Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Coming as a late update… www.commonground.se
A month ago or so I soft-launched a new website for Dan Hegelund, an long-time client of mine. This time it was a website for a church in Sweden, where he is currently based.
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We wanted to throw a party for quite a long time, and what can be a better chance to do it than a New Year eve? The perfect cause. And what can be better than a fancy dress party? Said & done!
It was also quite a special celebration, since everyone was from our hometown, back in Latvia and it was such a good fun we can’t remember having anything like this in the last decade. No kidding. Our party people really made an effort to make it a memorable night - from the costumes to the home-made, mostly traditional (yammy!), dishes. And we had whole 2 V’s, both Olegs :)
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In a year time we are back at O2 Arena. This time it’s a legendary Depeche Mode.
I hate booking tickets 6 months before the event and even more I hate paying extra money for no extra value added at ebay, but hey, these are the rules of the game. At least we did not go buying tickets for Michael Jackson’s show (yes, I was contemplating it).
The show was great. No surprise here. I must admit, I wasn’t a big fan of the band’s latest album, well, apart from a couple of tracks, but hearing the songs live definitely changed my perception of them.
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“Question everything generally thought to be obvious.” Dieter Rams
Dieter Rams is in town. Well, not exactly him, but there is an exhibition in the London Design Museum with many of his appliances and gadgets on the display.
For those of you who does not know, Dieter Rams was the chief of design at BRAUN (German manufacturer) and was the man behind most innovative and iconic designs of that time.
And if you are not an Apple hater (there could be a number of reasons, I am not judging you), you would definitely appreciate the simplicity and minimalism of the design that inspired Apple’s Jonathan Ive himself a lot.
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Who could have thought that iPhone camera can be of any use? I gave up on it loooooong time ago. It’s not a camera. It’s a joke. Pure frustration. But I used to comfort myself with a thought that it wasn’t that important, in the end even phones with more superior cameras make rather mediocre pictures.
From time to time I came across galleries of ‘cool iPhone photography’, but either shots were made in quite a perfect environment and good lighting, or required quite an extensive editing or were not that awesome at all.
So I just said to myself: don’t bother. And I didn’t. Until the moment a few days ago my work mate introduced me to an app, which changed everything. It is called ShakeItPhoto and you can get it from the iTunes. It is everything I need for just £0.59 (well, iPhone is not included :).
So what exactly do I need? Ideally it’s a gadget, small enough, so I could carry it around with me at all times, which wouldn’t intimidate anyone if I point with it at them and which would be capable of taking pictures of some artistic value. I don’t need my everyday pictures to be of outstanding quality, but to capture the mood of the moment. Yes, my DSLR can take great photos, but lately I have been even considering taking it with me when going on holidays. Cause it’s BIG and heavy. I also don’t have guts to point it at some stranger’s face. It just gets too much attention. On the other hand, phone is just perfect for this.
One more thing. I have quite a fascination with retro photography with it’s offset colours, occasional blurriness, lack of focus, with its imperfectness. Just like our life is - imperfect.
So here we are, I got it all now with ShakeItPhoto.
It’s a simple app. As a mater of fact it’s so simple that it does pretty much just one task. And this is exactly why I love it. It takes photos in a polaroid style. You point, you shoot, and… that’s it. It adds just one filter and the frame. Brilliant!
What also great about this app is that it’s a great fun to use. It takes time to ‘develop’ the photo and you can even shake ‘the picture’, just like the real thing. There is also always a bit of luck factor involved, which again, is what you get with an instant photography.
The first few days after I installed it, I just went crazy and took ,probably, hundreds of pictures, but they were mostly about what I saw at work or on my way to/from work. Naturally I ran out of things of interest, so settled down a bit, but still remain quite enthusiastic. I really feel like it brought the joy of everyday life photography back into my life and encourages me to experiment more and not just run through my life, but stop and have a look around and notice little things, to see the beauty in details.
These are just a few shots I did lately (I have also converted those few pictures I already had on my iPhone, which for me were DOA, but now they look great). I also started a new set on Flickr and constantly update it with a new material. Definitely go and check!
A couple of months ago a good friend of mine offered me to go with him to the Get Loaded in the Park festival in South London. Lots of electronica on several stages, and one of its highlights was Royksopp. Well, of course I would go! :)
I discovered the band back in 2005 after listening to The Understanding and being in love with their work since, and that was the first time I saw them performing live. They had a 40 minute session and with their unique sound, feel and look it was awesome.
Later that night I was checking their website and found out that my favorite Scandinavians would be performing soon in London, O2 Academy in Shepherd Bush. Well, that was an easy choice for me, since it’s just 10 minute bus drive away from my place. I booked tickets immediately.
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A year ago I was buying a domain name for my newly formed Skrinshot LTD. It did not come as a big surprise that skrinshot.com was already taken. So I had no choice, but to register under .co.uk (which wasn’t that bad, since business was registered and operating in UK).
Ac couple of weeks ago I received an email from itdomainnames.net, basically saying ’skrinshot.com is coming available for sale in a few days. If you have interest in acquiring it, please fill up priority notice, and we will contact you when the domain is available.’ Right, that is interesting! So I followed the link in the email.
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Ok, this time it is my birthday and we going on our next trip. Destination: sunny Turkey. Not particularly fancy or exotic one, but it’s not just a beach holiday either - it’s our annual ‘active holiday’ with Neilson (as their tag-line goes: ‘relax as hard as you like’). The plan: to catch a lot of sun, enjoy food and to do sports (primarily, windsurfing).
Below is my hopefully at least vaguely entertaining story about it.
I must say it wasn’t my luckiest day ever. We arrived at the Victoria station just in time to jump in the train to Gatwick airport. Literally 10 seconds before departure. Phew, that was close! Lucky us? Ummm, not really. In 10 minutes the conductor told us our tickets were not valid for the journey. What??? Apparently in a hurry we took the wrong train (same time, same destination). Actually I had a feeling something was wrong - it looked suspiciously fancier than usual. Well, It was a Gatwick Express. Unnecessary quicker and more expensive. Nothing to do - I had to buy another pair of tickets. Bollocks!
Next, at the check in we found out that there was a problem with our plane, so the flight would be delayed. No specific time yet. Taking express train to the airport seemed even worse idea. But apparently it wasn’t over. Not yet. My bank card was declined in one of the airport shops. Not now! I had another card with me, but no money on that account. Luckily I had a jezuz phone with me and could log in to my online banking to make a transfer between the accounts. It was painfully slow on EDGE, but possible.
You must agree, not a brilliant start. I did not want to take it as a bad sign, but I guess it made me a little bit more careful during the whole holiday :) Just a tiny bit.
The flight was 5 hours late. We visited most of the airport shops and had a dinner in a Cafe Rouge, where we had sea food with a bottle of white wine to my health (don’t forget, it was my birthday :)
We arrived in Izmir in the early morning ( 3am, is it early in the morning or still late at night?) and got transferred to the hotel with a hundred of other guests. Did not sleep too long though and were up around 10am when we headed to the beach after a breakfast and induction meeting. Now we can relax…
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