So Hello There

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.

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

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

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...

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....