My QOOP book!

My QOOP book!, View my Flickr stream here.

167 pages of abandoned chairs! An instant classic. The mini Flickr books turned out really good. I recommend everyone to print out a few books of their own.

it took about 1 hr to sort through the photos and 6 days to get delivered. Not bad.

Contact me if you want a copy.

MrTruffle and Band

MrTruffle and band, View my Flickr stream here.

I found this in an Old National Geographic I bought for 50c at a Book Shop.

This guys cracks me up.

PD70x Review

While it sounds like a bad Robocop villain it's actually an amazing Portable Storage Device (PSD) that every traveling photographer should own.

Before I took my holiday in Europe I knew I had to have a way to store all my photos. I didn't want to carry around a laptop and I knew the iPod transfer was out of the question due to speed and no RAW support. So I started to research PSD's and found this quite ugly looking PD70x. I researched about 20 other models and brands but they were either way too expensive (like the Epson one) or just too slow.

I opted for an 80GB 5400 speed HD (the 5400 speed wont affect the transfer speed to much but should give extra battery life) in my PD70x and it cost me just under $400 AUD. A bargain considering its worth.

So what is a PD70x. It's basically a 2.5" HD with a card reader built in. It runs off batteries (or mains power) and lets you copy your photos from your memory card (takes about 8 types) and then you're good to go for another round of photos.

I was able to take 5800 RAW shots with just two 1GB Compact Flash cards. ALl up between me and Ervi we did 50GB of photos no worries. Transfer speeds were the best part. It could rip down 1GB (well 977MB) in just under 2 min.

The size is about the size of an Atari Lynx (or2 IPOD 40GB's). So it's not pocket sized but fits in your bag easily.

There are models out there with display screens; MP3 players but I just wanted a photo storage device. The PD70x offered the fastest transfer speed and the option for battery power. So if I'm in the jungle with no power I can still run the MOFO on 4xAA's. I did about 20-25GB on one set of batteries (they were the expensive lithium) and that was more than I expected.

I could not have traveled with out this little device and I made a few mistakes like copying the same files twice (on more than one occasion) but that was my fault for not formatting the cards after transferring.

I recommend anyone who travels with their digital camera to get a device like this. The PD70x looks shit but was the fasted I could find when comparing transfer speeds online and that’s the main thing that mattered. The iPod transfer solution I tried when in Indo last took me over 45 minutes for 1GB and drained my battery to 0, even after a full charge!

The cheapest place I coudl find was Mrgadget but there are plenty of places you can purchase one.

O-Men Poster

O-Men Poster, View my Flickr stream here.

The latest remake from Fox! The O-Men!

www.heedtheomen.com/

Smackbook

Knock your Macbook while the harddrive is running and it adjusts the harddrive to make sure the HD doesnt get rooted. But with a few hacks you can get your mac to trigger OS functions. Like this fast user switching.

Cool

XPlanet Badge

We've created these funky badges for people to put on their websites/myspace profiles. This helps spead the word of XPlanet and creates a stronger bond with the users. We hope anyway :)

Worked out pretty good and I can't wait to see if people use these on their Myspace profile.

Ginger Meggs' Wrath

Ginger Meggs' Wrath, View my Flickr stream here.

You'd be angry too being born Ginger :)

Soap's Orange Reception Area

Reception Area, View my Flickr stream here.

The reception desk is still to be installed but you get the idea. Liz will have trouble seeing the colour corange outsode of the office after working next to this for a week.

Thanks Ron for keeping the photo diary going.

XPlanet Chicks

Slothly Posers

Slothly Posers, View my Flickr stream here.

Even without a spine these tourists can still enjoy Sydney.

This won 1st Prize in the Sydney Amazing Flickrace!for this photo.

I received a Lens baby 2.0 which I was about to buy so I'm "like totally stoked man".



The actual Race Event was great fun. 4 hrs of running (well walkign fast) around Sydney trying to complete the 7 tasks.



The tasks were to take 7 portraits of people in 7 different locations each depicting the 7 deadly sins. Teams were randomly chosen into groups of 5 and you had 4 hrs to complete the task. No taxis just public transport.



Our team, the Green team, came third which wasn't bad.



I met some great people and hopefully will attend more of the Sydney Flickr Nerd gatherings in the future.

Fast Food Nation

They've turned one of my favourite books into a movie. I would have expected a documentary but this might actually be more entertaining thean another fact heavy film. Hey read the book if you want those. I also like Greg Kinnear. And it's also a Fox searchlight film so I will get a piece of the action when it's released her in Australia.

Wolfmother Ipod Rock Ad

The IPOD ads are really a treat for the eyes and I'm glad to see that an Australia band has been featured on the latest one pimping rock music. I'm not really a fan of Wolfmother just a guy that likes to see Aussies in high places.

X Planet is live!!

We (Soap Creative) have just launched X Planet to promote the release of Xmen 3 (or X-men: The Last Stand if we want to be specific)

This is our most ambitious project yet, not only due to the complexity of the task but the fact this site is a global promotion. It's not just a local Australian site it's being promoted throughout the world by Fox to promote the film.

We created the concept and a prepared a mockup to be presented in the US at the Fox Global X-Men Summit. Which is every region of Fox in a big conference hall talking about how they will promote X-Men 3?

The initial idea was to have much more content from the first 2 films ie locations, the actual mutants from the movies with their locations and key events marked on the map but this was scaled back to concentrate on the community aspect of the site.

I still feel the site would be stronger with all that auxiliary content as it would allow users to really immerse themselves into the X-Men universe. But we’re just happy we’ve been able to push a risky but interesting idea. Another game, puzzle or competition would have just fallen into the “forgettable” bin which most things do.

Shane, Brett and Ron have been working feverishly over the last month getting this MOFO live, again I’m humbled to work with such a great bunch of people. The best advice I’ve heard is to always hire people smarter than you.

We expected more involvement from Google as we're using their Google Maps technology but they were understandably busy with other stuff. It’s funny as Google Maps kept going down for us in the office but was OK for everyone else.

Here is a grab form the initial flash mockup we did exactly 2 months ago. You can see it’s changed quite a bit. The only thing we were told late in the game was that that Xplanet had to match the official site’s looks and feel.

We’ve already had 1000 signups in the first 24hrs so I’m hoping this is a good indication that this will snowball.
Oh and we fianlly got a substantial piece of press in a trade publication for this project. No more media snubs or Soap it seems. We'll have to have a jumbo media BBQ at our office to ensure we don't fall into obscurity in the future.

Bannerblog is still to receive any press locally besides being linked up on every major international advertising blog. But hey I'm blaming Ashadi for that as maybe he's bad karma :)

Black Apple Macbooks

Once you go black.......

finally Apple have gone back to black for their laptops. Imagine how much of a mofo you'd look with a black G5 tower would look!

Rock up to an Apple store with AC DC's Black in Black blasting out of your boom box and order one of these sexy machines. I'll be swapping back to Apple once all the software runs native on the Intel Duo's and keep my throw my Dirty Dell.

Flickr Gamma

Flickr has done a major update overnight on the UI of the site and moved from being Flickr Beta to Flickr Gamma. Check the Flickr blog for more info

I'm loving the tweaed layout as it address's many of the faults I had with the site. It's now so much easier to get around and explore.

I hope it doesn't start to cost more, but in saying that I'd gladly pay 10x what I pay now for the service.

FWA Interview

I have been interviewed by The FWA. Amazingly no money exchanged hands for this to happen :)

I don't want to seem like a total brown nose but The FWA is consistantly the best source for whats happening online.

I just hope we get more of our work on there in the future as it's tough when there's 25,000 submisisons a year and only 365 spots to fill.

Beaconsfield Mime Disaster

Beaconsfield Mime Disaster, View my Flickr stream here.

Yahoo!7 is covering the lesser told story of two mimes traped in a glass box for two weeks.

Secret Building

Secret Building, View my Flickr stream here.

It's a building within a building? Is this a prison?

It actually looks like a Quake Arena level.

Elton John's Fruit Bowl

Elton John's Fruit Bowl, View my Flickr stream here.

All I can say is this fruit bowl is.... um... fruity.

Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006

Never before have I been so excited about seeing a bunch of pixels on screen. Check out Paul Robertsons: Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006. Weighing in a whopping 115MB it's worth every k.The character design is from a twisted mind and the number of 80's cameos is amazing. You need to watch it about 4 times to catch everything. My fav part was the pregnant zombies, it's just too fucked up. The soundtrack rocks too.

Xmen 3 Australian Media Premiere

Soap get to see Xmen 3 next Tuesday for the Australian Media Premiere. Can't wait!

Between this and Da Vinci Code may is lookign like a blockbuster month for movies.

Ian McKellen is doing the Hugo Weaving thing by beaing in two major movie releases at once like with Matrix and LOTR. And even the speech by Ian in the Da Vinci trailer sounds like his speech from X3.

Judging Again

I have been selected as a judge for the 2006 Asia Interactive Awards.

Sadly this is judged all online, so no gravy train trip across the globe with my goomah. Oh well maybe next time.

Soap Games

I was meant to have this done before I left for holidays but it's finally done.

Soap Games has 47 flash games so far with 2 more coming this month.

Coldplay :The Hardest Part

This new Coldplay filmclip cracks me up. I thougth it was a young girl with an old lady mask on but it looks legit.
It's probably wrong to get a chubby over this right?

Da Cinco Code Ringrose

Da Cinco Code Ringrose, View my Flickr stream here.

There's a main character in the Da Vinci Code with the last name Aringarosa!


haha WTF maybe I'm related. Or maybe Amarosa from the Apprientice is too!

Flash Content on PSP

Firmware 2.7 is out and you can play flash conent in the browser. Yay. Only Flash but that's still a big step.

Golden Man Smoking

Golden Man Smoking, View my Flickr stream here.

One thing I regret from my trip was not taking as many photos of the people. Here's one of the rare photos where I turned my camera onto a human subject rather than an obscure chair or sign.

Piku at Mt Pilatus

Mt Pilatus, View my Flickr stream here.

Ervi has posted all her PIKU photos on Flickr. Ervi finished PIKU the day before we left and the idea was to catalogue all the places we visit on our trip with her. PIKU is now really dirty and has 3 more siblings waiting to be swewn together.

If you want to check out what adventures PIKU got up to in Europe then click here.

Beans Baxter

Beans Baxter, View my Flickr stream here.

I found these old photos Ervi took of my beard from when I grew it for Movember. I might go the mutton chops again but the moe is a no go area.

Update: I'm currently in an international legal battle with Limmy over set copyright. Bearded minds think alike as Limmy and myself had taken these photos without knowledge of each other.
flickr.com/photos/limmy/sets/72057594072470957/

Freaky.

Paris Catacombes 1

Paris Catacombes 1, View my Flickr stream here.

For E2.50 it's the best couple of hours you can spend in Paris. My camera actually shat itself in here and Ervi kept blaming the ghosts. It started working again after 5 minutes of an weird "error".

We didn't see the one in Italy but I guess it's much the same. In paris you only get the see about 20% of the entire catacomes and I'd love to know more about this fantastic place. It actually didn't smell. You can even pick the bones up if you want but I opted not too.

Eiffel View East

Eiffel View East, View my Flickr stream here.

Coldest bloody day of the holidays but worth it for the view.

Treadmill at Work

One of the guys I met judging in the UK was Ben from The Bardbarian Group in the USA. He said his work partner uses a treadmill 8hrs a day 5 days a week. Check the photo here on Make Mag's site. Classic

Ben said the guy is always in a good mood now and healthier as well. I might try this with a rowing machine?!

Jet Lag?

Warning the following post contains the word POO.

After a 20 hr flight I seem to have timed my sleeping properly to avoid jetlag. The only thing I seem to be suffering from which you dont hear peopel complaining about (maybe its just me) is a completely stuffed up poo clock.

I used to be like clockwork and now i'm more like the dodgey sydney trains where it arrives when it wants to.

Apox on you airlines for serving me food at wierd hours and the same meal twice which I had to eat even if I wasnt hungry as I cant sit with food under my face for 15 minutes and not eat.