WRITING: Colorista review for MacUser

Magic Bullet's Colorista is a colour correction plug-in tool for video applications Motion, Final Cut Pro and After Effects. I reviewed the product a couple of months ago for MacUser magazine. If you have an interest in such programs and missed the review in the magazine you can now read the review at the MacUser website.

WRITING: Squeeze 5 review for Digital Arts

I recently looked at Squeeze 5 compression suite for Digital Arts magazine, which now also incorporates the old 'Digit' magazine.
Squeeze 5 is a video compression tool from Sorenson Media with a fairly simplistic interface but great results. For those that like to stay on the cutting edge - it even encodes for Blu-ray.
You can read the review online here or subscribe to the magazine, an IDG publication, by clicking here.

WRITING: Basic video editing tutorials for Which?

I've recently finished writing a series of 8 video editing tutorials for Which? magazine and website. They are aimed squarely at absolute beginners (7 are based on Premiere Elements 4 by Adobe and one features iMovie 08 for the Mac) to video editing and hopefully will give a few people the requisite information to finally take a stab at cutting their first little film together. Expect to see the tutorials to go live in the next few weeks here: www.which.co.uk

MTB: Llandegla black runs

I hadn't been to Llandegla before. My riding buddy had been a few years ago and wasn't too impressed. News of new black runs coaxed into making the journey.

The trail is a double-edged sword. The facilities are second to none: bike shop, toilets, cafe, bike wash, parking, bike hire, multiple routes etc but the flip side is that the experience is very 'manufactured'. The trails are all very sterile feeling. However, the journey is worth it for the black runs alone. I'm by no means highly skilled but loved them. They flow incredibly quickly and the design is perfectly measured. I would say the extra 6KM these sections add to the red route can be tackled by most people, providing they attack them with a modicum of common sense. I was surprised at the amount of people heading down them with no pads (or even helmet in one case) and therefore equally unsurprised to find a chap with a dislocated shoulder at the bottom of the first jump (having spoken to his friends in the car park after, at least he was enjoying the hospital morphine)!

For a hassle free and quick blast (1.5-2.5 hours for the combined 21KM red and black routes) with all the amenities present and correct, you can't really beat it. More info at the Coed Llandegla website

PS. You didn't think that photo was me did you? It isn't, I'm not that good! It's one from their website...

TECH: Great new (FREE) Symbian weather application

Just released is a new Weather widget for Symbian smartphones (e.g. N95/N95 8GB etc) from Weatherbug. It's a free application and not only gives forecast information, it also provides satellite imagery and live camera feeds from the Weather station supplying the forecast.
It doesn't have auto update or screensaver capabilities like Handy Weather but it can be set to a active standby shortcut and more importantly - it's free!
Open your smartphone browser and head over to http://is.gd/got to get it.