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Kitsurfing in Diani, Kenya.

By Me, Personal128 Comments

It was really blowing so we rigged up eh boards and kites and headed down to the beach.. josh was really excited and so was i…. We both wanted to get going so we got in a bit of a cafufle over who should launch who any way i won so i got going straight away.. I realised that my 17.5 was just a bit big for the conditions so mum ran up and got my new 12 metre flexi atom 08… thanks mum…

The new flexi was really great so smooth and easy to use…  also good and easy hangtime… i couldnt believe the ease of use compared to my 17.5 machine. The bar pressure was also so light compared…

I kited until it was dark and it was so cool just cruising on the flat water whilst the sun went down…

Lets hope the wind pics up today as its been raining a bit…

13/08/2008

Drive to Diani, Kenya.

By hollidayNo Comments

We set off at 5:30 AM with the car all loaded up with mostly Kite Gear it was so funny as all of it was just Kitesurfing gear…

It was my first time driving down to the coast and it was a pretty hard trip especially for the first 120 Kilometers.

It was so bumpy the the whole car was just ratling and its not that bad a car, toyota prado, the other scary thing was the driving through athi river.. dark dusty busy was not the best of conditions…

We got into Mombasa time around lunch time and made our way through the incredibly busy mombasa town it was so mad, the pushing and shoving and people jumping in the road was the just a few issues i had..

Once we got to likoni our ferry cross was really great.. straight through and we managed to keep the AC running whilst we were on it..

Then of down to Diani past Tiwi past Ukunda left just before Ukunda right at the bottom and we were there finally……. Kiting Continues…

13/08/2008

Little Wasini Island Boy | Kenya

By Candid, Portrait, Seaside40 Comments

Thus was a litle boy that i thought was pretty sweet playing on the old boats

This was a litle boy that i thought was pretty sweet playing on the old boats. I visisted Wasini Island, one of the last islands before you arrive in Tanzanean waters. As we were all leaving the island after having a lovely seafood meal this boy was watching all the tourists leave… Its such a wierd contrast as he lives there and its his home but for us visting is was a tourist atraction. Its quite powerfull as there is a sense of pain or anger in his eyes… What can we do about it?

08/08/2008

New Blog | by Theme Lab | Mashups | Lazy??

By Coding, Cool Things, DesignOne Comment

I stumbled upon this theme that you are currently looking at while I was looking though several… its funny as I stuck with a them by: styleshout | Theme by: Theme Lab . I know its a bit of a cop out in the sense of not designing my own but the thing is it would probably take me weeks to get to grips with doing my own desig…. besides i intend to change the main header image to something that  i have done.

I have been really enjoying adding all sorts of great plug ins to my blog and have found the lightbox 2 one pretty cool along with the all in one SEO one… i have also added super cache and that will hopefully speed things up….(its not like i had the type of traffic that they were talking about.. They said plus one hndred can update the cash frequently so that’s the setting i have put it on… I have also enabled the external link url plug in so that my nav bar or any post can link to an external url…. its a great one as i have other links that i want people to go too..

The problem or dilema i have is that i am not really good enough to design my own wp blog with all the PHP and coding that is needed but i am good at tweeking things and utilizing all the different API’s and plug ins and various functions…

PLEASE let me know your thoughts as i feel that i should be doing it all my self but what’s the point if others have done it and can probably done it better… ( i know that sounds apathetic or quite post-modern of me) its more of a case of learning from others and increasing this ever increasing web cocktail that is evidently the way forward.

The thing is that worpress has thousands of people working together on optimizing code and its all free so what more can one ask for.

I intend to migrate my whole site and portfolio over to worpress as its by far the easiest system that i have come across and it will help me update things quicker compared to editing and ading in each thing int eh html and then uploading this via FTP. Currently my bounce rate is terrible according to my google analytics as my home page is rubbish and boring.. so having it as my blog wil enable me too keep things interesting for my viewers..

So Comments please on if i am being lazy and what your thughts are on onlie mashups of plugins and other web aplications. PLEASE LET ME KNOW

08/08/2008

Best Mate Philly D and Lovely Katy S

By Portrait3 Comments
Querky PD and KS

Querky PD and KS

This photo is of my best friend Phil Downing and his lovely girlfriend Katy Slater. I was playing around with layering effects and one of the ones that i noticed was the overlay with gaussian filter… this creates a nice soft focus effect. I then made it black and white and realised it complimented the faces really (as is the case with black and white). I then toned the colourful areas to keep that bit of querkynes that i feel reflects a certain side of them both. Please Comment on it…

07/08/2008

Relaxing in Kenya | Diani | Blog Tweets

By PersonalNo Comments

I am just taking some time to chilout in kenya at home. Its lovely to be back again and i cant wait to get down to the coast. I have 4 Kites and 2 boards sitting here begging to get onto some water. It should be really great to get some kiting done down at the coast but i am not sure if my 12 meter will be big enough for the slightly lower winds of kenya.

We plan to stay at either Diani Beachalets as its pretty budget and cheap but near the beach and really great if you are not looking for a posh place… the other place the we want to go to is to Diani Marine this is nicer but obviously more pricey.

FamilyChilling on the beach

I just want to say sorry about all the tweet tweets as i realised that there is no point putting them as daily blog digests as they are on the side bar…. but it was handy as i have been so busy at inskin media but it did kindof take away from some other more interesting blog posts… so if you you want to follow my tweets then look me up on twitter ( http://twitter.com/trcwest/ ). I cant say how much i think twitter is an awesome internet application… please all my mates get on it and follow me…

04/08/2008

InSkin Business Cards

By InSkin, PlacementNo Comments

I have had the privalage of re-designing InSkin’s business cards. The orriginal front side was ok but the back side was not the best and needed improving.

So above is what they used to look like and below is just what I came up with….

Its a really simple design that i think works really well, the Black front also looks better and accentuates the logo and to really get the brand out there we kept the logo on the revers.

I wanted to really make the typography big and readable so i made sure that the names and titles were nice and Grand…

The font is consistant throughout allong with the colors.

I quite like the green dots on the i’s its a nice litle effect.

Please let me know your thoughts and if there are any improvements to be made as i am still waiting for all the details from each person who needs one.

05/07/2008

Work Experience/Placement at InSkin Media.

By InSkin, PlacementOne Comment

Well i have officially been at InSkin Media for about 2 weeks now…it has completely shot by…

This is a short quote about what its all about…

What is InSkin?
InSkin is a patent pending ad delivery format that can be used by any publisher to effectively monetise online video in a way that is not susceptible to consumer blindness. The InSkin ad delivery format is rapidly becoming the new standard in online video advertising.

Basically its a really cool flash  ad platform that allows advertising that actually works whilst people view videos or even photos.

check out the ad below…

http://inskinmedia.co.uk/view_ad.php?vid=coca-cola-onet-ad

Patrick Knight is the CEO and is a great person to learn from and amazingly has time to even chat on MSN with me (About Work related issues ofcourse) But yeah its a great atmosphere and interesting how things are pulled together from all over the world.

I have been working on making the creatives and designs for the adverts. These are used two fold.

  1. For wining clients and advertisers that would benefit from the InSkin.
  2. The final ads that will either be served using their ad server or on the companies ad server.

Sadly i cant show you what i have done just yet as its strictly confidential until the campaign is launched.

I have also been creating a new bussiness card for them and have come up with a really simple but effective final design… just have to get it sent of to the printers…. look at the specific blog post for more details…

i will not make this too long but so far it has been really great and good experience.

check out the ad and their site that i am hopefully going to redesign. www.inskinmedia.com

04/07/2008
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