Photography, Oysters and India

My RFID reader arrived the other day, it's very exciting. I can now touch my oyster card on it and it'll open the top-up page of the Oyster card website.

I've been playing with more new media practices too. As well as starting this blog and my web cartoon blog (Ants with Jet Engines) I've joined Twitter and subscribed to RSS feeds of other blogs on my phone. I'm starting to get very excited about new media tech and I'm wondering if this is a direction I should look into on my course at uni.

Unfortunately James and I didn't manage to get places on the Sony Resident Evil 5 advanced play event on the weekend, which is also a good thing. I didn't know that work would have let me go. So now temptation isn't there. On the same subject, I've joined the Capcom online forum to hear more Resi 5 news. I have a book about Resident Evil 0, 1, 2, 3 & Code Veronica X which is a beautiful read. It contains the back story, walkthroughs, concept art, item descriptions and character profiles. I bought it two years ago for about £20 on Amazon. It's now selling on there for up to £175! I know it's discontinued and there's alot of hype around Resident Evil, but damn! I put my copy up for sale yesterday at £101.02 so I get a total of £85 for it. I hope it sells. I could use the money.

My photography project the other week went alright. It wasn't fantastic, but a last minute rush around the alleyways around the Strand and Fleet Street isn't going to be amazing if it's all done within a 3 hour window with no background research. Ollie (my glamerous assistant) and I bumped into CJ while we were there, that was good. So we spent the afternoon with him.

At the moment Janet's in hospital. Luckily I'm right next door, so I can visit in my lunch breaks. Hopefully she'll be out today. She's meant to be going on holiday to India on sunday. I really hope she's alright to travel. She's been looking forward to it so much.

Please do visit Ants with Jet Engines. I'm really trying to get it around at the moment and get as many people reading it as I can. Although everyone who's commented on it says they love it (with the exception of my mother as 'it's rude' and it's not her humour) I am very concious of the fact that it's only friends and family that have seen it. I do believe they like it, I'd just like to get some outside opinion. I'll maybe tell the folks on the Capcom and Spaced-Out forum about it too.

First Post

At the moment I'm feeling a bit rough. I've got a nasty throat infection that's making it feel like there's a stanley knife blade in there everytime I swallow. I'm quite pleased that at the moment I have no immediate coursework creeping up on me other than my documentry photography project for friday.

I got home today sometime around 5 o'clock after having a great day with Janet and her family. We went bowling, the four of us, then had lunch in Nandos. It's amazing how good you can be one minute will be gone the next in bowling. I got three strikes in a row in one game then the next...all gutterballs. I had fun though.

I can't wait for August now though. I've booked my tickets to Copenhagen and I'll be meeting Conor there, who will, I believe, be staying over the night before. I haven't seen Conor since March and it'll be great seeing him again. I got my Christmas present from him the other day and it's fantastic. It's the TPB of Ben Templesmith's comic 'Welcome to Hoxford'. The illistration, as like all Templesmith's work, is beautiful. It's weird, although the characters have nothing in common other than bothe being in prison and being 'big guys' I have some how associated Templesmith's 'Ray Delgado' a psychopathic serial killer with 'Shadow' the main character of Neil Gaiman's American Gods and have Ray's face on Shadow too now. So far great book by the way.

I've just signed up to the Capcom Europe forum after attending their Resident Evil 5 playing event in Hammersmith. I had a ball. The guys there were great.

Most importantly in my news is that my portfolio of sketches is just about at the size now where I start posting my on my blog. This isn't said blog. It's up and running, but nothing on there yet. 'Ants with Jet Engines' coming soon.

Here's a taster of what's to come.