Duck!

Public rest rooms..

Natural enemy

Retro

I know I'm late to the party about instagram being sold to facebook for a billion dollars in cash and stock but still.. Is that not mind blowing? I mean this thing is just a couple of filters applied to your profile picture.. or your breakfast or other mundane object of your choice.. And just a combination of being somewhere at the right time with the right product really pays off. Blegh I don't get why it's so popular - but I guess I am pretty uncool. Anyway the above is my tongue in cheek verdict on the whole subculture.. Is it even a sub culture any more?

Elephants!

So these guys are always watching over me when I work on the PC. A modest collection of elephants that was began when I casually mentioned to my girlfriend that I enjoy these creatures. 5 years down the line and my herd is doing pretty well! My mother got in on the act too (the big white one) and they're quite a multicultural crowd. Elephants from France, USA, Morocco and different parts of Great Britain off the top of my head!

global consciousness

So I've been trying to drive traffic to this blog primarily through linking my comics and whatnot to a website known as reddit. Thus far it has been moderately successful. I've gotten a few views out of it but nothing major. The exposure depends heavily on your content being 'upvoted' by people who like it. The more upvotes the higher rated and more visible your content becomes. Sadly most of my content does not receive a huge amount of these upvotes, which is fine because it's hard to compete against the amount of brilliant content on that website with a few poorly drawn doodles.

So why am I writing this? Well I find myself in something of a personal dilemma. While browsing the interwebs this evening I did my usual round on reddit and discovered that some clever clog submitted a comic with the same idea and gag as one of my sketches that I'm currently working on.. Of course this is a complete coincidence, but when I saw how well received the content was on reddit I didn't know how to feel...

The comic is funny (obviously I would think that as I had the same idea) so I am glad to see it get so much exposure and many upvotes, but at the same time I felt (irrationally) robbed of any credit. Should I not just be pleased that my brain thought of a gag that if I had gotten to first would have made a lot of people happy? That should be enough. And I will have to learn to live with such feelings because I doubt it will be the only time it happens. In fact I'm sure that anyone who is trying to create anything original has suffered a similar scenario before.

Makes me wonder if we are all part of some global consciousness where we mutually share almost all our ideas. I'm sure many of us have had that 'I thought of that ages ago!' moment when we see a new product, concept or idea become widely known or commercially viable. I guess the difference lies in the ability for certain people to have the motivation to see their ideas through to a conclusion. Enthusiasm and commitment are commodities just, if not more valuable than original creative thinking!

Ozzy bear

The batman theme is awesome.

So yeah I've found that having the batman theme from the dark knight rises playing makes everything better. The illustration above is one of only many examples. If I walk into my room and it happens to be playing on media player I suddenly develop purpose and direction with my entire life.. Tying my shoe laces suddenly becomes a dramatic task that has to be done with rigour and perfection or else Gotham is lost.

More puppies!

Posting young Cooper yesterday got me all nostalgic of my other dogs when they were tiny. I still love them now of course but it was nice to be able to hold them in your arms and whatnot. The handsome pup above is called Oscar. If you've been following this blog you will have already seen him fully grown. The other dog in the image is Monty the bulldog.. I'm sure he'll get his own post soon enough!

sleepy baby bulldog

So these are photos of Cooper, one of the bulldogs in my family. He was only a wee tiny baby at the time but I stumbled across these in my photo archive and couldn't help but share them.. I'll maybe snap some fresh ones of how he looks today for some comparison!

Cereal Killer

I drew this with bring out the gimp playing on repeat for inspiration...

University competition - Current living - Conductive concrete

A few years ago during the architecture degree myself and two of my friends entered a proposal into an innovative concrete competition. Our idea was to re-envision how we think about walls as architectural components. With modern technology it is becoming more and more exciting. Just today I watched a video about turning any wall into a touch screen device by utilising sensors that can record vibration through the material - it reminded me of this competition entry and the idea that a wall can have a live layer within it, allowing you to 'plug in' anywhere. Of course there are all sorts of interesting questions about materiality and safety - we don't want to be electrocuting ourselves after all.. Still it is nice to open your mind freely to new ideas and concepts for how we can live our lives!

For anyone interested in the science:


1. Adding electrically conductive elements to a regular concrete mix
to achieve a conductive capacity to provide thermal and electrical
properties. Harnessing the potential of concrete as a “skin” to be
manipulated. i.e. In this case providing a thermal capacity, or applying
current through it to create a light source.

2. Possibility of the development of this technology to be harnessed
in all new builds involving exposed concrete surfaces – the
technology could remove the need for installation of separate
under floor heating systems, externalised radiators and even
wired light fittings.

3. Electrical conductivity can be embraced in the form of a thin layer
used to provide adequate power for lighting systems, which would
be introduced at the casting stage either pre-cast or in-situ. The mix
may be different to provide thermal capacity, but this could be laid as
a slab/screed to allow for heating benefit. The conductive concrete
can be connected to mains power, and thus a reliable light source
can be obtained.

4. The energy transmitted by free electrons travelling through the
charged concrete is changed from kinetic energy to the form of
thermal energy when it bombards the concrete molecules. This
thermal energy is stored by the concrete mass and thus it heats any
connected space by radiation/convection.

5. The inherent resistivity of concrete, which is an insulator is an
unmodified dried state, is such that it may be possible to overcome
this by providing a skim coat of plaster to the conductive surface,
while still allowing for thermal energy to pass through.

6. The production of our hybrid adds no more to the embedded
energy cost of the production of normal concrete, as the component
added to provide conductive capacity is a waste by product of the
steel manufacturing industry. Coke breeze is normally landfilled, and
using it in this way provides opportunity to turn waste material into a
new and exciting technology.

I feel bad..

This happens far too often. I feel inspired and motivated by an amazing post about something but my enthusiasm dies before I can muster the enthusiasm the type in my overly complicated and annoying password that I thought at the time would be really secure but in reality it's just a real pain in the ass having to type it out.

Seasons changing...

So summer has finally come to an end and we're into September. I always get a little sad when the change starts to happen. The nights are becoming rapidly darker in the evenings and soon the cold bitchiness of winter will be slapping me in the face.

I mean it doesn't make a whole lot of difference in some ways.. I just swap one kind of sneezing for another (see above) but I sure do miss a healthy dose of vitamin D every day from the good old sunshine.

I also have a pretty poor record with winter time and road safety, the two times by bike has been involved in a crash have been down to black ice and December..  I'd stop riding it during the bleaker months.. but I'm just too damn renegade cool to stop. YOLO, SWAG, BAYLIFE... ETC.