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!!

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

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.

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

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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…

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“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.

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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.

What else could you do with a lift?

These are just a few I found on the net…