Flickriver:

I’m loving this site. It’s a great way to browse Flickr images without having to deal with the Flickr interface, which for pure, good old-fashioned browsing is a bit on the pants side and too full of distractions.

If you've half an hour to spare, check it out. You might find something you like.

Feeling a little world-weary tonight. An afternoon spent battling with Launchpad's ec2 test facility and a gym workout that didn't go as well as planned (I really need a trainer - or at least a workout buddy - to make me do things some times, and I don't have either) have left me drained and a touch on the grumpy side.

You have been warned.

And again, I'm going through one of those phases where I'm not picking up and working with a camera much. Oh, I'm shooting bits and pieces here and there for the Countdown project, which I'm going to have to turn into videos some time in the new year because right now I just don't have the time, but I'm not shooting anything serious. It's all just frivolous shooting. Well, not frivolous but... I guess 'unimportant' would be the right word. It's keeping the muscle memory going - here's the ISO control, there's the shutter release, there's the bracket function, that sort of thing - but it's not challenging me creatively and it's making a part of my inner brain itch like nobody's business.

I've got some grand ideas written down, and I keep fleshing them out - more on that as and when I get round to actually carrying them out. That I've imposed a photoshoot moratorium on myself until the new year - because trust me, organising a wedding and holding down a programming job are quite enough to be getting on with - doesn't help matters, but at least I know that when the new year rolls around I'll be able to start sending out casting calls, talking to potential subjects and organising teams to be able to put these things together.

A part of me worries that the ideas are a little too grand - one of them calls for no less than eight different fashion styles in the same series, and the change in style extends to the location, too - but if I don't aim high now I'll never do it later.

On the slightly less complex side of things I'm working on a project that's not even embryonic yet - I'm still waiting for it to be a Zygote (okay, let's discard that metaphor before it goes any further, shall we?) - but, should it work out will be extremely simple, at least technically, though I suspect there will be a lot of work to do with regard to getting subjects and other parties involved.

All of which, of course, tells you bugger all about anything. Maybe in a couple of weeks I'll be able to tell you more.

One of the things that I learned at Bert's London workshop, back in the now dim and distant past, was the importance of setting yourself assignments when you're doing non-paid, personal, playing-around-and-learning-things work.

So, I need some assignments for the new year. Now, because I know that you're a twisted and inventive lot, I figured that you might be able to come up with some (it's not as if I'm not going to be coming up with some of my own; I just thought it'd be fun to crowdsource this a bit).

If you feel like suggesting an assignment to me you can do it in one of several ways:

• Leave a comment here
• Email me at blog [AT] grahambinns.com
• Contact me on identi.ca (@gmb) or Twitter (@codedragon)

Note: When I say "assignments" I'm talking about made-up, not-for-real, things-that-I-can-play-with assignments; nothing serious. I'm not accepting commissions here.

I'll post the best ideas here at some point in the future, assuming that there are some.

In bullet-point form, because I'm not capable of anything else right now.

• Banshee is being an arse on Karmic on my desktop machine. Can't figure out why. It freezes up when playing big files (podcasts are particularly affected by this), plays too fast sometimes (so it sounds like I'm fast-forwarding through songs) and other times just crashes for no apparent reason.
• So, I've switched back to Amarok in the mean time, though I don't particularly like Amarok 2, and the way its UI behaves is irritating to me at the moment.
• I've more-or-less, bar some work for the reviewer, fixed bug 471974 which should mean that bugs with lots of subscribers shouldn't time out any more. Hurrah for asynchronicity.
• People keep marking as favourites old photos of mine on Flickr, from the days before I considered myself worthy of having people in front of my lens. Not that I don't appreciate it, but I'd rather people liked the newer stuff.
• I had a crisis of confidence last night (again; how boring you must think me) about photography, mostly, and where I think I want to be. I've made peace - for now - with that particular demon; I don't know quite where I want to go but I think I know some of the things I want to do on the way.
• I've been playing a bit with Tumblr today. I quite like it's simple interface, and I suspect I'd use something like that quite a lot for things bigger-than-a-tweet-but-smaller-than-a-blog-post. Haven't quite worked out how to fit it in with what I do though; maybe aggregating everything together through FeedBurner is the way to go.
• I finished reading Michael Moorcock's Gloriana last night. Good book but didn't really grab me all that much. Somehow it just didn't quite sit right with me, and I don't know why.
• Started reading The Lies of Locke Lamora today, for the second time (I never finished it the first time round because I foolishly left the book on a plane in Schoenefeld Airport in Berlin). It's just as good as I remember.

Anyway, tired, can't think, going to do something that requires no brain.

A lolly, or a portal to another dimention?
Originally uploaded by zoetica

Via Warren "I am a plague wearing human skin" Ellis.

See that? That's the kind of stuff I want to do. Bring on 2010.