I feel pretty privileged to have been in the presence of Vinn D and his big Alloy Wheels in Morrison’s car park today. Yo Vinn why are you in the disabled space?

I have just been looking through some of the Photos I took in Berlin and remembered how awesome that place is. Someone quickly get me an excuse to go back.

PS. The original post ‘Berliner‘ from our trip last year. How time flies.

Tonight Brad hosted another classic garden party with foods a plenty. However this time with it being nearly October and getting chilly we decided that we needed a fire to keep us from getting cold.

Just after my last update about what I was up too I had to turn around a rapid Slice and Code job which took me all night. It was fairly challenging as it involved a fair amount of strategically placed images and a great deal of Photoshop work. However it was really rewarding and what the first project I had worked on with a new client. The downside is however I can’t show (or tell) anyone what the site is or that I worked on it. Mainly because the work was passed on to me as a matter of turn around time and the people this was actually for are not to know that someone else worked on it. Not ideal, but I can say that it was for a band who have a few very well selling albums but you probably will have never heard of them.

Next up at the end of August me and the rest of my family were treated to a visit from my Mum who I haven’t seen in roughly three years. It was amazing to see her and I hope she had a nice time hanging out with me and Heather when she stayed over. We did a few awesome things, like visit a deserted medieval village, eat fine cuisine in Pickering, eat not so fine cakes in Howden, got caught in insane rain storms and drove with the top down. All of which was great and Heather and I can’t wait to visit my parents in December.

Then I some how managed to loose 5 karma for reasons I don’t remember but this lead too another quick turn around job under the same circumstances as the last. The general outline is, work on an awesome project that you would normally be proud of but can’t ever show anyone what it actually is. All I can say is that it isn’t porn. Honest. Srsly.

That leads me to now. Working may A-Hole off on Critit, my day job and on finishing up the new fourleaves. To sum up the last month here is a massive steaming pile of images.

So yesterday I climbed to the top of England’s Highest Mountain, Scafell Pike. I did this with Brad and Kris who were great mountain buddies. Basically set off at 4.00am from Hull and took a steady paced drive to the scenic Lake District. The mountain itself is really out in the middle of nowhere and the drive up to its shadow is somewhat spectacular.

This is a photo of ‘The Lake’, yes thats its real name. I don’t care for what its name is when it sets the scene as good as this. All before we even set off up the mountain.

When we actually pulled up to the base camp we soon realised that everyone else there was taking things extremely serious, with all the latest climbing gear and hiking boots. We must have looked a little odd to them as the strange looks we got confirmed. This did not put us off though pushed on as planned. I will admit that wearing converse to climb a mountain is not advisable.

The walk up is tough as parts are very steep but the reward of doing far outweighs all of that.

Half way up you get the to choose which route to take. The longer easy route, or the Shorter hard route. Myself and Brad decided that the tough route looked more scenic and out voted Kris. While struggling on the most vertical part of the climb we were engulfed in clouds which bought some crazy wind with them. Got a little hairy but was all in the spirit.

We got a little lost as well at some point and Kris decided to declare that we were at the summit. Possibly of panic but having seen images of the summit on Wikipedia (geeks) me and Brad knew that this was not it. Lucky we found some more people who taught us the follow the Cairns, which are little man made piles of rocks that guide you to the top of the mountain. The knowledge came late in the day but was valuable in us reaching the top (as pictured below).

What is funny/unfunny about getting to the top was the fact that there was so much cloud we couldn’t see any of the spectacular views that this vantage point had to offer. Bummer. Achieved nonetheless.

I would do it again in the blink of an eye. The whole area is amazing and so beautiful. Next time we will aim for a clear day.

Here are the rest of the photos in Gallery form. Oh how I treat you so.

New cards arrived. I only ordered 50 to start with to see the quality, I am glad I did actually because I am not too happy with the way they turned out. Will have to try another printers next time.

Not sure what I really want to put really, but know that I need to write something on here that I can keep as an always accessible memory for finishing my degree.

I guess the first thing write down would be about the degree show that I spent the last 6 months planning with my fellow New Medians. It was on Friday and was the last official piece of work that is accessed, even though it doubles up as a showcase and celebration on the work we have done over the 3 years of study. The night its self went better than I could have hoped really. I don’t like social situations where my work is on display, I get nervous and generally dread the day it comes, but all in all I braved my own insecurities and felt that the whole night was well received. I only heard positive comments towards the Amoeba Project I was showcasing, people were in fact shocked and surprised at it which is exactly what I wanted to be honest. The only person who was negative towards it was some overweight, midlife crisis, wire hair woman, who just “Can’t see the point”. Oh well, we can’t please everyone. It was also great to see my Sisters make it over and bring that magic to the party that only they can do.

With this being the last thing on the Academic calender I can now officially say I have completed my degree. I haven’t had my official grade back, but I can’t see me failing, so I will go out on a limb and say that I am a Bachelor of Arts in the field of Interactive Media. 3 Years is a long time but on reflection it has flown by, maybe due to the lack of having my parents around to keep me earthed in reality. Luckily though, apart from finishing my degree, the other good news is that now I have finished I will finally get to catch up with my Mum, Dad and Thomas. This is awesome and I have looked forward too this since they left.

Urm, what else… Well there is Glastonbury Festival only a matter of weeks away, which I can actually now look forward too now without feeling guilty about neglecting my uni work. Very excited by spending the week in good company and in the magical Worthy Farm valley. Then after that I have a few weeks down time before visiting the capital with Ben and Emily to see Rhys Darby delivery comedy to our ears. Then summer will end and the countdown to my actual official graduation will begin, it is either in September or November, but in true Hull School of Art and Design fashion we still do not know the actual date. There is talk that my Mum may make the journey over here at that time to see my graduate and see the rest of her children, which will be really nice.

Last thing that is noteworthy will be the redesign coming to this very blog. I am still working on the ins and outs but it may end up looking like my showcase page that I did for the degree show. For an idea of what that looks like visit www.fourleaves.co.uk/things.

Thats it. Hello World.

Most of my sparse audience will know that I have been working extra long and hard to get my final uni project finished in time to showcase this at the Connected Degree Show on 5th June 2009. For anyone who has missed out on what exactly I am doing this video below may explain what I have been working on.

While this has been the biggest challenge it isn’t the only thing that I have been working on. I have a couple of projects that are being wrapped up at the minute, one is for a local month event designed to promote Media, Usability and Design in the local area and is known as Humbermud.

There is still some work being done on this to tidy up bits, but they sent it live because they needed it to launch by the last event, which was on Thursday last week.

The other project is call Critit. This is where the local media Industry finds the latest talent, and Creatives from the area find the freshest jobs. We launched a very early version of this site at the end of last year and have been working on version 2 ever since. I can’t really go into too much detail or even show you any screenshots of what we have but I can say that its looking really nice and we have added a lot of functionality to it over the first release. So I am very excited about that and will let you know when it goes live.

I actually enjoy being busy. This may sound a little strange to some people, but I really don’t like the feeling of not having a goal. Even if that goal is to just catch up with friends you haven’t seen in a while, it is still a goal. As I move into the next section of my life, which shall be known as ‘Cram as much music into the summer as you can humanely do, then fly right around the world at christmas‘ I look forward to seeing what these lego bricks can build.

Currently working super hard on my final year project at uni. I decided to go a head and build myself a multitouch table. When this crazy idea first came to me I had no idea of the complexities such a project would entail. I am used to having coding nightmares that need to be resolved before a project can work, but never have I had such a hard time getting the hardware to play ball on a project. Granted this isn’t you average interactive installation but still everything needs to be so precise and positioned at the correct angle just for it to work in any fashion. To say I underestimated this would be the best way to describe this.

Thankfully I have reached a point where I know it works. There are bugs, naturally, but nonetheless this table is mulitouchable.

To follow the progress in a closer fashion, read the blog over at The Amoeba Project site.