Archive for the ‘Good stuff’ Category

We’ve done it all…and they even wrote about us in the Stockport Express!!

From concerts, quizzes and fun days, to face painting (I am now an expert at painting tigers & butterflies), balloon launches, even bag packing in supermarkets and walking around with a big yellow duck. And all to support a friend of mine in his bid to raise money for the Meningitis Trust.  

In 2000 we nearly lost that friend Martyn to Meningitis. But Martyn was one of the lucky ones.

But this ferocious disease continues to affect thousands of families. The affects of Meningitis are not only through very sudden loss, but also through the devastating after affects such as epilepsy, limb loss and severe mental disability. So Martyn with a  bit of help from his friends & family set about raising an amount of money that will make a difference.

And he did! So far we have raised in excess of £7,000! A fantstic amount of money that will help so many people. If you would like to support the trust please visit http://www.justgiving.co.uk/martynsperutrek

Meningitis and septicaemia (blood poisoning) are not always easy to recognise, and symptoms can appear in any order. Some may not appear at all. In the early stages, the signs and symptoms can be similar to many other more common illnesses.

Be aware! For more information on the signs and symptoms of Meningitis please visit http://www.meningitis-trust.org/

Piccys of our fundraising in the local rag! fame at last!!

Over the past few months I’ve been messing about with different software to help me record some time-lapse video with the aim of making a short movie. Well here is a 3 and a half minute video I’ve managed to make by editing together 10 different time-lapse videos taken from the windows here at the office. Soon there may be more movies uploaded to my YouTube channel so take a look. Hope you enjoy it!

P.S. There is music so pop your headphones in!

The client says ‘I need a picture of a man throwing a frisbee and a dog jumping to get it’

Normally that would either involve hours of stock photography searching, hiring a photographer or trying to comp things together, which again would take lots of time. Imagine if you could just do a rough sketch of the composition and somehow it would magically turn into the image you need.

Enter Photosketch, a system developed at Tsinghua university. Sketch your image, label the elements and wait for the image.

At the moment there’s just this video although an online demo is promised.

A friend of mine on Twitter brought my attention to this uber clever stop motion film from Takeuchi Taijin. Photographed first and then filmed again – the overall result is cracking.

Ever wanted to create an super realistic miniature model and then painstakingly craft a time lapse video? No me neither, but thanks to the amazing technique of Tilt Shift photography you don’t have to – just find a suitable location in the real world and choreograph each… OK maybe it would be easier to create a model.

Take a look at 50 Beautiful Examples Of Tilt-Shift Photography, or if you’re truly geeky you might want a technical explanation.

Of course, there’s always another way…

As we all know, Macs are vastly superior to PCs. Seems like Microsoft knows it too. It has been discovered that the recent ‘I’m a PC’ TV ads were actually created on a Mac! Apparently, a Flickr user called LuisDS made the ironic discovery after looking at some of the metadata embedded in the video file. It was made on a Mac using Adobe CS3 software. Microsoft kind of defended itself by saying:

“As is common in almost all campaign workflow, agencies and production houses use a wide variety of software and hardware to create, edit, and distribute content, including both Macs and PCs.”

OK, they fobbed it off onto the Ad Agency, which as we all know use Macs. That’s not the end of Microsoft’s tale of deception though…

A new ad for a Windows only piece of software called ‘SongSmith’ has just been released. This lets the user start singing and the software creates a tune on the fly. Sounds fun, wish they had it for the Mac…

Going off the TV ad it would appear the software IS available for Mac users as it is shown running on a MacBook Pro!

They’ve attempted to cover the Apple logo with stickers but it’s still easilly identifyable as a MacBook. 20 seconds later it’s shown running on a real PC laptop that looks about 6 inches thick.

Here’s the ad. I’m sure the general cheesyness of the ad must be intentional, although why I can’t imagine. There’s a really funny part where one guy says “Microsoft huh? so it must be really easy to use”

Hmmm, pull the other one Microsoft, they’re probably running it on a Mac because it’s more stable at running Windows than regular PCs are.

It has been suggested that the placement of the MacBook is intentional so as to cause a storm and be a viral hit on youtube. Perhaps, but if that was the case you’d make damn sure you did a good job on the ad, make it on a Mac even.

Last week I blogged about our Chip Shop nominations. I know we’re all especially happy that our Body Worlds lift idea made the grade, but it got me thinking.

What else could you do with a lift?

These are just a few I found on the net…