nathan bentley's personal playground...

…me!  Last week Mel Kirk (or someone pretending to be her) challenged me to record a ‘random’ vid.  I took up the gauntlet - after my last post about being more proactive, I could really turn it down.

After a day of getting numerous short clips (whilst doing my day job) and even more strange looks, I sat down to edit it…

Numerous cups of tea, 3 crashes, a small amount of tears, and a lot of berating from my flatmates, this vid finally popped out of my mac.  The soundtrack is “Phantom II” by the awesome “Justice”.

Play it with sound - preferably LOUD!

A day in the life of… from Nathan Bentley on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

Nath.

I’ve left this one kinda late to be honest… If I hadn’t been so darned busy with other, less fun stuff, like work, the gym and lugging bags up and down stairs for my flatmate (we live 4 flights up - no lift - Peter owes me big time for helping him move), I’d have gotten my act together and probably have had a better chance at getting 25 comments to allow me to enter the Carsonified Golden Ticket competition.

The Golden Ticket for those of you that don’t know, is a Willy Wonka style offering from Ryan Carson over at the ever awesome Carsonified - write a blog post about why you want to win the Golden Ticket, get 25  or more comments and enter the prize draw.

Anyway, being that I’ve left it so long, I’ll cut straight to the point… Why I’m craving the Golden Ticket.

I’ve worked in the t’interweb business for 10 years now, and have managed to keep it a passion (if anything, it’s become more of a passion - I guess I’m lucky that I’ve got a job I enjoy so much). However, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been surrounded by people who, despite working in this awesome industry, just seem to lack the passion for it. When I dashed over to FOWA London last year, I felt at home in a sea of people passionate about what they do - and better still, what the possiblities that lay ahead are.

To be fair, in my time I’ve been lucky enough to work with some wonderful passionate people - but those individuals are few and far between. Maybe, just maybe, with the chance to get amongst others who feel the same way as I do, the smile on my face that I bring back at the end of the day (not to mention the photos, videos and mountains of goodies), may inspire some of the other I work with to consider this wonderful web as more than just a 9 til 5. (*ahem* 9 til 6 if you’re a Londoner like myself).

There’s a small and slightly personal note to this post - my intentions aren’t completely selfless… For the past few months I’ve been working on a side project that will hopefully one day soon blossom into a fully fledged webapp. Work has been flagging with the torrent of stuff that has taken my time up over the past 4 weeks, but I’m hoping that with a bit of inspiration, some serious networking, and of course, a few friendly faces to bounce ideas of, it may just come to fruition.

Spare a second to comment if you can. I’ll be eternally grateful!

Nath.

Well I’ve made it through my first week at Publicis… Of course, having a four day week has certainly helped!

First day in, I had the usual overload of names and faces - suddenly I remember how it feels to not know everyones names. Don’t have admin rights to my computer, so can’t even install an FTP client. A project manager yells something about a site being broken at 6pm. I have no clue. Fear and panic sets in.

Day two, I’ve managed to figure out where the coffee machines are, and how to operate them. Still don’t have admin access to my machine, which is starting to make me very touchy. Finally after a bit of banter with the IT support team, I manage to get rights to install stuff. On goes my favorite selection of open source utils. Feel a little better.

Day three, I start digging into work. Have a meeting with a Project manager who sympathizes with my frustrations at having no resource. Install wordpress and start to skin it. Feel much better. Go to pub for someones leaving do. Drink beer and head home, despite broken tubes. Feel much much better.

Day four (Friday!) - Sausage sandwich and other breakfast goodies awaiting me when I arrive. Continue skinning site successfully, finding out that I can still remember HTML and CSS. Bonus. A few more meetings and things click into place. Thing are definitely looking up. Finish work at 5.30, and grab a beer before shooting off. Looking forward to coming back on Monday and seeing where the journey takes me next.