Unfortunately, I’m not on it personally (that’s what I get for being sat at a computer for 18 hours of every day) but plenty of Matt-related things are. Like this bouncy castle.

I went on this pretty much every day during the summers of 1987-1997 (yes, I would’ve been far too old to be going on bouncy castles in ‘97, but it’s true nonetheless).

So indulge me and allow me to take you on a mini tour of my formative years in Plymouth.. beginning with a creepy voyeuristic look into my old Primary School playgound.

Those flats on the left used to be an old paper mill that may or may not have been home to murderous tramps. We used to dare each other to break in to try to tempt them out and though we never actually made contact with killer hobos, I remain steadfast in my belief that they were there.

The ‘Private Shop’ that I genuinely thought sold desserts (thanks to the KY jelly adverts in the window). I was a slightly shocked 7 year old the first time I walked in.

The Mayflower Steps – where we discovered America from – and where I rode a bike into the filthy vile cancer-riddled sea. But didn’t get cancer. Just lost my bike.

Plymouth Hoe. Where I learnt to how to ride a bike, play football, had my first kiss / smoke / drink / broken bone, saw many Radio 1 Roadshows and a plethora of other memories that it’s probably best not to go into.

I still feel quite lucky that I lived on the road parallel to this, probably the best location in the whole city (imho) but it has left me with the ongoing problem that I can’t bring myself to ever live too far from the coast. I’d like a view like that every morning.

The really welcoming looking entrance to my Secondary School where I learnt everything that I know (about wanky A-Level requirements and outdated teaching methods).

Slightly better entrance of my college. The barbed wire was required.

Theatre of Dreams. Home of the mighty Plymouth Argyle.

The Cooperage, where I first (and last) rapped my little heart out into the night.

The posters on the walls there are about the recently incarcerated owner of the Dance Academy; importer of roughly 71% of all class-A’s into Plymouth. It’s Sadly derelict and abandoned now. Doesn’t this view of Union Street just make you want to go out for a night out in Plymouth though(?) So alluring..

Bonus extra: The void of Armada Way in Plymouth city centre that was once an underpass and fountains and flower beds – complete with blurred out faces on a Beryl Cook painting. Is that necessary(?) Censorship gone mad!

I could literally spend days on this.. but I realise that it’s not that interesting for you, dear reader. So I’ll do it in private

Related posts:

1. google street view goes big
2. the whole street view uk kafuffle
3. view my blog posts using google maps!

via mentalfloss.com

This is amazing and sad in equal measures. Well actually, more amazing.

No related posts.

via the answer

Amazing gangster skills on the mic.. Seriously.

No related posts.

No related posts.

Somewhere, in a box in a cupboard (or in my loft), in the back pages of a notepad with various rap lyrics scribbled in it, there are usernames, passwords and web addresses, which if used correctly, would allow you to access the most awesome online content ever made. Or at least, they would’ve done. I’m talking about my first few pages that were hosted on the genius that is/was Geocities. As of yesterday, they are officially no more.

In actuality, I lost track of those pages a long time ago, but in all the years that have passed, I’ve clung to the hope that one day I’ll stumble upon that notepad again and be able to revisit those animated gifs / absurdly compressed Wu-Tang videos / early teen ramblings. I even think there might have been some Jenny McCarthy related content somewhere – that’s how old school it was. I’m pretty sure that I had some pages in ‘Hollywood’, and ‘SunsetStrip’ too. And I definitely remember using ‘Area51′ to host my Real Media files but the specifics escape me.

All I really know for certain is that along with Angelfire & Fortunecity, Geocities helped to make me the web designer that I call myself today. It was in those badly coded, garish, always-black-background sites that I learnt what an ‘a’ tag is and how to embed a wav file that played repeatedly in the background with no option to turn it off. During the day, I’d hand write basic html (with a pen and paper) that I wanted to use, so that in the evening, I could spend as little time as possible on my Dad’s 56k modem updating my pages before someone else in the house tried to make a phone call and killed my glorious work. Not to mention, we were paying by the minute for that connection and my Dad thought I was using it for ‘research’ for homework and whatnot, so any glimpses of a slowly progressively downloading 200kb image of Ol Dirty Bastard were met with a disapproving frown.

I stopped using Geocities just after the watermark scandal, and before it got bought out by Yahoo, so it’s been about a decade since those hedonistic glory days.. but there will always be a special place in my heart for Geocities.

Related posts:

1. another new year

This type of thing would probably be sufficiently covered in a simple tweet but TweetDeck just spazzed out on me so I thought I’d take it back to the old school and briefly blog about it.

YouCube has a simple premise, and a simple delivery, but it’s rather fun. Load up a cube with 6 links to videos on YouTube and they get loaded onto each side of a cube which you can spin around and rotate as they play back. That’s it really. The fading between the audio channels as you spin the cube is a nice touch and despite a few issues in Firefox for me (the cube doesn’t always seem to actually load up/couple of videos occasionally drop out?), it’s quite smooth. Definitely worth a look anyway. Peep my ‘Wu-Cube’ what I made. It’s great.

Related posts:

1. wu-tang / mental football / child dj’s

^ That is a blue whale’s eye, at actual size. Courtesy of the WDCS.

They’ve made this piece of flash that lets you float around the whale’s ample body – life sized. It’s huge but doesn’t actually seem as big as I thought it’d be. It doesn’t really help that you can only ever see a tiny portion of it at any one time, so it’s hard to put it in context. Nonetheless, mildly fun to play around on, and it’s for a good cause so no complaints here

No related posts.

A little, previously unknown and quiet Buckinghamshire village by the name of Broughton has hit the news for ’standing up’ to Google in the latest example of hysteria surrounding their much vaunted (by me) street view service. A handful of residents there successfully managed to deter the Google camera car by forming a vigilante type mob and waving pitchforks and crosses at it. Or something like that..

… once Paul Jacobs spotted the Google camera when he glanced out his window on Wednesday, the photographers did not get far. The car was an unmarked black Opel, but the 360-degree camera on the roof was a bit of a giveaway. Jacobs rushed round banging on neighbours’ doors, and soon had a posse surrounding the driver. When one of the residents called the police, there was a swift U-turn. Jacobs said there had been three burglaries in the last six weeks: “If our houses are plastered all over Google, it’s an invitation for more criminals to strike.“

via

In fact, since the UK version launched a few weeks ago, there have been a multitude of privacy rows in the press and plenty of nervousness in affluent leafy suburbs. This idea that being able to see a photo of a house will cause crime is all too oft cited. I don’t know if anybody has pointed out to Paul Jacobs that burglars have been successful on at least 3 occasions in recent times, without the benefits of street view, but it seems that he’s made his mind up, and has possibly also never heard of logic. So who am I to argue? Also, the fact that burglars are generally opportunistic creatures slightly puts a dampener on the idea of stripy-topped villains looking for targets on their iPhones and then driving to them with the built in satnav.

Nonetheless, the media love this type of shit. I don’t remember such a fuss over the initial launch of street view, but then maybe that’s because it wasn’t in my country. I mean, there were some complaints about photos but most people seemed to accept Google’s promise that they blur any faces and personal stuff and that they would remove any image on request. They still have that promise, and a few people here have taken them up on it. Notably, the guy spotted coming out of a sex shop. Incidentally, how did he find himself on Google? Surely he must have started up streetview and went straight to look at the shop front of his local porn merchant? Who does that? Anyway, at least some people are content with letting Google continue their work and waiting to see the results before getting all twisted. Also, who the fuck cares about a house in Broughton? And surely the place is even less private now that it’s been all over the news(?) The residents don’t seem too fussed about having their soul captured by the evil beings with cameras, as long as those cameras don’t have a multicoloured company name in a bad font on the side.

(* not original ‘John Holmes’ face. replaced to maintain his privacy.)

I for one, love streetview. I’ve been using it for years now; mostly fueled by holiday planning (the views of L.A. are great) but also just because it’s there. I’ve literally spent hours looking at film locations, places I’ve heard about in songs, potential holiday destinations, places I’ve been, random interesting sights, etc.. I’m not trying to pretend that that’s a cool way to spend time, but it can be fun, and more pertinently, it’s harmless. The technology is great, and until the court case that features a burglar confessing about the map he created of spots to run up in (complete with directions), then I will maintain my view that Broughton is one village that has the idiot/normal ratio the wrong way ’round.

Related posts:

1. google street view goes big
2. street view hits the UK.. properly this time..

Saw this today and marveled at the genius of it for a while. Thought I’d share.

It’s basically a collection of songs that have been produced from audio snippets off of YouTube – and the corresponding music videos which are made up of the actual original video footage. I’ll let Kutiman explain it himself;

It’s really nicely done and actually surprisingly listenable-to. It’s also a nice touch having the credits (i.e. links to the source material) because watching the original clips on their own highlights how much of an achievement this project is. Rather mundane videos of people playing guitar in their bedroom or singing to themselves come together to form a decent piece of music. Go watch. http://thru-you.com

Inspired!

Related posts:

1. top 7 dance music videos from the 90’s
2. when life gives you promo
3. wu-tang / mental football / child dj’s

“Atheists have started advertising on buses in the UK. Do you want to see your own message on the side of a bus? Well now’s your chance.”

I couldn’t think of anything funny to write, so I went with what the first thing that popped in my head.

In case you’ve not seen it, this is based on that ‘there’s probably no god’ poster (see here) and appears to have been cooked up by some of those clever folk at b3ta. Nothing extraordinary, but it made me smile . Go and play!

http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/

No related posts.

Sometimes, things are sent to try us. It can be hard to keep your head above the waterline and deal with the various things that clutter the plate of life. It’s at those times when we all need someone to look up to. Someone who has been there, done that, and lived to tell the story. (And written a book about it for reference purposes). Someone who “at once … intimidates and inspires; breaking down the walls that secure some yet block others.” Thanks to Will, I’ve discovered that very person.

Mat Dickie. Or as I like to call him, MDickie. Inspiration.

He’s “the free-thinking rebel that redefines the rules. He says what no-one else will say and does what no-one else will do“. Basically, when he talks, you better listen. He’s a master of everything that he puts his mind to and effortlessly maintains an entire empire. Specifically, he makes 3D games, primarily based on either wrestling (he’s a master at that too. When he was younger, he once tossed a guy off who jumped on his back, then they played with each other. True story.), or bible stories. Officially the two best subjects of 3D games. And he does both. Possibly combined, (Moses vs The Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase? (who, oddly, is now a christian minister..)) but that’s yet to be confirmed.

In his games, he also draws upon a myriad of popular culture references to convey his message to a world of people who, frankly, are lesser mortals. Things like comparing Jesus to Morpheus. As seen here. You have to watch this.

There’s also the colloquialisation of scripture, like in this scene from The You Testament.

How come indeed. It all helps to help us understand.

If the website isn’t enough, he’s also written a book, ‘Inspiration For The Interactive Generation’ which you can read the first chapter of on Amazon.

Gaming’s most outspoken character finally speaks out about himself! For almost a decade, Mat Dickie electrified the games industry with his prolific output. He used unconventional methods to create unconventional games, and redefined what could be achieved by one man. Audiences responded accordingly and ensured his underground rumblings would resonate around the world.

I’m hooked.

Now, I know that some of you cynical types might think that MDickie is too good to be true. I don’t blame you. I was like that too. I thought, how can one man embody all the qualities that I strive for and be so modest and helpful with it(?) How can just one person have achieved so much and have so much to share with the world(?) The answer lies in the fact that MDickie isn’t just one man. He’s a revolution. ‘The dictionary definition of “independence” in full effect. See if you can feel it…‘

No related posts.

Great collection of flash preloaders courtesy of the good folk at Big Spaceship. I spent a good 10 minutes the other night just watching them cycle through. Lots of recognisable ones; all good ones. Most seem to have been made by Big Spaceship themselves, but that’s understandable, and no bad thing because they’re consistent with the quality.

The ‘about’ section calls it a “a tribute to a vanishing art form”, which is somewhat true I suppose with broadband and whatnot often negating the need for a lengthy preloader but still, I come across a fair few still – most of which pale in comparison to these. See, a preloader doesn’t need to be just a bar and a %! Good stuff.

No related posts.

I love google maps. I could happily spend hours just zooming around the world looking at stuff, and in fact, I probably have done just that. It’s awesome. And it keeps getting better and better – and now it’s even better again! The street view option which started off not too long ago with a couple of North American cities now offers imagery from what looks like every major U.S. city and a decent handful from Europe. But no UK representation (yet).

It’s a great tool for checking out potential holiday destinations.. or even past holiday destinations for a hint of nostalgia or to remind you of that road where you nearly got ran over in Prague for instance (that particular view isn’t available yet but I’ll keep you updated).

I’ve just spent a short while checking out Rome and Paris and I’m just amazed at the sheer amount of coverage they have.. Go google!

I wonder how long it’ll be until they send the camera car to my village…

Related posts:

1. the whole street view uk kafuffle
2. street view hits the UK.. properly this time..
3. view my blog posts using google maps!

If you’re not sure who Futura is, you need to recognise. Go and look at his website. It’s a bit odd, and actually I think I prefer the older version of it which was really odd but it’s still worth a peep. Probably my all-time favourite artist/designer.. there’s just something about those shapes and colours that I always think is awesome. Not to mention his earlier graffiti work. The man is a legend. One of my top inspirational books is this which by the looks of it is rather hard to get hold of nowadays. Yay for being ahead of the game.

But anyway, there’s a small piece on him in issue 50 of vapors magazine. To be honest, it’s not the most in depth interview but it’s nice to see that he’s still doing stuff. I feel like I haven’t been aware of any new work for a long time, but maybe that’s just me being out of the loop. In fact, I did miss this Burton snowboard design which is supremely fresh. If I could snowboard, that’d be my shit.

So yeah, go and read the article.. and have a look at the other stuff in the magazine. It’s a good issue (some GZA, UNKLE, Jean Grae and other stuff inside).

No related posts.

After a prolonged absence, I thought it was about time that I pulled up my sleeves and actually updated this site. So here it is. A new post and more pertinently, a new site design. Well, actually, it’s another realign because if you have any memory of what the previous design was like, then you’ll realise that this one isn’t actually straying too far at all.

I started working on this way back in April, intending to have it ready for the May 1st Reboot but as that deadline loomed, it was quickly obvious that it was never going to happen. That said, I did think it’d happen sooner than mid-June but there you go.

The most significant change can be seen on the overall site home page (http://www.mattnortham.com) where I’ve ditched the old basic static look and tried to incorporate more of the blog content (as well as content from external places like youtube and last.fm). It’s an approach I used to roll with when I first set up this blog on my scpgt domain but for whatever reason I didn’t maintain it over here. So now it’s back; complete with fancy sliding jquery goodness. It took a bit of tweaking and some wordpress custom fields to get it sorted but I like it now.

The design isn’t actually what I consider completely done so bear with me if there appear to be any issues in the next week or so – but I didn’t want to leave it any longer than I already have. This was supposed to a ’summer’ design and seeing as our summers are notoriously short, I thought it best to just unleash it as is.

But anyway, on with the content.. I promise to pull my thumb out and put more effort into this. Got a few bits of work to add to the portfolio too shortly so stay tuned….

Related posts:

1. unleashing version 5 of this site!
2. another day, another re-design..
3. thanks to the following..

Shortly, the new Atmosphere album “When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold” will be out (April 22nd to be specific) and personally, I can’t wait. The couple of tracks that I’ve heard off of it have upheld my expectations and I’m sure the album wont disappoint (more on this next week. probably). The reason for this post however is to celebrate the way that Rhymesayers (or indeed, Slug and Ant) are promoting the album because it’s a definite change from the standard stickers/posters/myspace bulletins approach (although it includes those things as well).

Firstly there was the announcement..

..that in order to curb illegal downloading, they would not ship promo copies of the new Atmosphere disc. Instead, the label planned listening sessions in New York and Los Angeles. Either music reviewers made the trip, or they waited for the album to hit stores like everyone else.

- see here

It’s a bold move and until this morning, one that proved effective (the album leaked today.. only 6 days before the release.. not bad at all really). The rest of that article talks in more detail about the approach and puts it in context of the whole music industry / download ‘market’ thing. Go read it. It’s good.

There’s also been the recent talk of ‘Atmosphere Karaoke’ where the group are going to host a sing-a-long of their songs before each of the US tour dates. If they do this in Bristol this summer, I’ll be all over it. My Slug impression is fiyah!

What else(?) Oh yeah, the ‘moldy lemon in an envelope‘ thing which is quite funny as long as you weren’t the poor sap who ended up with rank lemon all over your hands.

And the free download on Christmas Day of ‘Strictly Leakage‘ was inspired. It’s still available if you missed it.

But the main thing I wanted to highlight is the ‘Paint It Gold‘ series that they’ve been putting out on Youtube. For the last couple of months leading up to the release date, Slug & Ant have been filming these 10 minute clips in their basement, answering questions emailed in, talking about random shit, and promoting the shit out of the album at any available opportunity. It’s entertaining. And genius. The episodes are getting better each time which makes the forthcoming release (and presumably, forthcoming end of the Youtube things) a bit upsetting. But fuck it, at least the album will be out .

So yeah. I did have a summary in mind for this, talking about how it’s a clever ploy in today’s society which is so indifferent to modern advertising techniques. How utilising Youtube in (what I think is) a novel way is a great use of the service. That managing to fend off ‘leakage’ til so close the album release date is nothing short of a miracle these days. etc etc etc blah blah blah. But this’ll do. for now

BUY THE ALBUM!!

Related posts:

1. atmosphere & brother ali. live.
2. wu-tang / mental football / child dj’s
3. my ‘most listened to’ in 2008

‘sunset over the river nile‘ by Matt Northam (me )

A couple of months ago, I went to Egypt and had fun. It was nice. I also took a couple of thousand pictures, most of which aren’t anything special. They’re holiday photos – you know what they’re like. However, I did take a few that I thought came out rather well, and you can see them in a ‘egypt’ set on flickr. I also submitted one of them to the Guardian Unlimted (The Guardian Online) travel section (Been There) and now, many moons later, I’ve been awarded the ‘February 2008 Photo Of The Month‘. Awesome!

I’m still fairly surprised and genuinely stoked to have won because it puts me in fairly illustrious company. It’s an honour and all that.. I’ve been smiling all week.

My winning photo is recreated above in all it’s glory but you can also see a larger version on flickr, or the individual photo page on ‘been there’, or the rest of the months entries.. Whatever takes your fancy.

Ranjit Dhaliwal, the Guardian’s assistant picture editor, says:

“This is a wonderfully evocative travel image, it oozes atmosphere. The use of an architectural feature to frame the subject shows that the photographer has a good eye for composition.”

I says:

Oooooh yeah!

Apparently I win a canvas print of the photo so we’ll see how that goes..

Related posts:

1. went to egypt
2. (my) genius photography
3. ‘yyellowbird’ on flickr

Tagging is not an art form or about expressing oneself. It is vandalism and the destruction of private and public property. Tagging is any unauthorized marking, etching, scratching, drawing, painting or defacing of any surface of public, private, real or personal property.

Brilliant. You couldn’t make this up. I actually agree with some of the criticisms of tagging but really, is this the best way of clamping down on it(?) I know my parents wouldn’t've been reading any Plymouth City Council things about graffiti when I was a wee lad for example and I doubt that too many people are bothered about this.

Still; good work.

http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/pd/Graffiti.asp

via Wooster

No related posts.

Just when you think that Lost couldn’t get any more confusing, they go and introduce new characters with potential ghost-talking abilities and multiple future-past-present-future flashforwardback things. Oh, and the bones of a polar bear wearing a Dharma collar in the Tunusian desert. Brilliant.

There’s all sorts of mental, overly complex theories out there but all I want to know is – what is the monster?! When Locke asked Ben that very question in episode 2 of the new series, I almost thought we’d get an answer. But no. That’d be too easy. Actually, there’s tonnes of things that still need answering but I won’t dwell on those; instead, I’ll rejoice in the revelation of how the plane wreckage was found in the ocean. They touched upon on it in the show with some news footage, but for the full story take a look at Find 815 (or if you’ve not got the time to unravel the events yourself, click here for an overview). It’s another nice accompaniment to the main tv series which answers a few things but also creates even more mysteries. Worth a look if you’re a fan of the show

The extent to which the makers of Lost go in order to support/add to the story never ceases to amaze me. The amount of work they put into things like The Lost Experience is uber-impressive and while there’s a part of me that just wishes they would concentrate on answering things within the show, I definitely appreciate the extra legwork that goes into creating the whole ‘Lost-universe’. Cross-platform immersive narrative-ness at it’s best.

Related posts:

1. skins series 2
2. we have to go back!
3. hyper island – interactive art director

Wu Tang & El Michels Affair -”Bring Da Ruckus”

I’ve had the MP3’s of this session for a while now, and though the majority of the Clan are missing, they’re still quality recordings. What’s been lacking for a while however, are any accompanying videos.. But no longer! Youtube comes through again..

tsatsulo street soccer

Ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I like to think that I’m an alright footballer but seriously.. Ridiculous.

bonus: the new FIFA Street 3 viral ain’t too shabby either..

DJ Sara and DJ Ryusei

If only I’d've got my Technics 10 years earlier, then I too could’ve been a superstar child DJ. But I didn’t. So now I can’t scratch for shit. But these kids can.

Wasn’t that fun(?)

Related posts:

1. wu-tang – 8 diagram
2. when life gives you promo
3. kutiman mixes youtube