Self Portrait, originally uploaded by fingertrouble.

..but like Anthony Gormley says, I’m available (this is a euphemism for cheap whore when it comes to me, I am the cheapest model I know!)

This is an experiment with some new gear – Cactus Wireless triggers, which I really recommend, 10th of the price of Pocket Wizards which will set you back £400 (!!!) – I’d heard that the old ones (v2) were 7/10 reliable, whereas these v4 ones seem 9 or 10/10 reliable – only started to fail when the flashguns were getting tired, so it was the batteries…other gear is a Sekonic L-308s meter (it’s a little on the frisky side, light wise, but good) and I already had the two Vivitar 283’s from when I bought Fred (my Bronica SQ-Ai medium format camera, you can see it here http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/3738490281/).

Another tip is to never throw out polystyrene boards – I was bouncing the light from the flashguns with some boards I found on the street, smart! Just to prove you don’t need a fancy studio to do this…

And this is note that I’ve created a new Flickr account for my ’serious’ photography http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/ – this is where my portraits and best work will live – I’ll keep the timbearcub account for personal stuff, Second Life and the like…I like to keep things tidy! Note I’ve updated the best-of too http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingertrouble/sets/72157621471979587/

Back to the music!

Oh did I point out how much I hate my face? Ok. Reasoning is, if I can make myself look beautiful or interesting, I’ve probably got a better chance with everyone else

A little voice inside my head said: “Don’t look back, you can never look back.”. Well actually it was Don Henley but in the case of The Asylum, home of the legendary Bastard, one the world’s first ever mashup nights (well that was King of the Boots, also run by Cartel Mike and Johnny, and might have been there too) in London back in 2001 or 2002 until 2006, it’s very true.

This was the club that was so underground (it wasn’t properly licensed!), grungey and accidentally hip, that not only did Chris Morris base the pisstake of the club in Nathan Barley on it, the owners went onto run the Macbeth in Hoxton, where one of them or their staff got into that whole Blake/Amy debacle.

It seems that The Asylum has been kidnapped by Laura Ashley, and forced to wear floral wallpaper, union jack underpants and Ye Olde tourist-trap trinkets. So sad.

History – right there. Or was…

(not pictured behind them is the Ye Olde fireplace, the patio chav-style windows at the end, the union jack chairs, the WI tea cups used as ice holders and the tablecloths. I shit you not. Go look at the pictures from upto 3 years ago and compare!)

After over 2 years (OMG has it been that long?) I’ve stopped the weekly DJ sets at the Parkade in Second Life.

No bad reason, no drama, just need to spend time on other stuff (like: finding work, career, photography). I’ll probably pop back time to time to DJ for the odd special set

I recorded the last set, at some point it’ll be here. Sad to leave ‘Cruise Control’ behind, but after 2 years it’s time to focus on career and paying gigs. I’m clamping down on creating free stuff, it’s great and all, but it doesn’t pay the bills – and the bills are the real problem at the moment.

To see some of the great times we had there, you can view the silliness here.

All you ever need for music, originally uploaded by timbearcub.

You don’t need anything else

Hey I have a deal for you – if you’re thinking of switching to Be Un limited ADSL2 in the UK (upto 24Meg broadband!), let me know and I’ll refer you, saving you the connection fee (24 quid!). I have 6 friend slots to give out, so hurry…

I’ve been using Be for a long while now, really happy with them apart from a current slight DNS flakiness which they are fixing (for which you can use alternatives OpenDNS or DNSAdvantage anyway, which I’m doing atm with no problems). You get a funky wireless router too, which is pretty good (Alcatel Speedtouch 780 I think; you can forward ports through it, does VOIP etc). Unlimited downloads, and they’ve not signed up to that dreadful UK anti-piracy ISP ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ thing either – credit to them!

For the sake of transparency I get an extra month for each person I sign up to Be, and maybe some Amazon vouchers – but I do genuinely think it’s a good service, as good as Zen my previous ISP. I wouldn’t recommend it otherwise (there was a similar scheme with Servage, but they are so bad I never recommended them to anyone, I value my friends too much).

I need email, first name, and last name – so email me at my Gmail – my id is timbearcub.