HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!

A very merry Christmas to you all!! Hope everyone is having a top day!! In the true self-obsessed nature of personal blogs, have a selection of pictures of presents I have revieved this year, from Mum, Vicky and then the gang (bear in mind the gang ones are for comedy value above all else!). Festivity-odey-doodey






AT LAST!!!

Who can drive now? Oh that's right... I CAN!!! :D

Yes finally, today, I passed my driving test!!!!!

Happy? Me? FUCK YES!

I now have one on Facebook.com so, if ur on Facebook, look me up innit. (mainly as I can't post a direct link to the profile, cos u have to log in to see it, so you may as well just do a bloody search for me on there)

:)

Continuing choo-poo

  1. Flooding
  2. Signal Faliure
  3. Broken Down Train ahead
  4. Line side fire
  5. Line side fire involving gas canisters
  6. trespasser on the line
  7. road vehical striking a bridge
  8. suspicious package on the train ahead
  9. passenger taken ill
  10. person under a train
  11. Doors not opening properly
  12. Passenger incident
  13. Security Alert (@ Blackfriars)
  14. Dead beaver on the line (!!!!! Apparently so according to Carrie)
  15. Temporary signal failure
  16. Points Failure
  17. Earlier service disruption
  18. Defective train
  19. Poor rail conditions
  20. 7.16 from Brighton suffering door problems thus holding up other trains
  21. Overcrowding
  22. Derailment at Brighton
  23. Over running engineering works
  24. Major signaling systems failure
  25. Temporary fault with signaling equipment
  26. Suspected fire alert
  27. Poor rail conditions that affected the preceding train
  28. Train still in depot as staff are attending to a fault on the train
  29. Earlier slippery rail conditions
  30. Emergency engineering works
  31. Non-availability of staff
  32. A man on the train in front has suffered a heart attack and is being treated in the carriage
  33. Held at a red signal, we're trying to fix the problem
I will add to this as I hear more.. feel free to add any in the comments too.

Just an observation

Fashion. You seem to get the same sort of amount of people with 'eclectic' fashion sense in London as you do in Brighton (esp. on my route, via Camden), but you also get the almost unfeasibly co-ordinated.
For example, the woman across from me on the tube, black trousers, black shoes with red trim that compliments the red tank top type affair over the red-striped white shirt, and the chunky bracelet and necklace that almost perfectly match her bleach blonde hair.

You just don't see that sort of effort in Brighton.

Sent while mobile.

the start of a rant

Bloody commute, there are certain things i hate about having to commute each day, one being the homeless black guy who stinks of shit being in the same carriage as me on an unsettlingly regular basis >:/
www.mattgrover.me.uk

Sent while mobile.

more choo-poo

  1. Flooding
  2. Signal Faliure
  3. Broken Down Train ahead
  4. Line side fire
  5. Line side fire involving gas canisters
  6. trespasser on the line
  7. road vehical striking a bridge
  8. suspicious package on the train ahead
  9. passenger taken ill
  10. person under a train
  11. Doors not opening properly
  12. Passenger incident
  13. Security Alert (@ Blackfriars)
  14. Dead beaver on the line (!!!!! Apparently so according to Carrie)
  15. Temporary signal failure
  16. Points Failure
  17. Earlier service disruption
  18. Defective train
  19. Poor rail conditions
  20. 7.16 from Brighton suffering door problems thus holding up other trains
  21. Overcrowding
  22. Derailment at Brighton
  23. Over running engineering works
  24. Major signaling systems failure
  25. Temporary fault with signaling equipment
  26. Suspected fire alert
  27. Poor rail conditions that affected the preceding train
  28. Train still in depot as staff are attending to a fault on the train
  29. Earlier slippery rail conditions
I will add to this as I hear more.. feel free to add any in the comments too.

I lost my badge :(

Dammit, I've lost the A-Team badge (Hannible + BA) off my rucksack!! :( had to happen at some point I guess.

Bastard scum >:/

Sorry..I don't care if you're sorry

WTF!

Earlier, faster train....10 minutes later into the office! WTF?!

UM???

Why is my template all screwed up?!?!? I'm hoping it's just IE not rendering it properly...it better be anyway!! >:/

Where's Matt?...












There he is!

choo-poo-continues

Yet more abomniable reasons...

  1. Flooding
  2. Signal Faliure
  3. Broken Down Train ahead
  4. Line side fire
  5. Line side fire involving gas canisters
  6. trespasser on the line
  7. road vehical striking a bridge
  8. suspicious package on the train ahead
  9. passenger taken ill
  10. person under a train
  11. Doors not opening properly
  12. Passenger incident
  13. Security Alert (@ Blackfriars)
  14. Dead beaver on the line (!!!!! Apparently so according to Carrie)
  15. Temporary signal failure
  16. Points Failure
  17. Earlier service disruption
  18. Defective train
I will add to this as I hear more.. feel free to add any in the comments too.

spontainious

One of the problems with this whole blog thing is that i think of loads of stuff to write or rant about while i'm out and about or, like this morning, sat on the train, but then forget to actually blog them when i get online.
This morning i've just remembered that i (hopefully got it right) set up email on my phone, although now i've forgotten what i had in mind to blog in the first place :/

Sent while mobile.

more choo-choo-poo-poo

Continuing the list, here's a couple more

  1. Flooding
  2. Signal Faliure
  3. Broken Down Train ahead
  4. Line side fire
  5. Line side fire involving gas canisters
  6. trespasser on the line
  7. road vehical striking a bridge
  8. suspicious package on the train ahead
  9. passenger taken ill
  10. person under a train
  11. Doors not opening properly
  12. Passenger incident
  13. Security Alert (@ Blackfriars)
  14. Dead beaver on the line (!!!!! Apparently so according to Carrie)
  15. Temporary signal failure
I will add to this as I hear more.. feel free to add any in the comments too.

Another random test

I am nerdier than 51% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

Excuses Choo-Choo

Something I meant to post the other week but forgot.. the start of a list of reasons why the trains are delayed or cancelled on either end of my daily commute..

  1. Flooding
  2. Signal Faliure
  3. Broken Down Train ahead
  4. Line side fire
  5. Line side fire involving gas canisters
  6. trespasser on the line
  7. road vehical striking a bridge
  8. suspicious package on the train ahead
  9. passenger taken ill
  10. person under a train
  11. Doors not opening properly
  12. Passenger incident
  13. Security Alert (@ Blackfriars)
I will add to this as I hear more.. feel free to add any in the comments too.

So very sick.

Vomiting seems to be becoming an all too regular occurrence in the realms of me.

In this instance tho, no bug or dodgy food, simply far too much alcohol for my system do feasibly deal with. Although scarily I wasn't aware that I'd drank that much, so...either I drank a shitload and didn't realise, or the little I had hit me harder than usual.

Either way not a good thing, especially when it involved vomiting from the early hours of Saturday morning until around 8.30 that evening :/

Needless to say I'm still feeling a tad rough today. :(

Birthday Calculator

The Birthday Calculator...another website of meaningless toss for filling up blogs and myspace...and why not eh? (via digg)

27 August 1976

Your date of conception was on or about 5 December 1975 which was a Friday.

You were born on a Friday
under the astrological sign Virgo.
Your Life path number is 4.

Life Path Compatibility:
You are most compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 2, 4, 8, 11 & 22.
You should get along well with those with the Life Path numbers 6 & 7.
You are least compatible with those with the Life Path numbers 1, 3, 5 & 9.

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2443017.5.
The golden number for 1976 is 1.
The epact number for 1976 is -1.
The year 1976 was a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 1/31/1976 and ending 2/17/1977.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Dragon.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Bear; your plant is Violets.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Hathys, the third month of the season of Poret (Emergence - Fertile soil).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 1 Elul 5736.

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 18 April 1976.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 25 April 1976.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 3 March 1976.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 6 June 1976.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 13 June 1976.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Saturday, 25 September 1976.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Thursday, 15 April 1976.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 2 March 1976.

As of 10/14/2006 5:26:41 PM EDT
You are 30 years old.
You are 362 months old.
You are 1,572 weeks old.
You are 11,005 days old.
You are 264,137 hours old.
You are 15,848,246 minutes old.
You are 950,894,801 seconds old.

Celebrities who share your birthday:
Alexa Vega (1988)Mason Betha (1978)Alex Lifeson (1953)
Paul 'Pee-wee Herman' Reubens (1952)Barbara Bach (1947)Tuesday Weld (1943)
Daryl Dragon (1942)Martha Raye (1916)Mother Teresa (1910)
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908)

Top songs of 1976
Tonight's the Night by Rod StewartSilly Love Songs by Wings
Don't Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John & Kiki DeeDisco Lady by Johnnie Taylor
Play The Funky Music by Wild CherryDecember, 1963 (Oh What a Night) by Four Seasons
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover by Paul SimonKiss and Say Goodbye by Manhattans
If You Leave Me Now by ChicagoLove Hangover by Diana Ross

Your age is the equivalent of a dog that is 4.30724070450098 years old. (You're still chasing cats!)

There are 317 days till your next birthday
on which your cake will have 31 candles.

Those 31 candles produce 31 BTUs,
or 7,812 calories of heat (that's only 7.8120 food Calories!) .
You can boil 3.54 US ounces of water with that many candles.

In 1976 there were approximately 3.1 million births in the US.
In 1976 the US population was approximately 203,302,031 people, 57.4 persons per square mile.
In 1976 in the US there were approximately 2,152,662 marriages (10.1%) and 1,036,000 divorces (4.9%)
In 1976 in the US there were approximately 1,921,000 deaths (9.5 per 1000)
In the US a new person is born approximately every 8 seconds.
In the US one person dies approximately every 12 seconds.

In 1976 the population of Australia was approximately 14,110,107.
In 1976 there were approximately 227,810 births in Australia.
In 1976 in Australia there were approximately 109,973 marriages and 63,230 divorces.
In 1976 in Australia there were approximately 112,662 deaths.


Your birthstone is Peridot

The Mystical properties of Peridot

Peridot is used to help dreams become a reality.
Some lists consider these stones to be your birthstone. (Birthstone lists come from Jewelers, Tibet, Ayurvedic Indian medicine, and other sources)
Sardonyx, Diamond, Jade

Your birth tree is
Pine Tree, the Particularity

Loves agreeable company, very robust, knows how to make life comfortable, very active, natural, good companion, but seldom friendly, falls easily in love but its passion burns out quickly, gives up easily, many disappointments till it finds its ideal, trustworthy, practical.


There are 72 days till Christmas 2006!
There are 85 days till Orthodox Christmas!

The moon's phase on the day you were
born was waxing crescent.

So far today, Friday the 13th is certainly living up to it's reputation >:/

Got up on time, got the right train, train got to Burgess Hill and decided that the doors didn't want to work properly so everyone got chucked of at Haywards Heath..thanks. Thus I have to wait 10 mins, get a slower train, change a East Croydon, wait another 10 mins, get a train to Victoria, get to Victoria just before 8, which is when I'm due at the studio!

Get into the tube station and YAY my Oyster card's expired, unlike my train ticket that I can still use on the day of expiry, the Oyster card's clearly a no-no, rush to buy ticket from the machine, even later.

Oh yeah and I didn't get paid this week like I was told I would :( Hopefully that'll get sorted otherwise I don't know how I'll even get to work.

Apart from that, filming's going fine :)


Oh my god I got up early today! :( 4.15AM to be exact!!!

Dark, damp and way too fucking early!! :S I hate getting up early, but I've yet to find a job that's any good, where I don't have to (and isn't a night work job), so until that time I will continue to grumpily get up early when required to.


So a couple of hours and a McDonalds Big Breakfast later I'm stood, slightly chilly outside the Brook Lapping offices, various people on their way to work giving me strange looks as a loiter outside the building :/





We pack, we load and we get on our way, for five minutes until we get stuck in traffic just down the road, also why we're in traffic, moving albeit not a great speed, so our driver was reading the paper at the same time!! :/, not so encouraging!







A couple of hours spent setting up and we're ready to go.






My responsibility today, apart from general continuity, fact checking, errands etc...SOUND!, not just booming, but mixing too! It's only a small mixer and we're pretty much running off one clip mic for most of the time, but still :)







Long old day tho!, 16 hours for me before I got home, thankfully a slightly later start 2moro, but then it's also Friday 13th :(

SecondLife Part 1


Ok, this weekend me n Jim signed up for SecondLife and it's officially one of th funniest things online.

I urge people to sign up and come find us (I'm Matt Geiger, feel free to put me down as a referral)

so far, I've bought a dress, got some free dance moves and uploaded a very bad version of my face onto my avatar.

Made friends with a girl called Lilly (I'm assuming she's a girl) and joined a Crazy club, which I promptly left again, cos the owner's mental.

It's a tad slow and a bit complicated to work out, but damn funny, especially now I can breakdance :D

A good grumble n stuff

Pissing rain >:/ I got drenched making the short trip round the corner from the office to Tesco and back.

On the way there the damn graffiti ridden cashpoint was OUT OF SERVICE (damn things are almost as bad as cocking MySpace!), fortunatly I had enough change for, what seems to be the ritual, Deep Fill Smoked Ham and Cheddar sandwich, bottle of Sprite and pack of BBQ Chicken crinkly hula-hoops, although throwing in a racy pack of choccy buttons this time.

Lunches seem to be incredibly dull over recent months, although while at Square Donkey I used some of my lunchtimes to do a bit of exploring of the area around that particular bit of London and will probably do the same up this way (when it's not raining enough to drown Noah), the actual food aspect of the lunches are..well..a bit shit.

A ham'n'cheese sanger, occasionally in a granary bap from a sandwich bar rather than a pre-pack Tesco one, but still Ham n cheese, at SQD came the odd Jacket Potato, every time with Cheese And Beans, so nothing racy there, overall, the same stuff and it all gets a bit dull.

I need to sort out some different lunches :/

Old skool 1

It's time.. HOFF alert recieved and I've just spent £1.49 on the Jump In My Car EP from the iTunes store, HOFF TO NUMBER 1!!!

Update craziness!


Well well well, for the first time since February, (with the exception of updating my CV in August), I've actually updated my website, not a huge amount, changed the layout on certain subpages, made it a little tidier, added some links, added some photos, the relevant film pages now have the YouTube feeds embedded in them, which is nice, all in all a productive day today me thinks :)

www.mattgrover.me.uk

Simply brillaint

Not having any money
Other people uploading from me and killing my d/l speed
Not having a MacPro 3GHz
Having stuffy ears

Currently enjoying..

Juliette And The Licks
Limewire Pro
A Strawberry Cornetto
Air drumming

Week one down


Little late in posting this I guess, well a couple of days at least.

First week @ Brook Lapping done and dusted and it's going ok, having to get back in the habit of cold calling people again, but I think all's going well at the mo at least. Should have some of the review samples coming in next week so I can get them checked out and sent out to the relevant teachers etc.

Two downsides to the job, 1)longer commute, 4hrs a day now :/ 2)A god awful HP PC, which allegedly is a 2.8GHZ P4, although you wouldn't guess it as it would probably run quicker if it was switched off! Possibly something to do with the 248Mb RAM it has (according to control panel at least), how the hell do you get 248?! It's a P4 surely the sticks are at least 256!?

Anyway because of the work/commute n stuff I've been stupidly busy and tired, which meand completing production on ITGA has slipped slightly (arse!), hopefully figure out the best plan of attack on that soon as I still need to try and blag a camera to shoot the few pickups so I can actually finish the thing! :(




I've also taken to trying to do the puzzles in whatever free paper I pick up on the train, namely sudoku or a crossword, needless to say I'm crap at both, but at least I feel like I'm stimulating my brain and helping to prevent the onset of Altzheimers...um...

um...


--
This Orange Multi Media Message was sent wirefree from an Orange MMS
phone.

I keep seeing names of stations i don't recognise. Either i never usually pay attention or i'm going the wrong way :/

Avast Ye Landlubbers!

Cap'n Matt Chaffinch wishing you a happy Talk Like A Pirate Day!!

ARRR! (etc.)

Hmm

Why is that as soon as I land another researching job (even though it should be quite good), do all the bloody Assistant Editor jobs start appearing :/

mobile testing


--
This Orange Multi Media Message was sent wirefree from an Orange MMS
phone. If you would like to reply, please either text, phone or send
a photo message to the sender directly by using the phone number listed
in the sender's address. To learn more about Orange's Multi Media
Messaging Service, find us on the Web at http://www.orange.co.uk/mms

Will this bloody work?

[edit] Well apart from all that MMS crap up there yeah. :/[/edit]

...and Steve was like all...like, the iTunes Music Store, is just the iTunes Store now, cos like..we've got an ass load of movies in there..

IF YOU'RE IN FUCKING AMERICA YEAH!!!

LIKE ALL THE FUCKING TV SHOWS!!

WHY IS IT SO FUCKING DIFFICULT?!!?

America has had TV shows in iTunes for ages now, at least since half way throudh season one of Lost, and over here in Blighty we got zip!

I downloaded a couple of episodes of Lost today, to catch up on what I'd missed, now that's not right. Ive since deleted them (for space rather than morals), but had they been available in iTunes I would have bloody bought them!

Now I'm not gonna pay for episodes of Dr Who or whatever shite eventually ends up in the UK store (if the broadcasters ever sort their crappy prehistoric ways out and start to realise that there's other mediums out there now!), but stuff like Lost, Battlestar, and if it were available The Amazing Screw On Head, stuff I like, I'd happily buy, especially as they've gone to 640x480 res now, although that's a bit odd, as it's still 4:3 (cos it's all iPod orientated), most broadcast is 16:9 now, and computer monitors are going more and more 16:9.

Although oddly enough the new iMacs are apparently 16:10?!? What's all that about?!

So all these new goodies that the mothership's tempting me with and I can't have any of it. And even if I could, we're stuck in shite old England with it's broadcast industry that fears change and it's crappy broadband. "Surf at superfast speeds* *compared to outer mongolia"

In Japan they have 100Meg connections now, 100-fucking-meg!, why in god's name am I still on 2Meg?!? Oh yeah, cos I live more than 3ft away from the damn exchange.

Bastards.

(A-la gayspace)
Current Mood
HAVE YOU NOT FUCKING GUESSED?!?

WHY DO THEY DO IT!?!?

Damn Apple!!

They drive me insane with their new stuff!! They announce their special "Showtime" event (today) a few weeks back, then last week, brought out a 24" iMac (w00t!!), after completing the intel transition with the Mac Pro (w00t!!!!!), now they've released an new 80Gb iPod, and are gonna be making a proper TV/Media centre thing.

why do the tease me so, they know I can't afford any of it BOO HOO, OH BOO HOO HOO


Hell Yeah!! Picked it up today, original trilogy lego goodness!! :D

The first one (set in the prequels) is amazing, this one is juat as good!! Bought it earlier, have just completed Episode IV ANH, so not amazingly difficult, but then a) it's lego and b)its aimed at younger kids anyway.

It wont take long to complete, but the magic is in the fact that you HAVE to go back and re-do the levels with different characters to get all of the special items.

I think they should do a full range of Lego platformers.. next up I reckon the Ewok movies..
Caravan Of Courage and Battle For Endor.

Then a bit of Indiana Jones Trilogy would go down well :)

It feels so weird to pay to download music, but I guess it the good and proper thing to do, rather than what some people do which is to download music from a P2P source. Scum.

I think it's this iTunes/Coke promo that got me started...I drink far too much Coke, and at the moment they've got this thing where 1 bottle of Coke = 1 iTunes song credit. Cheers, although it's limited to 5 songs per account, not so cheers. Still debating whether to set up any more accounts or not, just to get some more free music.

Plus side : more free music
Down side : having to manage more accounts that I'm only gonna use for 5 free songs each
Is it really worth it? Probably not.

But as a spin off from that, i've gone and paid for 2 whole albums from the store (previous and only purchase (apart from free downloads of the week) was the somewhat dissappointing Kubb album).. Revelations, the new Audioslave album, which rocks like a bitch although Tom Morello *still* needs to sort his damn solo's out :/

And thanks to the iTunes "Just For You" feature which suggests similar artists (sometimes with a fair randomness), I've purchased of Euphoria Morning, a Chris Cornell solo album, which is also quite good, if a little odd in places, but cheers. :)

and I know you're dying to know what I "bought" with my Coke Credits...

1. Dani California - RHCP
2. The Great Pretender - Freddy Mercury
3. Sweet Little Sister - Skid Row
4. We Built This City - Starship
5. Feuer Frei - Rammstein

Good mix huh? Maybe I should post that as an iMix??? ;)


The world has lost a legend. Steve Irwin "The Crocodile Hunter" has been killed today whilst filming for a documentary. :(

I couldn't quite believe the text that my girlfriend sent me this morning, telling me he was dead and that he'd been stabbed in the heart by a Sting-ray's barb, but it's true.

Now while I prefer watching some of the other reptile/animal people who cropped up on TV after Steve kicked everything off, I can't help but feel saddened by this news.

Both myself and my girlfriend thought that Austin Stevens would be the first to go, but it's not the case.

Steve Irwin, to us over here at least, I guess is kinda like a 21st Century Terry Nutkins, little bit edgier, but has done the same thing. Inspired a generation of children to learn more about animals and the world around them. His ridiculously high energy and enthusiasm for all things animal (esp. reptile), not only got him a top rating TV show, but also helped him pour much needed funds into the Australia Zoo in Queensland, raising awareness and support for all things conservation.

He will be missed.

Blogs On A Train

Or it would be if the damn T-Mobile wireless connection was any good!!! Thank Christ it was free and I wasn't paying the ridiculously extortionate charges that they have!!

So an interesting week, cut a couple of sequences for Viral Vision, which was fun, got me better aquainted with Avid Media Composer, but was frustratingly slow. Not the system, just me not knowing my way around properly, but that all comes with experience. I should spend more time with Avid Xpress at home, but the projects I've been working on recently have been in Final Cut, or I've started them in FCP cos I know it better.

Speaking of which, ITGA, is coming along, I'm still pretty confident with the October deadline, I'm kinda finishing as I go...rough cut the scene, then sync the clips and re-cut, tweak the cuts, colour correct and sound mix, tweak the cuts, scowl and swear, etc.

Sound is overall a right pig. After I solved the syncing issues, i'm now onto mixing, which is also a bastard (think I may have mentioned in a previous post), but it's getting there.

Work wise, it's been going well, I finish at SqD on the 8th :(, looks like next week is paperwork week, which isn't really exciting, but will be good to know more about that side of things, especially as it seems the next job I'm going to at Brook Lapping Education is gonna involve a shitload of paperwork!

But, at the end of the day, although I have no interest in becoming a Production Co-Ordinator/Manager, knowing how that side of things works, can only help to improve everything else you do. Having a greater understanding of all aspects of production is better then being solely focussed on one side of things...I could really go for a McDonald's Big breakfast about now :/

couple of minor points

a)

Your results:
You are Spider-Man
























Spider-Man
70%
The Flash
65%
Catwoman
65%
Green Lantern
60%
Hulk
55%
Robin
50%
Supergirl
40%
Iron Man
35%
Batman
35%
Superman
35%
Wonder Woman
20%
You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.


Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz



Well, I'm happy with that! (Although the female ones are a bit iffy)

and b)

Naive by The Kooks, really sounds like another song, possibly American pop-punk, it's ok, I've just clikced, it sounds like something by Alien And Farm...maybe Movies, i'll check that now

not long now

Only a couple more hours and I reach the grand old age of 30, this is really the only birthday, where I've actually felt any different (although we'll find out tomorrow, on my actual b'day if it is any different or not).

16 didn't feel any different from 15, 18 didn't feel any different from 17, no real advances to the "adult" world there, I'd been drinking for years, just now I could go and buy it legally..woo-bloody-hoo.

21 came around, the whole coming of age thing..uhuh, nothing really special going on there, in fact through the whole of my twenties, I haven't felt particularly grown up, despite becoming a father, forging a career, then changing career, getting in debt, I still fucked about at work (well, when I was in retail, when all you can do to remain sane is to fuck about), made stupid videos with my friends (now make more serious ones), joined a band, got pissed a fair bit, nothing that struck me as particularly adult.

Even now when I look in the mirror, I don't see "an adult", I see me, ok I've got a goatee (and a fair bit of stubble at the mo), my hair's throwing in a three-pronged assault of both receeding, thinning and going grey (cheers hair :/), yet I haven't felt like an adult since I supposedly became one.

Now approaching the big 3-0, I have this sudden sense of...well..."shit! 30!, that's like proper adult", things spring to mind such as TV programmes like "Thirtysomethings" "Friends", groups of adults, dealing with adult issues...ok maybe not so much in Friends, but you get the idea, it's pretty much a whole new demographic! And that's a tad unsettling.

So, in celebration of my impending b'day, I went out last night, got a load of friends together, went to the pub, had some drinks then went down to The Gloucester for (whatever it's called) an indy night. It's been a good few years since I've been to any club, let alone The Gloucester which I used to frequent, and, yeah, it was a good night, got a little drunk, not majorly, danced about a bit, and felt really really old.

I think it's a defining moment, when you're standing in the middle of a nightclub, not knowing hardly any of the songs and complaining to you friends (who were in agreement) that they needed to play more mid 80's to early 90's stuff, rather than all this new rubbish for all the people in the club who looked like they wanted to be Vince in the mighty boosh.

Then Outer Space by The Prodigy came on and everything was ok for 4 minutes :)

How long will it be before I'm thinking to myself "I can't keep up with these kids!" :/

So today was spent, with a little bit of a headache, sat in front of my mac, cutting ITGA. A lot of fine cutting and sound mixing today. I'm still not keen on anything sound related, although I've solved all the syncing issues now, and used Adobe Audition to clean up a lot of the fridge hum in the bar scene, there's now the issue of having one actor sounding really good, and the other sounding shite (mainly because of shooting on a wider angle and not having as good sound rushes), so more work there.

It's all a learning process tho, and I'll never be too old for that.

*yawn*


I've had a couple of messed up mornings this week. Trying to get back in the habit of getting up for work is not easy.

You stop work, and every day you want a lie in, you wake up at stupid o'clock in the morning, then when it comes to going back to work, all you want to do is sleep!! :/

For instance, this morning, I was at home in Henfield, over slept, woke up at 07:38, my bus was due around 07:40ish, rushed around, brushed my teeth, had a quick wash, chucked some clothes on and ran to the bus stop...missed it there's a surprise. Swore for a bit, then strolled up to the main bus stop to look at the time tables, ok, there's a bus to Burgess Hill at 08:02, which should get me there around 08:30, thus I should be able to get my normal train, cashback. Sure enough that's what happened (the pic is from platform 1 there) and I'm first in the office. Cheers.

Tuesday morning, even worse. In Brighton this time. My alarm on my phone goes off, I switch it off and immediatly drop off again. Wake up, look at the clock 08:30, shit! (my train's 08:36 from Brighton), jump out of bed, run around brush teeth, have a quick wash, look at my phone, the little bell symbol still there saying the alarm's still set, go into the clock switch that off, run around, finish getting dressed. Dash to the train station, thinking all the way about alternative routes to minimise my lateness, get to the station, next train to London Bridge 08:02, dash into the station...slow...stop...think...look up at the boards, next train leaving is 07:53.

Confusion sets in big time. Look at my watch, focus, 07:50, check it again. shit. When I woke up it was 07:30 not 08:30, my alarm never went off, hence why it was still set, and I could've had another 15 mins in bet and a bath in the morning. Damn. Spent most of the train journey up (on the 8:02) still trying to figure it all out.

Sometimes i can be really shit :/

Back on the donkey

Yep, back for a couple of weeks at Square Donkey, helping with the revisions to Viral Vision, so getting engrossed in the world of internet video once more, coming across stuff like this...



and remember...

Everybody loves Raymond. Except Chuck Norris.

Yes he bloodywell did!! Thank Christ for that!!

It wasn't that bad, 33/35 cheers, hated every minute of the Hazard Perception test, which is a load of bollocks, but hey, I passed, shouldn't grumble ;)

A LOT of work!



Okay, so some days have past since I last posted and since the shoot, which (if you saw the lookout blog) will know that as far as shoots go and being my first as a director, it went okay.

I've sat through, not all, but most of the rushes, started to drop scenes together to see what I've actually got and not got (soon realising that it's gonna be a hard cut), thinking about where the hell I can find a decent bathroom, and now..when the hell I'm gonna get that shot, as this weekend was the best one for it and after that, god knows on people's availability!?!? :/

I digi'd all the tapes into FCP with my iBook, on the weekend, I've now rigged the hdd back up to my powermac G4 for cutting.

One extra thing I've done is picked up a pair of cheap (and surprisingly good), £14.99 Sony headphones (MDR-V150) from HMV, as mum kept commenting on thet fact that all she could hear was Russ (my AD) shouting "QUIET PLEASE", obviously from me trying to sync the sound (which we'll get onto in a mo!)

So I'm currently flipping between, editing, sound syncing, sorting paperwork, generally procrastinating, thinking about installing ubuntu on my PC and thinking about doing some revision for my driving theory which I have 2moro.

I have to say, I've learnt a hell of a lot from this project (and still learning), knowing my limitations, knowing my abilities, realising how to think differently when you're a director from all the other shoots I've been on.

Learning about compromise on a shoot of this scale, realising how much more time I would've liked to shoot, I don't think I'm gonna love the finished product, but I think I'll like it, yesterday I hated it, but then that was just me getting tired and frustrated.

Sound syncing.

AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!! yes that's right... AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

I HATE IT!, first off I tried doing it in FCP (Final Cut Pro btw, thought about using Avid for this one, but went the FCP route anyway), my sound was 1/3 of a frame out, and I couldn't move it in anything but 1 whole frame incrememtents (first head in hands moment), so I bunged the shot into Soundtrack, which proved the business (despite crashing a fair few times on my PM), it allowed me to zoom further in and properly sync.

So a few hours and 2 shots synced. Onto the next one..bung it to Soundtrack, sync the clap, done. NOPE, the clap is synced but the pre-take voices are out!?!? Sync the voices, the claps out (and the voices still aren't fully synced!) at that point I went to bed.

I haven't tried syncing any more yet, instead choosing to drop an assembly together to see if the shots I've got actually work, why? because a) I need to, and b) I'm dreading getting to the dialogue and finding that it's all out of sync :/ fingers crossed tho!!

Anyway...back to the grind...

It's not the stress...


It's the headache. The constant, persistant dull headache.

Yeah and my printer's just ran out of black ink. Cheers. God I'm a grumpy bastard at the moment.

Anyway, getting stuff sorted, managing to make it through a day without being sick from nerves, and yay, soon get to make a "proper" film. :)

Got confirmed delivery times, got booked kit, still outstanding on a couple of things, a loc, an actor, but hey, that's all part and parcel of low budget, slightly poorly prepped, filmmaking ;)

Big kudos and cheers to Sally Reynolds, who's Producing, came on board late in the game (my bad) and has really pulled it together. CHEERS :)

sick with stress

You'd think by now, i would be able to deal with stress a bit better. I mean, I've been a manager, I've dealth with countless pressured situations, I have some shit go on in my personal life that I've had to deal with, u know the usual "makes you stronger" stuff.

No.

I'm a wreck, I'm worrying about getting another Job, (have 2 weeks work @ sqd now, which is cool), I'm worrying a lot about the shoot this weekend!! Will it come together ok? Can I direct it ok, get my vision across, get the performance I need from the actors, can I explain my ideas clear enough???

Will it look and sound okay? Will I make a [rather expensive] complete hash of it? Will I unwillingly let someone else take over and it end up not really being my vision? Can I get anywhere near my vision???

Damn my worry, damn the world, I'm gonna be grumpy for a while, I just need to make sure that I'm not grumpy on the shoot and that I don't vomit.

AAAAARRRRGHLGLGLGL!

MYSPACE!!! it's soo crap, Kevin Rose slagged it off on one of the recent diggnation episodes I watched and he's right, it's so crap.

"I'm sorry cuntspace had unexpectedly shat out it's own internal organs"

AAAARRRGH, I just want to post a damn comment! is that so fucking hard?!?!? Apparently so.

Anyway, short trip to London today, had some top garlic bread mit mozzarella in Pizza Express, cheers :)

myspace, shmyspace

How crap is it, really? I've tried all day to log in to deny yet another band's gay-myspace-friend-request and all I'm getting when I click the little login button is..

Sorry, I've unexpectedly shat my own mum out my arse, but I've told the technical losers about it.

Gee thanks. Well done Tom/Rupert whatever cock runs that site and it's clearly crappy servers. When I do finally get to deny the band, I do hope it shows up their end that I did. Have that in your face you Arctic Monkeys wannabes.

NB, obviously these feelings don't apply to any of my friends bands ;)

Last day at work :/

Well, it had to happen...my last day @ Square Donkey :( I have to say it's been great working here, it's been a fun job and the people are great (no, I'm not just saying that!)

So, today, make sure all the paperwork is up to date and kosher, then drinks :)

Yep..we're shit

Had a fun evening last night, went to a pub quiz with Vicky, down at The Crescent pub, just around the corner from where she lives.

General knowledge, 30 questions, the winning team got a respectable 27, well done them, we scored 9.

Yes 9. We're shit, I'm not doing another pub quiz with just the two of us. It's too embarrasing! :/

Top day at work..

I heartily recommend scooting over to scifi.com and watching the full pilot episodes of Eureka and The Amazing Screw On Head.

The first being a bog standard little sci-fi channel series, much like all the other series that are cropping up, like Invasion, Surface etc, but it's really funny, quirky and..well kinda like a grown up Eerie Indiana, which can't be a bad thing!

The ASOHead is an animated series from Mike Mignola...The creator of Hellboy you damn snotwheeze!

Watch them both! And if you feel like it also check out the first episode of Garth Mareghi's Dark Place, proper british lunacy that for some reason wasn't re-commissioned!?!?! Wankers.

No that wasn't my Steve Ballmer impression, although it was pretty close, that was my elatedness (?) at having broadband at home once more! :)

Thankfully, my Orange freebie package is now active and although only 2meg when apparently the line supports 6.5, it's better than dial-up and then nothing which is what I had for the past couple of weeks. Plus I only had 2meg on AOL (if that!)

Not so WOO! is the damn passport service >:/, they've severely pissed me off this week by messing me about something chronic with the delivery of my renewed passport. Now renewing a passport should be an easy (if expensive) process, you fill out the form, pay the money (£58 bleurgh!) and a couple of weeks later they send you a spanking new passport. Not if you move house after you've applied.

Now I didn't think anything of it, mum put a re-direct on the post, so I assumed (yes) that everything would get to me. Of course I didn't count on the fact that the IPS use a specialist courier service called Secure Mail Services (SMS) to deliver their stuff, they tried to deliver my passport to the old house, obviously we weren't there, so I got a letter through the post saying to ring a number and arrange for redelivery. I rang it, got a computer who told me they could send it to my work address. I hung up and got my work addy, phoned back, got a person this time, said could I re-direct to my work addy, they said sure no probs, i gave them the details, they said..
"That's in London yes?"
I said..
"Yup"
"We can't deliver there."
"Um...why?"
"Because your passport is in Brighton"
"Right?"
"So we can't track it to London"

Great..thanks :/
"Okay, can I give you my new home address then?"
"No we can't take that I'm afraid"
"Why not?"
"We can't we can only deliver it to the address on the system"
"But I just gave you my work address to deliver it to"
"We can't do it, you have to phone the passport service and get them to send a fax to us"

And so it begins...4 days of phoning the passport service, in the end to be told that I had to send a fax, which had I been given the right number would have been a hell of a lot easier and would have saved a lot of aggrivation for a little old lady.

That was sent on Monday. I still haven't got my passport and consequentially I couldn't take my theory test (driving) and have lost £21 for my trouble.

THANKS THE BASTARD PASSPORT SERVICE

Where's my Internet?

Just gone a whole weekend with no net access whatsoever! :/

Cancelled my AOL account on Saturday morning, registered for broadband thru Orange, but in the mean time...no access at all! And of course being in Henfield, no wireless either, not even any of my neighbours have an unprotected wireless router. Dammit.

Where's my broadband?!?

>:/

Dammit! We move, house and I have no broadband. I phone BT, they say the line *is* enabled and it's and AOL issue.

I phone AOL, tell them I've moved and they say sure give us your new address, right it'll take 20 DAYS to transfer your account, but you can have dial-up in the mean time.

Um... Dial-up? 20 days? £30/month? Um...

Dammit.


Well, I've moved house, still at mum's, still can't afford my own place, but it's a new place nonetheless, it has rather orange carpets and smells funny but it's ok.

The main issue I have is lack of space for the desk and computer setup I wanted, and am reduced to using (most of) my old desk with a single 19" CRT attached to the powermac, not that much of a compromise, as it's still a PM, but if you see my earlier posts u'll understand what I'm getting at.

Well, pretty much all packed now. After I've posted this, checked a couple of other bits and closed down, I'm gonna pack up the router, and then we're pretty much all set to move.

We don't move until tuesday, but as I'm not gonna be here 2moro night, I need to get everything prepped beforehand.

Speaking of prep, pre-production on "Impossible To Get Around" is well underway, check out the production blog for a few more details and ongoing summaries.

Oh yeah and WHERE IS MY WEBSITE?!? >:/ looks like the fasthosts servers are down as I couldn't connect earlier to look at getting some more webspace for lookoutfilm.net, can't get my email and can't pull up my site. Dammit, doub't I'll get a refund for the downtime.

Top day, sun is shining, I'm gradually getting all my stuff packed, although I have to dismantle the desk soon and I've just listened to The Imperial March rather loud, cheers.

W00T!

saw this on digg, it's bloody amazing, has it's shortcomings when you start to think about it, but run this on one of those interactive tables they've got in development and I'm there! I'd even have it running on a PC and use a mouse!!




do i?


Ok that title sounds a bit iffy, it was supposed to sound like proper thesp', but came across a little bit subversive!

Basically (again, I use that word far to often), basically yesterday was the day of the studio shoot for the programme I'm currently working on, and thus my television acting debut!! [wink wink]

Now, i wouldn't like to compare myself to the likes of Min-Sik Choi, or Olivier, but I think I can definitly describe myself as a character actor. This was a very demanding role for me, not that stressful, but a little disorientating at times, and very very warm. There was an element of danger involved and one might say that I was acting blind, although I still had the skills and confidence to do all my own stunt work.

I haven't seen the rushes yet but by all acounts the performance was the best they'd seen for a character of this type and overall I won't win any sort of award but should get 30 seconds (ish) more tv time!

I can't wait to see what the rest of the outfit looks like on cam! ;)

PANIC!!!


It had to happen, my iBook finally crashed, or to give it the correct terminology had a "Kernal Panic" and it certainly induces panic I can tell you!

Not panic in the sense of
"Oh my God my...my computer...it's...what's that? That's not supposed to be there, oh God what am I gonna do what am I gonna do? I'll have to take it to PC world, maybe it's a virus or..or..a trojan"

more

"Oh! Shit! Bugger! Damn. Okay, restart (twiddles thumbs during reboot) why did that happen disk space the heat in this office hope I haven't buggered something well it's fine now probably for another year or so.

So I am wondering, why exactly that happened. I've googled "causes of kernel panics" a few times to try and find out, all the main ones seem to be permissions and hardware, well as soon as i was back up, I ran MacJanitor & Disk Utility, so hopefully they've cleared any of that up. Hardware; I hope not, cos that'll be a bugger, but it wouldn't surprise me, I've been pushing this little iBook quite hard since I've had it, and what with the ridiculous heat (pah! English! never happy with the weather), it could well get a little frazzled.

Use your vote!


Take a trip over to the NME site and take a minute to log a vote & comment for Winteria.

Yes they're friends of mine, they're also really good! You can listen to some of their stuff on the NME page or from their webiste (www.winteria.co.uk) or their MySpace page (www.myspace.com/winteria).

If u like it please vote and also go see them at The Concorde2 in Brighton this Sunday at 3.00PM!

Cheers

the link again http://www.nme.com/newmusic/winteria

A little pointer


Just a quickie, to say to anyone reading this, to be sure to have a butchers at the links lower down on the right, u'll find the joys of Winteria, link to my MySpace...space, and a couple of IMDB pages of mine, such as ratings, and as I've newly discovered the My Movies bit of the site, I'll add the various films I own on VHS and DVD, so if you're really that interested..you can see for yourselves what masterpieces and embarrasing pieces of crap I own.

Cash In The Attic


No, not the BBC programme, but me, going thru my stuff that's in my mum's loft prior to moving, to sort and break it down into 3 categories..

1. Keep
2. Ebay
3. Bin

And there are some gems let me tell you!! A whole host of Games Workshop stuff, a BBC Model B, a train set, some really bad ties, a shitload of random computer parts, 123 3.5" cover disks etc etc, I keep so much crap!

Ahh, Rendering...

I often wonder what it'd be like to have a ninja machine that can suck the very life-force from entities around it (such as a PowerMac Quad G5 with 8Gb of RAM), I ponder this whilst waiting 20 minutes for my iBook to render an 1m40s After Effects project.

Hell Yeah! Pt.2

The PC is dead, long live the Mac!

Well kinda, I've finally unplugged my PC and am currently 100% Mac based!! :D This will change, when (after the move) I set up my PC again, so I have a printer & scanner again, but for now I'm wallowing in Mac happiness!

And I've started on the blinging road to pimping out the Powermac, I've ordered a new Pioneer DVD burner (fingers crossed that it will actually work, indications are that it'l be ok!), a 160Gb internal HDD and SATA card.

Basically I've spent too much money over the past week. I've still yet to get the FW800 card and ADC-VGA adapter :/ then the other options are, get another external HDD (probably a LaCie d2 250Gb as a scratch disk and use my existing 160Gb for other data (sound samples etc)), possibly upgrade the graphics card and finally the possibility of a processor upgrade, although that is rather expensive, and for the cost an upgrade I could probably buy a faster G4 Powermac off ebay! I think I'll see how I go with that one.

At the moment, it goes pretty good, rendering in FCP4 is painful, but, that's only cos I'm working on something with several effects and have to re-render each time I make an adjustment, cheers :/

It'll be interesting to see how After Effects gets on when I get it installed on here, mainly how it compares, rendering time wise, to my iBook, if it's about the same I'll be happy.

When we do move and I start to get everything set up again, I hope I have enough room and power points!! There's gonna be a lot of kit...

* Powermac
* Monitor 1
* Monitor 2
* Ext. HDD 1
* Ext. HDD 2
* Behringer Mixer
* Speakers
* DV Camera/Deck
* TV (for output until I get a broadcast monitor)
* PC
* Monitor
* Printer
* Scanner

Then theres the...

* PS2
* iBook
* mobile phone
* Marshall bass amp (& fx pedals)
* Paper shredder

Hopefully I'll be able to put the wireless router in another room...Hell yeah! :/


Lunch in a tiny burger bar, cheese burger n chips. To be honest, it wasn't bad, obviously you can't expect too much, but for £2.99, it was an ok lunch.

Apparently some of the buses up here are fuel cell powered, which i find a bit odd, haven't seen anything fuel cell powered before, i don't even know what exactly a fuel cell is! :/

i'm sure i'll forget to look it up. Got an email reply from an old friend from school this morning too, which is nice :) Hi Tina :)

WHY OH WHY OH WHY?!? Has it been sooo difficult to get hold of a new TV for Vic??

I'm guessing cos she's going for a cheap 28" 4:3 CRT rather than a "super bastard plasma screen" but still, surely it should have been easier than trapesing round Sussex for a day with no joy and eventually me ordering one online from a rather shady looking website via Froogle, who's customer service I now come to regard as utter shite! Last time I buy something through Froogle!

Now I've eventually got them to deliver it when they said they were going to (after giving in and paying out another £8 for a different courier), lets see if it turns up and works eh? If not I'm not gonna be fucking happy.

Rant over, on a plus note, for lunch , I've just had a rather good jacket potato, cheers.

Hell Yeah!

Oh yeah, Matt's got a "new" computer!! New toy to play with!! :D

How come? Richard at Square Donkey very very kindly gave me his old PowerMac G4 (Qucksilver) and the two Sony CRT monitors that go with it (but I've yet to get them home), so A big big THANKYOU to Richard!

Firstly let me tell you that PowerMacs are bloody heavy! Although thanks to my super strength (!) and an Ikea bag, I managed to get it home by train and bus all the way from london.

I've set it up at home to check it out, give it the once over and run a software update on it and to be honest, I'm very tempted to unplug my PC entirely and just run the PowerMac and my iBook, until such time I can set both up (probably after the move), of course this buggers me for printing stuff at home as I only have an old HP Deskjet 690C, with a parallel connection (I can't be arsed to get a converter as i want a laser printer anyway).

There is something comforting about seeing MacOS X on my Evesham monitor, I'm also surprised as to how good the PM's internal speaker sounds, considering it's an internal speaker!

One of the main issues at the mo with it, is that it's running MacOS 10.2.8 (Jaguar) because it's got Avid Xpress DV 3.5 installed which won't run on anything newer :/ Now here's the quandry, I want to run Avid, so I can learn the interface and get some experience cutting with it (Avid FreeDV just isn't the same), but I also want to run FCP 4.5, which needs 10.3.2 at least. Damn. (Plus the lack of Expose has already caught me out once!)

However, it feels surprisingly nippy. It's got an 800MHz G4 (slower than my iBook) and a generous 1.25Gb of RAM, which is clearly helping it along. It's got an ATI graphics card in there, but I'm not sure which model (has both DVI & VGA outputs), 40Gb HDD and, I believe, a Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW), although I have yet to test that to check (I know it's not a DVD writer as iDVD refused to open).

So, I'm looking into how much I can pimp this by, eg: Processor upgrade, optical drive upgrade, add HDD's, graphics upgrade, FW800, and also I'm pretty sure OS X allows you to boot from and external drive, which may be the answer to my FCP4.5 issue, but I'll have to check.

I'm typing this on the PM at the mo, in Firefox, the stripyness of the Jaguar interface is a tad odd, but it's very responsive. It also has an Airport card in there, cheers!, it's an original card I',m guessing as I had to change my router settings to Mixed to allow both 802.11g & b, as the PM wouldn't connect initially.

If I'm honest here, da da da da daaa I'm lovin it! L8r.

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