Category: Uncategorized

Remember all that tape stock I bought a couple of weeks ago? Here’s what it looks like now. Yikes. First off: slapped wrist that not all of it is labeled. Oops. Also, I’m going to have to assign sequential tape numbers… but hey, that’s what spine labels are for, right? The good news is that most of these tapes only have five to ten minutes’ material on them… the bad news is that about five of them are genuinely full. Mind you, DVCAM – they fill up at 40 minutes, so it could be worse. The statistics so far, including the pilot from a few months ago, are:

• Tapes used: 41
• Films shot by students: 17 (±1)
• Films shot by @Bristol staff: 1
• Films shot by Glasgow Science Centre staff: 2
• Films shot by me: 8

I’m going to cart all the gear to the BIG Event in Manchester next week, so hopefully we’ll break past 30 films. I doubt I’ll manage to get them all edited before we run out of days for this stage of the project, but nevertheless – there’s enough material here to do an update a week for half a year.

Now, not all of it is great. In particular, the shoe plates haven’t arrived for my tripods yet, so there’s lots of wobbly handheld, with the emphasis on the ‘wobbly’ rather than the ‘held,’ but a few of the films are absolute gems. The wild west Coke/Pepsi fizz-off, for example, will make your day when you finally see it.

I’ll post much more about how fab the workshops were, and how wonderful and creative and hard-working and sincere the kids were, and all that. For now: we had a blast, and there’s some cracking stuff in that pile of tapes.

Gia neatly summarises everything you need to know about video blogs… in a video blog post. If you’ve been gritting your teeth through the ongoing train-crash that is Rocketboom, and maybe you’ve seen Hope is Emo from the (still-the-only-good-thing-out-there?) Ask a Ninja folks – this is very funny.

If, however, it makes no sense, keep an eye on Gia’s blog anyway. I’m interested to see what she ends up doing.

This morning I had cause to do a quick Wikipedia lookup on Samurai. Which, inevitably, led me to an article about Korean Turtle ships, the first ironclads – dating from, would you believe, the early 15th. Century. The article suffers from some dodgy editing, but it all becomes a bit more clear if you also read up on the contemporaneous Panokseon vessels.

Fascinating period of history. Particularly when it turns out that there’s considerable controversy over the design of the ships, and whether they were truly ironclads at all.

An all-time classic on Maopost today – the daily vintage Chinese propaganda poster site, delivered fresh to a Dashboard widget, remember – ‘Vigorously promote pig-raising business.’

Now, can somebody knock me up a Dashboard widget for Daily Dose of Imagery, please?

I’ve mentioned Edward Tufte’s books here before; he has a new one out, and Kottke has some lovely notes about it. Interestingly, it seems to be something of a cult amongst the digerati, in the same sort of way that Moleskine notebooks are. As Kottke points out, however, that doesn’t make it mainstream – the book is self-published, and there are precious few reviews kicking around. My cursory inspection of Google turned up precisely none. Which is mildly frustrating, since amateur reviews tend to focus on how uncommonly beautiful the presentation is, making only passing reference to the content.

I’ve tried before to buy The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in the UK, and have failed miserably – Amazon eventually cancelled my order – and I have a sneaking fear that Beautiful Evidence may be in the same boat. It’s an import job, it seems. When Tufte’s book are available here, they tend to be sold at a spectacular markup.

Perhaps I should think to dropping the $150 for all four of his data visualisation books, and see how far ‘postpaid’ goes?

[update: hold the front page! IT specialists Holborn Books claim to have pretty much all of Tufte’s ouvre in stock, at sensible prices – there’s even a section right on the front page of their site. They’re in Hampshire, not Holborn, but I won’t hold that against them.]

Terrific – and terrifically bizarre – article in the New Yorker about hip-hop station Hot 97, carpenters’ unions, the Mob, and a man who got shot in the arse, did a radio session, and then went to hospital. Probably.

(via Kottke, I think.)

This is a terrific idea for a community art event – photographing Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte with real people. Article about the event; more photos; via iMark‘s sidebar links.

Interesting (if you’re interested in informal education, I guess) interview with a designer from Mattel, talking about HotWheels and play patterns and so on. Via Slashdot, of all places.

Meanwhile:

• Fingers crossed I have an interview in London next week, for a job in Dublin. Ooooh!
• I’m making what I hope are the final changes to the scripts for the Ri Lectures tour to the Far East. Andy and the props are already heading out, but it seems lots of things rather fell apart yesterday. Currently, for example, there isn’t a GM researcher for the Japanese lectures. Which is mildly catastrophic, since we spent ages over Christmas trying to think of an alternative ending to the lectures and failed. I don’t think there’s much I can do about it; they’ll just have to find someone. Eek.
• I’ve been invited to join Vox, Six Apart’s new social network-cum-blogging service. I doubt I’ll use it much – I’ve a fundamental aversion to people making advertising revenue from my writing, unless I’ve been paid for it – but it’s an interesting place to explore. I’m quern.vox.com – let me know if you’re on the system and we can do the ‘friends’ thing. Or is that gauchely 2005, now? I forget. Oh, and I think I can invite people in – let me know if you want a play.
• I need to buy trousers. Today. In Chester. I’m not sure why you need to know that.
• James’ Variety Show – now with correct spelling of the host’s name and links to most of the acts – is tomorrow night, in New York. Please, somebody go, then blog about it to tell the world how marvelous it was.

That is all.

Three of four schools’ workshops down, and about 12 films made – maybe 13 if the aeroplane boys pulled something out of the bag in the closing minutes yesterday. I’ve a huge pile of editing ahead of me to finish everything off, and I’m rather looking forward to that.

I’ve also done some shooting with the good folks at @Bristol and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Those days weren’t quite what I’d hoped for in terms of numbers of people involved, but we got something out of them and they were useful nonetheless. MSIM has a magnificent engine shed with real, working live steam engines, which as you can imagine is something of a sauna in weather like this. There are all sorts of spooky weird machines around, so we shot a Prisoner-pastiche chase sequence with a polystyrene tile glider.

Last night I was sitting on the balcony of my chums Daniel and Mary, watching the sun go down over the Cheshire plains, with a cold beer, starting to cut that sequence… giggling until I think the neighbours were rather worried.