After a long hiatus from the world of WordPress I feel it’s time to check back in and express. It would be foolish of me to think that I could possibly blog, tweet, have a social with some fun inbetween while doing all my design and project work and still have time to blog on a regular. As a freelancer I see a lot of importance in networking through the digital medium and I must admit, getting your head around Twitter and those weird looking “#FF” things can be quite bewildering, but simple and quite logical once you understand the flow of the community. With so many social networks on the rise and so many places to potentially advertise, make new contacts and connect, it can all take some time to begin to build and flourish within each one. This year, I joined Twitter and SoundCloud. Both have great potential and usability and diverse communities and I’ve enjoyed and can understand how some people can be so glued to them. However, there are times when I see people bragging about whatever they are doing and feel like some of these sites are just a playground for ego-maniacs and attention seekers. They can be a very pretentious and devious place also but am taking it all a moon step at a time. On the flip side it’s all good fun and can be wholly inspirational on days when your having a bad one.
Music is my gettaway, my fortress of solitude when I need a good fix. I’m still a vinyl junkie and DJ whenever possible and am open to all types of good music my soul likes to hear, so SoundCloud has been alot of fun and would recomeend it for any aspiring musicians. This year I began DJing on an internet radio station called Spotlight alongside London rapper S6. It’s a 3 hour drive time show packed with GOOD music from old to new which has kept me refreshed, creative and kept my vinyl spinning and put to good use. The S6 & VandaL Show has been growing in listeners and we’ve had a great response for the time we’ve been on there and I’d like to send a happy new year out to all the listeners who have been with us and supported us from the start and we hope you can all join the journey with us in 2012 and beyond. Exciting times lay ahead, S6 and me have begun working and collaborating with artists and will hopefully put something out later in the year.
2011 seemed to really pass by but I’m sure I said that about 2010 so it must be an age thing. Though, 2011 was a very productive and challenging year, it wasn’t all happy roses and smiling gerbels and mistakes and lessons have been learnt and will be worked on. On the freelance side there are things that will need amending this year and I think this will be another busy year around the desk looking into balancing the administrative and design time better. With programs, codes and keeping up to date with design trends it will be a year of learning, achieving, mentoring and building and just growing as much as possible.
One of the best things I done this year was buying my Nikon D60. Yes yes, it’s not the greatest slr in the world I know, but I think it’s a fantastic peice of kit and hate any other type of camera now. My father was a photogapher in his young days and always had an eye for the creative, probably where my love for the arts comes from and it has been something that has bought me closer to my father and appreciating the world he would have liked to have captured behind the lens. SLR’s are amazing cameras but can be a pocket shocker in these hard economic times, so while the temptation is to buy every fantastic lens thats out there, it’s worth putting into perspective how much I was going to use it, so I decided to get a D60 to start with and it’s been a complete joy to use. This finally gave me an excuse to get a Flikr account, another social to get my head around which again has been very inspirational.
With all the hype of 2012 I guess there’s just so much to look forward to. I’m particularly anxious to hear about the findings from Cern around the Higs particle and interested in gesture systems like Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense device and possibly some of the uses around this. I would love to see Wacom and Moleskin to collaborate and bring forth somekind of new digital writing pad, I think this would be awesome and would save many a tree. I’d also like to see digital stuff more affordable so that people can keep the carbon footprints down, the prices of some technologies is just ridiculous in these so called tough times, the Sixth Sense device was built on a small budget that apparently was supposed to be an open source project, however since they showed it on TEDtalks, I’ve not heard anything about the technology and it almost seems like they are waiting for the Apples and others to catch up. Bring it to the masses Pranav! It’s needed!
Recently caught the 7 min trailer of the Dark Knight Rises at the Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocal Imax experience. Could just about understand what Bane was saying, the mask is muffled and I hope the sound is improved when the film finally comes out, but all in all it looks like it’s going to be a good outro for Nolan on the franchise. Looking forward to all the other superhero flicks this year also, as long as they aren’t as shite as Green Lantern flick that is.
Well, I hope ye all had a great 2011 and I wish you all the best for 2012, minus the doomsdays and the mayhem Mayan calender stuff, lets hope it’s a prosperous and fulfilling year for all. Happy New Year.
