PigPog

It’s 2007! Yay! This year I want to be…

• Mindful
• Busy
• Awake
• Energised
• Domesticated
• Interested
• Excited
• Alive
• Here

And I want to have…

• Time
• Focus
• Love
• Squee

A Happy New Year to all!

On You Tube

Without a doubt, the highlight of this year for me as far as rock music goes has to be hearing from the Led Zep babes. John Paul Jones recently let it be known he has been enjoying himself with all his bluegrass and helping out other people with their albums, but it is GREAT to hear that he is still working on his own album. It has taken a while, but when you are getting something from him, you know it will be worth the wait! I adored both Zooma and Thunderthief, so I know I will love the new one. YES!!!

Robert has been busy running all over the place as is usual for him. I got to see him in Cork this July at the Marquee. Breathtaking. Unbelievable. Standing around me at the front was a sea of young kids in Zep t-shirts who were a little skeptical that he still had “it.” I smiled to myself listening to them and thought…oh you just wait darlings!!! Robert has it – and he has more of “it” than anyone else! A lot of them were unfamiliar with his Mighty Rearranger offerings, but when he grabbed the mic and belted out Whole Lotta Love, the young ones were suitably blown away. I chatted to a few of them on the way out of the show and educated them on his solo stuff, and I am sure he made a lot of fans of his new music that night. Robert is way more than a Led Zep jukebox, although even if that was all he had you couldn’t complain. His new box set Nine Lives is out now, so if you want it all from his previous recordings, there it is all nice and boxed up for you! For 07, he has mentioned a possible duet album with Alison Krauss as well as a new album with his band – wooo!!! Bring it on baby!

And last…but certainly not least…oh Jimmy Jimmy Page. How I miss him out there! It was just awesome to see him picking up the award for Zeppelin’s UK Hall of Fame induction in November. Now there is a beautiful, beautiful man, mmmm…all silver haired and red hot!!! But, I digress…He has been promising an album for ages too, and I am patiently waiting. I have everything he’s done since Zep, and seeing as I love his playing truly madly deeply, nothing has disappointed me from The Firm, Outrider, collaborations with Robert, The Black Crowes, Coverdale, and the most recent where he plays Rock N Roll with Jerry Lee Lewis, I love it all. This time I’m hoping for a more Zooma type album because I don’t think Jimmy needs a vocalist. Vocalists are fine, but when you can play like Jimmy, I just want Jimmy! Him and his guitars, or errrmmm…just him. I am such a ridiculous Pagey fan I’d be happy with an album of him just breathing, but that’s just me I think…Anyway, he has mentioned his new album again at last and says he will start working on it in the new year. Well yay! And when it comes out, my super enormous Jimmy squee will be heard in distant galaxies.

Did I have any other musical highlights? I really liked David Gilmour’s On An Island. Very mellow and atmospheric. It has great soaring guitar moments too, so three cheers to him! Generally though, nothing else new really impressed. I can’t think of a single thing that thrilled me more than Zeppelin this year and their solo stuff, at least not as far as rock goes. All these years and still the Mighty Babes of Zeppelin rule my music chart. So, bring on 2007 and bring me more, more, more Jimmy, Robert and JPJ!!

A nice article on Digital Shot on Preserving Digital Images. I tend to empty my SD cards by moving, not copying, the files to a network share on Sam’s machine, then very rarely delete anything at all. Edited stuff only tends to be kept temporarily, usually on its way up to Flickr.

It’s all very careless of me, though. I really should take the time out to get rid of completely worthless shots, and get the rest stored in some way that would make them findable again later.

We had a nice simple system set up before, where we used Picasa to view the images, and just put names, descriptions and keywords in the name of the folder the images were in. When you do a search in Picasa, it matches the folder the pics are in as well as the name of the image files, so this worked very well. The problem we hit with it was that with all the photos stored on a network share, when Picasa couldn’t get to the share, it cleared all the pictures from my local database. Next time it got a network connection, it had to find them all over again, which took a long time. For a while, I kept a copy of all the photos locally too, but that took too much time and effort to keep syncing with the network copy. Even with automatic syncing software, you have to keep checking that it’s really working, and usually running it frequently to make sure things stay up to date.

Maybe I’ll have a bit more of a go at all this again soon.

Is your Christmas Day lacking that annoying relative who insists on nagging you at every opportunity and telling you that everything you like to do for fun is wrong? Are you crying out for an excuse to nip into the kitchen and have a quick sip of that gin you have stashed away?

Well, have no fear, because the BBC has it covered… there’s a reason it’s often called ‘Auntie’.

In answer to your question, ‘auntie’, we’re online because you have yet again failed to show anything decent on TV. OK? Now stop nagging me and go criticise Cousin Channel Five’s bawdy christmas tie instead.

2006 has been one of those years where it’s tempting to borrow a line from the great thespian, philosopher and thinker Keanu Reeves

Whoa.

So, on with the list…

People of the Year

• WomanoftheWorld – for introducing me to Led Zeppelin and the fine art of squee.
• blue – for filling my year with beautiful art.
• Simon and Amanda Walker – for giving us the opportunity to start a new life in Devon.
• LadyMercury – for being a fun new pal and entertaining me with her amusing writing an’ that.
• Jacqueline Kilpatrick – for another year of friendship and free therapy. Missing you already!
• Emma Barnes – the best *pimp in the business.
• Michael Randall – for love, for friendship, for finally getting round to proposing.

* PIMP – Temporary employment consultant type person. Not the kind you’re thinking of, you mucky devil.

Music of the Year

• Houses of the Holy – Led Zeppelin – the best mix of musical styles since The White Album. We may never know what happened to that confounded bridge.
• Ain’t Life Grand – Slash’s Snakepit – everybody shi-i-i-i-ine! And then watch me turn into a gibbering heap of squee during the solo in Serial Killer.
• Led Zeppelin I, II, II & IV – Zep pwnd this year as far as music is concerned. What took me so long? Well, I guess it would have something to do with the fact that a) for years the only music I listened to was what was on Top of the Pops and b) Led Zeppelin were never on Top of the Pops.
• Love – The Beatles – George Martin is a genius. This compilation is amazing!
• The Butterfly Meditations – Michael Brandenburg – our beautiful wedding music. Thank you Michael.

Events of the Year

• The Wedding! – I’m married! To this fella! [image:2564 size=original]
• College Course – Michael and I completed the Introduction to Delivering Learning course, which now means we will be qualified to teach workshops and adult education courses.
• Moving to Devon – of all the unexpected events of the year, this was the most surprising. An email conversation became an informal interview, the informal interview became a move to… *looks out of window* …wow… this place is amazing.

Suppliers of the Year

Money has been a little on the tight side this year, so there hasn’t been much creative spending going on. However, it seems only fair to mention…

• Cult Pens – We like them so much, we’re going to go work there. It’s a sortofakindofa low budget Victor Kiam thing.

Tools of the Year

• Fountain Pens – it’s just a big inky lurve thing ’round these parts nowadays.
• My journal – I’ve finally got the hang of this journalling lark, I think.
• Filofax – I nabbed one of Michael’s cast-offs to use as a diary, temporary journal and general scribbling space.

Hopes for the Coming Year

• Staying in Devon – I hope this new venture goes well for all involved, but particularly hopeful that we get to stay here.
• Health and Happiness – it’s a cliche, but never mind.
• A Creative Revival – I kind of lost my artistic way during 2006, I hope to get it back over the coming year.
• More Surprising Twists and Turns – this year’s curve balls were fun! More please!
• Certain bands get their next albums out pronto – you know who you are. Get on with it. You don’t want a Blur/Oasis style face-off with your old boss now, do you?
• We get to sell our old house – and profit! £££!

Thanks to everyone who made this year so interesting! I hope next year will be just as much fun.

Latest Update: Added Beaded Tree. A bit late now for this year, but maybe next?

Happy merry jolly berry.

If you don’t do the whole religious thing, don’t worry, neither do we – just celebrate generic holidayness, or whatever you prefer.

• Beaded Christmas Tree: Simple, easy, and looks very cool. Found via Craftzine.
• Papercraft Santa from Paper Forest.
• Make decorations from photos, via Lifehacker.
• Wreaths: a Geek Wreath on Boing Boing, and Lifehacker found a Giant Wreath.
• Christmas Papercraft and Origami – a great list of links from the excellent PaperForest.
• Flying Spaghetti Monster in lights – if we did do the religious thing, this would probably be it. Noodly blessings to you all this festive season.
• Funky Paper Snowflake on wikiHow. Looks like more effort than the usual type, but seriously impressive results. Unfortunately, it would last for almost four seconds in the same house as our cat. (Via Lifehacker.)
• Another one from Lifehacker – homemade stocking. Colourful.
• Make: magazine have a video showing you how to make a paper turkey. It was done for thanksgiving, but we’re English, and we don’t do that. I’m not convinced it’s going to taste as good as the real thing, but it might be close.
• DIY Christmas Lighting Controller from Hacked Gadgets. Looks a bit complicated for me – I’ll just go for switching the light on and off a few times, I think.

There are a few different mapping services around now, and often you just need whichever one has the best maps for a specific area. Flash Earth gives you a quick and easy way to compare them – just click to select a different service, and it switches to using their maps. Once you’ve found the one with the most detail, you might want to go to that site for the extra features, but at the very least it saves you a lot of time trying several sites out each time.

Found via Lifehacker.

Latest Update: Added a link to DIYPhotography’s article on the rule of thirds – a really nice clear description of it. Thanks to the anonymous commenter for letting me know about it – I do read DIYPhotography, but I’d missed this one.

A quick and easy tip to make your pictures better.

This is one of the first things to learn for anyone wanting their pictures to look a bit better than the usual snaps, and it takes almost no effort. All you do is stick the subject a third of the way to an edge. Preferably, a third of the way from the top or the bottom, and a third of the way from the left or right side.

That’s it. All there is to it. The only difficult part is fighting the temptation to put the subject right in the middle, but if it’s a third of the way across or down the picture, it will usually look better.

I’ll let some other sites take it from here – check out the examples on some of these sites, and you’ll see what I mean…

• The Rule of Thirds at DIY Photography – probably the clearest explanation – nice simple diagrams to show you what the rule is and how to apply it. Thanks to the anonymous commenter for letting me know about it.
• CameraHobby – a nice example of applying the rule to landscapes.
• Cody’s Science – which picture do you prefer?
• Silverlight – for people, apply the rule to the eyes.