This is nothing odd, as ive watched most of the ASP events this year in the exact same way.

But in the corner of my eye for the last 5 days has been the little Hurley/Facebook logo from the corner, announcing that the expression session is going to be live on Facebook.

Curiosity got the better of me and I had to go check it out.

Hurley Logo

It turns out Hurley are pretty on-it in terms of Social Media and Networking…. and the Facebook site is just beginning.

http://www.facebook.com/Hurley

http://www.twitter.com/hurleylive

http://apps.facebook.com/hurleypro/?_fb_fromhash=4f8acfc4f79855cede6e234f91dca3f4

Between the event site, the fan pages, the live event on Facebook, and live updates via Twitter, there is plenty of info out there.

And the most interesting part is how Facebook has become a broadcast and event partner, standing side-by-side with Hurley to present the event. Considering the event winner’s purse was set at $105,000 – ensuring it set a new record – thats quite a big event to be hanging-out with, especially at home in Southern California.

Facebook is really storming-ahead, the lite.facebook site, the @replies functionality, its not Twitter that should be worried – its the market-place as we know it.

They are breaking new ground. We’ll watch as they advance..

Side-note;

If your really keen to get a varied social-media account of the Trestles event, you should check-out the Hobgoods – these guys have also got a good grasp on the Social Media world.

http://www.blog.thegoodss.com/hobgoods-227/

http://twitter.com/hobgoods

http://vimeo.com/user723842

and.. the ASP has a Youtube channel you can get the videos from…  here’s the Expression Session highlights.

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…

The guy used to hit the North Shore with a vengeance whenever the swell was pumping.

His story is coming…

And I cant wait… 

One of my pet-projects at the moment is the information site for Beadnell Bay – http://www.beadnellbay.info.

On it Ive created a page specifically for the surf report that im providing for the area (http://www.beadnellbay.info/surf-check/), and Ive been looking for an efficient way of running the content.

Its really not that hard, you go to the beach, take a photo, go back to the office, upload the image to the web server, and hey-presto, you have a surf report. But, doing this every day will take up more tim than is ideal, and is very repetitive.

So how can we make the process more streamlined ? how can it be easier ?

I had tried a few ideas, and had searched for the best solution online, and the best I had come=up with was to use Yahoo Pipes to push the latest image from a Flickr group into the page. The pipe is here if you want a look -

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=tgsFay003hGYXDqQBR50VA.

However this is not really what I wanted. The images do not display large enough, and whilst its nice running it through Flickr, linking out to the set is not ideal.

Enter technology and the perfect solution.

Apple iPhone

Im already using my iPhone to take the photograph and push it to the Flickr group, so ideally I wanted was something as easy to use but with a btter web presentation.

Enter the right application, and a little bit of AJAX.

FTP Picture upload provides a simple and easy way to FTP any picture from your iPhone to the web server of your choice. With a little tweaking, it was up and running in 10 minutes and i had the right image on the server.

On the page I could now print the latest image as uploaded form my iPhone. Fantastic.

However the image being displayed could not be identified as recent. How where users to know that the shot was taken today ? or even this week ?

What I wanted was a script that could find out when the shot was taken and print that to the page, telling the users the image was recently updated.

JavaScript alone can not do this, but the helpful people at http://twitter.com/javascripthelp quickly pointed out that the XML Http Request can grab the Last Modified date from the header of any file on your server.

With that, I searched, found the right piece of JavaScript and then set it all in motion. (code is below).

The surf report image now displays, is enlargeable, and has the upload date and time printed next to it. And all automated via the iPhone.

Along with this, I post a text update via Twitter and you get a pretty decent surf report.

******************  Example Code ******************

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var xmlhttp=false;
try
{
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject(“Msxml2.XMLHTTP”); /* for IE < 5 */
}
catch (e)
{
try
{
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”);
}
catch (E)
{
xmlhttp = false;
}
}

/* mozilla & opera */
if (!xmlhttp && typeof XMLHttpRequest!=’undefined’)
{
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
}

var upDated

function getUpdated(){

xmlhttp.open(“HEAD”, “MyPic.JPG”,true);
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() {
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4) {
upDated = xmlhttp.getResponseHeader(“Last-Modified”);
document.getElementById(“theDate”).innerHTML = upDated;
}
}
xmlhttp.send(null)
}

</script>

</head>
<body onload=”getUpdated();return false;”>
<img src=”MyPic.JPG” alt=”MBP_box” width=”500″ />
<br/>Picture updated on – <p id=”theDate”>Updating…</p>

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…

There are a couple of projects being worked on, in the ‘slow-burner’ style that will come to surface soon.

One of the days has me in front of the camera this time with me as the focus for James’s final photography project.

A few extract snaps are below as a spoiler, the final series will be much tighter.

Quiver shot

Skim-boarding at Beadnell Bay

The Kite / Batman shot

Searching.... (sorry Rip Curl)

Surfboard silhouette

Beach walk

Point break... almost

The 'launch'

Grassy detail

Skimboard hack

Dune walking

More when the exhibition opens from this series.

Had a moment of fun creating a nice business card graphic from a lobster pot at the harbor too…

Lobster Pot

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.

Some points from the last few weeks…

Banksy is still causing a storm, even without actually doing anything… http://www.flickr.com/photos/i_y_e_r_s/3418682416/

There are some great little surf-culture outputs being touted at the moment. Having seen Searching for Michael Petereson in Noosa recently, im kene to watch this – http://www.waveridersthefilm.com/

Whilst cruising about some surf-based sites and blogs, I found Point Never. This superb little art/surf/culture based Tumblelog is the work of Jimmy Newitt. I used to work at the University of Plymouth when Jim did his Visual Arts BA. Good to see he’s still being creative.

Surf Directory is a new site that’s looking to corner the UK surf market for travel and directory listings… we’ll watch with care.

Bikecar – superb little adventure if your into bikes and snowboards. Order the DVD online now – http://www.bikecarmovie.com/

The photos from the trip around LA I had are up on Flickr.

Zeus pulling it together

I got back into town just in time to see the Easter weekend at Beadnell. And much fun it was too, some fun little waves sunny and offshore. A great way to get back into UK living. Then it was straight down to Cornwall for a combined research trip and Stag weekend with an old friend. Needless to say it was a great weekend, despite there being no surf whatsoever in Cornwall.

The Stag, of course.

So, with the fun almost over for now, its time to get back and start making nice things again . There are a good number of websites in the offing and some video and social-media fiddling too.

And as a last note im going to try and split these posts up into more sizeable chunks !

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.