This little pocket rocket of a Staffie is called Red, and at the time of writing, he’s available for adoption at BCDH. Pant-pant-pant!

Genghis Khan – he of the floppy ears – has become my regular companion at BCDH, and, though the picture above was taken last week when I was on my own, Mrs P and I both went up today to give the young mutt a bit of exercise. We actually managed, after an hour’s walk and a half-hour frantic scamper around the paddock in pursuit of his rubber ring, to tire him out to an extent that the carers thought most un-Genghis-like.

It’s glorious up there these days; Summer is at full strain, and the greenery is just stunning.

Of all the breeds we’ve walked, none have been as strong as the German Shepherd. Combine this with their relative indifference to us hoomans, and they haven’t been a particular joy to walk. Still, Tess was a sweet big lunk. (‘Big’ being the operative word.)

It’s been quiet on the dog-walking front recently, partly through pressure of work, and partly because I’d been working with dogs y’all had seen before. Today, though, I was determined to get up to BCDH, and we walked a very, very sweet Rottweiler called Jazz. She goes proper batshit-crazy when there are other dogs around, but once she’s out and walking, she’s one of the most good-natured mutts you’d ever meet. I mean, look!

So it turns out that Ellie has a reserve. So after taking her out for a run about in the paddock with me, she went out with her putative new owners, and I ended up with a crazed shaggy lurcher, Genghis Khan. I assume his ears have been docked, though I could be wrong. Regardless, they are most diverting company when walking:



And here he is just having a sniff around:

Today is my birthday. And not just any old birthday; today is my 30th. I am officially no longer young. But so-the-fuck what? Thanks to friends in Bath and London, family, and to my utterly fabulous and sexy lady, I’ve had the best birthday ever. Thanks, all.

I was slightly wary of Ellie the Weimaraner, having been told she was ‘in here for a reason’ and being warned that she was dog-aggressive, but as it turned out she was sweet as pie. When we encountered other dogs, I’d just stop, keep her on a short leash, and keep a gentle touch on her head to remind her I was there and I was calm. And in fact, once we were out into the fields, she was nothing short of lovely – very playful, though desperate to be off her lead, and affectionate. And just look at those big floppy ears! More pictures – including her Queen of the World™ pose – on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

This is Teenie, a Doberman with an inexpertly-docked (hence, still not healed) tail.



The snow makes her go a bit mad.



(Man, I really shouldn’t put Lightroom-tweaked raw photos from a DSLR next to video output from the iPhone 3GS. Bleurch.) More pics on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

One of the highlights of visiting the folks’ for Christmas was meeting their two new cats, Buddy and Lennon. Both ginger toms – they’re not brothers, though they’ll snuggle down together and wash each other – they have very distinct personalities. When I got home, sadly, I found that I only had pictures of one, the more timid Lennon, but aww, just look!

What bigs eyes you have!


What big teeth you have!


What a pink nose you have!


What fluffy paws you have!

This sad little chap is Spike, an American Bulldog who was rehomed from the Bath Cats and Dogs Home and later dumped again at Weston-super-Mare to be found as a stray and picked up by volunteers a second time. He’s thin, timid and tired.



I’m not overly sentimental about animals, and on the scale of human cruelty, I guess that dumping a dog for whatever reason barely registers, but I’m utterly at a loss as to why someone, having taken an animal from a rescue home – and having been given the education that is insisted on there – would still think it acceptable to pull up in a car, push a dog out, and drive off. They know that the rescue home exists, and while I’m sure you’d feel like a heel returning an animal to a centre after trying to home it, that’s surely preferable to betraying its trust and dumping it to fend for itself. Bah.

He wasn’t the most demonstrative dog – though latterly he warmed especially to Jenny – but he was very gentle and sweet with his big paws and his droopy jowls and his big heid, and he was delighted to see his carer again. I suspect he now sees the Bath Cats and Dogs Home as being his safe and loving place, which, though true, is still sad.

Meet Lennie – “a Labrador’s temperament stuck in a Staffi body”, his carer says – who I walked today. He didn’t care much for hoomans, though he warmed to me by the end of the walk, but it was lovely to get back up to the home after work had kept me away for two months. A couple more photos – not that they really add much – on Flickr.

Before Tired, unshaven, dejected, stressed, over-committed, not blogging


After Freshly-shaven, cared-for-by-wife, gurning like an knob, probably still not blogging

It's a good job that MacFormat's photoshoot with our car took place yesterday…

IMAGE COURTESY OF FUTURE PUBLISHING LTD/JOBY SESSIONS

...as today an MPV reversed into us and now Carlos has a squished nose:

Though Marley and Digger are apparently best friends, Marley – the Staffie cross – has a rather worrying habit of just walking on Digger, the Daschund cross. Sweet pair, though actually very nervous of other dogs. They're new additions to the home, having just arrived yesterday. Shot some video too; will edit and upload later.

Oh, look; we walked a lovely big Akita Inu teddy bear from Hamleys. More photos here, though you should also watch this video of an Akita Inu puppy. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Meet Daisy, the dog who lived in the house to which our little holiday gîte was attached. She's pulling that rather alarming face because she's in the middle of masticating one of the many figs that fell from the tree at the front door. You haven’t lived until you've seen a Staffie cross chow down on a series of sticky, slightly fermented figs. Now, you might think that eating dozens of figs wouldn't be good for a small dog, and if you did, the spate of mournful farts she let out in our company would seem to lend credence to your theory.



And, as always, there are a bunch more photos from France on Flickr. Not terrific shots, I must say; the weather was against me, and, worse, the muse just didn't seem to be with me.

Ma and Pa Phin came to visit a couple of weekends ago, and we went up ensemble to walk some dugs. We got Jess (top) and Monty, a couple of very, very sweet Collies. Monty, unless, as above, you were tickling his tummy, was a real ball of energy, and we were all exhausted when we brought them back to the kennels. More pictures on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Meet Barnaby, a lazy St Bernard with a fondness for tummy rubs. We remain suspicious that he was not, in fact, a real dog, but was a man wearing a suit created by The Jim Henson Company. Such a big softie, he just stood there with a hurt expression while a family, who were out walking a muzzle-less Buster, let their dog take lump out of Barnaby’s big fluffy tail. (Special shot of the feather duster that he calls his tail shown in the second picture, below.) There are more shots of Barnaby getting some attention on Flickr.




And last week, we walked Kizzie, a sweet old Rottweiler whom we’ve walked before. We actually got her by mistake, as I got her confused with the much livelier Rottweiler, Cassie, that I’d had the week before. But then, after we’d walked Kizzie, we spotted Cassie in her kennel, and when I walked up to say hello, she bared her teeth and started barking at me. I’m going to go ahead and assume this was because she was feeling nervous, enclosed in her kennel, and that I’d just been too presumptuous in walking straight up to her, because she was very well behaved when I had walked her the week before. Plus, I was wearing sunglasses, and she might have been freaked by not being able to see my eyes. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Jenny’s cousin and thoroughly, delightfully batty aunts came to visit. We painted crockery...



...got Sheila and Isla convinced that Wii Tennis was a great game...



...and, with the power of OldBooth on the iPhone, turned Sheila into a man:

I’ve been mucking about with virtual machines a lot recently, and in order to get Windows 95 to install, I had to dig out my USB floppy drive to make an image of the boot floppy. Young whippersnappers may never have heard the satisfying clunk and whrt-whrt-fud-fud-fud of a 3½″ floppy drive, so I’ve preserved it here for all eternity. May we never see its like again. (I am, as an aside, just old enough to remember 5¼″ floppies, and weird enough even to remember the weird, chunky 3″ models used by the Amstrad PCWs my family had.)

On this day four years ago, Wife and I hired a band, invited a bunch of people round, and told them all that we each thought the other was a pretty nice person, all things considered. Today marks our fourth anniversary, and we toddled off to the Michelin-starred The Bath Priory for lunch. Such a glorious experience, and rounded off beautifully with this rather lovely selection of petit fours. Marriage rocks, by the way.

Yesterday’s dog was Cassie, a Rottweiler who, unlike Kizzie, was decidedly not arthritic. She was strong, and it took us while to get to know each other, but by the end of walk, I had her sitting at heel like a good girl when we stopped and waited for other dogs to pass. (Of particular note since she lunged madly at the first few dogs we passed.) A combination of heavy sporadic rain and wanting to give her more attention than any of the other dogs I’ve walked to date meant that the only usable image I have of her is the tiny clip below, but I think it’s worth sharing to show that even Rotties are just big puppies underneath. (I was struck again by how alike dogs are; despite knowing that they share a common ancestor only a handful of generations back, it’s still striking to me that a stocky great lug of a beast like Cassie would sniff at a scent in the grass with the utmost delicacy and care, and that she’d respond to the same commands, affection and body language as any other.)



We also went to Cardiff to see Cope, and though we had to leave early today so I could get back and get some work done, we took time to visit the bay and stop into the Assembly building. It’s a stunning piece of architecture, and the use of wood and slate is a sympathetic yet bold mix of traditional materials and techniques married to uncompromisingly modern aesthetic. The openness and welcoming nature of the place is also striking.

What’s more, though the shots below – the brick building is not the Assembly, though I forget its name and use now – have been Photoshopped (sorry Adobe), they’re the first in-anger pictures I’ve taken with the iPhone 3GS, and they are at least passable.

Trudy – a cross between a collie and a lab, I think – was described as ‘very boisterous’. Quite. Still, after the first twenty minutes of mentalness, she settled and would even sit well – until the very last lungey second – as we waited to let other dogs pass. More pictures on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Despite the 5am start, today’s visit to Brighton was wonderful. Met up with some of the dudes from Realmac for brunch, then caught up with The Nicest Man In The World® Simon Handby. Man, it was lovely to see him again. Then it was time for The Dave & Mendy Hour™, and it was all kinds of wonderful to see the little pair of scamps again. The most surreal moment – apart, possibly, from the tale of the glow-in-the-dark paint in the marital bedroom – was when a random biddy came up to our table in the middle of an anecdote to ask us if we could send a text message on her phone for her. Fair enough. Bemusedly, Dave complied, as the other three of us fought hard to avoid eye contact.



It would all have been fine, even though she then just started randomly telling us facts about her life and basically just not buggering off again after the message was sent, but for one odd little postscript to her rambling. It could have been ‘the gays’, but I think she was actually complaining about all the coons, and how they get everything and we get nothing. It’s apparently why she won’t go to London. At this point I made it clear somehow – it may have been by saying ‘goodbye’ with uncharacteristic firmness – that we were done talking, and she ambled off. The bigoted old trout.

Some people take pictures of their first born. Some takes pictures of the amazing places they have been privileged to visit. Me, I use photography to immortalise such epic meals as tonight’s risotto, which looked so fine in the evening sun as I brought it through from the kitchen that I thought it deserved capturing, uploading to Flickr, Twittering, posting on Facebook, and blogging here. It was that good. Good job, Wife.

Stig, my most favouritist of the nutjobs from the Bath Cat & Dogs Home, is shortly to get a new home. It’s not ours, sadly, so we took him for a last walk today. Man, I love this dog.

It was a Venn diagram intersection of serendipity: I wanted to muck about with some portrait photography, and Wife fancied some up-to-date shots. So off we toddled to Westonbirt with my cheap-but-lovely f/1.8 lens and a bag full of shrugs and egg yolk to take some pictures. Much fun was had there and in Lightroom, and further results can be seen on Flickr.

Marvin was, despite his angelic looks – brought to you here courtesy of my review iPhone 3GS – a bit of a Bad Dog. He was very young, pumped full of Collie madness, and clearly not dealing well with kennel life. Still, that was no excuse for jumping up, grabbing my t-shirt in his mouth, and tugging at it. It was all in play – no damage to the material, even – but never have I issued a ‘No!’ with such force. Bad dog!

Jamie came to visit us from that London place this weekend. Many and varied japes were had, including a visit to the Bath Cat and Dogs Home this morning to walk a sweet-natured lurcher called Flora and a young German Shepherd who rejoiced in the world’s chavviest name, Bacardi. Here is young Mr Malcolm displaying his dog mastery.



We also went out to Lacock; it’s only half an hour’s drive west of Bath, and it’s utterly entrancing. We’d been to the village before – where at the moment filming for Cranford is taking place – but never to the abbey. If the cloisters below look familiar somehow, it’s because it’s where many scenes for the Harry Potter franchise are shot. Lovely place, and if you’re local and haven’t yet been, floor tiger judges you.

One would assume that, before I even wrote this, some Hollywood bigwig spat out his cigar and told his seckitery to get this guy in pronto.



This being the internet, I’m assuming that some folks will want to tell me that what he does is in no way remarkable. You, you poor, joyless and bitter person, may have a point, and there’s no doubting the music and ’tude on display here is a bit knob, but damn that boy can do things that appear to defy physics. [via]

Last week, we walked an arthritic Rottweiler called Kizzie, and a mental Staffie cross called Oxo. I forgot my camera. This week, I walked Oxo again, and forgot my camera again. So instead of photographs, Oxo will today be represented by an audio recording made on my iPhone of him as he snuffled around in the undergrowth. Click here to listen to him – we’re not sure if his obsession with spending minutes at a time sniffing an apparently insignificant patch of grass means his nose is hypersensitive or dulled beyond use. We just know that it takes twice as long to cover a set distance with him. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Chatting to one of my colleagues from our sister magazine, Mac|Life, the idea of The MacFormat Cultural Outreach Programme was born. I bought and packaged up a selection of the finest comestibles this great nation of ours has ever produced, and mailed them off to the peeps in San Francisco.

The journey wasn’t kind to the box; when we sent it, it looked like this:

...but when it arrived in the US of A – after a baffling detour to Germany, apparently – it looked like this:

More photos from the American end here, and if you’d like to know what was in the box o’ treats, you can read Wife’s PDF commentary here. Now, we wait; American deliciousnessnessness will be here before long.

I may be a technology journalist, but I trained as a graphic designer. I was always a geek, and when, a few weeks after graduating, I saw an ad for a Labs Assistant for MacUser, I applied. I got the job and the rest, as people have an egotistical habit of saying, is history. I was planning on applying for design jobs, though, and had even got as far as designing and prototyping the little bit of direct mail I had intended to send. I found it the other day:


Wife insists that this was originally her idea; this may be* technically true.

*is

Stig may be the daftest dog ever born. When he found this stick, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to chew it or carry it, so opted for walking along, head tilted back, attempting to eat the stick at the same time. This was, it scarcely needs saying, doomed to failure, and the stick was frequently dropped. He would also, adorably, throw the stick for himself, tossing it away with a flick of the head then bounding the two strides to where it had landed before gumming it up again.


This is Stig on a log, trying to walk in seven directions at once, and chew his own lead. Like I said: daftest dog ever born. More pictures on Flickr. (What is Dog of the Week?)

This is Cara. She is mad. We wanted to keep her. (What is Dog of the Week?)

Stig was huge, and was on two leads. He liked to stand on his hind legs with his front paws on my shoulders, and to chew his chain lead. He was, however, a sweetheart, and I was given some treats to help train him; if he got too boisterous, you gave him the ‘sit’ command while holding a treat at shoulder level. He’d immediately drop to his haunches – good boy! – and sit waiting for his treat which you’d then drop for him to clop out of mid-air. (He did at one point try to clop a bumble bee out of mid-air, but missed, luckily.)

I forgot to put a card in my DSLR, so the above picture is courtesy of the iPhone’s appalling sensor, heavily Photoshopped.

Today we went in a hot air balloon; we took off from here and landed here. It was brilliant; I hereby declare it my ambition to be served chilled champagne at 3000′ at least once a month, while floating serenely above some (surprisingly vocal and unsurprisingly spooked) farmyard animals. Wife kindly pointed out that I was taking more photographs than the rest of the group combined, but I did manage to get some nice shots; a few were well-suited to my tilt-shift technique that fools the eye into thinking you’re looking at a scale model:



And some non-novelty pictures too, such as this one, below. There are lots more, ripe for the desktop-in’, on Flickr.



I know; I’ve completely overcooked the colours. The crazy slab of shadow is real, however.

I’m not saying that someone at Apple should be shot – something I have been told about staff on a magazine I’ve worked for when a reader spotted a typo – but I am genuinely surprised to see Apple, a company famed for meticulous, anal attention to detail, making gaffes like this one. The lack of an intercap B on MacBook, right on the www.apple.com/uk homepage, is weird. Was Steve personally proofing the pages before he took some time off?

I haven’t blindly embedded a YouTube video for ages, so perhaps you’ll forgive me this one. Premise: put a DV camera on a sushi conveyor belt, and let it wander round the restaurant. Charming stuff, and watching the different reactions of people to it as they click – or not – is endlessly fascinating.

Another Sooper Sekrit project at MacFormat has kept me occupied for a while, but that’s all done and dusted and the only thing* keeping me from blogging more regularly is, y’know, the actual day job.

Never mind; it’s all good. I have new laptop, our dishwasher will soon be plumbed in, and we have all sort of japes planned for the end of the week when I shall be celebrating the final birthday of my second decade.

We bin walkin’ some dawgs, too, though I’m not going to dwell on this because the dog we walked last week, Shadow, managed to cut her nose while trying to wrestle her muzzle off, and the thought of this makes Wife sad. Here she (Shadow, not Wife) is, looking chipper, though; she was so utterly dedicated to straining at her (new; we finally bought one) leash that for most of the first half-hour she was walking at this ker-a-zee 45° angle.


And today, I went up and took a mastiff cross called Maurice (Maw-REECE) out for a spin. Very aggressive towards other dogs, he also had a worrying habit of lunging at small children too; a short leash, to put it mildly, was called for.

Once we were about in the fields, though, he settled down and was a real sweetie. Occasionally he’d block me, snooking his head around my leg so I couldn’t move it forward. He’d then stare dolefully up at me and give a small wag of his tail until I hunkered down and gave him some love. If I dropped something and had to stop, he'd trot solicitously back; “Oh, hello, hooman, you appear to have dropped something. I have no opposable thumbs, but I'd like to help. No? OK, what about a wag? What about leaning against you; I’m not particularly heavy?”


* Apart from all the other stuff. And Twitter.

On Friday we had a Poringe First: we were visited by a little person. The Family Brennan came to visit, and that meant that for the first time we see young Niamh in the flesh; boy is she a cutie. I mean, look at those teeny little hands next to Wife’s; someone pass me the chilli dipping sauce!

More photos of Baby Brennan on Flickr.

And this in the interface to a high-profile Apple application, too. I am genuinely shocked; Apple is usually at last least as anal as I when it comes to grammar. Blargle.

Yay, the weekend. Christ, I was ready for it this week, and to celebrate I took myself off to Bath’s RSPCA cat and dogs’ home. Crazy deadlines over Christmas plus a general disruption to our routine meant we had got out of the way of the weekly walk, and I’ve been itching to get back into it.

Today’s companion on the walk was Alfie, ostensibly a Staffie though he looks a bit too gracile to me. I thought from that grey muzzle that he’d be a bit docile. Bollocks; he was fast and determined to follow only his route. I was originally resistant to this, but then I relented when He Found A Stick. Or rather, as you can see, a log-ette. He carried this for over a mile, and it was only when we were about to head back into the home – with me thinking they might be none too impressed – that I took a firm grip on it and said “give”. And he did. Given that I’m such a gamma male in real life, it’s astonishing how quickly dogs seem to identify me as the leader of the pack.




In other news, we bought a knife sharpener and a new iron today. They can, respectively, be summed up as “magical” and “badass”. The iron is black, yo, and has a two-stage anti-calc system. Respect.

San Francisco = current location
Up for = more than 24 hours
Internet connection = shitty
Me = too tired to write proper sentences
Below = some night time pics from SF
Flickr = not updated yet
Wife = missed

And as my hairline takes another leap towards the nape of my neck, Future Publishing Ltd is delighted to announce another special, MacFormat presents Switch to Mac!, this time aimed at the burgeoning ‘switchers’ market, those krazy kats who are switching from PC to Mac in their tens of thousands. (Over half of all Macs sold are sold to those who’ve never used a Mac before, Apple tells us.)

Like its stablemate The Essential iPhone Handbook, it’s a thing of beauty. I didn’t edit this one, but I wrote about a third of it all told; I’ve been going through it again just now to put the graphics together for this post, and I’m really proud of what we’ve created. There’s loads of information in there, including which Mac is right for you, how to migrate your data from your PC to your new Mac, and how to use all the best-of-breed media applications that all Macs ship with. Plus there’s troubleshooting advice and some ideas on essential kit you can add to your Mac setup; it’s all written specifically for ex-Windows users, too, with liberal use of terms Windows users will be familiar with, and jargon-busters and dictionaries galore.

Go! Buy a copy for the switcher in your life!

Do you ever do that thing with your significant other where you wonder what it would be like if you swapped jobs for a day? Wife and I pretty much did that today, with she on her second day of life as a Futureite, and me on the first of three days teaching some lovely folks at the company how to use Apple’s presentation app, Keynote.

It was strange, going home together and comparing notes on our day that sounded like the wrong person was saying them; her concerns were all editorial, and mine were all about teaching, learning objectives and assessment. Still, it was fun, and I’m looking forward to the next two sessions – intermediate and advanced – over the coming days. (Picture included below simply because I think posts can look a bit bereft without images, but it’s just a static PNG; no free Keynote training for you, Jimbob.)



While you’re here, why not pop over to my ma’s Picasa page and witness the demolition* of my childhood home?

* It’s not actually being demolished; only the manky modern extension is being knocked down, and in its place a phoenix† will arise.
† A smarter new extension with lots of storage and an en-suite, I meant to say.

I’m reviewing a little USB microscope, and it’s feeding my macro obsession. Yes, the pictures it takes are hardly medical-grade, but who can fail to love something that produces close-up images of the world around you. Wife, after spending half an hour quite literally poring over her skin in minute detail, proclaimed it to be the best piece of technology ever; suck on that, Hubble. Anyway, I’m still all full of mucus and can barely see the screen, so here’s a little microscope quiz for you:






If you get them all right, you could win either a Mars bar or the chance for me to put three objects of your choosing under the microscope and have me email the images to you. In the event of a draw, the prize will go to the person who most specifically identifies each object. Wife, of course, is not permitted to enter.

When I last tinkered with Linux a few years ago, it was more of an academic exercise than a realistic attempt to embrace open source or switch to a new operating system. On the old G3 I was using at the time, I couldn’t get the graphics card to output at anything higher than 1024x768, installation was courtesy of a slightly terrifying text-only interface, and Wi-Fi was more a theoretical ideal than anything that I could actually coax into operation. (I’m quite sure the res and Wi-Fi were fixable, but I ran out of patience before I fixed them.)

Fast forward to now, however, and Things Done Change. A slightly newer 500MHz Power Mac G4 in our study is now dual-booting into Mac OS X and Ubuntu, the Live CD’s installer was a joy, the screen’s at my display’s native res, and it’s connected to my WPA-protected wireless network courtesy of a Broadcom Wi-Fi card fitted in a PCI slot. I’ve even connected to my iDisk – yes, of course I am; it’s just a vanilla WebDAV volume – and am working off that in a rich text editor that puts Word to shame. And all for free.



All this is possible not just because Ubuntu is a very user-friendy distro that has come a long way, but because my knowledge of computers has increased as well. (I had to fetch the Broadcom firmware before my Wi-Fi card would work; ‘Broadcom’ and ‘firmware’ are moderately complex notions, and editing the yaboot.conf file to define the default boot OS is something many would balk at, so it’s not mass market yet.)

But – and excuse me as I saddle up my hobby horse – technology these days doesn’t have to get simpler for it to have mass-market appeal. It’s like has happened with me and Linux: where a downward-curving ‘complexity’ line meets an upward-curving ‘ability’ line lies the point at which technology and humans get along. ‘Win’, in other words. We no longer have to make technology simple enough for those who in the 80s were famously unable to programme a VCR. Sure, it’s nice to have simplicity and intuitiveness as a target – and Mac OS X gets this right better than any Windows or Linux flavour that I’ve used – but the great thing is that for people of my generation and for those coming up behind us, the language of computing is so instinctual and ingrained that a smidge of complexity doesn’t panic us.

A netbook running Windows sharing the screen over the internet of a Mac mini booted into Mac OS X 10.5, itself running a virtualised copy of a Boot Camp’d Windows XP in Parallels Desktop for Mac’s Coherence mode:



And all so I can have Stephen Fry in America ready to watch when I get home. I like to think he’d be tickled by this.

So, yes, things have been A Bit Busy recently, as pointed out by Wife, and as has been apparent from my veering-wildly-between-euphoria-and-despair status updates over there on the right. I can now exclusively (read: not exclusively at all) reveal what has been behind it all: I’ve been nurturing our latest baby, the snappily-titled MacFormat presents The Essential iPhone Handbook, into existence.

And what a pretty thing it is too. A hundred pages long, it’s packed with beautiful photography and easy-to-understand, authoritative advice, and includes independent buying information, helpful tutorials, reviews of the very best third-party applications and hardware, clear and concise troubleshooting guides, and interviews with celebrities about their iPhones.

Go! Buy a copy! Justify Future’s faith in making me its editor! (And please note that the cover image currently on My Favourite Magazines is incorrect; I’m chasing to get it changed.)







Told you it was a pretty, pretty thing. That portrait of Woz is my work, too; I must remember to mail a copy to my old (read: former) art teacher to demonstrate that I haven’t completely forgotten how to hold a paintbrush*.
* Actually, it’s a digital painting, created using the ever-excellent ArtRage, so it was not so much a paintbrush that got wielded as a stylus, but the point still, just, stands.

Some children dream of being firemen. Some of being astronauts. I dreamed of having business cards.

I didn’t, just to be clear, dream of having a business. I just wanted to have the cards. Thinking about it sensibly, I suspect this was largely because in the films of my childhood, the ultimate moment of cool was when the be-shoulder-padded gent reached into his inside pocket and flicked out a small rectangle of white card, and said, with that special intonation that’s impossible to capture in text: “my card”.

As a troubled teen, I’d design cards on my Amstrad PcW10, print them onto special pre-perforated sheets of A4, then allow them to moulder quietly on a pile. I was, after all, a teenager, and didn’t have anyone to give business cards to.

Recently, though, I’ve found myself genuinely in need of cards that have some of my details on them. Of course I have cards for MacFormat, but that’s not always what I want to give out, and in any case they don’t have my mobile number on them. And so I designed something and got them printed up properly. The idea, because I’m ostensibly someone who writes for a living and who revels in verbal wit, was to have a card that narrated a little story, telling folks a bit about me, and that, for example, they could call me on this number, but that I prefer to get email at this address. I’m happy with the way they’ve turned out, with lots of little typographic attention to detail and crisp, publication-like black-on-white text; the one thing I’d have done differently with hindsight is to have orientated the cards vertically, the more closely to mimic the magazine pages that I help produce.

So a few weeks ago I had a white board fitted at MacFormat so we could keep track of reviews stuff. The plan went slightly awry, however, and it was horribly abused. And so, before we wiped it the other day in order to use it properly, I took a (shitty iPhone*) shot of the madness so that it was recorded for posterity.

Please note: every single thing on the board is pure wank. Nothing is based in fact and nothing here should be taken as characterisation of MacFormat, the market, publishing in general, humanity, the people at the magazine or, indeed, anything at all.

* The iPhone’s camera is utterly mediocre; for the first time ever today, however, I took a photo in relatively low light using my iPhone that wasn’t dreadful. iPhone in ‘not taking terrible photos’ shocker.

And so the Smith-Graham-Smith’s party was lots of fun. The theme was 70s, and as usual Mrs and I went a little bit over the top with costumes. Memo to self: stop basing sense of self-worth on how well you do any given task; no-one is awarding marks.

As the Mateus Rosé flowed, it occurred to me that nothing marked us out as uncultured heathens more than the reaction of the other guests to the little bowls of pink stuff Lise put out to accompany the Monster Munch, Twiglets and Crispy Pancakes. For us, this was, clearly, Angel Delight. But we’re common; everyone else assumed it was taramasalata. I had never heard of taramasalata before the age of 23, and it’s not hard to see why. “Haw, Jimmy; Ah canna get this tarry massey latta tae stay in wan bit lang enough tae deep-fry it.”

More photos, including one of Mrs P’s get-up, on Flickr.

Oh, and thanks, all, for the rockin’ book recommendations in the comments thread on my post below; keep ’em coming.

Being a list in no particular order of stuff that we already know but that this weekend has confirmed.

• Jenny cannot drink more than one glass of Kir Royale without becoming utterly and amusingly drunk. No other drink has this effect on her.
• It’s not a weekend unless you visit Sainsbury’s at least once for every day of the weekend. Bank Holiday Mondays are included in this.
• There are only three basic plots for Sex and the City. (In this it’s very similar to Scot-wean-toon Oor Wullie, but with more, um, willies.) A Men are bastards/unnecessary B Women are sassy C Maxing out your credit card every episode is consequence-free.
• It’s impossible to buy a REDACTED in Bath, no matter now often you visit the REDACTED shop, largely because it’s never fucking open.*
• We could eat kedgeree for breakfast and dinner. In fact on Monday we did just that. We ♥ kedge. Bonus fact: when I first knew her, Jenny hated fish, rice and curry. Getting her to eat all three in the same dish for breakfast is proof, were any needed, that you can change someone.

* Censored so that D&L don’t have any inkling of the amazing† costume that I’ll be wearing to their 70s party on Saturday.
† Lame and overworked

I really am having a great time with my new DSLR, getting to grips even with doing stuff on full manual rather than relying on Program AE or Av/Tv. I’m loving the creative control of my f/1.8 lens; the selective focus in this photo of Jenny and her dad is intentional.

And today we went to Dyrham Park, a National Trust property near Bath. Though there were some beautiful landscape shots to be taken, my attention was caught by the selection of old wooden wagons and agricultural implements in the outhouses.



High-res and other shots, comme d’habitude, on Flickr.

What do you do with £500-worth of high-spec digital camera goodness? Why, take slow-mo shots of an aging Staffie eating grass, of course.

Well that was fun, wasn’t it? This is my ninth day off in a row – a record, I think, since starting at Future – and it has been all kinds of fun. What was originally planned as a week of Cornwall camping was cut short a little by the weather; though we were actually very lucky – the evenings were calm and dry – we did get caught in the car in some torrential downpours, and spent the second night in the tent fearing that we were about to end up in Kansas as the wind whipped around us. The campsite we stayed at, however, was rather lovely; it had a river running through the middle of it, and campfires were allowed. We were quite tentative on the first night (picture below) but on the second we got a real crackler going. It was all very ‘man make shelter; man make fire’. Props to wife for not being too grunky throughout the whole affair.

But we’ve had all sorts of fun back in Bath, too. There have been DVDs (hey, Cloverfield is good, isn’t it?), cinema visits (hey, The Dark Knight is good, isn’t it?) fancy meals out and trips to Westonbirt Arboretum where I played about with my cheap-but-rather-rewarding new Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. Since I took some photos for Mrs P’s Arts Week at the end of term, a couple of her colleagues have asked if I would take some portrait shots of them and their families, and I wanted a lens with a nice wide aperture to let me work in low light and to get some nice bokeh going on. (I’m never sure how to pronounce ‘bokeh’, which I know is an anglicised spelling specifically designed to make it obvious how to pronounce the Japanese; how should a gaijin pronounce ボケ味 so as not to appear like a twat, oh Japanese-speaking-brother-in-law?)

Despite having lived here for well over a year now, it was only this week that we went to the baths for the first time. We’d been to the Roman ruins a couple of times before, but this was out first visit to the new Thermae Bath Spa. It. Was. Idyllic. The rooftop pool is paradisal, and by lying on your back with your ankles tucked over the side and one of the big floaty foam tubes wrapped around you, you can soak up the sun in near-silent bliss.
No dog walking today as some manner of sporting event prevented us from find anywhere to park up at the university. Never fear: the relentless, pitiless and pointless stream of pictures-of-dogs-you-don’t-know-taken-by-someone-you-probably-only-know-a-little will resume next week. Stay tuned!

Finally we got a tent that was easy to put up. So easy, in fact, that our conviction that the first one we bought was actually faulty has only been strengthened. Having given it a dry run in the back garden this afternoon, we’ll pack up the car and head for deepest Cornwall on Monday. I’d like to get as far down as Land’s End – having been to John o’ Groats as a child – but given that the forecast for next week is a little rocky this may be a vain hope. We may be ‘forced’ to ‘endure’ the ‘lack of adventure’ to be found in a cosy, family-run B&B.

I’d like to take this opportunity, too, to make it clear that my technique for folding up a tent – doing a roly-poly along its length to get all the air out so it rolls up tight – is perfectly legitimate and not at all embarrassing. To me.

I will have my laptop with me next week – I have some freelance to polish off; it’s not that I can’t live without it* – but we’ll probably both be offline by choice until 2 August. Keep an eye on my main Flickr account and the photoblog account as we might throw some photos up there.


* No, really. I’d have my iPhone anyway.

Pretty, pretty Sandy! Pretty boy! Look at that pretty face! He’d been in isolation and this was one of his first walks; he was literally jumping with excitement – bounding up to shoulder level – when he was brought out of his cage. He was very bright; though initially foxed by some of the swing-gates that we encountered – trying in the first instance to poke his head straight through the bars – by the time we were on our way back he knew just how to snake through them. Pretty, clever boy! Flickr pics here.

Since my iPhone is in iPhone hospital being nursed back to iPhone health, and since neither of the O2 shops I went to had any loan phones, and since I gave all but one phone of my past mobiles away, and since that one remaining mobile is missing a charger and is in any case locked to Vodafone... deep breath... I bought this little guy on eBay.

I had one when I were a lad, and really liked it. I’m enjoying rocking the retro vibe – BT Cellnet, for fuck sake – but WTF is with no predictive text, monophonic ringtones and, of course, no pissing web access? I can’t, as Aston was wont to comment, work in these conditions. Roll on Friday...

Meet Ozzie, the most doleful of Staffies. From his gummy eyes to the bald tip of his tail, this walking tragedy was nevertheless a real sweetheart who, whenever Jenny or I fell behind, would turn round and stare mournfully until the whole pack had caught up.

And now, excuse me while I fall asleep face-first into my keyboard. Despite taking Friday off, this has been a prodigiously busy weekend and I’m pooped.

Robbie — another Staffie since we find ourselves loving their compact, brassy charm — was a-dore-able. While for the first half of the walk he was all about the forward momentum, once he’d tired himself out a bit he became much more affectionate and would roll on his back to have his tummy tickled, submit to all sorts of velvety-wonton stroking, and even jump up next to me to have a cuddle when I sat on a log. He was the most outwardly affectionate of the dogs we’ve walked, and though he was happy to trot back into the home — and was delighted to see his carer again — when we walked away after giving him back, he tried to follow us. Bless.

He was a hugely muscled dog, and though small, he was capable of really tugging on the lead. His shoulder and hindquarters were just pure, solid muscle, of the kind that makes my flabby, sedentary body weep with jealousy.

In photography news, I need to start taking more control of shutter speeds. Lots of the shots I took today were too blurry, not because of ISO, aperture or available light but just because the camera was deciding that a slightly sluggish shutter would suffice. Tv mode needs more investigation, I feel. Some of the better shots are up on Flickr.

Yes, Gabriella was foisted on us again today, looking more dishevelled than ever from rummaging about in the long grass. Every day is a bad hair day for Gabriella. She was joined by Titch, and seemed much more lively than she had been in Troy’s company. They were quite sweet as a couple, actually, with Titch refusing to walk on if Gabriella was busy engaged in some post-sniffing or grass-munching.

The damp weather doesn’t auger well for this evening’s Crowded House gig at the Arboretum, but it did give me the opportunity to take some pretty, pre-release-Leopard-default-desktop-rip-off photos of dew on grass; download a desktop picture pack, here, licensed as . Lots more pictures of the dogs too, as always, on Flickr.

Or: Take two dogs into the shower? A moment of heart-stopping panic today when Troy (left) slipped his harness and went careering into an adjoining woodland; we could only hear him rustling around in the undergrowth. Just as I was about to call the home and tell them we’d lost one of their dogs, he popped his head up further along the wall and Jenny dropped everything – including Gabriella’s lead – and harnessed him back up again. Gabriella, bless her, just sort of stood there looking on and occasionally munching grass; no mad dash for freedom for her.

Troy’s boisterous-yet-lovable nature – he slipped his harness a second time, and was a wilful little bugger – led us to christen him Oliver Reed, and Gabriella’s grizzled old lady looks earned her the name of Elaine Paige. The naming-of-random-animals-that-don’t-belong-to-us continues.

Left my 400D in the office on Friday, so pictures are courtesy of my PowerShot S70; found it more difficult to process the RAW images to give me a pleasing finished image than with the 400D, and I’m still not entirely happy with the finished result. It’s a bit flat. Hey ho.

Ladies and gennelmen, the pride of the 9-year old me: a Legoland (Denmark) driving licence. The look of glum, detached resignation on my face belies how pant-wettingly exciting it was for me to drive a tiny, blocky electric car around a fake road system, stopping for red lights like a good little Scandinavian.

Today, we walked a greyhound. I say ‘walked’. I mean ‘stood in close proximity to while she rolled around in the grass and snuffled into the undergrowth’. It was ironic that of all the dogs we’ve walked, the greyhound’s circuit took by far the longest thanks to Nelly’s insistence on flopping her butt down with a thump and rolling around in the long grass.

She clearly hated the kennels, and for the first time we felt oddly guilty about handing a dog back to the (very nice) staff. The other dogs we’ve walked seemed to have a pretty stoic attitude – “OK, well, thanks for that walk, friends; no hard feelings OK? I’ll just be here in this cage if you need me...” – but we really got the impression from Nelly that every time she gets taken out for a walk, she hopes she’ll never be taken back; we felt like we’d betrayed her just a little.

This old lady's most endearing physical characteristic was the two little head-mounted leathery wontons that she calls ears. Her most endearing personality trait was her slightly grudging and undemonstrative affection; I lay on my stomach at one point to take some dogs-eye view shots and Jade walked straight towards me, tucked her head against my shoulder, and just stood there leaning against me.

Note, we'd have to change her name if she was ours. We'd go with ‘Gloria’.

Remind me never again to suggest a feature that requires dozens of pieces of kit and four on-location photoshoots. Remind me particularly to schedule a heavy cold for a different couple of days. Enjoyed mucking about with my camera in the Blue Rooms today, though. Got a few interesting shots when my longer exposures, metered for the dim light, synced with Jesse's flash that was being used for the shoot proper.

A big shout out to my brother-in-law for supplying so many of the stickers that make an appearance on my MacBook; I thought it was about time I posted pics since it's getting pretty complete and since the old iBook got so many positive comments. More stickers, as always, gratefully received.

The line between genius and insanity is very fine.

Yes, she's wearing slippers inside my sandals. Also, have we told you about our poringe* carpet? We should really tell Pantone about it in any case; I don't believe anyone has ever isolated this colour outside the lab.

* purple + orange = poringe

Mrs P and I slipped smoothly into roaring twenties mode at the weekend, courtesy of a parental-sponsored weekend away at Bibury Court Hotel. I was born to order afternoon tea in the drawing room of a quietly mouldering country pile, and I did it with aplomb. I also filled my memory card with shots of the achingly-picturesque Cotswolds landscape, though unfortunately the weather only started to pick up once we were on our way home. There are a few below, and there are more on Flickr. I apologise in advance for my floral, depth-of-field-ey macro obsession.

Things we've learned about Big Dogs from Fraser, today's walking companion:

1. We lack upper body strength.
2. Big Dogs do Big Shits.
3. Some dogs don't really care much about hoomans; Buster and Fraser were more disdainful towards our presence than any cat we've ever been snubbed by.
4. We really want to walk – and photograph – a dog that doesn't need any sort of face furniture; we completely understand why Buster had a muzzle and Fraser had his face-strappy second lead arrangement, but you can't help but feel sorry for the little guys.

In other news, I appear to be unable to post a photograph without trying new ways to create a subtle vignette effect, a thing photographers have been trying to eradicate with better optics for years. I wonder if there are support groups I can go to; “Hi, my name's Chris and I put an archaic low-end photography effect on any picture I take with my expensive semi-pro camera.”

There are seaside towns populated by clean-limbed and bronzed Adonises. There are seaside towns that have a faded Victorian charm, all peeling paint and rusting iron railings. There are seaside towns that slumber quietly, nestling up against the crook of an inlet.

And then there's Weston-super-Mare. Which is as depressing a fly-ridden cesspit of a town are you're likely to visit before making your one-way trip to the nethermost reaches of hell. And so this is a public service announcement: under no circumstances think "Oh, I know what would make a nice bank holiday Monday day out: Weston-super-Mare!" It will only end in tears. And a possible car-wide suicide pact.

Blargh. Here's the equation of my life at the moment:

One dead hard disk + One chipped front tooth + One inexplicably painful y-ligament + Piss-poor + (Long nails + showering quickly + a painful nip in a surprisingly intimate area) / (Walking a dog + Making two huge lasagnes) = Meh.

So yes, not sure what's going to happen with my chipped tooth (and no, I have no idea how it happened) as I'm having a hellish time finding a dentist in Bath. The hard disk has been swapped for a rather lovely 250GB Western Digital Scorpio, so that's a bit of all right. There's bugger all I can do about the cash situation – apart from whoring myself out to sister Future titles for freelance – and the lens from Mrs P's glasses spontaneously popped out today while watching telly.

Never mind. Today we went up to the Bath Cats and Dogs Home and walked a long-legged Jack Russell cross called Buster. He was a cute little thing, though he had to wear a muzzle as he's 'dog-aggressive'. I refused to go and see the cats as I'd have been unable to walk away without secreting some old and mouldering puss somewhere about my person. More dog-walking is in order, I reckon, and I have a horrible feeling that we're on the brink of physically threatening our octogenarian neighbour-landlord until she agrees that we can keep a bugfuck crazy retirement-age pet.

We do also, however, have some fun things planned. We're signed up for Crowded House at the arboretum, Ben Folds at the academy in Bristol and, perhaps best of all, a hot air balloon flight at the end of May courtesy of an almost year-old housewarming present from my folks.

Oh, and my lasagnes promise to be fucking epic.

Having taken a sneaky day off work, Mrs P and I decided to slope off to Longleat Safari Park; all manner of safari-themed japes and scrapes ensued, and the day was proclaimed a success by all concerned. The highlight of the day (apart from the rhinos, which were fucking cool, by the way – I totally want to come back as a rhino) was a terrified-but-excited Jeff feeding a deer some of the special Longleat deer food. The stoopid deer didn't seem to understand that it was supposed to wait while I put some of the little pellets into my wife's hand before she moved her hand out of the car to feed it, and so kept thrusting its very fuzzy and adorable head inside the car to get at the cup of pellety goodness. Amid much excited shrieking, the task was eventually accomplished: one fed deer, one wife-hand covered in deer-spit. Witness the tongue-lashing she's getting below. More animal magic chez Flickr.

Some people see God's face in crisps, some see the Virgin Mary in slices of tomato. At the moment there's a slightly spooky face formed by clouds and the sun showing on my EarthDesk desktop.

Incredibly short, incredibly compelling TED talk about what Leonardo da Vinci looks like. Healthy scepticism is a good thing, but it's difficult to argue with the conclusion, particularly when it's put across with such understated confidence.

So a while back we got a letter from our friendly neighbourhood council informing us that we had strayed into a bus lane in our car.

They're right; we had, though Bath is a bastard of a city to navigate round, and it's all too easy to do this by mistake. We know, we did it; so of course I paid up. A small, spiteful but ultimately tit-numbingly stupid part of my brain, though, wanted to force the council to rescind the fine, because if you look closely at the bottom right of the frame showing us pootling along in our car, you see the legend Evaluation period has expired. Please buy the Elecard MPEG2 Video Deco[der]. Thieves and brigands the lot of them.

To add insult to injury, we'd been snapped on Mrs P's birthday, a day that even before this letter arrived we had agreed had been something of a birthday-tastrophe. Ah well.

In other news, we briefly visited Liverpool yesterday for the world premiere of Karl Jenkins' Stabat Mater in the city's Anglican cathedral, and I was absolutely entranced by the cathedral building. It's incredibly masculine but without being repressive and bullying – a real feeling of benevolent, trustworthy authority. A few (quite poor) pics on Flickr.

The ’Format Crü were chez Phin today for a photoshoot – very Homes & Gardens – and while everyone including Jenny was hard at work, James and Graham indulged in a little Blues, caucasian-style.

Our eighties-themed Philm Club was all kinds of fun, but Jenny gets the prize for best party idea by getting us to make top hats – chocolate, marshmallow, Smartie – which I then supplemented with the chocolate/corn flakes concoctions much beloved of nursery schools. Add to that lunch at the Marlborough Tavern, cream teas and my nouvelle cuisine extravaganza on Saturday, and the three of us were required to waddle slightly when we visited the actual baths.

Remember – the next Philm Club is Sideways on March 1. It will, of course, be wine-themed, but we won't be drinking any fucking Merlot. Wanna come? Let us know!

You know that thing? Like, when the Jehovah's witnesses turn up at your door and you screw your best polite smile into place? I'm quite familiar with that look now, as I've been seeing it quite a lot on people as I eulogise about the iPhone. Here's the sort of thing that gets me quite so evangelical:

If you bring up the keypad on the phone and punch in a number that happens to exist in your phone book, it will display the name of the person on whose card it appears. So what? Dozens of other mobiles do this. But as you'll see above, if I tap in my home phone number – which is listed for me and for Mrs P – it will elegantly display that it's the home number for 'Christopher or Jennifer Phin'; if anyone else had done this, I can guarantee that at best you'd have got 'Christopher Phin/Jennifer Phin'.

Utterly beautiful UI design, and a perfect example of why, as someone who is happy enough in Windows or Linux, I'm still a Mac user. Or to put it another way, Apple FTW.

In the British parliament, as Eddie Izzard has observed, the most entertaining it might get is honourable friends waving their papers, shouting 'Toilet paper! Toilet paper! Toilet paper in our times!", but the Italians have much more fun. I stumbled across this 'in pictures' story on the Guardian the other day and felt a bit like Bill Bryson reading about Australian politicians drowning in mysterious circumstances; why don't we hear more about this?

The background is the passing of a vote of no confidence in Romano Prodi, but that's not the fun bit. No, that comes from reading the captions and looking at the pictures. During this sitting, we learn of one politician who was called a lump of shit and a cuckold before bursting into tears and collapsing, see politicians throwing water all over the chamber, and – the crowning glory, this – stuffing mortadella in their mouths as an act of political satire.

Click here to see all the pics.

San Francisco is proving much more enjoyable this year than on past trips; partly it's just that I have more time – a clear two and a half days before work proper starts – partly it's because Mrs P is here and I feel more up for doing touristy things, and partly it's because I've been here sufficiently frequently now that I have a decent idea of the geography of the place and of where's fun. Photographic shennanigans follow.

And not a sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll teenager at that. Oh no; something much less palatable.

Further wallowing in Old Technology Nostaligia™ the other day, I bought on eBay the 100th issue of PCW Plus magazine. It was the first magazine I read with any regularity, and it helped me with my first computer, an Amstrad PcW 10. Plus, it's an old Future mag, so there was a second connection.

Turns out there's a third: in this issue not only had I written a letter that had been published, but I'd also submitted a design to the magazine's inaugural Readers' Gallery and won a £5 voucher for, um, the application I'd used to design the thing. The fact that the design is one for the cover of my Standard Grade Physics folder perhaps tells you everything you need to know about Teenage Chris.



Or maybe that doesn't paint a clear enough picture for you of a 14 year-old me. In which case, I present Exhibit B: my letter that appears just above my masterpiece.



"Insufferable little shit" just about covers it, don't you think?

So after seven years of our relationship, Jenny finally got the baby photos tour when we were home for Christmas. Strangely, I'd never seen the photos either, so it was as novel for me as it was for her. Bizarrely, I was an incredibly cheery baby; there's hardly a photo of me where I'm not grinning like I'm on smack. Here's a sampling of some of the more entertaining ones for your mocking amusement.

I dressed better then than I do now; check out those pseudo spats!


This looks like a picture you might find in a picture frame when you buy it from Habitat.


Jenny hyperventilated at my expression in this picture. Can't think why.


One word: insouciant. Three more: where's my dignity?


I've never seen a picture of this old puss looking so young. Still miss her.

Guys! Are you balding? Do you want some facial fungus options that can help mitigate the effects of your receding hairline? Then have we got the handy guide for you!

Option 1: The baby-face

The classic look for the baldie in your life. Fully shaved with what hair remains on the heid buzzed down as far as it can go.

Option 2: The gangsta

Not to be confused with the Village People, team this look with a cigar for the full effect.

Option 3: Jaaaaaz

Add a goatee, sideburns and a far-too-small vintage chapeau perched jauntily on your bonce, and you have all the ingredients in place for a generic jazzy, beatnik-style look.

Option 4: The wine ponce

It took us ages to work out why this look was so clearly a wine ponce look, but we've just two words for you: Paul Giamatti. Requires a phenomenal amount of upkeep.

Option 5: The Wild Man of Borneo

The Full Beard™ offers the maximum distraction from your backwards-leaping hairline, but it's a delicate balancing act. You run the risk of looking simply like you couldn't be arsed shaving, or like you should simply be selling big shoes*.

So there you have it, folks; five looks, each as ridiculous as the last, and all of them designed to ease the crushing sense of mortification you carry as a balding, tubby gentleman. Laugh through the tears, folks; laugh through the tears.

* The Big Issue. Seller in Scotland are wont to call out "Big ishu! Bigi shu! Big shue" as you walk past.

I have no affection for soap operas, but I couldn't help but have the feeling that we've moved from the epicentre of the universe once more forced upon me when I realised this morning that our old flat appears on the map of London shown in the title sequence for EastEnders. It's only just hanging on, but extensive scientific testing* has proved that it's definitely there. How often does the Bath flat appear on national television, eh? Eh?



* Laying a screengrab of a Google Maps satellite projection over a frame capture in Photoshop, and setting the former layer to Multiply.

I had to use a VCR today. It was horrible. One word: tracking. Another three: fucking horrible quality. It joins my little laptop in Retro Corner™ on my desk.

Apologies for the lack of updates and the disappearance of the webcam; I was hit with Fasthosts' password nonsense and was locked out of my own site. I didn't have a chance to sort out the webcam before leaving work this evening, but it should be back on Monday. Put a red ring around the day in your calendar.

Are you creepy? Do you want to see what I do all day? Then you'll enjoy the recently-insigated webcam; there's a link over there on the right.


The krazy kids at Dennis are obviously enjoying it. Here, accompanied by the note "Future Publishing forced to ban Tippex after staff bullying incident" is Barry's effort.


Nik wasn't to be outdone.


And then came this from Ross. "Ooooh. You should really nail that page furniture down more securely. Imagine if that had been an ACME anvil, for example."

It's not like they have magazines to publish or anything.

Autumn rocks a phat one. This morning's combination of low sun and frosty crispness made for some rather pretty macro cameraphone photography. Apologies for constantly bombarding y'all with my photographic braindribble, but these were just too bucolic to pass up. They haven't been touched in Photoshop except to add my standard border. They're all up on Flickr or you can download a zip with all the full-res pics here under a licence; they make quite lovely desktops.

They say that every man has a book in him. By that measure, I only have two thirds of book left in me, having contributed heavily to Jason Simmons' tome for designers. A copy arrived on my desk the other day, and very swish it is too. It covers everything from theory to practice, and, though I say it myself, it's a damned fine resource.

There are some sample chapters up for browsing at the publisher's site, and if you want a copy – it's only £15 – you can buy it from Amazon; click here or on the graphic in the sidebar, and I'll get a little slice of commission from Amazon.

In other news, I tottered through to London on Thursday for a press briefing which was held at the O2. I now more than ever regret not making it down to Greenwich when 'the O2' actually was the Millennium Dome. It's a phenomenal building, and I'm really looking forward to next weekend's trip to see the Foo Fighters performing there.

Michty. After the madness of the Mac Live Expo – during which I had so many meetings set up that I didn't buy a single meal myself – young Mrs RH and I drove down to the coast for a little R&R. We went down via Stonehenge – maybe I'm suggestible, but I always feel like something special is happening at these places – to Lulworth cove, and though it was blustery and later rainy on Sunday, Monday morning was bright and beautiful, perfect weather for the walk along the coast to the Durdle Door.



There are more photos from the trip on .Mac and Flickr.

And this morning we wandered through to Bristol and I plunked down some hard-borrowed credit card money on a proper Samsung 32" LCD telly. Annoyingly, it won't be ready for collection until Thursday, but it's all very exciting.

Life in Bath continues to tick over in a mildly hypnotic way, so while little blog-worthy has happened, here are a few old pictures of the Old Country™ I dug out just to keep y'all interested. Don't abandon me; I still love you!

Very cool and just in time for Hallowe'en; relies on chemical reactions to make it look like you're cutting yourself and bleeding. Surprisingly realistic.

* You may not know this about me, but I have a terrifyingly good knowledge of Bon Jovi lyrics. I am so very, very sorry.

That's is, folks; the final whistle, the last shout, the death knell. When Marks & Spencer starts using a grocer's apostrophe – or, more accurately, the opposite of a grocer's apostrophe, omitting one where one ought to be – you know that it's only a matter of time before Western civilisation implodes and we all revert to apathetically rolling around in the muck, splitting infinitives and just not caring.

I am in Pareeee for the expo, and, as usual, using my pretty convincing French accent and Gallic shrugs to fool waiters into thinking I can actually speak the damned language. I can usually make myself understood, with many crunching gears as tenses and verb endings are treated more as Platonic ideals than actual grammatical rules, but the problem with translation is not necessarily understand what the individual words say, but a grasp of idiom as well. Take this poster as an example:

I understand that the top line translates as “Your new best friend”, so I'm assuming the French call dogs man's best friend too. I understand that in response to one dog's question “But what does it have that we haven't?”, the other answers, “Dog, Oscar, dog”, and I imagine that there is some hilarious play on words there – ‘chien’ meaning both simply dog and something else – but without knowing what that ‘something else’ is, the whole thing takes on a surreal quality which is only heightened by how dazed I already am from this whole expo thang. Bleh.

Despite a to-do list that is running to a third volume, MacFormat took the afternoon off to celebrate its recent circulation announcement that puts it as the highest circulating Mac magazine in the UK. (Actually, you can cut the pie in different ways to say the same thing about MacUser or Macworld, but as far as the bare stats go, MacFormat is #1.)

So we had lunch at a rather nice little Italian next to the weir and then went next door to a pleasantly grotty pub to play pool. I had to confess that this was essentially the first time I had ever played. And the wine and gin didn't really help. Despite this rather phenomenal handicap, James and I managed just to pull in front of Michelle and Graham to win four games to three. How very exciting. So this is what normal people did at university. As well as bonking like bunnies.

...so here is a sickening picture of a rose I snapped today. Oh yeah. I can take a competent picture of an object famed for its beauty and supplement its impact with very basic Photoshop curves stuff. Oh yeah. I'm a real revolutionary. Full-res pic here, released under a licence. Oh, and by 'snapped' I mean 'took a picture of'. I didn't just snap a rose stem in a fit of pique.

http://view.break.com/295948 - Watch more free videos

The blades of the Russian MI-24 Hind helicopter in this video are perfectly in sync with the ‘shutter’ of the videocamera filming it, giving it this severely freaky ‘hanging in the air’ vibe. [Via]

Today, folks, marks the final phase in my transition to a normal person – or ‘norm’ as we like to call them in our contemptuous way. We now have all the accoutrements of adult life: as well as a filing cabinet, small economical hatchback and washing machine, we now own a dining table. For the first time since either of us left home. No longer will we have to squat like Neanderthals in the floor, scooping food into our gaping maws with our fingers* but can sit like fully-fledged members of Western society on chairs and use cutlery and everything. Note that we even plumped for rattan chairs. Rattan for chrissake. Plus, note the peace lily on the windowsill. What has become of our mock-indie credentials? The table even extends so we have dinner parties. I think I need to have a lie down.

* Never actually happened. Though I think that if we had not bought this table now, Mrs RH would have bought lap trays. And that really would have been the end.

This will be old news to some, but Mrs RH has just told me of a little snippet on the Russell Brand show that highlighted the fact that I Want You by Bob Dylan sounds exactly – and, folks, I mean exactly – like it's being sung by C Montgomery Burns. Here's a link to an except of the track on the UK iTunes Store, so you need to have iTunes installed and be in the UK. Otherwise take your pick from the links on Google's page for the album.

Also, should you not have seen the summer's sleeper hit yet, here's your chance:

Soundtrack courtesy of Lee Maddeford.

Ah, the West Country! If it please the court, I humbly submit a few pictures that prove that this is The Nicest Place to Live™:


A G&T in the H&H
(Gin and tonic in the Hare & Hounds); some more photos of the afternoon's sketchin’-readin’-drinkin’ here.


The Westonbirt Arboretum
Less than half an hour's drive from chez Receding Hairline is this huge, idyllic fancy forest (as I like to call it). Trees, shrubs, glades, dappled sunlight, dogs, people walking incredibly slowly, the desire to wear sandals and a hat and walk with a stick; it has everything. Including The Festival of the Tree, where there are lots of Phil Harding types all busily turning wood. Into tat in most cases. The worst thing that can happen to you at an arboretum is that you twist your ankle in a hole and fall down; anyone who meets my wife over the next fortnight must offer sympathy. More pics in the Flickr and .Mac galleries. (Same pics in each; .Mac is a bit prettier, but Flickr does more. All pics are untouched cameraphone snaps.)


Mrs RH doing some craft!
This is a happy accident; I was testing some webcams and happened to snap this. For some odd reason I like the photo even though it makes it look like the crafting is being done on the high seas in a force nine. Includes a guest appearance from my best friend Erik the filing cabinet.

UPDATE Mr Stonebridge tells me that my code was fine; I was just being impatient. If the below works, hurrah; if not, read on.



Bah. I've tried embedding the video here directly, but clearly I'm doing something wrong. Click here to watch Jeff’s Opus hosted on .Mac; it's well worth it.

Oh, and if anybody can tell me why the code below isn't doing what I want it to do – it just shows the blue QuickTime Q, but nothing loads – I'd be most grateful.

<embed src="http://www.recedinghairline.co.uk/othergraphics/Opus.mp4" type="video/quicktime" width="467" height="274" href="http://gallery.mac.com/chrisphin/100077" kioskmode="true">

The wife and I took our wee car to visit Cheddar Gorge today, and since he was going too, we decided to go along for the ride. You can come too! Well, virtually, that is, thanks to the wonder of iLife ’08 web galleries!! Click here to see lots of pictures!!! Well, nineteen, anyway!!!!

Also, I'm mucking about with some video at the moment, and Mrs RH has been filming anything that moves recently with our trusty Canon MD160. The resulting opus has been in preparation – merci bien, iMovie ’08 – for some days now; you'll be invited to the iPremière shortly.

And finally, paying lip service to this blog's title – and in the hope that it nets me some more lucrative receding hairline Google ads – please view the below video which demonstrates the ultimate evolution of the humble comb-over. Only in Japan.

Today is Mr & Mrs Phin's second wedding anniversary. The last twelve months have seen us move to Bath, slow our pace of life down, and buy a car. All good, folks. Next year in Acapulco. Or maybe Bath again. It's very pretty, after all. Such events inflame my dormant Hallmark tendencies, and so I make no apologies for the barely-credible self-consciousness of the picture that accompanies this post.

Just a quick note to say that the address for the RSS feed for this site has changed. The old one will continue to be published, but if you could resubscribe to the new address it will make things a bit easier down the road. Apologies if your RSS reader went a bit nuts with Receding Hairline posts.

Also, this article on the ol’ Amstrad PCW brought back fond memories; my first proper computer was the PcW10 with its 'paper-white' display. I'm a LocoScript boy at heart.

And finally, below is the phenomenal volume of paper and assorted tat – note that the mug and pen are special Induction-branded examples, though you can't see it – from my official Future induction. Note too that the foil-wrapped thing is a lolly, not a condom; they don't encourage that degree of colleague interaction. Future. Is. The. Best. Better. Than. All. The. Rest. *beep*

Well, New Cross, we've lived in your filthy yet strangely comforting bosom for just over two years, and we're almost ready to pack up and ship out. You've been fun, frustrating and – it's worth saying again – filthy in almost equal measures. Folks who say you have terrible transport links are just plain old wrong; the 453 goes straight into the heart of the metropolis via Waterloo, the 436 to Paddington via Victoria and the 172 to St Paul's if you feel in need of spiritual nourishment, and the 177 will carry will passengers at annoyingly infrequent intervals to the myriad delights of Grinij should you require top-notch gastropubs. The view from the window of the new flat in Bath isn't as diverting as the one from the lil' flat at 186 New Cross Road, but then again, we do benefit from not living at a fairly major junction of a four-lane A-road, next to a bus depot. Plus, emergency services of every stripe seem to have an irrational fondness for this particular route, and having the ability to pause live TV just to let sirens wail past – or, more often, sit at the lights making noises like amplified queens – is less of a luxury than a necessity for us. Oh well. I imagine that in years to come, we'll tell our children that “your mum and I used to live in London, you know” but the ungrateful little shits (I think it's important to begin developing an appropriate parental attitude as soon as possible) won't have an inkling of the sheer hard work and emotional trauma living in the capital city entails. It has been a phenomenal effort, but while we're undoubtedly making the right move for us right now – we may find ourselves back here in the fullness of time – I am grateful for everything the city and the people we've worked with in it have done for us, and I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to work here when we were young enough to live it properly. Thank you, London. See you around, yeah?

Hands up, those who'd like to be jealous of my new life in Bath. The below is the view from the beer garden of my local pub, the Hare & Hounds. Rather pretty, yes? It was micturating down with rain this morning, but by lunchtime the sun was out, and by this evening one could happily sit sipping a pint of something brown and room temperature.

Ma and pa are down in Bath at the moment, en route to their holiday-of-a-lifetime in South America. It is, of course, very good to see them, and not just because for the fortnight plus that they'll be away, I have the use of their car. Hurrah holidays and hurrah Peugeot. In theory, the world will be able to follow their travels on the simple blog I set up for them, phinsinperu.blogspot.com. Bookmark the site or the feed, why doncha?

I'm reviewing a graphics tablet at the moment, and today opened up a blank document to have a bit of a doodle. The below sub-Howson scrawl is the result of fifteen minutes' tinkering, and I was quite chuffed to see that, five years after graduating from art school, and rarely having picked up a paintbrush in the intervening years, I can still begin to knock together an underpainting. Do you have any dormant skills you sometimes use?

I'm off to the big smoke this weekend to see t'old ball and chain, do a bit of packing, and spend Monday doing work-ey things up London. Not long now, kittens...

With the announcement of the iPhone's price plans today, I dusted off my calculator (widget) and worked out how much an iPhone would cost me over the length of my mandatory two year contract with AT&T. The result is that if you choose the cheaper iPhone and the cheapest price plan, I'd be looking at just under $81 a month. Put another way, it's a total of just under $2000 for the whole of the two years, assuming I don't go over the bundled minutes and SMS allowance in that plan.

Want a better value deal? The 8GB iPhone allied with the $99/month plan would cost me a rather terrifying $2999 over the course of the contract, a price so neat and tidy that you wonder if someone has done this calculation before me...



Transcribe those prices straight to pounds sterling, and the more expensive options works out at £62 a month, and even that price makes me wince a little. It's impossible to calculate how much the iPhone and its data plans will be when it's available here in the UK. Normally, figuring out the UK price involves doing a straight conversion (halve the dollar price), then replacing the dollar sign with a pound sign on the original price, and splitting the difference depending on the size and attitude of the company involved. With phones, it's a wholly different matter. The price of the phone is much more at the whim of the carriers – apparently driving a hard bargain here in Europe, much to nobody's surprise – and is entirely bound up in the nature of the price plans.

All AT&T's price plans in the States, for example, include unlimited data for email and web browsing; that could turn out not to be the case in the UK, which could in theory mean that the handset itself is cheaper. (Why? The iPhone encourages people to use data, either by making web/email easier and more pleasant than ever, through using Web 2.0 apps, or just by pinging weather and stocks services for updates. The data traffic, if billable, ensures revenue in the future for the carriers and so they can further subsidise the cost of the handset.)

All of this makes me much less decided about buying an iPhone. Nothing has changed with the device itself – it's still a superb piece of immaculately-executed technology, and the spell I fell under when I had it in my hands in San Fancisco in January hasn't broken – but the figure of three thousand dollars sounds a hell of a daunting. Are you tempted?


* UK prices converted using the exchange rate of 0.50014

...but News Knight with Sir Trev, which only started tonight on ITV, had me laughing out loud mostly because it has him saying stuff you usually only hear from Rory Bremner. I think the comedy works largely because we've heard that particular voice read out headlines for thirty years; I've never known a time when he wasn't presenting news, and to hear him doing comedy – albeit a slightly smug, knowing comedy – is funny in itself. Plus it had Clive Anderson and Marcus Brigstocke. Recommended watching, and if you missed the first one, I have it recorded.

And finally [bong] I have to report that this was a very dull weekend during which I couldn't muster up the energy to do much. I'm now getting seriously bored and pissed off at being sans wife. The end of July cannot come quickly enough.

Is there anything nicer than a freshly baked Maris Piper potato, oozing melting Cornish butter, with cracked black pepper and a sprinkling of Anglesey sea salt? Why yes, yes there is. And that something is the self-same baked potato with tuna mayonnaise and spring onions. But I didn't have that tonight. Oh no, it was the unadulterated potato* for me this evening, largely – indeed solely – as the blinding realisation dawned on me as I went to prep the tuna a couple of hours after popping the potatoes into the oven that I don't have a tin opener here in Bath.

* Good name for a band, Mr Cope?

Cut through all the Leopard misinformation and rhetoric with MacFormat's special edition podcast, in which I talk about what the new operating system offers, how it disappoints, and what Apple's announcement about no SDK for the iPhone really means. Information on how to download or subscribe to the podcast can be found at MacFormat's site, and be sure to let us know what you think.

Safari? In my Windows? Dirty bastards.

I started drafting a post about the new Olympic logo, but found that Coudal got there before me with something far more articulate, less ranty, and more swearword-free. Their post is perfect; the one thing I'd add is my wife's observation that the new logo evokes the graffiti you see everywhere in London, which is quite a nice visual play.

And will everyone please point at least one visually illiterate dolt to the following text from Coudal's eighth point; if we can make just a few people take this on board, mankind may have a chance at being not so pig-headedly stupid:

“When we hear ‘my kid could have done that!’ we think ‘success’. Some of the greatest logos of all time involve two lines (the Christian cross) or three lines and a circle (Mercedes). Your kid could have done that, but she didn't. Nor did she design the graphics standards manual that goes with it. So give it a rest. Or send us her resume.”

Coming up with titles for posts is hard. Take this one, for example; all I wanted was an excuse to post a pretty little pic I took of the afternoon sun hitting a leaf of sage on my new pot 'o herbs, but to title it 'A picture of some sage' is as dull as a dull thing owned by Mr McDull, son of the original John Dull of Dulwich. So instead we have a dreadfull convoluted title that derives from a tenuous connection (sage and onion stuffing) married to a barely-there pun (stuff = things wot might be in the post); I think it comes from working in t'media, where you're contantly having to come up with such dreadful little bon mots in captions and headlines. Apologies, all; here's the damn picture...

Even the graffiti in Bath is polite, has a social mandate, and is pretty. Keep an eye on Flickr for more photos of life in Bath.

Did you see the moon last night? I finished working at my desk at about half midnight, came through to our south-facing bedroom, and thought Mrs Receding Hairline had left the light on. Absolutely loopy. High-res pics here.

Sure, there are a few bum notes, and sure, the tempo's a bit pie-eyed, but this is nevertheless one of the coolest things I have ever seen. It's long but well worth watching all the way through. Exploring the linked videos in YouTube suggests that this is not a new phenomenon, and Nicest Man In The World™ Simon Handby pointed me towards a very professional – though not, somehow, as fun – orchestral version by, he thinks, the Tokyo Philharmonic. What fun, as her Majesty is apparently wont to say.

I'm no gamer, but even I think this looks spectacular...

London could today wrest the 'windy city' moniker from Chicago; a 46mph wind caused a slate from across the road to crash into the window just behind where we work. Luckily, only the outer pane was smashed. Nik tells me that Russell Square Bloomsbury Square was closed off due to a tree being blown over. The city's coming to a standstill, people!

Watch this video, then tell me we weren't all better off with slide rules...

In the drawer of our hotel's bedside table, you find everything the weary traveller/ruthless entrepreneur needs when laying down his weary head: a spiritual and a capitalist bible. Hallelujah!

I was rooting through the photos on my phone the other day and came across this one. The smoking of cigars is a pleasingly complex and time-consuming business, but I'm delighted to see that my other half has mastered the art. Note to other wannabe aficionados: this is the only accepted facial expression one should affect while puffing on a fine Montecristo*.

In other news, we've had a fun day, having lunch with Wife's boss-lady, an afternoon at the pictures, some picture-taking, and a very relaxing evening watching programmes recorded over the last couple of days, culminating in the 90s-fest that is the very excellent So I Married An Axe Murderer.

* If anyone ever wants to buy me A Nice Thing for fixing their computer or whatevah, one of these babies will suit the bill nicely, thank-you-very-much-for-asking.

It's the season of Christmas parties, and it's quite normal for there to be several on one night. Last night, though, was Canon. It's one I look forward to, and it's always a fun night. I'm obviously not alone, and we can see documentary evidence of this in the expression of some of my esteemed colleages. Exhibit 1, ladies and gennelmen:


“I've only had a glass!” (Tragically, quite true.)


Groucho Marx meets Captain Birdseye: A new way to 'smoke' fish.


Random lunacy; it's getting late...

This morning, for example, I learned that ghetto boys can suck there mumz. Inspiration can strike from anywhere, you know.

A house near where we live has been in the process of being restored for ages, and the other day as I passed there was what looked a little like a lighting rig for a film crew set up outside, casting this otherworldly light onto its façade. Very pretty – wonder if it's being done up for filming, or whether the light was simply to illuminate some further work going on?

On the subjects of New Cross and films, don't forget about The New Cross Weekend Philm Club!

Next week: paintballing and hair loss.

Some more drawing with fire (“incediography”, maybe) tonight up at the upper Telegraph Hill park. Truth be told, I'm a bit disappointed with the results – I think it really takes two people to get good results, and with my good lady up visiting her folks, I was one short. I did meet up with a couple of drunk but friendly student-types up there who had a go, but I suspect the muse just wasn't with me today.

A few of the less shit examples are up on my Flickr page.

Look, I'm sorry, OK, but I just can't help harping on about the weather. It's insane at the moment. Today we got another torrential downpour – a view from our new fifth floor office shown above, but I have never yet found a satisfactory way to show how heavy rain is – that lasted no more than a quarter of an hour, then we had beautiful bright sunshine thereafter. What gives, people?

When we were on holiday, we discovered some ancient indoor sparklers stuffed into a suitcase. They were lying in our hallway tonight just before we retired for the evening, so I decided to try to muck about with the old 'drawing with fire' technique you see above. It took a while to find the right balance of settings, and a few of the sparklers were dud, so we didn't manage to capture anything jaw-dropping, but I think we'll be investing in some more sparklers soon. There are a few more of our experiments on Flickr.

In other news, the often-interesting Microsoft Font Blog has an interesting article on how creating new ligatures was once thought a practical way to save time and money.

OK, this is just freaky. Watch the film for at least 30 seconds, so you see the bit where a guy nudges it off balance and the creepy little critter self-rights and just keeps going.

In other news, I'd never heard of 'guided buses' before – particularly this spectacular example in Adelaide – but the whole idea is somehow incredibly satisfying. Barrrrrruuum!

At around twenty to six this evening, there were a few desultory flashes of lightning and grumblings of thunder. Minutes later, both slammed into position above the house, and the heavens opened. Within seconds, a remarkably strong river was flowing down the street next to our house – we live at the foot of a fairly substantial city hill – and the four-lane 'A' road our front was under an inch or more of rainwater. By the time I thought to get the camera and set up the tripod, the rain had abated, but you can see from the picture above – plus a few more here – how deep and wide the mini river was. Less than ten minutes after this picture was shot, bright, crisp sunshine was adding a burnished highlight to the wavelets.

Here's a little publishing secret for you: every time you see a screen grab in a magazine that includes a photo, it will almost certainly have been picked with great care and deliberation. They're usually chosen for one of two reasons: either the picture will contain a (usually young) offspring of the writer, usually looking heart-meltingly adorable, or it will be a particularly unflattering picture of an esteemed colleague. The above picture shows the enormous homage we created to Señor Stevenson of PC Pro fame, plus your humble narrator mid-hang. For added amusement, it makes its appearance in the Spanish edition of the magazine, sending the face of Dave "I am a pretty man" Stevenson spreading across the continent.

* The title for this post is just 'Receding Hairline' in Spanish. Or at least, in some sort of mangled Spanglish produced by Systran's automatic translations. It may in reality be a mortal insult. The same phrase is translated as below into various other languages – may not display properly if your browser/system doesn't play nice with non-Roman characters – but again, I can't vouch for their accuracy,

CHINESE (TRADITIONAL)
後退細線

CHINESE (SIMPLIFIED)
后退细线

JAPANESE
退くヘアライン

KOREAN
물러난 가는선

GREEK
Υποχωρώντας hairline [what a cop-out!]

RUSSIAN
Волосяный покров receding [ditto]

... and so on. Cope, Systran scandalously enough doesn't offer Welsh translation. Could you oblige?

The British Library is really quite a beautiful building, and on a day like today, when the sun was shining from the sky, the lavender and statuary looked utterly captivating. (I still can't get over the quality of the camera in the Sony Ericsson W800i phone.) Click for one more picture.

I left my wallet at the office yesterday, and with it my bus pass. Just my luck: there were inspectors on my bus, but I just said I'd forgotten my pass and was reaching to pay the £30 fine. The inspector instead issued me with a ticket for the journey and told me to send in a copy of my pass and photocard later to prove I hadn't just been a fare-doging ruffian. In the act of copying my photocard, I appear to have switched races. Hmm...

really expensive cat toy on Vimeo

This video has had me giggling all afternoon; even Northern cat-haters find it funny.

I love to cook almost as much as I like to eat. Above, for your visual delight, is today's lunch: roast chicken with lemon zest and parma ham, served with peperonata – potatoes, peppers, onion and garlic, roasted with rosemary. Damn, it was fine. It may be some time before I rise from this sofa, mind you. Medic!

Internet access on the train is cripplingly expensive, and is itself crippled to 1992 speeds, so the Scottish trip is being summarised in four quick photographs; that's like writing a four thousand word post, but it's much less tedious for both of us.


Taken at the beach at Kirkcudbright; look at the pure, clear Scottish water!


The McRobbie's cat; this picture makes me laugh so much, and I don't know why.


Quick, somebody call Guinness – this Yorkshire pudding has to be a record-breaker!


Looking glam in the evening light – this is a cameraphone picture, fer chrissake.

A slimline box arrived at the office today, containing a MacBook Pro. It is a rather lovely machine, but just as pretty as the hardware itself is the polystyrene packaging protecting it. Apple does a fantastic job of fetishising the whole process of opening the box containing its hardware; it makes unwrapping your new piece of technology as much of an experience as using it.

ETA: Check out our scientific experiments with Photobooth...

Me, I suggest: "Laters, bitches and bitchettes; my limo's double parked."

More in the comments, please.

Over the last month or so, I have kept seeing all over the web examples of tilt-shift photography. Actually, that's not strictly true; tilt-shift lenses are intended to help correct the perspective effect you get when, for example, looking up at a tall building which appears to narrow as it climbs.

No, in this context, I'm talking about taking photos using the tilt-shift lenses to make pictures of everyday scenes look like they're scale models, such as the one above. Ah, but, no. The picture above is one of my own – shot from the Pierre Cardin's mansion in Cannes, no less – taken with an ordinary camera, which I've doctored in Photoshop.

Examining the tilt-shift photos I've seen prompted me to think it would be easy to fake, and indeed so it proves. It's basically just mucking about with Quick Mask and gradients, then using the Lens Blur filter, plus giving the RGB curve a blow-out bias to make everything look that little bit artificial. I'm not yet completely satisfied with the results – some more tinkering is required – but I think the effect is pretty convincing.

(A big part of creating a convincing example, I've discovered, is in the choice of original image: not only is it simplest to work with images where the perspective slopes uninterruptedly from foreground to background, but as we're used to seeing models from above, the mind seems to accept photos taken pointing downwards much more readily than those looking straight across or up.)

If there's enough interest, I'll post a quick tutorial on here, but as it's 2:37am and my wife arrives back in London tomorrow, I'd better be off to my bed.

Click on the photo above to see it side-by-side with the original.

Because sometimes, you have to cover an absent colleague's desk with bread. Serve him right for being all polite and asking us if he could perchance take a slice from the bread in the kitchen which wasn't even ours. Yeah, serve him right.

The young lady and I spent a large chunk of Saturday afternoon walking around a blustery Greenwich park, cardboard cup of hot chocolate in hand. The low sun was gorgeous, and gave every surface a burnished metallic gleam. From the hill of the observatory, you can see a big loop of the Thames as it curves around the Isle of Dogs, and the upthrusting of the Canary Wharf complex looks like something from a 50s science fiction illustration. A few more photos from the park on my Flickr page.

My folks sent me some photos of my cat as she eagerly eyes up the excess fat on the dripping tray of a George Foreman-esque grill. Apparently she was taking surreptitious swipes at it with her paw, and licking off the tasty meat extracts. Beats Whiskas any day of the week. Click here for more of the pictures.

Happy 2006 to all!

A sample of English translation on a product we have in the office; the slogan of the company is 'Bring Wonderful Future into the Time Being.' Bless them.

Working in publishing is a little disconcerting. Having been employed by a magazine (not literally) for over three years now, most of the cosy conceptions I had about magazines, books, television and the rest of the media have been dashed. It's like that bit in the Wizard of Oz – one of the least kiddy-friendly kids films the word has ever seen – when you get to peek behind the screens and see the grand wizard for what he is: a small, timid man.

You see, part of us is disappointed; there's an in-built sub-routine in our minds that likes to be fooled and likes to be subservient to an authority figure which appears to be stronger, wiser and less doubting than us, be that a political leader or Cosmopolitan. My two-bit theory is that that's one of the reasons we still have a monarchy in this country; when we think of the Queen, our thoughts are less about the individual and more about the office.

Back to publishing, I fancy; all this political talk is unnerving here. My wider point about shibboleths as applies to publishing is that I'm saddened that I can now see the people and structures behind some of the titles I once held so dear. I know something of how magazines fill pages, and can glance at a spread in Empire and have an inkling of what was going through the mind of the editor, commissioning editor and writer as it was being put together. 'Oh dear, that actor wasn't very forthcoming in that interview, so we'll have to demote the interview and compile a half-page trivia box-out: it goes to press this afternoon.' Or 'Shit, we've sold more ads and have to cut what was a five-page feature down to three; let's try to cram it all in,' say.

My point is that I now think as much about the people behind the brand as the brand itself. Which is, of course, a nice, savvy position to be in, and one which makes me less susceptible to marketing spin. But, frankly, I enjoy being a little deluded. A comforting white lie can be more pleasant than a truth.

But my heart does go out to the poor bastard who fucked up with the release of the DVD pictured above. I forget now what film it is, but I can picture only too well the plummeting feeling in the stomach of one person when he or she suddenly realises that they've send a disc to duplication with a flaw. The stickers will, of course, help, and it's good that they caught it in time, but I feel for that sorry soul who ballsed up in the first place.

In other news, we've had a relaxing weekend, but I got less of the work done that I'd like. Up early tomorrow morning, I suspect. Also, the young lady has a week off work for the October holidays. She deserves every second.

Today, I love London. While my better half went off to the Royal Academy to meet up with one of her teaching chums to see an exhibition of Edvard Munch, Jamie and I went to gawp at animals at London Zoo. Then we all met up on Bankside, and had an overpriced dinner and many glasses of wine in a fug of bonhomie. You couldn't have such a varied day not in London. (Awful grammar, but you know what I mean.) Click on the picture above for a bigger version.
The highlight of the Zoo wasn't the tigers or the penguins – awesome though both were – but a small exhibit of nocturnal animals tucked away beneath an out-of-the-way house that's due for renovation. The light was incredibly dim – to the extent that I was waving my hands about in front of me as I was walking – but the tiny little nocturnal mice, bush baby-type animals and bats were utterly entrancing. I could spend hours in there.
So yes, a good weekend. Very relaxing. I ought to have done a little bit of work, but I think I'll just get up early tomorrow and finish of a few bits and pieces.
And now, if you don't mind, my wife needs some TLC, so I'm off to administer it. Goodnight, all.

Today promises to be a good day. I did some design work yesterday for our awards night – I do like being able to flex my design muscles every now and then – and got it all polished off last night. My workload at the moment seems manageable, and this evening I'll be at the BBC watching the live stream from San Francisco of Steve Jobs pulling another technological bunny from his oh-so-stylish hat. ('Beanie' rather than 'top', I feel)

Plus, the sun is shining, and our newly-renovated office is a sanctuary of neutral colours and quiet; the photo above is of our desk this morning. You can't see it in the photo, but the lilies are so bursting with life that they're dripping nectar onto the table.

I like the life my wife and I are building down here. Salut!

Beware, boys and girls: this is what happens when you blow-dry your hair and then forget where you put your brush. May cause moderate hilarity and giddiness. In other news: my wife appears to have incredibly pink lips. That is all.

I took possession of an old Power Macintosh G3 today for a little project I have in mind, and as part of getting it up and running I took apart an old Apple keyboard for cleaning. The printed circuit board that the keyboard is based around was very crude, but my eye was drawn to the old-style Apple logo that was etched onto the surface. It looked really smart and retro, so I tried to take a photo of it. There's more glare than I'd like, but the shallow angle the light's at does show up the embossed nature of the logo. Those of a particularly geeky bent can download a 1600x1200 version here for use as a desktop background.

In other news, the young lady had a huge vat of steaming soup with chick peas, spinach and chorizo ready for me when I came home from work. I intend to campaign for teachers to get even longer summer holidays.

There is a tiny shop near our house which sells second-hand furniture. The choice, which spills out onto the pavement and is dutifully packed back into the building at the end of the day, ranges from MFI chests of drawers to Moroccan pierced wood screens of breathtaking beauty. Had you visited yesterday, however, you too could have been the proud owner of this magnificent four-foot high brass eagle.

I was seriously tempted, but then realised he might feel a little claustrophobic in our London flat . It would surely be cruel to cage such a noble beast.

This blog is crying out for more pictures, so have this work of genius; she of the knitted iPod sock perched precariously on a Skatebike.

Ah Darius! Obviously a real Scot as well as a golden-voiced bag of well-intentioned grease. PICTURE FROM THE APPARENTLY VERY EXCELLENT SMACKED FACE, POINTED OUT BY THE EQUALLY EXCELLENT ED CALLAGHAN.

This will probably only amuse Jenny, but hey, that's enough for me. The grinning gentleman on the right is Big J (Julian Torreggiani) from my work, and for those who somehow managed to survive the 70s/80s divide without hearing of these people, the woman/school child is one half of The Krankies. Fandabidozi!

Thanks to Aston for the pic which brought so much joy into my life.

SOME HIGHLIGHTS FROM MY LIFE


MOI, SNIFFING A BUTTERCUP (OR LATTER-DAY CELANDINE)


PALNACKIE; ONCE CALLED BOGLE'S CREEK


JEFF, CLAIRE, CELIA (AND JENNY) – WE MISS YOU ALL!


DEMONSTRATING IMPECCABLE PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS IN CORNWALL