13 June 2010
Albert's Space Adventure
My year is finally over and so I’m going to be more free to do a billion and one things that preferably don’t involve deadlines, people called Alice and Bob or any form of knowledge about Oracle Databases.
For most of the year I was spending a large chunk of my time battling with my team to create a game for the PSP.
We created a 2D/3D platform game with an awesome storyline involving dinosaurs, highly trained space monkeys and cube shaped planets.
Seeing as the PSP development kit has now been shipped back off to Sony, and I will likely never get to play my years work ever again I thought I’d upload these couple of pictures here to remind me of both the achievement and the termoil.
Posted by matt at 11:36
20 April 2010
Olympus 35mm compacts
In the last few weeks I’ve ended up owning a couple of very similar looking 35mm compact Olympus cameras. Currently I’m extremely pleased with both of them, as they take lovely sharp photos without me even having to take a moment to think about shutter speeds or depth of field. Both of course have their eccentricities that cameras of such age shouldn’t go without. For example with both cameras if you press the shutter button too fast they seem liable to give you incorrect exposures, something which I’ve learnt through a series of spectacularly poor attempts by ASDA’s scanning to correct it.
35 ECR
The 35 ECR’s favourite eccentricity is taking now illegal 1.3V mercury batteries to power it. Spending 10 minutes bodging the battery holder with some paper and some tin foil allows you to put 2× 675 hearing aid batteries in one of the two slots, giving the correct voltage. Even then though the status lights seem to fade sometimes in completely unpredictable ways. Still as my test roll has shown me, it wasn’t affecting the exposure.
Trip 35
The Trip 35 on the other hand has a selenium light meter, and so no batteries at all! Unfortunately though, rather than the elegant rangefinder focusing mechanism of the 35 ECR, it has a rather antiquated feeling zone focusing mechanism. Sure there’s a certain charm to selecting either 1 person, 2 people, 3 people or a mountain to focus, but my god is it infuriating when your distance estimation isn’t up to scratch and all your photos come back slightly out of focus.
Posted by matt at 16:46
04 April 2010
The gigs of late March 2010
I shot a few gigs towards the end of last month, so I thought I’d pop up a couple of photos.
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra @ The Fleece
Why? @ Thekla
The Album Leaf @ Thekla
Both of those last two were shot on film, something I’m planning to do a bit more at upcoming gigs.
I’m thinking there might be a couple of portfolio worthy shots in there. In fact a portfolio site is being worked on over the coming weeks, and I expect a version online well before the end of this month! It won’t be brilliant to begin with, but it will be good to have one up that I can flash around.
Posted by matt at 22:49
15 March 2010
You're too smart to remember.
The National’s Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers has always been an on/off album for me. It starts amazingly with what could be my favourite song of theirs; Cardinal Song. In fact Cardinal Song taught me how to get through the end of a relationship without the seemingly inevitable element of self destruction. I’ve always struggled with most of the rest of the album though; it has it’s charms, but, well, it just isn’t Aligator or Boxer. Just the other day however I rediscovered my love for the final track of the album, Lucky You, something I see pretty much as a companion to Cardinal Song, bookending the album with post-relationship depression.
Lyrics
Every time you get a drink
And every time you go to sleep
Are those dreams inside you head
Is there sunlight on your bed
And every time you’re driving home
Way outside your safety zone
Wherever you will ever be
You’re never getting rid of me
You own me
There’s nothing you can do
You own me
You coulda made a safer bet
But what you break is what you get
You wake up in the bed you make
I think you made a big mistake
You own me
There’s nothing you can do
You own me
You own me
Lucky you
You own me
There’s nothing you can do
You clean yourself to meet
The man who isn’t me
You’re putting on a shirt
A shirt i’ll never see
The letter’s in your coat
But no one’s in your head
Cause you’re too smart to remember
You’re too smart
Lucky you
Video
Whoever decided to match this song with silent movie The Tram by Krzysztof Kieslowski was truly a genius. The only other Kieslowski work I’ve seen is Trois Couleurs: Bleu, which I didn’t leave as a fan of, but it might not have been the film to watch when I was too sleepy to give it the concentration it may have deserved. Anyways, The Tram matches the song truly perfectly in my opinion.
Posted by matt at 22:10
10 March 2010
I suppose I fall as I fly
I’ve seen Efterklang live twice in the past, and I’m already keenly anticipating their next visit to Bristol in late April. The last few days have been filled with listening to their new album, Magic Chairs and firmly warming to it’s more straightforward sound. So for any Efterklang fans old or new out there that haven’t listened to it yet, here’s a YouTube link to the leading track, and single, Modern Drift.
Dullest video ever?
Just for the contrast, here’s a live version of a song from what many will call the bands heyday; Step Aside. I’ve always found it interesting that they give what used to be their most popular song such a staggeringly different direction when performed live.
All photos by, erm, Me :D.
Posted by matt at 02:11
