Category: Blog

Blog

Custom cards

May 25, 2017
Skull and crossbones vector created by Freepik

It’s been a while since I posted. Hey I’ve been busy.

I’ve found myself doing more and more Photoshop jobs for friends and colleagues – for birthday cards, custom made invitations, that sort of thing. So I thought I’d share some of them right here, as a bit of a record and to show that if you want something like this doing, you can get in touch.

The beauty of sites like moonpig is that they’ve given us free reign to create one off personalised stuff much easier. If you want to go the extra step, you can create your own image compositions, like some of these examples, to really go to town. Anyway, enjoy!

This is just the tip of the iceberg of course. I’ve also been known to help people out with editing videos for weddings, hen dos (oo-er misses), school projects, birthday surprises plus creating logo animations (or stings as we call them in the biz, what), editing music for children’s plays and a whole lot more. Basically if you want some sort of custom multimedia sorting for a personal project then I can help!

Blog, Writing

The Quotable April 2013 Writing Prompt Micro-fiction (100 words) Contest Winner

April 12, 2016

It was a long, long time ago…

No that’s not the start of a new story of mine, it is a factual representation of the length of time between the events told in this blog post and today. Way back in April 2013 I won a micro-fiction writing contest on the Quotable, a writing website. The contest was to write 100 words based on a prompt by a famous writer. Unfortunately it looks like the good people a the Quotable are hanging up their quills, and the site no longer functions as it used to. To make sure I don’t lose online reprsentation of this enviable win, I’ve decided to publish the prompt and my winning entry here on my own website.

The prompt was “…it was Greek to me.” — William Shakespeare

And here is my (winning) entry:

The palaeographer scratched his head, confused. The slab of granite sat front and centre of the table, surrounded by aged tomes and yellowed, dog-eared books. These letters… there was no doubt; he’d definitely seen them before. But if the carbon dating was accurate, these pre-dated any written language he’d heard of by over four thousand years. He checked the paperwork again. It was conclusive.
“We have unearthed something here” he muttered to his assistant “The symbols on this tablet pre-date Ancient Egyptian, Sumarian even ”
“But isn’t that…”
“Yes” he interrupted; excitement and wonder etched into his face “it’s Greek.”

 

Who knows, one day I may take this and make it into something a little more substantial; for now, I’m just keeping this as a personal record!

Blog

Welcome to the blog

February 27, 2014

Welcome to the new site and blog for writer JD Pawson. This blog is all about what inspires me and generally my thoughts on the world.

Check back in soon for posts on books, movies, technology television shows, music, photography and travel.

Blog

The Woman In Black

June 25, 2012

We went to watch the woman in black on stage on Saturday night at the fortune theatre. I had heard that it was pretty scary and cleverly done, so really looked forward to it. Thankfully it didn’t disappoint.

the woman in blackThe story begins quite slowly – the main character, an older man and retired solicitor has sought the help of a young actor to help him to tell his story – a true story from his younger days that he feels he must tell his family in order to purge himself of it and finally put it to rest. These two men will play out the entire story with the young actor taking on the main character’s role and the older (whose story it is) playing out all those that he met on his journey. The tone is light and comical in places to start, instilling a false sense of security. Hearing the story through the actors in this way is a little jarring to begin as you feel yourself getting into the actual story just as it is stopped abruptly for the actors to discuss how they are acting it out. But again this all adds to the suspense and intrigue.

I won’t go into much more detail about the actual story than that, as I wouldn’t want to write any spoilers. But what I will say is that the lighting and sound effects were fantastic, the woman in black herself was very scary and moved as though she was floating.You could feel the suspense building around the entire room, as people held their breath and waited for whatever the next shock would be – and it didn’t get stale; I for one was unable to guess where the woman in black would appear next.

At times you felt everyone in the audience physically and audibly jump. My wife in fact threw her water in shock at one point – the man sat on her other side was very forgiving, thankfully.

I know I’ve not gone into much detail here, but let’s face it no-one likes to know the ending of these sort of things. A really great evening – a fantasticly spooky and jump-filled performance. I would suggest to anyone to go and see it – but make sure you take a friend with you.

Blog

My silence is broken

January 21, 2011

Well its been a while since my last post… a long while…. but not without good reason. I am delighted to say that I’ve been particularly busy in my personal life, specifically getting ready to become a father for the first time!

Understandably (I would argue) my online presence has suffered a little. However, I now have a date to shoot for to finish the first draft of my novel. I don’t imagine that I’ll have much free time after the arrival of little ‘un, so I’m going to attempt to get the first draft finished within the next 6 months – a difficult feat I should imagine with all the other things whizzing through my head at the moment.

I’ll be posting updates on progress as and when I can. As of this moment, I am almost at the 25,000 word mark, but I barely feel I’ve scratched the stories surface. Watch this space…

Blog

Travelersible… coming soon to a monitor near you

July 5, 2010

 

Travelersible, my new retrospective travel blog will be coming very soon.

The blog will look at my adventures travelling round the world on my trip from 2007-2008… in reverse. You will be able to follow my trip backwards from arriving safely home in 2008 to the day of departure in 2007, with entries from my journals from end to start, to see how the trip changed me.

Watch this space for more info…

TwitterFacebookLinkedInRSS Feed
Blog

Money: the root of all evil?

July 2, 2010

 

Well after undertaking the online video course at the Derby University Creative Exchange and uploading my interview with PLNG creator Sonia Thompson, I decided to dig out an old video from Uni concerning University fees and student debt and get it up on the web. It’s looooooong, was a bit of a rush job (I believe we found out during the lecture that we would be recording that day) and my interview skills aren’t quite BBC standard, but it is mine none-the-less!

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggNCKM_qu_U]

 

Blog

Quarter of a century… all down hill from here apparently. At least I made the most of it.

June 30, 2010

 

Well I officially passed the mid twenties mark this weekend, having reached the ripe old age of 25. I feel more mature already.

I celebrated with my wife, my dad and his wife. We had a lovely day in the sun with a couple of drinks at the Marriot in Breadsall and The Abbey in Darley Abbey – great place for a sunny afternoon drink.

We then visited Darley’s restaurant, and I have to say had probably one of the greatest meals of my life.

The pricing does reflect the quality of the place, but while many restaurants producing this type of high class food might get above themselves (with snooty waiters snorting in discontent at you – a lowly imbecile that doesn’t know what a talagio bon-bon is), Darley’s manage to keep their feet firmly on the ground… which is handy for reaching the hob I imagine.

A leisurely three courses with wine, coffee and petit-fours was a wonderful way to wave goodbye to 24.

Check them out here: www.darleys.com

 

Blog

A near miss

June 21, 2010

 

Well, I’ve not posted for a while… primarily because I’ve not had the time. This is not because I’ve been more busy than usual, oh no. Its because its been taking me longer to write, use a mouse and, well, just about everything else after my fall from my bike.

Cycling to work one Friday (week before last) I was minding my own business, using the road as a sensible cyclist does when a cycle path is not available. Out of a sidestreet, screaming like a banshee from the depths of hell came a car, a car seemingly without brakes, being driven by a blind man with a lead foot. I acted quickly, having 3 choices:

  1. Get hit by a car…. probably not a valid choice, I’ve seen those adverts with the little twisted up girl going all backwards
  2. Cycle into oncoming traffic… see option one, but probably with more cracking bones
  3. Fall off

With options 1 and 2 thoroughly out of the question, option three rang through my head like the correct answer on an 80’s gameshow “DINGDINGDING! We have a winner!!!”

So I fell. As graceful as an aircraft coming in to land too quickly and too low and smashing up its undercarriage, I landed on my right hand and arm… tarmac running across my fingers at around 15 miles per hour. Quickly, parts of my hand felt rather cold, since they were no longer wearing any nice warm flesh. Yummy.

Looking up, I caught sight of the car. At least they’d stopped to see I was ok… wait, hold on, they’re off again… lovely. They’d stopped long enough to check I wasn’t dead, but had seen enough and made a hasty exit. To add insult to injury (literally in this case) they’d given me as much respect as a dog they’d just run over. I imagine their conversation would have been something like:

Driver: “He’s got up! Phew, he’ll be ok!” (starts to put car in gear)
Passenger: (imagine a procoscious child): “But I heard that dogs do that while they’re in shock and drag themselves off somewhere quiet and die later”
Driver: “SHUT UP, HE’S FINE” (wheels spin, car speeds away)

Anyway, my hand is ok now – thankfully no bones broken, so its back to the keyboard. Now that I have use of it again I will be sure to put it to good use if I ever see that car again, particularly the middle finger.

I always try to look at the positive side of things… in this case, I got a chance to relive part of my youth – what falling off your bike feels like. In my opinion, it doesn’t really change that much however old you get- you just get angry at other people rather than yourself for acting like idiots.