About The Site

Pandemonia's old. In web terms, it's paleolithic, Web 0.1. Bits of it predate the original Netscape browser, if I remember correctly (I used Mosaic to access it in those days), and in its very first form it couldn't use new-fangled things like HTML tables or nice image placement options because they just didn't exist, or because not everyone could render or see them. And even though it was called Pandemonia, I didn't actually buy the pandemonia.com domain name until several years after I started it (about the time I began hosting it with Berkeley's excellent but long-gone DNAI, IIRC). It was spruced up a bit over the next few years, but it hasn't really changed much since then, because...

Pandemonia's irrelevant. It's basically been superseded over the past decade by my more-specific web sites such as HamishReid.com, Around Jingletown, Photolalia, The California Driving Guide, Yankee Alpha Foxtrot Bravo, etc., etc. ad nauseam. I keep it going as a sort of living fossil because a) bits of it are a sometimes-amusing look at what might have passed for a state-of-the-art photography website in the early 1990's; b) (and this amazes me) there are still a large number of incoming links from other sites to images and articles here that I don't want to gratuitously break; c) there's some content here I don't want to lose or disown completely (and one day I might actually do something useful with it again); and, d) my earlier learning-to-fly diary (and some other bits and pieces that are almost current) are hosted under this domain as well. So I maintain the site fitfully and use it basically as a nexus for all my other sites (or most of them anyway — I have a few...); bear that general lack of relevance in mind if you explore Pandemonia further...

About Me

I am an obsessive photographer of the familiar currently living in Oakland, California. I work as a software professional and (sometimes) as a photographer (with my photography and design business Mistrale); I used to play guitar and bass in legendary fab Bay Area Modern Pop band Handsome Poets (a long way from the punk and new wave of a former life); I'm also a private pilot flying out of Oakland airport (KOAK).

I've spent most of my adult life living in Sydney, London, or the San Francisco Bay Area, and I'm what the US Government quaintly calls an "alien" (i.e. I have a funny accent). Maybe one day I'll have the operation and become a US citizen. Maybe not.

For Americans mainly: my name is pronounced "hay-mish" (the "a" is long as in "same"), and is the Scots version of the Irish "Seamus" and English "James". I've lost count of the number of times Americans either mis-pronounce my name (mangling it into something like "hah-meesh") or tell me it's Yiddish for comfortable or homely (yes, I know this. I've known this since I was a wee bairn. Alright already!)

My studio is in the Jingletown district of East Oakland, in an old factory down by the Estuary. You can contact me via email, or you can send me snail mail via USPS at PO Box 12941, Berkeley, CA 94712, USA.