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).

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 have now added some of my photographs to the projects section of my website. They are mainly images that I have taken in the last year or so with a Nikon D80, but a few were taken with my old Nikon Coolpix camera. The ones that I have put on the website are some of my favourites although more images are available on my flickr page. I will continue to add more photographs as I take them.

Other things;

- Some truely incredible photographs of the Sun. Apparently it’s unusually calm at the moment!

- I like intricate designs and organic architecture, and as such I like this funky looking fractal sculpture/room.

- Sebastian Campion has created a museum souvenir that makes good use of the Web and social connections.

- A video about designing floating-head movie posters.

I’m definitely going to get some of my photographs added to the website soon, hopefully in the next week. In the meantime I’ll link to a load more random pages.

- Firstly, I’m pretty sure that this project is by an old class-mate from secondary school. It’s a really neat idea, and I like the fact that you have to physically pull the mp3 players apart but they remain virtually connected via the Internet.

- This TED talk by Doris Kearns Goodwin is quite moving. I really like the idea of people living on through the things they have done and the people they have influenced.

- These are photographs of real, life sized things, that have been cleverly taken to look like models.

- The viral-video is dying. Gawker is actually fast becoming one of my favourite websites (even though this article is based on one from another site). Their video player is particularly smooth, neat, and easy to use.

- My current favourite band, TV on the Radio, playing live on the outside of a building somewhere.

- A nice prototype for an augmented-reality car game. Pretty sweet.