digitaldust

We’re looking for more staff at Headshift. More cat herders, jacks-of-all-trades, get things done type folks. We’re doing lots of exciting next gen web stuff and. Here’s a couple examples of what I’m mostly involved in at the moment to give you a feel of what’s going on… exposing a think tank’s research processes via social software cool aid, lubricating a banks IT security team with ruby juice and sweet small pieces and besides that building wiki wizrdrs.

Do have a look at the rest of the site and check out the full job description there is more and if that gets you going get in contact: jobs@headshift.com

Opportunity
Headshift is a professional online social media consulting and development company, which is rapidly emerging as the UK market leader in this specialist sector. We work with a range of knowledge-based organisations to create successful online communication projects that exploit the power of social networking.

Our solutions cover the full spectrum from bespoke development to pure software integration. Most of the systems we develop use web services, and we have also developed our own modular social networking and knowledge sharing platform.

We now have an immediate need for 2 professional web producers / project managers to take on a range of exciting client projects, taking on responsibility for delivering these on time, on spec and to budget, working as part of a friendly, committed and highly professional technical development and design team in our open-plan offices by Butler’s Wharf in London SE1.

More details on the Headshift site.

I’ve had the strangest chest pains for the last 5 days. For the last few it feels strangely like being shot in slow motion, almost like having one of those red rods they use on CSI slowly forced through my body.

It all started feeling vaguely like indigestion, then chest pains over my heart for 3 days and finally yesterday a pain in my back beneath my shoulder blade.

I cant admit to knowing what being shot actually feels like, and most of the accounts I’ve heard of people being shot or stabbed sound like none of the pain feels like anything you could expect. However this has felt like an amazing constant pressure on and through my chest and then a sharp, more muscular/skeletal pain in my back. What’s more no amount of pressing or manipulation seems to affect them, however if I do lie face down it does help.

I’m beginning to suspect that actually someone is sticking a knitting needle through a voodoo doll somewhere. I’ve pissed someone off and they’ve tried pointing the bone, mystical bullets or the evil eye. Must remember to be more careful where I leave my toenail clippings and put up more amulets. Which reminds me, I think my Hamesh at the door is not straight, and maybe even has a coat over it… have to fix that!

I found two great looking sites.

This site’s got two forums, one for pinhole, hence the f295, the other mostly about DIY, getting your hands dirty, alt process stuff.

www.f295.org

And this blog with lots of equipment hacks.

www.diyphotography.net

I’ve just poked through my make mag RSS feed and pulled out the photography hacks that caught my eye, things that might be useful and I would play with if I had the time.

Full on UV light box for alt processes. Puts my sunlamp and 2.5 inch printing out frames to shame. Which reminds me that I ought to get my cyanotyping materials out. Maybe this summer if the year I do my banners.

Step by step, pictorial instructions on the good ol’ holga 35mm conversion.

Two still life set ups. One a wee backdrop frame and the other a soft light tent.

Home brew motion sensitive camera setup.

And mounting a camera on your handlebars.

Wow! Amazing! Cool! I want one! Are the things that went immediately thought when mind when I saw this guys digital lomo conversion. The pictures look just like lomo shots, which goes to prove that it is the weirdness of the lens that does the job.

Seeing as I’ve got 3 broken lomos at home (I say I, but two of them are Heather’s), perhaps one could become a digital conversion jobbie. Though I have to say i’m rather jealous of sushicam’s R-D1, it’s a nice piece of kit and if I do get around to it I think that I might have to do it with a slightly cheaper removable lens camera. The price they go for I think I would rather invest in my 6×17 dreams.

I’ve just spent a large chunk of the weekend playing and having fun with the processing language, or environment, or whatever you want to call it.

I’ve always been interested in the genetic and generative art of Casey Reas (especially the hairy red stuff) and Golan Levin. So after seeing this Dreamlines piece by Leonardo Solass, and poking around on the processing site, I thought I’d have a crack. I kept meaning to mess around with flash, use that for this sort of thing, but this feels a bit more natural, partly because it’s a bit more primitive, partly because it feels less tied to a big fat proprietary animation platform.
I played around with a bunch of 2-D experiments and then tried some 3-D, I’ve uploaded my box manipultation experiment.

UPDATE: I’ve improved the rotating this morning. Made it correct for screen position of the cube at mouse click and rotate slower. Much nicer!

I screwed up my site for a bit there by messing around with wordpress and having it do a naughty thing with my .htaccess file. Wordpress uses the .htaccess file to rewrite map human readable URLs to its query strings. That will teach me for trying stuff first thing in the morning before work and not thinking stuff through. All works again now thanks to James C.

And my new flickr gallery stuff is working now properly too, which was what I was trying to do. I think I might eventually make that the core blog bit and have a blog built around my flickr feed.