Feeling Polaroid
Posted on | January 5, 2010 | 5 Comments
My new favourite app for the iPhone is ShakeItPhoto which allows you to turn your photos into splendidly crappy and brilliantly retro Polaroid images. I mean, look at these (click for bigger images at Picasa):
Aren’t they cool. You can convert images already on your iPhone or, more likely, you can take a photo using ShakeItPhoto and watch as it spits out a virtual Polaroid. If you shake your phone you can speed up the ‘development’ process. Shaking and waiting for the image is something that’s really only fun the first time you do it so – thankfully – there’s an option to turn that off.
It has a very nice way of making pretty ordinary and mundane things look really rather pretty (in a polarised, saturated, colour-shifted, grainy sort of way). The picture format also forces you to think differently. Normally when taking a photo, most mortals are used to thinking in rectangles but thinking in squares makes you look at things differently.
ShakeItPhoto cheered me up immensely on a snowy morning trip to the shopping centre. It’s not quite perfect – as it crops the standard rectangular iPhone image, it could use a screen overlay to show what will be included in the final, Polaroided photo. Other than that, though, it’s really excellent. If you’ve an iPhone, try it.
You can see the full gallery over at my Picasa.
A Nice Cup Of Tea And A Book: The Death Of Bunny Munro
Posted on | January 1, 2010 | 2 Comments
Who doesn’t like a nice cup of tea and a good book? As I quite like hearing about what others are reading, I (self-importantly, perhaps) thought I’d share the same information with you.
So then, I’ve just started The Death Of Bunny Munroe by Nick Cave. About a third of the way through at the moment and enjoying things so far.
If you are a regular reader of these ramblings, you might remember that, a few months back, I went to ‘An Evening Of Readings, Music And Conversation With Nick Cave‘. The ‘reading’ bit of that evening with Nick, was from this book. It’s Cave’s latest novel and he was plugging it between singing some splendid songs and getting heckled for being misogynist.
This latter was from a lady who took umbrage at the content of some of Cave’s prose. While I think Offended-Lady was completely wrong, there is plenty in The Death Of Bunny Munro to cause offence to a certain type of person. Basically, if you’re the type of person who really thinks that all men are bastards and that everything – literally everything - revolves around men attempting to bed every woman they meet/know/know of, this book may not be for you. The eponymous hero is not a terribly nice guy and while he’s not doing things to ladies’ bits, he’s thinking about lady-bits. You might think him an unsympathetic character, then. You’d be wrong – I wouldn’t want to hang out with Bunny Munro but I certainly care what happens to him.
So far, a good helping of sex and death and masturbation. Oh, and an episode where, after parking in a disabled spot, Bunny tells his son, “if a traffic warden comes by, pretend to be a spastic or something.”
It’s good. Get it. Of course, yours won’t be signed by Nick Cave (like wot mine is) but at least you’ll get a good read. If you’ve read Cave’s And The Ass Saw The Angel, well, this is nothing like it.
Oh, I am enjoying this book and tea with some M&S Rhubarb & Ginger Cookies. Delicious.
Old Acquaintance
Posted on | December 31, 2009 | 5 Comments
Out with the old, in with the new. It’s New Year. A time for parties and resolutions and bloody Jools Holland. A time for review-of-the-year shows and for drunks telling you that next year will be better for them. A time for bells ringing and people singing. A time of fireworks and pipers and a billion text messages from people you only hear from twice a year.
And, at the risk of sounding like one of those arses from Grumpy Old Men, I don’t really see the point.
I used to think New Year was more of a big thing. In my youth, as the old year drew to a close, I used to get either very happy or very sad – generally depending on the proximity of someone willing and kissable. I used to brave the bars and the nightclubs and the parties, squeezed together with the drunk and the really drunk and those ones that just dribbled. I used to do all of this and more.
Then I realised two things:
- New Year is really just an arbitrary date that has gained some sort of significance in the popular psyche due, possibly, to our innate desire to mark the close of things that we don’t care for and to fool ourselves that the simple transition from one day to the next means all our woes will be magically transformed into good luck and solid gold puppies.
- I was a twat.
Armed with this knowledge (and the knowledge I’d always had about fireworks – they’re just coloured sparks in the sky, people), I put aside new-year’s things and simply got on with stuff.
Having said that, although I won’t be venturing out to pipe-in Hogmanay, I am celebrating the new year in my own manner by forcing my wife to make me a bread and butter pudding.
Remember – as that leering, stinking inebriate tries to tongue you on the stroke of midnight – that I’ll be having bread and butter pudding.
And custard.
I do sound like one of those Grumpy Old Men people, don’t I? At least tell me it’s not Rory McGrath.
Christmas Past
Posted on | December 30, 2009 | 4 Comments
As the wind hurls its more miserable and wetter brother, the rain, against my attic windows, I sit and consider the Christmas season just passed. All in all, it wasn’t too bad.
A rather splendid Christmas dinner at my in-laws began the Christmas Waist Expansion in earnest. Over the next few days, much beer was consumed and the entire second season of Saxondale was viewed on a dark, tea and chocolate-filled afternoon. In a Caligula-like moment of decadence I scoffed a big bowl of tiramisù while lying in bed. Possibly not my proudest moment.
I also got to chat with some friends that I don’t see often and, from one of those splendid fellows, I acquired this lovely little thing:
Isn’t it cool? It’s a Halina 35X. Despite that it looks quite snazzy, it’s actually a Hong Kong cheapie from the late 50’s and is probably worth less than the cost of processing the roll of 35mm film that I’ll be putting in.
Before any shooting or processing can occur, however, it needs some TLC. The shutter seems to work just fine, as does the winding mechanism. The inside could use a damn good cleaning (to avoid scratching up the film) and ditto for the lens. The big problem, though, is that the lens barrels are really stiff. This probably means I’ll need to take it apart and lube it up (no Carry On jokes, please).
Why on earth would I want to dismantle and reassemble a forty or fifty year old camera in order to shoot actual film when I have a perfectly good digital SLR? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. Look at it. It may be cheapie and it may need a lot of work and I will have to pay to process any images I take but, look at it. It’s a thing of beauty.
And I’m a geek.
The Day After Christmas
Posted on | December 26, 2009 | 2 Comments
It is the day after Christmas and I’m in a bit of a weird mood. I suspect one of two things:
- My spleen has secreted excess humour – a black bile if you will – that has brought on a bout of melancholia.
- I’m getting fed up with the Christmas experience of staying at my folks.
This leaves me with two possible courses of action:
- It’s quite probable that a course of leeches and blood-letting will clear up the issue. Failing that, drilling a hole in my skull should allow a means of egress for any demons therein.
- I could just go hide away from all familial interaction and read this splendid book that Santa brought.
It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year…
Posted on | December 25, 2009 | Comments Off
…Not really, of course. It’s just Christmas.
That being the case however, it seems traditional to offer some sort of Yuletide greeting to people – even weird, internet strangers who, more than likely, are reading this naked, smeared in goose-fat while performing strange, unsavoury acts with Toblerones and turkey-basters.
So then, filthy internet-people, have yourselves a merry Christmas, Hanukkah, winterval, fourth-day-after-solistice, holly-flagellation-day or whatever you happen to celebrate.
Ho ho ho and whatnot. I’m off to get drunk and shout at my family.
The Problem With LEDs
Posted on | December 23, 2009 | Comments Off
My itty-bitty bit of flash fiction, The Problem With LEDs, has been published over at Metazen.
It will also appear in the Metazen Christmas Story Book which is being sold for charity. If you pop over and donate more than 15 Canadian dollars (via PayPal) on Metazen, you will receive a printed copy of the book. Smaller donations receive a PDF version of the book. All of the proceeds are donated to the Sunrise Children’s Villages Charity in Cambodia so you get a snazzy book and help a good cause. Everyone’s a winner.
All Change
Posted on | December 22, 2009 | 4 Comments
As you may have noticed, if you’ve visited before, I have changed things considerably around here. Out is the old, grungy look and in is clean and crisp. It’s this season’s hottest new thing. Probably.
Truth be told, I got pretty fed up with the old look ages ago but just didn’t get around to doing anything about it. Finally made the time and this is the result. I may be tweaking minor things over the next week or two so don’t worry if things seem a little transitory around here.
Also, I hope to occasionally update the script in the banner with new epic tales. Cast an eye up there from time to time.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases. Why, it’s like Keats anticipated my blog redesign.
What do you think?
Simon Pegg doesn’t like fast-moving zombies either
Posted on | December 14, 2009 | Comments Off
Forgive the poor quality but I was too lazy to do anything but take a picture of the drawing with my iPhone. What do you want? I don’t have Gary Larson’s money and time. Or his commitment or talent.
Middle-aged
Posted on | December 8, 2009 | 4 Comments
I am no longer a young man. I’ve been aware of this for some time but it is occasionally driven home to me.
Like now.
Two beery nights and I’m a floppy, husk of a man. Two nights with too little sleep and too much beer and I look like the long-dead corpse of a wizened nonagenarian who died from some sort of wasting, insomniac condition and was buried in a cardboard coffin, in a bog, for one hundred and forty-six years before being reanimated by some weird, zombification process involving sucking all fluids from the body and replacing them with Nutella and dust.
I feel almost exactly like that too.
It’s a young man’s game, this beering.
« NEWER Entries — OLDER Entries »Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occassionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and debase my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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