I produced a drum and bass track today. It’s called LickWid. I made a short video to accompany it, entitled Laptop Lives. It’s supposed to represent the idea that our lives can no longer be independent from technology and that… Or some other pretentious bullshit.
Here it is.
Sir Ian McKellen recently visited the performing arts centre in the town I live in. He was introducing one or two of his films and giving question and answer periods on them all. He was possibly one of the most interesting actors I’ve ever listened to. So nice was he that I have now decided to dub all that is pleasing to me a ‘McKellen’ situation. It will be an adjective, simply declarative of all that is good. Much like proclaiming that something is awesome.
Example: that’s so McKellen.
Use it yourself.
That is all.
We’ve gone and done it haven’t we? I am delighted to announce the latest member of the band. Well, not quite. We decided it would be a great idea to buy a synth to help beef up the live sound. I’m quite excited about having it in the band. Hopefully it should add another dynamic and be really fun to write music with.
I’m not sure yet as to what sort of function it will have yet, but as I understand it the three outfield players of the band (Sean, Rob and I) will probably all have a bash at it.
Woohoo!
Sadly Spud has broken his wrist, so he’s not drumming for a while. That means no live shows for at least six weeks 
. Never mind! There will be a lot of writing on the cards.
In other news, Cables has reached well over a thousand plays on MySpace which I’m happy about considering we have a modest 400 friends.
TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design which initally began in the 80′s as a conference to bring the fields together. Since then it has grown into a kind of forum for leading thinkers to project their ideas and achievements to the world.
Intellects like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett have both given TED talks over the years (to name but two of the hundreds), along with perpetrators of more art and design based fields.
I would like to point you in the direction of the website, where you can view most of the talks for free and generally peruse the themes at your leisure. They really are incredibly interesting and will help you keep you up to date with the frontiers of human development, including those of future technology, design, science and philosophy.
They will also allow you to bypass the vast majority of hefty reading involved in appearing intelligent… Or else direct you to further reading if you genuinely are.
Click here for the TED website!
Alongside this I would like to post links to a few of my personal favourite talks, because… well it’s my blog so screw you:
Daniel C Dennett’s Talk on being sexy
Daniel C Dennett’s Talk on Consciousness
Johnny Lee on Wii Remote Hacks
My brother Mathew, an artist, favours these TED Talks:
Scott McCloud on Understanding Comics
Don Norman on how Design Makes You Happy
We both agreed that this TED talk was particularly powerful:
Happy, happy days.
This will not be a review, since I consider myself to be in no way qualified to critique art. I can, however, provide commentary and my perspective on those who do find themselves opinionated enough to do so. So let us begin.
Last night I indulged myself in going to the cinema-gram for a viewing of Watchmen. I have to start by saying that I have not yet read the graphic novel and that I found the movie to be absolutely stunning. Immediately, there will be people stroking their imaginary, prepubescent jowl tresses and sneering at me. They will wonder how on Earth I can possess a valid opinion on the movie without having read the source material. I say to those people that it is my view that the two must be viewed as seperate works. Essentially, they are both different interpretations of the same source material. After all, how many of us would read the script of a film or play before going to watch it and then make a negative comment if either slightly deviated from it?
I do not view the movie as an attempt to transfer the graphic novel onto the screen. It is simply a cinematographic realisation of the same idea.
With that said, I was pleasantly surprised at how many metaphorical layers of meaning the story holds. It was a much more satisfying watch than the majority of Hollywood “super-hero” movies. I don’t even think I would classify it as a super-hero movie. It’s a social commentary disguised as such.
It contains a plethora of scientific references that will keep physicists and chemists foaming at their respective mouths, as well as a host of philosophical issues that kept me thinking for the rest of the evening.
Besides, the sex scene was hot.
All in all, if you haven’t yet seen it, go now! And you certainly owe it to yourself to see Dr Manhattan’s gigantic, blue… Death ray.
Whilst joblessness can be depicted as a bowel churning, fist clench inducing moral sin, I have found it to be the source of a wonderful epiphany. As I was roaming around the house last week and indulging in what can only be described as “fridge gazing” an idea for a science fiction story hit me! Thus, I started work on it right away and am thoroughly enjoying it. I’m working on some character development exercises at the moment and hope to get a chapter draft sorted out soon.
I might even post some excerpts. We’ll see how it goes.
It's my favourite...
One of my very good friends has a cousin. He might well be her favourite cousin. I’ve met him on one or two occassions but I only know him via my friend. The point of the matter is that he takes incredibly inspiring photographs. For the purposes of keeping this anonymous (and not offending all of her other cousins, of course) I shall merely provide a link to his work.
I won’t name names…
Oh ok, it’s Tim…
Tim Jones…
he’s probably not even her favourite…
Anyway… CLICK
The band I’m in (We Are Band) recently passed an audition in front of a panel of judges to be involved with a show called Live and Unsigned. It’s sponsored by Vodafone and is partially covered by the ITV network. The top prize is £20,000 investment. Winner!
