefully make sense.

Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm

Here’s a video of him doing Still Alive:

At one point of the show, he took his iphone out and told the audience he wanted to show us something, I immediately heckled (yup, heckling is fun) “STOP TWITTERING!” which he giggly replied that he wasn’t, the next thing he showed us was quite a funny bit. He explained how one of his songs, Mr Fancy Pants was like a 1 minute odd song that he originally hated when making the tune but later on loved, he wanted to play it live but didn’t know how to, so he installed an iphone app that did some sampling action (i’m not too sure now tbh, it might have been just for show and he was merely playing backing tracks) which played all the samples from the song whilst he sang along to it. The song was funny to listen to, but halfway through the song.. it happened! A video is needed to explain this. So yes, ANOTHER youtube video!

So yeah, the gig wasn’t about musical genious, it was about laughing out loud, being a pirate, heckling, and appreciating geeky references. The photography experience was pretty fun since nobody really cared about me photolising, their main concern was for folks filming the show, I did record a song or two but that was about it. I still prefer the satisfication you get when taking a pretty photo of a musician that really captures the moment and whatnot. Oh and only one professional photographer was at the “photopit”, it was pretty hilarious seeing him on his own (guess someone had to do it). So yes, enjoy the photos. Definitely check his site out and listen to a few songs and tell me what you think

So yeah, lots of videos since it’s hard to explain!

stuff you might also like

• Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)
• …and you think Thom Yorke can dance
• Howling Bells: Now with more dancing
• Okkervil River @ Shepherds Bush feat. Lauren Gurgiolo
• Shearwater and the love of birds

Yup, facebook napkins!

“Bob has been drinking google, listening to digg and wiping facebook.“

One of my rather cryptic messages I posted on facebook a while ago. Don’t think people really got why I said that, so let me explain in a form of an event I went to. I was invited by Stuart to go check out diggnation, a geeky show talking about articles found on digg hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht. It was once again, one of my geeky days where I felt like checking out proper nerdy events, even a coworker was going so it had to be worth visiting. The actual event held was talking about Web Apps and whatnot but most people were merely interested in the Diggnation event which was free (and we love free events don’t we!!! YEAH we do!). So yeah, on with the show.

After arriving fashionably late to meet up with Dip and Stu, we started heading off to Excel Custom House via the DLR. I was hoping to bump into a lot of pasty nerds wearing Diggnation T shirts along the way which I did (teehee pasty nerds), most of them bearing iphones and twittering like crazy about the stop they’re at or whatever. We had a discussion about the concentration of iphone users there were at this event and did more stat’ing around, such as the ratio of male and female (more on that later) and the ratio of Mac / PC users. Dip actually went for shits and giggles, twas funny seeing him come to an event that clearly was for nerds only, but it did feel wrong (a good kind of wrong) that our friendly  and loveable emo was attending the show :).

Once at the venue, we were greeted by loads of people in red t shirts who were paid to be super friendly. They’d high five you, welcome you, cheer at you, raise your spirits and would probably hug you if you asked for one. There were loads of them about, which made me wonder who the hell was funding all these people to stand around and simply say hi to people. It was a nice feeling though, sounds like a boring job but what the hell, someone’s paying for it. At the venue there wasn’t much to do, the only thing left open was a Google stand, and the entrance to see Diggnation (more on the google thing later, trust me, it’s awesome). We queued up for Diggnation and nattered about bits and bobs and what the show will talk about, my bets were on the new Apple laptops (nom).

Girl with Apple Logo tatoo'd to her back!

We got in the actual diggnation bit pretty easily, there were loads of seats but it became pretty obvious that it was filling up pretty quickly. We had some pretty far back seats but no matter, it wasn’t exactly a gig haha (you’ll see me darting to the front if it was!) Once sat down that a few rows in front of us was a girl who had a tatoo of the Apple logo on her back. It was hilarious, people were taking photos of her (without her consent, the best kind) and even I got in there to take a quick ninja shot, I was originally going to ask her to pose for me but the timing was a bit crap so I decided not to in the end. Quite a lot of jokes were made about the tatoo, one in particular is when fornicating with a girl with an apple logo tatoo’d on her back, you’d might randomly scream “STEVE JOBS” (CEO of Apple) in the middle of it all. I don’t know if that would turn the girl on or not… anyway, knowing my bad history with talking about people I encountered at the gig and them actually finding my blog and commenting on it, I’ll leave it at that (though tbh that was all we talked about). Stu did say some mean things though haha (his blog is on the sidebar so find him there haha).

As time flew by waiting for the show to begin we noticed something very strange, people were vacating their seats and coming back with a handful beers. We investigated further about what was going on and realised that the Google stand, was in fact a “Google Beers” stand. Now what are they doing in the stand? Nothing but providing everyone with unlimited FREE BEER! (hopefully by saying that you even felt the need to get up to your seat and find out this stand, but alas, this was in the past so unless you have time machine, sit back down :P). Once we realised this attrocious freebie we got dip to go scout for beers. We eventually went ourselves after feeling ever so slightly impatient for free beer. The stall was swarming with people, a closer look and you’d see people behind the stalls frantically unbottling caps and handing it out to people. You’d think there’d be a limit to how many beers a person can have but nope. The only limit was your modesty in how much free stuff you’d like to get from a super big corporate company. The number of bottle caps on the table was ungodly, (would have taken a photo but my hand was filled with beers haha), since the bottles were opened, it wasn’t possible to just cram them into a bag or whatever, so the max I was able to get was 4 bottles (probably could of got more but I didn’t want to get too wasted). It really felt like they had a googleplex of beers under that stall (had to make a googleplex joke hehe). Anyway, 4 bottles was an ok amount to last the entire evening, don’t want to be watching a gig show drunk do we?

We salute you google! Thanks for the free beers!

Back in our seats we piled up the number of free beers we had, me and Dip managed to swipe 4 beers each whilst Stuart came with an appalling two (shame on him!). So with 10 beers to share between 3 we said whoever finished their third bottle will get the last bottle. Dip eventually won the 4th bottle which was good because I didn’t want to have loads of bathroom breaks :(. Anyway, it was nice having big corporate companies providing nerds free stuff, so Google, we salute you!

The show was really funny, a lot of heckling, shouting and screaming was involved. It was quite a nerdy bunch! Not only that, it felt like a proper sausage fest haha. When the guys from diggnation told all the girls to shout, there really wasn’t much screaming coming out from the crowd. It felt so weird going to an event that had such a low female ratio. Anyway, they talked about Google Beers, the new Mac Laptops,  Gmail’s drunk detector for making sure you don’t send unwanted emails while intoxicated and other bits and bobs.

It was a nice event, there were so many geeky references that I and the rest of the crowd got that it made you feel somewhat a bit welcomed. I can’t remember how the show ended but we were then all invited to the aftershow party at a pub. The event was sponsored by…*drum roll* FACEBOOK mwhaha.

Facebook PARTAE!

The pub wasn’t that interesting, there were a lot of facebook merchandise to take (one of which were facebook napkins) but it was just like any other pub. Later on, Kevin and Alex arrived and I was able to say hi to Kevin (I think I literally said hi and went haha). We decided to leave (after a toilet break) since nothing was happening but as we were heading to the toilets for a wee Kevin and Alex appeared behind the DJ desk with mics talking the crowd, they were about to play a game with the audience!

Kevin and alex asking the crowd which month and year Diggnation began

The timing couldn’t be any better since I was stood literally in front of them. They were constantly throwing Digg branded bottle openers and T shirts (managed to grab one) and yeah, they asked some pretty hard questions about Digg where the winners would get super prizes handed to them if they got it right (they weren’t that awesome mind). It wasn’t that interesting but having loads of nerds heckling was quite a sight to see hehe. I wasn’t able to take a good shot of the guys during the Diggnation event but I was able to do so now. After the show that pretty much was it, we decided to call it a day and left the area to go home (well we did end up in a boat for a bit but it was boring so we left).

So yeah, that was my day where I was drinking Google Beers, listening to Diggnation and wiping my face with Facebook. Suddenly all these events are making me feel more and more nerdy! (Though the abundance of music gigs and art shows should hopefully cancel it out!)

stuff you might also like

• Splash of October Swimmer (Summary)
• Killing a belgian with food and lomokev
• Photomonth preview & Korean BBQs
• Preview: A day with three photographers
• Guess who’s coming to town?

A few weeks ago my coworker went to New York, and I was in a gear buying mood (having asked to purchase a 28mm f1.8 USM lens from another coworker earlier on) so I did some camera bag researching since my current Canon one was a bit dated and crumply (funny how I should use the word crumply). Anyway, after much research I found out these “Crumpler” bags which were not only built for cameras (so filled with compartments and waterproof etc), but look very stylish and avoids screaming out the typical “I’m a LOWEPRO CAMERA BACK, I PROBABLY HAVE SOME HARDCORE GEAR INSIDE SO COME ON IN! STEAL ME WHILST I’M OFF PHOTOLISING MYSELF ON TOP OF A HEYSTACK!” (apologies for the painful use of caps and apologies Inn to her lovely shot of her on a heystack (but it defintiely made me think about random farmers coming to steal your gear whilst you’re on top of that thing). The selection was unfortunately limited in the UK so I thought I’d venture into the US for my dream camera bag, and out came the 6 million dollar home.

Took this at work, notice the robot aka Dr Strong Tron

Here are the lovely specs for the bag, because I’m very sure you want to know about this (haha)

• A protective environment for your basic photo and or video equipment that doesn’t scream “photo bag!”
• Water resistant 1000D Nylon shell & 420D Ripstop Nylon lining
• External pocket with internal mesh pocket
• 2x hidden internal side pockets
• Mesh zip pocket under clip & Velcro release flap
• Padded & Brushed Nylon-lined main compartment
• Configurable dividers
• Plastic stiffening layer in base
• Carry Handle
• Adjustable and removeable shoulder strap with removable shoulder pad
• Fully padded

The bag can carry:
A digital SLR, vertical grip & “twin lens kit”, external flash unit and basic accessories. There is no tripod holder.

Dimensions
12.6″ W, 9.45″ H, 7.1″ D

Six million dollars worth of goodness, priced at £66.60

Now a quick story about the bag, originally I wanted the 5 million dollar bag so I asked my coworker to buy it on amazon.com and have it shipped to the US office for her to pick up, eventually I did some more research to find out that the bag was pretty small and so I quickly bumped it up to the 6 million dollar. I then went out to a gig an FINALLY met someone carrying a SEVEN million dollar bag and sort of fell in love with it too haha. Though having said that I didn’t want to ask my coworker to change the order AGAIN because that’s just taking the piss. I eventually settled with 6 million dollar home and did some further research into it to find out it’s actually a nicer size to the seven million dollar home. The price worked out to £66.60. Well I rounded it off to that for shits and giggles and paid my coworker exactly that (since it was a six million dollar bag).

Now the “bag can carry” bit is quite a touchy one, when the bag finally arrived at my office (all pretty and new) you instantly realise how small it was, the names are so damn confusing (for example the Pretty Boy XXXL can only carry a dslr and a few lenses here and there, it’s still very ickle!) which I already knew in advance after some review digging (sadly I couldn’t find many photos of people actually wearing the damn bag). Though having overestimated the size of the bag, I’ve grown to like the size of the 6 million dollar dream, it’s just right for a camera/outing bag. I can easily fit all my gear in there but I sort of stick to the bare essentials.

Sans DSLR camera, where's that? behind the shot ;P

So yeah, here’s what I typically stuff inside my bag (ie the essential stuff):

• Canon EOS 400d avec 28mm F1.8 USM Lens attached
• Memory cards (though that’s pretty much permanently attached to my dslr camera strap so I don’t need to run about looking for it during hectic moments (it’s pretty neat)
• That ickle manual for the 400d (though I never read it anymore, again mostly for show)
• Canon 50mm f1.8 mkii lens
• Canon Powershot G9 (aka Eve)
• Either a PSP or a DS depending on my mood
• Notebook (though I hardly write in it, mostly for show, damn efficient mobile phone)
• Paperback book (right now I’m reading Birthday Stories)
• A 1up plush toy, in case I get killed outdoors (insert 1up sound effect)

It’s not heavy to carry (especially with the lovely shoulder strap) and I have room for loads more (including a signed copy of lomokev’s hot shots). I’ve customised the compartments so lenses go in one place, camera goes in one and the middle is for the compact, psp, notebook. One thing I’ve noticed is that the velco is pretty tough so it takes a bit of an effort to open the bag, but you’ll soon get used to it. The material and feel of it is pretty high quality, you can tell that these guys did a lot of thinking when making the bag. But yes, it’s very hard to find any other faults in the bag, it’s probably best you have a look at the camera bag in person and get a feel of it before making the purchase, you don’t want a bag that’s too small or too big. For me right now, I think the bag is a bit too big for me, but this won’t be a problem when I begin buying more lenses (always thinking ahead ;)).

How high the camera bag is

Gear Remorse

Man this is such a photography nerdy section, it must be boring reading this crap haha. So yeah, that’s about it, I’ve already began customising the bag with bits and bobs and have taken it to a gig. Would definitely recommend a crumpler bag if you’re into photography or just want stuff to carry (I can convert the bag into a bag filled with books if I wanted to). Due to the limited variety of bags in the UK I would recommend trying to get it from abroad, otherwise I’d pick the rather pricey Crumpler Daily.

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mmmm 320 gigalo bytes

Ickle post, I bought myself a lovely 320gb 2.5inch hard drive to replace my PS3’s harddrive. I wanted to fit a lot of TV shows, photos and videos on my ps3 and felt my PS3 is really struggling with the capacity.  It was bugging me, if I wanted to watch a film or whatnot I would have to copy it into a CF or SD card and actually play the thing on the flash card instead of the HDD since it was brimming with videos and whatnot. Games were also starting to pile up so I thought it was best to start investing in a bigger hard drive for my multimedia needs. I bought the badboy from play.com and it arrived pretty promptly at the office. Everything was fine and dandy until I started trying to upgrade the damn HDD. After removing all my music from my ipod to backup my PS3 I was stuck trying to unscrew the damn screws that was securing the HDD to the caddy. I pretty much stripped all 4 screws, leaving the thing stuck. Crapsticks. A lot of searching for alternative screwdrivers was involved and I ended up staying up till 4am finding screwdrivers until I gave up, I resorted in synching my ipod with a fixed playlist of music since my backup stuff were still in the ipod and I didn’t have enough room to store all my music (which was why I was stubborn enough to go searching for screwdrivers in the middle of the night because I wanted to have my music back). I went to sleep, hoping I will be able to solve this damn mess.

The next morning I called up the Sony support centre and asked for a new caddy which they were happy to send for free (go Sony Customer Support!) but got weary of waiting for it. I decided to take matters into my own hands (well to be fair, it was my matter in the first place but I like using that line) and googled for people who were experiencing the same problem (it wasn’t me! The damn screws were reallllly tight for others too). The suggestion was to either phone Sony or use a pair of pliers to carefully take the screws out. unfortunately I didn’t have a pair of pliers so an adventure down to the my nearest Maplins was at hand, I wasn’t able to do it that day either so another day went by with limited music and no HDD.

The next day it was a slightly miserable and rainy day, I took a trip to Royal Mail to collect some stuff and went to Maplins afterwards. At the store I presented them with the HDD and caddy and told them I needed the tools to take it out, the friendly store assistant got his screwdrivers out and tried unscrewing them to no avail. He eventually suggested pliers which I asked him to do, I granted him permission to mangle my HDD and caddy and that I wouldn’t sue him if he broke it (I just wanted the caddy). After several attempts he gave up and handed it over to a collegue who we shall call ISSA (ignorant stubborn sales assistant). He instantly recited some Maplins policy (which he most likely made up) saying he couldn’t do it for us as he wasn’t allowed to mangle up customer stuff (despite the other guy helping out). In frustration I asked him what tools I needed to do it myself and he recommended me the pliers (initially he had no idea, but I hinted at pliers in which he tried rewording so it sounded like it was his idea in the first place). I bought the pliers for £3.50 odd (I had another tough screw at home I wouldn’t mind unscrewing with the pliers so it wasn’t just for the HDD) and began the painful task of unscrewing the thing, now the tediousness of this task was just. too. tanterlising for engineers and nerdy folk, ISSA couldn’t help grabbing the tools and caddy out of my hand, mutter “you can’t do this, only I can do this” and began his ignorant journey of opening the damn thing.

It was pretty hilarious watching him doing it, the expression of frustration and stubbornness was clearly painted on his face. I got bored and went online on my mobile to talk to Kev about the situation whilst the other members of staff were serving other customers. The store supervisor came out and told ISSA that it was his lunch break but he refused to go because he had to get the damn thing out. It was almost a matter of pride now, I would have happily went back home and slowly tried taking it out myself but hey, once an ISSA starts, it’s almost impossible to get him to stop. Eventually one of the screws finally came out and hope began to settle in my doubts of whether ISSA could actually unscrew the thing, I continued to chat with kev and a few other people on msn and the store supervisor began nattering at ISSA to go have his lunch break, he even at one point offered to unscrew it himself only to find himself failing miserably. It wouldn’t have been right anyway, it was now a point where I wanted ISSA to unscrew them, better to have someone else do all the hard work eh? After 15 minutes of ISSA screams of frustration, he finally unscrewed all 4 of the screws HOORAY! The catch however was that at the last screw, he started mangling up my caddy in order to get room for the pliers! Damnit! I took the pliers and began unbending the thing he bent out. The supervisor shoo’d him away to lunch and I pretty much left the place having no other reason to be there. Once back home I was able to screw the new HDD into the caddy and begin transferring my old stuff back onto the PS3 and getting my music collection back into my ipod! (YAY!)

The extra room was all kinds of awesome, I was glad I finally made the upgrade. So yeah, that was quite an adventure :p

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I thought I’d post this in light of Halloween since it sort of kinda makes sense… I dunno, I’m not really into Halloween any but whatever haha.

After seeing quite a fair few number of people dressed up as some of my favorite video game characters at the Video Games Live 2008 concert, I decided that I wanted to do this again! During the concert they had mentioned as part of the London Games Festival 2008, there will be a London MCM Expo which will be the host venue for hundreds and perhaps thousands of cosplay folk, all of whom are dressing up as characters from video games, anime characters, cult films and other sci fi and geeky stuff you can think of. Embracing my still warm geekiness after the gig, I decided that this event was one I had to venture into. So yes, sit back and enjoy the freak geek show!

Cactuar!

6am on Sunday 26th October, I was still wide awake, I didn’t feel like sleeping after a hectic but funderful night watching Tilly and the Wall live at the ULU. I was still a bit wishy washy on whether or not I wanted to go since it would mean my Sunday wouldn’t be a relaxing day where I casually check flickr, blog and do what you cool kids do these days. I decided that the decision was best left on the day and based on how much sleep I would get after waking up. The show was from 11am to about 6pm so there was no rush.

It was around 1-2pm, the day was rainy and damp and I still felt I could do with more sleep, it wasn’t one of those days where you woke up going “ARGH, top of the mornin’, I feel like going out and galivanting around the town that is Lundun”. I decided to go anyway, despite having second thoughts midway walking to the tube station because it was already 2pm (would arrive around 3pm with very little time left for photolising). The journey was pretty long and involved an annoying replacement rail bus trip to the venue, but that never really stopped me when I was armed with music and a book, I also forgot that we had to turn our clocks back an hour so I essentially had a spare hour! Woo, thank you Sun!

Upon arriving at the venue I’ve already seen about 40 odd cosplayers, they were scattered about the place, some of which were leaving the expo, some of which who only just arrived and waiting to show off their skin tight lycra suit that mildly resembles a video games character. Things started to heat up (quite literally too, outside was cold and it was nice being indoors with some heating hehe) and I immediately got into photolising people who I thought dressed epically well.

Damnit, there's only meant to be TWO Vincents, TWO!

“Cosplay photography is a bit like porn, but without the porn”

Now I know what you’re thinking; cosplay? porn? fetish? sodomy? (probably not haha). Why the hell am I comparing cosplay photography to porn? And before you even think it’s that, NO, it’s not (and not that either). The reason why I made the comparison was based mainly on this online article (found it on digg but don’t want to Google “porn industry” to find it again :/) I once read. It was about a guy who was in charge of selecting which “adult romance” photos would be up in the site. Sounds like a good job? (I’m hoping everyone says no without me explaining the reason why) Well not when you have to see all the bad and unflattering shots (just wait until we get into mainstream HD porn some day *shudders*). It was quite an interesting article and talks about how the guys got all numb from it after a hard days work of filtering out all the hideous stuff from the decent flattering stuff (and thank god you’ll never see the unflattering stuff).

Probably the most badass cosplayers in the show! They were debating the use of controversial art and censorship

Though a mirky kirky industry, it still nonetheless has the essence of photography at hand, being able to shift out all the bad shots from the good one. Today it felt exactly like that; there were some amazing and beautifully portrayed characters and some totally cheapass and cringeworthy cosplayers who probably made their costume out of PVA glue and news paper (and macoroni, don’t forget macoroni!). I actually had to come back home after it all and google some DECENT cosplay to ensure that my faith in people who can pull off a video game character hasn’t been ruined! (If you want to know which character I was talking about, it was Tifa from Final Fantasy 7, there was one who looked like a man even though she was a lady, the makeup was horrific and the costume was shonky haha). So yeah, luckily you’ll get only the cooly dressed cosplay folks from my flickr set and not the crumby ones that had very little effort put into it.

Moody batman, indiana jones and Captain Jack Sparrow (argh!)

Cosplays, gotta snap’m all!

The place was held in London ExCel, which has forever struck me as the perfect venue for geeks (I went to another event at ExCel a few weeks back, but that’s another story for another time). It’s only when you goto events like this do you realise that there are a substantial number of geeks out there who share similar interests to you. Anyway enough of that, on with the freak/geek show. (hehe i should stop calling them freaks, though I refuse to retract my statement for certain people dressed up as certain characters).

Troopers of the storm variety, they spent most of the time outside frightening folks who knew nothing about the cosplay event

The place was filled with merchandise stalls! It was all kinds of epic, most of the time I have to get my stuff ordered from ebay and shipped all the way from Hong Kong or America (though not that much, I’m not merchandise crazy!), now all of the goodness is sent directly here ready for me to oogle and purchase. I got several studio ghibli bits and bobs (because the things they make are more subtle, cute and only the cool kids watch studio ghibli and understand the references) and a wee ickle bullet bill keyring (not sure where I’m doing with it but it was only a pound). That’s literally the second most important thing I did for this event, there wasn’t anything that interested me apart from cosplay folk ready for piledrivering photolising.

Awwwh! They were the cutest cosplay couple (if you exclude Alien vs Predator)

Now just rewind a wee bit when I was at the video games live concert, I did feel shy in terms of asking people for a photograph (yes, I’m a shy person, honest!) but braved it anyway and thought that they probably had loads of people asking them so it wasn’t just some random person going up to you and asking to take a photo of you, there was an obvious reason why I wanted to take a photo of them. It definitely improved my people approaching skills and I felt that going to the expo would of been another way of practising that skill (it’s a good “people approaching” skill that we should all learn). My original plan was to actually interview and talk to them for a bit so I had something to write in each section in the flickr page, but when in the moment, I only took photos and said thank you before shly moving to the next person. It’s a shame because I kinda like the idea of talking to them for a bit, finding out why they dressed up as x and how they designed the costume. But yeah, stay tuned for expo 2009 for more detailed explanations of each character, that’s if I remember this post anyway! Anyway, lets fast forward back to the event. *presses the remote*

The event felt like a fantasy world where video game characters were no longer bounded by the flickrless television screen or comic book frame, with so many quirky dressed folks out here you feel somewhat giddy and excited, especially when they’re characters you immediately knew somewhat “intimately” (eg “I controlled you for 70 hours slashing monsters and killing badass silver haired villains with a huge sword that’s somewhat bigger than you!”). It was a relaxed environment where people didn’t feel weird for wearing makeup and dressing up like a lady or a man or a lady man or whatever (though I’d disagree with that statement when they’re outside the event and taking the tube back home).

Damnit, more vincents! And the creepy sephiroth in the middle with a loong neck

Approaching people was surprisingly easy, when you do it more than once you start to carry the courage momentum over, people were always happy to let you take photos of them, in fact, they were more flattered that you are asking for photo takage, I’m sure you’d be pissed if you spent weeks and weeks making an outfit only to find noone noticing you. It was cute seeing them going from browsey customer at merchandise stall to cold ice queen badass villain, it was almost second nature to them to get in character (London is a land of intense professional method actors you see).

*Breathes in* Alien and generic cosplay chick, predator, random panda, sora, reno of the turks and link *Breathes out*

Slowly taking photos of people made me feel like I was playing pokemon, I had an urge to snap’m all (if I do boldy make a tacky reference to their slogon of “Gotta catch’m all”). Though I made sure I had my rules for snapping cosplay folks, they were:

• No generic characters that can fit in any video game / anime, so no generic pirates, ninjas or nurses outfits, this wasn’t halloween, it’s cosplay!
  

  BAD NARUTO COSPLAY!

• No naruto! Sorry Naturo fans but I’ve not seen it and didn’t want to take photos of something I haven’t seen (though if it’s any consolation I did break this rule and took a photo of them because they were all there posing and everything in a group, it felt rude not to)
• No Sephiroths unless he’s done RIGHT; there were far too many people dressed up as “Sephiroth” and boy was it horrific, they know how to murder the crap out of a character! I refused to take photos of Sephiroth cosplay folk (though I do have a photo of one because he was in a group shot and to be fair, telling him to leave would probably hurt his feelings).
• No forced cosplay; I’m more about the accurate representation of a character than choosing one whom you can relate to more. So if you’re a short tubby person, don’t dress up as someone who’s tall and skinny, it just doesn’t do, best sticking to characters that fit your physique! Though girls do make pretty cool male characters (sadly not the other way round)

The "Real" ghostbusters, so real that they took into account that one of them was inadvertantly killed during a poker game

Jam packed with free hugs and chargeable smiles

There were obviously some other events going on within the expo, just stuff I wasn’t really interested in unfortunatley, there was a show happening with talks from celebrities and whatnot, I didn’t know who they were so paid no attention, there were also several signing booths from sci fi / fantasy shows such as Heroes and Narnia. It was funny looking at the Heroes signing booth, they were only able to get the sub characters rather than the lead / hardcore ones. In the case of Heroes, we’re talking about a character who only had a one episode part, Matt Parkman (the guy who reads people’s minds) and the speedy chick Daphne, no Hiro or Peter The narnia one was more horrific as they only got people who were borderline extras haha.

Aeries and some random chick, another final fantasy chick i forgot the name of and lulu

Now I know what you’re thinking, a signings a signing, it’s not like you’re losing anything. Wrong, these signings required “SMILIES”. Unfortunately, I tried to smile at the guard but that didn’t work haha, they were some sort of token type thing which you had to buy for £15 in order to get something signed by the people. I was outraged by how much of a rip it is and refused to purchase a “smiley”. So I smiled at the guard and walked off from the signing area, it was just silly (not to mention Hero’s is like a poor man’s version of xmen, just with more emo heroes and japanese folks that go “I DID IT!” in Japanese quite a lot).

Selphie, Yuffie and Edea

So yes, chargeable smiles wasn’t cool, lets look at some free stuff…. HUGS! Man it was a hug fest! About 20% of the folks at the expo were donning “Free Hugs” signs. For those who’ve been living under a cave/bridge, the whole concept of Free Hugs is to make the world a somewhat friendlier and stranger place (mainly the former though). It was a nice way to start conversations as well as “feeling the love”. I unfortunately refused all hug requests, mainly because I was carrying a camera and also by the fact that if I were to hug a Final Fantasy character, I would have to hug a Naruto character too :/ (again, suddenly I feel like I’m making war on Naturo fans, I’m sure it’s a good show but meh, too hard to explain :P), it was fun seeing so many people pick up on this strange phenominom though. Almost made you want to do it too to feel accepted (though we are at a cosplay convention)

Anyway, heres some more photos of the cosplay folk.

Damn generic cosplay folk on the left!

A few hours went by and I started to grow tired, after seeing the same cosplay character for the 15th time, I became pretty sick of cosplay and decided to leave the venue before I got into a fight with a person dressed up as Mario carrying a DSLR camera talking to a security guard (it’s nice casually making weird sentences like that) ! It felt like eating too much icecream, it’s all sweet and good in the beginning but when you eat tooo much, you suddenly grow sick of it. So yeah, I avoided seeing any more cosplay folk on the tube and enjoyed reading my book and listening to of Montreal. The event was fun! You just need to know when to stop and leave before you start growing tired.

Mario was high on yellow stars!

No idea where this was from but it looks badass

So yes, that was about it, I think the best cosplayers were the alien vs predator folk, the cutest one was the one of Link and the Twighlight Princess, the weirdest character was probably the Cactuar dude, the ones I hate most was probably the Naruto folk (haha sorry!). I would definitely recommend any geeks out there who play quite a lot of video games when they were wee and understand all the references I’ve made in this post. It was surreal and exciting at the same time and for £9, it was well worth the mulla, So yeah, that’s about it, hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed the expo.

Check the flickrset and help me identify the other cosplay folk!

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