I have been rather casually using something called Zotero for sometime now without fully realising just what I was using nor what potential it has. I still find myself using it as a glorified Bookmark utility most of the time despite Zoteros power and extended uses, but even as a bookmark manager it shines compared to most other ways of working.

The Zotero home site calls this little plug-in '... a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources.'

Wikipedia calls Zotero '... a free, open source add on for the Firefox browser. Zotero enables users to manage bibliographic data and to store web-page snapshots and other electronic objects.'

Time Break ...

Consequent to me sitting on this post for ages as I wrestle with trying to explain Zotero I am just posting it so you can start finding out its wonders for yourselves. If there are any problems, thoughts or other, get backto me with a comment.

Below you will find just one of the many videos around which go a little way to explain Zotero and its capabilities.

Enjoy.

If you're not listening to or watching to (sic) any podcasts let me make a few suggestions that might tickle your ipod and get you into the habit.

Art 21 have an excellent podcast, deep in content and form with top class production values and content. Their style is substantial and suits my behind the scenes voyeuristic watching habits. (I am the sort of film watcher who looks forwards to the Directors commentary almost more than to the straightforward film.)
A search on iTunes will find their podcast. It makes for a digestive experience compared to their blog although I can recommend both.

Tate Modern have a top flight podcast TateShots which can now be watched online as well as on pod. However the online version takes away from the special delight of watching on an ipod. Remember, podcasts are radio/tv on demand, and my demand for  podcasts is lying in bed or on the sofa or wherever, not whilst sitting in front of my computer as however much I like my babbage engine I don't find it a form at all conducive to watching or listening for pleasure.

TateShots is small and perfectly formed with an almost perfect balance between length and content, a hard trick to pull off.

On a more practical note I mention John Reuter's podcast, Creative Photoshop with John Reuter, found with a search on his name within iTunes.
I am continuously searching for ways into the creative possibilities of Photoshop and this podcast has it in spades. You can of course question the outcome of JRs creative decisions but you can't fault his mastery of Photoshop. The quiet, distinctive way in which he passes on complex methods and techniques inspires greatly.
His background is as a photographer and much of his thinking is, I think, informed by experience of Polaroid manipulation and use which I am finding interesting as it is a technique that pretty much passed me by in its heyday. More on my Polaroid experiments in a later blog.

And finally a blog rather than a podcast that I subscribe to, which always makes me think, has made me laugh, so I share with you Gravité (Gravity) by Renaud Hallée - Falling objects synchronized to produce rhythm. 2009
Via Music of Sound - Tim's Obsession with Vibrating Air Molecules.

  As an artist I see the world firstly as a photographer. I see camera framed  photographs, shapes I know will make good pictures, forms I'm sure will go together to make a compulsive whole, in passing, and if I am lucky enough to have remembered a camera I get to check whether or not my photographic vision is correct. 
 


 The Djanogly Art Gallery show WITHOUT FROM WITHIN - Saturday 06 March to Monday 03 May - wasn't the first time I had seen the world interpreted by painters but it was probably the first time I wanted to be one of them. Get my hands dirty. Make marks directly. Paint my vision rather than capture my vision.

The exhibition is excellently put together and wanders with intent through a variety of art movements and any number of decades via works from both the well known and lesser known painters.
  Rene Magritte is probably the biggest name here but not, I think, the biggest hit of the show.

  I'm going back next week and taking a mate along to share my discovery and delight.
  Here's hoping that the memory is as good as the reality. It will be, I'm sure.
  The search for a local supplier of oil paints, canvas and absinthe begins.

There has been a return visit to the show with my good friend L.
It was just as as good as I had rememoried and if anything this visit was enhanced by having a second pair of eyes along.
The lighting for the pictures seemed worse than before and is the one thing that possibly lets the show down. Even so, visit soon, not to be missed.

My paints are out. Absinthe supplier not yet found.

OK I have finally altered all the esoteric settings as required by my domain host which means that moongold.me.uk now shows my new Weebly site - phew - and whee.

There won't be, indeed definitely shouldn't be, much of a difference for you as a viewer other than the new look and layout. There are a few pages that need work and I am still fiddling with the layout and look as I discover some of the new features and options.

A couple of nice surprises that I will use on future sites (Weebly allows up to ten sites with one Pro account) are that I can set-up a drop box for visitors to drop files into which will be delivered to me. This was something I really wanted on my Squarespace site but which required an incremental rise up the account/price option scale; a step too too far.

OK that's one nice surprise, there are lots more coming.

I have begun to move my web site from my long standing provider Squarespace over to this Weebly site, which is less of a chore than I imagined it might be thanks to both providers being at the top of their game.

Although I have been grateful for my time at Squarespace, times move on and their pricing has become a little uncompetitive for individuals like myself, whilst Weebly have a cracking Pro package which is well worth a look, although their regular free offering is quite fantastic. As I go about building a new Moongold web presence on Weebly I have been very impressed with the speed, simplicity and quality of the options available to me.

The move has provided a chance for a major site overhaul and given me chance to take a good look at the content and tone of things. To consider what I put up here; to re-think how I explain what I do and given me a chance to decide whether or not much of the old content deserve to be on show at all.

Moving the blog has meant losing much of the original posts content but this isn't a complete disaster. I will be posting specific news up here, more relevant to Moongold and the workshop activity, and starting a new blog for my more distinctive ramblings elsewhere.
More on that later. Meanwhile this is still a work in progress and eventually needs the domain moving over which should happen in a week or so.

The header picture has been made, as always, with a version of Node Box 2, which is beta, or you can go look at Node Box.