Hello and welcome to Grindleford, where I, Ed Richardson, will mutter and meander through my life as and when I get the chance.
I've had a blog running for a while now, but it was get a bit divisive between my work and private life, so I've split them. My work life can now be found at Digital Signals and meanwhile my other life mutterings will be found here in their new home, Grindleford.
To get the ball rolling I am going to cheat and copy some posts over that are relevant from my existing blog.
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Stefanine Posavec's Sentence Drawings
A while back now I visited the Millennium gallery in Sheffield to see the On The Map exhibition.
I'm a big fan of maps in general and their ability to communicate lots of information in a none textual form. After using OS maps and the alike since a very young age I can envisage landscapes in a 3D image quite quickly using good maps, something that has always interested me. Displaying what might otherwise be incomprehensible data in a regulated format to give insight to something that would be hard envisage otherwise.
The exhibition incorporated a number of artists that used maps in some form to display or express various forms of data, visually representing the data in colourful alternatives.
One particular artist, Stefanie Posavec's work struck me as interesting and appealing. Stefanie takes something we interface easily with, words, and then almost reverses the process to create a visual representation of these words, using Jack Kerouac's book On The Road as a source.
In doing so she creates more depth than the words might have by themselves. Well the depth is always there in the copy, but she visually represents certain aspects of the copy such as character changes, story changes, new sentences and makes visual representations of these and their relationship with the rest of the novel, to illustrate aspects of the text that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The result is a series of maps of various data sources, creating visual images of one of my favourite books "On The Road".
The work is interesting and provocative, creating a visual feast for anyone interested in either maps or On The Road.
Good luck for the future Stefanie with your work.
I'm a big fan of maps in general and their ability to communicate lots of information in a none textual form. After using OS maps and the alike since a very young age I can envisage landscapes in a 3D image quite quickly using good maps, something that has always interested me. Displaying what might otherwise be incomprehensible data in a regulated format to give insight to something that would be hard envisage otherwise.
The exhibition incorporated a number of artists that used maps in some form to display or express various forms of data, visually representing the data in colourful alternatives.
One particular artist, Stefanie Posavec's work struck me as interesting and appealing. Stefanie takes something we interface easily with, words, and then almost reverses the process to create a visual representation of these words, using Jack Kerouac's book On The Road as a source.
In doing so she creates more depth than the words might have by themselves. Well the depth is always there in the copy, but she visually represents certain aspects of the copy such as character changes, story changes, new sentences and makes visual representations of these and their relationship with the rest of the novel, to illustrate aspects of the text that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The result is a series of maps of various data sources, creating visual images of one of my favourite books "On The Road".
The work is interesting and provocative, creating a visual feast for anyone interested in either maps or On The Road.
Good luck for the future Stefanie with your work.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
The OMM approaches
As a transgression from the last few posts on Digital Media, fell running.
Only a few weeks to go now till the OMM event and I can't wait to get over there and get thoroughly knackered, wet and miserable.
The training to date has continued to go well and I am currently trying shake off a seasonal cold, but even that didn't stop me fitting a 12km run along the edges (Froggatt, Curbar and Baslow) on Sunday.
I've invested in some new shoes from Accelerate as the New Balance M800's I've been running in over the summer occasionally let me down in wet open fell conditions, which are exactly the conditions I am expecting in Borrowdale in a few weeks.
Now its just a matter of some more light training, about a 25km run this weekend in Edale I think and then a much lighter weekend run the following weekend and we are there!
I'm looking forward to a challenging few days back in the Lakes, in an area I infrequently visit.
Avoiding injury and illness are my tasks now . . .
Only a few weeks to go now till the OMM event and I can't wait to get over there and get thoroughly knackered, wet and miserable.
The training to date has continued to go well and I am currently trying shake off a seasonal cold, but even that didn't stop me fitting a 12km run along the edges (Froggatt, Curbar and Baslow) on Sunday.
I've invested in some new shoes from Accelerate as the New Balance M800's I've been running in over the summer occasionally let me down in wet open fell conditions, which are exactly the conditions I am expecting in Borrowdale in a few weeks.
Now its just a matter of some more light training, about a 25km run this weekend in Edale I think and then a much lighter weekend run the following weekend and we are there!
I'm looking forward to a challenging few days back in the Lakes, in an area I infrequently visit.
Avoiding injury and illness are my tasks now . . .
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Seasonal Talk
I've been here before and I am sure I'll visit here again in the future, but a seasonal change is yet again upon us.
The summer has been poor in anyone's eyes, with a brief glimpse of the sun only a few times this year in England. It stayed warm for a while, but there was only a small number of days when the sun tanned the skin.
But, as Summer draws to a close I look forward with anticipation what winter will bring. Scottish weekends in knee deep snow and ice (for at least the 6 hours it lasts!), cold nights and log fires.
The leaves are turning on the trees everyday as I watch them in the woods near our home, yellowing with the cooler weather and gradually falling to form that compost that will invigorate Spring next year.
In only a few weeks bare patches will appear in the woods where all the leaves have dropped, returning the silver birch from their current green ocean of colour to a purple haze of branches that adorns them during their restful winter months.
I am already very late in ordering my wood for the fire, I should have ordered it back in Spring to allow it a warm Summer to dry properly, but we were unsure where we would be living this winter. But with the falling house market, falling fast than the leaves themselves, we are sitting tight in our rental accommodation with the hope of being able to pick up a better value home next year.
Roll on Winter, I for one love the season as much as Summer . . .
The summer has been poor in anyone's eyes, with a brief glimpse of the sun only a few times this year in England. It stayed warm for a while, but there was only a small number of days when the sun tanned the skin.
But, as Summer draws to a close I look forward with anticipation what winter will bring. Scottish weekends in knee deep snow and ice (for at least the 6 hours it lasts!), cold nights and log fires.
The leaves are turning on the trees everyday as I watch them in the woods near our home, yellowing with the cooler weather and gradually falling to form that compost that will invigorate Spring next year.
In only a few weeks bare patches will appear in the woods where all the leaves have dropped, returning the silver birch from their current green ocean of colour to a purple haze of branches that adorns them during their restful winter months.
I am already very late in ordering my wood for the fire, I should have ordered it back in Spring to allow it a warm Summer to dry properly, but we were unsure where we would be living this winter. But with the falling house market, falling fast than the leaves themselves, we are sitting tight in our rental accommodation with the hope of being able to pick up a better value home next year.
Roll on Winter, I for one love the season as much as Summer . . .
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
What I think about while I'm cycling . . .
Just reading "Murakami's" "What I talk about when I talk about running" and enjoying it immensely.
I try and mix up my reading with a bit of fiction, biography, educational, swapping alternatively to keep the interest levels up.
Every so often a book gets read at just the right time, I've just finished Wilfred Thesiger's "Marsh Arabs", which although interesting I was looking forward to moving on and it was no reflection of the book itself. I just wasn't what I was needing to read at the time.
"What I talk about when I talk about running" is timed to perfection. Over the last 8 months I've been workingto regain my fitness I had in my younger years and I have just reached a point when I am happy to call myself fit.
Murakami covers his path to writing, through jazz bars etc and then I finds the running he takes up helps him adapt to his new career choice. Falling almost in line with my recent career change and my progress back to fitness.
I've always been a big adovocate of fit body, fit mind and feel I am getting back to where I was a few years back, with a new lease of life in my career I felt invigorated and passionate about work again, something I've not felt for years. Now with my fitness returning I am actually starting to feel years come off my age.
But the real interest I find with Murakami's account of his life is the solitude he seeks when running and how this has helped him. This is something I seek in both my running, cycling and when out in mountains in general. It's a defrag of my mental hard drive, a resorting of unnecessary information and filing into the depths of my mind, whilst at the same time running over items of interest that I have active in my mind that might develop into projects for the future.
My hat off to you for your "as it is" account Haruki, perhaps if your passing the Peak District you can drop in for a run, but don't expect me to say much.
I try and mix up my reading with a bit of fiction, biography, educational, swapping alternatively to keep the interest levels up.
Every so often a book gets read at just the right time, I've just finished Wilfred Thesiger's "Marsh Arabs", which although interesting I was looking forward to moving on and it was no reflection of the book itself. I just wasn't what I was needing to read at the time.
"What I talk about when I talk about running" is timed to perfection. Over the last 8 months I've been workingto regain my fitness I had in my younger years and I have just reached a point when I am happy to call myself fit.
Murakami covers his path to writing, through jazz bars etc and then I finds the running he takes up helps him adapt to his new career choice. Falling almost in line with my recent career change and my progress back to fitness.
I've always been a big adovocate of fit body, fit mind and feel I am getting back to where I was a few years back, with a new lease of life in my career I felt invigorated and passionate about work again, something I've not felt for years. Now with my fitness returning I am actually starting to feel years come off my age.
But the real interest I find with Murakami's account of his life is the solitude he seeks when running and how this has helped him. This is something I seek in both my running, cycling and when out in mountains in general. It's a defrag of my mental hard drive, a resorting of unnecessary information and filing into the depths of my mind, whilst at the same time running over items of interest that I have active in my mind that might develop into projects for the future.
My hat off to you for your "as it is" account Haruki, perhaps if your passing the Peak District you can drop in for a run, but don't expect me to say much.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
So Where Are We . . . ?
Probably going to be another quick post again, life seems so unrelenting at the moment, I suspect it might stay like this until our kids reach the age of about 30 . . . Anyway its all good at the moment.
I'm in a new job, which is great, working for agency out of Manchester called Elevator Digital and loving it. A predominately .NET agency so a new technology for me, but I've worked with Microsoft for so many years its all seems like an old friend.
The works good and varied, with it being a relatively small agency I am getting busy with all sorts, which at the moment is the way I'd prefer it. Briefs, tenders, bit's of CSS, design, client liaison, you get the picture . . .
In the meantime I've been doing some interesting background reading about human networks, after reading this interesting article about the "Tipping Point" and super influencers or Uber-Influencers as I like to call them.
It infers that there are individuals who are so in-tune with their social group that others turn to them for ideas and acceptance of what's the next big thing, the idea being that marketeers can then harness their potential to unleash a new brand or idea/trend and it will be picked up virally by others.
The article itself introduces a sceptical take on this devised and researched by a guy called Duncan Watts, a mathematician who has spent sometime researching and trying to prove the tipping point argument right or wrong.
I've got to say I'm in agreement with Duncan's finding so far. I've ordered his 6 degree's book to read further on the matter.
Like Duncan I do agree that there can be uber-influencers that can have a substantial affect on how a concept or product is adopted, but that this is not the only factor.
Tipping point famously talks of the adoption of Hush Puppies by uber-influencers and then how they then went on to out sell many much more established brands by the fact they had been worn by a number of uber-influencers and so been deemed as "cool", but I wonder and Watt's findings support this, had the uber-influencers been wearing clogs would they have become quite so popular?
I don't disagree that the market/popular thought/paradigm can be influenced by certain individuals that might speak/wear/buy things and everyone else watches and follows, or at least a large number do. But its just not that simple, it has to be at the right time and the right product, it can't just be anything.
Anyway, perhaps Watts himself is becoming an influencer and he's just got me at the right time, either way I'll read what he has to say and perhaps come back here and share my findings.
Well, the suns shining again here so I am going to don my running shoes and go for a fell run with the dog . . . laters.
I'm in a new job, which is great, working for agency out of Manchester called Elevator Digital and loving it. A predominately .NET agency so a new technology for me, but I've worked with Microsoft for so many years its all seems like an old friend.
The works good and varied, with it being a relatively small agency I am getting busy with all sorts, which at the moment is the way I'd prefer it. Briefs, tenders, bit's of CSS, design, client liaison, you get the picture . . .
In the meantime I've been doing some interesting background reading about human networks, after reading this interesting article about the "Tipping Point" and super influencers or Uber-Influencers as I like to call them.
It infers that there are individuals who are so in-tune with their social group that others turn to them for ideas and acceptance of what's the next big thing, the idea being that marketeers can then harness their potential to unleash a new brand or idea/trend and it will be picked up virally by others.
The article itself introduces a sceptical take on this devised and researched by a guy called Duncan Watts, a mathematician who has spent sometime researching and trying to prove the tipping point argument right or wrong.
I've got to say I'm in agreement with Duncan's finding so far. I've ordered his 6 degree's book to read further on the matter.
Like Duncan I do agree that there can be uber-influencers that can have a substantial affect on how a concept or product is adopted, but that this is not the only factor.
Tipping point famously talks of the adoption of Hush Puppies by uber-influencers and then how they then went on to out sell many much more established brands by the fact they had been worn by a number of uber-influencers and so been deemed as "cool", but I wonder and Watt's findings support this, had the uber-influencers been wearing clogs would they have become quite so popular?
I don't disagree that the market/popular thought/paradigm can be influenced by certain individuals that might speak/wear/buy things and everyone else watches and follows, or at least a large number do. But its just not that simple, it has to be at the right time and the right product, it can't just be anything.
Anyway, perhaps Watts himself is becoming an influencer and he's just got me at the right time, either way I'll read what he has to say and perhaps come back here and share my findings.
Well, the suns shining again here so I am going to don my running shoes and go for a fell run with the dog . . . laters.
Thursday, 26 June 2008
Toy ducks
Short and brief today, lots of things to write about at the moment, it's just finding the time as they are coming thick and fast.
For one, I've got a new job and start there on Tuesday July 1st and for the first time in a long time, I can't wait to start there . . . more on this soon.
Right, food for thought, why are toy ducks always yellow with red beaks?
For one, I've got a new job and start there on Tuesday July 1st and for the first time in a long time, I can't wait to start there . . . more on this soon.
Right, food for thought, why are toy ducks always yellow with red beaks?
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