Yesterday was the A1GP at Brands Hatch in Kent, and after conflicting weather reports all week, the day turned out dry and relatively sunny. On top of that the day was made that little bit better by having passes to the pit lane and paddock, allowing us to mingle with the teams and crew and have amazing trackside views of the track. All in all it was a good day and here are some photos from the day, more can be found in the gallery.

More in the gallery >>>

Over the past couple of months while juggling my final year project and other random work which I’ve happened to get caught up with, I’ve been putting together a website for a good friend to showcase her photography. The site includes a contact form and a flash gallery to display photos in various albums.

A nice little project, which you can find at; www.alessandrapitocco.com

It’s a week before the first phase of digital switchover happens in South Devon, and even with the high publicity campaigns in the region over the past year there still seems to be a fair few people who havn’t even converted their main television set to Freeview yet. The majority of people I know do seem to atleast know when its happening, and that they’ll have to do something to keep recieving television after the second switchover in a few weeks, but the main reason why some people are holding off, and the main question which people keep asking seems to be - why?

Many people don’t seem to either fully understand, or want to except the reasons why digital switchover is happening, and seem content with their existing four channel lineup. (Channel 5 cannot be recieved with Analogue in South Devon). The fact of the matter is, is that the world moves on, and whether you like it or not, at some stage you have to embrace change, and that time has come. I’m sure there were waves of people saying exactly the same thing when colour replaced black and white, but given the choice these days, those same people would more than likely choose colour over black and white without blinking.

So what’s so wrong with changing to digital? Switchover has been a long time coming, and set top boxes have come down considerably in price over the past couple years, so there’s no real excuse. Even people on certain benefits are entitled to a free set top box and installation from the government. There’s even the incentive that most people overlook, which is that everyone currently spends over £100 on a TV Licence, no matter if you have analogue or Freeview, you both pay the same, even though on analogue you recieve just 2 services from the BBC, whereas on Freeview you get 7 channels, and loads of digital radio stations.

The numbers; according to DigitalUK, currently 74% of the country can recieve Freeview, but the government need to make that avaliable to everyone (or as many as possible), and that can’t be done unless digital switchover happens across the country. We can’t stand back and watch the world move on while we don’t, just because of a few people who don’t think its needed, and arn’t willing to spend £30 on a box.

So if you’re one of these people who are still umming and arring, stop living in the past and upgrade, cause guess what, most people don’t want to live and use a system which was designed over 50 years ago.

Hi, just a few hours away from opening up the client side of my final year project website to a small group of select beta testers. But before that, I thought I’d post a screenshot for all to see!

I was told about a video this morning, and then found out it was one in a series. The object of the video; to answer one question to a bunch of 50 random people.

Go on, ask yourself the same thing…

More people, more questions: fiftypeopleonequestion.com

Now I know 24 is a high action TV Show, but there’s been quite a few big goofs in the past, and this week’s amazing two parter wasn’t without fault! Yes, that is a member of the crew standing in the corner of the shot as this lady gets pushed to the ground!

Season 7, Episode 12

Bushy House, Teddington. Part of the National Physical Laboratory. Taken 28 Feb 2009.

Over the past few days, as part of my on-going site refresh, I thought that it was about time that I finally sat down and sorted out the state of my online photography, and how it’s all organised.

Back in 2007, I had one single Flickr account to host all my photos, but I then decided to create a second account to be the home of all my event photography, while my original would remain the home of my ‘normal’ photography (places, objects, people etc, etc). It also worked quite well for my website so there could be two sections of photography. (As my photography section is powered by Flickr, which hosts the image files and then allows me to display them on my site).

But after a couple of years, I slowly came to the conclusion that this arrangement wasn’t working as well as I had originally planned for a number of reasons;

• I was paying for two separate ‘pro’ accounts on Flickr
• One account (namely the events account) inevitably ended up taking precedence, and my original account was hardly ever updated
• There wasn’t one single location for people to go on Flickr to see my photography, and so was splitting my audience up and potentially harming the amount of people who would see all of my work, and find out more about me.
• It was a pain keeping track of two accounts, their individual stats and notifications, more hassle than it was worth.

So, the solution I ended up coming up with and implementing the other day was to merge accounts and delete one, sadly at the expense of losing all my comments, favourites and view counts from the account which would be deleted. So, for a few days I’ve been moving all my event photography over to my main account, and after a couple days it was complete, and it was time to delete the events account.

To mark this change, my photography section of my site has undergone a couple changes, most noticeably larger album images, but a new url structure which I may blog about in the future at some stage.

Feel free to explore my gallery, either on my site, or on Flickr, now at its centralised location!

Flickr Account
or
Portfolio Gallery

You may have noticed that over the past few days the design of the site has been tweaked in a few areas. The main reasons for this is to simply freshen up the image of the site, as well as moving content around so its easier for you, the visitor, to find and give the site more focus; mainly on the most recent pieces of work which I’ve done, and any latest news - all while protecting legacy content which you may also be interested in.

The refresh will be managed in three stages, and stage one is already well under way. Stage one has concetrated on reworking the homepage, navigation and top header images. Stage two will focus on refreshing the photography and web design areas, creating them more into a ‘hub’ for their corresponding content areas. Finally, stage three will concentrate on bringing the blog in line with any changes.

Lets get up to speed.

So, a run down of the changes so far.

The Homepage -This section has seen quite a few changes, mainly with content being shifted around to better positions, such as latest blog posts now has a better, more prominant position, whereas redundant information such as RSS feed links have been removed.

Top headers - With the exception of the homepage, main banner images have been removed to bring in a fresh clean feel to the site, and replaced with a short, snappy headline which corresponds with each page.

Navigation -The old ‘tabbed’ style navigation is gone, and in it’s way is a clean fresh navigation.

When this will all happen

If you’re wondering when this will all be finished, well there’s no real date I’m working towards, especially as my university final year project website which is currently halfway through being built has higher priority, so all I can say is keep watching and I’ll blog every so often when big milestones are met! Hopefully it won’t be too long down the line!