Those of you that have the great fortune of putting up with my random ideas will know that of late i've been playing around with a washing up bowl, various items of tupperware and lots of tin foil... I've been making a DIY Ring Light, you can see the making and a few sample pictures over at Gallericious or on my flickr page. And yes, I know this picture to the right is well sexy!

So I havn't posted much in the last few weeks and loads has been going on. I've had a few nice packages in the post from ebay bringing me brand new toys.. A flash softbox, a new 50mm lens and wireless flash triggers that are a bit poo but only cost £20.
I've also booked yet another holiday, this time to the Caribbean island of Antigua... its gunna be awesome! Cant wait!

Well, until next time... Please don't have nightmares!

Just recently i've been trying to put together a folder on my computer as a reference for portrait poses and what not as a library for ideas when i'm out shooting, however Flickr doesn't want it to be easy for you to lift images off their pages and if you've ever tried it you'll know that they place an image called "spaceball.gif" over the top of the images on the overview page... However today I discovered a handy little workaround for this annoyance.

I use firefox for most of my web browsing and have the "AdBlock Plus" plugin, this plugin lets you block ads and anything you want from appearing on your pages (I think you can also get it for Safari, no idea about IE), What I found is that if you add the "spaceball.gif" image to the adblock filter you can then happily drag n drop images straight from the flickr overview page onto your computer

Easy as that.

Again people amaze me with just how thick they can be. Basically I want to create a random string 8 characters long, a bit of google bashing gives me functions that are like 20 - 100 lines long, why people? why? here is my fabtabulous (and far better than yours) script for achieving this.

function random_string($length=8){
	$charset = array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z', 'A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L','M','N','O','P','Q','R','S','T','U','V','W','X','Y','X','Z','0','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','0');
	$chars = array_rand($charset,$length);
	foreach ($chars as $a=>$value){
		$key.= $charset[$value];
	}
	return $key;
}

See how easy it is people! Love you really

And while i'm ranting about stuff... comparing 2 multidimensional arrays, hello php? bah.. here's my very simple solution!

function array_compare($array1,$array2){
	return (md5(serialize($array1)) == md5(serialize($array2))) ? true : false;
}

Woo! I'm back from France. Skiing was good fun, take a look at all the pictures on Gallericious.

Our Apartment in Maison d.. suttin french, was ok, quite dated but it was good enough and with the addition of a pokey stick (for changing tv channels) it had just about everything we needed. Unlike some of the other guys we had space to move thanks to just Mark and I sharing a 6 person apartment between the 2 of us.

The bars and clubs were always packed and there were loads of places to go out and eat. The Piste was pretty good with the exception of the last day when the gondolas were closed due to massive amounts of wind.

Something I did notice in France was the complete lack of anything. Ok so there's the Alps and there's Paris, but apart from that, is there anything there? However, what there lack in things to do they make up with the dodgy TV. Basically the TV in Europe is fab, everything's dubbed from the early 90's and the few shows they do have in French, like the wheel of fortune are really kinky with women in short skirts getting hit on by the presenter, what more could you want.

Woohoo! Marky and I and a load of random uni people are off Skiing in France for a week! Its going to be crazy! We're setting off tonight at about 6pm and driving all the way down to Alpe d'huez, only 750 miles!

If your really sad and want to track how we're doing you can check out our GPS location via THIS handy lil tool.

This does however mean that this blog and my 365 galleries aren't gunna be updated until next Sunday at the earliest, unless we find some random internet access halfway up a mountain somewhere. I'm sure you wont miss me too much :-)

If anybody wants booze brought back, send us a textual message.

Anyway, wish me luck! TTFN

Woohoo! My new flash finally arrived today.

I bought the Canon Speedlite 430EX off of Amazon for £160 in the end, what can i say... it's fab! Glad i spent the extra bit to get the official canon one rather than one of the cheaper options.

Andy also leant me his "Nifty 50" fixed lens today, which this photo was taken with. The flash was bounced off of the wall to camera left with a bit of ambient light from directly behind camera.. i'm happy with the results.

More on Flickr.

Wordpress users of the mod_rewrite feature will notice that post titles are adjusted to make them look / work nicer.

As I plan to attack my gallery with this kind of feature (and my boss attempted it earlier) I thought i'd have a play myself. After a lil bit of Google bashing and seeing numerous other attempts at making something similar I got bored with their stupidity and wrote my own... I know it doesn't cover every random character out there but it gets the most common..

I know what your thinking... show me the money... well ok.. here it is...

function string_to_url_slug($string){
	$string = html_entity_decode(strtolower($string));
	//replace illegal chars with -'s
	$illegalchars = array(" ","." , "," ,"/", "'", "\\", "*", "@", "!", "\"", "=", "_", "-", "?", "Ÿ", "€", "£", "$", "†", "§", "^", "%", "(", ")", ":", ";",  "|", "~", "`", "#", "{", "}", "+", "[", "]","±","<",">");
	$string = str_replace($illegalchars,"-",$string);
	// replace & with -and-
	$string = str_replace('&','-and-',$string);
	// remove duplicate -'s
	while (strpos($string,'--')!==false){
		$string = str_replace('--','-',$string);
	}
	// remove trailing -'s and return
	return trim($string,'-');
}

For example passing it the string: hello there & let g&o %$!!!!!!!!'"!!!!!i!!!@£ love^*() you ()*
Would return this: hello-there-and-let-g-and-o-i-love-you

Just like that :-)

Another year, another load of random resolutions. Last years were much about self improvement and being happy, this year, instead of things I want to do i've made a list of quotes to remember in my daily life to try n make life that little bit better for myself and others around me... Spread the love people!

Here is a selection...

1. There is no such thing as an unimportant day.


2. Make your life about something that will outlast it.


3. Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.


4. Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.


5. Don't cry because its over, smile because it happened.


6. Happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.


7. The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work.


8. It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not. (Personal fav).

(No, I don't know who said them.)

Have a great year ppl!

P.S. New years eve photos available on Gallericious.