If you go down to the woods today

There used to be a tradition in our family that every christmas day, after indulging in far too much turkey and spuds, we would take a leisurely walk across the common, collecting bits of firewood so that once we got back to the house we could make a fire and toast some crumpets and let the adults have a good snooze in front of the flickering flames while we, the children played with our latest shiny toys. 

This all stopped when it was discovered that the house had subsidence and the whole front wall of the house was trying to lie down in the front garden. Apparently someone decided to build the houses so they straddled a perimeter ditch that was filled in with sand, which has a tendency to shift over time.

We were relocated for the greater part of a year to another house while the house was underpinned, which also allowed us to completely redecorate the whole house in the absence of any inhabitants. Part of this plan involved taking out the fireplace, leaving a hole in the wall, which was to eventually be filled with another fireplace.

Fourteen years later and the fireplace still hasn't arrived to take its rightful place (Due to the fact that no fireplace has been ordered) At the moment the hole is covered up with some of my sisters artwork, which is held up by our VHS and DVD collection.

Hopefully by next christmas we will have a new fireplace, so we can toast crumpets again, that would make my christmas!

Home is where the heat is.

There are many advantages to going back to your parents house every so often, free food, a new set of hand-me-down boots to keep my feet dry, and most of all, a nice warm house that you don't have to pay bills for. There is something really cosy, authentic and solid about a parental house that so far i have been unable to emulate in any of my past few houses.
There are always little oddities that only the inhabitants know about, like the starlings that nest above the boys bedroom window, knowing to pull the front door as you unlock it, or the procedure to light the ageing grill without filling the kitchen with gas.

Home, there's no place like it.

We always tend to leave things to the last minute in our house, which was why when I arrived home on the 23rd I found the front room pretty much the same as when I last visited some time in November. My sister and I started putting up the decorations before her phone buzzed and she escaped into town for a social engagement, leaving me to do the manly job of getting the tree in, making sure it's in a waterproof pot, covering up said pot and eventually decorating it. The parents have opted to buy a tree that still has its roots so that we could potentially use it for the next couple of years christmases, that will remain to be seen!

As I was perusing the back room for anything I owned so I could help with Operation RescueThe Table From Crap, I found a hefty book, the size of which only one type book tends reach.
This King James bible was the Lewzey family bible, though apparently none of my parents family were very religious i think it was just the done thing.

If the roman numerals inside the cover relate to the books print date and not the first print or commission date, then it is over 140 years old! (The date inside was M.DCCC.LX.VI if you want to work out the date for yourselves.)
It's funny that this version of the bible has gone from such a substantial size to being a bunch of 0s and 1s on my phone that barely takes up the same space as a song!

A very Merry Christmas to everyone who humours me in what I write on this blog. Enjoy yourselves at this time of sharing and loving and don't forget the event that kicked off this whole celebration: Jesus being born over 2000 years ago to an unassuming couple, as a gift from God to mankind.

Cli-clunk, Whrrrrrrr

Thanks to the wonders of modern digital photograph, merely a week after finishing Little Match Girl and performing at Alchemi, photographs have arrived on my virtual desk of the two events.

As LMG was my first proper foray into theatre lighting (using all my own design and programming) i feel particularly proud that nothing went monstrously wrong and i even enjoyed the experience! Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's my dissertation.

LMG in a dream world

Drunk old crone

Cast singing the main theme song

LMG being wrongly accused

Tart singing about poor people enjoying a drink

LMG threatening a rich man for not giving her any money

If you've made it this far, well done! Usually after sifting through a bunch of photos of theatre I tend to blank anything else that happens after them and i imagine others may do likewise.

December'd Alchemi happened to fall on the evening of the church christmas play, which allowed us to tart up the room with lots of expensive things. If it pleases the court, may I present Exhibit A:

Photo by Ceri Herbert

I didn't have the foresight to take a before picture to go with this after one, but the church itself looks VERY different from the picture above.

Theatre, dahling?

Two weeks of almost solid theatre work and it's over! I've acted in three different capacities on three different plays, but surprisingly I'm not worn out by it all! 

The first production was "The Tentmaker" with Going Public Theatre Company, where I was a one-man technical team, squeezing every last drop of performance potential out of Microsoft Powerpoint to try and make it all appear as professional as possible.

The second was a week-long run of "The little matchstick girl" with Pukka productions where I was lampie. Once we had got past the halfway mark, I had refined all my lighting cues, and the actors managed to remember all their lines and cues, making the whole thing very enjoyable and fluid. On the last day of performance we had a matinee, but none of the windows in the church-cum-theatre were blacked out, which meant scene transitions were visible to everyone in the audience, but they all went off without a hitch!

The third and final production was a play based on the nativity story at temple baptist church. Having a bunch of current and ex-glamorgan technical students, the christmas play is always a very technical effort, with lighting, staging and video all being squeezed into a little space. For this I helped program the lights, made a few of the videos and played in the band during the performance. It was probably the most haphazard and sketchily-prepared of all the productions but from where I was stood it all seemed to go as well as a typical church christmas play goes, with kids not knowing how to hold toy sheep, forgotten lines and some managing to turn off their microphones before going on stage!

To help round off the week, the techs kept the christmas play rig up so we could use it in the evening for the second of our Alchemi events. After giving one of the non-technical helpers a crash course in intelligent lighting for events, I hopped up on stage with the rest of the band and played our little hearts out with modern twists on christmas songs and modern worship songs. There was a talk by Hedd, talking about what our "nightmare before christmas" might be. hopefully there will be some photos coming up soon of the matchstick girl, christmas play and alchemi, ill put them up when they appear.

For now though, here is the title video that was played just before the talk to help people get into the right frame of mind for the challenging talk that followed. (Soundtrack by BRIGHTLIGHTS)

There's no business like it

Time is running out before the start of Pukka production's next play "The Little Matchstick Girl". I've been at the venue spending the last two days getting all the lighting infrastructure in place, being told that a sparky would be along to connect us up with 63/3 mains on the first day. 

I went in today hoping that the sparky would turn up mid-afternoon so that I could start focusing lights and making sure all my patching is right. Nothing.

I'm going back tomorrow mid-afternoon in the hope that he has visited in the morning so I can start preparing for the tech rehearsal tomorrow evening. If he doesn't show, no tech rehearsal!

I'm going a bit panorama crazy recently so here's one from yesterday when the truss was empty and the fixtures were on the floor waiting to be rigged. The original file was 86MB, I wasn't going to wait all night for it to upload, so it'll have to be this lo-res version instead.

In a world...

Christmas is approaching thick and fast my friends, for some this is an exciting prospect, the tree, the carols, the presents, for some this is a daunting time of worry, debt, and slippery roads. Apart from the slippery roads this would be the same for christmas no matter what time of year it fell (Australians have christmas in the middle of their summer so they're living proof!)
We all know the nativity story, about the teenager who becomes pregnant with the Son of God, she journeys with her betrothed to his home town, give birth in a barn, get visited by rich men and poor shepherds (what happened to that gold in the end...). It's every little girls dream to be cast as Mary, every little boys dream to be cast as Herod. But if you think about the story, if it were to happen today it would seem like the start of another doomed relationship that forms part of a broken society.
It's probably likely that even if you've thought about this scenario you've given it more of an overview and never delved too deep into the role of each character in its conception.
On Sunday 12th December, Alchemi presents the most famous birthday in the world through the eyes and mind of Joseph, the "other" guy.

The Gentleman Rhymer

Whilst perusing youtube as one does when one has not much to do I came across a man that called himself Mr B, The Gentleman Rhymer. intrigued I watched on of his videos. And another one. Then another one. Then I visited his Facebook page, myspace page, website and watched every video I could on Youtube.

Now that I have run out of new ways to watch and listen to his music (until I get his album) I must now spread the word! So here for your delight is a song that is close to my heart, I hope you'll be as intrigued as i am to check out the rest of his stuff at his Myspace page 

The art of Alchemy

I've got myself involved in a new event being held at my church, it's a sunday evening event with contemporary worship and speakers with bits of multi-media goodness dotted around to keep it all varied. It's name is Alchemi, slightly altered from "Alchemy", in which gold is attempted to be obtained from common metals.


Here below is one such piece of media-wizardry that will be shown in church this sunday morning to help advertise for the evening. It was meant to be shown with "short skirt, long jacket" by Cake playing in the background, but the vocals came in too early and I couldn't be bothered to cut it up into an instrumental version. Enjoy!



Sunday morning promo from Paul Lewzey on Vimeo.

Video, but not the VHS kind

I've been playing around with After Effects and came up with this little teaser for an event I'm helping with soon. I gave the embed code to another webmaster exactly as it appears here but its appeared completely differently, so this is partly a "look at me!" and partly a trial to see if blogs change things when they're not told to.

It was...Bedlam

The nights are closing in and all the students are back from a busy summer of...studentism. That must mean that the Bedlam bus is coming into town!
Yet again it was a relentless night of drum and bass, dubstep and a spot of grimey beatey type things with some wum-wum-wum-woh-woh-woh bass and I got to oversee the whole night. Me vs. two rooms of constantly changing MCs and DJs, equipment that would break when i leave the room and fix itself before I arrive and a promotor who got given a radio he couldn't hear because it was he was in loud rooms!

A list of broken equipment started forming before the clock even struck midnight, which included a sound engineer who broke his glasses by face-planting the stage! There was a welcome intermission around 2-3am when somehow amongst the smoke, haze, tobacco smoke, weed and general sweat fumes, smoke detector set off the fire alarms, causing a few thousand ravers to have to evacuate into the night air for a few minutes.

After 13 hours of Bedlam, I fell into bed and spent the next day walking as little as possible on my swollen feet and trying to surround myself in vibration-free silent things.

People were walking around with DSLRs in cinema rigs so hopefully a tasty-looking video will appear soon, you can't see much in the photos this year so i can't boast about it too much. Roll on Hospitality!

how to re-use a building

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?

I've worked for a few productions with a local Am-Dram Society from Barry called Pukka Productions, and this year they've got big plans for their big yearly performance in december.

Porthkerry Methodist Church is up for sale in barry, and a local community arts group want to turn the church into the two-storey "Canolfan Porthceri Centre", incorporating galleries, a theatre and some various other arty rooms, a bit like The Gate in cardiff.

This year Pukka productions decided to utilise the space that the church offered, and use it for a week long run of performances.

The view in the panorama is what the audience will be seeing. The pews will have been taken away by December, but the heating pipes that follow the lines of the pews in a zig-zagwill most likely stay in place(above the floor!). This means that the whole area the pews now cover will have to be covered in staging a foot off the ground. 

The balcony at the back of the room is pretty treacherous to say the least, and i'm not sure about hanging fly bars from the roof beams, so back and top lighting will probably not be happening.

The first thing the Director said to me was that the play included lots and lots of complicated and drastic lighting changes! So of course I'm looking forward to seeing the script and finding out just how drastic these changes are meant to be!

It's going to be an interesting few months leading up to this play, I'll be sure to let you know what happens along the way, whether you like it or not!

Don't look down!

It's a new craze sweeping the photographers of the world!!!
Well, no actually, it's not.
But I like it.

Some good friends of mine decided to take it upon themselves to smarten up my roguish appearance and buy me a monocle for my birthday, I think it's working.

                      

Feel the burn...

Quick! the last of the summer sunshine is outside, catch it before it escapes until May!

Thank you Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm thrilled to be here

I haven't been outside much in the last few days, trying to get some work done and prepare for the coming term. Yet again I bagged a bedroom that only gets about an hour of direct sunlight so I had to venture out into Le Jardin to get some rays.

I've been playing about with taking photos holding one end of a tripod so that camera is looking down the tripod at me. When I find one I like I'll post it up.

Five go camping

Dear me, the summer times have flown by!

Cardiff's students have buggered off, so the union's been dead and I there hasn't been much else on locally. 

So, with nothing else to do I decided to go and work at Soul Survivor weeks B and C in Shepton Mallet as a video editor for the Seminar recording team. I was promised a shiny new iMac and fun times, both of which came true! It was like christmas in a field.

Although the office had no windows we were allowed out into the big wide world two or three times a day to eat and pick berries. 

This year was the first year that seminars were being filmed, so we had a whole bunch of new problems to overcome, like a 4Gb record limit on the cameras, cheap tripods that are held together with PVC tape and renders that took 4 hours for every hour of footage!

The team had a team leader, a deputy, editors and camera/sound ops, with some ops having a go at editing. Over the two weeks I got to share the office with these monkeys

Sorry if you're eating...

The office was split up into three sections, audio editing, video editing, and the cinema (with surround sound system) and that is where I lived from 8.30am to 12am every day for two weeks.

Join us...

Must...try...harder...

I was strolling around the sunnier parts of cardiff to find some graffiti I had seen the other night when it was too dark to photograph properly and noticed this planning application sign that had appeared to be attacked by a well-meaning person.
Obviously the person wanted the reader to visit cardiff more, except the sticker was put in a semi-industrial part of town so only locals would see it, and it was in the very city it was advertising. Oh well!



This is the flower that I saw on my way back from the bay one night. There are some very good graffiti artists based around the A470/A48 roundabout, but hardly any on the east side of town that i've found so far. I'm waiting to be proved wrong!

Meet the housemates!

Or one of them at least...

I don't tend to see much of my housemates these days since they hold regular jobs and I'm still a freelance vagabond with aspirations of lazyness. But tonight me and Bri sat down to watch IT crowd, so I snuck in my camera and tried to get some candid shots. Needless to say an SLR isn't too subtle so I had to make do with this:

Lets go exploring!

Given that I've had a few days where I haven't had any work to do, and that i'm now living in an area of cardiff i've only ever driven past i thought I'd do a bit of exploring.

Ever the technophile, I had to do a google maps search first, so that i wouldn't miss anything major. I was mainly looking for a small (or large) park somewhere nearby since i used to visit Roath Park a lot but now live too far away to get there comfortably.

LO AND BEHOLD! I come across Waterloo Gardens, a small green crack in the grey newport road area landscape

The area is dotted with little patches of grass, flowers and trees, with the odd stream running through them. a quite idyllic setting for chilling in and watching the world rotate.

As well as the public garden I also discovered Waterloo Gardens Teashop, which is a medium sized tae shop done up in a modern style akin to an english version of Starbucks. On the wall is a list of teas that they serve and can be bought in sachets over the counter, all loose leaf of course!

They're very much a local shop, supplying locally made cakes, vegan chocolate and exhibiting local artists work, with a commission from any sales of art given to charity.

Waterloo Gardens Tea Shop
Hipo Hyfryd (Chocolatier)

wanna buy some pegs?

wanna buy some pegs?
Originally uploaded by WierdyBeardy

Though i haven't been a student for a year my movements are still dictated by the student calendar. I moved into my new house on 1st July after a two day transition moving my stuff two days before moving myself. The timing is based on nearly every student housing contract being only 10 months long and traditionally ending on 30th June. Even though i've "upgraded" to 12 month contracts they still start on 1st July and end 30th June!

Anyway, this year should hopefully be buzzin'. Nice house, good housemates, and (fingers crossed) lots of work.

Got a tour scheduled for the autumn so i've just got to last the summer!

In the summertime

I'm not sure where spring went! I must have lost it in a flurry of activity that covered the last two months, but summer has arrived!

In my first evening off in weeks, it was looking so nice outside (and vaguely light for a change!) that i thought i'd return to my old photography haunt; roath lake.

The only two other beings on the lake were a swan and a fisherman (I saw him pack up at 8.30 the next morning, either he's dedicated to the sport or has an insufferable wife), and even with the occasional passing car, the scene was very calm and warm, so I tried to capture that in my photos.

The water still had some movement in it, but the long shutter times flattened it out so it looks almost like it's made of glass. That's the moon in top left, I tried to figure out an elaborate system to block it out for half of the exposure so it wouldn't be so bright, but left it for another time.

Life of the Rich and Famous

I got a call the other day from Rich in Media Sales (or something like that) at the students union, he needed a photographer to cover the Student Media Awards at the Cardiff Hilton and would I be interested?

Being the curious cat that I am i said of course, since I wanted to see inside the hilton, that i have walked past hundreds of times but never dared go inside for fear of being whisked off my feet by my collar and thrown out the door by a burly bouncer.

Greg James from Radio 1 (one of my favourites for live DJing, he's really very good) presented most of the awards. It all looked very pretty indeed with Peanut's fruity lighting colours and lots of white drape and frippery. On top of champers and other fine details that make an awards ceremony so glitzy, I have to say that the Hilton make a mean lasagne. I could have done with 4 pieces of garlic bread instead of 2 though, get it sorted!

Ignite Hope 2010

As promised here are some photos from the IgniteHope 2010 event in Sophia Gardens.

Top two taken by Marie, with her amazing 10-20mm lens, Bottom photo taken by Ceri, on an unknown but also very wide lens.

Someone left cake by my desk, it wasn't there after the preach...

Lighting Rig consisted of:
Pearl Tiger
4 x Mac 550s
4 x Mac 250 Kryptons
8 x LED Parcans
4 x 2 Cell blinders
2 x 4 Cell Blinders
24 x PAR64s
3 x Betapack3's
4 x Source 4s
Festoon for prettyness
and 6 LED truss warmers (Multiform 1310 Multispots)

Unique Hazer and JEM ZR33 Smoker were used for effects, and lots of it!

Flashy Flashy

As a technician, and especially a lighting technician, its not often that i get recognition from artists or in the press (aka blogosphere), but the last two weeks I've worked on two events where the feedback has been positive and has made me feel like my contributions have been appreciated.

The other week I worked a drum and bass night in the SU's Great Hall, called Hospitality. Hospitality is generally seen as the little cousin of the larger BEDLAM nights that happen at the union, but this last event was the best yet and hopefully will set the calibre of acts higher for next time.


Alongside the regular local and regional DJs and MCs, I had the privilege of lighting a set by Mr David Rodigan, the reggae equivalent of Tim Westwood. Rodigan (blue t-shirt) played some great tunes, was a fantastic MC and all round good fun.

After a big night of bass and "revelry" it was time for a week of tent-based christian music and worship in the form of IgniteHope 2010. 

IgniteHope is the sequel to the national Hope '08 initiative in which many thousands of young christian people did good deeds in their community to show the love of God through their actions, and Hope Local in 2009, which sought to let the churches have a go at organising their own social action, rather than having it centrally controlled by Ignite.

This years event production was provided by PG Sound and was a grand entry into the world of medium scale outdoor events for the company, only a year after its inception. 

The event was held in Sophia Gardens in Cardiff City Centre, (as far as I know we had no noise complaints!) and the site was used as a mustering point for hundreds of young people for the mornings and evenings, and was open to the public during the day.

Pictures From the event will hopefully arrive soon on the internet, I couldn't tell you where because there were so many people with cameras, but when I find some good photos I'll post them here

Lighting was provided by MJ Lighting, Video by Genero, Sound and crew by PG Sound and Staging from Stage Lighting Services.

And relax...

The last few weeks i've been jetting all over the country doing various bits of work and volunteering at a an easter club, but this week was time for relaxation, and where better to relax than a part of the country where nothing happens? That's right, I went to Norwich!

I stayed with two friends in norwich, both showing me completely different sides of the city. Thursday was a quite full but probably the most relaxing day of the week. Starting with a bike ride to the village of Wymondham about 9 miles from the outskirts of Norwich, we had a cooked breakfast from Cafe Creme and some pastries from the village bakery, before leisurely strolling to the nearby abbey ruins.

These ruins are HUGE, the picture really doesn't do them justice, but the arch you can see at the front  is about 4 storeys tall!

Most of the abbey has crumbled and eroded below the ground but at the back there is still a working building which serves a similar purpose to the original.

Following a cycle back to norwich we went to the cinema to see How To Tame Your Dragon in 3D, and I was very impressed.
I became even more impressed when i remembered to put my glasses on so I could see everything clearly. The focus pulls combined with the 3D technology make the whole thing seem very realistic. And although things weren't jumping out of the screen at me it was still a very exciting experience, even for a kids animated film.

Following the cinema we went to a pub called The Murderers, which has various newspaper reports around it detailing history's most famous murders and assassinations. While this might seem a bit morbid the pub itself was almost a blueprint of what pubs should be like (or city pubs at least) It was slightly dark inside, lots of old wooden beams, new technology subtly mixed into old decorations, plus 8 local ales on offer at the bar!

I'll be sad to leave Norwich, every day I spent here i found more things that I wanted to do, maybe I'll come back next year to see what's changed.

Ve vant to suck yur Bluuuud!

I've been neglecting my duty as a blood donor for a while, probably coming up to a year since I last donated.
I went to a mobile donation centre (a big trailer in a carpark), filled in forms, and sat in the waiting room (a minibus parked next to the trailer) patiently awaiting the command for the next donor.

I tend to become hyper sensitive to the way my body feels before giving blood, or just after an injection. Questioning every little thing; like an itch that could turn into eczema, or a mis-timed sniff that could be the starting point for the next international health crisis

Giving blood is a rewarding experience, you get to lie down for a bit, then get given a cup of tea and biscuits while you sit and chat with the lovely nurses, and you walk away with a feeling of having done something positive for humanity.

According to the national blood service website, there is only about 8 days of blood available for the most common type O+.

Click on the links below to find out more.

Welsh Blood Service
National Blood Service

Image by Stuart Buckley

I Met the Walrus

John Lennon is interviewerd by a 14 year old kid. The kid sounds together enough to give a proper interview, and John sounds his usual peace-loving self, but after a while i stopped listening to the dialogue and marvelled at the animation in the video.

If you can, watch it in 720p, its worth it.

The Youth of Today

On the way to the post office to collect my pension I came across this vehicle, carelessly parked after what looked like an accident (note hole in bonnet and loose headlight). The driver was clearly under the influence as they left the roof down on a rainy day, and gave scant regard for the authority of "no parking" signs.

I don't know what they're teaching these kids in school these days, but when i was young, we at least parked parallel to the kerb when we abandoned vehicles.

Rugby? What Rugby?

I heard there was a rugby match on in Cardiff today, Wales vs. Italy. I only know this because we were giving away tickets in the union last night in exchange for dunking people in a tub of murky water.

Obviously I had to make it seem to my welsh cousins that I was taking an interest in the sport that was happening less than half a mile from my front door, so under the cover of darkness I crept into town.

...and took some photos of buildings.

I feel so patriotic, I may shed a tear.

30th Post!

It's not your usual milestone, its not as impressive as 50 or 100 posts, but since I started this blog I wondered how long I would keep it up for. 


At first I thought maybe it would be a summer thing, just something to help me report back to people about my many, many adventures. Then it became a way of getting my thoughts and observations into the big wide world. 


Now though, I try and use it to share interesting bits and pieces that I find lying around, hopefully some stuff will interest you, but if not, please hang up and try again.

Oh...

If music be the food of love, steal it!

I've been trying to put some video or a photo with my blog posts, but sometimes you just feel the need to share something else, some music, a sound, a rousing monologue perhaps.

Seeing as millions are made each day hosting videos and photos on the web, surely there is an audio equivalent of photobucket, or youtube. but apparently not!

I've been wanting to share this song by a young american singer/songwriter for a while but try as i might, I couldn't find any sites that wanted to host my file in a simple photobucket-like way. In the end i created a new folder on my website server so that i could share sounds with the world.

This is a song called Smile by Kaylin Alexis, i randomly found her on myspace, like a couple of other artists i've been honoured to listen to.

Big Brother is watching...

I've always had a book by my bed for the last few years. They've  mainly consisted of bill bryson, random books bought just because I liked the cover, or biographies of soldiers, pilots, generals, etc.

It occurred to me just before Christmas, that there are one or two books which have always eluded my increasing pile of bedtime reading, one of which is Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. So when it came time for the annual pilgrimage to Waterstones a
week before Christmas, i was determined to get it. And get it I did.

I'm just over halfway through it now and it's quite a chilling tale of what the world could become like if governments turned from their current paranoid "nanny" state, to a more controlling "big brother" state, run on media spin and oppression.

If you haven't read it I heartily recommend it! Though maybe not so much if you have an abduction complex or a fear of alternate pasts...

Asleep

Asleep
Originally uploaded by WierdyBeardy

The internet can be a strange place sometimes.

I uploaded this photo of me yesterday evening on flickr, but somehow it has already become the most viewed image in my collection.
I'm not sure what people find intriguing about it, are they looking for an interesting back story? do they think there will be some deep and meaningful reason for this picture to be taken at all?

Personally I'm baffled.

TED - -Ideas Worth Spreading

"TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design."

Ever since I discovered TED last year, i have been watching videos on subjects so far ranging and  numerous that it excites me to think that there is so much potential, passion and knowledge in this world.
The other day i watched a video of a performance of a Theremin and an explanation about its history and construction, before that i watched a video where a designer and innovator was showing a prototype phone that hangs around the neck and has a built in camera and projector, to enable instant information relating to anything its pointed at. One use was for finding your way, you can turn on google maps, project it onto a surface and, using finger gestures as seen on the iPhone but also in Minority Report, you can zoom in, out, drag, drop, right click on items and find information about businesses, amongst a host of other things.


The latest video from TED was an 18 minute talk by Clifford Stoll. I had no idea when i clicked to watch the video what the topic was, the only clue was in the title "18 minutes with an agile mind". It ended up being an amazingly entertaining and informative talk by a physicist that im sure most people have never heard of, but who managed to leap through about 5 different topics before coming to a climax with the actual topic of his talk. But to find out what that is, you'll have to watch it yourself. :)

Behind The Scenes

Earlier this year I attempted to add another feather to my cap by trying my hand at filming and producing a behind the scenes video for a 2-day music video shoot by Silvertip Films for an upcoming female artist that goes by the name Hashell.

I filmed on a Sony Z1 and used Sony wireless lapel mics for the interviews. The video was created to show the process of making the music video and to show the production companies work.

Have a butchers





to see the music video this was shot for CLICK HERE