▶ get a selfie stick for xmas? instructions HERE & more on the “wand of narcissism” HERE (thanks Dan)

▶ The Ship is Brian Enos latest installation, currently exhibiting in Barcelona until February 15, 2015

▶ a musicless Macgyver intro

▶ Jean Paul Satre meets Star Wars (only works if you do not understand French, desole)

▶ Kandinsky just entered the public domain! (thanks Jordan)

Gotta admire someone who sails out to Mana Island & times the return trip for the sunset!

Just got back from walking Wairaka Walkway, around the coast from Pukerua Bay back to Plimmerton – track info here. Normally it would take a couple of hours but stopping to take photos added at least another couple of hours to the trip!

I sat & watched this oyster catcher go about its business for ten minutes or so… and if you ever wonder how it got its name…

seagull motion study

just the sun, the sky & the sea… not so sure about the building permit

shot with Canon 5DmkIII and Distagon 21mm lens for landscapes/ Canon 100-400L lens for the birds

Hope you welcomed in the New Year in fine style? My New Year celebrations tend to be fairly restrained, due to getting checked into hospital at 2.30am on New Years day after breaking the tibia in my right leg back in 2000… It was certainly a memorable New Year, but I don’t really reccomend it..

As it was the year the millenium ticked over, the hospital was full of doctors & nurses, incase the communication apocalypse actually happened, but as we all now know that was just the IT industries little injoke…

How did I break my leg? Well, I was celebrating the New Year with a bunch of dear friends at a farm house near Christchurch and was standing on the verandah of their house about 2am drinking champagne when a friend wandered out the front door & slapped me on the back (to wish me good luck or something)
It being 2am and having consumed my share of inebriants I lost my balance & rather than fall into the garden I tried to jump from the verandah (which was only about 1 foot high) on to the driveway… But as it was dark I couldn’t see where I was landing and unfortunately planted my right foot between two big rocks & as my body was turning there was an almighty ‘CRACK’ and down I fell, with a spiral break to my Tibia! Memorable? Hell yes!

Its funny how in moments like that your survival instincts kick in – I’m pretty sure I blacked out briefly, but I also vividly remember working out exactly what had happened & asking someone to check the broken bone hadn’t pierced the skin (or an artery) i.e. to check I wasn’t about to bleed out! Where did that knowledge come from?

An ambulance was called who arrived fairly rapidly and off I was taken to Christchurch hospital. I remember the doctor who received me cheerly saying ‘first bone break of the new millenium!’ Thankfully none of this hurt much (thanks!?! to the inebriants) even when he tried to realign the break & failed, hence the titanium…

So I spent the next 2 months hobbling around on crutches & was given an invaluable lesson on what it means to be dependent – I couldn’t drive, and due to work commitments had to relocate my home & studio from Auckland to Wellington! It also led to lots of interesting conversations with taxi drivers (eg one driver told me the main way people die on ski fields is due to breaking their femur (the big bone in the upper leg) and it piercing the main artery, and they bleed out before help arrives!)

Anyway while I was recovering I played around with the scan of my broken leg and its new titanium feature. First I tried making a font out of the X Ray, then I loaded a scan of the XRay into Metasynth (my favorite sound app of the time) and got it to ‘play’ a TR808 drumkit… this sound was the result:

Have a Happy and SAFE New Year!