Matthew Nellis

I missed this Monday’s haiku. Please accept my apologies:

I was busy man,
Lost track of time and forgot
Don’t be mad at me

I’ve spent the last month working on Muckle Sandwich, a very cool art/music fanzine run my by brother from another mother, Neil Warrack. If you happen to live in Scotland, or more precisely Glasgow/Edinburgh, then you’re in luck as that’s where the fanzine is sold. However if you’re down in Englandshire and fancy grabbing a copy then give me a shout and I’ll sort you out.

Its a great read featuring interviews with the legendary Henry Rollins, fascinating comic-blogger Tom Humberstone, plus some crazy art and photography which is just too cool for school.

So whats next at MatthewNellis.com? Well, I spent an evening at a local arcade taking photos of crazy Japanese kids playing random arcade games. There also seems to be a bizarre sub-culture of people who go there simply to play the dance rythym games. I use the word ‘bizarre’ only because the people playing the game are often not what you’d expect! I mean, it ranges from uber cool Japanese kids, to middle aged white guys who look like my dad, to ridiculously cool black guys who appear to know the game so well that they don’t even need to look at the screen. Yep, these cats were dancing backwards.

So I took a bunch of pictures and plan on putting a few collages together in as interesting a way as possible.

In other news: Went to see ‘Shutter Island‘ the other night. Pretty cool film. Everyone says you need to to watch it more than once to get the full experience, but I doubt I’ll be doing that. It was good, but not that good.

Well, I’m finally back. I’ve decided to embrace the goodness that is Wordpress and managed to get it working with a bit of effort. Here’s my past week or so in Haiku form:

New toys to play with
A shiny new camera
And Wacom Bamboo

When pay day hits, it’s a glorious day. I can slowly work my way through my Amazon wish list one item a month, but this time I treated myself to two! I’ve been meaning to buy a new camera ever since I lost my old one a few years ago in New York. It took a good few weeks of researching, going back and forth over whether I should splash out to get a DSLR, or whether a compact will suffice. But then I also wanted to be able to shoot decent video. Have you seen the price of consumer HD camcorders? I really didn’t fancy spending a fortune getting two devices, one to shoot stills and the other to shoot video.

I eventually decided that my best option was to get a DSLR that was also more than capable of shooting HD video. After much deliberating I was erring towards the Canon 7D, or the Panasonic GH1. Both fine cameras that are capable of good looking HD video.

But then I started looking at prices.

As much as I wanted either of the cameras, I just couldn’t justify myself shelling out over £1000 on a piece of  equipment that would satisfy my hobby. Perhaps in a year if I’m really getting into photography then I could consider such a purchase, but not now. So back to the drawing board. DSLR out of the question really. Too expensive for what I need. What do I need? A good camera with full manual controls that shoots HD video.

And in steps this beauty. The Panasonic FZ38, a superzoom bridge camera which ticked all the boxes! I’ve only had a few days, and already I’m very impressed. Easy to use, all the manual controls I want, HD video (albeit in the horrible AVCHD codec), and at a very reasonable price tag of £245.

So I’ll be planning on posting random pictures as the weeks go on, and also some video stuff I have planned. Below are a selection of images I’ve done, and you can check out the rest on my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mnellis/

Just the one haiku today, and yes I know its a day later than usual!

Textpattern, you bitch
Why are you so difficult?
So long, and farewell

Currently the site is powered by Textpattern, an open source content management system similar to Blogger and Wordpress.

I chose it over the aforementioned for various reasons, mainly because Worpress would just not install correctly on my web host. Whilst it is a very powerful and open-source system it also has it annoyances which, quite frankly, are really starting to piss me off.

So over the next week or so I shall be migrating over to another blog hosting site. Not sure what yet, might try to give Worpress another install and see if it wants to work.

So bear with me in the next couple of weeks where content might be a little light.

In part two of my 2010 preview of ‘things I’m looking forward to’ I enter the world of Technology and Music….

Tech

Chrome OS

Google’s next step in world domination sees them enter the world of operating systems with their Chromium OS, an open source lightweight uber web browser it seems. Contrary to what some people thought, Chrome isn’t designed to be a windows beater and I think this is its major strength.

You see, Google already own the internet. And whether you like it or not it’s nigh on impossible to browse the internet without using a Google service, or a service owned by Google. From email, to maps, blogging, web analytics, photo storage, file sharing, voice-over-IP and of course the infamous search engine, chances are whatever you do on the web Google has a hand in. Oh, and they also own a little video sharing site called YouTube…

With all this dominance in web based applications, what would be the point in Google trying to beat Microsoft Windows? Microsoft already has the desktop operating system market tied up, so what do you do? Create your own market.

Chrome OS will essentially be a web browser running on specialist hardware (ie, netbooks). Now, I don’t own a netbook but I imagine people who do bought one because that’s all they really need one for: accessing the internet. And with enough Google web apps around to run your life/manage your business why would you need anything more?

For these reasons I’m super excited about Chrome OS. You see, I happen to be in the market for a netbook; my website revolves around Gmail/GDocs/Youtube/FlickR, all web based services. Hell, I even own an Android powered HTC Hero. If these two operating systems happen to converge sometime in the future, then I for one welcome our new Google overlords.

Music

Meatloaf

Seriously? Meatloaf has a new album coming out? That. Is. Awesome.

I remember my dad taking me to see Meat Loaf live at Aberdeen Exhibition Centre way back in the day and just being absolutely blown away by the performance. As a young man who hadn’t seen many live performances, the sight of Meatloaf taking the stage and belting out hit after hit was simply extraordinary.

For starters, he had a giant hydraulic bat suspended from the rafters. A GIANT HYDRAULIC BAT. In my book that already grants a five star review, let alone the epic length of his live songs. See, his songs are already quite long, but naturally when you play live you want to give the fans a little something extra and so he extends them a bit. I swear to the maker, in one hour he played perhaps only three songs. The man likes to jam!

So basically I’m excited because it’ll probably mean I get to see him live again once the album is out. I’m sure the album will be decent too, but with Meatloaf I’ve always thought it was about the live show.

Devo

Not much to say about this, other than I’m more curious than excited. I’ll be honest, I didn’t think much of ‘Watch us Work’. ‘Dont Shoot (I’m a Man)’ was ok, partly because the title (and subsequent chorus) makes me chuckle. If rumours are true then the reason the album was delayed to 2010 is because they wanted to ‘radically remix’ it. Very intriguing….

Lets kick things off with what seems to be quite an obvious place to start: A look at what I’m most excited about in 2010 in my four areas of interest (games, tech, design, music).

And in part 1, lets take a look at what things peaked my interest in the world of games and design…

Games

Mass Effect 2

Commander Shepard is back in the sequel to a game which I found to be utterly compelling from start to finish. The first Mass Effect was one of the most engaging games I’ve ever played, mixing interesting narrative with tight third person controls, pushed along by an intuitive dialog selection wheel. Yes, that dialogue wheel.

Mass Effect 2 looks like more of the same, which is not a bad thing at all. When the ‘sameyness’ is this good, I honestly don’t care.

Apparently they’ve cut down on the tediously long lift loading limes, possibly the only thing about the original which seriously irked me. The graphics look refined, the gunplay action looks almost like Gears of War and seriously, who doesn’t want to play as a Vanguard? I’ll be picking this the day it’s released, which if you didn’t know is January 26th for North America, January 28th for Australia and January 29th for Europe.

Bioshock 2

Developing a first person shooter which stands out from the crowd must be difficult thing to achieve. But that’s what 2007’s Bioshock did with great aplomb. Sure it may have had some inspiration but the underwater dystopia of Rapture was a character in itself. My favourite sequence in the game still has to be at the taking the elevators ride down into the city. As the voice of Andrew Ryan announces ‘I chose something different, I chose the impossible, I chose….. Rapture!”  and you are greeted with an amazing view of this underwater metropolis, my skin literally tingled. It was an awesome introduction, and it was as damn near perfect as any game will get in my opinion. Are games art? Damn right they are.

So I have no doubt Bioshock 2 will be must-play game of 2010. It has the same team behind the development and whilst it may not surpass the original, it’s certainly going to be close. Bioshock 2 is slated for a February 9th worldwide release.

Design

Adobe Creative Suite 5

I don’t really consider this a must buy for me in 2010, I’m quite happy with CS3, but that still doesn’t stop me getting excited! The main reason? Flash 5:

I think Flash development has become so powerful in recent years, and is so versatile in its uses. I remember making Flash websites during university and thinking “This software is so incredible, it can’t get much better than this.”

Things did get better. What Flash 5 alone is capable of is simply astounding. From developing  native iPhone apps, to its physics simulations, and as I’m told by certain people within the broadcast industry: Bye bye VizRT, hello Flash.

Whether this becomes reality remains to be seen. What is true though, is that Flash is a far more supported, and far more accessible graphics system than VizRT ever will be.

Of course, the creative suite isn’t all about Flash. After Effects is confirmed to be 64-bit native which will no doubt speed things up, and Photoshop? Well Photoshop just looks awesome.

Well thats about it for part one of my 2010 preview. In part 2 I’ll be looking at what I’m looking forward to in the realms of Music and Tech.