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…

Having done a lot of work with elearning material over the years, it was fun to get back into it for a small job via the agency. SCORM wrappers needed to be added to nice looking html site to get it working in a Blackboard LMS.
All pretty straight forward really. Except it had been a while. So I got Google out and began a quick scout-around for new developments.

I was very happy to find Pipwerks.com, and its very useful collection of scripts and API hacks. Kudos there for making the API interactions a lot easier than 3 years ago.

Diversity in the Workplace

Today im getting a chance to do some exciting SEO stuff…. *yawn*

Im also busy trying to get http://www.beadnellbay.info up and running as fast as I can… its getting there.

So, to make it all a bit more fun, here’s a lovely song/video from Boards of Canda to brighten the day (linked via Charlie…thanks !)

In other news, I contacted the Magicseaweed guys and they kindly added Beadnell Bay, so we now have a forecast for the village !

http://magicseaweed.com/Beadnell-Bay-Surf-Report/992/

Also, this is awesome !!

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/

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 !

Its now May, and the summer is rushing up to us.

Apart from other things, ive been pulling together a few pictures to print and show. The working set is here.

The last few weeks have been spent chasing goals around to varying degrees of success. My foot and ankle is still in a bad way, and my fitness is waning. Work with Mad Dog saw the end of the season, and a company meeting that was a very interesting experience.

I did manage to get an edit out for the NuArt and C6 peeps, which you can see on this page here.

Just gone this weekend, the Cans Festival, ran for three days showing some amazing work in a disused tunnle under Waterloo station.

Some photos here via Flickr and here, and a nice video here

So that sorted friday night out when i got into the private artists show, had a good look around then ran about in south london with Leon and Toby for most of the night.

Saturday was all about surfing, and, more difficulty, getting there.
After wrestling with the north circular for 2 hours i hit the M4 and was finally on the way. I arrived at Jamie’s place in Braunton and went to check the surf, of which there was none.

So with a heavy heart, and having been driving for 5 hours already, i got in the car and headed off to Dartmoor for the free-party where i was meeting Alan and Lucy… it would only get messier from here on.

So after spending most of the night dancing in a barn, or in a field or helping push some cars out of the field.. or trying to sleep in the drivers seat of my car… i got my head together at 10am and headed back to the beach for a surf with the boys.

It was shoulder-to-waist high, onshore and grey..  i was done after ab hour, a shadow of my former self. I must start surfing more..

So, now it was on again, more eating more drinking and a night on the tiles with Dan, Jamie, Al and Lucy… and the dangers of Timepiece.. decently pissed, i remember getting into a taxi at a kebab shop on Sidwell street, and then i woke up on the floor of a kitchen hugging a radiator. The lovely girl who awoke me made me tea, whilst the Dan and Jamie appeared from various bedrooms…

One fry-up later and i was back on the M4, feeling the heat and wishing i was already back in london.

Gotta love Bank Holiday weekends.