iPhone let's me blog easy.

Just back in from a pub quiz minus the pub. Was at church but I still had a goo time despite the amount of Christians there. Honestly, the guys at church really make life so much more fun. I'll need to start uploading some of the pics as I go.




Note the very 70's Stevie g now with added moose.


- Posted using my silly billy iPhone. But we all know iPhones are evil.

May I introduce the iphone killer...

Microsoft have done it again, a perfect rival to the iphone, much like the successful zune - Microsoft have developed a fantastic touch screen device using many of apples ideas but made them better. The best function to this sleek new phone is (unlike the apple phone) the ability: to reset on the fly. Simply use the function buttons above to make this happen real time, apple bosses are furious over the new release and are looking into the microsoft patented '3 finger salute function'. There are rumours that there may be a new 'ireset' function key available as an add on to the existing iphones as a way of winning back Microsoft customers.

The online battle continues with a stunning line up on online games, such as solitaire, chess and legacy xbox titles. Apple really need to get their game plan on for the coming Christmas rush if they plan to counter this intelligent device. We will release more screen shots as we take them...

Anylise this:

On a wee mass web note, check out all these people who are minty with their sites, to be honest - I'd have put facebook higher in the chart, but money talks.

Zynga
4,675,441
$121,986,913

Playfish Ltd
4,218,008
$53,653,919

Rock You
2,140,355
$63,067,230

Slide
1,681,919
$55,793,168

Facebook
958,105
$7,638,216

Flixster
955,084
$22,004,638

Project Agape
944,178
$31,943,509

FamilyLink.com
771,873
$9,562,005

SA Ventures
677,760
$7,698,577

SNAP Interactive
626,980
$11,103,130

How to make real ginger beer (GBP tutorial)

A true Ginger Beer Plant. (DSMZ Strain 2472)

Ok this is my first ever blog project that may actually get me some real followers to this rubbish I waste my time on every other day. I have and always will love and cherish Ginger Beer, or as its marketed by Coca Cola - tangawizi.

I however, hate the carbonated rubbish that the soft drink companys make as it's too sweet, carries junk contents and tastes like you need to brush your teeth immediately after drinking it.

So I used my mate: google. Google said to look at several blogs and articles, so I did - and may i point out if you plan to read only one persons account of making ginger beer then you may fail. I noticed that in some they added or left out parts that others had. So I combined them all together and made my own (bit like that mad religion that takes all the good bits and makes a new one from it).

So Here is what I done for day one:

We want to create a cool named mirk callled lactobacillus, a culture that lives and makes the fizz and more for the brew. Ginger beer is a fermented drink - don't think otherwise. It is special and dates back to ye olde tymes. So, enough with my stupid into, onward to the beer.

1. Grab a jam jar, coffee jar and wash it good.

2. Find some fresh ORGANIC fruit, if you miss this and get tesco/supermarket stuff the yeasts and nice things are all dead with the chemical bleaching etc. So find something like your kids raisins (they are great) I grabbed 3 wee boxes and tipped them into the jar.

3. Fill with water about half way up, dont put the lid on the whole way on the jar - leave it 'ajar' lol. This lets the air at it and allows the yeasts and lactobacillus to start making it happen. Now leave for a warm five days in sunlight, yeast don't like sun but lactobacillus do.

4. By day five you have yeast and lactobacillus and a bunch of smelly fruit, so ditch the fruit and now you have a certified and sought after GBP - a ginger beer plant. You may notice that it does not pack the funky leaves and flowers a plant boasts, but it has all kinds of cool happening, this is the base for any fermented drink from beer to cola.

5. After this period tip the contents through a strainer, transferring the water into another jar. You then added a teaspoon of dried ginger (you could also use freshly grated ginger) and 2 teaspoons of sugar. The sugar feeds the culture, which should be a mixture of lactobacillus and some wild yeasts which will largely be suppressed by the bacteria. In winter the plant needs to be fed 1/2 teaspoon of ginger and 1 teaspoon of sugar every 2-3 days in order to keep it lively. In summer it will need to be feed more often as it is more active in warmer weather. Malt extract will give the culture a more nutritional feed.

You are now a GBP owner.

For more info join this group like a nerdy me:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GingerBeerPlantArchive/

Part two coming soon. Once I brew it!

I am rich, so filthy rich!

Success! I have finally caught a break in these tough times, I received a fantastic offer by email from Africa, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to get ahead - to throw caution to the wind and take the dive into financial freedom!

All I need to do is take secret funds from an account and place them into mine, I then in turn get 40% of the whole deal for helping a friend in need. My peace of mind is guaranteed too:

I will not fail to inform you that this transaction is 100% risk free. On smooth conclusion of this transaction, you will be entitled to 40% of the total sum as gratification, while 60% will be for me. Please, you have been advised to keep "top secret" as I am still in service and intend to retire from service after we conclude this deal.

I am so excited about it I had to tell you all about my future success. I even took the time to copy and paste the amazing deal I'm presented with:

FROM THE OFFICE OF MR. HAKIM JAFAR

AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING SECTION OF 

BANK OF AFRICA (B.O.A) OUAGADOUGOU

BURKINA-FASO WEST AFRICA.

 

Dear Friend,

 

Do not be surprised in receipt of this message as though, you don't know me but  I want you to pay attention while reading this mail, you will understand better. Well,  I am Mr. Hakim Jafar, the director in charge of auditing and accounting section of Bank of Africa (BOA) Ouagadougou, Burkina-Faso in West-Africa. With due respect and regard, I have decided to contact you on a business transaction that will be very beneficial to both of us at the end of the transaction.

 

During our investigation and auditing in this bank, my department came across a very huge sum of money belonging to our deceased customer, Mr. Emmanuel Etukudo who died on May 2nd, 2004 in a gassy car accident with his entire family on there way back from Bobo-Dioulasso, the formal capital city of Burkina-Faso, and the fund has been dormant in his account with this Bank without any claim of the fund in our custody either from his family or relation before our discovery to this development.

 

The said amount was U.S $9.8M (Nine million eight hundred thousand United States dollars). As it may interest you to know, I got your impressive information through yahoo search on foreign business relations here in Ouagadougou , Burkina-Faso.

 

Meanwhile all the whole arrangement to put claim over this fund as the bona fide next of kin to the deceased to get the required approval and transfer this money to a foreign account has been put in place and directives, and needed information will be relayed to you as soon as you indicate your interest and willingness to assist me and also benefit yourself to this great business opportunity.

 

In fact, I could have done this deal alone but because of my position in this country as a civil servant (A Banker), we are not allowed to operate a foreign account and it  would eventually raise an eyebrow on my side during the time of transfer because I work in the same bank.

 

This is the actual reason why it will require a second party or fellow who will forward claims as the next of kin with affidavit of trust of oath to the Bank and also present a foreign account where he will need the money to be re-transferred into on his request as it may be after due verification and clarification by the correspondent branch of the bank where the whole money will be remitted from to your own designation bank account.

 

I will not fail to inform you that this transaction is 100% risk free. On smooth conclusion of this transaction, you will be entitled to 40% of the total sum as gratification, while 60% will be for me. Please, you have been advised to keep "top secret" as I am still in service and intend to retire from service after we conclude this deal.

 

Finally, I will be monitoring the whole situation here in this bank until you confirm the money in your account and ask me to come down to your country for subsequent sharing of the fund according to percentages previously indicated and further investment, either in your country or any country you advice us to invest in. All other necessary vital information will be sent to you when I hear from you.

 

I will be expecting to hear from you soonest. Please if you are not interested in the deal don't bother to reply me and delete this message from your mailbox ok.

Have a nice day.

Mr. Hakim Jafar.

If you are interested in this non scam, call me. It is so worth it!

Chris

My daughter went missing!

I am sitting here, sweat on my face, my heart beating and I feel sick. As I had mentioned, my family have got sick; and when your family are sick you put them to bed and check in on them over the course of the night. BUT... Tonight I put Belle to bed (my 4 year old daughter), I went down stairs and put on a few episodes of 24. I was right in the middle of one and I heard the door bang, so I paused the show and decided to take a quick toilet break, so I see Belles light on and I go in to check up on her with her new found measles virus.

To my amusement she was gone, I thought: "ahh, bless her, she is in our bed resting all snuggled" so I go to check on Lindsay and Belle, there was no Belle, I then started to calmly panic, I went up to my loft, no Belle, down to the kitchen, living room, addisons room, toilet, every where: no Belle. I then checked the kitchen patio door and it was open!!

I freaked! I ran and waked lindsay, turned on all the lights and then checked again, no Belle! I felt sick, really sick. I called for her: nothing. Lindsay was really panicking so we started frantically checking all the hide out holes around the house, then she ran out from behind our bed (bay window cove) she was sleeping behind our bed. What a relief. What a horrible few minutes, I can only think I caught a glimpse of the poor McCann family. That was by far my worst 3-4 minutes of my life. I would take anything in place of that happening.

So in that, the only good I can think is that I will post a link to Maddie McCann's Blog in some hope that these guys get some closure either way on that 2 year feeling that I experienced.

Horrible.

Link:

My work on BBC new tonight at 6pm

Be sure to check my work on BBC tonight, I'm really happy with the outcome, I guess I can't really, truly call it my work as I was only the hands that built it from two artists I worked with, however I am stealing the show today as I am responsible for all the hard, hard work that went into appeasing two very contrasted artists.

I also had alan from thefatevlis shoot some video from it, so who knows where this will end up, but I can tell you where it has ended up for now; Belfast's Lanark Way peacewall. It's not the worst art installation, but its not really the best. I like the fact I built and managed the print for it. But they really should have let the boys at it to sort the artwork out with some dog heads and the like. 

Enjoy.

DNA promos - check out the dogs!

 I set some pets to the new dna promo stuff for elevate. Loving where this thing is going and that I can be a part of promoting it. The team are all busy working away on various bits, watch this space to see the kool stuff. 

Here is the brochure-ism: LINK

50's wins

I came back at it after lunch, I think I'll try a blend of pac man meets 50's prude. I think this represents us Belfast type people? Our approach to sex has to be mental. Every thing else is.

Let you know how it gets on.

I'm off home.

Which way to design it...

Today on my desk lies a new bit of work for the Belfast Trust, they are a great crew and generally allow me to fire away on anything I design, this is on sexual health - I can just fire anything on it as it needs to have the ability to go to the very young and very old. So, does pac man win this or a 50's scrap look?

Pdf on it's way on print time...

First of many - I just discovered lovely blogger supports pdf!

Yey, great news for my brain, it found out today that I can upload the work I produce to this blog, meaning that I actually can document the work I create. I find that my whole life has whizzed by with not a single shred of evidence that I work in design.

So here is a first off, rob if your reading, yes, I have spammed your document to the internet before proofing it with you, something you should have signed against when placing your order.

LINKY HERE!

Hope you all like the work. Its vector so download is small.

My mate draws on peoples backs

I just wanted to give you fine folk a look at my mates art: THEFATELVIS

It's not every day a bloke asks you into the mens toilets at church to take his clothes off to show you something, at fist this reads bad, but my mate alan needed a shot of his new tattoos and they rock, so this fine bloke gave a demo.

Alan has been going from strenght to strenght on these super awesome inks, he is available for consultation and indeed to hire for his foxy services. You want some art that means something? Art that is not on 1000 other people? Then seek ye the fat elvis.

Click here to see the skill.

Easter eggs

I am choc'd out and it's only lunchtime. Easter eggs are nice, but why
do all these people make them with the secret suprise on the outside?
When I was a kid they were inside and it made it special. What next:
kinder will put the toy wrapped to the foil? We need to unite. We need
to say no to the packaging whore mongers.

Sent from my iPhone

I fedd RSS like a pimp feeds his hoes...

YES! I did it, took 4 nights to work it out, but there is software out there if your willing and it creates one fat RSS feed from all the mini feeds from the likes of twitter, facebook, flickr, blogger and all the others I have, now I can send them all in one swoop to each of my sites, better still I know how to do it for my clients.

This means good things for this web designer who hates designing for the web! I am so lost right now that I hate what I do, but can't do anything else. It is a creative process but it's just not the right creation I want.

Ahh, the news is that RSS is here to stay its beautiful, powerful and harnessed.

Google got street cred

Google never cease to amaze, I have played around with street view or the wee orange man as you may call him and I must say its way cool. It baffles me to how they decided that this would be a good thing to do, but I now see estate agents using it and news teams. It makes my life easier as designer too, things like a mural off a wall I need for a bit of artwork or a profile of a landmark I need to trace can all be grabbed off this wonderful thing.

I do tip my pointed hat to google for this amazing feat, however, when I done what all you must have done first thing on discovering this new tech; went to see my house - I discovered that the lazy google driver never bothered to bring his car past my neighbours, he switched off the cams and headded home! Come on!!! I want views of my house, I live in a major city on an important road! I'll be watching out for them if they ever come back to finish the job.

I thought it worth mentioning all this in case some of you stumble upon this one day and ask what is it for... The way I see it is that it beats maps into the ground for coolness. The technology in how they mapped the place out was using 360 cams with gps plottings, much like some of the high end dslr's out there. I may have to finish the job they started and upload my shots to google HQ.

It is also available on iphone for you fine folk to use and abuse.

Cleaning the house

Well all I got to say is the iphone is a good way to scive. Right now my dear wife cleans while I sneak about wirelessly checking up on by blogs, facebook and forums. Heh heh. Gotta love it.

Google sites now online

Well google are taking over the world and their newest thing to offer is a fantastic wysiwyg web editor with features that would take any web developer weeks to add to a site. I love that they off these things free, but what about the humble web designer now? He will have to up his game, I say shame on you google.

If you want to be the first to test out the app then http://sites.google.com/ get your name on it before they get snapped up. Who knows, you could sell it in the future? Or it could sell you.

Enjoy.

New year, new media

I like my mate Alan have decided that this year I will steal back time stole from me in the wonderful world of media, I want to see a dear project finished, my dragonprince. I have decided to make it so and get the webs off my keyboard and begin making 3d models again, I was really happy when I was doing it and when I stopped it I was sad.

So new year, new film and new video, watch this space for future updates on the wonderful work of the dragon prince and AC productions (I'm not sure that was even the name) 10 minute feature.

Iphone hangups - why the iphone has suckable things they don't tell you

Ok, we all love mac's not the dirty rat burgers either. But I recently got myself the new 3g iphone, well to be honest I guess they will release the 4g shortly with all these problems fixed; but to date they have not, so I thought it would be constructive / destructive of me to tell you fine folk the real drawbacks to the phone.

I use computers a bit, so naturally I hoked and poked for workarounds, they are not there without the help of third party software (yes - pay for what apple left out).

Ok here goes:

1. The sms abilities are poor. By that I mean you can't forward a text! You cant copy and paste the words you sent either. This will hurt you lots if your the type of guy that copies old love texts and pastes them into new ones that you reckon your wife/girl won't remmeber. Now you have to slave over a new note, most likey not being as good as the ones you copied from the net.

2. The iphone camera is terrible, it does not zoom, it can't take multiple shots, it's way slow, it blurs, it has no timer, it has no editing ability, it really is a simple thing made for a housewife with 10 kids and no brain left over. Further more it is terrible to take your own picture with it as you have to bend your fingers around the front of it and try and guess the position of the button and then wonder if it took the picture. When it does, its blurred, off centre and just about the worst wide angle shot a phone can take.

3. Bluetooth - I got this phone and was so excited to sync with my mac and have incoming calls pop up on screen and then the ability to sms over bluetooth like my last phone, guess what!??! Apple decided to enable this amazing skill for everyone with a real phone other than their own spawn. I really am confused over this as it defies common sense - which is apple's selling point!

4. Well there is a four, but I'm taking too much time at the minute ranting, so I'll be back for 4 later.

I hope this helps you in making your future iphone purchase.
I'll be back with more.

BTW - the phone is awesome, makes my last smartphone look like a window licker.

Ok, so I'm back

Well, it's been a bit - this whole social networking thing is a bit much, apparently is part of 2000 living, so I guess I better get on the ball. 

I  got a facebook, myspace, blogger, friends reunited, flickr, photo forum, 3d forum, church forum and blogs that I frequent. I'm kind of thinking these things are taking a lot of my production time away from me. 

The reason I post this new update is that there are a lot of developments from my life at present, I'm not sure if I mentioned; but I have a number two child now: Addison Grace, she is amazing, I have moved work to a warehouse that is very cold, I drive a poke van that has adverts on it, I take photos now as a big part of my living.

I think that covers my things to date, the great news on my productions are the following:

1. DragonPrince is well underway

2. Im freelancing 3d for companies such as UTV and Developers

3. Best of all is this one: I'm making a 10 minute film with my buddy Alan, it's going to complete our pact since we were about p4 - to make a motion picture. It's not feature length, but a darn good try at doing it pro.

Life is great, my family are great, my mates are great. I'm a very blessed guy. I owe it all to God who makes all things possible. What more can I say...?