one thing after another

BLECH!

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 08:18:15 GMT

so.
bristol city council are committed to reducing the amount of rubbish sent to landfill. this is very commendable, and i agree wholeheartedly with this policy.
the way they are doing this is as follows:
they provide every household with a black recycling box, for cans, plastic bottles, newspaper, plastic bags, glass, that kind of thing. collected weekly.
they provide every household with an organic waste bin, for leftover food, vegetable offcuts, things like that, anything compostable. collected weekly, goes to a giant compost bin somewhere.
then there's the main wheelie bin, for stuff that doesn't compost or recycle, collected now only fortnightly.
all well and good. there's a few problems i can see though.
like if people don't use the organic waste bin, their rotting organic waste is going to sit in their wheelie bin for up to 2 weeks, attracting vermin and causing a Smell. i would imagine the fortnightly collection of the main bin is probably in part to encourage people to use the recycling services, but still there's people (like my housemate James) who won't, just because it's easier to throw everything in the one big bin.

anyway, on to my main subject, which is our organic waste bin. the setup is that you get one small bin for your kitchen, and a larger one to keep outside. when the small one's full you empty it into the large one. so far, so good.
the other day i went to empty the kitchen rot-box into the mega-rot-box. i opened the mega-rot-box, and saw a number of maggots crawling around on the decaying shit inside.
"blech" i thought to myself, and shuddered. i tipped in the new garbage, and continued with my day.
yesterday i moved the mega-rot-box from where it had been kept (in what's essentially our back yard, although it's on a rooftop) to outside the street door, so that the bin men could collect it. i observed that a number of probably pigeons had shat all over the mega-rot-box, making it shitty and disgusting on the outside. out of curiosity, i opened the lid, from a safe distance, with my foot.
inside was a seething mass of maggots, filling approximately a third of the bin. i could see nothing else inside other than maggots. from the bin emanated The Foulest Stench Ever, it smelt of something dead, that had then been shat on by someone with dysentry.
i nearly vommed in the street.

later that evening, after i had asked both james and alex to empty the kitchen rot-box into the mega one, as it was full again, and after both had refused point blank, myself and billiam went to do it.
the smell had got worse during the day, as it had been quite sunny. also, the maggots were making some kind of exodus, and were crawling out from around the edge of the lid and plopping onto the pavement.
billiam opened the lid of the mega-rot-box with a stick. from within came the sound of thousands and thousands and thousands of maggots crawling over and over each others' slimy maggoty bodies. in case you're wondering what it sounds like, it's a sort of wet rustling sound. truly horrorsome.
i tipped in the fresh waste with a shudder, and we retreated into the flat, pausing only to throw the stick in the wheelie bin. as we left the scene, maggots covered the pavement outside the flat, crawling out into the night.

this morning i woke up at 6am, having had a nightmare about maggots.

actually..

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:02:11 GMT

the week of rehearsals went very well in the end.
it was a bit stressful sometimes having so many people in the flat, as i may have mentioned below, but it was all ok in the end.
i wasn't really around for much of the rehearsals, i thought it'd be best if i just let alex get on with directing the actors without me watching everything. i saw the last rehearsal before the actors left though, and it's looking really really good.

i also got the flyers back from the printers, and they look brilliant. 10,000 of them, which might be more than we can actually give out, but it's better to have too many than to have too few, i think.

also, last week a photographer came round to shoot some publicity stills for the play. his name is phil nicholls and he's a very nice man who did these shots for us for free. they turned out fantastic, we're really pleased with them.

in other news, i still have no job, and to be honest, i think there's very little prospect of finding one before edinburgh now. actually i realised we go up there in exactly two weeks..

updatezilla!

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:43:25 GMT

maaaaan.
i've been doing some video work for my friend zac who wanted visuals for when his band played live. fine. except he gave me a week to do the work in. 40 minutes of visuals. they're playing tomorrow night. plus i've been busy with plenty of other stuff (the play, looking for a job, house stuff, writing) and well skipping to the end, i didn't really start until today. it's finished though! and it's fine as well.
composition is as follows: 50% video feedback, 35% psychelically false-coloured footage of the city of bristol, 14% the band's name on rainbow colour-shifting backgrounds, 1% black video.
the band's myspace page is here
i don't think i like myspace. i think it might be a sort of internet turd-pie.
hopefully the band won't completely hate the 40-minute acid trip i've made for them. zac said he'd sort me out with tickets to their gig tomorrow, but i might not go.
if i don't go, they can't lynch me afterwards.
if i can be bothered to do a compressed version, i might put it on youtube or something so you can see it.

production on the "the hood" is going ok. the flyers are ready to print, i got some quotes this afternoon. problem is that we need lots and lots of regular flyers, and then a much smaller number (like 700 or so) of special flyers which are exactly he same but also have a splash on saying "2 for 1 with this flyer". the actual cheapest way to do this is to print more regular flyers than we need, and have a rubber stamp made up with the "2 for 1" stuff on, and then i sit for an hour or so and stamp 700 flyers with the stamp. so i think that's what we will do.

front:

flyerfront_jpeg_small

rear:

flyerrear_jpeg_small

looks good, no?

the bad news is that one of our actors has a problem. he's in another play, and he was originally told this other play was on at 7pm, but it turns out it actually starts at 1.15pm, which is exactly when our play will finish. giving our actor 0 minutes to remove some fairly heavy makeup, run up the street to the other theatre, and get into costume ready to appear in this other play.
hopefully he can do it. we can try to make sure we start on time/early, and he's got about 10 minutes from the start of the other play.. plus their get-in time.. so more like 20-25 minutes. it ought to be ok, but it's a worry.

still unemployed. still spending more than i ought to be. particularly on t-shirts.
and drink.

on friday last i went out with some friends to a place called the bierkeller, it's a dirty rock club (they also have gigs there) full of weird people and under-age kids. i realise this generalisation of mine forces me into the "weird people" category, but fuck it.
anyway, i saw a man dancing like a robot. this entertained me all night. then we went and danced with him, but i think he was in too much of his own world to notice.

animal crossing on the ds is brilliant, although i wish i could make it work with my wireless network. i've messed with it quite a lot, and so far no dice.

HAHAHAHAHA alex just came home, and i put the dvd of the visuals in for him to see, and i've made a critical oversight on the dvd menu. where it should say "play visuals" it says "fuckmyass" because that's what the actual video file is called, because of the number of times i had to create a new project.
did i mention i had to edit in iMovie? i had to edit in iMovie. my copy of final cut pro doesn't work for some reason, and as for editing a 40 minute video in premiere pro on my old pc.. no chance.
anyway, fucking iMovie kept starting projects in NTSC format, and then weirdly changed my PAL projects into NTSC ones while i was working on them. hence "fuckmyass"
fuck shit fuck. i really can't go to the show now. they're going to put the dvd in, and my super-funny menu is going to appear, with it's scrolling banner of these images:

and underneath, it says "fuckmyass".
HAHAHHAHA i'm slightly hysterical.

games

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 22:27:50 GMT

the other day i bought a nintendo ds lite, and two games: animal crossing and trauma centre - under the knife.
so having played both games a bit, i am going to ramble on for pages and pages about them. well, mostly about animal crossing actually.
to be honest, i shouldn't have spent so much money, as i'm still unemployed, and haven't managed to find any kind of job, even a crap one. all the job agencies are useless. today i went round loads of shops, and offloaded some copies of my cv. tomorrow i'm doing cafes.
i'm getting low on funds because i've been forking out so much money on the play. more on that some other time.

i never bought the original nintendo ds because quite frankly it looked like a piece of shit. now they brought out one that looks nice, i decided to get one.
as previously mentioned, i got two games - first we have animal crossing: wild world.
anyone who played animal crossing on the gamecube will be familiar with the basic format, although there's some changes. actually, as i only know of one person who reads this and they're definitely familiar with animal crossing, i'll just lay out some of the differences. forgive me if this is old news.
- you arrive initially not by train, but by taxi. this means goodbye to rover the bothersome cat. driving the taxi is a familiar face from the gamecube version - kapp'n the sea turtle! yarr!
- there's only one user-owned house in the town, but up to four user characters can live there.
- no more personal gyroid assistants, you now save by climbing into bed in the attic of your house.
- the rubbish dump is now a recycle bin, and is located inside the town hall. the town hall is pretty good actually. pelly and that-bitch-phyllis, who ran the post office in the gamecube game, are now town hall clerks, and deal with not only mail, but also things like changing the town tune and providing feedback on your town's environmental situation (this means the wishing well is gone). tortimer lives in the town hall, but only comes out on special occasions.
- tom nook's shop no longer sells clothes, you now buy these from the able sisters tailor shop. the tailors also sells hats and accessories.
- the town is no longer divided into acres, so you don't get that slight pause when you move into a new acre.
- the camera view is less top-down, and moves with you so you see things recede into the distance beind you, and disappear over the horizon. i don't think i've explained that too well, but umm, i can't really do any better.
- the animals don't seem to constantly be badgering you to run errands for them to retrieve their camera/picture book/pokemon pikachu. actually they also seem to have less general chit-chat. so far the ones in my town seem to concentrate on giving me factual information about the town, and helpful tips.
- the museum is bigger! there's space for waaaaay more paintings and fossils and fish and insects. this is exciting! i've already caught three fish that didn't exist in the gamecube version (squid, clownfish and black bass, if you were wondering)
- also, the museum has a cafe in the basement, that serves coffee. i don't know what effect the coffee has on your character, as i haven't bought any yet. at 200 bells a cup, it's pretty steep.
- plus, the museum has an observatory on the roof! it's run by someone who is possibly Blathers' wife! you can look at stars and name your own constellations. coooooool!
- i presume you can still dig up gyroids, as i've seen them in animals' houses. i don't hav a shovel yet though, so can't confirm anything.
- the police station is gone. copper and booker are still here though - they're now gate guards. booker still looks after the lost property, and copper basically performs the function that porter the monkey used to - you speak to him if you want to go visiting other towns.
- no idea about wendel, sahara, gulliver, katrina. joan though must be knocking around, as tom nook can quote turnip prices.
- tom nook sells something called "medicine". i used some after being stung by bees, and it made my swollen face better.
- the lighthouse is gone :/ as is, of course, the dock.
- the notice board is better organised (it shows who posted things, which is good)
anyway, first impressions are pretty good, although i'd like a little more in the way of chatty interaction from the animals. i haven't really done any letter correspondence yet though (other than the advert that nook makes you send out when you first move in) so....
also i think the WiFi capability has a lot of potential, although i am having trouble getting mine to connect, i think i'm just too far from the router. i'll try again tomorrow because the router is in billiam's bedroom and he's in there at the minute.

moving on to trauma centre: under the knife...
this game is wicked. you get to be a surgeon! i've been excising tumours and suturing lacerations all evening. even funnier is watching my housemate james play the game, as he doesn't have the steadiest hand.
the story, while pretty decent, is pretty secondary to the real business of slicing patients open and fishing around in their guts.
fucking addictive.

photos!

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 17:17:29 GMT

grand pier
Originally uploaded by jadthetaff.

i finally got round to uploading all my photos from weston-super-mare, the crazy seaside resort near bristol.
most of them are pictures of arcade machines on the pier.
check them out here

il fait chaud

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:06:25 GMT

i went to the dentist.
i need 4 fillings and something called a "fissure sealant".
plus i had a "new patient's check-up" (twice the price of a regular check-up, and "clean & polish".
total cost: £465.
i'm getting the first two fillings done on monday, before the party. my face might still be numb and full of painkillers, causing me to slur and dribble my drink down my front, which should add something extra to the event.

toby the actor has a friend who's publishing a magazine during the festival, and we're getting some space in it, i think basically it's a small article/advert. i'm unclear on the details of this at the minute, hopefully i will find out more soon.
plus this friend has a flat we may be able to rent a room in for the week, though it depends on whether some other people want it for the whole festival, or something. we'll see. it'd be better than the campsite though.

today i went to the job agency, and they offered me a job in bristol prison working with paedophiles and rapists. if i don't get on this tefl course, i may take it.

i just sent out the invitations (read: text messages) to the people i'm asking to my birthday drinks tomorrow. if everyone i invited turns up (unlikely) then it will be a rather odd eclectic mix. there's at least one combination of people who actually have problems being in the same room. and, unusually, i'm not part of that combination. anyway, it might be alright.
before we go out for drinks, me and my flatmates plus one or two (most likely one) others are having a big dinner at home. we were planning to go out, but billiam and james have no money. so i'm going to spend all afternoon cooking a massive meal for everyone.
it's a bit strange, cooking your own celebratory birthday dinner, but i will quite enjoy it, plus none of the others can cook, so if i want a good meal, i have to make it.

half past pissing four. again.

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 03:40:32 GMT

i can't bloody sleep. and i need to sleep tonight because i have to actually get up tomorrow and do stuff. i have to go to the dentist for a check-up. i'm really not looking forward to this, because i last went to the dentist in 2002, and i'm convinced there's some stuff wrong with my teeth. at least 2 fillings, i reckon. maybe they'll want to remove a tooth or two.. hell.

this evening we had a read-through of "the hood" with toby, the lead actor. he's the only one who actually lives in bristol, which is why he was the only actor present. i read the other two parts, which was great fun. anyway from hearing the script read aloud it's become clear that some stuff needs to be changed a little, but overall it's pretty good.

also we recieved some more stuff from the theatre, just stuff for our flyer design, and a lighting plan, which will be useful. plus we now have a date/time for our technical rehearsal. it's at 11.30pm-1.30am on the friday before we open. as it stands right now, me and alex don't have any accommodation sorted for the friday, but i expect we can extend the campsite booking if we need to. we're hoping to stay with a friend of toby's though, in a flat. it's probably not actually going to cost any more than camping.

it's my birthday on thursday. i was originally intending to organise a big event to mark the occasion, but now i don't think i can be bothered. i think it's likely to end up with me and a limited number of close friends going out for a meal, then meeting anyone else that wants to go out at a bar or something.
then on friday a friend of mine is having a house party, which apparently is a formal, black tie function. ho hum, we'll see how it goes.
and on monday we are actually having a party in our flat! this is by no means a common occurrence - we last hosted a party on the 24th of september last. this party is in honour of alex's television appearance, on the channel 4 show "the play's the thing". it's like pop idol, but for playwrights.
a busy social week.
plus i have to get a job this week, it's becoming rather urgent.

i applied to do a celta course at the bristol uni language school, however all their places are provisionally filled, i'm waiting to see if anyone basically drops out. i'll know on wednesday what's going on. i hope someone drops out and i get on the course, i really do.

i need to go to sleep

the squalor continues..

Sat, 03 Jun 2006 01:56:25 GMT

on the coffee table are:
1 large plate, holding some cheese fragments, 2 chocolate bar wrappers, and a smear of brown sauce.
1 small plate, holding some crumbs
3 glasses, all partially filled with water
2 mugs, half filled with cold tea
1 fork, used
on the floor next to the coffee table is:
1 bowl, half filled with pasta/tuna/sweetcorn mixture
1 fork, dirty
on the kitchen floor are:
1 carboard box, containing clothing (black)
miscellaneous carboard
1 box of "frosted flakes" cereal, contents removed
on the kitchen worktop are:
1 ovenproof dish, containing some water
1 small saucepan, containing dried-up rice
1 sharp knife, dirty
7 mugs, 2 containing unidentified liquid
1 dirty chopping board, on which are the insides of a pepper
7 large plates, 2 caked in dried gravy
1 sieve, used
4 bowls, 1 containing dried cereal particles, 2 holding some kind of tomato dinner remains, 1 half filled with what appears to be gravy
2 saucepan lids
1 cheesegrater, crusty
3 glasses, 1 containing unidentified white powder
1 small frying pan, soiled
2 plastic glasses, 1 half filled with water
1 large coca-cola bottle, containing a very small amount of flat coke
1 large frying pan containing white fat and bacon fragments. a spatula is welded into the fat
1 sweetcorn tin, contents removed, upturned
1 jar of "chicken tonight" stir-fry sauce, contents removed
every remaining item of cutlery in the flat, excepting 3 forks, 1 spoon and 1 knife
on the cooker are:
one medium saucepan, containing pasta/tuna/sweetcorn mixture
1 wok, containing glutinous chicken stir-fry
4 mugs, tea-stained

i would like to point out that i am responsible for none of this. except a very small amount of the miscellaneous cardboard. and that's only because the bin is full.

squalor

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 14:54:21 GMT

on the coffee table here are:
2 small plates
1 large plate, holding some orange peel and an apple core.
2 spoons
1 sharp knife
4 bowls, 1 contains the remains of cereal, 1 contains what looks like gravy, 2 contain dried-up dinner fragments.
5 glasses, 1 containing coke, 1 water and 2 empty
5 mugs, 4 of which are half full of cold tea
on the floor next to the coffee table are:
1 large plate
1 spoon
1 plastic glass, lying on it's side
on the kitchen floor are:
1 spoon
1 used teabag and some kitchen towel
1 trashbag, full of trash
on the kitchen counter by the sink are:
1 frying pan full of white fat and bacon particles. a spatula is welded into the fat
1 jug full of gravy and dirt
2 large plates caked in gravy
other miscellaneous

it should be pointed out that out of all this, i was responsible for one empty glass.

nuts! etc

Sat, 27 May 2006 01:09:42 GMT

tonight i went to see X-Men: The Final Stand. it was alright. i didn't especially like X-Men 2, but i quite liked the first film. anyway i liked the third one more than the second, and probably not as much as the first. i'm hardly a big fan though, i've only seen each movie once i think, maybe twice for the first X-Men..
anyhoo.

also i've nearly finished sorting the mac out after it's disaster yesterday. i managed to salvage my iTunes library by copying everything from my iPod. also tonight i finally got round to downloading "If You're Feeling Sinister: Live At the Barbican London" by Belle & Sebastian. it's good, i'm only about half-way through listening to it at the moment, so far the standout track has been "Like Dylan In the Movies"

i've also been listening to Nouvelle Vague. they're a french group who do acoustic bossa-nova versions of punk/new wave songs. they're really good.

also, yesterday i made really good food. beetroot and goats cheese tart. with chili potato wedges.

the chili potato wedges are easy: cut potatoes into wedges. heat oil in roasting tin in top of oven. boil the wedges for about 1-2 minutes. drain and give them a good shake. tip the wedges into the roasting tin and return to the oven. finely chop a few pickled chilis and then scatter over the wedges, along with some smoked paprika and salt & pepper. roast until brown and crispy.

the tart requires making pastry, which is my New Favourite Thing. you make a pastry tart case and bake it blind in the oven for maybe 30 minutes, while you chop up a few cooked beetroots into wedges, and fry them. then add a handful of broccoli florets and plenty of pine nuts, and keep frying for a bit. then add about 100ml of passata and cook it all together for 5 minutes. then tip the whole lot into the pastry case, top with chunks of goats cheese, and return to the oven until the cheese starts to brown.

this weekend i plan to make The Ultimate Pie. i plan for it to contain vege-sausage, mushrooms, and hazelnuts, in a port wine sauce. as i said, making pastry (and using it in pies, quiches etc) is my New Favourite Thing.

FMA

Thu, 25 May 2006 18:14:37 GMT

so.
we're having trouble arranging suitable times for the actors to rehearse, hopefully we can get a full week in july with the two who are playing the main characters, and a weekend with all three.
alex is panicking.

also, we're really kinda desperate for people to help us with flyering while we're in edinburgh. we so far have me, alex, and probably the three actors. that ain't gonna be enough flyers, i don't think.

and to cap it all, i tried to install adobe creative suite 2 on my macbook pro, and it crashed or something during the install, and broke the OS in some fundamental way that i could only fix by reinstalling mac OS X. so now i have to go back and reinstall all my programs, and recover my iTunes library from my iPod, and copy loads of stuff across the network from where most of it was luckily backed up on my pc. pain in the fucking ass.
not sure whether to try installing CS2 again, i think it might have happened because my internet connection was active at the time.
i have a separate copy of photoshop cs2 though, which i know works, so the only important thing i'm missing out on is illustrator. might be able to get that from somewhere else.
gah.

play progress

Tue, 23 May 2006 01:32:40 GMT

so the play is going pretty well, thanks.

we have a working first draft of the script, which is good, but i expect some rewrites to happen once it's been read-through with the actors.
oh yeah, we now have a cast. three actors, they all know each other well and have worked together before, which is great. only one of them is based in bristol, which is a downside, the other two are up in scotland, but they're willing to travel down here for a week or so of rehearsals, which should be plenty of time to sort things out.
plus one of them is looking for somewhere for me and alex to stay in edinburgh, for free, so we wouldn't have to camp. this would be good.

ok, so last week we had to pay the venue the rest of the booking fee, which was £450, a bit nerve-wracking, that was. and this week we have to send them a preliminary press release, and an image for their programme, also a short bit of copy to go in their programme.
here's a draft of our programme art. i guess it's also a potential basis for flyer design too, but i'm not worrying about that too much yet.

hoodimage_preview
Originally uploaded by jadthetaff.

it's small and low res, but you get the idea.
anyway, for once things with the play seem to be moving along roughly as they should. this is worrying me and alex, we're both sure something catastrophic lurks round the corner.

three weeks of stuff

Tue, 23 May 2006 00:35:46 GMT

no updates for a while, about 3 weeks in fact.
this is the first of two. this one's about general shit, the other one's about the play.

so i've been sleeping a lot recently.
i've also been trying to find a decent-ish job round here, but no dice so far. i got turned down for a job selling tickets at the watershed and i also failed to get a job sitting on a chair at the arnolfini so that was all quite disheartening. as for the job i applied for at the tate, well, i didn't even get an interview for that one.
tomorrow i have to send my cv to fopp as they're opening a new store down my road, and also i have to fill in an application form for a celta (tefl) course at the bristol uni language school. this course is damn expensive, it's going to cost well over £1000, but after getting the qualification from it i could go anywhere in the world and teach english, which might be fun.
i'm not completely 100% sure that's what i want to do though.
in fact i really don't know what it is i want to do.

me and alex watched the opening ceremony, which was quite crazy. every single one of them came across as a complete headcase and pretty hateable. last night i watched this guy walk round the house for about 45 minutes talking to himself and addressing unhinged rants to the cameras after everyone else was asleep. it was like watching a mental breakdown.
i expect i will get bored of big brother pretty quickly, i usually do. pretty much every year i watch a lot of it in the first week or two, and then get bored and stop watching.
eh up, the crazy from last night might be sparking off another argument. right now he's shouting at the woman who looks like one of the orang-utans from Planet Of The Apes.

i am also becoming increasingly addicted to threadless.
it's a website where people can submit their t-shirt designs, which are then voted on by visitors to the site. the most popular designs are then printed, 4 a week.
i now have 6 t-shirts from here, which are fucking amazing. having said that, i was a bit disappointed with the new prints this week, two weeks running now with nothing i want to buy. i've seen some really good designs submitted though, hopefully they'll get printed.

i've bought loads of albums lately. mostly really good. i've been listening a lot to silent shout by the knife, broken boy soldiers by the raconteurs, ballad of the broken seas by isobel campbell and mark lanegan and tired of hanging around by the zutons. i also bought in love and squalor by qwe are scientists, because i liked the single (nobody move, nobody get hurt) but i'm a bit disappointed by the rest of the album, which i think is a bit samey and a bit boring.
stuff i haven't bought recently but i've been listening to a lot includes clor by clor, funeral by the arcade fire and de stijl by the white stripes.

some good, such as brick, which is a wicked film. it does a really good job of putting a fresh modern twist on the film noir formula. ok the "twist" ain't hard to see coming, but that's not the point. it's a taut, tense thriller with a great script, well acted and well shot. and the girl in it is beautiful.

i also saw mission: impossible 3, which was watchable and entertaining, although hardly anything special. the romance between ethan hunt and his girlfriend/wife is such a thinly veiled representation of the tom cruise / katie holmes thing that it's quite funny, also. philip seymour hoffman makes a decent bad guy, but his death is shit.

and then just the other day i went to see the da vinci code. i never read more than a few pages of the book as it seemed like utter tripe like a jeffery archer novel, so i figured i ought to see the movie.
my reasoning here is that it tries my patience a lot less to sit through a mediocre movie for 2 hours than to spend a week reading a mediocre book.
in the event, the da vinci code is such a bollocks movie that i nearly fell asleep. paul bettany's assassin monk is the only mildly interesting character, and he only has about 5 actual lines. and ian mckellan is very watchable, as he clearly realised the caibre of the film he was in, and hammed up his part as a crazy english aristocrat for all it's worth.
hanks delivers the type of leaden, plodding performance i've come to expect from him, audrey tautou looks bewildered at all the bullshit going on, and jean reno looks thoroughly uninterested in everything except probably his paycheck.
verdict: tripe.

and now on to play news..

the power of christ compels you

Mon, 01 May 2006 23:48:15 GMT

i'm semi-watching the exorcist. it's not really holding my attention. it's ok, it's fine, i'm just not finding it particularly gripping.
i remember i saw the movie in the cinema when it was rereleased in 1998. all the people i was at the cinema with were these total fucking idiots, they'd basically gone to see the film to see how funny they could find it. dicks.

the exorcist is the third movie i've seen today. first up was shaun of the dead, which i'd only ever seen once before. that's a pretty good movie. i really like spaced, and i don't think shaun of the dead is nearly as funny as spaced, but it's a pretty good story, and it's enjoyable enough.
then i watched predator, which is an amazing film.

the flat is a fucking tip. largely this is to do with james, who has spent the weekend playing tom clancy's rainbow ghost splinter ops six squad recon spear cell 3. but also i've not been helping the mess situation, i've not washed anything up all weekend. mind you, i also haven't cooked a meal since thursday.

strange weekend. friend of mine's birthday party on friday night, which was a good night with crazy overtones. there's always crazy overtones actually, at parties round at that house. keeps things interesting.
on saturday i was helping a friend of mine by filming some stuff he wants to use in visuals for a live drum and bass band. the filming went surprisingly well, considering the excesses of the previous night, although i started to flag somewhat towards the end of the afternoon.
also, part of the filming required we climb to the top of cabot tower, which is a tall tower on the top of a hill near the middle of bristol.
i am not keen on heights, and i'm not keen on spiral staircases. needless to say, the tower features an especially narrow variety of spiral staircase, which wasn't much fun.
the view from the top is amazing though.

the exorcist has become more interesting now the actual exorcism is going on.
earlier i think the slowness of the film, compared to predator, was causing me to lose interest.

so at the party, i met the guy who's going to act in the play. i had actually met him before, at a different party at the same house, although that occasion was a particularly crazy one, a load of shit went down when some guy thought i'd spoken to his girlfriend in a way he didn't like, or something.
anyway, the other night i met hugo the actor, he seemed very excited and keen about doing the play, which is great, we need people who are as enthusiatic and committed as we are to the project.
then he passed out on the couch.

lies

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:54:59 GMT

it's half past ten and everyone else i live with has gone to bed already.

i enjoy winding people up for my own amusement. it's a flaw, yes, i admit it.
the following are not true. but thanks to me, someone, somewhere, believed them all to be true.
- al pacino is actually blind. he employs a look-a-like to act in all his movies. except for "scent of a woman", that was actually him.
- karl marx was one of the marx brothers.
- the movie "phone booth" was originally to be based not around a phone booth, but a confessional, only being changed after catholic colin farrell had problems with the original script.
- in mediaeval times, people would predict the weather by throwing a forked stick and observing how it lay upon landing. this was known as a "fork cast" from which we get the modern word "forecast".

i can't think of any more, although there's sure to be many.
anyway, i suppose really it's a form of anti-social behaviour, this semi-compulsive lying.
oh well.

so today i went to cardiff to visit harveyjames and i've now got his decks and all his records on loan. this is cool, some of them are really good. there's a lot of prince.
i don't like cardiff though, it's a dump. on my way home this evening, as i entered bristol, going past the downs and down whiteladies road, i thought "this is why i live in bristol - it's really nice. and cardiff is shit."

it's hot!

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 16:27:02 GMT

so just now i dug up the mint plant and threw it in the bin. i also had to wash everything that had been near the windowbox, as it was all covered in dead aphids. because the mint plant died a couple of days ago, and the aphids can't, it wouldn't seem, live on the chilli plants, all the aphids are now corpses. impaled upon their own sword, hah! who's laughing now, aphids?

i've noticed my macbook pro gets really quite on the warm side when it's in use. especially when it's connected to mains power. running off battery it's not so bad.
looking around on the internet, i see that lots of people are complaining of heat issues with the mbp, although it seems to vary. some reports are clearly exaggerations, such as "hot enough to give first-degree burns" and "can cook a pop-tart" and some people say their mbp runs "cool" although how actually cool "cool" might actually be is subjective.
i've only had my mbp a day or so, but my current opinion is that, yes, the mbp is a computer that generates a fair amount of heat, like all similarly powerful computers are bound to. the reason it's so noticeable is likely the aluminium chassis, which conducts heat out a lot better than the plastic case of your typical windows notebook.
yesterday, for example, i had both my notebooks on for most of the day, as i was moving files and so on, and really, the vaio was hardly "cool". it wouldn't surprise me actually if the internal temperature of the vaio was higher, as with a plastic case, the heat can't dissipate as well.
anyway, i'm going to monitor the heat thing, see if it's actually a problem or what.

the play is definitely going ahead, 100%. it has to, because we've signed a contract with the venue and sent it back. and we're not going to be in the main fringe programme, but we will be listed in the venue programme, which is fine with us. it saves us a whole heap of money not being in the main programme, after all.

it's here!

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:30:24 GMT

my macbook pro arrived this morning!
it's so shiny and wonderful, i can scarcely believe it!
ok, too much excitement over a computer there, i feel. it's a niiiiiiice computer though.

it's sitting next to my 4 year-old sony vaio now, and the two machines look like they're from different decades. and i think my vaio has aged quite well actually, it still manages to do most things i ask it to, after a while. it even manages to look quite modern really. but next to the macbook, it looks rather primitive.

the most immediate improvements i've noticed are things like the display - the mac has a widescreen display with a 1440x900px resolution. the vaio has a 4:3 ratio display with a 1024x768px res. the difference is really noticeable, especially the res.
actually, the mac is wider than the vaio, by probably about 3 inches. this is quite a bit of extra width, but still the mac feels smaller, mostly because it's half the thickness, and also it's smaller from front to back, and also shorter when the display is open. in terms of weight, i think they're about the same, roughly.

the mac does get a lot warmer than the vaio though, and i mean a lot. at least, it feels warmer to the touch, but i'm not finding it a comfort issue with the mac sat on my lap, while i've definitely found the vaio to warm up and cause me to get uncomfortable in the lap region. i guess it's to be expected the mac generate a bit more heat than the vaio, the mac has a dual-core 2ghz processor, the vaio has a single-core 1.1 (think) ghz. plus, the mac has a proper video card in it as well.

oh yeah, another plus - the battery life is amazing compared to the vaio. ok so the vaio appears to be particularly lame especially as it's got older, requiring that i plug it into the wall socket after about 45 minutes of use, tops.
in comparison, i used the mac for about 2.5 ours this afternoon before i plugged the power back in because the battery was getting slightly low (probably actually about 30% charge).
actually i've noticed the bottom of the mac gets warmer when it's connected to mains power, probably to do with charging the battery and running the computer at the same time i'm guessing.

so far i've mostly just been emailing, browsing the web, and i've copied some files across from the vaio over the network, which went incredibly smoothly, much easier than whenever we've tried copying files from, say, the vaio to james' pc. in fact, usually if we have to do that we find it's simpler to burn a cd than use the network.

also i got a load of photos off of my mobile phone, via bluetooth, as my phone no longer connects to the vaio with the cable it came with. ever since i last formatted, i reinstalled the phone drivers and software and shit, but whenever i connect it, windows says "the usb device malfunctioned" and that's that. so now i can get my photos, hurrah. the quality isn't great, my phone doesn't have a very high-res camera. but it's better than nothing.

what else? i got photoshop, via torrent, downloaded it to the vaio, need to copy it across and install it now, although i am wary, as it was downloading a pc version of photoshop that gave the vaio the virus/problems that required me to format it recently.
also i need ms office, as there's a load of word documents i need to be able to open. most urgent of these are job application forms. and this is something i can't use the vaio for either, because i don't even have office for windows. james says he has it on cd somewhere, but thinks he's lost it. and billiam thinks he might have it on cd, but he's not sure, and he's got better things to do than look for it, like paint pictures.

also today i washed up the things from when i made cream of mushroom soup last night. the soup was a success, well i liked it a lot, and alex did take a second helping, although i found his bowl on the table this morning and he'd only eaten half his second bowl, so...
anyway, good soup, but it's not an incredibly appetising colour, mushroom soup. it's sorta grey. and bitty. it reminds me slightly of paper pulp.

i went to meet alex on his lunch break so as i could sign the contract for the venue, which alex had to print out at his work because despite having 5 computers in this flat, we don't have the logistics to open and/or print ms word documents. anyway. i had to sign the contract because i'm the producer or something, and the official first contact for the venue. so i did that.
then i tried 4 times to phone the venue man to tell him we weren't going to be in the programme, and ask if this would be a problem as far as he was concerned, but it seems nobody was in the office today. so in the end i sent an email. hopefully the reply will be "that's ok" and then we can send off the contract.

my mint plant is dead. this is a shame, i wanted it's tender minty leaves to use in cocktails like mojitos and mint juleps. unfortunately it got aphids and the little bastards killed it. it was weird. one day it was fine, the next day it had little dots on it, the day after that there were shitloads of little aphids all over. guess i have to dig it out the windowbox and chuck it in the bin.
hopefully the aphids haven't/won't spread to the chilli pepper plants, che and maria. maria is actually growing a pepper! i don't think aphids can handle the hotness of the chillis though, i've seen no evidence of infestation.

another u-turn

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 00:46:25 GMT

having spoken to alex about the play earlier, we decided we will go ahead with it, probably.

if we don't pay to be in the festival programme, we save about £350, which should cut our budget to about a thousand. see, that would be £500 each, except some of those costs - transport, accommodation, food etc - the actors will pay a contribution to, which reduces it further, and then on top of that there's anything we manage to make back from the door.
so.. best case scenario could only end up costing me and alex £300 each, worst case £500.

so tomorrow i'm going to talk to the guys who run the venue, about our not being in the programme. the thing is that the submission deadline for the programme has passed anyway, so i'd say our chances of being able to get into the programme at this late stage are pretty slim anyways.
so i'm going to tell them we aren't even going to try to get in the programme, cos we can't afford it anyways.

the major concern i have is that i don't know how reliable the actors are, but at the reduced cost (and a few hours more thought on the maths) it's a gamble i'm more prepared to take.

obviously there could still be a problem if the venue are pissed that we don't want to even try to get into the programme, but really it's unlikely they will be. after all, they're willing to accept a booking even after the programme deadline.
also, they're still getting their £500 for the week. ok with our show not being in the programme the reduced publicity potentially means we get less people buying tickets.. but the venue don't even start making money off the door until we sell more than 100 tickets anyway, and even if we sell out every show we do (highly unlikely) they still only make £400 from it.
the upshot of all that is that the £500 guarantee is what the venue really cares about. and they get that from us whether we even show up to put the play on or not.
so it should be cool with them.

so all we have to do now is make sure things don't fuck up, and we actually manage to get the play ready to open in edinburgh on the 13th august.

in other news, tonight i watched solaris. this is a very very slow movie, but i rather liked it. and it's beautiful, the art direction and so on.
i also saw an advertisement for coca cola with lime in. seen this? the advert shows a fictionalised version of the invention of coke with lime, set to the song "coconut" by harry nilsson, the one from the closing credits of reservoir dogs. except they make pains to point out that you can twist the lyrics to "put the lime in the coke, you nut". clever. yeah.

tomorrow i'm going to get up early, in the hope that my macbook pro will arrive in the post.
also i need to talk to the venue for the play.

internal mental crisis - work related

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:36:45 GMT

right.
i think that i might think this play is a bad plan. there, i said it.

let's start with the financial side. £500 for the venue, this is already more than my hopeful budget. then on top of that, the venue are really keen for us to be in the festival programme, well that's understandable, it's good sense in terms of publicity. but that's another £350 or so.
then there's accommodation. i've done some research, and the cheapest thing to do here is to camp, but that's still probably £100 for the week.
food and drink for 4 people for a week in edinburgh in the middle of the festival.. i reckon could be £200.
additional publicity - getting flyers printed - based on my research from the time me and my friend zac were planning to promote a club night (never happened) this is probably at least another £100.
transport costs - petrol for driving a car to edinburgh and back - £75 maybe? tank and a half there, tank and a half back? £75.
props etc - say £50
so that's in the region of £1300 - £1400.
that's a lot of fucking money.

so the budget is £1400, taking the higher end (there's a possibility of it being more like £1000, if we skip the festival programme, but really the venue won't like that i wouldn't imagine)
now if we sell out every single show... (bear with me, i'm actually doing the maths as i write this) that's 6 shows at 50 seats at £2 per seat.. that's £600, right?
now the contract we would have with the venue says that if the door is more than 40% of our guarantee (£500) then they subtract the excess, or something. hang on, let me work it out. 40% of the guarantee is £200.. so... if the door is over £200, they actually only pay us... fuck, i can't work it out.
anyway, i think the upshot is that our actual take is capped at 40% of the guarantee, i.e. £200. so even if we sell out every show, bringing in £600, we only get £200. similarly, if we only sell 100 seats all wekk, bringing in £200, we get £200. and if we only sell 50 seats all week, we get £100.

so... outlay is £1400, maximum return is £200. therefore the whole project will definitely cost us at least £1200. £600 from me, £600 from alex. probably a bit less, as i would want the actors to contribute to the travel, accommodation and food/drink costs. but then again, they ought to get some of the door money. so probably me and alex still lose £500-£600 each.

ok that's quite a substantial financial outlay, but for that we get to put a play on at edinburgh, in a good venue, and maybe people will see it and maybe they'll like it.
there's other things though. we have never put on a play anywhere before. we only have one actor so far, and i've never met him, i don't know him, i don't know how reliable he is, etc etc.
if we lose an actor in say, july, we are totally fucked.
i don't know how likely this is to happen, but still..

there's too many factors that could cause it to go pear-shaped. and all at a minimum, absolute bottom minimum cost of £500 each. if it were me and alex acting in the play, it would be a different matter, but it's not. it's one guy alex knows a bit and i don't know at all, and someone else we don't know yet.
i genuinely think it's possible, even on the really tight timescale we have, to produce a good play, but.. it requires everyone involved to be really up for it and really committed, and we can't possibly know if they will be or not, as we don't know who they are. add to this there's things around my personal plans (with jobs and maybe moving out of bristol etc) and alex's personal plans, that could cause complications and interference...

i guess i just think it's too foolhardy a venture. i'm not averse to the idea of sticking my neck on the line and doing something good, but i don't feel convinced that this project is the right thing to stick my neck out for.

i guess i have to tell alex how i'm thinking about this.

a costly lesson?

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 17:49:48 GMT

there's been some doubt brewing here about whether this whole notion of taking a play to the edinburgh fringe is really a good idea or not.
it is very late on, we'd be on a really tight schedule. not to mention the cost of booking a venue, publicity, accommodation, etc etc...

however, on the plus side, we have found an actor who's expressed interest in going to edinburgh with us and being in our play, and also this morning i think i found us a venue. having spoken with the venue people on the phone, i emailed them some stuff, we're now waiting to hear back from them.
if we can get this slot, it's 12pm every day for week 2 of the festival, that's 6 shows. cost: £500.

what the fuck are we thinking? this is crazy shit. it's going to end up costing about £1000 and we only have one actor (maybe) and 20 pages of a script that needs to be 60 pages long, and there's issues surrounding the set, and the lighting (we don't know anything about theatre lighting) and we're already too late to be listed in the official fringe programme, and there's the further cost of doing our own publicity...

a really big adventure...

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:20:37 GMT

me and alex have decided to take a play to the edinburgh fringe this year.

i wish we had thought of doing this about 2 months ago, as that would have given us much more time to organise everything - for example, the deadline for submitting copy to be included in the fringe programme was yesterday, although we phoned the office just now and they said if we get it to them as soon as possible, they should be able to fit us in, though they can't make any promises.
this is cool, with just the slight drawbacks that we don't have a venue booked yet. so tonight when alex gets home from working at the cinema we're going to book a venue.
this is cool, with just the slight drawback that we don't have any actors to be in the play yet.
but that's ok because the script isn't finished yet anyway.
nor does it have a title.

nor do we really have a clue how much it's all going to cost, though my estimate is somewhere in the region of £1500. now assuming we can find a couple of other people who want to do it as much as we do and want to put money into the project, it's fine, as that's only what £350 each?
but if me and alex have to pick up the tab, and i can see it going that way to be honest, that's more like £750 each and that's kinda pricey for something that's guaranteed to lose money (as all small first-time productions at the edinburgh fringe do)
fuck it, i think we're just going to do it anyway.

it's a pretty cheap play to put on. in terms of resources, we need:
a small venue with a stage, and lighting
a digital projector
props: two chairs; two bags (head-sized); some rope
two actors
accommodation for about a week in edinburgh for 4 or 5 people
petrol to go in my car
food for 4 or 5 people for a week
flyer printing
cost of putting a listing in the fringe programme
i don't *think* i've forgotten anything important. only time will tell..

also i plan to make a documentary film about this whole possibly misguided project.
at the very least i intend to write all about our (mis)adventure on this blog.
i'm really excited, it's been quite a while since i've done something quite this rash and stupid.

mac > pc

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:12:21 GMT

i just bought a new computer. my sony notebook is about 4 years old now, and getting a bit old, also i have had it up to here with windows pcs, so i've ordered a macbook pro.
this is quite exciting. the only real drawback i can see is that i'm going to have to format my ipod and then copy all my cds again and load it all back on again. however, i think a format would probably do the ipod a bit of good, it's been playing up a bit lately, it's actually crashed 3 times in the last month or so.

i also tried to go clothes shopping today, but to no avail. i mean i went, i just didn't see anything i really wanted to buy. i saw a couple of jumpers that were ok, but they were about £50 each, and that's too much to pay for something that's merely ok, it needs to be actually good to be worth that sort of dollar. same goes for a shirt i saw.
i did see a really nice suit, that was only about £150, quite a bargain, but i don't really have too much use for a suit right now. for example i'd look pretty foolish sitting on the couch eating crunchy nut clusters (the bomb) watching rock school with gene simmons (surprisingly compelling) and playing snes games on my notebook wearing a suit.

paper

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 16:46:08 GMT

yesterday i spent all afternoon ~~writing job applications~~ playing earthbound.
actually i did write some job application. about 5 sentences in 3 hours. then james came home from work and told me what i really needed was a cocktail.
so i had a cocktail of my own invention, which i call "the gin genie" it's really something special. and then i wrote a page of A4 in 20 minutes.

so today i sorted out the problem with the dent in the car.
alex advised me to call the 'lon, but i don't like the 'lon, so i decided to do what col. hannibal smith would do, and went to pay a visit to the offending driver.
i had been slightly concerned there could be a heavy scene, but it all turned out ok, the woman that caused the damage and her man were both cool, they're getting someone to come and fix the dent and they're paying for it all, so that seems to have turned out alright.

now i need to look up on the internet about different savings accounts. there's a lot of different ones, i think. some of them let you have instant access to your money, some of them don't let you touch it for a number of years, 2, 5 or 10 or whatever, but give you a better interest rate...
i don't know. also it all seems a bit boring and middle-aged, thinking about finances.
billiam works at the moment for a major building society, doing data entry and filing, so therefore he knows everything there is to know about savings accounts. he spent the whole of march hassling me about my ISA account, every few days he'd go "did you put money in your ISA yet? you need to do it before april because you can only put £3,000 in per financial year, and if you put money in now, you can put more in again in april" fuck off billiam, fuck off. my financial affairs are NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN FUCKING BUSINESS. like EVERYTHING ELSE is NONE OF YOUR GOD DAMN FUCKING BUSINESS.
i didn't, in the end, put money in my ISA before the end of the financial year.

billiam's Big Problem is that he seems to think it's his mission to fix everyone. here's a list of a few things which are causing billiam concern right now:
- his career plans
- his lack of a pension plan
- the fact that he's 24 and isn't on the property ladder
- james' mental health
- james's career prospects
- my love life
- my mental health
- my financial affairs
- my job-hunting
- alex's mental health
- alex's love life
- the arab-israeli issue
- BBC breakfast news financial reports
- metal gear solid 3: snake eater
- who used all the milk?

fuck, i hope billiam doesn't find this. he nearly found out about it the other day, he saw it and said something like "is that your website?" and i went "aaahh in a manner of speaking, no" or something, and X'ed the window.
i think actually he probably thought it was a website i was designing, not something actually on the internet.
fuck it.

sleep deprivation

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 04:51:16 GMT

i'm supposed to be using my time off work profitably, to Get Stuff Done.
instead i slept in until 3pm today, then did pretty much fuck all else the rest of the day, so now i find it's nearly half 5 and i can't sleep. i've spent most of the time since the last of my housemates went to bed playing earthbound, which is an amazing game.
recently i defeated a titanic ant, and came off worse in an encounter with a rambling mushroom, which left my character "feeling strange".

speaking of earthbound, nintendo are bringing out a sequel to earthbound for the gameboy advance. it's out in japan on the 20th.
unfortunately, no information on whether an english translation will be released. probably not, i suppose.
more information is at shigesato itoi's world of mother 3, although actually more useful to those who don't read japanese (e.g. me) is this english translation.
the monsters look particularly cool.

shit shit shit shit. i meant to sleep, so i could get up early (read: before lunchtime) and write my cv, as it appears i have inadvertently deleted the copy i used to have, and apply for a load of jobs.
shit.

also, all the jobs i'm applying for seem to be in london.
i don't live in london. i'm not sure if i want to live in london.
every time i visit london i think what an exciting place it is, and how much i enjoy visiting there, but enjoying visiting a place isn't quite the same as living there i don't think.
fuck it. in the unlikely event of me being offered any of the jobs i'm applying for, i can always turn them down if i really decide i don't want to live in london.

and another thing, the other day i was going out somewhere in my car, and i saw someone's created a massive dent in the door. and then someone else had put a note under the windscreen wiper saying "i know who damaged your door. call me" and a phone number.
so i called the guy that left the note, and he told me whose fucking volvo put the dent in my car door. now i am not quite sure as to my next move. do i go round and pay the volvo-owner a visit? or do i just go straight to 'lon?
i know what hannibal from the a-team would do. well i guess he couldn't go to 'lon, as he's a wanted fugitive.

shit fuck shit now it's quarter to six. i've got to do those job applications ~~tomorrow~~ later today. and i need to buy bread. for some reason this chore seems like it's going to be the hardest thing in the world.
i've got to sleep. got to. sleep. shitting hell.

i heart nintendo

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 23:42:40 GMT

i was reading about the zelda game nintendo are releasing for the DS.
it looks really cool, i will now have to buy myself a DS so i can play it.
look at this video it just looks amazing.
there's a bit, for example, where you can see link chuck his boomerang, and have it follow a path drawn out on the touchscreen. just that one tiny bit makes me think this game is going to be awesome.