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iPhone with Parrot MK6000 Handsfree – My Solution for Bluetooth Audio Skipping

Just thought I’d post this, as I’ve found a solution for something that’s been driving me crazy for a very long time.  I use a Parrot in-car handsfree bluetooth kit.  It’s wonderful.  It works very well, and always has, for making and receiving calls.  However, it also acts as a A2DP destination for the iPhone [...]

Upgrading XBMC Live Dharma on the command prompt from Beta to RC1 and beyond…

Just a quickie this time.  As I’ve customised my Dharma install to work with another remote receiver, I didn’t really want to be wiping the install and putting the whole lot back on, only to have to rejig my library and then redo the customisations for the remote stuff… So!  After a bit of digging, [...]

XBMC Live Dharma (Beta 3) – Adding an unsupported Media Centre Remote

How I overcame the joys of fiddling with Linux drivers to get an unsupported MCE remote working with XBMC Live…

Great Western Colliery, Hopkinstown

Four shots from a recent shoot in Great Western Colliery, a derelict colliery in Hopkinstown near Pontypridd. The two versions of the last shot are due to me being indecisive!

HTC Desire – Android 2.2 Froyo

Just updated to the latest version of Android on my HTC Desire – version 2.2 – codenamed Froyo (short for ‘Frozen Yoghurt’ in case you didn’t know – Google has a habit of naming Android updates on desserts…!).  Just so happens I’ve ‘rooted’ my Desire already, and the good old bods over at xda-developers.com have [...]

iPad Camera Connection Kit

  iPad Camera Connection Kit I’ve just received my iPad Camera Connection Kit through the post today.  This unassuming set of dongles attaches to the dock connector of the iPad and allows you to import photos and videos directly into the iPad’s Photo gallery app. The premise is simple – just plug either the USB [...]

iPad Wifi + Rooted HTC Desire + Navicore Bluetooth GPS = A Nice Little Setup

Falling short… Since I got my iPad, the only thing I’ve really lamented is it’s lack of GPS and 3G.  Being the Wifi (read: cheaper) model, I had to make do with WiFi only.  As usual, my tendency to over-analyse and get the most out of anything I have got the better of me, and [...]

iPad – First impressions…

Yesterday, I was browsing, as I often do, in the Cardiff branch of Mr Jobs’ finest tech-emporium, when I finally decided (after yet another round of touchy-feely, have-a-go marketing), to take the plunge and sort myself out with an iPad. After a lot of reading, trying, and agonising about whether it would be worth the [...]

Switching Nikon to Canon – A Photography Leap of Faith

I’ve recently taken a leap that surprised even me. For the last four years, since January 2006, I’ve been exclusively a Nikon man. My Nikon D50 has served me very well, with absolutely no issues whatsoever. It was my first ‘true’ digital SLR (well my first with interchangeable lenses anyway, I previously had an Olympus E10), and has been a fantastic piece of kit

Stranger #4 – Jim

  After a Hiatus of over a year (having kids kind of takes your mind off other things in life!), here’s stranger number four or my hundered strangers project on Flickr. Jim is an artist from Newport, and is a regular in the Coffee Shop where I go in Newport. I’d never spoken to him [...]

Protected: Peel Your Own Spuds – Cardiff Millennium Centre

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Ogmore Set

This is a quick set taken at Ogmore-By-Sea in South Wales.  We travelled down to arrive before sunrise, and got some great light as a reward. I have some great memories of Ogmore as a child, and each time I go back there, it brings them flooding back. Funnily enough, I thought that this morning [...]

Collings and Herrin Podcast Wales 1

Hurrah! Got a mention and some snapshots published on the Collings and Herrin Blog. If you haven’t tried them yet, Andrew Collins’ and Richard Herring’s brand of Humour is not for the sensitive, or easily offended, but I love it. It brightens up many a boring car journey via the gift of the ipod.

Film for Lomography, and Cross-Processing – Things are getting strangely analogue around here…

Following on from the discovery in the previous post, I’ve decided to furnish my Lubitel 166B with some food.  Fujichrome Provia 400x slide film to be precise.  It’s been kind of weird shopping for film again for the first time in almost ten years – like I said – feels sort of liberating, and I’m not [...]

Lubitel 166B – Real Lomography Beckons

Following on from yesterday’s post – it’s been kind of interesting getting a feel for what all this Lomo stuff is about.  I don’t know what it is that draws me to the Lomography style exactly…  I think it must be the lack of any fixed rules, and the way it captures bits of life [...]

Lomographic Aspirations

Today, I had a happy accident.  Today, I accidentally (re)stumbled across the art of Lomography.  Today, I finally found a genuine use for my iPhone camera.  Today, I had a ‘Eureka’ moment. Let me explain… Photography is an art.  In the end, it’s all about the aesthetics.  Beautiful photos opportunities rear their heads in the [...]

Cwm Coke Works Urbex Gallery

This is a set that that I took back in 2008 in Cwm Coke Works in South Wales.  This abandoned industrial site drips with atmosphere, from the abandoned newspapers with last dates of work on them, to the rusting and precarious structures, tired-looking from many years of uncaring exposure to the elements. Click the thumbnails [...]

Golden Temple Statues, Bangkok

Part of the incredibly complex and ornate exterior of one of the buildings of the Bhuddist Golden Temple in Bangkok.

Lonesome

An HDR shot captured in the Brecon Beacons.  I couldn’t work out whether this tree was long-dead or just dormant for the winter.  The environment here can be so harsh, and makes for some bleakly beautiful landscapes.

Something Cold That Way Lies…

A stunning afternoon on the Blorenge, a mountain near Blaenavon.  I was fascinated by this sign with its one-way-to-cold, one-way-to-warm suggestion, (and no, I didn’t knock the icicles off one side for dramatic effect!).  With the vast range of tones in this shot, I had to resort to HDR to make it look as it [...]

Before the Long Walk of Life Starts…

First in a series of studies of my gorgeous baby daughter Amélie.

Unconditional

A studio shot of my Wife and newborn Daughter…

Waiting for the day…

A set of studio shots of my wife and our yet-to-be-born daughter Amélie…

Self Portrait With a Difference

A self portrait in a different style to my usual way of approaching these things.  A return visit to Talgarth Asylum made me decide to get a little darker for a change…

Drag Racer (BBC Snooker Theme) Full Play Through

I’ve been asked to post a vid of me playing the full Drag Racer track through (to accompany my last post – Guitar Tutorial – How to Play Drag Racer – The BBC Snooker Theme, and help put it in context), so here’s a more-or-less full version, played far-from-perfectly!

Guitar Tutorial – How to Play Drag Racer – The BBC Snooker Theme

As a kid,  I always loved the theme to the BBC snooker coverage.  It’s a great little guitar instrumental called Drag Racer, and was written in 1976 by the Doug Wood Band.  I enjoy playing it, and on more than one occasion have been asked to show people how to play it themselves. You can [...]

Through the Black

This shot was taken in Abernant Tunnel, South Wales.  Strong light source behind, coupled with a 30 sec exposure and a stillness and atmosphere you could cut with a knife.  Abernant is an abandoned railway tunnel, a mile and a half in length.  The central mile is in total blackness, as each end is slightly [...]

Into the Matrix

No manipulation here apart from cropping!  A very unusual shot taken in Abernant Tunnel in South Wales with the help of a lot of darkness, a 30 Sec exposure, and a 30mw laser.  It was a case of setting up the tripod, starting the exposure then going a little nuts with the laser (making sure [...]

Great Court, British Museum

A challenging HDR shot taken in the central Great Court of the BM in London.  I love this place, and have spent many an hour chilling out there.  This shot was another HDR effort, via the Sigma 10-20mm (at the short end).  This time, it was taken with the express intention of producing a mono [...]

Catholic Westminster Cathedral

This is an HDR shot of the Catholic Westminster Cathedral in Victoria, London.  It was taken at the beginning of an unexpectedly sunny period during an overcast day.  I wanted to create a sense of the scale of the building, so the trusty 10-20mm Sigma was pulled out of the bag.  Getting a series of [...]

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