Archive for August, 2010

Contact

New website and blog for a new group show (Birmingham, 3rd-18th Sept 2010) of the work of eight emerging photographers from the West Midlands.

Novacon 40

Dates announced for the Midlands’ science fiction convention, which is no longer in its traditional home of Birmingham (although still organised by the Birmingham SF Group). Novacon 40 happens 12th-14th November 2010, in Nottingham. [ Hat-tip: Steve Green ]

The botanical sample left by H.M.S. Erebus

The botanical sample left by H.M.S. Erebus  |  by me. Another fun quickie Lovecraftian faux ‘antique’ postcard. Thanks for the Creative Commons components to: Stuart McKenna (background), daniele_sartori (the jetty), manojmp (the crate), kevcole (the ship), and nsalt (the bud/stalk/tentacle).

Prokudin-Gorskii

Amazingly-clear colour photographs of Russia, before the horrors of socialism. I’d seen the site before, but the Boston article reminded me I hadn’t linked it here. There are many more photographs by Prokudin-Gorskii at the Library of Congress website, and the LoC don’t stint on the file-sizes or formats — big 25Mb TIF files are […]

Depth through surface

Depth through surface  |  by me.

The New Optimists

The New Optimists : Scientists View Tomorrow’s World & What it Means to Us. The book is to be launched at the British Science Festival 2010 in Birmingham, and is published by Linus Publishing of Birmingham. There’s a website/blog for the book. Back in 2007 the annual Edge Question asked a similar question of the […]

LoTR Online for free

The Lord of the Rings Online will be genuinely free-to-play from 10th September 2010 — in America, the UK, and Europe. “No subscription or credit card required”. The West Midlands connections are two-fold: Codemasters is a local company, exploiting a fantasy world created by a Birmingham man. I’ll certainly be taking a peek, come September, […]

New book on Lovecraft’s ‘At the Mountains of Madness’

I’ve published a new book on H.P. Lovecraft, more specifically on his Antarctica novella At the Mountains of Madness… 18,000 words. Contents listing.

Maps of future creatures 9

Maps of future creatures 9  |  by me.

Tax the bloggers

Oh yes, that’ll sort out the city budget deficits. Philadelphia is extorting business taxes from the city’s bloggers… “For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over […]

Maps of future creatures 5

Maps of future creatures 5  |  by me.

50 new opportunities on Creative Stoke

Creative Stoke is rolling again after the summer break. Just posted:— 50 new arts and creative industries opportunities, calls, and jobs in the north of the West Midlands. Plus a sprinkling of wider opportunities and competitions, and the most important Birmingham items. Many have very time-sensitive deadlines, so I suggest reading the new update while […]

Behjat Omer Abdulla’s drawing, SHOP

SHOP, Stoke-on-Trent, Aug 2010. Spode site in background/reflection.

Happy 120th birthday, Mr. H.P. Lovecraft.

H.P. Lovecraft was born on 20th August 1890, becoming one of the great writers of the 20th century. He’s still widely read for pleasure, more than seventy years after his death. Although a ‘pulp fiction’ writer, his collected works are now between the covers of publishers such as Penguin Classics and the Library of America. […]

cloud|earth

A photography show by Odette England at Light House gallery in Wolverhampton (27th August – 22nd October 2010)… “Fresh from its debut in New York, Odette England’s show marks a study of geography, belief systems and the natural flows of nature. The significance of the phrase ‘as above, so below‘ is that it is one […]

Docu on Brum’s musical histories

Jeremy Collins blogs about Made In Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra… “I’ve recently completed an hour long documentary called Made In Birmingham: Reggae Punk Bhangra. As the title suggests, the film concentrates on those three genres of music and uses rare and unseen archive material interlaced with contemporary interviews with musicians such as UB40, Steel Pulse, […]

WordPress dating

Useful WordPress techie tip from Chris at Birmingham’s Subtrakt. Don’t rewrite the URL structure to something simpler (i.e.: no dates embedded in the URL), as doing this with the current version appears to cause an overhead that can clog up your database/server.

The death of photojournalism

Neil Burgess, former head of Magnum, declares the death of photojournalism… “I believe we owe it to our children to tell them that the profession of ‘photojournalist’ no longer exists. There are thousands of the poor bastards, creating massive debt for themselves hoping to graduate and get a job which no-one is prepared to pay […]

“Do-not-want th clicky thingz…”

The last technology “do-not-want” group, or so it seems, university lecturers… “The survey, answered by 4,600 professors nationwide [ in the USA, found that ] Only 13 percent of the professors surveyed said they used blogs in teaching; 12 percent had tried videoconferencing; and 13 percent gave interactive quizzes using “clickers,” or TV-remotelike devices that […]

Brown & friend

A photo from the big re:location artists’ show in Smethwick, that I didn’t even know I had. Only a version of Photoshop that came out five years after the event was able to recover the photo from obscurity, and bring out a decent (or indecent, according to your tastes) picture… You’ll need a good monitor, […]