so this is a post for Blog Action Day, “what’s that?” i hear you cry. well it’s a bit of a shout for a good cause that is being made by lots of bloggers on the world wide web and the cause is the environment – yep, the hot topic at the moment.

so what do i think about the environment? i think it needs to be there for a lot longer than we are going to be here that’s for sure. i also think it is stupidly easy to stop or change the majority of the things that we are doing to harm the planet [tree hugger moment alert], but we are just the little people, it’s businesses that are doing the lions share of the polluting at the moment and they are the ones that need to shift direction. fortunately this ‘being green’ look is pretty fashionable at the moment and many companies want to look as green as possible and certainly greener than the competition – have you noticed the amount of companies that are starting to advertise the fact that they are carbon neutral!

but there is a flip side to this coin.

did anyone see the fascinating documentary about the other side of the argument for global warming? entitled ‘the great global warming swindle‘ it was shown on channel 4 here in the uk about 6 months ago, little has been heard about it since, but some of the theory’s and explanations for the rise in the earth’s temperature made a lot of sense and in some cases a lot more sense than al gore and his inconvienent truth – which is something that i have yet to see. Many of the scientists involved were highly respected in their fields, a lot of them working for some of the largest universities and institutions around.

I really don’t think that it’s completely black and white – it just can’t be that simple. You know?!

So, what do I do? Well, assuming that I go along with the argument that we are helping to ruin the earth I recycle a lot and I buy recycled products where possible, we have started to use recycled paper and card for many of our printing services at work, I don’t use the car for unnecessary trips, I walk to work daily and I have used public transport for the majority of my life – I’ve only learnt to drive very recently. We use energy efficient light bulbs, we turn off stand by switches and power plugs when things aren’t in use and we try to stick another jumper on before whacking the heating up!

You see, the thing is, a lot of the things that you can do to help the environment will actually save you a fair amount of money – when added up. And that’s where I think a lot of advertising could be going wrong, the marketing and advertising people are trying to tug at our heart strings and the majority of people don’t care enough to make the changes, but if the angle was that it will save you ‘x’ amount of pounds, dollars, euros, yen or whatever then the little ice cube could start to snowball, quite literally!

btw, the photograph used at the top of this piece is “true energy” by Suat gursozlu.

i’ve been watching top gear for what seems like ages, the program actually started out way back in 1977 – before i was born, but the real birth of the program for me is when the bbc ditched the old 30 minute program for a studio based 1 hour show in 2002.

with the new series just underway i felt i should do something special to highlight my love for all things top and gear and show you my favourite 10 pieces of top gear, courtesy of youtube.com!

10. celebrities

is it a chat show? well, every week they have a well know celebrity who is usually publicising their new film or book or play or tv program or album or… you get the idea. here’s some of the best interviews and more importantly – the best efforts around the race track in the very reasonably priced car.

johnny vegas | jonathon ross | stephen fry | sir michael gambon

9. a great car review

BMW M3 CSL: I’ve always been a fan of BMW’s – ever since my parents had a 5 series, but it was the smaller 3 series that I drawn to and the m3 was the main attraction. This is a great car test, brilliantly shot and it just shows up every other car show that tries to imitate top gear’s style.

watch

8. a nail biting race in an amazing car

Aston Martin DB9 vs Eurostar Train: Ahh, the races – this is something that many find a complete pointless part of the program, it’s just an excuse for a holiday in a nice car and too probably drive too quickly in it. but for me it’s something adventurous and exciting – the ending is almost scripted, they are so close or it could be just an extended road test. see for yourself.

watch part 1 | part 2

7. extreme car testing

bugatti veyron does 253mph: not many people will have the chance to do it, so to witness it – even if it is only on tv is great. i can’t believe that when the veyron hit it’s top speed that it was eating up a football pitch every 1 second!

watch

6. silly sporting action

car football (Toyota’s V VW’s): there’s sporting action too, football with cars, a giant ball and some neat tricks by some of the drivers – some not so neat tricks by others.

watch

5. amazing human feats

Audi RS4 Review + Mountain Race: I’ve already mentioned that I love the BMW M3, but this audi RS4 went straight on to my lottery win car wish list.

watch part 1 | part 2

4. some toys for the kids

remote control cars: this was one of the funniest things they done, why don’t people do this and charge entrance fees?

watch

3. science abuse / almost clever engineering

Reliant Robin Space Shuttle: i think a lot of people thought that this was a step too far and completely pointless, i’ve never wanted them to finish and suceed in a project so much before, when it lifted off and it looked like a proper rocket… wow.

watch part 1 | part 2

2. danger

Richard Hammond Jet Car Crash: just to show that not everything turns out well, this was actually quite serious and if he wasn’t as short as he is then it would of turned out very differently.

watch

1. the best piece of television ever

bugatti veyron vs a private plane: I could honestly watch this over and over, it’s brilliantly done – the idea isn’t original because they’ve done these races before, but what makes this special is the car. now add to that the drama of this cross continent race then you really do have a top bit of telly. enjoy!

watch part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

top gear is great, the production quality, the writing, the chemistry between the presenters and even the music they use is all top notch – actually a lot of the cool soundtrack, breaks, downtempo, modern orchestral music is from my ipod – it’s one of the only programs that i look forward to and long may it continue!

social networking isn’t new to me, i’ve had a myspace page for a couple of years and i’ve been hooked into facebook for the last few months – it’s a great way of keeping in touch with people – it’s almost how friends reunited should be.

but now i’ve started to share my photographs.

i first signed up to ephotozine which is where a lot of the photographers that i see at work use. it’s aimed at the more professional photographer, the resulting gallery of work is very impressive and i felt a little over shadowed by most of it as i’m just starting out, i don’t use a proper digital slr like the majority of users, i don’t even have a tripod – crumbs, i must be almost frowned upon over there! epz is a good site and i’ve had some nice feedback from some of my images, i just don’t think i’m up to that standard… yet!

so this week i ventured over to flickr.com, it’s not the first time i’ve been on the site – there’s usually a stream of links from digg.com to flickr images – so I know my way around. first job was to register… yahoo! what are you doing here? I must of been under a rock when that purchase was made, you have to have a yahoo account, complete with yahoo email (like i need another email address) to sign up. great!

through gritted teeth i signed up to yahoo and it redirected me to my new flickr page, an empty box for me to start filling up. the basic free flickr account gives you enough space (100mb a year) to have loads of photographs, it also (unlike epz) allows you to upload loads of images at a time.

flickr is a lot more casual, which suits my level just fine. i’ve added a handful of images, but now i’ve got to get people to look at them – 3 days in and zero views

right then, i’m off to try and promote my flickr page!

The brief for Nicola Duffy’s Photography website gave me an opportunity to produce a site using a CMS (content management system) – my second will be online very soon – some sites that I’d produced in the past used MySQL and PHP but not to this extent. In addition to a content managed site, Nicola wanted a clean, streamline design that would not distract from her photography as the website’s job was to promote and sell her very nice landscape photography and not to amuse with bells and whistles.

To keep down costs we decided to use PayPal as the payment system, which is very easy to implement and has the benefit of no monthly fees – it just costs you a percentage of every transaction which can be simply factored into your prices.

The admin suite allows Nicola with almost complete control over the content within the site including FAQ’s, Biography and a news section on the home page. The largest area of the admin suite is where Nicola can add new photographs and edit or remove existing ones.

It was a great project as I learned a fair amount about MySQL / PHP that I’m definitely going to take on to future projects. If you’d like to take a look at the site, follow this link;

www.nicoladuffyphotography.com