I’m off work for the Easter break at the moment so it felt like a good time to get in a blog post. I’ve had an active month catching up with friends and going to concerts, with Grizzly Bear and Beach House at The Roundhouse being the highlight! Just started on a new website design which I’m enjoying working on and should hopefully be able to post here in the next month or so. Also put a few more photographs up on my Flickr page recently, so feel free to take a look. Here are a few bits and bobs from the web that have caught my eye and imagination in the past month:

- Have to start with this. At long last, my beautiful home city of Bath was inducted on to Google street-view!

- Some songs: Radar Detector by Darwin Deez, Beba by Pantyraid, and Happy New Year Luie by Ronnie.

- Awesome herb-growing postcard designs.

-  A truly inspirational TED talk from Raghava KK about art, life, and following your heart.

- In praise of nothingness.

- Great article on the photographer/street-artist JR from the Observer.

- I really want to buy a print of this creation of C215’s.

- And finally, if you haven’t watched any of Merton’s hilarious Chatroulette piano improvisations yet - where have you been?!

About time I made another blog update. Not much to report really, plodding on with the new job still, while trying to organise the rest of my life at the weekends! Went to see Tim Key this past Saturday, and really enjoyed it. Such a different type of show to anything else I’ve ever seen, with a subtle blend of touching poetry and brilliantly crafted sly humor. Thoroughly recommended. Other than that, here are a few things that have caught my eye (and ear) these past few weeks:

- Loving the words of wisdom that can be found on Bobulate

- Trimester by xkcd

- Best cake I’ve ever seen

- This is how I should be living my life

- Phonebook. Awesome use of the iPhone.

- A couple of songs I’m liking at the moment: Gonjasufi - Candylane (funky) & anything by Beach House, but in particular Walk In The Park (luscious)

We keep working through them, and they keep coming. Next up 2010. This year has been a strange one for me, it was filled with some brilliant moments and people that I’ll remember forever but I also spent a lot of time struggling to find regular work, stewing in my own thoughts. 2010 has more direction, I know exactly where I am, I know what I have to do, I’m feeling more positive and more sociable. It’s all good. Below are a few end-of-year links, and for anyone who actually ever reads this, I hope you enjoy the first year of the new decade!

- Ingenious glass design

- It’s still a while off but this asteroid pass is going to be awesome (I heard a rumour that the Russians want to hit it with a rocket!).

- Proof that there is and never will be ‘A perfect job’

- 15 reasons to live for the next 10 years

-  2009 in photos: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

- The Alps at night timelapse. Incredibly soothing.

- Lastly my favourite album of 2009: xx

I’ve had one of my photographs that I took in Laos very kindly selected and used on the cover of a journal in the USA. I’m extremely pleased to actually have a published photograph, and it gives me hope that I can get more published in future. A larger selection of my photographs can, as always, be viewed on my flickr account.

In other news; I got an actual proper job! I’m going to be a Support Engineer at a company called dotMailer in Croydon. It seems like a really great company that has a top-notch growth strategy and will reward hard-work and commitment so I’m super stoked to get a position there! All in all I’ve had an amazingly good week (and my thanks go to all the people who made it so).

I’ve always enjoyed creating my own personal birthday/thank-you cards rather than buying mass produced ones, though as I’ve got older I don’t always manage to find the time to make them. I’ve made a few over the last couple of months using Photoshop & Illustrator and I thought I’d post them here. Each card style is a bit different from the other two.

- This first one was for a friends birthday. I wanted this card to be business-card sized so I could transport it easily in my wallet. I chose to use ants (because they are small and fitted on the card) carrying a strawberry (to represent the birthday present).

- The next card I made was for my friend’s wedding. I wanted to keep it simple so decided to just use Illustrator to make a black & white line drawing of the bride and groom; tracing their heads from photographs I found. On the printed version the image itself was a little smaller, I’ve just enlarged it here so it’s easier to see!

- Finally I made a card for my brother’s birthday. For this card I found a suitable photograph of him from Facebook then replaced each of his friends’ faces with the faces of famous people who had the same birthday as my brother (but obviously from different years), which I listed inside of the card. I think he found it quite amusing!

That’s all I have for now but I’ll undoubtedly make more in future. On another note, I know I don’t update this blog as often as I used to, but you can find more regular updates featuring my musings and links to things I like on my Twitter feed.

It has been too long since I added a new post here. I have been in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos for a few months, but I still should have posted something over the last couple of weeks when I’ve been back. I have managed to go through the vast number of photographs that I took while on my travels, and my favourites are now available to view on my flickr account.

Cambodia - Of the three countries that I visited on my trip, I found Cambodia the least enjoyable, relatively speaking. I felt that there was a larger percentage of the population that were out to take advantage of tourists, and there were a lot more people bugging me wherever I went than there were in Laos or Vietnam. However the country itself was beautiful and the Angkor region in particular was just mind-blowingly spectacular. In all I only spent 10 days in Cambodia, but I did enjoy it, particularly relaxing in Kratie towards the end of my time there. My favourite photos of Cambodia can be seen here.

Laos - After Cambodia I moved in to Laos. The first place I got to was an island called Don Deth, which was absolutely beautiful, and not too busy. Just from my first few hours there, I knew that I would have a great time in Laos. In general it is much less developed than both Cambodia and Vietnam but the capital city Vientiane was very clean and well presented (even during the 3 day water fight at new-year). At the end of the trip we took a small plane from Luang Prabang in the north of the country to get to Hanoi in Vietnam. I would certainly like to come back to Laos again someday. My favourite photos of Laos can be seen here.

Vietnam - I spent the most time in Vietnam, working my way down from the North of the country to the South. It was definitely my favourite country of the three, and I saw some amazing sights, while also managing to avoid the start of the wet-season by staying on the coast for the latter stages of the trip. Highlights include Ha Long bay, riding motorbikes around the tombs of Hue, the energy of Ho Chi Minh City, and the old French town of Hoi An (my favourite place of the whole trip)! Just like with Laos, I would be surprised if I don’t go back to Vietnam again someday. It was all just an absolute feast for the senses and the mind! My favourite photos of Vietnam can be seen here.

Things that I have seen and like from the past few days.

- A fun project involving cameras left on park benches in New York. Love the random selection of people and imagery that spontaneously erupt from simple ideas like this.

- This company called botanicalls sell little arduino based sets which can sense the water content of the soil supporting your plant and send messages to twitter accordingly. A nice little idea, but not sure if I’d pay the $99 for a single kit at this moment in time. I’ve been getting more into Twitter recently after many months of not joining/twittering. There now seem to be more people ‘on it’ that I am genuinely interested in hearing about/telling things to; so I’m finding it an amusing past-time.

- These World War II aviation photographs are pretty awesome. I believe that my grandfather worked on this sort of thing during the war so I may see if I can find some of his shots and post them online.

-  I can see myself getting a Kindle or similar device in the next few years, there is so much great free literature online, and being able to get a book as easily as a music download would be brilliant. This would be a bonus feature.

- Other bits and bobs; a super-fine way to display photographs, a 224-word pallindrome from Demetri Martin, and a nice collection of the characters found on subway/underground trains.

- Videos; Johnny Flynn sings and wonders the streets of Buenos Aires in another great video from La Blogotheque, a clever advert from Loewe, flippin’ awesome puppetry creates this very impressive dinosaur (though I think the desaturated video adds to the authentic appearance), and finally, Louis CK tells it like it is.

I just realised that I seem to treat the various applications that I use online as filters, with this blog being the final stage of refinement. I have loads of stuff saved as favourites in Google Reader, and a number of items manage to get into my delicious bookmarks and YouTube favourites, but after I look through them all I realise that there are only a distinct few that I appreciate more than the others and as such I feel are worth sharing. Also, I need to update this page more often, at least three posts per month would be a much more productive output!

- This video is so cool it’s unreal. I love it when spontaneous acts of creativity come out even better than you ever thought they could.

- Some nice images; a beautiful shot of a macaw, my favourite picture from the many taken over the recent snowy period in the UK, art can be created out of anything, awesome manipulation of the land masses of earth to form the 12 signs of the Chinese zodiac, I want to attempt to make some images like these using stereographic projection - super fine!

- I believe that the guy who helped create this nice surveillance themed project, Chris O’Shea, did the same University course as me. This is the kind of stuff that I could do… if I wanted to. Also through the CR blog: I really like the work of Berlin based artist Brad Downey. Particularly love ‘Negative space saves the day’.

- These chocolate pencils look so clever, stylish, and delicious!

- Nice blogs; COPPAKIDS is a supremely funny blog of kids pleas and excuses sent to a community website that they are too young to register for, this is another funny blog about the embarrassment experienced when one’s parents join Facebook, and this blog asks people to try and tell a story in one sentence - many of the entries are clever, witty, or moving.

- Super clever MIT students at the super intriguing TED conference show off some awesome technology/concepts. I recommend watching the videos.

- Some humorous videos; Learn to Speak Body: Tape 5 and ‘Hurt Feelings‘ from Flight of the Conchords.

- Some music videos; ‘In For The Kill‘ from La Roux (I like this more for the song than video), and ‘Nothing To Worry About‘ from Peter, Bjorn, and John (nice tune, mega-fine video).

- Finally. I have recently been laughing at the show/collective known as “How’s Your News?”. This video here can explain the premise of the show better than I can, but what I will say is that the biggest ‘issues’ about the show are the questions of whether it is exploitative and whether people are laughing at the presenters’ disabilities or at their irrepressible and extremely vibrant characters. I personally see no problem with this show. I find the presenters refreshingly honest, fun-loving, and passionate. It is the individual viewer of the shows’ problem if they laugh at the presenters disabilities. Although having said this, I believe that when the joke has run dry and their laughter has stuttered to a stop, they will realise what a frivolous joke it was, and will hopefully start to enjoy the show as the happy little gem that it is. Feel free to click on the following links to find out about my favourite presenters; Bobby, Jeremy, and Susan.

- Obama is President of the U.S.A. - here are few inauguration/Obama related items. Big pictures of the inauguration, Gawker’s top 10 moments of the inauguration, and my favorite, letters from schoolchildren to President Obama.

- Here is a gentle/macabre video of chocolate bunnies being melted.

- A guy named Zerofra has designed and built a new kind of all-terrain skateboard/bike thing. Looks pretty cool.

- Tony Hart really influenced me as a child and help feed my interest in art and creativity. Sadly he passed away last week. He will be sorely missed.

- Here is a funny and nice street art project where the artist places thought bubbles on the walls then snaps people when they walk by to make it look like their thoughts.

- Handegg.

- This is an awesome looking image matching/searching program. This would be so good for finding the name of a bit of art, or even a location, based on your own photograph.

- Lastly a couple of videos. This one is a short bit of Zach Galifianakis who I have recently stumbled upon. I enjoy his slightly uncomfortable style, makes him feel a bit more like a regular guy than a polished performer. The second video is a new song by K’Naan called Somalia. His last album was awesome and from the sound of things the next one will be just as good.

So 2008 is almost over. Just time to provide a few more links to various items of personal interest.

- The Ludacris Effect

- Absolutely super-fine architecture. Best roof of the year.

- Brian Dettmer creates these phenomenal sculpted books. They look so intricate and mechanical.

- This project (We Feel Fine) by Johnathan Harris is the kind of stuff that I like; finding the little bits of tender emotion buried under the weight of the Web and presenting them as the distant and deeply touching whispers that they are.

- A nice list of the top 10 technology breakthroughs of the year. I’m not sure if this means breakthrough ‘in the lab’ or breakthrough into the public domain. Either way it’s an interesting list.

- Possibly disgusting. Definitely amazing. A Canadian film-maker plans to turn his empty eye socket into a hidden camera!

-Nanotech food!

- Finally. I hope to see the stars tonight at some point. I find space hypnotic and overwhelming in it’s sheer scale. It makes me feel so insignificant and yet simultaneously reminds me of the stand-out brilliance of human emotion, creativity, and scientific endeavour. Here are a few of the best pictures of space taken over the past year.

What I would not give to be the protagonist of Olaf Stapleton’s Star Maker!