just too good - having used an ikea clothes hanger-cum-rubberband-rifle-remake, what is the prize? an ikea tape and instructions on how to fashion your own rosette.
just too good - having used an ikea clothes hanger-cum-rubberband-rifle-remake, what is the prize? an ikea tape and instructions on how to fashion your own rosette.
its a strange day when you look at what you and your lady are reading for fun… and find they’re both developers books. suffice to say, programming in objective-c isn’t quite as much fun as the developer’s bible, but then again when the summer has included bulgakov’s the master and margarita nothing can quite compare… satan kicking up a ruckus in atheist 1930’s moscow. with a talking, cigar smoking black cat. and historical passages involving pontius pilate.
diary | 25 jul 2006 | tagged: errata of life · code
this week’s ritual, walk down the canalside park and watch sunset against this bronze clad hall-of-residence-par-example
shadow and light through trees, leaves fluttering… gaze captivated: its summer
riding a bike from bow to kew is long, but its the traffic that really kills it - there’s no bike motorway. rush hour just makes it painful. no taking the bike on the north london line at that time either, so what else could there be? ah - house to house via the canal and river paths. may have taken twice as long as you wind about this way and the other, but it was a pleasure to ride… and allowed me to watch the sunset, not the car in front.
how did i fix my camera? by dropping it on the kitchen floor. i’m curiously outraged yet delighted.
i have a lovely kyocera sl300r, a ninja spy camera from the design gods. then it’s exposure suddenly lost the plot, bright sunny days became near black through its lens. six months later, with the surprisingly capable camera inside my sony ericsson w800i phone holding the fort, i finally trawl the internet thinking there may be a firmware flash for it. deep in a japanese website i find it… load it… flash it… to no effect. a beautiful brick. so, its not software… its got to be hardware. and what can you do with a micro-engineered, sealed product? drop it. i put it in its semi-soft case, and dropped it flat on tiles. and the damn thing was back to normal. six months out of action for want of a drop? i know i didn’t drop it around when it went wrong. don’t believe it. but hurrah!
maybe you had to be there, but this made me laugh. so well to-do round that part of the north downs, even the burnt out cars are quads.
i’ve resurrected my old, beloved, mountain bike (clockwork orange, lotus colours, perfect), and finally got out of london on a solo, soul day of me, countryside and not much else. too many quaint picture postcard scenes to mention, but here, a spot of perfection. not a sign of civilisation to be seen, and a descent into the woods beckoning.
somehow combined an unnatural trend for waking up at 7.30am and just getting up and on with things (three weeks now - crazy, but going to bed when you’re tired has to be key in there somewhere), with spending most nights at the pub. louis was 22, then burning man planning, then my roof leaked, then it was a job interview, then it was brussels inspired community drinks, then lara’s birthday, then up at 8.30 for my day off to meet mark, have breakfast out, introduce him to vjing, then meet adam curry et al in the pub for a podcasters meet up - all about jo and kosso and the def leppard tour connection - and then more pubbage with still-standing marathon runners. can i go to bed now?
a double-take moment at the hospital. a front door where there should be a lift: where’s dirk gently when you need him?
i just had to share this, girlfriend and blog separate or not. so, she has to spend a week in a hospital ward. out of the whole of the NHS, where does she land? in a room by herself with the view of choice. check it.
artist hospitality, northern style: fish and chips on the pier. damn fine. nourishing ‘northern sole’, warm clothes, bracing wind, and a victorian seafront just round the corner. surfers, even. james came out from the chippie ecstatic - he’d just heard someone place an order with “fish and chips twice”, instant timejump.
event, deadlines, stress, allsuch over - time to escape the urban condition, honour the title of my piece. the 2020 crew catch the metro to “the coast”… and the sign even says that. its an escape one-two, in fact… airport or coast. i like.
diary | 05 mar 2006 | tagged: errata of life · vj · 20/20 · name · novak
breakfast on the day of 2020 at the council cafe set in the manor house cunningly just down the road from the two-up-two-down terraces i’m staying in. no escape from the cctv iconography though, from dreams of cctvs cameras outlined in vj clips to these in the landscaped gardens. somebody thinks painting them green makes them invisible, acceptable?
diary | 04 mar 2006 | tagged: errata of life · vj · rbn_esc · 20/20
ok so nothing too extravagant, but had a day when a salary certainly helps.
saw cirque du soleil at the royal albert hall, had a three course meal, and rounded it all off with brokeback mountain at the cinema.
really interesting seeing ‘alegria’ then brokeback mountain. worlds apart, and for me, the film was far the better… which is kinda against the point of going to see a live spectacle. the cirque du soleil show was stunning and quite amazing, but didn’t go anywhere, was all for the moment. i guess with all the production they invest, i was expecting something to hold it together, or at least accelerate towards a grand finale. brokeback mountain is quite the opposite - quiet, emotional, it stays with you.
its all more experience pushing me towards the idea of visuals with meaning, there’s a definite parallel between cirque du soleil and visuals as eyecandy…
just had one of those days that feels like a week in itself. got up, got on the train, wrote a job application, arrived in birmingham, had a two hour meeting with lawyers, left that and met max and had a coffee then a pint, got back on the train, arrived in kentish town, spent the evening immersed in my audiovisual project with a musician, then missed the last tube back home yet miraculously the double nightbus challenge worked a treat.
lots to follow up. urgh. and this all isn’t helping my cold…
the photo is from the new costa coffee shack in the bullring, its quite an amazing little construction, not just sculptured but with a beautiful use of materials. the pub after, the rainbow, is a perfect place too, and even had a massive munchbreak-esque band setting up for a two day gig…
diary | 08 feb 2006 | tagged: errata of life · photo
saw mode selektor at the rex with jess and co, and had a funny conversation about performance… where we’ve gone from orchestras to the single dj, and from instrumentalism to, er, dancing: mode selektor flip faders as they bounce around, its not quite the same thing.
and no matter how many laptop live sets i see now, in my head its still a battle as to just what a live, solo, audiovisual performance could or should be… but there’s only one way to find out, and its going to be march 4th.
diary | 21 jan 2006 | tagged: errata of life · vj
walking around montmartre - a rite of passage for me, you know you’re in paris then - checking old haunts from holidays past i saw this stencilled in the pavement… much in the vein of one of the animations in rbn_esc: ‘who watches the watchers’
…but oh la la the world needs to rediscover the spirit these were made with. it touches my soul. the stations of the jubilee line extension hopefully will last like these have, utilitarian monuments to a richer world.
…that i seem to get most work done on trains? anyway, eurostar all good. i hate airports. out the house, on the tube, onto eurostar, a la metro et voila. makes paris probably easier than newcastle, where i’ll be in a few weeks performing the audiovisual premiere of rbn_esc. this narrative lab presentation will be online soon, for you budding vj theorists.
diary | 19 jan 2006 | tagged: errata of life · *spark · narrative lab