So next week i am geting a new xbox with a kinect for my birthday, with the new gear, i also want an xbox live gold subscription and to be able to stream my music, movies and photos over from my mac.

I initially started with an app called ‘Connect 360‘ as it is available in the app store. but i saw it had a few bad reviews. In my own experience it isn’t worth trying, when it was running, my xbox could see it was there but could not connect. I even emailed their tech support who could not give me a solution but said i tried ‘Rivet’

Rivet is no longer being updated and is being abandoned. As such, the makers have released it into the wild for no charge. Which i thought was great, except that i couldn’t load it on my mac, it would stop responding before it was properly working. But this may be due to me recently upgrading to Mac OSX 10.7 Lion, creating an incompatibility issue.

So then i tried the open source media server ‘Serviio‘, which comes with 2 apps that you must run to set it up and get working, the server, and the front end user interface. Once again, i had a few issues with it crashing whilst attempting to load, but when i got it working, i was disappointed, it did not have any kind of iLife integration, so i could not stream any of my images from iPhoto onto my xbox, i also found the entire app and process clunky and not very refined at all.

But this led me to stumble across ‘Playback‘ which is a very defined, very streamlined media server which works across the xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. It is very easy and quick to set up, with no connection issues like Connect 360 did. Unlike Serviio, it has full iLife, Aperture and Lightroom integration, streaming your music, movies and photos from iPhoto and iTunes.

Playback also allows you to share specific folders so you can have your music and movies in multiple locations. Which is extremely handy if you run your server from a laptop with a small hard drive. Unlike Playback, Serviio does not allow you to link to files that are on another hard drive.

I am very impressed with Playback media server and would recommend it anyone, especially if your home theatre at the heart of your entertainment or social activities.

Well, The Degree Show Exhibition for ARU just wrapped, and apart from a few disasters, everything went alright.

I was displaying my work from my third year Final Major Project, entitled “Economically Diverse” Which portrays a contrast between the affluent and less wealthy areas of Cambridge.

My clips that were meant to hold my work up were not strong enough so i put silicone rubber on the inside so they could grip the paper better, it worked fine in testing, but in practice, not quite so well.
The rubber instantly bonded to the resin coat on the paper and made a huge mess of that area, luckily i could hide most of the mess with a new clip.

I also learnt about the importance of keep refilling business cards, i refilled the pot twice and when i came to take my work down, there were no cards left again, i fear i may have lost some work or business due to this, so in the future, no silicone rubber, and i must keep checking on my work!!

This project is a study of contrasting architecture and living conditions between areas of diverse economic background through panoramic landscape photography, focusing on affluent and less affluent areas of Cambridgeshire.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

Hey guys,

Tonight (28/4/11) there is a Photography/Fine Art auction in the Ruskin Gallery, Anglia Ruskin University, East road, Cambridge CB1 1PT,

Viewing starts at 5pm, and Bidding at 6pm

The auction is to raise money for our end of year degree show, i have 3 panoramic images up for auction, so come and show some support and get bidding,

The 3 images are wide format printed, and of a large size.

Lomography Spinner

Manufacturers Price: £115 + £12 P+P to the UK / [LINK]
Firebox Price: £99.49 with Free post and packing to the UK [LINK]
(it can be found cheaper on Amazon UK, but i didn’t trust the store it came from)

Lomography 135 Digitaliza Scanning mask

Manufacturers price: £25 + £12 P+P to the UK  / [LINK]
Fototo Price: £23 + £2.50 P+P to the UK  [LINK]

Hey guys,

So I’ve had my spinner for just over a week now, and I’ve fallen in love with it,
it really is taking up most of time, when I’m not at work, ill be spinning, and if I’m not spinning, i’ll be scanning and shopping the spun film.
Its a long process but not as long as stitching multiple shots together to make a panorama.

The camera itself is extremely easy to load and use, though it is impossible to use it with only one hand. The camera is totally mechanically driven, so there is no need for batteries to capture an image, especially since there is no metering system and it is impossible to use a flash with while taking an image due to the scanning movement of the spinning head.

Hey guys,
As part of my FINAL (GARRRRRR) uni project, and the SU wall project,ive ordered a Lomography Spinner camera, [Lomography Shop]

It should come on tuesday, and them im going nutsIt takes full 360 photos onto film, which also means i have to go home and grab my scanner,this will be great because i will not have to stitch the panoramas, so moving people or cars will not create any issues, like half an arm floating in the middle of the image,

i will not have any parallax errors either, (where things in the distance move faster than things close up, so when you stitch, things aren’t aligned)
Wish me luck

Tomorrow i also have to take my 1930′s Ensign Pocket Twenty in for repair, i haven’t had chance to use it, and now the shutter is stuck shut, but it takes really wide images onto 120 medium format film, so would be really good to use for this project,
not to mention the unique images it will produce from the light leaks in the bellows, or really old lens.

Hey guys

Im being flooded with spam on the comments,

the comments being left are all gibberish and gibberish website links

even though i have the reCaptcha plug-in which should (theoretically) stop any program/bot from posting spam on my site,

i must look into that at some point i suppose,

Stephen