Camera Filters : Driftwood on the Bay

Driftwood on the Bay
Originally uploaded by beforethecoffee.

I've recently been introduced to the idea of HDR but this photo taken with filters seems to produce a stunning result without looking quite so fake as some of the computer produced versions I've seen.
Whichever the version used it definitely brings out the colours in photos like this sunset and means that you can catch the detail in the foreground without loosing the colour in the sky. Allowing you to get on film/SDcard what your brain tells you your eyes are seeing!

Windows

For once this title on a blog does not actually refer to software, it does in fact refer to the panes of glass and frames that support them that allow light and air into a building. It is however yet another post about the management at my university.

It was recently decided (by whom I don't know) that the university would look much better if all the old buildings had matching windows. While they were at it they decided to refurbish some of the departments as well. Now I have no problem with this, some areas are looking tacky and when you have visitors round to see what wonderful facilities/research you have then it's nice not to feel ashamed about the decor. My problem is with the mind-numbing stupidity it must have taken to make certain decisions.

Firstly, on our floor alone, half the windows that are being replaced were only installed 5 years ago with the refurbishment then, so of the £3.6m that it's costing to do our building's windows, a large proportion could have been saved if they'd chosen to match the existing up-to date windows rather than replacing the whole lot.

Secondly, and from my point of view, most importantly, they didn't really think through what the windows were needed for. Our office houses 7 PhD Students, each with a centre Linux desktop, 4 of us with windows boxes and another 5 laptops which are regularly here and running. (it's a computer vision lab, we need lots of computers!) so in total this little room has 16 computers providing the heating system. We are also on the top floor above the electronics labs which tend to produce a fair amount of heat. The upshot of this is that even during winter we used to have a window open.
It is now summer, we have been experiencing a little sun and the computers are all still running. Now however there is a difference; we have new windows. If I were to talk about windows in metres square, I would say that we have lost nearly 2 square metres of opening windows (it would have been more but I kicked up a fuss and we now have 2 little openings in place of 1). I appreciate the university doesn't want all its stressed PhD students jumping to their deaths but I would like to point out to them that if we were going to do so we could quite happily use one of the many roof tops easily accessible to us rather than a window that would be awkward to climb out of. So as I sit at my desk and write this I am boiling. The stress dot (a little colour changing sticker) I was given during health week is bright blue, which would be great if it were on my hand, instead is is on the corner of my desk out of the sun. The long and short of it is that this room is now at least 33 degrees centigrade and it is only the beginning of June. (I know I need a proper thermometer!)
Unfortunately the HSE does not specify a maximum room temperature so the university are not obliged to do anything about this, instead when asked about air conditioning we were told that it would be "too expensive and use too much energy" it would have been nice if they'd have thought about that before spending £10m on the refurbishment of one building.

Why is it that decisions like these are always taken without consulting the people it will affect? At least they sent out a survey when they started the re-branding process; when it's our comfort though we sure as hell don't get a say!

Re-Branding.... Again?

So the other week this email pops into my inbox "University of Surrey Brand Survey" from Marketing, always willing to opine on a subject I start the survey. After only a couple of questions it becomes obvious that the university is looking to rebrand itself... again. Now admittedly I'm not a big fan of the logo, I prefer the flag or the shield, UniS to me is a little generic, "University of Sussex, oh no Surrey, sorry that's right University of Surrey." At least with the others there's something a little more meaningful! Also for those of you ex-UniS undergrads like myself you may well know that the UniS logo was only implememnted in the late 90s and that it is rumoured to have cost a small fortune. Having done a little research I found that there was some more information about the rebranding in "Understanding The Real World - A Visual History Of The University Of Surrey" and that it had this to say:
"International brand consultants Wolff Olins played an important role in developing both the Vision Statement and the visual identity, which itself was the work of Pentagram, the distinguished design consultancy."

Not being in the know of these things I did a quick Google on the net and found out that these brands are indeed reputable, and that the rumours of costs are likely true, Pentagram lists amoung its clients Sekonda and Wagamama whilst Wolff Olins list is even more heady including giants like Q8, GE, BT and Orange.

Then at union council I discover that the Students' Union is thinking of hopping on the bandwagon, hopefully getting the design work for a nominal fee or nothing. Not a bad idea, but what about the cost of upgrading all the signs, business cards, headed notepaper, teeshirts etc. it all mounts up.

I suppose what I'm asking is this; do we really need a new logo? Will it do us more good than new computers, books or equipment? As I said I'm no fan of the current logo and have no problem with them changing it, it's the costs that concern me, especially in the current climate with AUT strikes and the academics who are being 'lost' to us.

So I'm left with one real question; if the design team of the UniS logo were so good, why does it need to be done again, not even 10 years later? Hardly what I would call making a lasting impression. Has the branding failed?... If so can we have our money back please?

More information on the re-branding is available at http://www.surrey.ac.uk/gateway/brand/

Still Doing The Right Thing (TM)?

I was playing with the Google page creator earlier today seeing how flexible it was, the answer is not very, but then that was to be expected, at least to begin with. I put in a couple of links, a picture and left it at that when I realised it wouldn't take my Del.icio.us link rolls.

But as I sat back and thought about it I realised just how much I have come to use Google's tools as part of my daily life. Any form I use on the web is spell checked with the Google toolbar, here I am writing on a Google owned blog and only this morning I was persuading our centre administrator to make an additional .ics file available with all the seminars on so that I didn't have to add them manually myself to the new Google Calendar I'm trialing. I check my Gmail regularly as it's my only personal email address I still use and I haven't touched another search engine in years. I even tried Google desktop until my poor work computer decided it couldn't cope with something as advanced as that ;o)

So are they still doing the right thing? As I said the page creator is a bit naff for anyone who has the slightest knowledge of HTML, but it's straightforward and easy to use, almost anyone could knock together a page in no-time at all. It's the Calendar that's really got my goat though, there's no synchronisation ability, not with any portable device or any standard program. There's the ability to import .ics files from the web, the ability to import and export your calendar files to outlook etc, but no actual live sync facility. Without which, to most of the technical world, the calendar is useless. They are both still in the labs/beta so I suppose there is some leeway for little errors, but you would have thought that they might have investigated the market a little before releasing them even as beta.

So in answer to this title, I think they are still doing the right thing generally, but it's slipping, the new projects arriving at our desktops are not quite as paradigm shifting as they once were, and some of them feel a little under baked. Pull your socks up Google, it's not about being first on the market, you proved that with the search engine, it's about being the best and doing things that make people say "Now why didn't I think of that?"

Oooh a Blog!

Well I fianlly decided that I ought to start a blog, not sure that I have anything useful to share with the rest of the web but it seems to be the thing to have, along with a flickr account, del.icio.us account, gmail account etc, etc.