Jane Dallaway

Jane Dallaway

Jane Dallaway  //  Service Delivery manager, photographer, dog owner, gardener, reader, learner, software developer and occasional snowboarder

This blog contains all sorts of bits and bobs, from development related stuff, through process and productivity stuff, to photography stuff, and general inspiration things. It's a bit all over the place with no real theme, but then so am I

Email: jane @ dallaway.com
Also at:    

 
Feb 4 2012

Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination

Last weekend I had the good fortune to visit "Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination" at The British Library. What an incredible exhibition. 150 beautifully illustrated and written manuscripts on display for us to be absorbed by. We didn't read the information before going in, so failed to realise that there were 150 of them to look at - we probably took an hour looking at the first 15 before looking beyond the next manuscript and realising the extent yet to be seen. Definitely the kind of exhibition to take your time over, and to be absorbed by, and also to think a bit about what these manuscripts have survived - 500 years of fires, wars etc.

The British Library have put images from some of the manuscripts into Facebook albums and whilst they are good to look at and study the detail of, they look so very flat and ordinary when compared to the real thing - no matter how good the photographer is, it's very hard to get gold to shimmer in a still image.

On Monday, Richard spotted the BBC Four series Illuminations: The Private Life of Kings which provided to be an excellent resource of post-exhibition information, although I did find myself saying "Ohh, yes, I remember that one" quite a lot.

All in all, definitely one to try and get to.

Filed under  //  exhibition   london  

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Feb 1 2012

How Twitter helps a small bookstore thrive - O'Reilly Radar

She emphasizes the importance of putting your personality into it and being interesting because that's who you are, not because you want to draw followers for the sake of a higher number. And she adds, "The strategy is to make people feel included not excluded, to make them feel part of your world.
via radar.oreilly.com

This has been on my toblogabout list since Christmas time when I finally got through my instapaper backlog. It interested me because, to me, it shows the value of authenticity to the brand being represented. If you have someone manning your twitter account for you, it's hard to get that level of connection that is described in this article as well as to maintain consistent tone of voice, language style etc. Twitter may only allow 140 characters to be used, but I suspect that's still enough to need tone/style guides.

Filed under  //  article  

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Jan 30 2012

Weaving attempt #10

Weaving Project #10

Weaving project #10 was another bookmark, and another bookmark gift.  This one for a friend who is currently studying to be a teacher, and who has recently been writing an essay on Maths and on patterns. It seemed appropriate, somehow, to make her a woven, pattern based, bookmark.  I started off considering this, and this, as they seemed very primary school maths, but in the end I decided on this slightly more sophisticated pattern.

My friend is vegan, which complicated things somewhat, as the most successful of my previous projects have involved wool, which is, obviously, animal based. Fortunately, as part of my yarn identification programme (or, lets buy lots of cheap yarn from Kemps and see what I like and what I don't) I had a selection of acrylic or cotton based yarns. The cotton based ones I discarded as I'd found them too splitty when I did weaving projects #5 and #6, which left me with a handful of acrylic options. I ended up using a Stylecraft Special DK (in Raspberry Marl) warp, and a Jarol Supersoft DK (in white) weft thread - both much thicker than I'd usually use which has left it a bit heftier than normal. However, also being thicker, it took a fairly short time to make up - in the order of 2 hours - which was handy as this was a bit of a last minute gift idea.

Overall, quite happy with the end result. I think DK is a bit too heavy for a bookmark normally, but might well get experimented with a bit more on something a bit bigger as it certainly holds the pattern together well. This was also the first time I really had a very pale weft over a dark warp - and I quite like the effect of the colour from the warp peaking through. Again, I think another experiement of light weft might be in the pipeline (fortunately my yarn pile has some options for me to work through!). 

Weaving Project #11 isn't going to be a bookmark for a change! Watch this space.

Filed under  //  craft   photo  

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Jan 29 2012

Every leaf traps CO2

Media_http24mediatumb_ehkri
via inspire.2ia.pl

Beautifully prepared and evocative imagery

Filed under  //  inspiration   photo  

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Jan 27 2012

3D Origami Illustrations of Wild Animals - My Modern Metropolis

Media_httpapiningcom8_eihag
via mymodernmet.com

These look wonderful, the texture, the folds, they look so, erm, like paper
The blog has some nice history pieces

Filed under  //  inspiration   photo  

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Jan 25 2012

Rashad Alakbarov Paints with Shadows and Light

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via thisiscolossal.com

A friend sent me the link to this on Monday, and I've spent quite a while thinking about it. It is so clever, I have no idea how anyone can visualise this kind of thing.

Filed under  //  inspiration   photo  

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Jan 22 2012

Downloads moved to github

Today I finally had the opportunity to do something that had been on my todo list for a while - move the collection of SQL Server Helper Scripts and the Kindle annotations to text file applescript I wrote into a proper repository. I hope that it will make it easier for other people to make changes and enhance the scripts rather than having to email me updates/leave me comments on requirements etc.

I chose github as it seemed to be the most frequently used repository amongst my colleagues and friends, and because I haven't really used git much before so thought it would be a good way to get some exposure to it (and so far a combination of the help text provided and a husband who knows his way about git seems to be working).

I'm going to spend a little time going back through the various blog posts to try and get the links all hooked up to the right place, but as with everything else around here, there are no guarantees I'll catch them all.

Filed under  //  download  

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Jan 20 2012

Forgotten Bookmarks: The Secret Life of Second-Hand Books via Brain Pickings

Media_httpwwwbrainpic_rbggx
via brainpickings.org

From actual bookmarks to photographs, ticket stubs, lists, scribbled recipes, children’s drawings, birth certificates, four-leaf-clovers, unsent love letters, and countless other funny, heartbreaking, and odd ephemera, this scrapbook of Popek’s most intriguing finds opens a rare window into the private lives of anonymous strangers through snippets of their life stories.

Something about this really appeals. Recording the stuff found inside books, against the books, and then letting the books go on their merry journey onwards to have new bookmarks left in them.

Filed under  //  reading  

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Jan 19 2012

Technological change: The last Kodak moment? | The Economist

Bad luck played a role, too. Kodak thought that the thousands of chemicals its researchers had created for use in film might instead be turned into drugs. But its pharmaceutical operations fizzled, and were sold in the 1990s.

Fujifilm diversified more successfully. Film is a bit like skin: both contain collagen. Just as photos fade because of oxidation, cosmetics firms would like you to think that skin is preserved with anti-oxidants. In Fujifilm’s library of 200,000 chemical compounds, some 4,000 are related to anti-oxidants. So the company launched a line of cosmetics, called Astalift, which is sold in Asia and is being launched in Europe this year.

via economist.com

And so Kodak has filed for bankruptcy. And I feel sad about it. But it's just another big company. I think I'm attached to Kodak though because my first ever camera was a Kodak instamatic taking 1190 film (I still have it incidentally)

Filed under  //  article   photography  

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