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Bad Bail (video) 29th April 2008  Me & Bail was playing a lil PES earlier today when I made him try on my brother's NYPD t-shirt. He then added to the look by putting on some shades and grabbing my glock BB gun, and once again a random video is born! The video is basically a test run of my efficiency to use multiple angles of the same scene and combine them to create a full flowing movie. The duration itself is only less than a minute but the takes took over 15 at least! I now appreciate how much time and effort goes into making Hollywood movies. Imagine how long a 3-hour piece of film takes to compile? :o Anyway, watch it, love it, watch it again! This piece is titled "Bad Bailiff" Watch video » My entry 28th April 2008  With my brother currently being an employee of Merseytravel he has recently informed me of a photography competition being held between staff. The competition wants photos from all districts of Merseyside that can only be taken by members of staff for their annual calendar of 2009 (I think). So basically, my brother is the medium in this operation throughout. The downside is that any certificates or prizes that could be won will be in his name, so portfolio use will be void :( I spent an hour with my dad trotting round town trying to find the perfect shot for my submission but I was having some serious troubles! Especially because yesterday was such a gloomy and rainy day. So after an hour of crappy shots I called it a day and retreated back home (see below for sources).
I'm not so much unhappy with these shots, I just don't like how they turned out after the processing compared to the chosen piece. Later that night I was sitting at home thinking where I could go, what I could snap .. How can I make St Helens stand out? Then my brother gave me the idea of the East Lancs welcome sign that we have on the border of the Knowsley district. So we drove there immediately and stopped in a layby as close as we could get! Sadly ... this was a good 5 minute walk from the sign and the grass leading there was waterlogged. Nice! Below is the chosen shot:
All in all after the shot's processing and composition I was happy with the result. Happy enough to justify the puddles in my shoes. Nightshots 25th April 2008  I've always wanted to have the ability to take pictures of certain places at night, but I've never known how to. I tried a couple of things I read on a few forums but they were all regarding other manufacturers of camera and they never seemed to hit the spot with mine at all. But now ... finally ... I've found the g-spot!! I won't bore you with details, I just wanted to announce. You can take a look at how my shots progressed as I fiddled with the ISO / shutter speed over and over and over and over and over an...
Lemonlime juice drink 22nd April 2008  With summer just around the corner I wanted to broaden my horizons and create something with my hands, something I can make during the summer and keep me busy. After watching my dad have a field day with the plum tree last year and making vats upon vats of jam, I'm inspired to bring out the summer jist and create something refreshing. So today I went to Tesco, bought 3 lemons & 3 limes, some mineral water, a juicer and away i went! Whilst waiting for things to settle and cool I designed the logo above to compliment the flavours. As you can see I used really bold yellow and green colours with text that says either "lemon" or "lime" from whatever angle you look at it. This was then converted into a bottle label that you can see below:  And here are two shots (front and back) of the label attached to an existing un-named drink bottle:   The label was printed with an inkjet printer on basic weight paper so the quality isn't all that great! But the final product will be of a more professional quality without a doubt. I'm planning to make a case of this for promotional purposes throughout the summer. Not as handouts in the street as i'm sure that's illegal but more along the lines of parties & BBQ's I manage to get myself to inbetween work. Viva la Lemonlime! Misc. & photography online! 20th April 2008  I've been trying to figure out the best way to portray both these sections and I've finally come to a conslusion. With the misc. section there are hundreds of random images that don't fit any other section, so i decided to keep the entire content link based. As for the photography I used Adobe Photoshop's automated gallery function and made them super simple to navigate and load. That's all, really. Tesco "thank you" poster design 17th April 2008 
After the charity event at work being sucha great success I decided to make a thank you poster to put up around work. The images used are from the sources captured on the day with my SLR & the background is actually a picture I took in Southport last summer. All in all, Ellie recieved enough money to get a new wheelchair and is currently shopping around for the best suited model. Here are some shots of the poster in my local store:
My top 10 14th April 2008  After listening to music consciously for 17 years I've finally put my finger on the songs that bring me out of my shell. To keep this thing as brief as possible I'll simply list my tunes and be done with it. I'm sure a lot of you won't agree with my picks but that's why I've stated these my personal favourites: ( in no particular order) 1. Don't Stop Me Now - Queen 2. Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash 3. You'll Never Walk Alone - Jerry & The Pacemakers (Controversial) 4. Pretty Green Eyes - Ultrabeat 5. Flight of the Valkyries - Wagner 6. Flux - Bloc Party 7. Last Summer - Lost Prophets 8. It's A Long Way To Tipperary - Suntones 9. Ave Maria - Beethoven 10. O-Fortuna - Carl Orff As you can see from the list above, my general taste in music doesn't exactly to follow the pepsi chart. I have a really old school ear when it comes to a good track and with the way the music industry is these days, I don't think it's a bad thing. you can get the plasylist of my choices by clicking here Gavikko design group (first mock) 7th April 2008  After endless attempts of getting my web/general designs services online, "Gavikko" finally settles the spot. "Gavikko" comes from a long list of sketched ideas and endless hours of domain checks. Every initial name I wanted was taken by another business, even more annoying ... a business of the same category that Gavikko is set to be. Can you feel my pain? You can find the un-finished layout here. As you may notice, it's almost a mirror of this site's template but with a change of colours. And that's exactly how I wanted it to be. I've taken a strong liking to the simple effective style, plus it's much easier to maintain web standards this way. It's the perfect layout for usability and navigation, what more could you want from a design site? GAVIKKO is set to go online by the summer. Status will be mentioned on this site upto that time. A new Lenshaw ... yet again! ♥ 6th April 2008 
Any of you that design websites will also find it's insationably hard to meet the strict web standards set by W3C. Throughout the design of this /simple/ layout I've ran into a series of minor errors that make any sane person cringe. Putting aside how easy they are to fix (as WC3 tells you the code line of the error and a potential reason why it's occuring) it's a pain in the arse when all you want to do is blog your heart out! At first I wasn't going to place the burden on myself with this site as frequent visitors may know I seriously just do whatever the fuck looks good. But why not meet the web standards at the same time? It's just more professional. Sure, there's no law that we have to meet these standards, but they are there for a reason and it's nice to say I meet them. The simplicity of the new layout breeds opportunity for low end internet users to actually see my site by the year 2010. with my old layout reaching 132 seconds (using wesiteoptimization.com) on a 56k modem it was kind of blocking out the lighter web users of the world and I want to avoid that. Here are the official loading times of those connections below:
Putting that aside, the web standards for the old site were also a little shocking. Reaching 53 errors on the XHTML validation and 2-3 major errors for the CSS, it would be a lost cause trying to fix them. Not only that I've decided to stem away from Photoshop templates for my blogs and keep the images on the lighter side. That's what's causing the awful loading times and it's about time I stopped it. The new Lenshaw is also hosting Adsense. Just so you're aware of why Google ads are appearing on the left hand-side of the site. Tesco's "Share a smile" 2008 5th April 2008  After a good few weeks of planning and preparation, Jo's charity event went full steam ahead. Ellie Knight, a local girl who suffers from rett syndrome is in need of a new wheelchair and I think it's safe to say we aided that purchase significantly. The event was held at the East Lancs Tesco Express and the following activities were/are on the go: • Car wash • Windscreen washing • A raffle • Guess how many sweets • Staff jumble sale • Name the teddy Each one was a massive success and to date the event has raised £1,400. I especially enjoyed the day as it gave me something new to do throughout, and that's a rare occasion when you work for a supermarket, really. The only thing that keeps me sane are the staff! On a further note, the event was advertised all around the neighbourhood and I managed to get my own design in there to help out. It was only a basic poster but it attracted the attention of customers and that's all that matters at the end of the day:  I was also allowed to take my SLR along with me to document the day. To see the pictures, Click here
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