Just released online, the UK research report Nurturing creativity in young people: a report to Government to inform future policy (PDF, 870kb). Worthy aims, such as talent-spotting and individual mentoring of the highly creative. The report’s a worthwhile contribution — but if you’ve also read All Must Have Prizes by Melanie Phillips then you’ll be […]
Archive for July, 2006
Nurturing Creativity
22 Jul 2006 at 17:43
David Haden
Artist(s), Creative industries, Reading, Teaching
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Bak magazine
Bak, a visual arts magazine, has zoomed out of the tail end of 2005 and through 2006. It has four issues out already, each in Flash and with 100s of pages per issue. You can download Bak from their web site, or there’s a torrent containing all four issues here. There’s a nifty “page flipping” […]
Art glass
The Times reports on an exhibition of fine 20th-century art glass. Much of it was made here in the West Midlands, in and around the village of Wordsley, just north of Stourbridge on the Worcestershire/Staffordshire border. The show is on at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham.
Wikis
A 400-page book on the philosophy and uses of Wikis. Mmmm… perfect geekalia for the beach. Let’s hope it answers the burning question though. Which is: “why do they have to look so ugly?” Academic wikis in particular, like Moodle, usually look like something knocked up by someone unfamilar with Aldus Pagemaker, circa 1993. Complete […]
Light art
Instructions for a D.I.Y. outdoors digital light projector. Sadly, it’s van-sized rather than pocketable.
Mail Art
Mail art, Royal Mail style. It seems everyone is enamoured of sexy artists these days; The Times and The Guardian get especially overheated.
Adobe Lightroom v1.0 for Windows
19 Jul 2006 at 10:15
David Haden
Creative software, Photographers
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Just released — Adobe Lightroom v1.0, free beta, for Windows. The Adobe site appears to be down at present, probably collapsed under the weight of downloaders, but lightroom_b3_standalone_07-18.msi is the name of the Windows install file you need. Doubtless it’ll be Google-able before the day is out.
License f(r)ee
The BBC Creative Archive site has a nice clear visual explaination of its licence terms, on the front page. It’d be nice to see the ability to run a Creative Commons license type through a “convert to visual icons” service, and then paste the resulting code into your web page.
Pod-onomics
An interesting discussion of the economics of podcasting, by a pro podcaster.
cPlex back on track to open
19 Jul 2006 at 08:54
David Haden
Artist(s), Birmingham, Creative industries, Regeneration
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I hear that the cPlex arts centre in West Bromwich is back on track, that an agreement has been reached, and that building work should begin again “soon” to complete the nearly-finished building. It will still include the planned art gallery, and events / education spaces — plus a restaurant and commercial office space.
Snow news like old news
With temperatures set to soar to an amazing 98º tomorrow, the elderly may become confused. Dear old Auntie Beeb certainly is. The BBC Broadband front page asks… “So, is it going to snow? Get the latest news on the cold snap.”
WMP 11 and the Blue Screens of Death
In the Might Be Useful To Someone Dept.: I upgraded to Windows Media Player 11 (excellent, if beta) and then I started getting occasional Blue Screens of Death with XP, due to the Realtek AC97 audio driver component called alcxwdm.sys — now Realtek has just released a new 3.9 version of the AC97 drivers which […]
2 Tone photographs
In the early years of the 1980s, somewhere between the election of Thatcher and The Smiths, there was a 2 Tone / Ska revival in England. Toni Tye was on hand to record it on camera . A large selection from his archive of images has just been released by the PYMCA, online. (Go — […]
Otaku test
Japanese otaku (trans: ‘geek-hermits’) have devised a national test to see who’s the most otaku-esque. I imagine the one who gets the first Manoi also gets a big bonus added to their test score. It’s pre-ordering now, $1300 US.
Wim Wenders
The Times, on the photography of film-maker Wim Wenders. He has galleries on the Wim Wenders official site.
A good time to graduate
17 Jul 2006 at 12:53
David Haden
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While UK unemployment creeps up significantly, it seems that it’s doing so at the bottom of the market (presumably since there’s so much cheap labour about). Because the annual survey of graduate vacancies is out and it reports that… “vacancies for graduate positions … have risen by 16.7 per cent since last summer, the largest […]
CND
The Independent has a report on a ‘boom’ in Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) membership, reporting claims of “200 people joining in the first week of July”. That’s hardly ‘the great leap forwards’, but it’s sad because presumably the new members have no idea that CND was infliltrated and completely taken over. It was grabbed […]
Fan boy
Ah, the bliss of a cheap £15 air fan. It finally came out of storage, after I heard the weather forecast — nudging 90º for three days, followed by the most enormous thunderstorm. But it could be worse — Japan currently has torrential rain in 80º heat, and 95% humidity. Speaking of which, D’log had […]
Digital marketing
MORI has released details from a survey for London Calling. MORI looked at the use of digital marketing among arts organisations. Almost all have web-sites although few seem to be able to allocate sufficient budget to them, and most have small e-mail mailing lists. In the next year they’re keen to know more about “interactive […]
Ag & Red Top
Unaccountably overlooked in the recent WordPress-tastic overhaul of D’log: links to two British photography zines — Ag and Red Top. They’ve now been added to the D’log sidebar.