Beginnings of new site

Martin — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:29:33 +0000

Well over the weekend I was able to code up the first page of my new concept…

You can see it here, on its beta page.

Now I ‘just’ have to do the category and archive pages and hook it into WordPress. Not done this from scratch before, so is a bit of a challenge. I also need to get the Twitter and Flickr APIs plugged into the front page too so it gets updated dynamically.

Second Wednesday Meeting

Martin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:21:34 +0000

Had a nice, educational time tonight at the monthly web industry meet

Tonight I went to ‘Second Wednesday‘, the monthly web industry social gathering in Nottingham, held at Broadway Media Centre. We had a talk from lecturer Derek O’Brien about CSS3 and HTML5 and how/when to start using them and inevitable compatibility pitfalls! It was a very good breif overview of the full, verbose extent of these new standards, and was cirtainly interesting fuel for debate.

My feeling is that CSS3 really does have some exciting features we need to get using as soon as possible, and as soon as the bottom end of the userbase (those running old browsers) drops-out. Gradients, shadows and animatiton without script will become so lightweight! The distributers of browsers really need to get heavy handed with those running older browsers, making it very difficult to stay with a deprecated browser.

HTML5, however, I think is more of a hard-sell. I’m not convinced of its value just yet, cirtainly as far as the new XML-style attributes go such as

and

which are essentially common div IDs with standardised names! The SVG part of the spec is very exciting though as it cuts out the need for bitmap images to load, and with Google now favouring lightweight websites, it’s a welcome new toy.

I think for now, the main benefit will be for SEO and telling the crawler what some content is. Full ubiquity isnt expected until around 2020 apparently anyway (if users of the next decade are anything like those of the last!), but it’ll inevitably become commonplace much sooner by those experimenting with the new features.

A very informative evening, and it was great to be engaged by others who love to talk about these things!

Exponential mk2 Printed :D

Martin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:28:12 +0000

As mentioned in a previous post, I made a new Exponential logo recently. Anyway, it’s arrived — I was looking forward to seeing it!

I’m well-pleased with it…now I wanna make loads more!

Lake District Trip

Martin — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:17:24 +0000

Photo Day!

Been pretty busy today – went out with the dogs to Wollaton park — took loads of pics, and I’ve taken the opportunity to sort through the Lake District pics.
Spent the evening playing with Lightroom. Why must I insist on shooting in RAW?! It’s worth it though, even if it does eat disc space!
I have been making some of my first HDR images too – it’s amazing how varied the results are, and they can be made from a single RAW file with equally good results.
The photos are from the Ambleside region. High Street Mt. in Hartsop and Helm Cragg near Grasmere.
Here’s some of my faves:

Martin’s Sunday

Martin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:15:58 +0000

In an attempt to make my own entertainment for lack of anyone else to help, I decided to go to Nottingham centre to have a proper play with my new camera.

I’m now understanding how F/numbers work and how aperture size needs to be compensated by shutter speed etc. I’m now getting it…but still trying to figure out how to take a long exposure in daylight with a camera which only goes down to F/22 without complete whiteout. n00b!

I went to the Nottingham Contemporary to see the ‘Star City’ exhibition. It was all a bit odd. Got some fairly interesting pics, but it was all a bit too post-modern. Had a walk around the Lace Market while I was at it.

It’s so odd walking around Nottingham and actually noticing stuff, as you do when looking for photo opportunities. Normally, the nuanced character of Notts city centre passes one by, until you stop to notice it.
I stopped caring about the potential for people to try to steal my camera…it’s not really a threat. If someone tried, they’d be the ones in danger, anyway. When one walks around a city purely to look for photos, one feels like they’re not participating in what everyone else is doing – you’re there in a different context!

I filled up my memory card with RAWs, so I look forward to going over them, and getting frustrated because I’m not brave enough to get the more risky shots.

New Shiny Thing

Martin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:17:22 +0000

Wooo…I finally got my new toy. My first proper D-SLR camera.

It’s a Nikon D3000. OK so it’s not a top-line one, but it’s still a decent entry model to the world of SLRs.

I’m a bit scared of it – it does stuff my old Fuji didn’t, so I need to take it out and play with it…but so far, it’s brilliant. It’s great not having any noise on indoor shots!
I look forward to taking this baby to the Lake District, France, Edinburgh and around Nottingham this year!

End of an era for 5Live nights

Martin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:50:42 +0000

Yesterday was pretty amazing. I was lucky enough to be invited to the last ever Richard Bacon show on 5Live – possibly the best show on radio. Nobody seems to know about it though! Bacon invited 200 loyal members of the ‘SHH’ down to BBC Radio Theatre, London.

The Guardian wrote a nice article to offer some explanation for the uninitiated. Nobody seems to understand why I made such a pilgrimage from Nottingham for a radio show. It required meticulous planning and a night with no sleep, but it was such an experience. It was quite an odd, surreal experience spending the evening on oneself in London before driving back in the early hours.
We were each presented with the much-coveted ‘Special Half Hour’ badge as we entered the radio theatre and I was co-incidentally sat next to not only Olly Mann of ‘Answer Me This’ podcast fame, but a chap from the same area as me. Also sat nearby was Quentin Wilson and Ash Atalla, Producer of The Office.

We had a discussion about whether or not it’s ok to steal from supermarkets if you’re poor, and the night culminated in a funeral for the Special Half Hour (‘SHH’ when mentioned outside of the time slot). We sang Jerusalem to mark the show’s passing. It was, as always, difficult to interpret the true tone of the show, the genuinity of the fans and the sincerity of the presenters. It’s a typically British phenomenon that we treat everything with an undertone of humour and slight wry sarcasm. We, the English can be serious, but never genuinely earnest — a quality that separates us from our fat cousins across the pond.
I did find that not only is Richard Bacon very Alan Partridge-esque in real life, but as some listeners have said before, very self-indulgent. He is apparently not modest about his radio empire at all – with millions of followers on Twitter and thousands in the Special Half Hour facebook group. He likes to cmmand us to cheer or clap and does tend to boast at any opportunity.

We’ve become something of a cult, now destined to be disbanded; the SHH consigned to fade from our collective memory.
At least we all now have our ‘SHH’ badges to remember the last 14 months or so of enjoying this short-lived, but brilliant show. 10pm-1am will never be the same again; I now have to listen to some guy I’ve never heard of. It has been a true honour and a privilege.

I got Mail

Martin — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:46:59 +0000

Well, today was a bit of a mixed bag of crap. Following my application to Logica a while back, I saw I had the familiar graduate scheme subject line in my mass of junk in my inbox.
“Thank you for taking the time to complete your application and our tests. ['here it comes' you think] Unfortunately….” ARGHH! Oh, look, ANOTHER blow-out! I really shouldn’t make a habbit of checking my inbox first thing in the morning before work…becuase it smashes one’s self-esteem for the day. They seem so impersonal and arbitrary in their decision to reject me. My life feels like one depressing struggle against these corporate monoliths.
On a more optimistic note, I was very pleased to recieve my Masters degree certificate in the post. Forgive me for being pleased with this, but it confirms my ‘Commendation’ degree classification. I now look forward to graduation later this month – pics to follow no doubt.

However…frankly, all of that nonsense pales into utter insignificance when compared to what else I recieved today…Modern Warfare 2! The game I have been waiting for for eternity. I even got some new headphones to play it with!
I have had precious little time to play, but I’ve borrowed sleep time to play it. I hope to complete it over the weekend. I’m AMAZED by the gameplay so far – it helps me forget my actual life.

Results & Weekend!

Martin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:40:39 +0000

Well finally we got our results back for my masters. I got a commendation, so a 2.1. I’m releaived that’s over! I look forward to reading the comments on my final project (!)

Zombie Killing

So it was Halloween last night — I thought it was gonna be yet another boring day on my own, but I ended up being invited out to Rock City so I thought I had better make a bit of an effort. Being a zombie fanatic, I thought I’d go as a survivor, or rather, whatever I had lying around! In this picture I actually look as if I have seen zombies.
The rest of this weekend will be spent trying to get my laptop to boot into Windows XP setup from a flash drive; so far it’s having none of it. This is really doing my head in; it has no optical drive!

Pretty boring weekend

Martin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:32:57 +0000

Yep…it’s been a pretty boring weekend – which really annoys me because I feel guilty if I’m not doing something productive in some way, so I end up filling in the time reading stuff for the sake of it. It’s a mental illness! I have also been listening to the CustomPC Podcasts!
Anyway, I spent more time with Photoshop and produced something which I really like. As always, I produced various versions and now I don’t know which I like best, so here’s my faves. I mean really, one could go on and on…

I wanna try this technique again, but with a different image…need something interesting, like a Parrot.

Martin Dimartino-Marriott » Martin’s Life Blog