Yeah … so almost 7 months have passed since I last tried doing something with this website.

Since then, I got laser eye surgery, went to Korea, came back from Korea, moved house, and set up a photography site for my piccies. The last bit is what encouraged me to get back in here.

The first bit you can read about in a post. The other stuff … well you’ll just have to wait for that. There *is* a Korea post in the offing, but I’ve been working on it on and off for a considerable amount of time.

You CAN however look at alllll the pretty pictures (there are some of me, so those don’t count as pretty pictures, before anybody sues me for retinal damage) that I took whilst there, plus a whole bunch of others. I’m particularly pleased with the portraits.

Either click the Gallery link above or to the right, or mash your mouse right on THIS FAT ARSE LINK HERE. BOOM.

That’s it for now. More to follow! At … some … point …

So I stumbled upon (not using StumbleUpon, ironically) the Internet Wayback Machine and hit it up for old instances of LiquidElephant.
Found this.

It’s me blogging about stuff about 4 years ago, and it’s almost as boring as my current stuff! Huzzay!

Yeah … probably could have been more descriptive, but sometimes stupid simplicity is the best way.

Thesis, the theme that this site runs, has just been updated, and now you can click the images to the right of this post to follow them to larger, better quality versions.

Good eh? Two of them don’t go anywhere, because their large-sized bretheren aren’t on Flickr, but you can’t have everything.

It’s a Bank Holiday!
So naturally I spend a Friday evening doing what I could probably do in my spare day off …

I’ve added more photos (some slightly tweaked) to my Flickr page. Pictures from this year’s Bristol Balloon Fiesta and the British Motorshow have been added.

I’ve also updated the Gallery page. It now has a link to my Collections at Flickr instead of just random images. Check ‘em out

Hot damn.

I can’t believe I just put ‘Hot damn’ in there.

Anyway, you’re probably seeing this on Facebook. I decided to stick the RSS feed back on there, seeing as this is supposed to be read by actual living people and all. If you are reading through Facebook, please do click this link right here to go to the actual page. It’s all nicely designed and stuff, and has some pictures that I took.

While you’re there (or here, if you clicked that link right away) you can also check out this dealy, which would be Rob’s site. There’s currently some good downloads there right now, because you know, he makes music. You didn’t know that? See, you’re learning something already.

I digress, a little. Yesterday (Saturday) was HanClareFest ‘08. Previously ChloHanClareFest (Chloe has been sadly absent in other parts of the world of late) this is pretty much an excuse to have a big party once a year which people can plan around, because whilst spur-of-the-moment stuff is always good, you can’t have spur-of-the-moment when most people are scattered as far north as Durham and as far south as Devon.

Rain.

That one little word played a LARGE part of HCF ‘08. The day started off drizzly, but when we arrived in Chepstow at about 1.30ish, it was dry. After putting up a tent, a gazebo and a tarpaulin (thank $deity for bungee cords and tall trees eh?) it started to rain a bit again. It was on and off for a while, but after we got the BBQ going at around 7ish (long story, it took a LONG time to get going) the heavens opened and Mother Nature decided she was going to have a good crack at destroying our collective spirits.

Didn’t happen though. The rain got harder, people got drunker and wetter, and spirits stayed remarkably high.

I was “in charge” of providing the musical entertainment this year so, after making a few half-hearted efforts at making up some CDs the two previous years, I decided that this time it was going to be done properly.

So a laptop, a digital receiver and two large speakers were the order of the day. And dyu know what? They sounded pretty damn good, covered as they were in cellophane to keep the water out. (The laptop/receiver was in the shed, nice and dry!!)

Rob and I spent most of last Saturday day/night putting together a mix of songs for the party. At almost an hour and a quarter long, we figured it would be a nice ‘centrepiece’ of the musical entertainment. Unfortunately by the time I put it on, the rain was in full swing and I’m not sure that our hours and hours of beat-matching and mixing really were appreciated. But no matter, I enjoyed it !!

Oooh, yes, as people will probably be actually reading this now, I’ll take the opportunity to plug this charity swim. An old flatmate of mine is swimming the channel in a swimming pool in order to raise money for Aspire, a charity which helps people with spinal injuries. It’s a full 22 miles, or 1073 lengths, so if you’re not much of a charity-donating person, spare a few pounds for this one! Also, if you’re incredibly unfit like me and the thought of swimming 1 mile, let alone 22 gives you chills, it’s an even bigger reason to donate

Here’s the Facebook group. Give generously!

Most garden-variety electro/dance tracks don’t really require much sophistication to get into the charts and onto dancefloors across the world, and a lot of the time it shows – Basshunter’s efforts, for example, are truly shocking (in my humble opinion) yet have done pretty well for themselves.
Occasionally though, you get a song that’s relatively simple, but just works. Baditude by Spoon, Harris and Obernik is a prime example. Funky, catchy beat, uncomplicated lyrics (with a couple of continental ones thrown in for good measure), and a brilliant vocalist all makes for a brilliant track that you can’t help but a) dance to, b) sing along to and c) purchase and play a LOT.

It also goes REALLY well into Overseer’s Velocity Shift, as Rob and I found out when putting together the mix for HanClareFest ‘08.

Also, I don’t know if anybody noticed, but the whole site was down for quite a while. Expired domain names and mix-ups with settings are to blame. As am I.

But we’re back now, and Rob has some great self-produced tracks going for download on his page.

So I’ve not posted on here in a while. I do have stuff to post, and I will. Just not right now. But consider this an update anyway

When I started on a design for this site, I tried to go for something mad and abstract. Think scratchy drawings, lots of line-art and distressed typeface.

It failed.

I realised why today, when thinking about why I liked Biffy Clyro’s latest album so much, but didn’t like the older ones much at all.
Then I got it.
Puzzle is quite a polished piece of work, certainly compared to the older albums. And I like it for that. I think an enjoyment of high production values applies to other favourite albums/songs, even though I never singled that out as one particular aspect until now. For example, BT’s Emotional Technology is widely recognised as a highly-honed and polished piece of work, and some people criticise it for that.

It makes perfect sense of course. I like shiny things. I’m big into technology. I always try and go for the things that have been worked on and polished to perfection … or as near as it can get. It’s why I find myself buying the next version of software and hardware even if the old one is doing just fine, and why in certain aspects of life I can be a bit of a perfectionist.

I said to Rob the other day how I wanted to change the blog again, but couldn’t even write my ‘About Me’ section, so how can I design something that reflects me when I can’t even figure out what to [i]write[/i] about me?
So I guess that’s answered then. Whatever it becomes, you can put a decent bet on that it’ll be shiny and polished

Not that it’ll change for a while I imagine, seeing as I have this week off before I start back at HP-CDS for another 6 months!

^That one was just to annoy Clare, who probably doesn’t actually care in the slightest

I uploaded pretty much all of the scribblings I’ve done over the years that are Matrix-based, over on the right-hand side.

Funny really, when I was writing them and posting them to people who were really passionate about that sort of thing, I felt great. Yet putting them up here gives me a dark sense of foreboding and fear. Probably because someone’s gonna slate them with absolutely no tact whatsoever, but sometimes you gotta take a risk or two
It was actually a huge pain in the arse trying to get them on here in the first place. The Wordpress uploader wouldn’t work, so I found a fix, and applied it. It worked for the first 11, then failed again. But like all IT Technicians, when a problem presents itself and you can’t find a fix, just force your way around the bastard.

So I did, and now they’re all up

There’ve been some changes around here, as you might be able to tell, subtle though they may be.

I tried to theme the header to be as much about ‘me’ as possible. Basically, things I like. So we have some Formula 1, PCs, photography, my car and my lovely lovely speakers which are – as I type – feeding The Crystal Method silkily into my ears. There’s something at the bottom too.

I started out on Saturday (after getting my car repaired, woo!) just doing a simple Pendulum-themed heading for the standard Kubrick theme. I mentioned it to Rob, who then decided that the time was right to get a wriggle on and start with his.

So began hours (about seven I think) of collaborative web-design over MSN. And when I say collaborative, I mean I tried to help him out as best I could with various solutions to what he was trying to do. The interim results were … intriguing … to say the least.

It also brought home to me that occasionally, being bloody minded can yield real results. Rob wanted to get a page that would automatically centre both horizontally and vertically. The background image was fine, but the text was not. I was adamant that it could not be done; I’d looked before and been told “No way”.

To my surprise, and I’ll admit, slightly annoyance, he managed to find a perfect CSS schema that allowed exactly what he wanted. After a quick look, we adjusted the Wordpress CSS to mimick the settings, and there it was.

Ironically, after spending hours trying to tweak a CSS-framed design, I ended up scrapping it on Sunday when I started to work on the header image. I’m pretty happy with the way it all turned out. It’s not-at-all overcomplicated, it’s easy to read, and should be able to have new stuff added to it fairly easily, if and when I decide what that ’stuff’ should be

Mmmm, Mint-Chocolate KitKat bars are delightful.