It’s been two weeks since my latest project, Ask a Scientist, was released into the wild and so I thought it was about time to at least mention it here.

The site sees young people (primarily between the ages of 14 – 25) engage and interact with science on a new level – by providing them with a platform to ask any science related question they want – and get real scientists from around the UK to provide the answers, stimulate discussions and generally teach and inspire young people to make science their career.

After months of planning, designing and negotiating with various science organisations and scientists, the site finally went live on July 15th – with the aim to expand and enhance the content of the site over time. I’d also like to thank all the support I’ve had so far from many, many people who without them, the site wouldn’t be anywhere close to completion – that includes my friends and family, colleagues at NPL, and various people from a whole host of other organisations including STEMNET, Kingston University, the MET Office and the NHS to name a few!

Go check it out – let me know what you think – and by all means get involved and help improve and expand what the site currently has to offer!

www.askascientist.co.uk

The site also makes use of various social networks – you can follow it on Twitter at @askascientist – and, if you tweet questions they will automatically be added to the question repository. There’s also a Facebook fan page and a Youtube page for the videos.

Losing Track

You can view more at NPL’s Flickr set.

See a scan of the story below from the paper, or you can read the story online.

Working in collaboration with Cherry Designs, last week saw the relaunch of the new website for photographer Andrew Brookes. I was responsible of turning the new site design into a fully working site, coded in XHTML, PHP and jQuery.

Andrew Brookes is an award winning photographer, and his new site features a javascript gallery to showcase his work, as well as having sections to provide contact details and more information about him for potential clients to make contact with him.

The site is also optimised for search engines to increase it’s position in Google and other search providers.

www.abstill.co.uk

www.ktns.co.uk

Why has it taken so long? Well I’ve worked on this site solely during my spare time, which at times can be hard to come by – and there have been several big coding changes throughout its development, either to improve usability and page loading times – to just keeping up to speed with the developments of the new KTN platform currently being introduced over at http://ktn.innovateuk.org

So what is this site all about I hear you ask?

Well, to put it simply; the site’s main purpose is to monitor and gather all of the social media activity conducted by the UK’s KTN’s into one place! The site currently monitors several KTN accounts on Twitter, Flickr and their blogs on the new KTN website platform – with their updates being posted up to every minute on this site as and when new items are posted!

The site is structured in a way which should be familar to KTN members. Each KTN is listed on the homepage (and the networks page), and then sub groups of each KTN are listed on each individual KTN’s page.

For example;

www.ktns.co.uk – All main KTN’s updates

www.ktns.co.uk/networks/digitalsystems – Updates from the Digital System KTN’s main accounts

www.ktns.co.uk/networks/digitalsystems/locationtiming – Updates from Digital System’s Position, Navigation & Timing group.

Technical

The site is coded in PHP with a MySQL database for the core functionality, with jQuery being implemented to improve usability and add to the whole site experience such as auto-updating the stream as and when new updates are posted.

Future

There are many more features and updates planned to be launched over the next few weeks so keep an eye out over on the KTN site!

*Part of this blog orignally posted over at ktns.co.uk/blog

I’m pleased to announce that some of my photos have been selected to be added to the Getty Images collection and are now avaliable to purchase through them, for use in publications, editorial purposes and on websites etc.

You can view my collection of photos on Getty Images here.

The first two days were mainly for school groups and young people aged 11 – 18, whereas the Saturday was open to everyone who fancied to pop in and explore the wonders that was on offer, and what science, engineering and maths does and how you can get involved. Among the stands with NPL were the likes of Shell, E-on, BAE Systems, Airbus and the BBC to name just a few, as well as there being live shows from the BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory and Sky’s Braniac.

The NPL stand proved very popular with the visitors; where we had several interactive hands-on activities which demonstrated how the human mind perceives objects and how physics plays a part.

Here, a visitor is briefed on what to do on the vision test; where people have 2 minutes to decide whether 20 different samples of wood are each made of real wood, or man made wood – with their results being recorded and used to help NPL create computer systems which can mimic how humans see and compare objects.

On the other side of the test, people can also use touch, along with vision, to again try to guess which of the 20 samples are natural or non-natural wood. People who get 13 or more right won a much sought after plastic brain!

Another test on the NPL stand, which saw people having to arrange 6 Russian dolls in order weight, only to find out that they would always guess incorrectly because of the different densities of each which made everyone mistakenly believe the lighter, smaller dolls were actually much heavier than they truly were.

Someone trying to guess whether the sample being shown is natural or non-natural wood. Hopefully the results can have an influence on how man-made wood is created to give it a more natural effect and feel, thus reducing the need to cut down and use real trees.

Fellow Serco company the NNL (National Nuclear Laboratory) also shared the stand, who were demonstrating the science of nuclear power. Here, a group of school children are shown how nuclear materials are transported safely on vibrating carpets; who had the chance to win torches if they managed to pick up items moving around the carpet using robots.

Through a mixture of lectures, live demonstrations and hands-on activities the students get taught and shown wide ranging areas of science; from the fundamentals of electricity and light in weeks one and two, to debates on climate change and health issues with mobile phone use.

For more information, you can check out the Protons for Breakfast section on the NPL site, or read the official Protons for Breakfast blog.

See some of the goings on from the past couple of weeks below;

Electrification with a Van de Graaff generator during Week 1

Week 2 saw the students exploring the wonders of light

Listening to a talk on optical illusions and light from week 2.

Events selling photographer tickets do seem very, very rare – but something which I’ve thought about for quite some time; why some events don’t sell tickets for photographers (even at a premium if they must) is beyond me – after all, the organisers normally always are in favour of us and love the free publicity we photographers provide – maybe they can learn a thing or too from the London Fashion Weekend event!

So, without further a do, below are are a few highlights of the shots I took while I was there of the models showcasing outfits from a whole range of designers, including Betty Jackson, Jasper Conran and more.

As always you can also see more in the photography section.

Outfit by Betty Jackson

From the Swallows & Amazons range

Mecia Simson, winner of Britain’s Next Top Model 2009, showing off another outfit from Betty Jackon’s collection

From the Candy Rock range

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