One Man's Notes

Jan 22, 2012 ⌘

Closed and Hidden

Jan 20, 2012 ⌘

Left behind unwanted goods at #likemindbri #likemind. Anyone want?

Jan 20, 2012 ⌘

#coffee and conversation

Open The Work Pod Bay Door, Hal

Jan 18, 2012 ⌘

[vimeo [www.vimeo.com/21463365](http://www.vimeo.com/21463365) w=601&h=338]

Immersive Cocoon "2011" | 1080HD from adNAU on Vimeo.

via www.hermanmiller.com

I love the homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I'm not sure I could ever see myself working in one of these.

The things you find while scanning…

Jan 18, 2012 ⌘

Queen Mary & Westfield students at 1994's Rag Orgy

Students: always classy

Believe it or not, this is one of the tamer images that's just passed through my scanner. This is, I believe, the QMW Students Union Rag Orgy in 1994. So, it was all in a good cause, if not in good taste…

A photographic method and a career, in the rear view mirror

Jan 16, 2012 ⌘

Portrait of the blogger as a young hack

I've been scanning again. One of my redundancy resolutions has been to use my sudden increase in available free time to catch up on some projects, including the digitisation of my own negatives and old family photos.

The image to the right comes from a set of negatives I shot as a university student - probably in the spring of 1993, although exact dating is hard. I'm not quite sure who took the photo of me above - but I do know they took it with my camera.

The thing that has really struck me about this film in particular is how darn grainy it is. Honestly, I'm not sure if that's an inherent characteristic of the film - Ilford HP5 Plus - or some poor darkroom discipline on my part, effectively "push processing" shots that didn't need it.

Or, am I now so used to using digital photography (which I've been doing since late 2001) that I've forgotten how much grain was an inherent quality of silver halide photos? I suspect the coming weeks of scanning will answer that question one way or another.

The other thought that occured to me was that, as these photos from the student magazine office remind me, I'm not involved in the production of a journalistic periodical in any way for the first time since probably 1987. School magazines, student newspapers, my professional journalistic career… It's been over two decades of continuous involvement brought to an abrupt end by redundancy.

And you know what? I'm amazed by how little it's affected me. Perhaps sometime in the last year I passed the point where I'm truly more a blogger - an online content afficicnado - than a journalist.

Where does that take me next?

Jan 16, 2012 ⌘

Mmmmmm #coffee

Jan 15, 2012 ⌘

Sunday morning reading

Jan 13, 2012 ⌘

Horny #skulls

Jan 11, 2012 ⌘

More #coffee

Jan 9, 2012 ⌘

Hello, old friend. I’ve missed you. #coffee

Plastic Solar Panels?

Dec 26, 2011 ⌘

This is potentially good news:

A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.

Not only that, but it’s way cheap. Chemistry professor Xiaoyang Zhu and his team discovered that an organic plastic semiconductor could double the number of electrons harvested out of one photon of sunlight. Yep, plastic.