D'log :: blogging since 2000

Normal service to be resumed at the end of August. In the meantime…

Midlands:— Birmingham’s Creative City Awards 2008 are announced. Deadline for nominations: 17th October 08 // Wolverhampton Radiophonic Institute (on WCR FM & podcast), “radio for thinking, culture, politics and philosophy” // Screen West Midlands gets a website makeover // 21 out of 53 business advisors at Business Link West Midlands are to be sacked // Birmingham No2ID have a free screening of the film Taking Liberties, at Birmingham University on 26th August 08 // A new £50,000 Warwick University Prize for Writing // The 2008 BIAD M.A. Fine Arts graduate show // Grand Designs Live 2008, in Birmingham, 10th-12th October 08. Billed as… “the UK’s no. 1 consumer show for anyone who has an interest in [interior/product] design and innovation // Open Days for B.A. degrees and Foundation courses at Birmingham’s BIAD: 3rd & 4th October 08 // Birmingham Early Music Festival 2008: ‘Rites & Revels’, 15th Oct — 6th Nov 08 // Five more Google Analytics training workshops before Christmas 08, at Aston Science Park // Serious Virtual Worlds 08 conference, at the Coventry TechnoCentre on 11th–12th Sept 08 // The Independent sinks to a new low: “Derby: marvel of the Midlands” // The Stirrer, gone and “domain parked”? [Update: it's now at a new url] // The Black Country is finally on O.S. maps // The Birmingham Post to go tabloid, dumps the Saturday edition //

Photography:— The National Media Museum in Bradford has a significant Photography Bursary on offer. Deadline: 26th September 08 // Cameraheads protest against CCTV // IntuImage 0.4, the first public seam-carving software? // Photographic carbon-prints that should last 10,000 years, part of the Clock of the Long Now project. There’s a Long Now Foundation podcast lecture on the possibility of a 10,000-year gallery (.mp3, 52Mb) // TinEye is a beta search-engine that helps photographers and artists track down unauthorised use of their images. Upload your image, TinEye crunches it into data, and then their search engine automatically finds other web uses that match it // The winners of the 2008 Blurb/LensCulture/Rhubarb-Rhubarb photobook award //

Creative industries:— The West Midlands Animation Forum has issued a new report on the state of animation production in the region (PDF link) // A detailed profile of the role of private and public art galleries in the cultural economy of Edinburgh //

Videogames:— Just over two weeks to go until the release of the mighty Spore (PC & Mac, and it’s designed to run well via WINE 1.0 under Linux). For once, Europe gets a new game before the U.S. — if only by two days // I’ve been harping on about indie PC games lately, in the form of the UK’s home-grown indie hit The Lost Crown. I’ve now found another solo-developer gem, Shawn Bower’s Evochron Renegades, a unique space-sim released in September 2007, and now very stable at v1.88. What is it? Cross the completely free-form world of Morrowind with Elite II, take out all the ‘loading’ screens for a completely seamless go-anywhere universe (it even has seamless planetfall from orbit), stir well and garnish with graphics about 75% as pretty as those in X3: Reunion and lush gameplay — and you have the space-sim Evochron Renegades. The 30mb demo has a lengthy tutorial, the manual, and 90 minutes of gameplay. The full version is $24.95 (about £14) which I forked out for after 60 minutes of play // How do we preserve the history of virtual worlds? Do we want to? //

Quirk:— Extra-wide manga-style contact lenses. I’ve already met a few BIAD students who change their eye colour with such things. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone turns up to class wearing the manga versions in September // Vulgar Picture is a hi-res archive of all the album and single sleeves/coloured-vinyl produced by The Smiths and Morrissey // Virtual trannies wear their avatars in the real world // Genetic map of Europe, showing the clear distinctiveness of the Brits and Irish. Interestingly, the UK sampling point seems to have been Brighton, so one can’t help but wonder how much further the British might vary from Europe if the survey had sampled in the genetically-insular northern Midlands // A realistic life-sized walking-on-two-legs robot dinosaur (video) //

Ugly:— Watch out for your BT Digital Vault, BT appears to be using it to spring a nasty protection racket on users //