Littlepixel™

Signing off(ish)

2007-03-09T01:37:00.000Z

Au Revoir

If you haven't seen a new post in while it's probably because I've switched to my own hosted WordPress blog where I can geek-out with the swiss-armyknife-like power. So it's 'so long Blogger' for now (though I'm maintaining the Bontempi Radio Köln podcast blog still) and 'Hello WordPress'.

Click this link to jump ship to my new blog

Ferry, Elo & Ferdinand

2007-02-04T00:59:00.000Z

Do You Want To Stick Me Down?

Franz Ferdinand: Do You Want To?
Electric Light Orchestra: Don't Bring Me Down
Bryan Ferry: Let's Stick Together

Ever since the Franz Ferdinand Tune came out it bugged me just how much it sounded like ELO. Then the other day I realised that the ELO sounds pretty much the same as the Bryan Ferry tune too so this is really just that: Proof that these three songs are exactly the same tune!

Listen to the evidence

Tags:Bootlegs

Watch out Brompton!

2007-01-31T20:47:00.000Z

Something new is around the bend

And it's ace! This is the new Bike Friday 'Tikit' (Yay to palindromes) out in the US in a few weeks. BF have a really good reputation for high end packable touring bikes which have always tempted me but they take more than a wee while to dissassemble and pack into their towable cases. So not great for commuting then.

This new fella - as you can see by the vid - is a different animal all together. Expect it to cost a shedload - thanks to the amazingly 'a dollar on a US import nearly equals a pound even though a dollar actually only equals a 50p piece' problem we seem to get here - but boy - look at how easily it folds! And the clever little push handle. I love it. I'd work evenings for a month for an ultra-light fixie Tikit. In baby blue. Or hospital green. Mmm....

Teh oddjob kittehs r here 2 help!

2007-01-27T20:28:00.000Z

Tags:Helpful Cats Cat_Macros

Fantasy League Big Brother

2007-01-22T00:06:00.000Z

It's only a matter of time

"Dai thortie sevin in thu Beeg Brootha Howse"

Luckily for me I don't 'watch' the news anymore. Or reality TV thank god. This week has been a stupid hybrid of the two in the UK. An ignorant girl and a prima-dona have been dominating the news, even prompting questions about racism in the House of Commons. Talk about media-hype. Jade is not racist, just ignorant. I somehow doubt she's in the N.F.

We in the Littlepixel household can't believe that the government – Mr Brown in particular – lets himself be drawn on questions about this 'shocking' issue, when he should really just be saying that this is simply water-cooler tittle-tattle that hardly requires the attentions of the ruling elite. There's more racism in the average comprehensive school playground every day of the week, but that doesn't get any press. Funny that.

The bottom line is that the TV execs put people in houses like this exactly for the chance of *any* press and ergo good ratings via some sort of evocative and nerve-hitting personality clash. It's exactly why people tune into the goldfish bowl each night. Thora Hird and Gary Lineker would make for paint-drying TV so they choose people with the biggest likelihood of winding each other up. Hence the ingnoramous and the spoilt princess.

The other funny thing is the reality tv company's reticence to comment on it all. Could it be that Jade shares the same publicists as Davina, Dermot and Russell? It couldn't be to do with a clash of interests could it? Could it?

Banging these 'shocking truths' onto the evening news each night as well as every sodding paper in the kingdom only adds to viewing figures and nothing more. I've kinda stabbed myself in the back by talking about it here but it's been annoying me all week and I had to fire off a bileogram.

In the future, there will be Fantasy League Celeb Big Brother, it will be excellent and as exec producer at Endemol this will be my selection of 'housemates most likely to not get on and hopefully result in the first-ever 'Televised Celebrity Lynchmob Murder' ever.

1) Lauren 'James' Harries
2) Wilf Lunn
3) Divine
4) Max Headroom
5) Imelda Marcos
6) Dee Snider (from Twisted Sister)
7) Richard Stilgoe
8) Malcolm Tucker (from The Thick of It)
9) Zsa Zsa Gabor
10) Anne Armstrong (from U-Fit)
11) Kate Bush
12) Eamonn Holmes

Imagine the Factions. The Friction. Bring it on;
(I won't be tuning in though.)

If you like my Podcast...

2007-01-17T16:48:00.000Z

Why not Digg it?

In an act of shameless self-promotion I've submitted the back catalogue of Bontempi Radio Köln to Social News site Digg, with the hope of sharing the podcast love to a wider audience. It only needs 267 votes to get to the top of the Podcast music charts so if you've heard the show and like it or just feel an inordinate sense of duty to be nice to me then please bump it up with a vote!

Digg my show by clicking this link and banging your little fists all over the 'digg' buttons

Tags:Digg Podcasts

So Hello There

2006-12-29T00:09:00.000Z

HPPY NW YR!

So I've been blogging 'proper' for about a year now. If my page counter doobrie is to be believed I got over 5,700 'unique' hits over that time which is rather something-whelming. I was going to say 'over...' but that would be a bit much. Somewhere in the shaft where whelmed gets stuck in the lift on the way up to overwhelmed is probably a better description. But it's nice to know you people find my page somewhat interesting. Or laughable. Or whatever it is drives you to peek every now and again.

Anyhoo. A while back I got this fantastic email from this lad in Utah who's at college and dropped me a line to say how he liked the podcast, which really made my day and made me wonder who — besides the people I pay to read my blog — else is actually reading this, so my big question for 2007 is: "Who the flipping heck are all these people, Tucker?".

And my follow up is this: If you are reading this and aren't a random buttn' clickn' Blogger surfer - *Please* could you be arsed enought to leave me a wee comment at the bottom of this post so I have a better idea... I only got about 7 comments over the whole of last year (Sob), and those were mainly from Jo or Joe (thx guys), so as I continue to blather on into the ether for the next year, I might as well ask who's reading it...
So who are you?

Dat Infermayshun that wil maek de Littlepixel into teh smiling boy:

• Nickname/Nom de Plume
• Location (of sorts - specific or oblique)
• Least Favourite TV Show (and why) [hint: 'Torchwood' is a good answer]
• How you found my crappy blog... [i.e. 'Link from Steve Jobs' Blog']
• Your top tunes of last year/last decade/evaaah [Typers of 'Oasis' or 'Poo Snowtroll" will be quietly escorted away]
• Info on your first ever bike [Mine - metallic blue 'Stambecco' with stablisers, Xmas 1980]
• Frazzles or Nik-Naks?
• Top Napoleon Dynamite quote [Mine would be 'Tina: Come eat some Ham!'
• 3 reasons why I should turn my PowerBook off and go out and do something less boring instead

Fill out all (or some) of the above and I shall have all the info I need to commit identity crime on your behalf.
There's impetus if ever you needed it.
Happy 2007!

Tilt-shift photos r.o.c.k.

2006-12-28T01:03:00.000Z

Welcome to Lilliput

Ever since I saw a set of photos about 18 months ago, where the photographer had taken shots of world landmarks from a helicopter using a tilt-shift lens I was hooked on the crazy model-like images the lens produces and wanted to experiment in making my own, without having to splash on the a special lens, and an SLR to fit it to.

I had a stab at it too, but the blur filters in Photoshop, combined with gradient masks didn't really work - you couldn't control the amount of blurriness, only the amount of opacity to the global blurring you were applying. I could blur parts of the image to create the feeling of depth, but not the amount of bluring. Annoyed, I left it on a shelf in my mind for another time.

Then, I was at Nicky's MA photo exhibition at the LCC the other week and a set of toy-like Milton Keynes photos that were one of her colleagues' contibution to the exhibition used the lens (I thought)and reminded me just how cool I thought those kind of shots were. After she let slip they'd actually been faked in post-production (shh) my interest was once more piqued and I wondered just how people might be doing this effect...

Finally - the other day whilst browsing the stories on Digg.com I chanced upon an 'idiot's guide to tilt-shift' tutorial and it all fell into place. Shock horror! There is a new(ish) blur tool hidden away in CS2 that I had missed!
Much Woo-ing and Yay-ing ensued.

Suffice to say I've been pretty addicted the past few days rifling through my photo archive for suitable shots to doctor, and tweaking the technique (which is easy on the face of it) to get the best results.

Have a look. I think they're pretty rinky-dink...

My tilt-shift photoset on Flickr

Of course - everyone's doing it now. Search for 'fake tilt shift' on Google or Flickr and you'll find lots of good, bad and indifferent attempts. Pfft. So much for keeping abreast of Photoshop improvements. I could have been on the cutting edge!

Tags:Tilt Shift

Bontempi Radio Köln: Edition 10 | Adrift on Moonbase Alpha

2006-12-24T00:34:00.000Z

Adrift on Moonbase Alpha

Welcome to edition ten of Bontempi Radio Köln. 45 minutes in your own personal headphone space - wherever that may be.
This is a special retro edition; Found whilst rooting through a box of cassettes (yes I still have some) I unearthed this pre-Bontempi mix I made around about 1994 or 95 judging by the tunes on it. Global Communication, FSOL, Bandulu, MLO...mmm

No Ableton back then, not even laptops for brassic students, so this is strictly 'old-skool' with the mix done with a combination of 2 mismatched decks, a cruddy vari-speed 4-track tape machine, a CD player and a VCR all hooked up via a cheapo 4 channel mixer on the dining room at home during the summer break. No luxury of post production edits or timestretching then - it was a one take deal and after dusting off the TDK and listening back I was pleasantly surprised with this (most tapes used to mess up at about the 37 minute mark) so I thought y'all might like to hear it. So lean back, turn on the Dolby noise reduction and enjoy! And if anyone can identify the dubby one near the end - I think it's the Original Rockers - and mail me with the title I'll despatch them a Milky Way bar post haste.

Listen here or subscribe via iTunes by clicking the post-title or the Podcast link in the right-hand column

Please mail with requests or ideas for themes or even to lavish your undying love for my aural travails. I'd love to know who you are, what you like and where you listen to the show. I thrive on feedback!

Bontempi Radio Köln 10; 24/10/06
Tracklisting:

01 FFWD - A Violent and Rushing Wind
02 Golden Claw Musics - Long Ships
03 Bandulu - Phaze in (Remix)
04 Peter Gabriel - Of these, hope (Last Temptation of Christ OST)
05 Amorphous Androgynous - Fat Cat
06 Global Communication - 12:18
07 Meat Beat Manifesto/Dudley Moore Trion - Placebo/Millionaire
09 The Orb - Backside of the Moon (Peel Session)
10 OMD - Stanlowe
11 Original Rockers - ??? (anyone know the name of this!?)
10 Fortran 5 - Time to Dream (Spiritfeel's Fruit of the Spirit mix)
11 System 7 - 777 (Ambient mix)
11 Transform - Transformations (MLO Ambient mix)
12 Janis Joplin at Woodstock

Buddha Machines

2006-12-18T20:05:00.000Z

These look interesting...

I'm robably the last person in the world to mention these but to hell with that - they look cool. Sold at Boomkat (a very cool online record store) they are essentially little transisitor radios' that play loops (from a band called FM3) that have been hardwired into them. Forever. You can press a little button fade between them and that's about it. Brian Eno and Thomal Fehlmann have been buying them in bulk apparently.
£14.99 to you sir. Less than a iPod Nano. And in more colours.

Interview with creators here

Tags:Buddha Machines

Mmm Fishcakes...

2006-12-13T21:25:00.000Z

Proud chef blogs his own Thai fishcake recipe

For the up-and-coming family christmas which we celebrate early, I volunteered to make some food and spent the afternoon today doing a rather rich chocolate cheescake and then some Thai fishcakes to take away with us. I absolutely love Thai fish cakes - I'm always lamenting that they don't do them as a main-course at restaurants and have always meant to get around to having a stab at making some myself. So with that in mind I had a wee trawl of teh intarwebs and didn't really find any recipes that I thought looked right or had very hard-to-find ingredients I wouldn 't easily find in a Crüshánde Supermarche.

So with all the bravado of a cocky get I thought 'sod it I'll make it up' and post to cooking and eating a few am really more proud with the result than is normal—so here I am sharing my travails with my ever-interested blog audience.
(Who *are* you guys?)

So - here's teh recipe. It worked out pretty well. You need to be ok with handling fish to make the patties in your hand otherwise you'll get into a real mess trying out icecream scoops or other such nonsense.

Tags:Thai Fishcake recipe

Ingredients:

750g White Fish; (I used haddock but there are cheaper options - Rock, Hake, doesn't really matter)
Thumb-sized piece of root ginger, grated with the fine side of the grater
5 cloves of garlic, pushed through a press
3 teaspoons of lazy red chilli (or chop two or three fresh ones - seeds optional)
Handful of coriander, chopped finely
Handful of chives, chopped into little rings
Zest of two limes
3 tablespoons of thai fish sauce (Nam Pla - from most world food aisles)
1 egg white
Pinch of Salt and Pepper
Generous squib of Tomato pureé for colour

To serve:
Sweet chilli dipping sauce; Lime wedges; satay or anything else you like

Makes about 35 little bitesized cakes (see pic - sorry - phone photo so a bit crap)

Method:

Once zested, chop the lime zests fairly finely. Put the garlic, ginger, chilli, coriander, Nam Pla, salt and pepper into a pestle and mortar along with this chopped zest and pound lightly. Don't go as far as a smooth paste - rough and ready seems plenty enough.

Get the fish off it's skin and either pulse it in a blender till you have a roughish chop, or do as I did and run it through an old-skool worktop-mounted hand mincer using the coursest disc. The point is to get so it comes out finely chopped enough to be formed into little patties, but not so fine it's just a mush.

When all the fish is chopped, put it in a big bowl and add the seasoning from the pestle, along with the chives and the egg-white, a sprinkle of flour and a squib of tomato pureé. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty - mix it all up till you have a nicely even mix.

Heat a big non-stick frying pan to a medium heat and fill with sunflower oil to a depth of about a centimetre (1/3 of inch). When it's hot enough start making the cakes in the palm of your hand (about the size of a big walnut and drop them carefully into the hot oil. If it's hot enough it should sizzle, but you don't want the oil so hot that it's spitting. You are cooking quite a few here so it's maybe better not to put lots in at once so you have a panic when it's time to get them out again. I alternated the moving and turning of cakes with the making and adding new ones so there was always one about ready to take out to leave room for a new one to take it's place. I started off with a slice but a fork was best for moving turning and flatenning the slightly ball-like patties. Cook each one on both sides until they are nicely crisped on both sides and put them on to some kitchen roll to get any excess oil off.

Then eat them!
Dip them in sweet chilli sauce; drizzle lime juice over them; try satay sauce if you like...

Mmm...mnmm...nun...mnymm....ymm....

Fun with Whiteboards

2006-11-28T09:54:00.000Z

Got this vid from Paul Jason

And it's ace. Very odd. Whiteboards must be like the perfect medium for drawn animation. Well. Second to Etch-a-sketch obviously....

The Holy Grail of typeface selection...

2006-11-25T16:36:00.000Z

Font Tagging Please!

By font tagging, I don't mean stencilling Aachen Bold on a wall like Banksy. No no no—I mean adopting the near-ubiquitous of Web 2.0 pursuit of tagging data and objects with keywords so that they are easier to find.

A little background for those of you going 'wtf?'; On-and-off recently I've been collating my burgeoning and disparate collection of fonts (I won't say how many but it's a lot) with FontAgent. And it's a really large amount. As a typographic designer I do keep an unhealthy amount of font names hard-wired into my head, but even The Biggest Font Monkey In Geekdom™ has problems remembering them all. At one time in the heady days of ATM deluxe on OS 9 I actually had my fonts organised by kind (Fraktur, Transitional, Script, Modernist, Retro, etc), but OS X came out, ATM became obsolete and I was back to square one.

So FontAgent has done it's thing and I've rooted out all the crap and duplictates and sorted them by foundry.
But not by 'kind'...

I could spend another weekend-or-three sifting them all and making sets-sorted-by-kind manually — but that's not the really the point. The foundaries should be doing this. If you show up at the iTunes store looking for music you look in categories, find what you want and buy it. Then, when you look in your iTunes database - there it is - in a genre category, and customisable by you too if you'd rather categorise it as 'Crunk' rather than 'Ghetto-tech'. I want to be able to do the same with my fonts. I'm not getting any younger, I want to type 'Swiss' or 'post modern' or 'bad 90's digital' and be rewarded with a list of fonts I can actually use, rather than an unforgivingly inpenetrable A-Z list that requires a full hour just to find a suitable compliment to Frutiger as a display font.

So my appeal to all font foundaries and font management application developers is a simple one: Tag the bloody fonts so people can find them! Or let them tag them themselves with an ID3-style system!
Needle. Haystack. Sorted... Come on now - it's not rocket science!

Tags:Tagged Fonts

Heh...

2006-11-16T19:04:00.000Z

Ellen and Nabaztag

2006-11-05T21:40:00.000Z

Recieved by MMS yesterday

My Niece, Ellen and Nabaztag, a WiFi Bunny. This is too good. I have to keep watching it. It's the arm movements and the music. What a poppet.

Sketch Furniture

2006-11-02T02:51:00.000Z

Sketch in 3D then make the object
Now I've always been a fan of the idea of the 3d printer—The ones that fire lasers into a vat of goo to make a 'real' version of an object you've just spent hours sweating over a painfully complicated CAD application to visualise

But this is the real clincher: Draw the object in real three-dimensional space!
The computer tracks what you do and can then 'print it' as a real object; Truly amazing.
I soooo want a go.

I can imagine this being developed with a range of sculpture tools in a palette like in photoshop so you can rasp, sand. carve or whatever till you get exactly what you want. Sculpture or design without the dust, muss or blisters. Real organic shapes. Created on a human scale. I want a go. Oh I already said that didn't I?

When will home versions be available?

Tags:3D Printing

Surely the biggest waste of public money since 'Howards Way'

2006-10-30T22:59:00.001Z

BBC 3 Torchwood. Ugh.

Russell 'T' Davies: Your new show is so bad, on so many levels, that it's not even funny.

Your characters struggle to be even two dimensional. Your sets stink. Your plots are full of holes and more predictable than day following night. Your props are from Toys 'R' us, but sprayed silver. Your music is gaudy and intrusive. Your 'actors' seem to be from the 'Santa Barbara' school of realism, and yet—somehow—people still think you have this midas touch for gritty adult SF drama.

Personally I say loudly: “Russell: The emperor has no clothes.”
Listen Russ: Your career peaked around the time you were finely crafting those Chuckle Brothers scripts... (Yes kids - look it up on IMDB). Give it up and live your smug life to it's conclusion in sunny Cardiff...

This show am teh suxx0r big time!
Make it s t o p . . . It hurts so b a a d..... A h h h h h h h h h h h h h h h e e e e ee e e ! ! ! ! ! !

Bontempi Radio Köln: Edition 09 | Tiger Mustard

2006-10-30T12:25:00.000Z

Tiger Mustard

Welcome to edition nine of Bontempi Radio Köln. 70+ minutes in your own personal headphone space - wherever that may be. I would say relaxing, but this is probably one of the most bass-heavy podcasts thus far. Lots of freestylin' towards the end. Hope you enjoy - my feelers have been out finding the best music, best *harmonic* mixing and most deja-vu inducing snippets of sampled fun iced-gems can buy. Again - sorry for the delay getting this out. I really should stop saying that it's fortnightly as that's patently not true.

Listen here or subscribe via iTunes by clicking the post-title or the Podcast link in the right-hand column

Pull up an office chair, sofa, cross trainer, car seat, train seat, bike saddle or whatever it is you sit on to listen to these, jack in your phones and enjoy!

Please mail with requests or ideas for themes or even to lavish your undying love for my aural travails. I'd love to know who you are, what you like and where you listen to the show. I thrive on feedback!

Bontempi Radio Köln 09; 30/10/06
Tracklisting: (of sorts - it's get a bit layered towards the end)

01 John Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13
02 OMD: Junk Culture
03 Aneka: Japanese Boy
04 Billy Idol: Catch My Fall (Remix Fix)
05 Yes: Owner of a Lonely Heart
06 John Barry: Florida Fantasy
07 Uffie: Pop The Glock
08 Anthony Rother: Punks
09 Modeselektor: Turn Deaf
10 Vitalic: Suicide Commando
11 Meat Beat Manifesto: Electric People
12 Mike Oldfield: Family Man
13 Missy Elliot: Pass That Dutch
14 Madonna: Music
15 David Bowie: The Man Who Stole The World
16 Olive: You're not Alone
17 Krush: House Arrest
18 Felix Da Housecat: Watching Cars Go By
19 Tori Amos: Professional Widow (Armand Van Heldon mix)
20 Deee Lite: Intro
21 Chicks on Speed: Eurotrash Girl
22 New Order: The Beach
23 Missy Elliot: Work it
24 Sheep on Drugs: Motorbike
25 Bis: Shack Up
26 Felix Da Housecat [Feat. Miss Kittin]: Silver Screen (Shower Scene)
27 Studio B: I See Girls (Tom Neville mix)
28 Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Relax
29 John Carpenter: Prince of Darkness (Transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9)
30 Kylie: I Believe in You

Welcome Westy!

2006-10-28T11:46:00.001+01:00

Holidays inna Boosh Stylee

It's been a rollercoaster week what with house buying, house selling, Jo going into hospital and such but perhaps the coolest thing that makes it all seem a bit less manic was our aquisition of our new 1982 air-cooled VW T25 Westfalia camper. Left hand drive (ooer) it's only had one owner, near Hamburg, since new. We have lots of paperwork to get it registered properly (How's your German?) but we can't wait to get it running properly and do some camping! It sleeps four so form an orderly queue for joining us on holiday ;)

Is it a coincidence we went for a green one like Vince Noir and Howard Moon's?
I think not....

(Please no jibes on the hypocracy of hating SUVs and getting one of these. I know - I know. This will be a LOW milage thing. No little trips to the school for Tarquin and Jocasta in this beast.)

Tags:Westfalia Campers

Telly-Pathy

2006-10-07T22:43:00.000+01:00

For some reason tonight I had an irrational calling to watch Clint Eastwood’s 'Escape from Alcatraz' movie — something I got a copy of a while back in a fit of grabbing "Movies from San Francisco™" to watch after our holiday. (See also 'Dirty Harry', 'The Rock' (awful), 'What's up doc?', Bulliit, The Love Bug...)

Then The Researcher tells me it's on TV tonight anyway. Spooky. Was I tuning-in to the expectant vibes of Clint-lovers everywhere?
Or maybe I just saw a the TV listings in a dream...

Cartoons

2006-10-06T23:40:00.000+01:00

More here

Taming the Bicycle

2006-10-06T14:10:00.000+01:00

Taming the Bicycle by Mark Twain

I love this essay by Mark Twain, published in 1917 at the occasion of him learning to ride a Penny Farthing.

Full Text here

”...I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true; but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my experience...”

London to Brighton 2006

2006-09-29T19:29:00.000+01:00

Lovely update on the black-and-white classic.
Shame the trains look so boring these days but who can resist a nice bit of timelapse.
I should do a bike one of my ride to Chelsea. That might be fun...

The same film but in lovely widescreen Hi-Res

Tags:London to Brighton run

On this ‘Significant’ date....

2006-09-11T08:46:00.000+01:00

Mind The Gap
Since it's officially five years since some idiots blew up some buildings over the pond (maybe not who you think) here's a documentary detailing the gaps in the official story of the 7/7 London Bombings.

The film, presented by ex-MI5 whistleblower David Shayler, argues the need for an Independant Public Inquiry into 7/7 and the surrounding events. Because we are being manipulated and this stuff - strangely - is never on the 'news'.

Other essential viewing; One should really know this stuff if you live in the west:
Adam Curtis’ excellent “Power of Nightmares” documentary
Alex Jones’ “Terrorstorm” documentary

I know - too many videos recently. And ranting as well.
I'll try to be more moderate in future.

Tags:Truth movement

Jus' a wee QTVR from the N. America Trip

2006-09-10T00:40:00.000+01:00

Taken inside the 'Park' Observation car last June

It was moving and I didn't have a tripod but I think it came out pretty well - mostly because it was at Pensioner Lunchtime. Kinda like being in a really big fighter plane heh...

Tags:VIA Canadian QTVR