Motel Rocks Nail Art Competition.

Hello, I've made it through to the finalist's stage of the Motel Rocks Nail Art Competition! It's so exciting and would be so awesome if you could head over to the Facebook page and like my entry because it would be great to win.

I promise I'll post something interesting soon, but I've been so busy job hunting, driving and house hunting that I've not really had anything interesting to show you or to talk about. I was down in Newbury this afternoon looking at places, we saw some game changers as we were pretty dead-set on the one we're viewing tomorrow, we've got to act quickly so it's all quite intense.

I picked up some great fabric in Fabric Land today as I plan on making my own version of Elsie from A Beautiful Mess' plush fox as well as some other things. I also bought some paint to revamp an old chest, I'm in a really DIYing/crafty mood, that might give me something fun to show you.

I hope you had as good a start to your week as I have.x

You mug!

I'm really ill, which is a total bummer because I had planned on doing a few important things, ironically one of them being registering with the local GP, but I'm too sick to leave the house, so things are on hold. I only hope that I'm a bit less snotty and achey for my driving lesson tomorrow as my test is in less than a month, don't ask me why I booked it, I don't know either.

I'm placing full blame for this lurgy on my sister and Moon's brother, I can't blame one or the other as they seem to both have the same thing and have been ill for the same amount of time, and I've been near both of them, my immune system was doing so well until about 11pm last night, unacceptable.

In slightly more fun news, I finally got around to taking part in the 'Yours & Theirs' project this week and my image is up on both their Facebook and blog, so I'm pretty chuffed.
The theme was 'Your Favourite Mug', and this is the photo I entered.

This is neither my mug, or even a mug I use, it belongs to my Gran and it's the one I give to Moon whenever we're there for a cup of coffee. It's so funny and difficult to hold, as well as being ridiculously tacky, but it's definitely one of the best mugs I've seen.
I'd love to take part in similar projects as it was so easy, perhaps a downside being that 'Yours & Theirs' is Australian; it would be great to be part of something a bit more local, for no other reason other than to have another, more focussed outlet to share my work.

I'm going to give this week's theme a shot too, it's 'A Place You Like to Go', and if you're a long-time reader of this blog you'll know there are quite a few places that I like to go, a lot, so I'm sure I'll be able to get around to capturing something.
Here are a few of my favourites from the 'Your Favourite Mug' entries.

Lucy White


Candice Wilde


Alana Dimou
Why not give it a go yourself? It's so much fun to see people's different takes on such simple subject matter. If you know about any similar UK projects I'd also love to hear about them.

Hardly recent.

I've not really had the get-up and go to take photographs what with the terrible weather and generally being a bit pre-occupied recently. It feels like two or three weeks since I shot the #DitchingDieting march, which is crazy because it was only at the beginning of the week.

I've been cat-sitting for my Gran in Dorking this week, not very exciting but it's nice to have the company of Suzie because she actually cares if you pet her or pay her attention. Dolly needs to get her shit together and learn how to be a real cat.

It's not been a stimulating week really, one of those weeks where you apply for job after job and get almost nothing. I've had a rejection from one of the jobs I interviewed for last week, so that's a bit of a bummer, but I'll be interning for a couple of weeks from the 1st February at a magazine called Shortlist, I would do it for longer but I simply can't sustain that lifestyle anymore. Someone just needs to recognise my talent, like now so I can be an adult.
I have a few pretty exciting jobs to apply for today and then I'm hoping Moon can come over for steak, I've got to time it well because he's working nights at weekends at the moment, so I don't want to wake him up too soon.

Here are some photos that I took at the beginning of the week. How many of you have figured out how to get your free Facebook business cards from Moo.com, it's a pretty sweet deal. I already have some really nice ones from Moo, so I had a bit of fun with these ones, but they're a really good idea, especially on a promotional level both for Facebook integration and Moo.com itself. I thought the quote on the back looked really good, I'll be so impressed if you can tell me where it's from, even my most-knowledgeable friend on the subject didn't manage it.



Last weekend my Gran brought round this book, it's kind of like a baby book for cats. My Gran said she's had it for ages, since we got Felix but she just kept it. It's quite a nice idea but quite tough to fill in for Dolly because there's so much we don't know about her, I'm still going to give it a go though.

Obviously, a 'random' blog post wouldn't be complete without some photos of Dolly Cat herself. She's actually getting much easier to photograph as she's becoming less and less skittish, no where near on Suzie level yet, but we'll give her a little more time.

Facebook - Timeline.

Before I get underway with the mammoth load of planned posts that I have, I thought I'd share my excitement over the forthcoming F8 from Facebook. Because I'm such a nerd, I've already pushed forward my chance to use it and switched to using Timeline. After being so annoyed with the New Facebook that they updated with last week - although I've since got over it and normality has resumed - I think all can be forgiven when the sheer awesomeness of Timeline is taken into account, even 'Lists' (which I still don't use and have since deleted, but I'm sure it will come in useful at some time, probably).

So yeah, because I've been away for the weekend and haven't really wanted to/had the time to blog, I thought I'd share both a screen-cap of my current Facebook profile because it pleases me. And tell you to get on it, because it's fun to know what you were doing in 2007, I don't know how but they've actually added to amount you can procrastinate on Facebook and given my current situation, I think it's brilliant.

It's pretty easy to do if you have instructions, so follow this link and you can start embracing Timeline as the future of your social networking, Google what?

Video Room, Digital Age.

This is a pretty interesting commentary on the recycled and distorted nature of the digital age. The post cards of the Mona Lisa would all end up like this if everything had been digital from then on in. He turns in to some kind of weird alien by the end of it, so much effort though, it must have taken him a very long time.

A Thousand YouTube Iterations via The Creators Project Blog

On a related note, I won myself tickets to The Creators Project in London, 5 of them to be exact, the only bummer is that it falls on the same day as the Grad Ball, which I have already bought my ticket for and want to go to anyway. However, if some of The Creators Project event is taking place during the day, I may go by myself (as most people I would want to take would be in Portsmouth) and fob off tickets on people that desperately wanted to go, not that I don't, but I'm not entirely sure I won the competition fairly.

The idea was that you would comment on The Creators Project Facebook fan page and the selected comments with the most 'likes' would win the tickets, I got two likes and one of them was me, some got hundreds, maybe I just got pity tickets, I don't care, a win is a win and if I don't win tickets to any of the iTunes Festival shows I will count this as Fate's consolation prize, even if I really wanted to go to both. But then again, winning iTunes tickets two years running would be one serious fluke, especially seeing as I already got who I wanted and had an amazing time last year.

Today has been a pretty hectic day for e-mails, I feel like I've been doing them non-stop all afternoon. I stayed up a bit later than I wanted to last night sending out emails asking for work experience and I've managed to grab a position covering 'Malden Fortnight' for a free local magazine called, 'Village Voice', they won't be paying me but I will obviously get full credit and it might be fun to take in some local New Malden entertainment, I've written down the dates I want to cover in my diary already. Despite lack of payment, I'm quite excited about doing it because it goes out to all the houses round here and everyone will get to see them.
I also got an email back from the editor for The Kingston/Epsom Guardian wanting dates that I would be available, I hope to hear back from him later or tomorrow. I knew it would be a good idea to try and start small, I sent out another email to Company as well but I think I'll be left with no response like the last time. My cousin Mark also emailed me a pretty good paragraph about the mild identity crisis' that mixed race people have to go through which I guess is how I initially felt but I've changed my perspective on it a bit since thinking more in depth about the project overall.

Draaahh.

One of the arguable downsides to having a publicised blog is the fact that any time you have a feeling against a situation, it is fine, it can be ranted about as much as you want because almost no one will criticise you for it, yet if it's a person you have an issue with, you have to be really secretive about it and definitely not ever mention names - you know, just incase they see it.

It comes back to being just as bad as the kind of people who think it's stress relieving to go, "Go fuck yourself, I don't care about you anyway etc" on Facebook, when the person who they're talking about it probably knows - and ultimately doesn't care, but no one else understands and assumes they must have some kind of mental problem. No one ever asks anybody anything properly these days, that would be too weird, "Oh, I saw your Facebook status, what was that about?"
Half the time it isn't actually any of anyone's business but we feel the need to share it nonetheless.

With a blog, we can be much more thorough and if we wanted, could probably explain everything that is wrong with a particular person in detail, just not their name or any obvious traits that may give it away. That's what's annoying about a blog like this, because even though there is an urge to keep it private because there are people I don't like that I want to bitch about, they may see it. However, although I don't want them to see that, I want as many people as possible to see what I'm achieving within my work and how my image-taking is improving.
I guess I'll just have to stick to bitching in person and go back to trusting people.

Today is a particularly difficult day for this, not for talking to people - that would be odd - but for resisting the urge to blog about how ridiculous certain people can be.

Because I write about most other aspects within my life and people are certainly a subject I talk about a lot in real life, there's always a bit of a test to decide what to hold back sometimes. I'll admit it I have slipped up a couple of times here so far, but I used the classic tricks, so overall it's fine, no one got hurt and I let off enough steam. I used to be really bad at it, and it made a few people kind of angry.

Overall writing like this is just as much about the editing process as the photographs I've uploaded, and it's something I enjoy and am interested in. I don't have any other outlet to utilise these skills other than essay writing, and written journals don't excite me, at the moment I feel that taking time out to write about anything is a pretty good way to de-stress, and I don't have to sum it up in 140 characters or tell 200 people every time.

Here is a man with a death wish, note the bike.
Here are a couple of extras from Portsmouth Cathedral.

Wonder if it's doable..

Decided I'm not social-networking all of tomorrow, not even in the evening - it's a total bore, gonna see what I can achieve while not clicking 'refresh'. It's a discipline thing.

Proposal went down well, now I just have to sort myself out.



I'm really looking forward to going home.
I reckon I should spend some time looking for a pull-along tomorrow. GUNWHARF.

READING, ASPEX, PHOTOGRAPHING, GUNWHARF, GYM...DONE.


I hope Moon is home soon, I am so hungry.

The hell is this??

Lol.

Snap happy.

I've filled two Facebook albums nearly.
I don't know if I should copyright them or not, I've heard something about Facebook automatically having the right to your images if you don't. Although it's probably scaremongering, right?
Part One:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=297572&id=813000463&l=1d9d82a00e
Part Two:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=297586&id=813000463&l=a9013e5865


















© Ruth Johnston 2009 (just incase, ho ho ho)

I am going to see Inglourious Basterds tomorrow. :)
And Mesrine: Part Two on Friday. :)

I also got brown on holiday. The weeks a goodun.

Money ah ah oh.

Cannot WAIT!
Editing photographs from London most likely for the rest of the day.
Unedited versions and the rest of the day are on Facebook here

Fail.

Poor facebook.

Passed(!)

My first official degree year at Portsmouth University has been passed.
I'm so pleased, considering how nervous I was.

67% overall on my Gaze essay - nearly a first.. I got 60% on the presentation and 70% on the actual essay. So, so pleased, and I did much better than I thought I would with the other projects.
I guess things can only get better. It is a plus that these marks don't count towards the final degree grade though.
I really can feel myself improving and enjoying the idea of it more now, maybe I won't quit to do Media afterall.

Click here for photographs of my last few nights out with friends in Portsmouth.

I have booked tickets for my sister and I to go to Walking with Dinosaurs as Moon couldn't afford it. But I'm definitely going now, and I've gotten us some pretty decent seats, even if it was a bit pricey.

Now off to watch someone fail at Come Dine with Me.
Will put some actual work up soon, promise...
..weather was brilliant when I got up then it rained for about 3 hours, quite heavily too. June is bullshit. I hope it's not like this for Brighton.