My name is Mark Rochefort and this is my website - a place where I like to play and learn. Are you still searching? I doubt you'll find it here but you might find some other guff - sometimes with photos.
Or you could try looking down here ↓
Filed under: Random
Filed under: Media, Random, Technology
I’m not much of a “gamer”, although I have to admit I am able to reference my life by what computer game I was playing since I was about 10 years old (for the record – Jet Set Willy, on the trusty ZX Spectrum) – maybe before then, if you include the clunky Radio Shack games I played on my Dad’s computers.
Jet Set Willy (1984: ZX Spectrum), Sonic the Hedgehog (1991: Sega Megadrive), Monkey Island (1990: PC), Doom (1993: PC), Worms (1995: PC), Abe’s Oddysee (1997: PS1), Grand Theft Auto (1997: PC), Rainbow Six (1998: PC) and many more; they all chart a certain personal view of the evolution of console and computer gaming. And it’s incredible to think how things have changed.
I can mark eras of my life in the same way you might signpost your autobiographical memory with where you were living. Sad but true. It tends to be just the one game as I don’t devote masses of time to gaming – when I find a game that I like, I stick with it.
Recently, I persuaded my wife that a PS3 would be a great addition to our family because “a PS3 is so much more than just a games console – you can use it to view all those digital photos and videos of our son”. And I’m glad I did as I think I’ve found the game to mark the next era - LittleBigPlanet. This game is incredible. It has brought the traditional platform game into the future with a fun, creative and collaborative online world that is constantly changing and ever evolving. Irrespective of what it represents in terms of amazing media and technological innovation, it also represents a return to pure and simple platform based game-play, with a few twists. And, possibly most importantly, it is impossible not to feel happy playing this game. It looks like we’re going to have some fun with this one…
Filed under: London, Photos, Random
Polka Tables, originally uploaded by markrocky.
From our photography excursion (with Harvest Digital) on the South Bank using “Lomolitos” (mini Lomos), on Wednesday evening…
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In our industry you need “creativity”. Where does all that creative juice come from? Here’s a behind the scenes tour of of an award-winning creative farm, juicing process and distribution in South West England.
Vote Ken, originally uploaded by markrocky.
I thought there was something strange about these stencils I saw this morning.
Rumour has it they are part of a campaign against Banksy’s backing of Ken. Subtle. Most people will simply think Ken has gone all street and down with the kids.
[Edit: cycled past this morning and they've now been boarded over]
Back in the day, my friends and I used to share mix-tapes. Many of which I still have – kept in an old school trunk – unable to listen to them due to a backwards compatibility error (I don’t have a working tape player), this trunk holds many musical memories. But, I digress, the point being sharing music was a great thing to do. And now we can again, with muxtape.com. Today I’ve been listening to a selection of tracks put together by a friend who has just returned from Kinshasa and what a joy it has been to listen to music like this again. I’d previously browsed through a few other people’s Muxtapes but I didn’t know them – there’s something very nice about knowing who has put it together, so thank you Fred! Any more Muxtape suggestions?
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There’s been some good gags circulating online today:
Filed under: Random, Technology
Bit of a random rant this one but I seem to be caught in a perpetual loop with Tiscali and BT support. Over the last couple of weeks, there has been no ADSL connection at home – which affects both our internet and TV, as we receive Homechoice (aka Tiscali TV). So we’ve called support, they’ve gone through the standard questions and then sent out an engineer. The engineer, when at our house, then blames the company that they are not from (i.e. Tiscali or BT). Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. I’ve heard from a couple of other people that their ADSL connection with Tiscali is also down. Is this an issue with the ADSL line supplied by Tiscali TV then? Bring back Homechoice!
Filed under: Friends, Media, Random, Technology
I’ve just taken a quick look at friendfeed.com – it’s basically a lifestream service, where people can aggregate and publish their web-lives. It’s done rather nicely – enabling you to quickly create your own lifestream from various feeds (here’s mine) and not too different in look to the lifestream I quickly hacked together with pipes – but done way better and on a grand scale! You can also track friends’ feeds easily too, making it a much more two-way tool than others out there – say Tumblr, for example, which publishes your combined feeds. There’s definitely a need for this – with the whole micro-blogging/twitter/lifestream thing, it is useful to show this data in one place and provides an excellent way for potential stalkers to gather all their up-to-the-minute information on a particular target in one easily digestible feed 
Filed under: Media, Random, Technology
I’ll admit I’m quite a fan of Tom Hodgkinson’s work (being an avid reader of the Idler and having read both his recent books – “How To Be Free” and “How To Be Idle”), so I might be more inclined to understand where his rants and raves are coming from. But his latest outburst in the Guardian concerning Facebook certainly seems to have generated a bit of a maelstrom in the murky waters of the social media world (more than 500 del.icio.us bookmarks after one day and counting). While a little conspiratorial, there’s a certain weight to what he’s saying.
Lately there’s been a spate of negative blog entries and articles slating Facebook – and the furore surrounding Mr Scoble’s recent quarrel with Facebook pushed things even further. [Although some may argue that this simply served as an excellent PR pre-cursor to last week's announcement that Facebook (along with Google) were to join the Data Portability initiative.]
Is this the beginning of Facebook fatigue? In 2008, will Facebook go the way that Second Life went in 2007? Or is this simply the natural media/ public reaction to “hype”, as described in Gartner’s Hype Cycle, and we’re now in the “Trough of Disillusionment“? I have to admit that the tedious slew of unanswered invites in my inbox from zombies, pirates and vampires has sent me sliding down my own trough of Facebook disillusionment. Although, rather lazily, I do find it handy to have friends’ details in one place on the web – I use Facebook to arrange meeting after work or even to message someone, for example, as it is easier than digging around for their contact details. Will I still be doing this in 12 months? I certainly wasn’t a year ago, so who knows? Maybe Gartner does.
If you are sitting next to someone who irritates you follow these instructions:
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Two complete strangers agreed to look at each other for an hour in complete silence. A lot can happen in an hour.
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From the busy streets of Brixton, the blood red dot in the sky was beautiful but rather washed out by the orange glow of the street lights. That said – it’s not every Saturday night at 11 o’clock (when most people are more concerned about what club to go to) that you see all the people on Brixton high street looking skyward! Anyway – people in less urban settings got a fantastic show by the looks of it.
Filed under: London, Photos, Random
Budding taggers learn how it is done..
These young whipper snappers were watching keenly as an older kid scrawled his tag on a wall along London’s South Bank. It didn’t take long. Let’s hope the pupils of this nursery school of graffiti move on to a higher level of street art sooner rather than later. Am I getting old? These pesky kids. Grumble grumble… I’ll be complaining about uneven pavements next.
Anyway – while I am on the subject, when a particular piece turned up at the bottom of Bristol’s Park Street a few months ago (on the side of a sexual health clinic, I should add for the benefit of the picture), I heard Bristol City Council were debating whether it was public art and should be left. Funny that they start to see the potential tourism benefits of leaving this stuff after years spent cleaning it up. They certainly wouldn’t have even considered the fact a few years ago. Well – they eventually decided to let it stay and it promptly made the Visit Bristol tourist guide.
Filed under: London, Random, Science
Some research from Bath University suggests that wearing a helmet might be more dangerous than not. And that drivers gave women cyclists a wider berth when passing. Personally I’m not taking any chances cycling around London without a helmet but I am considering growing my hair and wearing a skirt, just to be on the safe side when cycling to work.
Filed under: Random
On what is now officially the hottest July day since records began, here’s an interesting “subvertisement” that’s being passed about the office. It just shows how powerful word of mouth or “viral” campaigns can be these days. And not necessarily for the benefit of the brand supposedly behind the campaign. In this excellent game you get to play a McDonalds executive – in a Sim City style – complete with politician bribing, hormone enhanced beef patty production and employee motivation schemes. I can’t imagine this game being live for too long before the legal teams at McDonalds shut it down – by which time the damage will have already been done. Take a look now, while you still can.
As I cycled home, after a sweltering summer’s day in our Soho offices, there was a continental buzz in the air that is London after work – out on the pavements, enjoying one of England’s rare and blissfully perfect long evenings, cooled by a pleasant breeze and a beer. I turned into St James’ Park and who should drive past in a cavalcade? The Queen! I was genuinely monarch-struck – glowing with a patriotic pride I never knew I had. I’ve never understood all this flag waving, cheering and general whooping that our Queen seems to provoke but, I have to admit, she had a similar effect on me. As soon as I saw the outline of her familiar head I started to grin. I wonder, is it something to do with seeing that instantly recognisable hair-do? I am so accustomed to seeing her on casual everyday items like cash, stamps and so on that it is really quite amusing to see the real thing. A funny thing indeed.
Taken in South Devon, last weekend. At last, the signs of Spring are starting to show. Whoop!
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Thank you to all of you who made it on Saturday evening. It was great to see our new flat so full of people and it now feels well and truly warmed. All went rather smoothly – with no broken hips or slipped discs reported from the oldies. So that’s nice. There’s even some photos.
I feel like I spent the whole night having half finished conversations with everyone, being pulled this way and that, waving my stick at all the youngsters, supping on my beer… I quite enjoyed being an old man. A dangerous sign of things to come perhaps?
Filed under: London, Photos, Random
For those of you who wondered where our evangelist friend with the loud speaker at Oxford Circus station had got to recently during these cold winter weeks – this photo was taken in Sydney last week. He certainly gets about. It looks like he flies south for winter to find warmer preaching grounds.
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I’ve just heard that Homechoice is considering putting itself up for sale. After last November’s rumours, I’m not sure whether it is true but there’s certainly plenty of vultures circling. I’m sure it won’t be long before we have to sit back and watch them fight over the spoils.
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Chris McKinstry’s sad and rather public suicide note reveals “the mind is a maximum hypersurface and thought a trajectory on it and the amygdala and hippocampus are Hopf maps of it” – inspired genius, hoax or simply too much LSD? You decide.
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Just what I was looking for. Spotted in an office window round the corner on Poland Street. They aren’t kidding.
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