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Happy Rapture Day!

Well I'm still here, which means either the rapture didn't happen, or we're all going to hell...

There's been some pretty cool stuff going on, I won the bloggie competition!

The judge was Ian Nathan, Editor of Empire Magazine, who I met on Friday. It was a really lovely day and I also met the person who wrote my brief and also won a cash prize - she's six months pregnant and I'm really happy for her!

Here's what Ian had to say about the film:

“It was impossible not to be persuaded by the sly humour, easy visuals, and note of poignancy in Matt’s feature. Dare I say, there is a touch of David Lynch in his natural strangeness — this tired figure (well performed) trapped in the monotony of life who finds release dressed as a yolk-yellow chick (a homage to Tweetie Pie?) and dancing like a madman amongst the grey clutter of Trafalgar Square. A song to the lunatic in us all.”

I was really touched - especially about the Lynch thing! It was amazing to be compared to David Lynch even in the slightet passing manner!

Hearse Pileup is also doing well - we've got another gig coming up tomorrow, £2 admission, and we're also looking at doing some recording soon!

Finally, we gave a talk today at OpenTech, a conference held at ULU, on behalf of Sukey today, here's a recording of the Ustream:

That's all for now, have a great rapture!


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Hearse.gif

Loading GIF for the Hearse Pileup website

More #snowdonbuild stuff coming soon!


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HearsePileup.co.uk now active!

Pretty happy with the result really, me and Sam cobbled it together whilst out here in Snowdon! The next gig is on the 11th of May, so make sure you come, I hope to see you there!

You might have noticed the text at the bottom of the site mentioning that 'Hearsepileup.co.uk is an open source website, with its code released on github.com'. I'll be posting about github soon, suffice to say that it is awesome, and with a short afternoon mucking about with the software, you could easily have access to source code for the website, and request me to pull your suggested changes to the code. In fact I truly hope you do - I'm falling in love with open source!


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Sukey has made sleep a distant memory...

I've had so little sleep recently.

Sukey has officially arrived, I believe. Today we were featured in the Guardian, I was pleasantly surprised to discover we got four pages!

Alongside that I've designed a couple of new websites (Including Sukey.org, helped shoot another Sony advert, pulled more pints than I care to remember and gone to innumerable band practices. Pulling all nighters left right and centre I feel like a zobie right now.

However the warm glow inside I get for knowing I'm doing something I love keeps me going throught the hunger and sleep deprivation.

I'm truly happy, happier than I've been in some time.


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Sukey is Now Live

Check this stuff out, it's awesome!


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Sukey Logo

Say hello to Susan Keys, your friendly guardian for non-violent demonstration! I'm very much looking forward to seeing this thing go live!


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GAFFEN.co.uk - layout mostly finished!

Please take the time to check out Gaffen.co.uk some time soon. All that's left to do if prepare my work for upload (I openly confess that that is going to be a no small feat to do, and will take some time). I'm going to try to take it in stages, adding one project at a time.

Thanks to enabling PHP on my server the speed at which I can code has become a LOT faster!

A lot of text-heavy posts recently, I know. There'll be pretty pictures soon.

Resonance

Two videos that reflect some of my recent thoughts. Enjoy.

In Other news, I have been getting involved with a magazine called Arthur and Albert, you may have heard of them, or not. In any case, click below for the website I have just compiled for them.

If the exploding shark and Keepon are still up in the delights section, that's my doing rather than the magazine. They'll probably disappear soon.

More stuff coming soon, including the collaborative art piece I have mentioned that I'm working on with Alex Chinneck. Also the smallest possibility of some new music soon.

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Student Diet

For those of you who may have a strange and possibly slightly worrying fixation about what I eat, my diet blog is now being updated again - with a brand new layout. Check it out if you want to know how my stomach is doing today.

Identity Creation

Whilst I am well aware that I already have a fairly recognisable identity in place here, I have found creating a new one for my 'professional' work has been rather difficult. Fortunately I have finally found one I'm happy with; a combination of Garamond bold and brightly coloured Futura. I think it looks rather nice.

Go over to Gaffen.co.uk to take a peek at the new holding page. Be warned however, it will only direct you back to this blog for the moment.

A Storm is Brewing

Just a quick update today to give an idea of what's going on and why it's been so quiet recently.

Firstly I have had to start considering the possibilities of a Final Major Project (or FMP), my progress for which you can see at my FMP blog. This is going to be the main focus of my creative energies over the next few months. However having said that there will hopefully be some material coming this way too.

I'm still working with Six-Creative, and have been working on a short, typographic animation which will be used to advertise a show for London Fashion Week in collaboration with Liberty.

The 'Hardware' zine is now complete and only needs to be photographed. I'm pretty happy with the result, though it could use some minor adjustments.

Finally I'm finding myself getting back into song writing, and have some lyrics germinating which hopefully won't take too long to come to fruition.

<EDIT>Oh yes, nearly forgot - I was in an Exhibition in Brick Lane called 'Untitled'. Response was really good and I was incredibly grateful to all who attended;


More pictures and a review coming soon. </EDIT>

It looks like an exciting few months lie ahead before I finish my degree, so stay tuned to see all this and more!

MATERIAL holding page

It was my first day back at Six Creative today and I was asked to make a holding page for their new web magazine 'Material'

It seems I'm going to be quite involved with the creation of this site so you can expect to see more as the project progresses. It's interesting to not that this will be the first live brief to be uploaded to here for a while.

I have just about recovered from handing in my dissertation now, expect a new post soon on the subject, and possibly a link to download it too.

Interview for Digital Guyana

Here I am talking about my experiences teaching on the Web Skills Guyana project. As I'm in México at the moment and the computer doesn't have a sound card sound I can't hear it I'm not sure, but I believe I flounder massively and embarrasingly on the word 'specialism'.

There is also an interview with Pontus Westerberg, one of the people I worked on the project with. Thanks to Chris Unitt for shooting and hosting the video. Check out the Digital Guyana blog for more info.

Expect a new post soon on the subject of my thesis.

An Introduction to CSS Layouts

Being out here with the team has made me start to consider to reasons why I have a blog, as well as the capacity for blogs to be not only a glorified version of the 'round robin' letter but a way of providing resources to a wider community.

In light of this I have decided to open up the doors a little bit when it comes to how I have developed and persue my practice. I decided to start with possibly the most useful and relevant development in relation to my blog, which was the switch from layout tables to CSS (cascading style sheets).

To those who are not HTML-savvy this may all sound like gobbledy-gook. For this I apologise and if you are interested in learning more you could do worse than to have a nose around W3 schools for some HTML training.

In any case, assuming you are already familiar with HTML and a little CSS, this tutorial is a great way to introduce a clearer, more organised approach to website design. It's also incredibly useful if you want to customise your blog. This tutorial has aided my website construction process infinately and I highly commend it.