Anthea Whittle

This picture machine has been in my dad’s garage for at...

Sun, 13 May 2012 21:53:15 +1200

This picture machine has been in my dad’s garage for at least 30 years, he can’t remember how it came to him, but now it’s come to me.

It’s a 3A Autographic Kodak Special Model B. Kodak’s first rangefinder camera, the “Autographic” means that when Autographic film was used with it, the photographer could open a window in the back of the camera to make notes with a special stylus on the red, lightproof backing paper. This would deteriorate the paper enough that the writing could then be exposed onto the film by a 3-10 second exposure to light. This writing was then visible in the resulting negatives and prints.

I believe it’s about a century old, it has a little muck in the lens but the camera is largely in brilliant condition. It takes 122 film, but I think I can probably expose a roll of 120 through it with some fiddling. Failing that, photosensitive paper could catch a negative image to be inverted.

Also brilliant discovery: the camera manual.

I have a camera on my finger. (sparkledepartment)

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:16:43 +1200

I have a camera on my finger.

(sparkledepartment)

The first time I have wriggled around in my chair with joy at...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:13:15 +1200

Double while exiting the motorway home

Nick at Camp a Low Hum, February

Laneway Festival, Silo Park, January

The first time I have wriggled around in my chair with joy at what’s come out of my scanner. Photos from this summer taken with my Diana, more in this Lomography album.

One day, hopefully soon, it will be a whole pile easier to play...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:41:00 +1200

One day, hopefully soon, it will be a whole pile easier to play any media on any device. Until then, there are devices and drives and cables and wireless and applications galore.

Because it’s not easy, and because there is more than one way to skin this particular proverbial, I find myself frequently describing how I play stuff in my home. I am writing this so I can send a link instead of explaining things repeatedly.

The current situation:

2 x Apple TV 2
2 x Panasonic Viera TV’s
1 Apple Time Capsule used for backup
1 Seagate 1TB hard drive networked via Time Capsule. This hard drive contains movies, TV and a backup of my music library.
iPad (2)
iPhone (4)
MacBook Pro (aging! 2008)
The Time Capsule can be a router, but I use an extra Linksys one

How it all works? Well, that’s too complicated so that’s what the diagram’s about.

The best part had to be discovering Air Video. You set up your computer as a server, and tell it where to find your media library (in my case, the external drive delightfully named “Glossy”).

Then, using the iOS app on iPhone or iPad I can browse that library and play any of my media with “live conversion” - Air Video converts the media to a format appropriate for playback via Apple stuff. Using Airplay, I send that video (and audio!) to Apple TV.

There are a heap of things working together here, seven different gadgets all just so I can watch a movie.

When I set up the bedroom TV and Apple TV, I decided to try it without wiring. My Lounge ATV is connected to the internet and network via ethernet and it’s pretty snappy. Charmingly, it works just fine over wifi and I could download and play a movie from the Apple store without any lags.

Problem - I stream TV on my computer (Gossip Girl!), and can’t stream it to my Apple TV’s as yet. Mountain Lion will hopefully solve that one.

I could also hook another computer up to my TV(s) and control it via iTeleport for iPad - I do this sometimes but my MacBook Pro is old enough to still go through VGA, and it’s a pain to set up.

This is the best arrangement I’ve had so far, I once went so far as to reformat an old Dell computer with the intention of installing Boxee or something. It was a pain.

———

Question from AdrianwithaW:

This is awesome. I’ve got an Extreme, 2 x Express’, an Apple TV and a Hard Drive… so question: how do you find the streaming from the Hard Drive plugged into the Time Machine going to the Apple TV? Is it solid…? If so, I may have to try it again.

Thanks Adrian! It’s completely fine. Plays seamlessly.
If you set it up and it struggles though, I’d probably go through the usual checks on whatever machine is running Air Video Server just to make sure that it doesn’t have other apps chewing memory or something. My computer only has 4gb ram and I can still use it while it’s playing media via live conversion, and I’ve never had a problem.

Actually really love this concept for Apple’s 1986 Mac OS...

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:39:41 +1300

Actually really love this concept for Apple’s 1986 Mac OS on the iPhone.

Sometimes you just want to LOSE ALL THE SHINY GRADIENTS.

Knit another owl friend, this one’s for Nicki. I’m...

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:27:18 +1300

Knit another owl friend, this one’s for Nicki. I’m quite fond of him!

Knitting without a pattern is pretty liberating, and I love how these critters all have such personality.

This little guy came into being with no pattern, and I...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:49:00 +1300

This little guy came into being with no pattern, and I hadn’t had my needles out in months and months and months.

Pretty proud of him! He’s for my mum, who’s going away on holiday for a couple of weeks and will miss her bird (who I’m birdsitting). This little chap can join her on her trip.

Craft Spells - After the Moment Doing a bit of a shuffle dance...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:00:34 +1300

Craft Spells - After the Moment

Doing a bit of a shuffle dance in my seat at work to this tune. Pop dancey funtimes! Craft Spells are definitely my flavour of the week.

Pinterest for.. Business?

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:36:00 +1300

That time has come, Pinterest is now “popular” enough that all the “social media gurus” are formulating Pinterest strategies.

As with every social network, there are some businesses for whom a presence will be a seamless and logical fit. For others, it’s tit’s on a bull, as my kiwi-bloke dad might say.

Pinterest is very lifestyle focused, and is useful for aggregating boards of content relevant to particular topics. Personally, I use it to capture inspiration for things I want to do myself - DIY projects, fashion inspiration etc.

You’ll find a lot of twee girly stuff, a lot of macarons, home ideas and craft projects. Depending who you follow, it can seem to be one massive Frankie-magazine-girlfest.

Air New Zealand have climbed aboard the bandwagon and reined in over 200 followers in the past week since launch. But does their “strategy” offer any value? Is the content even that interesting? I guess we’ll see.

How might Pinterest actually be useful “for business”? Well, I can imagine the referring traffic for content shared on Pinterest would be pretty healthy, but you will need legitimately good content to share in order to do well. Great for those with an Etsy store or fashion, craft, or beauty blog.

If you’re on the fence, I’d suggest:

Create a personal account and try it out before trying to apply it to your business.
Create a business or brand account and start sharing your content
Make it as easy as possible for your readers or users to share your content on Pinterest. Yes, that’s a “pin this” button to add to your collection of like, tweet, plus, share, bookmark.
Make sure you have good quality images with your content on your site - Pinterest is all visual and most pinners will like or repin without even clicking through to the originating source.

There’s an “Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Guide” available from Hubspot, it’s worth a read if only to know what’s being said “out there” about marketing on Pinterest.

How to scrobble to Last.fm from your NZ iPhone

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:06:33 +1300

The Last.fm iPhone app isn’t available available in New Zealand (even for subscribers!), no doubt due to sticky licensing drama. In fact, unless you’re in the US, UK or Germany you’re out of luck.

Even though I can’t change my blasted username, I like to scrobble what I listen to - so I can track it, compare it, recommend it, see, touch and taste it… Well, maybe not taste it.

Fortunately, the ex.fm app for iPhone is available in NZ.

The ex.fm app allows you to listen to music you already have on your phone via the ingeniously named “iPod” feature, and it also scrobbles what you listen to if you connect it to your last.fm account (needs wifi or 3g, duh).

Make sure you dig into the other super awesome features of ex.fm - the Chrome plugin will scout pages you visit, collating MP3 URL’s into your own little streaming library. This is then available to stream on your phone too. More about that in my previous post.

Oh, and add me so I can judge your taste in music.

Some other ways to scrobble:

Pretend you’re American.
If you’re an Air NZ Airpoints member with a OneSmart account, your card counts as an American Credit Card - opening the door to all sorts of internet joy, including an American iTunes account from which you can download all the good stuff.
Use another app.
Rdio is now available in NZ with a 1 week free trial. It has a pretty limited catalogue available, again, probably due to licensing and probably because you will be given the option to actually store the media onto your device (there are different rules if you can stream but not store). Rdio scrobbles to last.fm, and I’m sure there are a handful of others that do similar - hit reply and let us know if you use any.

Did you know I have a second Tumblr blog? It’s where I...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:19:00 +1300

Did you know I have a second Tumblr blog? It’s where I indulge my girly obsessions with beauty products and especially nail polish.

This is one of my most epic manicures yet!

sparkledepartment:

The Langham Manicure

The kind folks at Langham Auckland gifted me a bottle of their limited edition Langham Pink OPI polish so that I could recreate their signature wallpaper look in a manicure.

Boy, those floral designs are complicated! I followed the basic shapes and curves of the flocked pattern with a tiny paintbrush.

I painted my own real nails plus one fake nail which I used as practice to start - that was a new experience, I was able to prob the falsie in the perfect position for me to paint. So simple! Now I understand why so many people just paint false nails and stick them on, but I still think it’s cheating!

Three coats of the Langham polish got the nice opaque pink, a solid slow design in Orly gold finished the pattern. The result is super delicate and pretty, with a subtle shimmer from both polishes. Delightful!

Laksa I like to cook “interpretations” - where I...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:33:19 +1300

Laksa

I like to cook “interpretations” - where I read a recipe or two, and then do what I feel like based on what’s in my kitchen and what I think will taste good.

This tasted damn good.

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons crushed/grated ginger
1 tbsp red curry paste
Rind of half a lemon
1 tbsp canola oil
2 cups vegetable stock
3/4 cup coconut cream (small tin)
2 cups skim milk
4 tbsp fish sauce
1tbsp brown sugar
Chilli flakes (dried) or fresh chopped chilli to taste
4 cored, diced tomatoes
1/2 cup desiccated coconut
5 fresh snapper fillets, cut into 2cm strips
2 cobs boiled corn
1 small capsicum, diced
1/2 carrot, julienned
2 spring onions, chopped
3 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

Method

Heat the oil and add the garlic, ginger and rind on a med-high heat in a large saucepan that will hold all your ingredients. Fry briefly and add the curry paste and stir until the curry releases it’s fragrance.
Add the stock, stir. Add the coconut cream, milk, fish sauce, brown sugar, chilli, tomatoes and coconut, stirring continuously. Heat thoroughly, but pay attention because if it starts to boil it’s likely to escape your pot.
Lastly, reduce the heat to low and add your fish. It won’t take long before the fish is cooked.
Ladle into serving bowls. We topped ours with corn boiled and cut from the cob, fresh capsicum, fresh carrot, spring onion and coriander.

I’d like to say this recipe would serve five, but we definitely had to (because it was delicious) go back for seconds.

Laksa is meant to be served over udon noodles (yum!) but we didn’t have any, and the starchy corn was enough. I’d say this would feed more people with noodles.

I kinda want to go back to school so I can doodle during class.

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:28:51 +1300

I kinda want to go back to school so I can doodle during class.

Sometimes I spend so much time intellectualising music delivery...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:31:57 +1300

Sometimes I spend so much time intellectualising music delivery and access that I forget the most important part - how you feel when you listen to an epic song, a song you love, regardless of how you’re listening to it.

You know you have a girly taste in typefaces when one of your...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:00:05 +1300

You know you have a girly taste in typefaces when one of your favorites is used in a campaign for tampons.

Took these snaps of Auckland spots using Streetview...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:27:29 +1300

Under Hopetoun Bridge

Three Lamps, Ponsonby

Auckland Museum

Shipright Lane - Parnell

Under Grafton Bridge

Sky Tower

Victoria Park

Franklin Rd

St Matthews in the City

Took these snaps of Auckland spots using Streetview Stereographic. How many do you recognise?

Locations:

Under Hopetoun Bridge
Three Lamps, Ponsonby
Auckland Museum
Shipright Lane - Parnell
Under Grafton Bridge
Sky Tower
Victoria Park
Franklin Rd
St Matthews in the City

The Future Belongs to the Curious - Skillshare (found via Amber)

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:19:17 +1300

The Future Belongs to the Curious - Skillshare

(found via Amber)

The Montana House, by the Hussin brothers of the America...

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:54:06 +1300

The Montana House, by the Hussin brothers of the America reCycled project.

I’ve experienced the butchering of sheep, cows, chicken and of course, fish… But a black bear and a deer are shown in this clip as I’ve certainly never seen them before.

Is commune a dirty word?

NYE

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 12:31:00 +1300

NYE

hellogiggles: thank you Jezebel for this. Love

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 23:52:06 +1300

hellogiggles:

thank you Jezebel for this.

Love