Play Archives - Andy Lobban

2023-01-20

Oh hi – I moved back to WordPress

I’ve just moved this website back to WordPress. I know, I know. JAMStack is the future. WordPress is slow.

The thing is, when I moved it over to Hugo, I never updated it. Even writing text only posts was just too much hassle. I haven’t done any real technical work in a few years, so the thought of running Hugo instances locally and committing to git repos just for some small updates just put me off every time.

The Twitter tailspin of 2022 has got me thinking and engaging with the indieweb community again. Big tech has got me not wanting to go anywhere near their networks any more. My curmudgeonly bloody mindedness has got me wondering why on earth I every cared about reach or likes or whatever in the first place.

I know I’m not the only one.

So here’s to hopefully posting a bunch of semi-interesting things in 2023. From my phone! In minutes!

2015-10-06

Parallels VMs do interesting things sometimes

glitch

2015-02-18

Sleeves Received Twitter

The Wire run a Tumblr blog called Sleeves Received which features some of the lovely, weird and wonderful packaging from releases they're sent. As a label owner, record nerd, and designer, this is pretty much the best Tumblr for me. Since I've given up RSS and moved to following sites on Twitter if I absolutely need to follow, Sleeves Received has been missing from my life. So I used IFTTT to pipe the RSS feed from the site to a Twitter account, so it tweets new posts. Follow if you're interested.

Disclaimer: This is totally unofficial.

The Wire's Sleeves Received on Twitter

2013-03-22

Lytro testing

While I was in Austin, I was given a Lytro camera to try out for an evening. The Lytro site can explain much better than I can what this camera does:

The Lytro camera lets you capture and share what you see in a whole new way. It’s the first consumer camera that records the entire light field — all the rays of light traveling in every direction through a scene — instead of a flat 2D image.

This means you can refocus images and change perspective in post-processing. You can do this and export a flat image, or you can upload your photos to the Lytro site and embed them on websites, allowing viewers to focus or alter perspective they way they want.

It's an amazing idea. It's going to be incredibly useful technology when it's ready. At the moment, the photos are very low resolution and the crazy focus and perspective shifts you'll see in the example images didn't seem to happen for the photos I took. It's also pretty bad in low light. Still, it's a lot of fun, and I can't wait to see what the next few iterations bring. Also, it's fun watching people get really confused about the weird looking Start Trek type contraption you're pointing at things.

View my full gallery

A few examples

I've embedded a few examples of mine here. Try clicking on an area to refocus. Try clicking and dragging to change perspective.

2013-03-21

My NYT ‘word cloud portrait’ from SXSW

The only 5 minutes I spent at the SXSW Trade Show this year was getting a 'word cloud portrait' done at the NYT booth. They took my photo, asked which section of the NYT I liked most, and two minutes later presented me with a print of my portrait.

View on Instagram

2013-03-02

Private-public screening of the Ghost of Piramida

Paddy and I are hosting a private-public screening of The Ghost Of Piramida on Saturday 2nd March 2013 in the cinema room of the Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh.

In The Ghost Of Piramida director Andreas Koefoed follows Efterklang on their 9 day audio expedition to the ghost town Piramida on Spitsbergen, located just a thousand kilometers from the North Pole and home to more polar bears than people.

Accompanied by their taciturn and not visibly impressed Russian polar bear guard, the group goes on a treasure hunt in the empty buildings of the ghost town, while the narrator, the former Piramida-citizen Alexander, takes us back to a bygone era, when Piramida flourished and the immigrant Russian miners and their families lived in a Soviet parallel society far from the brutal reality of their homeland.

Efterklang collected over a thousand sound recordings for the album ‘Piramida’ they later wrote and recorded in Berlin.

The music in the film incorporates some of the early sketches, as well as finished songs from the album.

Screening info: Saturday 2nd March 2013 in the cinema room of the Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh at 7.30pm. The screening is free but we have limited space so to reserve a space please email me. I will reply to confirm you’re in.

2011-09-21

One for the music and letterpress nerds

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings oversee the letterpress process of their new album cover.

2011-08-23

Duck Tron is pretty great

2011-04-10

Basketball footage from MSG

A wee bit of basketball footage I shot in Madison Square Garden. Our first basketball game was an amazing experience

2011-03-15

Made it to Austin

We made it to Austin last night after some delays and a mad dash through Houston Airport. Spent the night catching up with our good friend Jess and went to a Bad Veins / Ted Leo show which was good. I love Bad Veins so much and it's always one of the best things about coming to SXSW.

Our last day in New York consisted of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Highline, burritos and more frozen Margeritas in Greenwich Village, then seeing the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. That was really amazing. A high point. as was the Shake Shack burger we had afterwards.

The rest of our crew arrives in Austin today, but before that we have Tacos to eat, Daniel Johnston murals to see, record stores to visit and Shiner to drink.

If you're around in Austin this week, let's drink together. I'll give you a Gerry Loves Records cassette.

Bring on the madness.