Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Hipstamatic and Rebooting a Hobby

As any­one who hasn’t been liv­ing in a sack for the last few years will be aware, the iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod) plat­form has become some­thing of a pop­u­lar hit, with an App Store that now com­prises hun­dreds of thou­sands of apps for all pur­poses (both real and ima­gined) under the sun. I’ve owned an iPhone for the last two years, and dur­ing that time have tried a fair few. Many have been impress­ive, but none so much as Hipstamatic (iTunes link), which I bought on a whim after see­ing some of its out­put on Twitter. And I’ve found using it to be quite a trans­form­at­ive experience.

In a nut­shell, Hipstamatic sim­u­lates a vin­tage film cam­era, much like the vaunted Instamatic and Holga low-fi cam­eras of old. The user can swap out the vir­tual cam­era lens, film and flash, choos­ing from a vari­ety of options — some sup­plied and some avail­able to pur­chase in-app. Under the hood, tak­ing a photo (through the cute mini­ature “view­finder” view­port on-screen) causes vari­ous fil­ters and effects to be applied to the photo accord­ing to these choices. Photos are then browsable via a superbly designed gal­lery inter­face; they’re also saved to the Camera Roll.

The premise, then, is simple enough, but it’s in prac­tice that Hipstamatic really shines. Early obser­va­tions from myself and friends centred around the fact that just about every photo that comes out of this app is fant­astic. The images ooze nos­tal­gia, con­trast and char­ac­ter, and in those first few hours many a Facebook pro­file pic­ture was created.

And then a funny thing happened. A com­pul­sion over­took me that I hadn’t felt for a couple of years — the desire to take lots of pho­tos of everything in sight. A couple of years back, I was a fairly act­ive ama­teur pho­to­grapher — it was, more or less, my main hobby. But since then I’ve been occu­pied by too many other things, and gradu­ally allowed my interest to wane. I’d also always shied away from more can­did pho­tos — pre­fer­ring instead more formal arrange­ments — not least from a point of prac­tic­al­ity (my hulk­ing DSLR isn’t the subtlest thing).

Yet here was an app that pro­duced amaz­ing shots on a device that I always had with me, that could be whipped out in a second to cap­ture the moment. Previously I’d browsed photo col­lec­tions like Larry Clark’s unfor­get­table Tulsa, and while it didn’t leave me with the desire to shoot speed, it did leave me wish­ing that at some point I too would be able to look back on an archive of more per­sonal pho­to­graphs of my own. Using Hipstamatic felt like a decis­ive move towards that, and when that week­end was over I did indeed have a col­lec­tion of snaps on which I could look back and smile.

Using the app for a few days left me with the strong urge to rekindle that old hobby, and I hope that over the next few months I’ll be able to return to pho­to­graphy with the interest and pas­sion I once had.

Hipstamatic is £1.19 on the App Store; in-app kit bundles are £0.59 each.

Jobhunting with Less Pain, Part 3

I’ve already had some great feed­back from the first two parts of this art­icle, so I’m pleased to be able to share the third and final part today.

Having read this far, you should have some idea about the pro­cesses required to set your­self up with an inter­view with a pro­spect­ive employer for a job you actu­ally want. For most roles, this is the most cru­cial step, and giv­ing your­self the best pos­sible chance of suc­cess is key.

Interview tech­nique: The face-to-face inter­view is gen­er­ally the crux of an employer’s assess­ment of you and your suit­ab­il­ity for the role they have on offer. Interviews are some­times sup­ple­men­ted with aptitude or tech­nical tests that are in most cases just as import­ant, but these tests are far more object­ive and if you know your stuff, chances are you’ll do just fine without think­ing too hard about them.

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Jobhunting with Less Pain, Part 2

The first part of this art­icle dealt with my motiv­a­tions for writ­ing it (very meta, eh?) and the basic steps you should take before start­ing out on the path to find­ing a new job — decid­ing what job you want, and pre­par­ing a CV that doesn’t suck.

The CV sec­tion alone turned into a colossal beast of a thing, such that the ori­gin­ally envis­aged single art­icle turned into a multi-part series, the true extent of which will only be known once I’ve fin­ished writ­ing it. In this second instal­ment I’m going to dis­cuss cover let­ters, the “hunt” itself, and per­haps round off with some words about recruit­ers, if you’re lucky.

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Jobhunting With Less Pain, Part 1

A new influx of recruiter spam plop­ping into my inbox this after­noon promp­ted me to write a post I’ve been mean­ing to put together for a few months: a col­lec­tion of my top tips for com­plet­ing the job-hunting pro­cess with as little pain as possible.

This art­icle ended up becom­ing a bit of a beast, so I’ve split it into sec­tions which I’ll post daily for the next few days until — like a strange, inform­at­ive ill­ness — I’ve got it all out of my sys­tem. UPDATE: You can find the second part of the art­icle here, and the third and final part here. Enjoy!

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Chickenhawk

I just fin­ished read­ing Robert Mason’s Chickenhawk, the latest in a line of excep­tional books on war that I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to have fall into my hands. My takeaway quote was the fol­low­ing pas­sage — the cog­nit­ive dis­son­ance of those who fight our wars never writ more succinctly.

The clerk, a young woman, took my money and asked if I was return­ing from Vietnam. I said yes, proudly. She sud­denly glared at me and said, ‘Murderer.’ I stared at her for a long minute, feel­ing con­fused. Then I smiled. I real­ized that she was talk­ing about someone else.

Telegraph Turns to Fiction for Inspiration in iPhone Piece

Okay, Telegraph. We know what it’s like. The hotly-anticipated launch of what just about every­one now accepts will be the iPhone 4G (or at least, the 4^th iter­a­tion under another name) is just around the corner, and the blogs and rumour sites have pretty much got the situ­ation sewn up. You need to write some­thing to show that you’re rel­ev­ant and in touch with the shiny tech that your read­ers’ kids (or grandkids) so des­per­ately want. But what new insight can you bring to the table? What excit­ing new facts can you breath­lessly pass on to your audience?

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