An HDR shot, looking up at the peak of Mount Teide

I recently have realised how much I had been neglecting this blog, but thankfully have found internet at the hotel, so I thought I would quickly share with you a few nice pictures and facts that I have found today whilst ascending mount Teide!

The Canary Islands are an archipelago of eight islets set 100km west off the African cost that belong to Spain. The islands are relatively young and formed by volcanoes along what is known now as the 'Canary Hotspot'. 'Mount Teide' (pictured above) formed the island known as Tenerife, where I am now.

Since I was holidaying on Tenerife this week with the family, we decided to take a trip up the mountain as we do every time we go to the island. It was a beautiful day and I managed to get some great pictures as well as some interesting facts about the volcano.

Did you know, for instance that the last noted eruption of Teide was in 1909? Which makes it almost exactly a century since a good explosion... all the locals say they're due for another eruption, and I agree as long as I'm not here to see it- although it would make an amazing photograph.

The weather in Tenerife is fairly consistent all year round (due to it being warmed by the desert winds and set into the sea) and fluctuates by only a few centigrades throughout. However, there is often snow on the mountain around October, so we were unfortunate not to see any this week.

Even so, I took some pictures that you can peruse here:

(full version of the HDR photo of teide)

wordpress's cool user interface

It has a snazzy interface in which you can write 'posts', tweak 'themes' and add plugins (shown above). It uses PHP scripting (or as I like to call it: magic) to place content into your website quickly and easily. Not only this though, you can tweak it so much that by the end your site no longer looks like a blog at all and by doing this you can quite happily use it to create decent, usable websites for small to medium-sized companies.

Which is what I've attempted to do at: flowersgoinggreen.com (this is being hosted here for a small time, whilst the hosting and domain is sorted out).  It is a friend of mine's floristry business, and a nice touch is that even when the site is completed, he can go ahead and log into the wordpress editing software and add/edit pages as much as is needed, in an intuitive and simple way that doesn't require any coding.

Yes, I realise that this may be a bad idea for all us webmasters who, in the past, could make a living updating companies' sites at an hourly rate and charging incredible amounts of money for the pleasure of doing so. However, think of it this way: if the company did ever want you to update their website for them it would take a fraction of the time required to update a normal one- especially if it's something that applies to all existing pages.

Unfortunately though, I wish I had figured wordpress out earlier, and have the sudden urge to convert all my past client's websites into wordpress blogs... oh well!

Them Crooked Vultures

So, today I found out that 'Them Crooked Vultures' are playing at the Portsmouth Guildhall! Which is practically ON my university campus, and I can't wait to pre-order my tickets. For those of you who don't know who Them Crooked Vultures are... please wake up! No, seriously. This could be one of the most awesome gatherings of musicians to be created in a long, long time.

Them Crooked Vultures comprises of: [drum roll please] No other than Joshua Homme, the lead singer and guitarist from one of my all-time favorite bands: Queens of the Stone Age. Also, Chris Grohl- who drummed for Nirvana a long time ago and sings for the Foo Fighters. In this band, he's going back to his roots, putting down the microphone and wielding the mighty drumstick once again. And last but not least, Jone Paul Jones- the actual bassist from Led Zeppelin is also in the band. When I heard about this union of superbands I couldn't quite believe it. I think in one interview they said they were going to call themselves something like: Queens of the Foo Zeppelin. (Which actually sounds quite good!)

Unfortunately, the Portsmouth Guildhall's website sucks and they don't seem to have put the tickets on for sale yet. For which, I hate them! Nevertheless, I'll be refreshing the ticket listings page every five minutes for the rest of the day probably.

Them Crooked Vultures 2009 UK Tour:

December:

10 - Plymouth, Pavilions
11 - Portsmouth, Guildhall
13 - Blackpool, Empress Ballroom
14 - Birmingham, O2 Academy
15 - Edinburgh, O2 Academy
17 - London, HMV Hammersmith Apollo

http://themcrookedvultures.com/

So, another blog entry! Things have been going well lately, the websites i'm setting up at the moment are all being put into motion. The guys at Mike Hooper Architects (www.mikehooperarchitects.co.uk) sent out a massive amount of emails to their past clients asking them to go take a look at their new website (designed by me).  Therefore, with a little luck, I might see a rise in trafic to my sites! Which will be very welcome, seeing as google analytics informed me that the amount of visitors I get is pitifully low. Yesterday the domain www.quaycarpentry.co.uk was bought by the client which was fantastic because it now means that the URL is safe. As soon as godaddy.com stops 'pending' it's setup I'll be able to shift all the files across from the temporary version on my domain. Excellent stuff!

In less nerdy news, last night my brother and I agreed to get up at 4.30AM to go take some photos. The idea came after I saw the site: www.golden-hour.com- the premise being that you just type in your coordinates, and bang- it'll tell you the best time in the morning to "get your shutterbug on." So I wanted to try it out,  I found our location and didn't bat an eyelid when it said sunrise would be at around 5.21AM... I have since learnt that 5.21AM is a lot earlier than it seems... and colder! *brrr*

Regardless of the hideous time and temperature, we did take a couple of good photos. Here they are:

I really, really hope to keep this thing up to date with lots of cool stuff and on a sidenote, as tempting as it is to re-write my website design every five minutes (just because I get bored) I am going to have to limit my changes... got to stay with one nice image. I'm happy with this snazzy new one, at least for the next five minutes. We'll see how long it lasts.

Life has been very busy lately, there have been loads of recent updates to one of my client's websites at mike hooper architects and I've been working there for the last three weeks full time (and yes, that is knackering for a student who's used to not working). I have been doing the odd job here around the office for them and I've really been enjoying it. Recently, I just aquired another web-design job, and although in very early stages at the moment, the concept looks good. When I think it's at a decent enough standard to share, I'll post a link to the site in progress!

Going to Cornwall over the weekend... perhaps I'll try to put some pictures up- check out how the new blog handles them.

Thanks very much for taking the time to read this! Come back soon, lots of changes be afoot here (hopefully).

I arrived back in Devon the day before yesterday after an exhausting 5 hour long train journey stopping at Westbury and Taunton along the way. Westbury has to be one of the most laughable stations I’ve ever seen, it only has one platform and it appears to be in the centre of nowhere. It’s very odd indeed, and rather than the usual 10 minute pause that the train usually would take there it was an hour before my next one arrived! Not only this, but when I did finally get on my train I was sitting opposite this:

I’m sorry to say it, but she actually had the worst breath, ever. From that distance I still wanted to hurl and I thought I’d take a sneaky photo just to prove what I was seeing. Hideous! Welcome to Devon, I though to myself.

One Nice thing that happened just before I left Portsmouth was this rather odd event. Basically it was a professional operatic singer just standing on her own in front of the guildhall with some background music playing in the background, singing her lungs out. Nobody walking past took a blind bit of notice though! James and I thought it was good, however, and we stood and took photos of this mildly bizarre lady.

Here’s one of those photos:

This time last week was a very hectic time for me, I realised how much work I had to do for the project (to be handed in on Monday) on the Saturday and proceeded to wake up bright and early on the Sunday to get it finished. 9 o’clock to be precise. I got up, got changed, had some breakfast and sat down at my drawing board, and that’s where I stayed until 5 o’clock the next morning. I’d been slaving away drawing elaborate doors for a good 20 hours and it was still a tight deadline. So at 9 o’clock, with no sleep I stumbled into studio to hand in my work and, exhausted, left promptly to sit and relax in my halls of residence. For some reason, I have a fear of messing up my body clock so I couldn’t let myself sleep during the day. I set myself a goal of staying up until at least 9 in the evening and by that time I literally felt drunk. Dizzy, zombie-like and swaying I crawled into my dust-gathering bed and I had the best sleep ever.

At the end of all that, I produced some pretty decent work which I was very proud of. Here’s a photo of one drawing I did of a Georgian-Style door in which I rendered every single brick in the wall as well as colouring and shading the entire thing. It took a long time, but in the end I was very proud:So yeah, I’m back in Devon now, enjoying the good weather and after a rather heavy partying session last night with friends I haven’t seen in ages, I’ve been a little frail, sitting in the sunshine and ‘monging out to some sick tunes, bruv.’ It’s all good.

Thanks for reading! More updates on the way hopefully!

Getting my portfolio handed in the other day was a little manic, as you can imagine. I had 4 projects to print and arrange aesthetically in my A1 portfolio (which is monstrous) in a very short amount of time. In fact, just to get everything sorted I had to work up until 5 in the morning before sleeping for 2 hours and then walking into University and dumping my folder into a room full of stern-looking examiners. Afterwards, I stood around for a while watching my studio group add their portfolios to the pile and chatted about what they’d submitted. One of the maddest things I heard was from a Bulgarian student who had taken the time to print all 15 of her A1 sheets in the IT suite- totting up around £100 of printing costs, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this probably wasn’t the final hand in for the projects and that some things may have changed before the end-of-year hand in.

Because of the large amount of time between then and my one and only exam, I decided to take a little time off and travel home for a week’s relaxation a time off. I travelled down on the train last Thursday and it was a good experience for me since I hadn’t travelled from Portsmouth on my own beforehand. Travelling on the train turned out to be exceptionally easy and thankfully my train was on time at every station, even though it took 5 hours to complete it was a relatively relaxing train journey as I ordered a coffee and crisps and sat munching- taking in the view, listening to music and reading a book.

So now I’m back in Devon, and it is good! As usual, to celebrate my return I went out with my family to have a curry which was fantastic. It seems that we do this for EVERY special occasion. Birthday? CURRY, good exam results? CURRY… you get the idea- I don’t complain though… a good curry every once in a while is good for the soul. The weather’s very dull and grey, but that’s to be expected here on the moors I suppose. It’s certainly good to be back, although nothing ever changes around here- which is reassuring at least. (This is especially true for Plymouth, where I heard a woman on the phone shout “I only got a U in maths, I can’t work out them prices! I hate man-shoppin,’ no you can’t have the LaCoste trousers, they’re well expensive”… After that, I knew I was home.)

Yesterday I went into Plymouth and bought some new headphones for the train journey back, I felt a little guilty seeing as they cost around £70 but I figured that they would sound infinitely better than the standard shipped iPhone headphones that can’t be turned up higher than a ‘room temperature’ amount of decibels without creating a shrill squeak for all those around me. And so, feeling a little remorseful I trudged out of the apple store clutching my expensive new ‘V-MODA’ ‘Vibe’ headphones. This is what they look like:

When I got home and tried them out I quickly realised that they perhaps weren’t as much of a rip-off as I’d expected. I can honestly say that the sound was absolutely awe-inspiring, especially the bass they created, which was face-shattering. I’m sure many audiophiles would shake their heads with disgust, but I really enjoyed the overpowered deep, rich tones. Their looks are completely killer too, the shiny metal separator and bevelled buds steered me towards them like a moth to a flame. Not only this, but they’re very light and comfortable on the ear also, which is brilliant for me because I can guarantee some very, very long nights working with these in my ears.

One of the most interesting pages on architecture I’ve come across recently was some of Tadao Ando’s stuff. He’s a Japanese architect and a real inspiration to many. One of my favourite blogs- http://archidose.blogspot.com/ directed me to some photos of his modern art museum in Fort Worth. It’s an amazing project, apparently modelled on ‘…pavilions that float on water…’ as Ando describes it. The ‘pavilions’ are massive 3 storey double height galleries supported by Y-shaped posts and concrete above 1.5 acres of shallow water. Here are some of the best pictures, in my opinion:

Incredible eh? Check more out at: http://www.themodern.org/building.html

Thanks for reading! More updates coming soon, hopefully!

You may be wondering why he's saying: "Oi! Jamie!" Well that's because it's a little nuance that he's picked up- calling me out to the kitchen for no apparent reason when drunk. Often shouting "JAMIE!" from the top of his lungs, bless him! So yeah, we printed this on A3 and slapped it onto his cupboard, I think he enjoyed it. On a completely unrelated note, this is a picture of dave eating a lot of chicken in one go, that I took tonight (I thought it was fantastic):NICE!

My poster- I decided would be filled up with some of my best, and most stupid quotes since I've been here:

It's probably best if I explain some of the quotes, since they're really quite 'in' jokes.

One's enough for me- I said this when I first arrived, to Dave, when I noticed that the locks on the doors could be locked twice (?) I.e. You can twist them around once and they click into 'locked' and then you can keep going and the bolt goes slightly further into the lock. But since it is already in the lock, it seems mildly pointless.

Twenty pages a minute, baby- This is what I said to my flatmates when explaining how good my new printer was going to be, which they found quite amusing.

(To Vicky, dressed as an angel) Are you going out?- Pretty self explanatory, just one of those questions that are completely pointless... but you never know- It could be the new thing without having to go to a fancy-dress party!

So today has been a very lazy day, I spent the afternoon shopping with my good friend, James (who's blog is excellent, please read it- it's under my 'subscriber list'), in Gunwharf Quays. Since I was still tired, I was very lucid and

lackadaisical... So much so in fact, that I managed to leave my scarf in Next whilst trying on cardigans, a minute later I kicked myself and I had to run back in case someone picked it up and tried to buy it. Fortunately, I was able to walk out with it without looking suspiciously like a thief. In the evening, I watched The 'Ghost In The Shell' with Audrey (A French International student) who had suggested I watch it, since I'd mentioned to her that I enjoyed anime films. She was completely right about this film, she said it was amazing- and honestly it was! The plot was very strange, about a futuristic world where people's souls are 'ghosts' and can be transferred from body to body, mostly in order to commit crime. It was really thought-provoking, and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good movie every once in a while. Afterwards, we sat, drank tea and coffee and watched funny French clips on youtube, talking late into the night- which brings me to where I am now: sitting at 4 in the morning writing my blog. What AM I doing? Right, time to sleep... Something that has become somewhat of a luxury to me, these days! Trust me, I wont be getting up for a long time tomorrow (or in fact 'today' if you want to be a smart arse).