Flickr

I've started a new Flickr account, partly because of the recent Instagram debacle, partly because of their new app and partly because I'd started my old account with a username I don't much like anymore. If you have any interest in seeing what photos I take, gimmie a wee look.

A quick note on the Instagram thing - I was fairly vocal (for me at least) against their policy changes when they were first announced, not so much because I thought my crappy photos were going to end up in ads, but more as a knee-jerk reaction to another non-creepy app that I liked becoming a creepy app that I'd miss.

For now at least, I'm gonna stick with it. As I tweeted: I really like Instagram and I like Facebook (the creepiest of all creeps) too and I'll continue using both. If either makes me too uncomfortable, I'll stop.

Not a brave stance, but a stance nonetheless.

(I crosspost my Instagram photos to Flickr with a little IFTTT trickery so they've never really felt tied to any one place anyway.)

Recoat: Art for Advent

Recoat's annual affordable art sale is set to open tomorrow at their gallery in Glasgow's West End (right near Kelvinbridge subway). As always, they assign each wall in the space a different price value (£25, £50, £75, £100) and everything on said walls goes for said price. It's a great way to snag some cut-price art from some big names (and myself) in time for Christmas.

The show opens at 7pm on Friday the 14th December with a wee shindig (free drink - all welcome) and runs until the 23rd. More info / a wee nosey at who's going can be found on the Art for Advent Facebook page. Details:

Art for Advent
Cut-price Christmas exhibition

Runs: 15th - 23rd December 2012
Opening party: Friday 14th December 7-10pm

Recoat Gallery
323 North Woodside Road
Glasgow G20 6ND

Stop by if you can. Everyone's really nice and friendly and you might just find yourself a unique gift or two. The opening in particular is worth a look if you want a bargain (stuff sells fast). Say hello.

Adding Date Suffixes With TextExpander

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know AppleScript, code, programming or anything else of the sort. I bodged this by Googling for 'AppleScript date suffix', visiting various blogs and jamming stuff together until it worked. I'm sure there's a better way (if there is, let me know).

I use TextExpander, the text expansion app, a lot. Combined with keyboard shortcuts on iOS, I don't think I've typed my full email address in years. Mostly it helps me with repetitive / easy to forget / easy to misspell stuff (watch Merlin Mann or MacSparky in action to get the idea), but I do use one or two little tricks that I've not found elsewhere.

One of these is for dates. TextExpander's date features are great - it can drop in today's date in a bunch of different formats really easily. You can also do simple maths and slightly less simple things like generating urls for sites with custom date ranges (I'll share my 'today' Analytics snippet sometime). The only problem I've found is that TextExpander doesn't have a feature for adding suffixes (y'know 'st', 'nd', 'rd' & 'th', as in '1st', '2nd', '3rd' & '4th').

This bugged me. I like to include the full date (eg. '22nd November 2012') on invoices because I do some work for US clients and marking something '02/03/12' can mean 2nd of March to me and 3rd of February to them. I've often confused myself and likely confused others.

By default, the closest TextExpander'll come is: '22 November 2012'. That's pretty good, but I wanted '22nd'. Using a little bit of AppleScript, I came up with this:

set {day:d} to (current date)
set suffix to "th"
if d is 1 then set suffix to "st"
if d is 2 then set suffix to "nd"
if d is 3 then set suffix to "rd"
if d is 21 then set suffix to "st"
if d is 22 then set suffix to "nd"
if d is 23 then set suffix to "rd"
if d is 31 then set suffix to "st"
if d is 32 then set suffix to "nd"
(d) & (suffix) as string

That'll give you '1st' on the 1st, '2nd' on the 2nd and '3rd' on the 3rd. Just make that an AppleScript snippet, then add that snippet it to the start of your existing date generator and Bob's your uncle, today's full date.

As I said, that might be sloppy code - I don't know. It's Greek to me. I just slapped away at it until it worked. It does work, though. The above screencast maybe explains things a little more clearly (or maybe it doesn't, I'm not the clearest speaker in the world). Let's date.

Innis & Gunn Artwork

Work! I'm supposed to post bloody work here, aren't I? It's easy to forget that sometimes.

In 2012, I was lucky enough to work with Innis & Gunn, the Edinburgh-based brewer of delicious oak-aged beer, on a couple of projects. I'm very proud to have been on board (they're a damn fine company and it's damn fine beer).

For I&G's involvement in the Edinburgh Film Festival, I made a little cartoon (above) depicting the importance of the oak-aging process to the unique flavour of their beer. Although short, this was still the most ambitious hand-drawn animation I've ever tried and I think it turned out pretty good, considering.

The animation was edited down to a lean 60 pages and made into a lovely little flickbook that was distributed amongst festival-goers back in June. It can be seen at the end of the short video I made below:

(note, it's surprisingly hard to flick a flickbook straight-through only once while holding it in front of a video camera. Please forgive my slightly juddery attempt. Music is 'P' from the album John's ABC by the Fence Collective.)

Using a combination of the old-fashioned (drawing stuff over-&-over-&-over) and the new-fangled: (Photoshop trickery), I was able to put the whole thing together on a fairly short turnaround. Although frustrating, tedious and difficult, animation is something that I hope to explore further. My Wired illustrations, which I animate for their iPad app every month, are getting increasingly ambitious and are good practice.

Innis & Gunn Edinburgh cityscape illustration

I also produced a few illustrations for their beautiful Bartender's Choice book, including the above Edinburgh cityscape and a small set of drawings depicting various stages of the brewing process.

(more on the Bartender's Choice section of my site)

Big thanks to Lucy and everyone over at I&G for getting me involved and for all their help - they've been amazing to work with. Fingers-crossed, I'll have more to share in the spring.

Oh, and not that I like to toot-my-own-trumpet too loudly, I'll just that, when it comes to perks, this job had one or two:

It's been tricky, but I've kept some aside for Hogmanay. Dancer.

My Instagram Web Profile

Instagram is rolling out its web profile pages this week and mine just went live. Once they're done, everyone's public photographs will be viewable through a normal web browser. This'll make it super easy to share / follow / find people from links and blog posts (such as this).

Here I've quickly put together 3 sets of photos that I really love, loosely themed around animals, people and places.

Revisiting my own wee archive has been interesting - 402 photos over two years. All stuff that at some point, I reckoned was worth sharing. Some of my early uploads were pretty heavy on the filters but, on the whole, I think they hold up not too badly. Mostly.

The square format keeps Instagram photos out of my yearly montages and it's nice to now have a place I can browse through them easily. The selective nature of the app actually creates quite a tightly edited little gallery when you view it all at once.

I still use Instagram a lot, quite carefully choosing who to follow (mostly people I know) and trying to stay up to date with my timeline. Uploading is something I do only when I feel that I've got something funny or interesting to share and I loosely stick to a 1-a-day limit because, man, nobody really cares about someone else's God damn trip to the beach too much at all.

Follow me (if you like) at Instagram.com/davidgalletly.

Guy Fawkes Night

I loved the view from our flat when we first moved to Glasgow. That winter (2010) was particularly beautiful. Then, for a little while, I hated it. In the distance I could see the building I worked in and I'd know that, after a miserable cycle, I'd be over there, sitting at a desk in a job I hated. Whenever I looked out, that's all I'd think about.

Now that I work from home, I love the view again. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Campsies. If I want to (and don't have a mountain of work to wade through), I can pick a place and go there. My old workplace no longer taunts me, seeing it makes me smile. I even cycle my old commute when I need some exercise - it's a really nice route.

Tonight is the 5th of November and the air is filled with fireworks. While the above video isn't the most spectacular in the world (my camera isn't great in the dark), it sums up fairly well the pops, bangs, fizzes and whizzes that've peppered the 2 or 3 miles between my window and my old desk.

Happy Guy Fawkes Night.

My Blog Now Has A Twitter Feed

Twitter Transform
I have created a Twitter feed that will automatically link to new blog posts. If you would like to be notified when I write stuff, please follow @galletlyblog.

This is an unobtrusive service that only tweets once per update (I don't want to spam anyone). It is completely robotic and won't do anything beyond this simple task. It wont get offended if you unfollow it and probably won't answer back if you talk to it.

As always, I'm @davidgalletly on Twitter and my RSS feed is alive and kicking for adding my blog to a reader.

TRANSART: Art on Cars, Inverness

Team Recoat return to Inverness this weekend for TRANSART - a live street art project where a bunch of artists (myself included) paint the hell out of some cars that have been kindly donated by members of the public.

As I write, I am literally packing my bags / running late for the trip up but, should you be interested, please stop by Falcon Square on Friday 26th and Saturday 27th October from 12 - 6pm to see us at work. There are more details on Inverness Old Town Art's page.

We'll all be tweeting / Instagramming (my username is davidgalletly) / blogging / Facebooking / etc. no doubt. If you're around, say hello.

Vote The List Sex Issue as Scottish Cover of the Decade

The List's Sex Issue from early 2011 has been included alongside 11 other magazines as the potential "Scottish Magazine Cover of the Decade". This is especially exciting, to me at least, as I bloomin' drew the dirty drawing on the cover.

The winner, which will be decided by public vote, will be announced at a swanky awards ceremony on the 25th of October with voting closing the day before on the 24th. Everybody gets 1 vote per day so, y'know, make your voice heard. Together we can make a difference. Vote here.

Seriously though, if you pick mine (or share this info), I will be super, duper grateful. Thanks to everyone who has already voted and thanks to the guys at The List for getting me involved in the first place. Cheers x

Paris

At the end of September we went to Paris for a week. It was a belated honeymoon of sorts (technically honeymoon pt.2 as we took a wee trip to Jersey immediately after the wedding to relax). While there, I shot some little clips with my point-&-shoot and edited them together into a video.

It was the best.