So much has changed and it seems like a lifetime ago I had any time to even consider posting on the site, playing some PS3 or even finding time to read. This is mainly all down to one thing… Ralphy!

We’ve had Ralphy for 7 weeks (since he was 7 weeks old!) and boy oh boy is he a handful. Now you may be thinking “I just see a picture of a cute puppy sleeping – he doesn’t look that bad!?!”

That’s mainly because it’s the only time I can get my camera out, the rest of the time i’m stopping him digging in the mud, chewing flowers, chewing shoes, chewing stones, hell the other day I even caught him chewing the house (he had his teeth around the corner bricks of the outside wall literally chewing the house)!!

Now, I don’t want to discourage anyone from getting a puppy, and it is something me and my girlfriend Lin mulled over for a good few months before making the decision, but it is a lot of hard work and very time consuming but definitely worth the initial struggle. He’s now 14 weeks old, getting very good at listening and becoming more independent which means I get a chance to post!

I thought it would be a good time to get back on track with some of the targets I set at the beginning of the year so here they are:

1) Write more blog posts:
Well I guess so far it hasn’t been a great start for this one, but I still plan to post more in 2010 than I did in 2009!

2) Take more photographs:
I have actually done a fair bit of photography all awaiting processing. I am currently using Photoshop CS4 to process photographs but have heard good things about aperture (Mac) and the speed in which you can process images – If anyone has any recommendations, I would greatly appreciate them! (just comment on the post below, send us an email or drop us a tweet – www.twitter.com/oxcreative).

3) Learn Actionscript 3:
This is something I have really been pushing as it has been dragging on a long time. I went on a 2 day introduction to ActionScript 3 course in January with Symbiosis, Adobe certified trainers in the UK. I then went on an Advanced ActionScript 3 (Object Orientated Programming) with Design Patterns course with the same company in February. Furthermore, the trainer I had for the two courses (James Courier) was brilliant and very good at explaining not only the “how-to’s” but also the “why’s”! I still have a lot to learn and I have a ton of books as well as a Lynda.com subscription to help, but for anyone wanting to pick up a new programming language or learn more about specific software, training would be a good way to go and I can definitely vouch for Symbiosis and James!

4) Make an application or game:
I am still planning on working on an application or game for either desktop machines or on a mobile platform. I hope that with my newly found (though not extensive) knowledge in ActionScript 3 I can tick this one of in the next few months.

5) Exercise and get more healthy:
This one has gone way out of the window unless eating tea and biscuits count as exercise.

6) Contribute more to iStockPhoto:
Whilst I haven’t uploaded any more images, I have had a few more downloads and I am pushing close to the ’100 download’ mark. With that, I will have 150 to go to achieve my ‘bronze canister’ and hit my target for the year!

I’ve been with O2 for a very long time, in fact, since I have owned a mobile phone (it was BT cellnet back then, then Genie ( a subsidiary of BT Cellnet) and then it merged/got bought out and became O2 across Europe.

Now, I try to avoid blogging my rants but I read something today that really ‘took the biscuit’. It was an article on ITProPortal about Ronan Dunne and how he apologises for the poor o2 network coverage in London where people have been ‘unable to make calls’. Mr Dunne claims it is mainly due to that fact that smartphones (i.e. iPhone etc) using alot of data and jamming up the network.

You may think this is noble, someone actually stepping forward and apologising for something that has gone wrong… especially a big company like O2 (Telefonica). However, there are a few things about this that annoyed me:

Firstly, O2 are acting like the issue is only in London – I live in the county Hampshire (UK) – my home is about 60 miles from London and I can get a signal when I visit my parents, at my friends house or in the supermarket car park… apart from that I have GSM only coverage or Zero coverage (yep… alot of the time it just says searching!).

I own an iPhone 3G, which lets face it, is mainly for data, yet I cannot use it for data as there is no signal. My brother who also has an iPhone has the same issues (he works in demolition and travels the south of England and he said it is equally bad wherever he goes). I have tried googling this and found many people have had problems across the country, O2 even made it onto WatchDog (a UK tv show which names and shames companies and tradesmen who are providing a shoddy service).

I found a ‘service status’ checker from O2 which apparently says that the signal in my area is good and has full data coverage. My phone still says searching… In all fairness, it does state that this is coverage to the street (outdoors) and so I can only assume that walls/houses affect the signal so I am going to go outside. Ok… so I just got back from popping into the middle of the street at night and apart from getting wet in the rain and attracting some strange glances from the ‘curtain twitching’ neighbours, I got one bar of GSM signal… which quickly went back to searching!

The second thing that annoyed me about the apology is that it was blamed on the use of smartphones data usage. Now, I’m not a telecommunications expert nor am I the head of a multinational corporation, but it doesn’t take mild-boggling intellect or business pizazz to know that if you buy the exclusive service rights to probably the most hyped gadgets to hit the planet (the iPhone) there will be a significant increase in data usage.

Let’s be straight, O2 must have improved their network vastly to take on such a contract, but clearly it is not enough.

It is no surprise that O2 is ripping it’s customers of by charging an additional £9.50 a month (minimum) to use tethering, as the fact of the matter is that their network couldn’t handle everyone using the service that they are already paying for. Tethering for data is no different to using 3G or Edge directly on the phone. The only difference would be that people would use more of their ‘unlimited data’ and the network could not cope.

A final point I would like to raise is that I have heard alot of people, in fact everyone I know or have met, who owns an iPhone, say at least once “my crappy iPhone” or “this shitty thing” or something to that effect. I have had a few minor problems with the iPhone that have actually been due to the hardware or the software but 99.9% of the issues are because I cannot get signal and I think the Apple, and the iPhone, get alot of criticism for what is O2′s failure to provide the service they have promised to deliver.

There are a few things that as a disgruntled O2 customer I would love to see:

- Apple suing O2 for damages to both the Apple and iPhone brand.

- O2 losing the majority of iPhone customers now that it is open to other networks

- O2 fined by OfCom for mis-selling its iPhone contracts. Unlimited data is unlimited data and tethering should be allowed within this allowance.

- O2 actually providing a better service

For now, I guess this means riding out my 18 month contract at £35 per month to use the iPhone 3G’s Wifi feature whilst I am at home or occasionally being able to make a call or even get an Edge data connection if I am especially lucky! I will definitely be switching network as soon as it expires.

Should you wish to make a formal complaint about the service you have received from O2, please contact OFCOM.

You can also let others know about this post by using the URL http://bit.ly/O2Fail in your twitter, facebook, myspace, digg and other social networks.

Let’s spread the #O2Fail message for 2010!

Now it’s your chance to get some free exposure and get featured on OxCreative.com. All you need to do is send us an email with some examples of your work before 14th December 2009 and you could be featured on the site in January 2010!

Send your work to info@oxcreative.com and one lucky winner will be our main feature throughout January!

Good Luck!

Online/Multiplayer

I finally got a chance yesterday to try out the online features and they are amazing – the gameplay is 10 times better with real people and whilst the ‘bots’ used in single player mode are very good, they aren’t the ‘real deal’. I tried the ‘mercenary team matches’ and the all vs all deathmatches and both were excellent. On the team matches, the ‘winning kill’ is shown at the end to all players so you can see who won the game and who shamefully lost it for their team!

Unfortunately there has been a major bug which stops you from joining your friends or inviting them into an online game. There are also a couple of teething issues the host selection and migration. Basically, an online multiplayer game picks the best ‘host’ or PS3 connected based on speed. However, should the speed dip in the game it will need to migrate the host info to another PS3 to prevent the game from being slow and laggy. There have been a few instances I have seen of failed migrations of hosts and games continuing with so much lag that the character jitters about like ‘tickle me elmo’!

Today, I attempted to play online either against random players or my friends, but due to the sheer volume of traffic, could not connect the the matchmaking servers! Now, if they anticipated sales would be as high as they have been (which they would know for the amount of copies they distributed), you would think they would have invested more into servers and load balancer’s to cope with the demand. Hopefully, this is something they are looking into as technically speaking it’s not really the ‘full experience’ if you can only play a portion of the game!

So far, 4 of my friends have bought the game all have had similar issues with lagging and online play, but all also say they can’t put down the controller!

We would love to hear your thoughts so why now drop us a comment below

More updates to come…

Ok so in all fairness, it loads up quicker and it shuts down a lot quicker…but besides that and some fancy animation effects, I am yet to see any benefits. General use is the same, if not a little slower. The main issue I am having is with sleep mode.

I often use the sleep function as I just close down the lid and put it back in its bag if I have to go somewhere quick and then all of my work is ready instantly when I open it. Since upgrading to Snow Leopard I am alot more reluctant to do this. Firstly, if I do let the machine sleep and then wake it – every few minutes, the screen will flicker black for a fraction of a second and then come back on. Secondly, I have a couple of third party widgets and it seems that they act bizarrely after the machine has been put into sleep mode i.e. not loading info correctly, or not responding to clicks. Finally, after sleep mode, some of the general functionality like selecting objects and clicking and dragging, in both the OS and in applications, acts strangely, sometimes it won’t select, occasionally it won’t deselect and it has even selected something close to what I was clicking but the item I intended.

Hopefully, Apple will iron out these issues in the 10.6.2 Snow Leopard update when it is available but it seems to be increasingly common that users are finding issues and buggy updates being put out by Apple.

We would love to know your thoughts and experiences with Snow Leopard so why not leave us a comment below!

as most of you have probably realised, we’ve been having a few technical difficulties recently.

The hosting company we’ve have been using for the last 4 years let us down… badly! Whilst we should have been backing up the data, we were under the impression that the hosting company were completing daily backups. In reality, they hadn’t backed up since early august and had a RAID-1 configured storage system. The first hard drive failed and the second had corrupted, losing all of the OxCreative posts since August

We have a few posts that we can put back (hopefully we can recover the Tado and Kazumi Hirota interviews), and we are aiming to set up the Letraset competition again as soon as possible (the deadline will be extended to reflect the downtime).

In the meantime, we’ve switched to a new company with servers in the UK and US, fully redundant DNS and email clusters, daily backups and NAS used for storing server snapshots taken every couple of hours and with a RAID-5 configuration!

For those who have a website, make sure you back up your site (and databases!) as you never know what will happen!

To celebrate the launch of their 56 new Promarker colours, We’ve teamed up with Letraset to offer you the chance to win some fantastic products. Their Promarker range are great marker pens suitable for everyone from the hobbyist to the pro designer. What’s more Letraset have increased the colour variations to a whopping 148 colours!

** This Competition has now closed **
Entry Submissions must be completed before midnight (GMT) 22nd November 2009

We’ve got three great prizes to giveaway:

1st Prize
Tria 24 Visualisation set and a Bleedproof Pad

2nd Prize
Wallet of 24 ProMarkers plus Bleedproof Pad

3rd Prize
ProMarker 12 Pack plus Bleedproof Pad

To be in with a chance of winning all you have to do is click the button below and answer the question.

** This Competition has now closed **

Born and raised in the UK and a graduate of Central Saint Martins, she now resides and works in London. With a peculiar hand-drawn style, Kazumi creates worlds of bizarre creatures and characters and is not only an illustrator but animator too!

We thought we’d ask Kazumi a few questions:

OxCreative:

So Kazumi, we hope you are happy to feature on OxCreative.com – how
are things in London? tell us a bit about yourself!

Kazumi:

Thank you for having me! It’s unusually sunny at the moment, so I’m
keeping my fingers crossed. I studied illustration, came out with a
portfolio full of animation, and now am concentrating on illustration
again. I like learning new things, so I have a pretty diverse skill
set. My recent skill is growing tomatoes.

OxCreative:

Me too! Though a wave of slugs, snails and catepillars pretty much ate my garden!
It’s never polite to ask a lady her age, so can we ask how long have
you been illustrating?

Kazumi:

Since I could hold a pencil!

OxCreative:

What do you get up to when your not slaving away over the drawing board?

Kazumi:

I write music and play the odd gig here and there to keep the
creative juices flowing.

OxCreative:

Awesome! Now a lot of budding artists, illustrators and designers would love to
freelance but aren’t sure of what steps to take… what would be your
top tips for those wishing to freelance?

Kazumi:

Not sure I’m in a position to be giving people advice!.. but I would
say perseverance. Rejection is just part of the game isn’t it?

OxCreative:

Unfortunately in design and illustration it is part of the game!
The first thing we noticed is that you have an awesome style of illustration – which artists and
illustrators inspire you?

Kazumi:

I watched a lot of cartoons, (and still do) both from Japan and the west- so I guess my style reflects the kind of characters I grew up with. I loved the Carebears!!

OxCreative:

Do you listen to music whilst you work? if so, what music?

Kazumi:

I have a stupidly electric (bad?) taste in music- anything from
cheesy Japanese Pop to the Gypsy Kings, to Frank Zappa. Whatever fits
my mood. It has to be very loud though- which might be why I’m a bit
deaf.

OxCreative:

hmmm… that doesn’t sound too healthy! Do you ever get creative block? If so, what do you do to get past it?

Kazumi:

Sleeping on it always helps!

OxCreative:

Can’t get enough sleep! What is your favourite piece of work you have created and why?

Kazumi:

I don’t really have a favourite- I guess it’s usually the last one I created.

OxCreative:

What products do you use for your illustration and art?

Kazumi:

Pentel Brush Calligraphy pens, Pilot drawing pens, Copic markers,
pencils, photoshopping, elephant ear wax, goldfish brains…

OxCreative:

Goldfish brains hmm…I imagine its a bit difficult to apply! If there’s one illustrator/studio/company that you would like to work with, who would it be?

Kazumi:

NINTENDO!

OxCreative:

Where do you aim to be in 5 years from now?

Kazumi:

I’d like to be travelling around, maybe live in France or the States for a while. I’d also like a cat. Called Anchovy. And he’d have a pet passport and come with me.

OxCreative:

Nice! What do you prefer…
Marker Pens or Pencils?

Kazumi:

Markers!

OxCreative:

Paints or Inks?

Kazumi:

Ooh… paints!

OxCreative:

Tea or Tequila?

Kazumi:

I can’t get through the day without my cuppa’ in the morning…

OxCreative:

It’s all about the PG Tips! Well thank you Kazumi for your time!

Well folks, there you have it – Kazumi Hirota, illustrator, musician, care-bear lover, and all-round lovely person! Definitely an illustrator to watch out for!

For those who don’t know who Tado are (unlikely), they are a deliciously dynamic design duo from sunny England……ermmm well England at least. Their work has inspired a new generation of budding illustrators, designers, artists and animators across the globe and in fact, back in the early days offered me valuable advice which even lead me to focus on a career in design and illustration!

Tado’s menagerie of monsters has lead them to work with the likes of Nike, BBC, Kidrobot, Toy2r, Microsoft and many more – they even designed a nursery for Christina Aguilera!

We thought we’d ask them a few questions about themselves, the industry and which of the pair is the bossiest!

OxCreative:

Well Mike and Katie, it’s been a long time since we last spoke… how have you been? We see you have finally succumb to the world of twitter… what took you so long!?

Tado:

we’re very well thank you, bit frantic but we can’t complain. As for twitter, we’re always very slow on the uptake of anything new and quite frankly we lead very boring lives so we dont have much to twit on about! that said we decided it was time to get involved and try and get more followers than our friend jon burgerman – bwhaha! only 2400 to go!

OxCreative:

What have you been up to the passed few months?

Tado:

We’ve been head-down working on a big web-project for an american client that has taken up about 70% of our time. We’ve also been busy with a new collection for Gola, some new poster prints and a lot of stuff for Kidrobot.

OxCreative:

Nice… we’ll keep a look out for the new stuff! What’s all this private panda club business? It all looks a bit kinky!

Tado:

The private panda club was our installation for Pictoplasma 2009 – it was basically a parody on Japanese maid cafes/cosplay and soho all mixed into one with a big does of interactability (new word!) and sillyness.

OxCreative:

Cool… so Fortune Pork 2 has just been released and we are eager to get our hands on them! We know it’s a bit early but we are always looking for our next ‘Tado fix’, so is there any more Fortune Pork stuff in the pipeline in the pipeline?

Tado:

We have several bits and pieces in the pipeline at the moment but we cant say much more than there’ll be something at the end of the year from Kidrobot

OxCreative:

We’re look forward to it! Working in a design duo must be pretty cool but I imagine that working together so much would lead you to have certain traits. Which of you fit into the following traits:
Who is the bossiest?

Tado:

whoever made the tea last.

OxCreative:

Who is the most immature?

Tado:

hmmm… that would depend again on who’s turn it is to be the bossy one!

OxCreative:

Who is the laziest?

Tado:

we’re equally sloth-ish but in different ways. mike is lazy at the end of the day, katie at the start!

OxCreative:

Spending so much time together must lead to a few fights now and again (someone leaving the lids off the paints and not washing out the brushes properly!)?

Tado:

not really! we squabble a bit about work stuff but thats it really! any disagreements are easily solved with fistycuffs.

OxCreative:

You should get some gladiator-style pugil sticks! There’s alot of competition in design now even in the less densely populated areas… we are only a stone throw away from the folks at Ilovedust! From what you’ve seen is there any rivalry in the industry?

Tado:

Of course there’s always rivalry but we’re sure its all very good natured and banterous! we’re friends with a lot of other folk who do similar stuff and its never been seen as ‘rivalry’ at all. theres plenty of friendly mick-taking tho!

OxCreative:

If there was a industry-wide “royal rumble” fight, who would you most want to be on the same team as?

Tado:

Ilovedust without a doubt. we know what they’re capable of and they definitely don’t fight fair.

OxCreative:

Scandalous! What’s the worst practical joke you’ve ever played on anyone?

Tado:

can’t say – they still havent realised its a joke and we’re sure we wont live to tell the tale when they do!

OxCreative:

We already know that you’ve inspired alot of artists and designers around the globe, but it would be great to know who inspires Tado?

Tado:

each other mainly! (barf!) aside from that, we love reading blogs about weird stuff and anything vaguely natural-history related and watching anything by studio ghibili of course.

OxCreative:

Barf indeed… none of that soppy stuff here! You seem to be oozing alot of creativity in everything you do… do you ever run out of juice and get creative block?

Tado:

of course! its a lot harder for us to get a block as there’s two of us, but we do get run down and burned out like anyone else. a couple of days of happy-walks in the peak district or playing with cars, bikes or animals soon sorts us out.

OxCreative:

Does alcohol ever play a part in the creative process for you or is it a strictly ‘tea and biscuits’ affair?

Tado:

we’re pretty much a tea-total-tado! mike likes the odd real-ale but not very often!

OxCreative:

There have been some important issues in the UK recently, like the return of the Cadbury’s Wispa (chocolate bar) and the return of the original Monster Munch (crisps/potato chips) – what item from your childhood would you most like to see the return of?

Tado:

Werebears!! we just re-discovered mike’s little sisters one in a cupboard.

OxCreative:

Nice… I used to sit with my orange WereBear reading along with the book and pushing the button when the book said to so it howls! My dog chewed it’s claws off

Without sounding sordid, what would £1000 get me in terms of Tado Time or Artwork?

Tado:

depends who’s asking. what are you wearing…??

OxCreative:

well me and i’m wearing… whoah going of the point… Finally, what advice do you have for any budding artists and designers out there?

Tado:

work hard, research, research and research some more, find your own style and brush your teeth before a meeting.

OxCreative:

Well folks there you have it – Design Gods Tado on WereBears, fistycuffs, tea and biscuits and a little bit of kinkyness!
Fortune Pork Series 2 are available now from Kidrobot and don’t forget to check out Tado’s Website.

How to enter

All you have to do is get in touch with us and show us some examples of your work before the 21st August 2009 and you’ll be in with a chance to win!

To get in touch with us you can either;

- send us a tweet with a link to your work at www.twitter.com/oxcreative

- email some examples of your work or a link to your work to us at  info@oxcreative.com

- comment on this blog post with a link to your work

The winner will be contacted and there work will appear on the site on the 1st September 2009!