Russell James Smith

Spring is Here!

2009-03-16T19:18:45+00:00

Spring Colours, originally uploaded by russelljsmith.

I took a trip up to Greenwich Park with Mum & Dad at the weekend, a pleasure to see thousands and thousands of daffodils out now. Then today I think was the warmest of the year so far, so I think we can conclude that spring is here.

Website back up!

2009-02-27T16:16:51+00:00

My website is back-up after about a year of down-time, oops!

Comics Britannia - Tintin & I

2007-09-12T22:28:06+01:00

I've been catching a few shows from the new BBC Four Comics Britannia season this week and so far I've dodged the bullet of watching celebrities reminiscing about the Beano and Dandy. Anyway, tonight I caught an excellent documentary about Tintin and it's creator Hergé - Tintin & I (Tintin Et Moi). Put together using archive from an interview in the seventies it shed some real light on how the characters and stories came about, if it's repeated or there is a torrent out there it is well worth some of your time.

Glastonbury 2007 - Most Interesting

2007-09-11T23:16:34+01:00

Sunset At Glastonbury, originally uploaded by russelljsmith.

I've noticed this photo has bumped in and out of Flickr's Explore pages since I uploaded it. It's definitely become one of my favourites from a festival which wasn't perhaps the best for photography. So for those of you who may have missed it in my photostream I thought I'd blog about it here, I think just maybe it captures just a little of the Glasto magic.

Uk "I'm a PC", "I'm a Mac" ad campaign debuts

2007-01-29T14:48:13+00:00

Uk "I'm a PC", "I'm a Mac" ad debuts, originally uploaded by russelljsmith.

The UK version of Apple's "I'm a PC", "I'm a Mac" ad campaign started running today with a double page spread in the free Metro paper (yuck), it features Mitchell and Webb. I think these adverts can come across a little smug, but I have to agree with the general point that an Apple Mac is the best choice for a home computer.

Video adverts on the Apple website.

Now They're Coming Down! (Updated)

2007-01-27T12:55:23+00:00

Now They're Coming Down!, originally uploaded by russelljsmith.

The sad fate of the CASPAR appartments here in Leeds was revealed today via a somewhat over-hyped Yorkshire Evening Post headline. The flats are to be pulled down after structural problems first uncovered back in 2006 have proved unfixable.

I had a good friend who lived here for a couple of years so I've spent some time there. The flats were designed to provide affordable living to city center workers and were built using an innovative pre-fab construction that enabled them to be put up quickly. They offered a nice space in which to live and features such as heavy insulation also ensured they were cheap to run and relatively environmentaly friendly. The buildings shape took advatage of an unusual circular site created inside a slip road. Unfortunately as I understand it the buildings problems were down more to mistakes in the construction that the design. I can only hope the new building destined for this site shares some of the spirit of innovation with the doomed CASPAR.

For me, I'll miss this building because of the good times I spent there. Farewell to the CASPAR.

Further reading:

My New Nokia N73 & Photos

2007-01-23T18:34:17+00:00

So, I got a new Nokia N73 last week (today my number transfered) so I've started to play around with some of the features and applications and I've found a couple of nice photography related tools.

Firstly built into the Nokia N73 as standard is Flickr integration, this allows you to upload to Flickr direct from the N73. It took about 2 minutes to get this setup following the instruction provided on flickr.com (also for other N-Series phones) and the uploads are speedy, very handy if your out and about and need to get something online.

Now I thought that was good, but I've just been playing around with Shozu which is even cooler. Shozu is a small application you need to download and install on your phone, this is a little fiddley but took me no more than 5 minutes. Once you have Shozu installed it sits in the background all the time and can do a number of interesting things:

If you take a photo you can have it upload that photo to Flickr immediately (or any number of other services including YouTube or even BBC News), it can do this everytime or you can ask it to prompt you each time. The really smart thing is that it does this in the background so you can carry on taking photos while it uploads.

You can also tell Shozu to back-up your contacts (to the Shozu website where you can export later as a CSV etc), it will backup any new contacts using the data connection like this as you add them, no need to remember to blue-tooth with your computer anymore.

There are a few more tricks up it's sleeve which I'll be playing around with, for now I'll finish by pointing out that suprisingly Shozu is a British rather than a US company as you might have expected.

PS. To see some of the photos I've been taking with my N73 keep an eye on my Flickr photo stream.

New T-shirt Via New Phone

2007-01-22T21:39:21+00:00

New T-shirt Via New Phone, originally uploaded by russelljsmith.

My new Evolver T-shirt from Go Ape featuring monkeys :-)

(It makes a change from Threadless.)

Uploaded directly from my new Nokia N73 using the flat rate data Three X-Series. Expect more live photo blogging soon.