Photo Album

To accomplish the set task of creating a photographic album on the theme of “All work and no play”, I brought my own camera into University. The camera was a digital Canon 450D with an EOS 18-55mm zoom lens and in good working order.

During the beginning of the session I collaborated with two other students to create our own team. We decided that our storyline would focus on one day in the life of one student. Showing how he would spend the start of his day being studious and solitary. Then as the day progressed his life would become more enjoyable, as represented by spending time in conversation with a friend in the café that led to a drinking session.

As we were under the time constraint of one hour we decided to use the facilities around the University as a backdrop. Featuring places that the majority of university students may frequent during each day to try and give the story a feeling of reality, for example the library, computer classrooms, the local café and bar.

The majority of the photographs were taken by me and I, due to nerves, decided to rely on the camera’s auto functions. This is something I’d never do when using the camera for my own personal needs. However, I felt pressured (by myself) into gaining properly exposed images and I mistakenly believed that although these auto functions wouldn’t provide any award winning shots, they would give sharp properly exposed photographs. However, mixing this with my nerves and existing medical condition led to lots of poorly exposed, blurred and badly composed shots.

Post production was initially carried out during the practical session of Entertainment Computing. I used Adobe Photoshop for the first time and managed to create a flash based album of all the shots that were taken on that day. I also tried another application package based on recommendations from a fellow student, namely ‘Windows Photo Story 3’. Both applications provided functional and enjoyable views of the photographs.

However, I could see the biggest draw back was the content not the applications, so I took a copy of the photographs home. There I began to select photos based on their relative superior quality and began to use the application ‘The Gimp’ (The GNU Image Manipulation Program).

Using ‘The GIMP’ provided means to crop and select different parts of the images. Then through use of ‘The GIMP’s’ functions, I changed different aspects of almost all the selected images by use of basic features such as the brightness, colour, contrast. I also used some of the artistic features, ‘scripts’, to help add feeling to the overall story. Once I was happy with the selected images I put them together with the aid of ‘Windows Photo Story 3’ into an album.

We tried to create a story of an average solitary student going about his day. How his time was spent initially studying and working hard. Then showing how he would relax and enjoy his leisure time drinking with friends, to recharge and be ready for another day of hard study.

The Appliance of Non-Science

The largest free standing wasted space in any kitchen is the result of a fridge freezer. They have become the poor relation of entertaining kitchen appliances; while the washing machine twirls, the cooker cheekily reveals her glowing inners, the kettle whistles a merry tune and even the humble toaster boasts a make over, becoming shiny and attempts to juggle with your toast.

This upstanding motionless rectangular shape, this large staunch mass of white enamel creates a desert for the eye, as it lies … silently cooling. Many people have tried to decorate this expanse, to tame its near glossy brightness only to fail and fall under the multitude of brightly coloured magnets.

Now has come the time for the sober fridge freezer to throw away its reputation of a quiet upstanding reliable appliance and engage with its peers in entertaining, to let down her draws and reveal to the world that its up for a good time.

On a more serious note, we can see that in fact the facia of the fridge-freezer does provide an opportunity for making the appliance both more appealing and entertaining. I propose that the door of the top compartment could be modified to provide a viewing platform for various media.

Personal photographs could be stored within its permanent memory or downloaded from a local file server, via a wireless link or from mobile phones using Bluetooth. So for example we could show photographs that depict special events, like Christmas card images during the Xmas holiday period or scenes showing what the weather is like outside or the time of day, as seen in these examples.

A small on-board computer would make use of personal configurations and databases, which would allow for complex image schedules that suit the mood and age of the different occupants and different times of day. Thus, ensuring that the pictures are always entertaining and appropriate for the household.

These configurations could be changed as often as wished or left to run the same way day after day. Allowing the users to take special meaning by the images shown, for example a picture of a young child in pyjamas to show its time for bed, or a picture of a bus to show it’s nearly time to go to university.

Configurations could be constructed to remind us of happy days and special anniversaries. Pictures could be shown in special order for comic effect or as a form of cryptic messages. During the long winter nights and rainy days, we could show pictures of holidays to remind us that it doesn’t always rain and that happy sunny days are just around the corner.

The display unit would be able to receive text files from mobile phones and display them on top of the image being shown, allowing important and personal messages to be seen or reminders to be shown. A simple cancel button could be pressed to dismiss the message and return to just the original image.

Pictures can provoke memories and emotions, forcing us to change our train of thought and encouraging us to be imaginative. This mental processing of what a personal image means or depicts, can encourage a more insightful outlook on life. While reproducing the original pleasure experienced at the time the picture was conceived, and we then become the entertained as a result.

Thank-You

Introduction

As with all people, I am a collection of many facets that I hope provide an agreeable interface for each situation or experience. Hence, I enter different roles at different times with different people. When I’m a Dad I’m loving, caring and understanding and hopefully the same as a Husband. The role of a Son is forcing me to come to terms with the fact my parents are ageing and I look more and more like my Dad with each passing day. These roles and behaviours are built on past experiences both good and bad. So I have decided to provide a background of my life as an explanation of the beliefs and morals that have created the person I’ve become.

I am the son of Scottish parents, who moved to England to avoid the resulting bigotry and persecution for marrying into the wrong faith and from the wrong town. Little did they know that the town they chose to escape to (Darwen, East Lancashire), was under siege from an influx of Scottish and Italian immigrants. They had swapped one form of intolerance for another. This led to a childhood that was punctuated by physical violence and verbal attacks, resulting in the worst decisions of my life! I would learn how to talk like a “Darrener” and fit in as much as possible, I’d be ashamed of this decision but I was only 5 and couldn’t understand my school teacher and she could understand me. “Dae ya git mi?”

I’m agnostic and political by default. My family is from the ship building area of Strathclyde, where I used to spend most of my six week holidays, watching the ocean liners and oil rigs being built and giving each type of gigantic crane a dinosaur name. These were the happiest of times, the only period during my childhood that I felt completely safe and at home. Even as an adult these feelings still return when I visit. I have often believed it was the ghost of my granddad reminding me of where I belonged, as he often did when he was alive. One day when our children are grown up and have their own families, my wife and myself will return to Scotland and remain there.

Both sides of my family were historically from proud crofting backgrounds, with the exception of my Great Granddad who came from Ballycastle in Ulster. Hence, the surname but that is another story. The maternal side of family were known for risking the death penalty by turning to sheep stealing to feed their kin during the lean periods of the post-clearances. I feel a tremendous pride in my ancestors for the risks they took, which ensured that my present day family would exist. So I’m proud to say “I come from a long line of sheep stealers”.

Being born in the sixties meant that I witnessed the rise of ‘Thatcherism’ and was old enough to see how her government used Scotland as a guinea-pig for their reforms. Shipyard after shipyard closed, people lost there jobs not in 10’s or 20’s at a time, not even hundreds but by 2000-3000 people at a time, followed by the destruction of small businesses that fed the shipyards. My ‘Granddad’, towards the end of his life, used to watch the young men pushing prams and found it hard to understand how any man could take over the role traditionally held by the wife. It was carefully explained to him that they were the new ‘new men’, who were not afraid to show vulnerability or help around the house, to which he replied “so that’s what ‘new man’ means, it means unemployed”.

The jobs evaporated and a brighter future was considered an oxymoron. People gave up and moved away in a mass exodus of nearly 30,000 people. Those who stayed watched their home towns turn into desolate waste grounds. The combination of poverty and no hope led to a slow creeping death for the towns that once depended on the shipyards. As unemployment escalated, so did the misery caused from the drug trade and then came the petty gangsters, who introduced a gun culture into these already desperate times.