Interesting site vi.sualize.us that allows the bookmarking of images on the web. There must be serious issues regarding copyright for a site like this, and the software engineer Victor Espigares who built the site has a very comprehensive terms and conditions which disclaims any copyright issues and attempts to pass them to the users of the site. Victors own choice of images are shown here also. He says the site took him 5 months to build. Even so it is an impressive achievement for one programmer. The site uses tagging heavily aka flickr, and images that one person bookmarks are available to other users. Victor also has a blog discussing issues relevant to the site.
Another useful Dosh Dosh article, this one with links to articles about :
- making money with wordpress
- using Yahoo answers to direct traffic to your site
- poor landing pages
Dosh Dosh article on writing blogs, discussing the editorial decisions made behind a blog, and the evolution of a blog from the haphazard posting of stories (as in this blog) to the planned curating of blog content.
Trevor on keeping the darkroom … “It’s sad so many darkrooms in colleges are closing down. I teach 150 full-time students and the joy and satisfaction they get from watching prints appear hasn’t changed in all the time I’ve been teaching. We are one of few colleges left using conventional processes. Students are very keen to use these and it is good for those who don’t just want to learn purely digital photography.”
Caverns reviewed by Retro Remakes’ oddbob … ‘Now, this is much more up my street. No, not a giant smoke demon rising up from the ashes of London but Martin Ruffe dropping us a nod to let us know about a remake of one of his ZX81 games to the PC. Not that I have anything against giant smoke demons, especially when they get walloped by cranes. Actually, there’s got to be a game in that somewhere hasn’t there? Someone get to it pronto!
Caverns is a remake of possibly one of the earliest remakes, his own remake of the arcade game The Pit. Did you follow that? Good. Here’s what you need to know, the game is lovingly restored in all it’s ZX81 style glory. It has jewels, dwarves, aliens, lasers, Balrogs and spaceships. Now, by my reckoning that’s only a pirate, fez and a ninja short of everything you could ever want in a game. You need to collect some mithril before your spaceship can take off. There we go. No further explanation needed except for me to inform you that you should go and download this right this very second. Or in a few minutes. As long as you do actually download it, we’re good, right?
Stuff like this coming along is why I really love this place. We need more stuff like this people, get to work.’
Cat Power at Academy, Manchester … arrived in Manchester realising I’d forgotten where the Hostel was, so searched around WHsmiths for an AZ and located. Settled in at hostel and down to Oxford Road for a pint - the students were watching some wildlife program rather than Euro 2008. Genned up on the Manni gigs, and then across to the Union for the Cat Power gig. Missed most of the warmup - didn’t seem very interesting. Cat Power were on around 9, and not having seen a live show, was amazed by the power of Chans voice, put together with the blues backing band, they made a great sound. Chan kind of leaned into the crowd, sometimes aggressive and sometimes more approachable. They played for a least two hours, many many songs. I started near the front and moved around for different views, sitting on the floor just to listen at one point. Up for the end, someone gave Chan some flowers. She gave many out to women in the crowd, throwing some out into the crowd, it was nice for both her and the crowd, and she got much applause. Did she have something going on with the keyboard player? I couldn’t make my mind up…
The Hop - part of Bradford Music Week gigs across Love Apple and Delius. Checked out Laura Groves, Napolean IIIrd, Ox Eagle Lion Man, Paul Marshall, Lets Wrestle, Sons & Daughters. Laura Groves sounded good, but very similar to artists like Regina Spektor - sadly the most notable part of the gig was a set to between an avid fan and a guy talking very loud making it hard to hear the gig.
Ox Eagle Lion Man were very charismatic and pretty good. Some of the tracks better than others, but the NME hype seemed justified this time.
Lets Wrestle - the bit that stuck in my mind was the guitarist being unable to sing their Lets Wrestle track, so he got two lads up to chant the chorus - rock stars for a night, it was great.
Sons and Daughters, sounded not all that interesting from the back of the room, but up closer started to see what the band was about, maybe need to check this band out further.
free games from mini clip - this is a good un