Ahoy there.

My first experiment with painting still life with light.

Tue, 29 May 2012 00:05:06 +0100

My first experiment with painting still life with light.

System-wide Equaliser for Mac OSX

Fri, 18 May 2012 15:56:00 +0100

So I used to have two problems: 1) Macbook pro speakers aren’t the loudest in the world and 2) I listen to Spotify all the time, and it’s annoying how there’s no system equaliser to make the most of my headphones, like there is in iTunes.

The best solution I’ve found is two small, free, apps: Soundflower and AU Lab. Soundflower is open source and easily downloaded from http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/14067/soundflower while AU Lab can be downloaded as a package on its own from the Apple Developers resources page: https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action (search for AU Lab, and also you have to register as an Apple Developer, which is free).

Once everything is downloaded, installed and computer restarted:

Set your system volume to the max, and go to System Preferences, Sound, Output, Select Soundflower (2ch)” (see 2nd NB below…)
Open AU Lab (Should be installed in the Utilities folder)
On the Document Configuration screen that pops up, select “Soundflower (2ch)” for the Audio Input Device, and “Built-in Output” for Audio Output Device in the “Stereo In/Stereo Out” section. Click on Create Document.
In the Output 1 column on the next screen there’s a dropdown under “Effects”. Choose “AUGraphicEQ”. Boom. Equalise your jazz. Or Bieber, whatever you’re listening to.
Save the document somewhere, then go to the AU Lab preferences, click on Document, select Open a specific document, and choose the path to the saved file.
Set AU lab to launch at login, and check the Hide box in System Preferences.

NB1: AU Lab needs to be constantly running in the background for this to work. If you want to revert to unprocessed system audio, select the default device output in the Sound section in System Preferences.

NB2: You should select maximum volume for your default output device before switching the output to “Soundflower (2ch)” in System Preferences - this will make sure the volume settings aren’t screwed up when you have the equaliser active.

So you can also amplify the output of your speakers - I can now boost my built-in Macbook Pro speakers very high, which makes it easier to have someone on Skype in a company meeting for eg :)

This hack is a lot better than using Audio Hijack Pro, which can do something similar, but uses a heck of a lot more CPU, and also doesn’t multitask well when you’re doing other stuff on your computer.

A heart in a hole. In Shoreditch!

Fri, 04 May 2012 01:57:47 +0100

A heart in a hole. In Shoreditch!

Black.

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:44:04 +0100

Black.

If this isn’t cute, I simply don’t know what is.

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:25:00 +0100

If this isn’t cute, I simply don’t know what is.

The Nikon 105mm f2 DC is pretty damn sharp - I’ve been...

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:57:25 +0100

The Nikon 105mm f2 DC is pretty damn sharp - I’ve been taking a couple of street photos with it over the past two days. Still not perfect at using it, but hopefully a bit more practise will solve that!

Right, I don’t normally do B&W, but I felt this...

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 10:07:59 +0000

Right, I don’t normally do B&W, but I felt this deserved a bit of greyscale treatment :)

This has been outside the Red Gallery in Shoreditch for a few...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:29:00 +0000

This has been outside the Red Gallery in Shoreditch for a few days, today there were perfect conditions to get a shot at it while I was on my after-lunch photostroll.

SSDs are amazing

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:50:42 +0000

SSDs rock so hard! I’m in deafening silence now, instead of listening to the tune of 7200 revolutions every minute from my old HDD :))))

Plus, no more funky sounds coming from my hard drive, and data being weird. SSD-joy. Now dry up please, factories in Asia, so we can drive external HDD prices down again! I’d like to get 1TB that doesn’t cost about 90-100 quid.

My Macbook Pro is pretty much good to go for another two years at least! Hopefully more. Thanks, Apple, Conversocial and life :)

This was taken yesterday, while they were setting up the stage...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:11:42 +0000

This was taken yesterday, while they were setting up the stage for today’s London CNY celebrations. Mesmerisingly symmetrical, and lined up perfectly!

Slightly racist message here surely :S

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:31:22 +0000

Slightly racist message here surely :S

RIP Megaupload, you were wrongly ripped apart :(

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:02:00 +0000

Please excuse the horrible title.

We need a freedom of speech equivalent for the web, because if SOPA and cases like Megaupload being taken down get through, then the web will be quite simply a dictatorship. And dark too.

Who will police what?

Surely this will only provoke aggressive acts by those angry with the decisions the “law” make, and this will simply lead to war, whether it will be physical, or cyber warfare (I predict the latter). How about the internet takes a lesson from the real world and sees how these boundaries affect the general populace so greatly, and leads to so much conflict over territories and content.

Here’s the BBC article about the horrible death of a great online service.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16642369

On another note, this makes cloud storage ridiculously moot. If your service can be taken down any day without warning, people will have to start backing up data to multiple cloud services, which kind of defeats the point. Seriously legislation, WTF.

This is pretty damn cool!

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:34:52 +0000

This is pretty damn cool!

I don’t normally post other stuff apart form my...

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:09:00 +0000

I don’t normally post other stuff apart form my photography on this blog, however I just saw this video and felt very, very strongly about it, so I had to repost, and share my thoughts (which I accept are my own, and will evidently cause different reactions in everyone, but people are entitled to opinions).

*edit: I also find it ironic how the youtube thumbnail is of a topless orgy… They’re (albeit unintentionally) exploiting the very nature of the values they’re campaigning against to drive views of this crap*

//start rant

Is this meant to be about teenagers and their media consumption or simply feminist crap, spewing out the same old statistics and arguments, simply packaged and presented as teenage media influence? In my opinion, this is a load of spinned, biased rubbish.

If they wanted to talk about teenage consumption of media, they should be looking at both the good and the bad sides of the argument, instead of taking the bad sides, and misinterpreting, twisting and spinning other bits into the message they are trying to get across, which is frankly a thinly veiled feminist campaign.

I don’t see anything about how technology and media is driving and inspiring entrepreneurs, or helping kids in disadvantageous backgrounds learn, yet there are so, so many examples of this and more everywhere on the internet, and indeed life.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree there’s some over-sexualisation in some instances of the media, and violence in some video games, but at the end of the day, it’s down to the values taught to growing people by their parents, teachers and peers, and not feminists brainwashing them that all media is evil and must be abhorred.

//rant over

Pitch a tent, and take a hike. Occupy is still in Finsbury...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:22:28 +0000

Pitch a tent, and take a hike. Occupy is still in Finsbury Square! From my afternoon photo-stroll-break.

Another of my bokeh panorama experiments. I love this technique...

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:41:37 +0000

Another of my bokeh panorama experiments. I love this technique because you can be so creative with framing! Plus of course get monstrous detail when it’s set as the background on your 24” monitor :)

London is full of interesting things, and sometimes...

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:00:16 +0000

London is full of interesting things, and sometimes they’re in the details.

shootingdave: I gotta have a go on this!!! rozanes: ReCraft...

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:34:30 +0000

shootingdave:

I gotta have a go on this!!!

rozanes:

ReCraft Your Bike: Simplicity In Inner Cit Bicycling By Joey Ruiter Studio

Michigan’s Joey Ruiter Studio has a new prototype designed for inner city cycling. Inspired by the hobby horse and the café race scene, this bike’s focus is clearly on the frame. It has been stripped down, shedding many key elements in order to create a new compact cycle. As Ruiter puts it, “The final design came down to a frame system and a really difficult rear hub. Everything else is rider preference.”

This is pretty damn cool!

And so the xmas lights light painting begins…

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:58:26 +0000

And so the xmas lights light painting begins…

Points for anyone who knows where in London this photo was...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:14:00 +0000

Points for anyone who knows where in London this photo was taken!