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SNAP! Screening a series of short documentaries from FourDocs and 3 Minute Wonder.
Thursday 27th March 2008
The Drawing Office, Titanic Quarter, 2 Queen’s Road, Queens Island, Belfast [MAP]
Doors open 7pm, screening at 8pm
Free admission
Part One
3MW: Mouthing Off: Scoring (Ken Wardrop)3MW: Lee Kern’s A-Z of London: Love (Lee Kern)
4Docs: Kebab (Khaldoon Ahmed)
4Docs: Rose Thieves (Jane Cheadle)
3MW: Little Worlds: Maria’s Story (Sally Hewitt)
4Docs: Flora and Thieves (Xanthe Hamilton)
4Docs: I Remember Lebanon (Zenia Aboul Hosn)
Part Two
3MW: People in Order: Age 1-100 (James Price & Lenka Clayton)3MW: WarTorn Stories of separation: Anna & Rissell (David Modell)
4Docs: Twenty Lenghts (Katie Barlow)
3MW: Beside the Seaside: Ice-cream (Julie Moggan)
4Docs: Weston Super Mare (Dan Blore)
3MW: Preparing for the Worst - Gordon Francis (James Caddick)
4Docs: Country Commute (Robin Field)
Recently I’ve been working with local promotion company Moving On Music, who specialise in classical, traditional, world, rock and jazz music.
MOM are putting on a mini-festival in the Black Box from today, 26th March, to Sunday 30th March, encompassing many great musicians, as well as film screenings before each show.
In the Café, however, a selection of my photographs, taken at Moving On Music events, are on display throughout the festival.
If you are in Belfast it would be great if you could stop by and have a look, maybe even get a bite to eat - they do a good lunch.
For full details on the festival programme click here
The king of Internet ideas, Ze Frank, has started a Colorwar.
I’ve taken my throw.
ROCK!
Go noTeam!
A random photo from the archives.
This photograph was taken on this day in 2006
The majority of my hardware concerns stem from the fact that it is a laptop - which is not the fault of Apple Inc. I have mostly disliked laptops in general for a few reasons, but now I find that having a laptop will prove much more beneficial.
The keyboards are difficult to get used to and near impossible to upgrade, at least that’s what I have always been lead to believe - correct me if I’m wrong.
Starting with the Keyboard:
a) So much less pressing of the keys is required than regular keyboards. This annoys me.
b) Buttons are in the wrong places.
c) No number pad on the right
Then there’s the differences in Mac and Win keyboards. So Command = Ctrl? and Option = Alt?
Why can’t they be in the same place as their windows equivalent? After at least (estimate) 15 years my muscles and brain have been trained to do things a certain way and it will not be easy to change that. I did read somewhere of a way to swap Command and Option (not physically obviously). Nice way to confuse other Mac users…
The lack of a Delete key is awkward, but I’m sure pressing Fn won’t be too much of a task.
Mouse
The mac mouse has always bugged me. Only recently has it become in any way nice to look at, though to me it still isn’t as functional as it should be - so it can scroll sideways, that’s not really not necessary.
As Macs do have right click functionality, alone with most software, why can’t they stop being so obstinate and get two buttons on the mouse?
It isn’t going to be a problem for me anyway - I have my own [Microsoft] optical USB mouse which I will be using.
Next, the trackpad - no problems here at all. I’m aware of the recent improvements, with multi-touch which should be fun. Though wouldn’t it be interesting if it was slightly to the right for right-handed people…
CD/DVD drive
And finally.
Each time I have placed a disk into the Mac drive I have felt likeI’m scratching it as it goes in touching the sides along the way. And if something goes wrong? There’s no way out. No classic paper-clip option.
These are just a few of the obstacles that I will no doubt overcome quickly. Plenty of updates to come when it arrives.
I welcome any and all hits and tips!
The next hurdle is part software part hardware - the ability to play all-region DVDs. Not completely necessary, but certainly a nice thing to have. Even if I have only done it once - The Bourne Supremacy which I bought in NYC in the Summer, but t hen I got the trilogy for Christmas.
It’s more the fact that if I wanted to play a DVD that wasn’t region 2 I could. It is a laptop after all, I may travel the world now, but I won’t be able to watch DVDs outside Europe when I do.
I currently use DVDXPlayer, a great multi-region media player, for Windows only. Why is it impossible to get around this problem with Macs?
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I don’t think I will find any other software compatibility problems:
Firefox - check
Photoshop - check
MSN msgr - check
Skype - check
Googletalk - check
Flickr Uploadr - check
Office suite - check
As for photo editing, I will have to teach myself a new work-flow technique - which won’t be a bad thing anyway, and I’m sure it will be nice and easy.
The Macbook Pro has been dispatched. In a matter of days it will be mine! There are many things I am looking forward to, as well as many Windows habits I’m not looking forward to trying to kick. So lets see what these are:
Software
Of course I know that with my Mac I will be able to do everything I’m used to (and more?), only slightly differently. There will be certain things I will miss greatly though. The first is a nice little program called Winamp, which I have used for at least 8 years. I like everything about it; its simple layout, those sweet skins (having used the same ‘Flying Circles’ skin for many years), the plugins and its general functionality.
Most of all I will miss the ‘J’ and ‘Q’ functions - simply hit J on the keyboard followed by any combination of letters in either song title or artis followed by Enter to play the track.
Even better than ‘J’ is ‘Q’. Single-click on any track in the playlist followed by Q on the keyboard and that track will be queued after the currently playing track. Do this 20 times and you have your own ‘mix tape’.
Finally, I just cannot stand music stopping suddenly. Sudden silence after hitting the stop button; it just won’t do. Or that quick jump when changing tracks, or a long gap between two consecutive tracks. The music should flow. Smooth transitions. I want crossfading plugins. Now I’m not going to bad mouth it just yet in this respect as I’m not entirely sure how possible it is to enable [decent] crossfading in iTunes. Is it?
I do know that I can’t have it looking like Winamp. I saw recently something about having a ‘minimal view’, but I want to see the playlist too. I hate that it’s so largeand takes taking up most of the desktop.
I have never liked iTunes. I first used it when I had an iPod a couple of years ago. It broke. I still use it, however, for podcasts. I still don’t like it. The Apple Store is good. But when I want to listen to music I don’t want something that’s so huge and feels so bulky.
a) Winamp people - please make a version for macs.
b) Feel free to try and convince me that iTunes is good, or suggest something better.
Well I live in Ireland so I can’t forget about St Patrick’s Day now can I.
I like to keep it pretty quiet - see last year’s rant for why. The plan was to take photographs of the parade as it made its way from the City Hall to to Custom House Square, but of course the two batteries I had with me quickly died. Thankfully I got a few shots of the parade - though I had other plans for the afternoon anyway.
Two friends from England were over for the weekend and so we went to Pizza Hut in Victoria Square (all-you-can-eat buffet for £6!) then to Roast Coffee (note to self: free wi-fi!) to chill.
Random Saint Patrick facts:
-There is no histrocal evidence St.Patrick ever went south of the border hence the name of Downpatrick which is abbreviated from its origianl Ulster Scots name Donchabeegoingdowntherepatrickhey
-The south was entirely pagan until the introduction of the Euro when its animal worshipping coinage (dolphins, horses, deers etc) was replaced by sensible looking bridges and pictures of other European heads of state brought back from holidays. Juan Carlos of Spain is particularly popular in Mayo.
-St.Patrick built the first ever UTV transmitter on the top of Slemish. It was made of sheep bones.
- As well as killing the Loch Ness Monster, Goliath and leading all of the rats into the lagan with his magic flute, he, in a race with the Pope cut of his hand and threw it onto Ulster (Gods Own Soil) thus proclaiming it a non papal state for all eternity.
- St Patrick’s real name is Steve.
- St Patrick is actually allergic to the Black Stuff.
- St.Patrick leaves the toilet without washing his hands if there’s no one else around.
This week went quite quickly, coming to an end that was well worth the wait.
After work on Friday I purchased a 15-inch Macbook Pro from the Apple Store. This I am very excited about. It will be an interesting transition period from XP to Mac though hopefully it will go smoothly. I have lots of questions, which Andy has answered for me recently, and I’m sure I will have many more when it arrives. So more on this then.
Later than evening I headed to the City Church hall above Common Grounds Café for an evening of Bollywood fund raising for a trip to India. On the bill were some Bollywood dancers, whose dancing skills were quite mesmerising, Kitty and the Can Openers and Captain Kennedy.
Kitty and the Can Openers
Captain Kennedy
For over 2 years I have used the most clichéd self-portrait of a photographer ever as my avatar for most sites online; my blog, myspace, facebook (until just recently), bebo, lastfm and a few others. Yeah that one with the camera at my face, taking a photograph of myself in the mirror. The first was used from May 2005 - April 2007, the second from then until today.
It isn’t the most original photograph of a photographer, I know, though I didn’t want to risk taking one of me any other way. Since having that photo a few people have said that it’s a bit crap, and that as a photographer I should show some more ‘imagination’ by either using a photograph that I’m proud of, and also change the picture occasionally - or just use a better picture of me.
There is another photograph I use occasionally, though not sure entirely how much I like it, so it’s use will remain minimal:
To answer this, I want a picture that can be easily recognised through all the masses of avatars, to be static. I am not the photographs I take, or the people I shoot. It will be a photograph of me. Just a decent one, if that’s possible.
Recently, however, my friend Miriam took a a photograph of me from half way up Cave Hill that I quite like, and so this photograph will be me new avatar throughout the web for the next few months. Me, with my camera, and North Belfast and Belfast Lough in the background.
For those wondering why the hell I have just posted four photographs of myself (I’m beginning to doubt myself whether I should hit that ‘publish’ button), I am in the process of putting some thought into my online identities and how to make best use of them. The plan is the get a photo blog going again when I get a spare moment, as well as a redesign of icedcoffeewords.
These identities are important to me and so I want the content to be clearer, to readers and myself. It is a process I’m working through.
Why do you use your current avatar(s)?
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