link-o-rama

A chance Facebook friend request reminded me that I haven’t posted to this blog in aaaages. So, I’m going to take the opportunity to link to some projects I’ve been working on, as well as projects being worked on by others I admire.

Cul-de-suck is the website for Scott’s latest novel, sWitch. I’m doing the site design work, as well as acting as a sort of publicist for the novel. Interesting, enlightening and sometimes frustrating! There are also two Twitter feeds - one for the book and one for the books main character, Barbara Ducharme. There’s also a fan page and a blog.

Chancellors of Vice is a new site design for my favourite local band. Temporarily it’s being hosted on my own website.

Creebies is my Nokia Series 60 game that has finally emerged on the Ovi Store. It has a website (in development) and a fan page.
Table42 with Chef Darryl Harmon is Scott’s reality TV show currently in pre-production. It too, has a fan page and a Twitter feed.

Teapott Fables is a collaboration between Scotty and Teddy, an extremely talented animator in Germany. It has a fan page!

Surrounded by Idiots is Scott’s band. Again, talent a-hoy. That Scott’s a busy boy!

Optricks is a new venture from my friends at Gameware Development, focussing on Augmented Reality software. I’m working with them doing some marketing and suchlike. (I’m a busy girl.) Optricks has a fan page and a Twitter feed.

And finally (although there actually is more), my rabbit Regis has a Facebook fan page. He’s lovely, if a bit grumpy. Won’t you be his fan? He doesn’t Twitter though.

a novel novella

My guy has written his first book - a novella called HorrorCon. I’m not just saying this, but it’s brilliant. He’s an incredible writer with an amazing imagination.

What’s more, you can buy it from Lulu now.

Oh, and guess who did the photography and design? :-)

everything i know i learned from a tree

The BBC asks what we can learn from climbing trees.  It seems that tree-climbing has gone rather out of favour and of course, I find this a jolly great shame. I was really rather pleased to find that my daughter and her friends were spending their afternoons in a tree near their school.

I spent loads of time in trees when I was growing up. One of my earliest memories is of a marvelous grassy park with a thick verge of mature trees that at the time seemed a veritable forest. I suppose it was more likely a few small trees. The last tree I remember climbing was in Italy - a giant cherry tree just next to our house, that I climbed to harvest its fat juicy fruit. I didn’t hang about to admire the view, however, as the tree often had more ants than cherries.

I think I’m due a tree climb in the near future.

I enjoy being a girl

Well, I would do if it didn’t cost me so bloody much.

You see, I’ve never really worn a lot of makeup, but when one gets to a certain age, despite the advice that “less is more”, one tends to become a little obsessed with the idea that makeup will fix all those little (and not so little) flaws that seem to pop up on a regular basis. But I’ve made a not-quite-mid-year resolution to stop buying cosmetics unless I actually run out of stuff. Truth is, I’ve tried just about everything now and I can assure you, there is no magic formula, no highly-priced miracle, nothing at all that will do much more than enhance a little. After all my experimenting and spending, however, I have come up with some favourites that I will now share for the benefit of anyone else that is still in “I’ll try anything” mode…

Creams, lotions, potions - all bollocks. Honestly, every last one of them is a crock. You can spend a fortune or spend a little and you will still get virtually the same product. Serums? Bullshit. Night cream, day cream, eye cream? The only difference is in their texture. If it feels nice, buy it. All they are are a bit of protection for your skin and can, in a limited way, lock in a little moisture. What they can’t do, unless they’ve got a lot of retinol in them (the only topical treatment actually proven to do anything - but only in large amounts, for which you need a prescription), is affect the skin itself. Eat well and your skin will look its best. That said, I do now use a tiny bit of Bio Oil on my face. It smells nice, absorbs well, goes a long way and is a fairly natural product. I use quite a lot at night and my skin feels lovely the next day. A tiny bit in the morning and makeup goes on smoothly.

Oil under your eyes can make them a little… well, oily, so I use No7 Protect & Perfect Eye Cream. It’s reasonably priced, lightweight and apparently has some retinol in, for what it’s worth.

Concealers - My biggest personal issue and largest expenditure to date is with my eyes. There is, I’ve determined, little you can do for dark circles and bags if you are predisposed to them. I’ve bought every light-reflecting, under eye miracle concealer on the market and they’re all shit, with one notable exception: Dr Harnik’s Dark Circle Corrector. It’s a yellow concealer that goes over the dark circles and a beige that covers the yellow. Nice and smooth, last all day and best of all is only £6.99! Compared to £25+ for Elizabeth Arden and Givenchy? No-brainer. Under eye bags? Don’t bother. It’s surgery or live with it, sadly.

For foundation, I’m still in love with Lily Lolo mineral foundations. You can swim in this stuff - it covers well and stays on. I think it looks really natural as well. Hopefully!

Eye shadows can be a tricky one. At a certain age it’s best to stay away from glittery shadows and creams and that’s actually quite hard to find, even in the expensive ranges. I like Benefit Silky Powder Eye Shadow. Nice and smooth and good, natural colours. Benefit also do a nice eye shadow primer, but I just use the Dr Harnik on my lids now and it does just as well. If I really want a little glitter, I quite like the Lancome “Best of Color Focus” compact I picked up at the airport last summer. Eight colours that will probably last me forever which is just as well as it looks like it’s either an airport-only thing or has been discontinued.

Eyeliners really aren’t rocket science. If they go on smoothly and stay on, then they’re good. You don’t have to spend a fortune. I actually prefer to wet a fine brush and use a dark brown eye shadow.

Mascara is another story. The best, always and forever has got to be Lancome. Really - no other really comes close in my experience. Most of their mascaras are good, but I really like Virtuose.

I’ve given up on lippy, frankly. Always looks unnatural and feels icky. I use any old lipliner that’s the same colour as my lips and I use it to fill in the whole lip area. Then I top it with Elizabeth Arden’s Eight Hour Lip Protectant Stick (mmm, rosemary) and maybe a little Ruby & Millie hot gloss (mmm, cinnamon).

And there you go. The contents of my makeup bag. I think that’s quite enough girly bollocks now. Hopefully my film has dried and I can scan some negatives now.

the blog loop

My websites are beginning to get a bit… out of control. I seem to be blogging all over the place lately, with no one place to call “home”. I guess this is an understandable side effect of being an early-adopter of the whole blogging thing. Or am I a “bloggerati”? Not sure, but no matter what career I’ve ended up moving into (and I move in and out of various roles with some frequency), I always end up back on the interwebnet, blogging. Even my game design roles seem to inevitably include some sort of webby/bloggy/UGC thing at some point. Perhaps I need to keep my mouth shut.

Right… enough rambling. The point of this post was to draw attention to some other blogs I have or contribute to. One day I’ll be a bit more organised about it. Somehow. Oops, rambling again! Sorry.

I’ve started a workblog over on my portfolio site - mostly for posts about the work I’m doing, photo assignments I’ve had and so on.

Twin-Lens.org is a photoblog devoted to images taken with medium format, twin-lens reflex cameras. I co-manage the blog and the Flickr group with which it’s associated, so, although it’s not my work, it certainly represents my aesthetic. I love the images on there and visit frequently just to admire them.

Games Eden is not strictly a blog, even though it is built on the same blogging platform as this and the other sites. It is, however, a professional games industry website that I manage on behalf of Games Eden. I’m also on the steering committee.

Oh, there are probably more and if I run across them, I’ll either post them or shut them down!

And one more question for the random stoppers-by: A huge number of people - perhaps even most - seem to get to Burnt Toast via a photo of my deck that’s linked in Google. Can anyone explain to me why? WHY?? It is my most pressing question and I need an answer. Straight away, if you please.

daddy tweet on BirdNote

My photo! Published! With a credit!

I particularly like this as it’s a feature from the US public radio station NPR. Do listen to the MP3 of the clip. My budgie photo is there to illustrate a clip from Sparky the budgerigar, a well-know talking bird from the 50s. You’ll be amazed at its speaking ability. There’s also a little mention of the late Alex the African Grey - one of my favourite birds of all time.

Do also follow the link to the British library articles. This in particular features a good long clip of Alex, which fair made me well up listening to it knowing poor Alex is no more. He is, sadly, an ex-parrot.

One Day in History, part the second…

So, the second third of the day was spent out of the office/house. I went out to Bridges Patisserie for my regular satay and noodles. It proved a pretty fortuitous choice, as the owner, who knew I was a part-time photographer, asked if I ever did food photography. I said, yes, because, yes, I do as it happens. He wants some images of his dishes since people tend not to actually read the menus. I gave him a moo card but had to write my number on the card. I need to order another set with some proper information - sort of a non-Flickr version.

Then I went out to the Sedgwick Museum of Geology to get some work-related inspiration. I came away not particularly inspired, but perhaps it will come to me later.

Back home, I did a bit more arts funding research and a little more reading. I realised, when following a link from the BBC that today is the anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 and remembered that I was in the city the day before so I tracked down a couple of photos.

I was living in LA at the time, but my boyfriend (who I married a couple of years later) and I went to my high school reunion in Santa Clara on the 14th.  This is me and my high school best friend at the reunion.
The next day, we went up to the city for a little recreation and on the Monday, headed back south. We decided to take the scenic route along the coast - route 1, but left it a bit late so a good chunk of driving was while it was getting dark and very foggy. It was pretty nerve-wracking as the road is narrow, twisty and with massive great drops to the rocks below. It got to the point where the trip was taking far too long, so as soon as we could, we headed back inland to take 101(or possibly 5)  the remainder of the way. Needless to say, we made it home fairly late and slept late the next day.

By the evening it was all over the news and we learned that the very road we traveled so tentatively the night before had fallen into the sea.

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