I haven’t posted for a while as I was first of all getting Married back in December, then was on my honeymoon until January 15th this year, then I have been getting my lab up and running for the year and in particular getting some new experiments that we have not done before working. I have also been trying to catch up on some videos that we were behind on last year for the video business that my wife and I run and lastly I have been trying to get my portfolio of web sites for my different activities up and running.
The web sites are coming along, I have registered my URLs and so now have:
www.haydnallbutt.com.au – which is of course this web site, my blog which is just for fun stuff and where I will probably post miscellaneous how to videos. I was reading an article in the Australian about how “How To” videos are really taking off in Australia. One of the guys they interviewed was a baker and has a You Tube Channel where he shows how to make various cakes and other things. His channel got more and more viewers and he eventually started earning more money from his you tube channel than his regular job, so he quit and just makes his cooking videos. He has had over 120 million views in total which is more than Master Chef according to the article.
www.russiadownunda.com.au – a web site where I am going to post word drills for learning Russian. It was an idea I had mainly to help myself to learn russian, but as they say the best way to learn is to teach and so I will be posting the resources I make for learning Russian on this web site.
I have been trying to learn Russian for ages but it is a really hard language to learn. My wife, her family and I think we may be going to Russia for our next big trip in June of 2014 so basically I have 1.5 years to stop messing around and finally learn the language. Everyone says that the best way to learn a language is to be immersed in it and just use it, which I agree with, but I find it hard to learn enough of the language in order to start using it. It is as though there is a threshold of language you need before you can then learn more and more exponentially by getting out there and using it. So to help me get over that threshold I wanted to make up some word drills where I just go over and over and over and over and over the most useful and common words and in that way just get the vocabulary in there.
www.fiftyframespersecond.com.au – Is for our videography business which at the moment has only been filming ice skating competitions. Still if you have a niche then I reckon go for it. I am planning on working on promoting Australian Ice Skating on my web site given that web searches for Ice Skating is 95% or more from overseas, and there is certainly no Australian Ice Skating televised, so I will broadcast Australian Ice Skating on my web site if I can.
www.neurolab.com.au – This is my labs web site. It is also still a work in progress but will oneday have what we are doing in the lab, lists of publications and grants that we have received and videos on how to do various lab techniques that we specialise in.
www.humanformphotography.com.au – for my photography. Stictly speaking “Human Form Photography” was the business name I was going to use for any human photography I did, and Animal Form Photography was going to be for the animal/wildlife work which will include the Ark Project (where I take a picture of every terrestrial member of the Kingdom Animalia), and Micro Form Photography for my microscopic photography down the microscope which I was planning on turning into art works. Collectively those three branches were going to be part of Captured Life Photographic Services but there is already a “Capture Life Photography” in Australia and “The Captured Life Photography” and “Captures Life Photography” in the US. All of which is just a bit similar. So I am not 100% sure where to put just general photography yet.
On the way back from America one of my lenses broke. I had it in for repairs, which took 1.5 months but it I have it back now which is great. It is too time consuming to handle all the photos manually so I am intending on getting Lightroom 4 up and running to handle all these. Unfortunately Lightroom 4 does not run under Windows XP which is what I have on my home computer at the moment, so I will have to upgrade to a later Windows. Before I do that though I need to finish the videos I am working on.
Once the videos are done, I have installed Windows 8, I have installed Lightroom 4 and can sort through my photos, then I will start posting the results coming off my new camera!