Ok, its not like doing the London Marathon, or a parachute jump, but it is an easy and accessible way for people to take part in a charity event, raise some cash and have some fun doing it. The charity the money goes to is The Prostate Cancer Charity.

The Movember promo video;

There really is no-more to explain, its about raising money for a good cause, and growing some facial hair. Shave clean on 31st October and choose a stlye to grow into… (see below for style guide…)

Do one of two things now;

1) commit to growing a Mo, and get some people to sponsor you, or,

2) put your hand in your pocket and hand over some cash for the cause.

Im going to be taking part along with a number of other friends, and im going to document it with daily mug-shots on the web.

Click here to join my team – http://uk.movember.com/register/17780

Click here to send some cash to the cause by sponsoring me. – https://www.movember.com/uk/donate/your-details/member_id/62974

Dig-deep people !!!

Movember Style-guide…

Movember Styles

I was reading a blog post last night, about why your blog doesn’t get read, most of which i agreed with. Therefore with a spurt of energy, im going to throw myself at writing more frequently and openly. Apparently its the best way.

Whats been taking-up all my time ? well, Agent Lynch has a shiny new website, powered by WordPress, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. We had fun making that happen. It was the first Facebook Connect integration I’ve done and was nice to see it implemented and working. Ms Lynch is a good friend of a couple of friends – if that’s even a sentence – one of whom is Roxy Velvet. It was great to get her a sit up and running that she not only liked visually, but could attack from a content point of view and really enjoy working with.

AgentLynch.com

The Facebook Connect integration was done with relative ease, using a WordPress plugin that needed only a small amount of kicking and hacking to get working as I needed. I did in-fact use two plugins, one for the on-page login, and one for the admin/user prompt login. All the other Twitter/Flickr/Youtube bits and pieces are the standard ones ive used elsewhere.

If 6 Was 9 – its back ! – Randall has got new designs and a new movie. After filming on his trip to the Mentawai’s, he posted the video on the We are If 6 Was 9 blog. The flash site was produced by him, i just helped get the pre-loader, hosting and analytics sorted.

Slatehall Riding Centre

I did a superb little shoot last week to get some shots for a local tourism brochure and book. Slatehall Riding Centre met me on the beach along with Claire from Imapct PR and we had some fun in the shallows. Nice looking shots we all thought. The full Flickr set is here.

Bamburgh Castle

Holy Island Castle

Beach gallop

Farne Island Divers

Finally, over the bank holiday I spent the weekend with the Farne Island Divers crew diving with the seals around the Longstone. A great few days that I recorded with my little Canon compact, and the result was this small but fun video chopped together fro the video clips..

Farne Islands Divers – Diving with Seals – August 2009 from swinhoe on Vimeo.

More once Ive got something to say…

Facebook

Facebook, is by-far the most prominent of all the social networking sites, with the largest saturation and user-base for non-geeky internet types. The site is used by many for as wide a set of uses as you can imagine, with third-party apps, groups and causes flooding your home screen daily.

I personally use Facebook as a reference point for friends and family to keep me in touch with and available to people I might not email or call regularly.

Facebook as been constantly in the public eye for a host of reasons regarding security, privacy and even human rights, but this week I had a entirely new Facebook experience.

Its not uncommon for people to use online networking communities to gather research on individuals, but this is usually limited to the privacy rules set by the individual along with the relevant site, i.e. – you could use Facebook to research somebody, but only if they have privacy set so low that they want the outsied world to get a view of what they are doing.

Rarely, if ever, would you expect to have your details and information surveyed if you believe you have set all the correct measures in place to secure yourself.

Unless someone you know hands over THEIR login details to a third-party to allow them to profile and research you….  which is what happened to me.

Now, all joking aside, I dont have any dirt to be gleamed by hacking my Facebook account, and I wasn’t being hacked maliciously, nor where the perpetrators seeking to base a highly important career decision based on what they found. But they did circumvent one of the most basic privacy protection measures we all have – our own individual login details, and that blew a hole in my personal privacy the size of the Grand Canyon.

What im saying here is;

Dont under-estimate the control you have of your own privacy, and dont EVER give out your login and password details to ANYONE !

Between media scare-mongering and the onslaught of malicious hackers, its ever-more important to keep yourself secure online. Use each part of the internet for its intended purpose, research and find out about how the site or application works and then configure your own settings to meet your needs.

Dont let the technology get the better of you – its a tool there to aid in the achievement of something and used the correct way will provide huge benefits.

But use it safely and confidently.

Working with Ben Southall on his new site has forced me to source answers to issues that I have left un-addressed on my own site.

With Ben leaving to Hamilton Island in 4 days, we had to get his whole new media platform up and running in advance allowing him to fly away, happy and content that he could post text blogs, audio blogs, video blogs and images all to his site and have them all aggregated and drawn together.

BestJobBen.com

So far we’ve been pretty successful, and have only a couple of small outstanding issues, but the run-down looks like this.

WordPress for publishing and standard blogging – you just cant beat it.

Twitter for micro-blogging – not really another alternative with the widespread usage and app development for all platforms.

Flickr for anything image based, utilising some handy hacks and plug-ins to get what we need.

Seesmic – for video-blogging and publishing via some more handy hacks and plug-ins.

Youtube for edited video content.

AudioBoo for audio-blogging and pod-casting.

With all this going on, we’ve had a lot to consider and its no surprise that Google and web searches are pretty intrinsic to the way things panned out. Also, of worthy mention are the rougish fellas I follow online who keep us all in the picture regarding Social Media and digital publishing, and they are (in no particular order…) Christian Payne (@Documentally) , Phil Campbell (@philcampbell) and Dan Thornton (@badgergravling).

Bomb Planet Earth – Dotmasters & Teddy Baden from swinhoe on Vimeo.

and the Flickr set is here.

Last night I stayed up late to watch the WCT fellas finish off the contest in Tahiti. There’s nothing like a surf contest in a perfect location, streamed live over the web to get you pining for a wave. Sadly there ain’t nothing doing here for a week at least.

Taj was beaten by an on-form Bobby Martinez to take the title, with Parko, Slater and Bede all going out early.

Aritz had another good event taking out Kelly en-route to a semi’s spot.

And then after watching that last night, whilst eating breakfast I watched the second in the awesome South Pacific series on BBC2.

Awesome footage and insight into the world of the ocean and islands.

Then stupidly I link-out from a tweet and start reading about the North-east guys who are getting set for a Mentawai trip… which in turn reminds me that 5 good friends have only just returned from the damn place – where they scored (as you do in Indo…)

Some snaps from their trip are below…

Indo dream

Randall getting set-up to be slotted...

Mentawai Perfection

More Mentawai Perfection

Yet More Mentawai Perfection

Now, normally all this would be fine, I can handle a fair bit of land-locked torture – its good for the mind every once in a while. Except I have to drive to London tomorrow. And that just makes things worse.

In fairness, im going to see a good friend who has the Best Job in the World… so there are gonna be some good bits. But im also going to a funeral and that wont be so good.

Anyway, to come full-circle, envy is terrible, but Im not letting it get to me. Im using it to motivate and search for that trip of my own. I’ll ge my piece of Indo gold… im just waiting in the meatime. Making it work for me…

Ben Southall wins

Being appointed to holder of the ‘Best Job in the World’ has drawn a fair bit of attention. And rightly so.

Yesterday, his Afritrex site recived 16,000 pageviews…  the day before it was in single figures.

A Twitter search on his name reveals a torrent of tweets..

http://twitter.com/#search?q=ben%20southall

A Google search on his name reveals almost every news agency running a story and his name.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=ben+southall&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq= (Good to see Afritrex.com at #2)

The news sites include;

New York Daily News

The Times

The Telegraph

The Daily Mail

U.tv

news.com.au

CNN

Professional Fundraising

TVNZ

Canada.com

Tradingmarkets.com

PR-inside.com

Yahoo

The Huffington Post

and many many more…. infact there are now 174,000 results on Google for “Ben Southal”…

I hope the servers hold-up…. 

A weekend of drinking and water sports – in the freezing arctic winds – has left me somewhat destroyed.

Skimboarding at Beadnell Bay

Getting back to the desk and the safety of the internet landscape was pleasant, untill it all kicked off again.

Lobster Pot design for a business card

James has to hand in his final photography project on friday, and with the seagulls not playing-ball, i was roped in for an all-day photo-shoot and editorial profile to complete the job.

Then, I found out with a hugely sad heart that a good friend of mine from school, a fellow snowboarder, sailor, surfer and lover-of-life was killed in february whist cycling to work in Notting Hill.

Eilidh’s Memorial Ride from Giles Carlin on Vimeo.

The world is a more than a little worse-off without Eilidh Cairns in it. So sad.

And then then twenty minutes after finding out that news, this news arrived;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8035175.stm

Ben Southall is the new caretaker for the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia. Congratualtions Ben !!.

After last year and the trek around Africa (http://www.afritrex.com) he deserves some time off !.

I look forward to visiting….

Here’s the original Youtube clip for the job.

1) I should really be a farmer, or a fisherman. I’m from so far north people often have no idea where i mean. Most of the folks from around my home village are traditional tradesmen, as is my family background.

2) Cold saltwater runs through my veins. I started surfing in my early teens – in the North sea. Surfing, and sliding sideways has been with me ever since.

3) I believe. Not in god, or the lottery, but in other things. Some of them are quite conspiracy-esque, but i still like believing in them. If this confuses you, search Google video for ‘Zeitgeist’.

4) Im well known for the web-side of my life, building and running websites, but im also an avid producer of video and VJ material too. Ive played video in New Zealand, Germany, Norway and lots of the UK for many artists both large and small.

5) Despite loving the things, i am quite allergic to cats. (ok, thats not terribly interesting – but there had to be a weird one…)

6) I have a bit of a facny for street-art, stencils and spray-cans. Good friends involved in the london scene have grown my interest, I wouldnt say im a collector, but i follow and visit shows avidly.

7) Having used PC’s, Mac’s and various other audio-visual kit, i think i might be nurturing a festish for Linux.  That scares me slightly….

And so, for better or worse, seven snippets from me…  now, your turn…

My tags…

Suburbia
WebRat
Otaqui
Cisnky
Holgere
Noseblunt
Klaustrofobik

Now it’s your turn….

Rules as copied from Plasticsnow’s blog:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

The last few weeks have been pretty chaotic, the projects at BDP have been going live and new work has been starting. The eCPD site has gone into Release 1 stage, and the Skill Boosters site and Team BDP Site have both been nearing completion.

All this activity work-wise and plenty going on elsewhere too, on Saturday we fly to Geneva for a week in the Alps with the Seventy3 crew – very much looking forward to that, especially with all the snow there has been already. There is the chance this could be the best season for a decade, with meters of snow having fallen already across Europe.

This can only be good

Along with the plentiful snow, there has been the end of the WCT tour to browse over. Slater won his 9th title at Mundaka this year, meaning things were a little dull from then on. However the Pipe Masters and Triple Crown still provided some interesting viewing – despite Slater winning the Pipe contest for the 6th time – yes, another record..

Parko was a highlight at Pipe scoring a perfect 20 in a heat.

More from Billabong Pipeline Masters on Mpora TV >>

On the arts side of things, Dotmasters have been at Mutate Britain for the last week or two, and work has been moving along nicely. The show has gathered high aclaim from various places, open only till the 21st December, go take a look if you can…

Lastly, everyone is willing-on Ben in the last week of his mission around Africa. He plans to be home for Christmas – running the last 26 miles in place of the marathon that was cancelled in Zimbabwe ! Lets hope he gets the visa’s he needs to get out of Egypt and back into Europe for the home stretch.