A letter has been left on my desk at work, supposedly from Monkey, suggesting that Monkey has left and gone traveling. As I taught Monkey to write, I believe that the letter is a fake due to the spelling mistakes contained within. If anyone sees Monkey, if he is on his own (possibly hitch-hiking off to Malaysia or somewhere) please persuade him to return, all will be forgiven. If anyone sees Monkey being manhandled into a car (or pocket/handbag etc) please inform me straight away so appropriate action can be taken.

Monkey, if you’re reading this, please come home…

by John Porter

It’s late. I should be in bed preparing for my last day as a Photography Executive, but instead I’m up and blogging.

Since college, I’ve been very interested in Web Design and so I set myself a life goal to be designing sites professionally, before I reached the distant age of thirty. Well that distant age is running up fast to hit me in only four months! Has the goal been realised? Am I to be a thirty year old web designer? No. It has just changed slightly, instead I’m going to be a web developer.

It dawned on me in the last couple of years that I have a nack for logic, codes and script, and so I have dug my head in and tried my hand at them. I can hapilly say that I am an excellent coder in XHTML, CSS, Standards Compliancy, and Applescript.

Applescript? That’s not web related! I hear you say, well no, I learned it for my last job as a Photography Executive… Hang on, Photography? Well, yeah. It’s a long story. Anyhoo, so, I’m starting my new job as a web developer on Monday morning! And I’m very excited about it too. It’s been a long time coming! Absolutely stormed the interview, even though I’m just a hobbyist so far.

After so many years trying to stay in the same field of photography related creativity, I’m finally leaving my comfort zone (which personally, especially at the moment, is just what I need), and I can tell you it has brought out a few nerves and worries, but they’re under control now, so full steam ahead into my new career!

I’ll let you know how it goes…

by John Porter

So, if anyone has visited the site in the last few months, you will have noticed that the images have been very BIG! Also that I haven’t posted anything while I tried to sort it out.

I moved the location of all my uploads on the server, which caused a lot of problems. I have had to go through my database and automate a change of URLs for all my images. I missed, however, the security numbers in the database.

When anything in a Wordpress database is edited, it’s co-relating ’s’ value must match the number of characters in the string that has been edited, otherwise it will return ‘false’. If only I had known about that in the last two months! I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out why my images weren’t loading as thumbnails or medium size. I even got to the point of deciding to scrap Wordpress altogether.

Obviously, it twigged with me eventually, et viola! Images that display correctly once again!

I’m toying with the idea of writing a little plugin that will correctly edit this info for anyone who wants to move their uploads folder, although don’t hold yer breath! I may be very busy with my new job…

Oh, and I’ve been asked to credit Heather’s wonderful calculator wizardry calculating the correct values. Hmphf.

by John Porter

I went to fermynwoods today to visit Stephen Turner’s exhibition.

It was interesting to see some ‘landscape’ art other than that created by my Mother. Not what I personally would call art but the process was very interesting, as was the result. If I had a wall big enough, I would love to have one… Well if the price wasn’t so much!

Stephen lays a canvas at the base of a tree, leaves it for a year, and then takes the results and seals it to another fresh canvas! All the tree fall and moss etc are captured there until they ultimately decay. I think he seals it with a varnish first to keep it for as long as possible though. These pieces were at least 6 foot across!

Stephen also made some art from what he calls the ‘essence’ of a tree. One set of 16 images were the result of boiling up waste from specific trees and pouring it onto paper. The result was lovely to see, one in particular had some metallic residue in it, which made it look like a stone had been chopped in half. Again, if it wasn’t for the price tag, I would love to have them.

Well, overall a very inspiring trip. A swerve in another direction from my normal style and appreciation, but I’m definately going to try the ‘essence’ style.

by John Porter

So we’ve made some progress in our effort to simplify, we finally moved house and both are a lot happier so far! As you can see, the temporary office is set up on the dining room table, or is this my office temp, checking Facebook?? I don’t think Heather would like being called that…

by John Porter

So a few people have been looking over the site, a few people that know me very well, and have given me some very constructive feedback. continued

by John Porter

Ok, so I’ve not posted anything for ages, and not posted anything of real interest for longer than that!

Life has been a little weird of late and has started to really stagnate, promotion prospects at work being dangled like a carrot, and then snatched back at the whim of a rather unpleasant person, lots of stress and becoming very moody and tired, very low moods and trying to ‘find myself’ again, complete loss of creativity etc etc ad infinity.

So then, what to do about this…

continued

by John Porter

I’ve done it, I’ve bought a matte-black MacBook. continued

by John Porter

I was just Google-ing around for monkeys (as you do) and I found this. Brilliant!

Apparently it is a very famous photograph, but alas I cannot find the name of the photographer who took the picture! Damn. If anyone knows it, please comment!

by John Porter