Rob Hilken

Maria and Graham Photo Shoot

2007-11-18T13:14:00.000Z

Last weekend I did a photo shoot for Maria and Graham, musicians in Belfast with residencies at several bars... a web site for them is in the works...

See the rest of the photo shoot here. Maria also sings at weddings.

WikiBelfast.com

2007-11-15T13:11:00.000Z

One of my latest web projects is WikiBelfast.com - an all inclusive Wikipedia style websites for information on Belfast.

Useful for residents and visitors alike, I aim to cover absolutely everything Belfast has to offer.

But I need your help! Editing the wiki software is super easy, so sign up and join in :)

New Portraits

2007-11-15T13:01:00.000Z

This blog has been a bit neglected for a while, but I'm going to try and keeping it a bit more up to date with news etc. So first up I'd like to share two portraits with you that I have just finished. I'm pretty happy with them for the most part...

Jocelyn by *rdch on deviant ART

Peggy by *rdch on deviant ART

Google wants your video AGAIN!

2007-01-28T10:46:00.000Z

In August 2005 I blogged about the new Google Video service. Then Google went and bought YouTube and it looked like GoogleVideo might be a dead duck.

Then Google announced that they would be transforming Google Video into a general video search tool, listing videos from both GoogleVideo and YouTube and potentially other video hosting services such as MySpace (my speculation) .

Now we're beginning to see the full story of Google's plans for YouTube. It is planning on introducing a revenue sharing model (similar to AdSense) for video producers.

Basically, if you host a video on YouTube and people click the ads on that page, and if you are the sole copyright owner of the video, you will get a percentage of the revenue generated by the clicks. I estimate that this will be around 75% of the revenue to start with but will probably drop slowly over time (based on speculation of how the AdSense model works).

So if your video becomes huge, you stand to make a fair bit of cash from it all.

If it works, then YouTube will become THE place to post your content, and the amount of great content on there should blossom. In theory anyway - and with Google's track record I have no reason to think otherwise.

C'mon you creatives. Get filming!

ePassports 'at risk' from cloning

2007-01-15T12:32:00.000Z

This story slipped past my radar a month ago when it came out, but it's worth a read...

ePassports 'at risk' from cloning

Yet another example of how ill-concieved security lockdowns will fail to improve our security at all. Another waste of money!

Complete URL control with .htaccess

2007-01-05T17:07:00.000Z

[for webmasters]

OK so it's a bit of a dull thing to blog about, but this thread gives an excellent insight into the world of .htaccess and highlights lots of URL-based issues that you may not have even known were out there.... not least being the issues of duplicate content (on www and non-www versions of your site) in Google.

A guide to fixing Google duplicate content & URL issues

[for non-webmasters]

Kindly move along, there's nothing to see here... ;)

Petition Downing Street to Scrap ID Cards

2006-11-17T15:00:00.000Z

ID Cards are going to be a huge waste of money. So I encourage you all to petition the government to scrap them immediately.

The deadline for this petition is 15th February so please do it asap.

Not only will they infringe civil liberties and dehumanise our population, but they wont improve our security one bit.

Security is all about the weakest link, and ID cards won't eliminate this fact at all. A British-born terrorist may even HAVE a valid ID card, and STILL commit an attrocity.

If they are going to be voluntary then they're just plain pointless - who in their right mind will want one? especially if you're planning on commiting an illegal act.

How will we issue them to immigrants that come from a poor country with an unreliable government that may not even be able to prove their ID anyway?

They say that ID cards may cost the tax payer over a billion pounds in total. I object to that. I don't mind paying taxes if the money is spent well, but I really object to such waste.

The government's record on computer databases (NHS) is so poor that why anyone would trust that this will even work is beyond me.

Spend that money on more intelligence. That's a much better way to improve our security.

SopCast - Free P2P internet TV

2006-11-08T15:39:00.000Z

With this nifty little program - SopCast - you can, amongst other things, watch live premiership over the net... nice!

You do have to put up with the occasional long pause for buffering but you still get most of the action.

Free!

The Life and Times of Victor Bloom

2006-04-16T01:36:00.000+01:00

TheLifeandTimesof is a new site I have set up to explore the possibilities of non-linear collaberative storytelling using wiki software on the Internet.

The wiki will consist of many interlinked pages, some telling stories, some detailing events, some describing people. Anyone can add pages and so the details of the

protangonist's life will emerge slowly and organically.

The wiki revolves around the main character - Victor Bloom - and the details of his life. I don't want to set too many rules for it, other than that is should be all fictional.

Sign up and join in!

We made sushi!

2005-12-02T03:26:00.000Z

Well, we had a lot of good food in Minneapolis this thanksgiving, but the sushi we made at the weekend was fantastic! Thanks for a great week!

Google wants your video

2005-08-30T13:01:00.000+01:00

Google wants your video by ZDNet's Dan Farber -- During a panel at NCTA today, Google co-founder Larry Page announced his company's latest experimental service: video on demand. Users will be able to upload videos, which Google will catalog, host, rank and distribute. Page said that video is more difficult to deal with (bandwidth demands, hosting costs, etc.) than audio (podcasts), but that Google might consider a similar [...]

UK Organ Donor online register

2005-08-22T13:50:00.000+01:00

OK so you carry a donor card, but maybe you don't have it on you all the time... Why not sign up for the online Organ Donor register now?

The Magic Formula for Retail Website Success

2005-07-25T16:46:00.000+01:00

This excellent article by respected Internet marketing expert Todd Malicoat (stuntdubl) goes through all the basics of successfully launching a new e-commerce website. I thoroughly recommend reading it carefully if you have any plans to launch a new site.

How to poach an egg

2005-07-12T13:13:00.000+01:00

B3TA : FEATURES : HOW TO POACH AN EGG

What can I say? This unasuming link arrived in the popbitch email and it's another triumph from b3ta. Life will never be the same again :)

Who Should You Vote For?

2005-04-21T13:54:00.000+01:00

Aim
The aim of this site is to provide voters in the 2005 UK general election with a simple tool to see how the main parties represent their views. While this site is not pursuing any political agenda we would obviously urge all users to research the issues in greater detail themselves before making their final voting choice. This site is not funded by any political party or interest group.

As expected, it told me that I should vote Lib Dem, followed by the Green party.. unfortunately I live in Belfast and am not totally clued up on Northern Ireland politics just yet, so my options aren't as simple as that.

Adam Fields weblog � Why photo editing is important

2005-04-21T12:18:00.000+01:00

Adam Fields weblog � Why photo editing is important

I agree that Photoshop is the new darkroom and images do need a bit of tweaking to get the maximum impact out of each photo, but I dont like what Adam has done to the photo in the example he gave. In my opinion he has cropped too much off the top, and made it too sharp which has resulted in the focal point of the photo being very confused.

However, the third photo uses a cool trick.. one that I used here.

Should people be jailed for graffiti?

2005-04-11T12:54:00.000+01:00

Is jail the best way to deal with young people who scrawl their names over property, costing the UK millions of pounds in clean-up costs a year?

One judge in Manchester thought so - on Thursday he sentenced two young men to 10 months' youth detention for spraying their signatures, or "tags", onto trains and bridges. He said he hoped it would deter others.

The BBC News website went to one of London's graffiti hotspots to see if people thought it was so serious a crime that it merits a custodial sentence.

The Westway flyover, which stretches for miles over west London, has long attracted graffiti artists and taggers.

Colourful artwork festoons the grey concrete arches supporting the dual carriageway and along the neighbouring underground railway track.

In some parts, local authorities and building owners have worked with graffiti artists, commissioning works and encouraging what many admire as a vital urban art form.

Less admired are the ubiquitous and uninvited taggers, who have left their mark on almost every lamp-post, doorway, pillar, shop front and wall in some areas as well as etching their names into bus shelters and train windows.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea says it removed graffiti covering 50,000 square foot - the equivalent of 45 full-size football pitches - on private property alone in 2003-4.

It sees graffiti as an "enviro-crime", which, along with fly-posting, litter and dumped cars, blights its neighbourhoods and can pre-empt spiralling crime and anti-social behaviour.

The cost of cleaning up graffiti across London each year is estimated at £100m.

But in trendy Ladbroke Grove, by the famous Portobello Market, most passers-by saw a clear distinction between genuine street art and messy tagging.

Few thought taggers deserved to be locked up.

Yuri Cardenas, 38, of west London, said it would be better to force offenders to clean up the mess they had made.

He said: "I believe it has to be punished in some way but jail is too harsh."

Nardos Michael, 17, and her friend Ferewaini Habton, 16, said tagging was "stupid", adding: "There's just no need."

But they said locking people up for graffiti was "heavy-handed".

Nardos said: "I think community service would be more appropriate. They could make them clean it up themselves."

Social worker Ines Berg, 34, said she did not see most graffiti as a problem.

She said: "I think the kids should be given more space where they can do something productive with it. It's great. Why shouldn't the place be colourful?

"If this happened, I think a lot of this silly nuisance stuff would stop."

Portobello resident Rachel Collingwood, 39, agreed.

She said: "I like graffiti. I think most people do. I'm just not so mad about it when they write their names over my front door.

"It's grim enough looking at all these grey buildings, especially under the Westway, so let's have a bit of colour - just not on my door please."

Rudy Gad, 37, said the authorities should find out what young people were interested in and provide more activities for them to distract them from nuisance behaviour such as tagging.

"When graffiti originally came out in my school days in '84 or '85 it was done as an art form. But the authorities tried to suppress it.

"Tagging is just done by bored children. If they like art so much then send them on a course for artwork rather than sending them to jail.

"If someone who scrawls their name on walls is sent to prison with bank robbers and murderers, they're going to come out doing much worse things than tagging.

"A 12-month community service order scrubbing off tags would be better."

Patricia Roche, 59, of central London, said the idea of custody for graffiti was "dreadful".

She added: "I like graffiti if it's done well. I don't see anything wrong with it. It brightens up the day sometimes.

"I just don't notice the tagging, I don't care about it and I don't see why people make such as fuss."

New UK Map Site Online

2005-03-18T19:11:00.000Z

I have finally launched the beginnings of my new map of the UK site. I'm very happy with the level of detail of the maps on these UK maps.

Are you blogging mad?!

2005-02-17T12:22:00.000Z

I have decided that the best way to get all the great material I have on the countries that I have visted or lived in, out there is to blog about them!

Scotland travel - Spectacular and scenery characterises Scotland's diverse landscape.

Spain Holidays - Spain is the third most popular tourist country in the world, and its not hard to see why.

Malaga Travel - Malaga is one of 8 provinces in Andalucia. It is also the name of the city that is the capital of the province. The coastline of Malaga is commonly known as the Costa del Sol.

I'm sure there are more to come!

Harry's Top Ten Movies of 2004!

2005-01-06T10:59:00.000Z

From 'Ain't it Cool News'

10 - THE CONTROL ROOM
9 - INCREDIBLES
8 - THE DREAMERS
7 - SILMIDO
6 - ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
5 – JA ZUSTER, NEE ZUSTER
4 - HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS
3 - AVIATOR
2 - BEFORE SUNSET
1 - TAEGUKGI HWINALRIMYEO

Read the article for a brief summary of each film. I'll be trying my best to see all of these in the next few months.

Murals in Belfast

2004-11-15T13:30:00.000Z

I have uploaded a gallery of murals in Belfast, taken mostly in the Shankhill and Falls areas. I have yet to take photos of the ones in East Belfast, but I will upload them as soon as I do.

Star wars 3 - Revenge of the Sith - Screenshots

2004-11-05T19:30:00.000Z

This one one of 12 screenshots I have captured from the new trailer for Star Wars 3 - Revenge of the sith. I can't wait to see a lightsabre wielding Emperor in action!

See more pics here:

Star wars episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith pictures

More Star wars episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith pictures

Countries I have visited

2004-11-03T15:08:00.000Z

World66.com is an open travel site and has some great new features, like this map of visited countries that you can make. I will try to keep this up to date.

You can Create your own visited country map or write about it on the open travel guide.

Wikitravel is another open travel guide project.

KLF Communications

2004-08-13T15:09:00.000+01:00

I've always loved the KLF.

I loved it when they burnt a million quid and I loved it when they deleted their entire back catalogue at the height of their fame, but unfortunately that meant that I never got to hear some of their best work.... until now.

You can use emule to get almost their entire back catalogue in a single download, but that wasn't enough for me :)

So I have been hunting around and these are my tips for the best sources of KLF material:

http://www.biglouis.de/klf/home/ - Loads of news and links... a great site.

http://www.biglouis.de/klf/home/ftp.php - Olav's ftp server works, the other one didn't.

http://www.blacksmoke.org/ - Jimmy Cauty's new project.

http://www.youwhores.com/ - A new Bill Drummond project.

http://www.swcp.com/lazlo-bin/discogs?klf - A complete KLF discography.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onemusic - Jimmy Cauty talks to OneMusic about his new project - Blacksmoke.

Bill Drummond's web site - Includes details of all of his other projects, including 'You Whores' and 'My Death'.

Blackspot Sneakers: An Anti-Corporation Corporation

2004-08-10T17:31:00.000+01:00

"Blackspot sneakers. What an intriguing idea. A non-brand. An anti-brand. Its own brand. A shoe whose only advertising is the word of mouth of its owners, and the impact of the image of its wearers.

But then, I thought, why stop there? Why be an organization marketing an anti-brand, when it can become so much more than just that? Why not turn blackspot sneakers into an anti-corporation? Fight fire with fire. Make the shoes' owners the company's owners. Whenever someone buys a pair of blackspots, he or she is buying a share in blackspot sneakers. A cooperative. An anti-corporation."