Like crocodiles? Can't get enough pictures of them? Then check out African Crocodile Photos for all your crocodile photo needs. Mmm... handbags.

Labels: Animals, photos, Shameless Plug

After a long, boring flight (note to Air Canada - finish fitting your trans-atlantic planes with in flight!) I'm now in Oakville for the start of Mathew and Micah's wedding weekend. Lots to do and not enough cars to do it with, so there's a complicated schedule of car juggling going on (big thanks to the Johnson clan on that one).

And on an unrelated note I've finally gotten around to putting a photo up for vote in JpgMag in their 'Democracy' theme. Please feel free to head over there, check out my ace photo and then vote for me. See, I understand democracy - it's all about getting the masses to do stuff your way {;)

Labels: Competitions, flying, photos, Weddings

Super Furry Daft Punk : Super Furry Animals @ Montreal
Originally uploaded by ultrahi.

Another great gig last night - this time the Super Furry Animals at the Just for Laughs hall. After an interesting couple o' support bands - the monotonal stories of Jeffrey Lewis complete with hand drawn comics, and the wonderful pop punk intensity of Times New Viking - the Super Furries came on with Gruff wearing some kind of space helmet and singing through the eye plate with some great, dark dance beats. It seems they want to be Daft Punk.. but that only lasted for a song before it was helmet off and back to some smashing melodic indie rock. The Furries are on tour right now in the US - so go see them if you can.

Labels: Bands, Cool Stuff, gigs, photos

I've just launched the Matt Hobbs' photoblog as part of an ongoing re-vamp to my photo site, Diversified Focus. This photoblog will consist of a daily photo chosen for your delight from the umpteen thousands that I've taken over the years. Hope you like it.

Labels: It's All About Me, photos

For those of you who like the surreal - check out the 'SleeveFace' group on flickr. They take photos of themselves and their friends with album covers with faces in front of their own faces. Very funny. [Thanks to BoingBoing]

Labels: funny, Music, photos

Diving Santa Rosa Wall, Cozumel

As part of my fooling around with Aperture I've now gotten around to uploading some pictures from my first ever dive in Cozumel, at the Santa Rosa Wall. A fun dive.

Labels: Mexico, photos, Scuba Diving, travel

Now that I'm back from the sun, sand & surf of Mexico it's time to do some web house keeping. First up on the agenda - the official launch of Digital Photography Hints. This is my site dedicated to sharing any useful photo tips that I come across while spending most of my non-laptop life behind my cameras. Have a gander and let me know your thoughts.

Labels: Blogs, My Sites, photos

I guess I've been in Montréal a while now... I woke up this morning in the middle of a weird dream in which everyone was speaking French, including me. So when I tried to remember what the dream was actually about - something to do with baby rabbits - I had no idea what anyone in the dream had said... Zut alors.

All of that is pretty encouraging, but don't expect my blog to suddenly become bi-lingual! If you want to read it in French please feel free to chuck it into Babel Fish or some other online translation engine.

The reason for this sudden influx of french-osity (and rabbits) to my dreams was most likely from spending most of yesterday taking photos for Chocolat in Outremont, the French quarter of Montréal. The owners of the stores I had to take photos of generally didn't speak English, so for once I was forced to chat away in 'French' - or Franglais more like. All in all a fun day, as Outremont is a lovely area, it was beautifully sunny day and I got to eat a lovely lunch of sardines on thin pizza. Mmmm, fishy.

Today I'm still suffering from my photographic wanderings, combined with a solid three day weekend spent labouring over a hot paint roller. The kitchen, hall and bathroom are now looking much more together, barring a few last details. The doors are white for the first time in years, with no grubby hand marks or worn paint - and that in itself is something of a miracle. The other miracle being the discovery of the missing bathroom extractor fan... not sure how one can loose such a thing, but apparently you can.

Labels: Languages, Montreal, photos, Renovations

A few weeks ago, well just before 5th May to be precise, Flickr started to prepare its members for their first '24 Hours of Flickr' event. This group had one simple goal - to take photos on 5th May, whatever you're doing, then to choose the best and add it to the group. Then the lovely folks over at Flickr make their picks and put them in a book commerating the day, which you can either buy or enjoy a free copy if your photo gets chosen.

Nice idea, although Fotolog already did something similar but with all the photos on their site. Personally I think I prefer Fotolog's approach, as I was having a 'bad photo day' on the 5th and wasn't particularly inspired with any of my pics.

Anyways, after much cogimatation I chose the photo above which pretty much represents the lazy, hanging out day that it was - plus it's a representative 'Matt Hobbs' photo. I'll let you know if it gets chosen. Fingers crossed..

Labels: photos

Yesterday flickr changed their policies on 'old skool' users, that is to say the folks who signed up for the site prior to the Yahoo! takeover and requirement that you use Yahoo IDs. They also decided to place limits on the number of tags and contacts you can use - ostensibly for performance reasons. Turns out people are mighty pissed at this, and in fact I probably would be were it not that I already have a Yahoo ID from years back.

Of course the guy who is mighty pissed happens to be CEO of Zooomr.. an easily mistyped Flickr rip off that, every time I've visited it, is slow, badly designed and generally seems to be nowhere near as good as flickr even with these limitations. So I'm sure he's happy and will pick up a few of the dissenters, the question is - how many old skool users, many of whom are big influencers in the online photo world, will leave now and how many accounts in general will become dormant. Time will tell.

On a related note though, I've been at the Always On conference the last few days - and in an interesting panel on 'contagious web sites' this morning discussion was made about how users are always pissed off when changes come out and, yes, you will lose a few - but the question becomes how many leave. I suspect the answer is not so many.

Labels: photos, web 2.0

Here are some beautiful high speed shutter images of drops of milk falling into coffee - of which this one is particularly disturbing. I'll never think about cream the same way again.. Thanks metafilter!

Labels: photos, random

Today was the IdiotARod. A rag tag fugitive fleet of... oh wait. That's Battlestar Galactica. Sorry. It's basically just a group of folks who get a shopping cart (that's trolley to us Brits), dress up funny and then 'race' to the finish in a treasure hunt of location finding.

IdiotARod is one of the reasons I love New York: people come together in 'spontaneous' gatherings such as this just for the hell of it. They brave possible police action, just to remind us all we're here, we're alive and we should cherish the fun and freedoms we have. Especially at a time when so many freedoms are being carefully eroded in the name of 'safety'.

Next year come along. Or check out Chenguin. Or dress as a zombie. Or santa. Or start your own. I'll be there.

BTW: In a fit of uncharacteristic timeliness I've uploaded all of my IdiotARod photos from today. Go check them out here.

Labels: new york, photos, williamsburg