Month: March 2006

Is March always this busy? Having read the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and then jumped feet-first into Creative Commons licensing, last week (crumbs, was it only last week?) I ended up at a school in Dingwall doing a day-and-a-half video workshop. The students (a.) were terrific, (b.) were patient with my patently inept workshop planning, and (c.) worked like stink to get their films presentable. They slaved over hot iBooks right up until the deadline, bless ’em. Huge fun, very silly, and four inches of snow overnight merely added to the entirely surreal quality of the trip.

This week I did not-really-the-same stuff with a group of staff at the Glasgow Science Centre – who were, frankly, embarrassingly good at filming things and probably didn’t need me in the first place. But like all rookie teachers, I’ll claim their success was down to my instructional talent. Obviously. Then today I finally held a running camera again, shooting a couple of pieces with the award-winning Ben.

So now I have nine films hot for the editing, and it’s going to be another busy week. Meanwhile, it looks like I might be going to Bangalore in the next month or so, in a this-must-be-a-wind-up-surely? sort of way. For work, I’ll have you know. All very strange.

So: busy, happy, all a bit weird and unsettling but (mostly) in a good way. And I haven’t even mentioned the wolves in the walls yet. Nor my attempts to convince James to have business cards printed reading ‘James Gordon, Vaudeville Producer and Shark-Hunter.’ It would actually be true, you see.

Anyway, I’ll try to catch up with posts soon. I know you’ve missed me. Even if you didn’t send me cards and flowers for my birthday. Ingrates, tsk.

This is a year old, but I was reminded of it recently: cute Flikr group of people who’ve set the desktop picture of their Macs to replicate the physical background behind them. You… well, you pretty much have to see it for yourself.

Now if somebody could do this in real-time with a TrackIR headset…

One morning a couple of years ago, I awoke to find a small snake curled up beside my bed. Since I did not then, and do not now, own a snake, this was something of a surprise.

As of today, however, I’d be ready for it. How so? Because now, I’m insured. Today (well… yesterday) I took out performing artist’s public liability and employer’s liability insurance. Activities covered are principally video and film production, workshop/training, science experiments and demonstrations, and so on. But a range of other activities are also included… including ‘snake charming.’

I don’t think I realised previously how important it would be to me to be insured for injuries incurred by members of the public as a result of my snake charming act going badly wrong. But now that I am covered, I find myself inescapably drawn to the ‘reptiles’ section of eBay.

Tragically, there are specific exclusions for knife throwing acts and high trapeze. Drat.

Brief notes, in no particular order: Somebody has sent me a large case of extremely obscure beers. I don’t know who, but I’m extremely grateful. I’ve only heard of three of them, and the rest look wonderfully obscure and marvelous. How lovely, if not a little unexpected.

Meanwhile: oh bother. Guess where I’m going on Wednesday. At least I’m on the train…

Busy busy busy. More later.

Why have I not heard of this game before?

An update on what I’ve been up to of late. A week ago, I had a meeting with some NESTA folks about this project we’re trying to do (that’s the one I haven’t explained here – I will, promise). We met in York, in – of all places – Betty’s tea room, and discussed some of the fine detail over fat rascals. It was a useful reality check for me: it’s all well and good my coming up with a scheme, writing a large budget, and saying ‘We should do this! It’ll be great!’, but does it really stand any chance of happening?

Well, yes and no, but mostly ‘yes.’ It’s clearly the sort of thing they might go for, and they’re extremely enthusiastic and supportive. However, NESTA itself is going through some changes at the moment, and there’s some uncertainty about how their self-perceived rôle might change in the short term. So the timing is a bit iffy. However, the project scales rather well. That is, we could go huge… or quite small. So, given the enthusiasm, I’m reasonably confident that something will happen. Fingers crossed because it’s still on a bit of a knife-edge, but I’m optimistic.

So it’s been full steam ahead since then. The first product of the pilot project is finished, more-or-less, and next week I’m heading up to a school in Dingwall to run a workshop for a day or so. It’s also looking hopeful that something will happen with the Glasgow Science Centre, and with Ben.

This week has mostly been planning, including getting seriously stuck into copyright law and Creative Commons licenses. A slightly unexpected twist of the project is that I’m going to be introducing 13 year-olds to intellectual property issues, which is surprisingly fun. If I had to make a prediction, I’d say that they’ll find it straightforward, but their teachers will flounder. We’ll see. It’s at least provoked some interesting discussions with and within NESTA about open licensing, and there’s already some lasting value in what we’ve done there.

Friday saw a welcome change of pace, as I joined SMG again for a day working as a camera operator. It didn’t occur to me until we started that I’ve never done this before – I’ve always been in production, setting everything up, gathering props and writing scripts. I’ve never just turned up on the day and pointed a camera at stuff. And you know what? It’s a hoot. I’m not a half-bad cameraman, either.

It’s easy to become bogged down in all the nonsense and politics and bullshit of TV, and to forget the central truth: larking about with a camera, making films, is a blast. I think I’d started to forget how much I enjoy it. On some levels, this year is about my rediscovering that sense of fun, by opting out of some of the conventional politics.

So while it’s all feeling terribly precarious at the moment, if it comes together I think it’s going to be a wonderful year. Scary, challenging, and doubtless there’ll be moment of appalling awfulness – but emotions more raw than ‘frustration’ are what it’s all about.

Waaaay back in the day (1998, apparently), an amusing little website popped up called ‘Eric Emotes.’ In which: a chap called Eric would attempt to convey an emotion of his readers’ choice, via captured video stills. It was silly. It was – usually – pretty bad. It made everyone laugh, rather a lot. It’s also still going, in the form of ‘Eric Conveys an Emotion.’

Best of all, it’s still making me laugh. Scroll down the list on the left, and tell me that ‘Magic trick gone horribly wrong,’ ‘Unemployed,’ ‘Computer just ate my 20 page research project,’ ‘Lucy pulls the football away’ and ‘Eric as a chick magnet’ aren’t comic genius.

But now, there’s a new game in town. It is: Ask a Ninja. It has as way to go yet before it covers the sheer scope of Eric’s oeuvre, but these early stages are promising. I’m particularly fond of the explanation of ‘podcasting’ that concludes ‘we are a factory for feeding apple pies to whales.’

Such is the usual defence of people angling to commit serious liberty infringements, against the journalists and ‘lilly-livered liberals’ who have the temerity to question their intentions.

It’s an excellent defence mostly because it’s a thinly-veiled attack, and also because counter-arguments tend to involve phrases like ‘ad hominem’ and ‘specious,’ that aren’t as snappily memorable. With the result that people don’t know what they mean, either.

Which is why, of course, we’ve reached the stage of having an ostensibly left-wing government on the verge of invoking the parliament act to push through legislation that would force (OK, compel us to receive with our passports) identification cards that are, on the face of it, of stuff all use to anyone beyond whichever IT company wins the (lucrative) contract to implement the darned things.

We’ve reached this point because nobody understands the argument against, except – it seems – the Lords. You can read up on the whole mess care of the Guardian’s Special Report on ID Cards, but if you just want the core of the argument against, here’s my version:

I don’t like this sort of legislation precisely because I might, at some point in the future, have something to hide. Whatever that might be could, in principle, be of sufficient weight to bring down the government. This, ladies and gentlemen, is critical: we have to be able to collect information damaging to our political leaders, because otherwise, we’ll never get them out if they go off the rails in a big way.

It is the job of the people to watch the government, not the other way around. That isn’t terrorism, it’s democracy.

In 1970 British Rail patented a design for a flying saucer. However, this fact is not ‘recently uncovered,’ as the lax journos at BBC News Online would have you believe. Tsk.

The document was perfectly well known back in the mid-90s, when Patent Office staff showed me a copy. Until about three months ago, I even hosted the text and illustrations online, at my old Demon space. I’d even be able to prove this, if the Internet Archive was talking to me right now.

What I’ve never managed to track down is the fabled patent for a cat-powered anti-ballistic missile defense system. The Patent Office’s new search system is good, but not that good.

[update: harrumph. Also on The Register and Slashdot. It’s apparently also in the Guardian today, but you know what? I just can’t be bothered to look.]

Walking through the park this afternoon, I saw this little fella. And about ten of his pals. And about three of their girlfriends, who were looking a little harassed, poor souls. What I don’t know is:

1. How they were finding their way over a large hill and down to the lake, &
2. How amphibians cope with nearly-frozen water. Fish I understand – only the top surface is frozen, and that insulates the deeper water – but air-breathers? Won’t they freeze?