Death of the 'photo'

Now, don’t get me wrong I love hipstamatic. I love Casio exilim, Sony ericsson, fuji finepix, nikon, canon and the rest of the digital camera market. What digital did for photography was like what the jet-plane did for travel. I was in absolute awe of my phone when at 5.30am on a clear cold morning in the middle of nowheresville I took a photo, slapped on a comment and posted it to the multinational audience that is facebook. What I did in the 2 minutes it took to take, write, and upload would have taken days if not weeks to achieve 20 years ago. And saying that, there’d be no guarantee that the photo you got back from Truprint even came out, or more likely had your finger covering half the shot.

I love that I can take a photo anytime I like, add effects from a stack of different lenses, films and flash effects, discard all of the bad ones in a second, and show the globe a visual diary of where I am, who I’m with, and what the hell I’m doing.

But…I really miss holding a photo, or a pile of photos. The shiny ones that you hold like someone else’s toast. The ones that your mum shouted at you about when you got your fingerprint on anything but the edge. I miss those days, the days when you looked forward to getting holiday photos back from Boots. Did someone take pictures on my camera? I don’t remember that, why are everybody’s legs cut off at the knee or tops of heads are missing. Those kind of photos.
I saw a t-shirt the other day that said “when I was your age Pluto was a planet” soon we’ll be saying to the youts of tomorrow “when I was your age a photo album was a book” and they’ll stare back in disbelief that we lived in some kind of crazy backward dark age.

Looking back, though, it’s nostalgia more than anything else. Photography just wasn’t convenient. I actually have a film case, undeveloped from the 50’s. I have a Truprint envelope sat next to it but its just not as easy as plug and play now is it? I think the need for a Monty Python style ‘bring out your dead’ service may be in order… or I just need to stop being lazy and post the thing. 

Now where’s that chequebook? Are Postal Orders still a thing?

As your mother tells you, and my mother certainly told me, it is important, she always used to say, always to try new things. - Hannibal Lecter MD

I'd eat a dog. Hell, I'd eat a kitten if it came with roast potatoes and gravy. Basically I'd try almost anything. While in France, as my friends were opting for a table full of steak béarnaise, I went for horse- the fine and noble steed. As Hannibal Lecter said "it is important…always to try new things".

So why do so many people have a problem with trying something new? My old line manager gagged when trying some of my venison sausage (insert joke here) all because I told her it was deer and not a cute little piglet. Even food programs don’t do the cause any favours with visual delights such as America's "Top Chef Masters" and it's selection of famous chefs who were forced to create 'street-food' from offal including cow heart, tongue, tripe and pig's ears in a way that denounced this food as revolting. The same unfortunately applies to our very own 'F word' with pig's head terrine and cow heart being brave for the chef to serve to the audience/diners

Ask your granddad and he'll give you a recipe for tripe, 100 % guaranteed.
Ask your grandma about a tongue sandwich (actually, maybe not). Travel north of the border and take part in a Burns' supper to see the splendour that is haggis neeps and tatties served a million different ways.
Everyone loves pate, but serve a plate of pigs liver and see faces drop. Chicken breasts, fillet steak, lamb chops all have something in common – price. Chicken livers, oxtail and lamb's heart, all available from supermarkets nationwide at a fraction of the price, although the old quote goes "life's too short to bone oxtails" but you get the point.
So next time you walk down the aisles of your supermarket, instead of reaching for the pork chops, pick up a pack of calf's liver and try it for yourself.

Modern Warfare is ruining my life

21 days! More than 21 whole days. That’s over 504 hours of my life that not only will I never get back but have been wasted stalking around make believe ruins, wastelands, crash sites and tower blocks looking for people to murder in a cold blooded, premeditated, blood drunk rampage. I’m not in the military nor have I ever been yet I proclaim my sniper rifle skills are up there with the elite of her majesty’s special forces. I am of course talking about the phenomenon that is call duty modern warfare 2.

I've spent night after night staring through the thermal scope of my heavily camouflaged, German made, Walther WA 2000 rifle with the sole intention of firing a high velocity bullet into the face of my enemy. I’ve risen through the ranks from a lowly private, right through to a commander using everything from a suppressed special forces combat assault rifle to a Kriss Super Vector right though to the FGM-148 javelin anti tank missile. I have prestiged 4 times taking my worldwide score rank from in the millions right down to the hundred thousands.

Do I have anything to show for the mammoth amount of time, effort, patience and skill that has taken me this far? I have nothing, nothing but a worn down joy-pad and a broken headset.

Now, my normal working day consists of repeating the same information to a host of different people with almost no change in the script, simply the order in which I say it. I sit across from the most ignorant man I’ve ever worked along side who not only has complained about the way I talk, but also the volume of the radio, the smell of my food and a whole list of other things I care not to mention. To cut the point short, I hate my job.

The Pareto principle, known also as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few states that, for many events, approximately 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Meaning, most of the work is done in 20% of the time. If my job were to play call of duty this would not be the case. I put 100% of effort into every game and spend the 1-minute between games shuffling around my weapons and perks to try and gain the best advantage for the next run of the gauntlet.

I asked myself, why? Most importantly, why not? Why do I not spend even a fraction of the effort that I put into this meaningless game into getting a proper job, one that I not only enjoy but also pays very well?

I have all of the tools I need to get where I need to be with the exception of motivation. I can draw better than most if not anyone I know. I have a perfect instrument in my computer with a bounty of graphics software at my disposal to create logos, layouts, websites, animation and branding. Why I’m not sitting at this very computer with the same tenacity and drive that I put into killing strangers at long range I don’t know.

Is it time to hang up the joy-pad and take the tablet and pen in hand?

One more quick go wouldn’t hurt…