Matt Grover - Freelance Camera Operator & Editor

A new great Adventure

2009-07-20T17:13:00.001+01:00

A while ago now (late 2006), I made the very conscious decision to not get involved with any more short films, with the exceptions of the occasional bit of helping out mates, I decided to avoid the whole "indie film industry", partly as I felt it's not really an industry.

Now I'm not saying there's not such thing as the Indie Film Industry, there clearly is, there's plenty of feature films being made without studio backing and being sold through a variety of distribution channels, from DVD distribution to Sundance and successful theatrical release, that, to me is the Indie Film Industry.

One of the definitions of Industry is "the organised action of making of goods and services for sale", the "for sale" bit, being my key point here. I seemed to be working with a lot of people who were under the impression that they were working in the "indie film industry" by making short films and maybe getting them screened in a pub somewhere. (Or even longer films in some cases), not seeing the film as a product, not having a realistic plan for it's distribution or getting any sort of return on, in some cases, quite a substantial investment. I myself spent out about £1000 on a short that didn't come out quite as I'd hoped and sat on an edit hard-drive for a couple of years, before getting archived on another hard-drive (still unfinished), but that's a slightly different post, although a realisation hit me at the end of the main part of production on that short.

That realisation about the "industry" I was involved in was that it clearly wasn't "the film industry", that it's more of an Amateur Film Maker's club.

That realisation was born of accepting to myself that, despite all the special features watched, the course at Brighton Film School, the books I'd read and all my enthusiasm, I really didn't know what I was doing. I had an idea about it sure, but going out and directing this reasonably ambitious short for a first timer (anything I'd shot before doesn't count at all), pulling together a crew and cast, making the whole thing work over a weekend, I was clearly an amateur, and so were the majority of people I'd worked with on this and other shorts/films.

There's a lot to be said for just going out and doing it, learning as you go. There's also a lot to be said for learning how to do it wrong.

At the time I was trying to change career, move entirely into a different industry, from retail into media/film, so my outlook was very career focussed and before my anti-shorts decision, I was all about getting involved with shorts, writing my own scripts, going to screenings, alongside the paid work I'd gained working in factual TV production. (The choice of going the Factual TV route was a circumstance/financial one really, but that's the route I chose at the time!)

Obviously, like many people out there i was hoping to, not only gain film-making experience, but also contacts, people in the industry who could then hopefully lead to more work. Unfortunately, most of the people in the "proper" film industry are not working on your average no-budget miniDV short film, thus the contacts being made only led to other no-budget miniDV short films, plus all of us were in the same boat on the skills front, sure there were people who'd been doing it longer, but pretty much all of us were just bumbling along figuring stuff out. Working on an "indie" film set is not the same as working on a professional film/tv set. Blind leading the blind and all that.

So I decided (after much faffing about with my own film) that I needed to learn a hell of a lot more and that doing these short films wasn't getting me to where I wanted to be. Time to focus all my energies on 'proper' work.

At the time, where I wanted to be was still up in the air. I'd already made the decision to go the factual production route (researching) for various reasons, so that's where my focus lay, eventually being allowed to shoot stuff, deciding that I really wasn't all that happy with being stuck in the office phone-bashing for 7 of my 8 weeks of contract, then getting to the point of using "real cameras" instead of just PD170s & Z1's (although I still get a LOT of Z1 work, plus I KNOW how to shoot on one!), then working with and alongside experienced professional cameramen to start learning "the craft" and that's essentially where I want to be now.

I am a cameraman, I moved on from factual production over a year ago, although still keep a hand in every now and again to keep skills up, but I'm developing myself as a cameraman. The route I've taken (via production) has kind of niched me to a degree, the same as other routes, such as the kit-room upwards route can do, but in different areas, but that's something I'm working on, at the end of the day I'm a cameraman, yes I'm multi-skilling, I can edit on FCP and (bit rusty on) Avid, I have a strong factual production background and years of management experience behind me, but at the end of it, I want to be the best camerman/camera operator I can be, learning "the craft" so that with any luck, down the line I can be a top end operator, perhaps be able to call myself a "lighting cameraman" or even a "DoP" (people giving themselves titles above their station/experience, again is another post). Getting to this point, which is still early days as far as I'm concerned, has come from focussing on that 'proper work' and ignoring the Amateur Film Club/Indie Film Industry stuff.

Now you may be thinking that this is just a big snobby rant about short films and slagging off the people who make them, it's not (it's leading somewhere, honest). I know people who have and who currently are, making low/no-budget films, FEATURES even, with a view to distributing them and with any luck, pulling in some sort of revenue, they also work on shorts, some of them have also been doing work in the "proper" film industry, but that hasn't been garnered solely from doing no-budget dv shorts.. I've worked on odd shorts and other projects since my decision, for friends, as I've said. I've no problem with the many people who are out there making shorts, I've seen some absolutely cracking ones along with the plethora of dross, just to me, at the time, and to a degree, still now, feel that the "indie film industry" is not where I should be focussing my energies to achieve the goals that I want to reach.

So why is it then am I about to embark on producing, what is, for all intents and purposes a number of short films, shot for minimal budget, with minimal crew and generally as far removed as you can get from a "professional film set", what I've been purposely avoiding for the past few years??

It could just be put down to the "working with friends" exception rule, but it's not, I'm investing a lot more time, effort and cash into this. We're really starting to go against pretty much everything I've been saying now!!

Is it because we're calling them a "Podcast" or "Web Series" instead of "Short Films", does merely a change of title mean that makes it all okay, when everything else about the project fits the description of your usual no-budget DV faire? Well partly. I say partly because, we've got a definite distribution plan for the product (it IS a product after all), okay getting something up on the web isn't exactly rocket science any more, but getting that all important marketing and promotion down, that's still eluding a lot of people. Plus we're developing a series rather than a single short, which means it's more marketable and more open to viewer investment (of the repeat/return viewing kind rather than monetary), AND we are looking at ways to monetise it, it's certainly more feasible to make money back (on what ever scale) from a series than a single short or group of disparate shorts.

The fact remains tho, that we're not expecting to make any money from it and even the vague expectations we have at the moment, amount to covering production expenses. There are podcasts/web series out there who have "made it", ones who are pulling in high viewing numbers and reasonable revenue from varying sources, the same as there are filmmakers out there who have made a few shorts and gone on to "make it" in the film industry, but I'd say the numbers (in some form) are comparable.

So I am going back on everything I said earlier then? Again, partly. There's a whole lot of "speculate to accumulate" in this project, and no real guaranteed "accumulate", I've got to invest a fair bit of time and energy, as well as some cash (although trying to keep it as low as possible) into what is essentially an experiment into a field I've been interested in for a while, all the time, fitting it around my 'proper' work, to make sure I can still bring money in and further my career goals (along with the other people involved), with the hope that it will see some modicum of success. Much like many short film makers.

So apart from having some vague plan and a good level of belief in the project, what else? Enjoyment.

Adventure Men, as we call it, is carrying on from a thing I got involved in back in March (wow, that went by quick!!). A friend of mine, who for the purposes of this post we'll call Ross Lewis, who worked with me at Gadgetshop, got in touch and said that he and his good friend Simon Daneski were planning on doing something for Comic Relief and did I fancy coming along and filming it for them. It sounded like it could be fun, so this fell into the "working with mates" exception category.

Fun is not how to describe it. Having an absolute BLAST is slightly better. A total of six hours of filming time (an evening, a morning of climbing a hill, some lunch and a little bit after lunch) became the five episode behemoth comedy event that is Touching the Dyke, (that links to YouTube, you could also have the Touching the Dyke Vimeo Channel if ya fancy) which thus far has been pretty well received, over 3000 views, cumulative across all videos and sites (and raised over £400 for Comic Relief). So the viewing figures, ratings and people saying "That was actually pretty funny", all from very little planning and haphazard promotion efforts, combined with the enjoyment on the day (the edit schedule was ridiculous, t'will be more measured this time around), gave all three of us involved a full on robot chubby for doing some more.

Factoid: I initially insisted that TtD would be a single max 10 minute short. D'oh!
Factoid: I've initially insisted that the first installment Adventure Men (and subsequent installments) will span no more than two 7-9 minute episodes. This is being met with some doubt/resistance from within the AdMen camp. Only edit time will tell!!

So this time round, slightly more planning, some may say even collaborative workflow (!! more on that another time), a lot more ideas and struggling to come up with ideas to expand the thing. Trying to format it better, this is mostly down to me as I've got to cut the thing together, so I need to make sure I cover all my shots on the shoot day(s) whilst letting Ross & Simon keep to their flow. The reason for formatting is, we're going for a series, a series needs identity, more than characters and titles, although considering I'm no After Effects wiz, I'm pretty chuffed with what I came up with on the title front! A series needs structure, I'm basing that structure on existing programmes and adapting it accordingly, whether we can stick to that once we get into things, we'll have to wait and see.

It's still all very experimental though. All a bit "run-and-gun", there's no script, simply a number of beats we know we want to hit, and ideas we want to include, the rest is totally improvised by Ross & Simon, thus from a filming POV, especially as a single camera shoot, that's a challenge, need to get coverage and details in one take (thinking two camera shoot's a possible, if I can cover kit and find someone for next Tuesday! the 28th!!) although I think I'm gonna cover my technical concerns in another post as this one is MAHOOSIVE! (at least compared to what I normally post)

Anyway, My point, if there is one to this, is that I'm not totally going back on what I decided was my way forward back in 2006, I'm still not going to devote time to working on loads of other people's shorts, but this project is something I'm willing to devote to, something I'll work to fit in and make work, whether it does or not, we'll have to wait and see, it will hopefully evolve and improve, but it's still down to people watching it and liking it as to whether this particular "amateur" project will make it or not. I hope it does.

Finally, apologies for any bad links, spelling mistakes and the glaring grammar issues throughout, but deal with it (in a nice way).

You can follow the progress of Adventure Men in a few ways...
On the Lookout Film & Digital blog (Adventure Men announcement)
Follow @AdventureMen on Twitter
and currently we've set up our YouTube account http://www.youtube.com/AdventureMenShow although we'll also be publishing to other hosting sites.
We're currently toying with a dedicated website, but nothing just yet.

I'll post certain personal thought son stuff here, and I'm sure Ross will do much the same on his blog.

A couple of links to people who I know and I feel are actually doing something vaguely sensible in the "indie film industry" ;)
Mike Peter Reed, his blog is here - Filmmaker Slog
Simon Drake and Dan Rickard working on Darkest Day

White Star Liners - Tyre Pressure Was The Least Of His Worries (Live)

2009-05-21T13:39:00.000+01:00

Helped out some friends of mine by cutting together some recent gig footage for them, taken from a couple of camcorders (one 16:9, one 4:3, yay, both auto-exposing, double yay), I synced and cut together the two angles, applying a little re-framing (or a lot on the 4:3 stuff), and the odd bit of motion, as well as a bit of a grade (within FCP) to take the edge off the DV footage and some of the blown out areas.

I've got the rest of the gig sat on the work drive as I work on building videos for each song for them, so they could well upload some more at some point.

For those of you in the Liverpool area, they're playing The Cavern, this weekend (23/24 May), check out their website for more details White Star Liners (www.whitestarliners.co.uk)

Touching the Dyke

2009-03-11T10:40:00.003Z

Something I've been working on for this year's Red Nose Day...

You can follow their progress on blip.tv and YouTube. Enjoy and if you fancy you can donate here. Cheers!

HURRAH?

2009-02-18T22:48:00.001Z

Is that good? I'd rather be guaranteed not to get tapeworm.

new (old) lens arrived!!

2009-02-10T10:12:00.005Z

HURRAH! the 50mm 1.8 Nikkor that I ordered off eBay has arrived! I ordered from Jesscollie Classic Cameras, who's now on my fave sellers list.

So what's next for this lens?? Well it should get some use in some upcoming photoshoots, at f1.8 it should be a nice portrait lens, and as with the other lenses, it'll hopefully get some use in the video world via a 35mm adapter later in the year.

Lens comparison set on Flickr

more lens comparison

2009-02-06T14:59:00.004Z

I've just snapped off a few shots for lens comparison on my Nikkormat EL and Olympus Trip 35, I've still got frames to use up on the rolls in both cameras, so they'll be a while away yet, however after I did it I thought I may as well snap a shot off from my iPhone, after all it has a camera, I do take pictures with it, why not add it to the mix. So here it is.

Shot landscape, no adjustments.
The full set. More will be added as and when.

Lenses lenses everywhere

2009-02-04T14:14:00.005Z

Well not quite everywhere, but still...

I've just recently added a couple of zoom lenses to my kit (2nd and 3rd from left), both by Tokina and both found in a charity shop in Horsham! (hopefully on it's way via eBay soon is also a Nikkor 50mm f:1.8 prime)

The main reason I snapped the lenses up is that they're Nikon AI-S F-mount lenses and thus compatible with my Nikon D80, the older lenses I have (3 on right) are Pre/Non-AI lenses which are fine with my well old Nikkormat EL, but not so good for the D80 without being modified first.

The idea of me building up my SLR kit, is partly bringing still photography into the work side of things, for stuff I work on and also projects I'm developing, but also to have a collection of lenses to use with 35mm adapters such as the Letus, which while doesn't quite give you the quality of a set of DigiPrimes or similar, does lend an interesting creative turn to video filming that I intend to explore.

One of the first thing's I've done so far is to compare viewing angles of the lenses, or at least the D80 compatible ones (3 on the left up there), I'm also going to run off a few shots on film with the EL and the same lenses (with the exception of the Nikkor DX), plus the 3 non-AI lenses.

Left to right (and with the samples below, top to bottom), they are:-

Nikkor AF-S DX 18-55mm f:3.5-5.6G VR (kit lens)
Tokina SZ-X 270 28-70mm f:3.5-4.5
Tokina SZ-X 210 70-210mm f:4.0-5.6

For each lens I took two snaps out of my window, one fully wide, one fully tele. (Mouse over for alt text)

So there you have it, 3 lenses' focal lengths compared with dirty, no frills snapshots. Bet you're looking forward to the others now eh? ;)

http://www.flickr.com/people/mattgrover/

Up and Running 6a

2009-01-31T12:39:00.005Z

Page 2 of my iPhone and it's apps...

Again top to bottom, left to right.. All non standard apps on this page were free.

Clock:- I use the alarm feature quite regularly but that's about it, if I want to know the time a quick press of the home button while locked will tell me. No complaints tho.

Weather:- Another standard iPhone app, built from the Yahoo! widget, it's ok, but very very basic, I'm gonna look for a more detailed one, but then if I find one I won't be able to delete this one!!

MySpace:- I don't use MySpace a hell of a lot any more, but I still have an active profile, and I occasionally check it on the go and delete all the crappy spam adds that you get on MySpace, functionally, the app's not as good as Facebook (much like the site itself!) (iTunes)(Profile)

Digg:- Bookmark to the mobile version of Digg, which isn't the easiest to use, and thus doesn't get much use from me. (Link)

TubeStatus:- As I do a fair bit of work and commuting to/from and in London, this would seem like quite a handy app, which I suppose it would be if I actually checked it regularly before my journey, but at the same time, the Tube isn't that hard to navigate and if there's a major problem (becuase "minor or even major delays" generally don't matter if you're just getting the next train), you can easily figure out how to go around, and if you're checking the app now, it's already too late. If it was integrated into a map, that may be more useful. (iTunes)

Linkedin:- Another social network site, this one supposed to be more business orientated, so I've got a profile, have some connections and that's about it at the moment, but the mobile app comes in handy if I want to check on it.(iTunes)(Profile)

Photos:- The standard iPhone photo gallery app, once again, I've got no issues with this, I don't want to be doing any photo manipulation or editing on the go, it simply stores my phone cam photos and syncs with iPhoto. Cheers.

UK Trains:- WebApp interface for the National Rail Timetable search, the interface isn't great, but it delivers the same results, and for a free webapp it's ok, does the job. (Link)

ShoZu:- This seemed like a bloody good app, I could post pictures to my various accounts from a single app, could blog on the go, all looked good. First time I tried posting a pic to TwitPic, it failed, nothing posted. I think I've had one test blog post from it and that's about it. There has been an update and I haven't tried it since, so maybe I should give it another go. (iTunes)

IM+ Lite:- I keep this on as a just in case, it should handle multiple IM accounts and protocols, I very rarely use it. Don't know if the paid version's any better. (iTunes)

Remote:- AWESOME!!! Brilliant app from Apple to control iTunes. Unfortunately I rarely have cause to use it as I'm generally sat with or next to the computer that's playing the music, however when I eventually DO get a media centre set up, this WILL be used! (iTunes)

eBay:- The interface isn't great, but I have been using it recently to keep an eye on my watch list, and even placed a bid with it, so on that score I guess it does it's job. (iTunes)

AroundMe:- I really like this app in principal, I wish I could get more use out of it. It should link to the location services and tell you what's nearby in any given category, for instance Restaurants. Which it seems to, as long as their in whatever database it looks up (Google??), I've used it to find somewhere to eat, as well as confirm that there were no better options from what we'd already found. (iTunes)

AIM:- I get more use out of this than IM+ Lite, mainly as my girlfriend has a MacBook now I set up an iChat/AIM account for her and now if I'm out and about this can save on SMS Texts, as long as there's a decent connection. Hopefully it'll get the whole push server thing going on and then will run in the background, that would be handy. (iTunes)

MMS:- Okay, was told about this one recently whilst filming at Olympia. We had a chat with one of the guys on the O2 stand there at BETT, and he pointed us in the direction of this app. It's a simple app that gives you an interface to the O2 MMS web portal, so if you receive an MMS message you can use this app to read it rather than faffing about through Safari. This is definitly a much better way to do it. My only concern is with sending. Now, unlike the majority of the whinging iPhone community, I'm not that fussed about having MMS capabilities, true this app makes it easier for me to pick up any that are sent, but I could do that on the web anyway. If I want to send a picture I'll generally email it. However there's still a lot of people who haven't got decent mobile email and so are still using MMS, like my girlfriend for example who has a Nokia 5000, because that suits her mobile phone needs, and has MMS. So I can view MMS messages from her, and with the MMS app I can also, if I REALLY needed to send them. However you need to top-up MMS credit from within the app via PayPal, the rates seem about average, but are they on-top of my mobile tariff, is it a seperate thing? I haven't been able to clarify, thus I haven't given any money over. (iTunes)

Darkslide:- I added this yesterday, because I was specifically looking for a picture of something. Sat in the car, bought it (free) over 3G, used it to search Flickr. Couldn't find what I wanted, but that's not the app's fault. It seems pretty good, lot of functionality, I'm gonna keep it about for a bit. (iTunes)(Profile)

Starting to notice I have a lot of apps that get bugger all use.

Pownce it!

Up and Running 6

2009-01-23T10:33:00.006Z

I've now been using my iPhone 3G for about 6 months, so here I'm going to cover the 'page 1' apps on my iPhone. Top to bottom, left to right. (pages 2-4 will follow)

Calendar:- Pretty straight forward this one, I use iCal on my MacBook as my main calendar, so it's synched to that. Unlike on my previous Nokia phones, I can add an item to any calendar category I like, rather than having to specify just one iSync or something. Only bugbears with it are that there's no week view and the calendar colours don't match the one's in iCal, the latter at least seems like a no brainer!!

Maps:- Maps gets knocked by a fair few people, mainly for it's lack of "turn-by-turn" SatNav abilities, all I can say is that so far, it's got me everywhere I've needed to go. True every now and again there's a post code error and it takes me to the wrong street, but this isn't the application's fault as such, more the data it's using from Google Maps, or maybe even address having the wrong post code on it.

Back to the "turn-by-turn" side of things, yes, this is is a tad fiddly in Maps, you have to tap through each waypoint and then re-engage GPS tracking each time, not the best thing to have to do while driving. Rumors still fly about the Tom-Tom software for iPhone and a guy from O2 told me there was another SatNav app coming out soon (same one as they have on XDA perhaps), but I've yet to see it, plus it'll be a subscription based model, not sure about that.

Contacts:- I don't have to delve into this that often, apart from via the phone book. It was dreadfully slow to begin with, updates have pretty much sorted that.

Camera:- For a bog standard phone camera, it's not terrible, yeah sure there's better phone cameras out there, but this is comparable to and better than some previous Nokias and Motorola's I've had. Does ok.

Twinkle:- I'm a Twitter addict. So until it goes bankrupt (revenue model yet anyone?) I'll keep going. There's a variety of Twitter apps out there, I've been happiest with the interface on this one, plus it's location aware. (iTunes)

Calculator:- It's a calculator...

Notes:- It does exactly the job I need it to do. If I need to make a note of something, this is where it goes.

NetNewsWire:- I got into the whole RSS thing a few months back, and I have both the mobile and desktop version of NNW, both pretty good, for collating the various sites I read. Still think the mobile one has syncing issues tho. (iTunes)

Facebook:- A pretty good interface for the site, they do keep improving it, there's more needed, but I'm sure they'll get there. I do get quite a bit of use from this. (iTunes)

Safari:- All in all, it does a pretty good job, can be a little fiddly with some sites if there's crowded text, you can easily tap a link when you wanted to zoom in, or tap an adjacent link to the one you want. Can be a tad slow at times and obviously doesn't cope well with pop-ups etc.

Evernote:- Thinking this may go soon. It's an interesting concept when combined with the broswer applet, you can clip to Evernote then it's accessible from pretty much anywhere. Thing is cell data isn't great and I rarely use it. Favouring emails, Notes and PDFs it seems. I want to like it tho. (iTunes)

Settings:- Cos there's no quick switch icon for Wi-Fi on/off

Air Sharing:- Brilliant, gives you wi-fi disk access to your phone, create folders, drag over docs, whatever really. I've got a store of useful docs on my phone and use this a fair bit. Be handy to have some integration to mail or something, to allow you to save docs to it tho. But that's probably more a restriction by Apple. Luckily I also got this when it was free, but well worth the £2.99 now! (iTunes)

Traffic:- WebApp, quick view list of traffic problems around the UK, listed by region, very useful (if I remember to check before I set off!), would be handy if it listed by Motorway, cos half the time I'm going somewhere of any distance, I lose track of which county I'm in!! (WebApp)

FireFone:- Recently discovered Fire Eagle, added it to my Twitter-style addictions and online explotation. Tried a couple of Fire Eagle apps out, this seemed to do the job the quickest. Apparently the recent update allows Location to Twitter posting, haven't tried that yet tho. (iTunes)

Quick bar.

Phone:- No complaints so far, sometimes the Visual Voicemail is a bit sketchy whether it will actually be visual or not, but that hasn't been a major issue so far.

Mail:- Again, this has been working okay, nothing has stopped me from working or anything like that, would like to be able to save documents tho, that did cause a minor delay in things the other day as I couldn't get the doc off the phone (no wifi to pickup email on my MacBook), but overall it's done well. My email accounts are all over the place, but I will be upgrading my server to Exchange which will hopefully solve all that (but not until Snow Leopard!)

SMS:- I'm pretty sure I text a hell of a lot more with this, the conversation format works well, only issues are me being too quick and accepting some of it's stupid spelling and word suggestions by mistake.

Checklist:- I tried various ToDo list apps, this one enabled me to add tasks the quickest, so it stuck. (iTunes)

Okay, so there's page 1, I'll cover pages 2, 3 and 4 when I can/feel like it/am bored/etc. Always interested to hear about useful and interesting apps, especially paid apps that are actually worth the money!

Pownce it!

BETT 2009

2009-01-14T23:49:00.003Z

Today was the first day of BETT 2009 @ Olympia, and as I've done for the past couple of years, I was part of the team covering it for Teachers TV. It's been a long day and I have a blister on the ball of my left foot.

If you're hoping for an insightful post on the current state of technology in the education marketplace, this is not going to be the one. This is about what freebies we snagged on the way round, mainly as despite being rather tired, I'm not quite ready to go to bed yet, so you get this!

The haul is not as good as previous years :( no bags, no mugs, no drinks bottles. I'm pretty sure we could've found all three of those (bags at the very least), but for some reason, the freebies were hard to find, the stands were more reluctant to give them away and we seemed to have a much tighter schedule (or at least it became tighter!) this time round, which meant less time to browse on our way between I/V locations!

But what did I come back with.

A Pencil with TWO rubbers on it!

A Rubiks...sorry...Logo-Branded-Generic-Puzzle Cube (which one bit pinged off while I was smugly boasting about it to the presenter)

A rather snazzy flower shaped highlighter (may give that to my g/f, on the other hand, may not)

A few sweets, including a sherbert lolly!!

A Stress LightBulb

A Stress Phone

2 'credit-card' sized packs of mints

3 USB Memory Sticks! (not sure on the sizes yet, won't be huge, although my sound guy got given a 2GB one and he didn't even ask!!!!!)

Also got recommended a couple of iPhone apps by the guys on the O2 stand, I'll cover at least some of them in a post tomorrow (yeah right, believe that when I see it!!... I Will honest!)

Anyway, it was a great show and we saw (and filmed) some interesting stuff, should be a good programme!! BETT Report 2009 goes out on Teachers TV 20:15 Thursday 15th (Today now!!) and should be available online shortly after at http://www.teachers.tv/video/30904

Pownce it!

YO YO YO'9

2009-01-02T01:20:00.004Z

Well it had to happen I suppose... as it does every year, one finished and another arrived, this time, something a little different, Two Thousand and NINE, yes NINE of all numbers!!

OK it's late, 20 past 1 in the AM Jan 2nd 09 and after pretty much 3 months, I NOW decide I want to post some random shite up here. Deal.

So, was pretty damn busy at the end of last year, mix of stuff and, by the time it came around, I was really glad for a bit of a break over xmas! :/

How did '08 go?? Not bad, first 8 months of being freelance done and dusted, all going ok so far, sure there's a way to go, but for a start, I'm pretty pleased. 4 months left of my first year, and then a proper assessment I think.

Been trying to work out my 1 year and 5 year plans, not going great, still needs a lot of work, and preferably some sort of writing down, once I do figure out what they're going to be. Still interested in creating some sort of online content, still toying with various ideas, still not moving forward with anything... that'll be on the plan.

Spent too much money over xmas... mainly on myself, post xmas. I'm not a bastard, I bought good presents, just buckled afterwards and bought myself one..

What you see there is my spanking new Nikon D80 sat next to what can now probably be described as my vintage Nikkormat EL, which used to be my Dad's. The Lens on the D80 is an 18-55 'G' lens, which isn't great, but it's a start. I want to get a decent zoom for it as the Nikkor 80-200 I picked up recently for the EL is of too old a type to mount on the D80. Damn.

Apparently I can get the lens modified to fit, which I may need to do anyway, as I bought it not only for the EL but also for use with lens adapters on video and I think there's a similar mounting issue there.

Anyway, Happy New Year.

Mood is quizzical and ever so slightly apprehensive

Currently (still) listening to White Star Liners - Dimmer Then Explode

BREAKING THE LAW?!

2008-10-30T21:45:00.004Z

Apparently anyway according to Facebook, although it could well be a click of the "Report" button on a video (haven't tested what happens with that as yet).

I've asked them for details as to what the actual problem is, currently waiting to hear and as of this time, the video that they say has been removed, is still listed under My Videos.

The video in question is a showreel, so it'll be interesting to see what comes back from FB as the precise issue.

Pownce it!

Me Meme

2008-10-07T19:22:00.003+01:00

In response to Mike....

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

Do it. I did and (as you can see) I'm tired, haven't done much except sat on my bed and opened my laptop since I got in about quarter of an hour ago and I don't even know what a 'meme' is!

Comic collection

2008-10-03T17:56:00.003+01:00

Testing out Blogger integration with Shozu on my iPhone by posting a random picture of my comic collection (minus one just out of frame and a few in the loft).

It's growing, just read the first trade of Proof, which was awesome, also started reading 'normal' comics, currently following Wolverine with the Old Man Logan storyline, Marvel Apes, Kick-Ass and I Kill Giants, all very good.

Verdict on Shozu just before posting is that it's a tad slow and unresponsive, let's see how the posting goes...

[edit]

Okay it seems that didn't work so well, in that ShoZu posted to the wrong blog (it dawned on me that I hadn't been asked to specify while it was sending), so I've copy and pasted here, not sure how the geotagging went down there either.

[more edit]

Ok have now rectified the situ via ShoZu's web page, hopefully posting from the iPhone will go straight here now.

Busy Busy

2008-09-20T13:50:00.003+01:00

It's been little over a month since I last posted on here, not that I'm that regular with posting anyway, but still..

Been a busy month so far, and subsequently I'm fucking knackered! (there's no pleasing me!) Been good fun though and tomorrow, all being well, I'm off to Brussels for the final few days of this part of the BT job I've been on. (which reminds me I must check the train time for getting to St Pancras!).

As I've been busy, the comic script I've been working on has had to go on back burner for a few weeks, not a bad thing really, need to come up with some new stuff for it as it was too short, and as I had a pretty tight story worked out originally, it's hard to come up with something to extend it without just adding "stuff", I'll get there tho.

Couple of other projects bubbling under as usual, waiting for something to kick off. BTW anyone been watching "The Wrong Door"... Brilliant!

On the iPhone front, things are going pretty well and I'll chuck up another "Up and Running" post soon, maybe in a bit if you're lucky ;)

White Star Liners

2008-08-15T12:00:00.001+01:00

myspace.com/whitestarliners

Pownce it!

Up and Running 5c: Web Apps and more/less apps

2008-08-05T11:36:00.002+01:00

Ok, let's start with the native apps..

Gone from the phone now are both PhoneSaber and Labyrinth Lite.

Added to the phone is:

TubeStatus
TubeStatus is a simple app that's pretty much Ronseal, gives you the (I'm presuming) current status of the various London Underground lines. Having just installed it a few minutes ago, I haven't tried it "in the wild" yet, but I will and we'll see how that goes. To be honest, I don't usually worry about "minor delays" and stuff, because of the pretty poor nature of the tube anyway, but it's possibly handy to know about any major problems before getting to the station, or even setting out on your journey.

What would be good to see is DLR info in there as well and at least a link to an online tube map if they're not allowed to include one (of course TFL could always buy him out and include a map then ;) I'm not gonna stop carrying my trusty paper tube map just yet, but it's a start maybe.

Now onto the WebApps.

Referring back to a previous (pre-iPhone) post, where I'd been looking at some WebApps to see what I'd potentially use, only one of those is currently bookmarked on my home screen.

Depth of Field Calc

Instead of having a circular piece of card or plastic that costs around £1m give or take, there's a handy little web app for doing something similar. You pick your camera, which should then give you the correct sensor size, then give your focal length and subject distance and the app calculates and displays your DoF. It's video only, not a problem for me as pretty much all of my work is on video at the moment, and despite having smaller cameras like the HVX200 and EX1, it's missing others that may be useful, such as the Sony DSR-450/570.

Again, I've not tried this out properly yet (will post when I do), but it's certainly an interesting app and I know a couple of people who've had it installed on their original iPhones.

Before I deleted PhoneSaber, I installed an update for it (no major changes), played about with it and randomly decided to tap on the info button. This displayed who it's by; TheMacBox with a "Tap here for more apps" button... so I did. It seems they've got some pretty good stuff going on!

UK Train Times

nationalrail.co.uk on the iPhone is a bitch! Okay so Safari gives you the 'real' web, but some sites are still a bitch to navigate with it, National Rail being one. So this app sounded really interesting.

It seems pretty good, great clean interface (although all these standard colours are getting a bit dull now, not this particular app's fault though), seems to work well, I'm guessing it queries the National Rail site and displays the results in a more iPhone friendly format.

Only complaint so far, can't select Arrival time, which is what I normally use.

Cinema Times

From the same guys comes Cinema Times, type in the film and area, or just the area, give a date and tap search and it returns, first the various cinemas around there, tap one to get the times, tap the film to get links to it's IMDb page, trailer if available, where else is showing it and the ability to mail the details to someone.

You can't book online, but it does give you the phone number for the cinema (which you can obviously call from your iPhone!) and a Google Maps link showing the location, although this is a web based Google Map link rather than invoking the iPhone's Maps app.

I think the last time I actually pre-booked tickets was for The Phantom Menace (and we all know how that turned out!), so the booking doesn't bother me, I'm liking the look of this for quickly finding out what's on though.

I know I've been crap with hyperlinking the various apps, but the UK Trains and Cinema apps are on TheMacBox's site and I've linked that above ;)

Up and Running 5b: Apps still on my iPhone

2008-08-02T15:29:00.003+01:00

So part two (or as the observant have notices, part 'b' and technically part 3, but hey..) on iPhone apps that I've been trying/using. Previous post covered the ones that I'd tried and removed, now for the ones that are still on the iPhone, for now at least.

Twinkle (free)
A location aware Twitter client, apparently Twitteriffic is location aware as well, but I couldn't find that in the version I had, plus I prefer the interface on Twinkle.

AIM (free)
When Apple's push server is up, this will rule, as would any other IM client hopefully, and with any luck significantly reduce the amount of SMS texts I use each month. The interface isn't brilliant, but it does the job, haven't checked out the Online/Away/Offline side of things when you go back to the home screen yet tho, so not sure how good that is.

Cube Runner (free)
Quite an addictive game, simply (uhuh) fly your craft through the blocks for as long as possible amassing points on the way, very simple premise, controlled with the phone's accelerometer, I haven't played it in about a week tho, so it may come off soon.(I have managed to get a higher score than 12 btw)

PhoneSaber (free)
I tried to resist, I couldn't, this was one of the first apps i downloaded to the iPhone, it's great for showing off your new iPhone to all the people who haven't got one, but that's about it, the novelty wears off and I've shown it to pretty much all the people who's be impressed by PhoneSaber now, so it'll probably come off soon. Not yet though, just in case.

Tap Tap Revenge (free for now)
Another game, yes, a good one though (although could do with some sort of better feedback when you tap), I'm not gonna bother to explain, it's a rhythm game, it's doing very well for itself and is definitely worth getting.

Facebook (free)
The Facebook app is getting there, still needs a couple more features implemented, video of example, more detailed friend feeds, but it's pretty good for a "mobile" app, haven't tried the chat on it, but the Mobile Photos part is a very very good idea.

MySpace Mobile (free)
MySpace is a bit of a has been now, true it's still pushing forwards with the music and stuff, but it's all about marketing now rather than a pure social thing, i've got the app anyway, as I'm still on there and I still use it.

Labyrinth Lite Edititon (free)
Another addictive little game, simply one of those puzzles where you have to maneuver a ball bearing around a course, avoiding the various holes. Not impossible, but a couple of the courses took a few tries. I've got one left, not sure if I'll upgrade and pay for more, but it's worth investigating.

Pownce (free)
I've got a Pownce account, but it hasn't seen much use yet. Transferred a couple of files, got Twhirl linked up to it, but it's still in early days yet, got the app tho cos I would like more use from it.

Remote (free)
Finally buckled and downloaded this today. It's AWESOME, at the end of the day it's a simple principal, but the fact that, I'm downstairs typing this, my PowerMac (which had my iTunes library on it) is blasting away upstairs (listening via the staircase, oh for an Airport Express) and I can change tracks using my cocking PHONE is AWESOME!

Dizzy Bee (£1.79)
Ok, finish up the post with the first app that I decided to pay for. Is it some uber-productivity app? Something camera or video related? No it's a cutesy little game featuring a bee who has to recuse fruit. Another accelerometer based game, with which you could easily tie yourself in a knot or dislocate something, you roll around resucing fruit, collecting flowers and dropping it all in a hole. As the levels go up, so baddies are introduced who squish your fruit and pop your bee. It's brilliant, especially for only £1.79!

So that's it for now, 5c will cover the web apps I've looked at and the ongoing adventure that is the iPhone 3g (?), the only other thing app related at the mo, is a complaint.

I don't have any stocks, I don't currently want to purchase any stocks so I sure as hell don't need a stupid Stocks app on my phone! Can I get rid of it? No, it seems I bloody well can't! (And no I don't want to Jailbreak my phone thanks), just to uncheck it in the settings somewhere or something.

Up and Running 5a: Apps I tried and removed

2008-08-02T15:03:00.005+01:00

Ok, Blogger's formatting restrictions are REALLY pissing me off. I JUST WANT AN IMAGE NEXT TO EACH ONE!! WHY IS THAT SO FUCKING HARD?!?!? Fine I'll put them below, FUCK YOU BLOGGER!

Okay and here.. we.. go. A rundown of the various apps I've have or have had on my iPhone 3G. I'll do this in two parts, starting with the apps I've tried and have removed.

ToDo
This little app by Erica Sadun, will be leaving my iPhone shortly, as a) I'm not using it and b) it takes like 3 taps to even get a ToDo up and running, may suit some. Not me though.

Google
It would probably be good, if it was actually quicker then me using Google in Safari and didn't have a nasty habit of rebooting my iPhone. You are the weakest link. Googbye. (see what I did there.)

Sim Stapler
You tap the stapler, it staples, every 10 is says something to you.
Funny at first. Not any more.

Jared
God Awful! I don't even know what to say about it, it's terrible, a total waste of a download, despite all the "positive reviews"

Bubbles
A cute little prog to demo the touch screen, but that's it, I downloaded the free versio (obviously), apprently there's a paid one?!?!?

Twitteriffic
I gave up using Twitteriffic on the desktop, favouring Twhirl, now I've switched on the iPhone as well, to Twinkle. Seems camps are split by these two, I like the loction based tweets in Twinkle, hated the Twitteriffic interface.

Ok that's those, next post the stuff that's still on there... for now MWAHAHAHA! :/

Up and Running 5: First paid for purchase

2008-07-29T11:28:00.003+01:00

This morning I downloaded my first PAID FOR app from the iTunes App store! It was a game. Damn.

So much for "steering clear of stuff like that". I'm gonna post soon about the apps I've been using/trying out on the phone, but just thought I'd share on here rather then Twitter, dunno why. ;)

Pownce it!

Cuil

2008-07-29T10:01:00.004+01:00

I had a look at this new search engine today... Cuil

Obviously the first thing I decided to search for was me, see what profiles and sites of mine came up and how high in the rankings. It took a few term variations to find my stuff (not good for starters) and then when I did, there was something not quite right about the results where my actual website was listed. Namely the accompanying pictures.

Right... So in illustrating my site, we've got a picture of what appears to be maybe a hotel of some sorts and the logo of The Portland Hospital for Women and Children, ok.

So I have to say, thus far I'm not overly impressed with Cuil, the webserver that my site's on is undergoing an upgrade of some sorts at the moment, this could be throwing Cuil's results off a bit, so I'll be checking again, when I know that my site's back up, and if it's not back up soon getting onto Fasthosts to find out why!

Odd, nonetheless.

YES PLEASE!

2008-07-18T20:04:00.001+01:00

It's awesome, watch it! and if you're in the states BUY IT in iTunes (cos we can't over here in the UK :( )

Pownce it!

Short showreel update

2008-07-15T13:32:00.003+01:00

I've uploaded a slightly updated short showreel to my various profiles (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Ovi etc) as well as to my main website, www.mattgrover.me.uk. The one on there's iPhone compatible too! ;)

Pownce it!

Up and Running 4: The first call

2008-07-14T12:33:00.002+01:00

HURRAH, after only 3 days of owning the iPhone, I've actually made a call!! Albeit to O2 customer services to transfer my number from Orange, but still a call has been made.

It's pretty phone like, the ear speaker's not too tinny, I had a slight moment of panic when the O2 automation asked me to press a number, only to find when I took the phone from my ear, nothing was there!

It's ok though, I'd forgotton about the fact that the screen turns off when it's next to your face, and it quickly came back, I then figured out to tap the "keypad" button and I was away!

Debbie at O2 was very friendly and helpful, number will be transferred on the 16th and we had a quick chat about typing on the iPhone and how it takes a fair bit of adjustment.

The main thing so far (apart from tapping the wrong letters), is the preditction. All the "AMAZING MATHS" that goes into predicting what you're typing and it corrects correct words.

Example: I was typing "ported" into a tweet. iPhone was suggesting "porter", i typed ported, pressed space to go onto the next word and iPhone changed "ported" to "porter", I then had to go back and change it back again.

No while this is not the end of the world, it does slow down the typing process somewhat. The fact that pressing space accepts the suggestion and tapping the suggested word declines it, could be a bit backward. It's not suggesting every word like T9 or something, only odd ones, so it would seem better to tap the word to accept?? Have to see how that one goes.

Pownce it!

Up and Running 3: The SatNav edition

2008-07-13T19:11:00.007+01:00

...so today was the first real, proper like, test of using iPhone 3G's Maps to navigate my way somewhere. The somewhere in question was Radlett (for work I assure you).

In this instance, I didn't have any backup printed Google Maps as my printer had decided to run out of ink. Thanks. So I was relying TOTALLY on the iPhone (well I did have a road atlas in the car, and the A-Z may have helped, but I'm not sure if Radlett's in there), today helped in the fact that I don't have a 'known' route (as with yesterday), but knew I needed to go round the M25.

One of my concerns with navigating by iPhone, is that the thing keeps going to sleep. Luckily if you have the iPhone in 'tracking' mode, whereby it's using the AGPS to constantly monitor your position, this doesn't happen.

The next

problem I discovered, is that after I'd got the route (as straightforward as normal GMaps), and pressed start to kick off the first step, the phone came out of tracking mode, I put it back in tracking mode and skipped forward to around step 11 or so, which was which junction I needed to come off the M25 at (the bit before this is easy ;), again the phone came out of tracking mode.

This happens pretty much any time you do anything, although i was able to zoom in and out (although I don't think you can zoom right the way in when tracking) without it losing me, but each time you advance a step in the directions, you have to re-engage tracking again. Thus it would be rather nice if it recognised each waypoint on the journey and updated itself.

Signal wise, which was my main concern prior to getting the phone, it held up pretty well. The thing with this is that the maps aren't stored on the device, so each time you scroll along, it has to download the next bit. If you're in a no-signal area, you'll lose the maps and just get a pulsing blue dot on a grid. Not very helpful. So far, I haven't had a problem, but I'm sure it'll crop up before the TomTom software's out!

A couple of things that helped with the whole satnav side of things are a couple of purchases I made yesterday from Carphone Warehouse in Tonbridge (as the O2 store and staff were SHITE)

, being a Griffin in-car charger and a holder. Tried it first in the centre of the windscreen, didn't like that, moved to to the right.. much better (as above).

An iPhone view of the world

So I eventually got to the location okay, reasonable straightforward, couple of unsure bits and brief wrong turns but all was well. I still needed to navigate my way back out and to the M25 th

ough. C'MON iPHONE SHOW ME WHAT YO GOT!

Again, I made it okay (I know you were all worried there for a moment!), signal held up okay, as it should in a built up area, GPS tracked okay, what confused me a couple of times going this way though was the map.

The map stays compass orientated, rather than orientated to your direction of travel as a standalone satnav would do, this created issues on a couple of roundabouts, as not wanting to keep tapping buttons on the iPhone as I was driving, I opted for the "follow the blue line" approach. Which was reasonable successful, but a couple of time where it looked like I was going straight across the roundabout, I wasn't, I wanted the next exit over. A quick double back and I was sorted, but this was a bit of a niggle.

All in all it was a pretty successful first test.

Main points

Tracking works fine
Until you step through the directions, then it gets switched off.
Data signal holds up well enough for the maps on most of today's route, built up and motorway, O2 needs some more 3G coverage tho!
When you do lose signal, you're fucked.
Have to think about the directions, due to the map orientation.
Not bad for a basic feature, needs improving though.

Pownce it!

Up and running 2

2008-07-12T13:37:00.002+01:00

First Blogger post from the iPhone typing with 2 thumbs in landscape mode.

Main thing so far is having to type in HTML mode rather than compose, will try again in a bit. Gotta work now ;)

Pownce it!

Up and Running 1

2008-07-12T09:18:00.004+01:00

Ok, so finally got the iPhone activated around 9.30 last night, been playing around with it since then, and yes I buckled and installed PhoneSaber...It's AWESOME!

As I'm working today, I thought I'd investigate the Maps in more detail, specifically the directions and GPS tracking.

Now the location services do a pretty spot on job of finding where I am, and tracking me in a moving vehicle, so that was promising. I tapped in the destination post code and it gave me the same directions as it would using Google Maps on a standard computer.

The problem here is that I don't want this route, it takes me up and around the motorway, whereas I know the cross country route that takes around the same amount of time. That's the one I want (I've had far too much motorway driving recently).

Now on 'normal' maps you can just grab hold of the middle of the route and change it to where you want it to go.

No such luck (that I can find) on the iPhone. Nor, does it seem am I able to add a waypoint by dropping another pin in. I can get directions to or from that pin, but not via.

This is a bit of a bugger, now while it's not too big a deal for today's trip, as most of the journey I know and I'll print off the GMaps for the end bit, part of the idea behind getting an iPhone 3G is to save having to buy a separate SatNav. (Still no word on the TomTom software btw, will keep checking).

Obviously I need to do some more playing around and reading up as there may be something I can do with the maps here that I've not found yet, obviously comments are welcome. Now I'm off to print my Google Maps.

Pownce it!

Not funny now

2008-07-11T17:12:00.004+01:00

Apparently according to O2's site, it could take 2-3 days!!! to activate the phone, which sucks big time. Them and Apple do seem to have been totally unprepared for this launch.

Pownce it!

Unboxing the iPhone 3G

2008-07-11T14:35:00.018+01:00

HURRAH!! It's finally arrived, my brand spanking new iPhone 3G 8Gb Black.

It arrived in this rather dull browm box courtesy of DHL

Once into the box there's a load of O2 stuff on top; returns policy, old mobile recycling bag, 2 sim card envelopes (one with a sim card in, not sure why I have 2, mistake probably)..

and underneath, the iPhone box, all sealed :D

The SIM is all very straight forward stuff. It's attached to the get started leaflet.

There it is!!, It even looks amazing in the box!

Possibly the greatest thing I've ever held in my hand!!!1

Your wires sir; USB-to-Dock Adapter cable, ear buds (with the inline control/mic), UK plug adap and power...brick? more like a chunk of gravel.

A fancy Apple paper clip, namely the SIM removal tool

Paperwork; Apple stickers, IMPORTANT INFORMATION, 'Finger Tips' leaflet and iPhone microfibre cloth.

Finger Tips, is pretty much a quick start guide, or "this is what your phone can do"

Cables out of box, how small is the power block?!?

this small. L-R; Macbook, iPod, iPhone.

Go Go Gadget SIM Removal tool, or in this case to install the SIM.

FIRST BOOT!

After being told to plug in to iTunes (or make an emergency call if I wished), I have done so
Needless to say, I've been waiting for about 45 mins for it to access the store. yay for Day 1.

More to come once it's up and running.

Pownce it!

Twitching, the pain of waiting...

2008-07-11T09:51:00.002+01:00

IT"S NOT HERE YET!!!! I was up early today, mainly cos I was waiting for a phone call from National Windscreens as to when they could replace mine.. Monday it seems :/

But I was hoping for an early delivery of my spanking new iPhone 3G (just logging into O2 now, to try and track it). It's a horrible empty feeling that Apple induces in people. I feel for all those people who are queing outside the various stores, especially those who are at the back of the line and could well not be going home with an iPhone today. I'm guaranteed one, but I don't know when today I'll have it (it should be today!!!)

Having just checked My O2, the order tracking doesn't work. :(

To try and satisfy my cravings, I've created two ringtones using Garageband and the instructions at TUAW and downloaded 3 free apps from the store.

Ringtones

Friend is a Four Letter Word - Cake (this is what's on my current Nokia)
Sonne - Rammstein

Apps (iTunes Links)

So far holding off on the PhoneSaber and Moo, although I'll probably buckle. Also on the cards at the mo is AIM, although early reviews don't look good, needs push.

Speaking of 'push' that's quite a big thing, I'm gonna see how well the basic POP handling is for my email before considering forking out for Exchange server or MobileMe.

Expect more ranting while I wait, then gratuitous unboxing photos/video when it arrives.

Pownce it!

very nearly iPhone time

2008-07-10T10:31:00.004+01:00

HURRAH! It seems (as I can log in to My O2, they're billing me and apparently shipping an iPhone 3G 8Gb Black to me), that I'm getting an iPhone tomorrow!!!!

So yes I went with the 8Gb model, and yes a lot of people are probably groaning at that, but for me I didn't see the need (at the moment) to splash out on the 16Gb model, I've no intention of ditching my 80Gb 5th Gen iPod (or 60Gb iPod Photo). I don't want to waste my phone's battery by listening to music on it for hours, although the larger screen for video is tempting, so I'll have to see how that goes.

And as you may have noticed I'm on the £45/month contract, a little higher that I really wanted, I would've preferred the £35/mnth one, but as I'm a tad strapped for spare cash, the £45 tarrif, means FREE 8Gb phone, rather than paying £99 up front (although If I could've afforded it that's what I would've done), the other thing is I will still be slightly better off on this tariff than I am on my current Orange one.

So, I need to transfer my number, go out and buy a car charger and holder, and wait....

[edit]

Ok not just waiting, I've also upgraded to iTunes 7.7 on my MacBook, I need to clean up my address book as well, there's probably a couple of other things to do n all.

Pownce it!

Nearly iPhone time

2008-06-30T20:11:00.005+01:00

Yep, nearly.. FINALLY.. time to get me an iPhone. July 11th is approaching, I've "registered my interest" with O2, I'm past the end of my Orange contract (happened a couple of months back, just as O2 reduced the 8Gb iPhone price, something didn't smell right then, despite how tempted I was, so I held off.. cheers me), and I'm all set for 3G iPhone goodness (all being well with credit checks and the like!!!).

So, I've started looking in a little more detail at the available apps, after all the iPhone functionality is good, but I want more from it.

iPhone 2.0 can display all manner of Office docs, so that's ok, but you can't create/edit any. now I don't know if I'll actually need to, but I may well consider Google Docs as a possible solution. I don't currently use them, so I'll have to try them out on here first.

The GPS side of things will also be an interesting one. I'm hoping the iPhone will save me having to buy a separate SatNav device (such as a TomTom 520T that I've been considering), I don't think that the standard Google Maps will suffice, so I'll be waiting to see what TomTom's software's like, but I'll certainly give the standard system a go in the mean time on upcoming jobs (with printed directions as well, just in case!!!)

Web Apps

First stop on the App train was the Web Apps page and there's a fair few on there, including Virtual Panda...but I'm steering clear of stuff like that for the time being (no doubt I'll play some sort of game on it at some point), I'm looking at what is actually going to be of use to me, in the same sort of way I'm looking at Facebook apps. So...

Facebook

Obviously, I use FB a fair bit, so this is a no-brainer, it's also a bit odd to me as to how it classifies as an 'app' rather than just an iPhone optimised page. (to be fair that's pretty much just what the Web Apps are though)

Tapes

This seems interesting, a simple tape logging app, which could be quite useful, however, having thought about it a little more, possibly TOO simple, what could be great for quickly and easily logging tapes on the fly, could be a complete waste of time as there appears to be no way to export the data. So if I did want to log on loc. perhaps a Google Docs approach would be better, i'll def give it a go though.

Twitter on ThinCloud

I'm not sure if this is THE Twitter client that people are using (there's probably a Jailbreak app out there), but looks ok, the other options are simply going to twitter.com via Safari, or seeing what Twitteriffic on iPhone will be like (I've switched to twhirl on the desktop now though)

Lens Angle Calculator

It's specific to camera work, not sure if I'd actually use it, but work knowing it's there.

Depth of Field Calculator

This is pretty awesome, I can definitely see myself (at least one of my friends has already been using it) referring to this reasonably regularly, you can select the camera, bear in mind this is for video cameras, everything from the Canon GL up to the Sony F23.

DOFMaster Depth of Field Calculator

Similar to the above, but geared more towards stills photography by the looks of it, unfortunately I couldn't get the site up to investigate.

Footage Calc

Another reasonably handy app, a little ugly compared to the Digital Heaven widget, and to be fair, I'm probably more likely to use the widget as it'll be on to the edit station, but maybe I'll be in PC world, wondering how big a hard drive I need for location digitising... you never know.

Qik

This isn't in the web app list, but they've recently announced the iPhone compatibility and it's an interesting service.

I haven't seen any other "productivity" apps that I think would give me any better functionality than the existing iPhone functions (for what I need), feel free to suggest tho.

Native Apps

So next up, the App Store, this hasn't launched yet, but there's various announcements on line (specifically I've been checking posts on tuaw.com)

PhoneSaber

Okay okay, I said no stupid apps, but we're talking Lightsaber's here!!

Tube

(possibly Tube 2) Uses the Location functions of the iPhone, tells you your nearest Tube station, then you can plan a route to where you want to go. While this does seem ok, quite useful, possibly quicker than consulting my trusty tube map leaflet, for an app that will probably be charged for there does seem to be a lack of functionality/features. Post Code search? Service updates? option of actual tube map rather than overlay?

Nothing else has sprung up yet, ebay app possibly.

Jailbreak Apps

Now I don't intend to jailbreak my phone unless there is a 100% absolute need to, I'm hoping any actual useful apps will find their way to the App Store. Many developers are complaining about not being accepted, ok Apple are limiting the initial numbers, fair enough, the other thing I think is there's a lot of crap apps out there. However...

Mobile Finder

Yes this would be useful, if you combine it with other apps for using the files that are on your device. Good news is that they're working on an SDK version.

Mobile TextEdit

Notes looks a little weak for typing any serious text docs, so we're between Google Docs, but if you're offline or no signal (out in a field or something) A handy text editor would be nice.

ApolloIM

An IM client for iPhone, supposed to be pretty good. Would I use it? I don't know, I use AIM, but would I need it on an iPhone?

iPhoneNES

Yes, play NES ROMs on the iPhone, tempting, very tempting, but very against what I'm trying to do app wise!! And I wouldn't jailbreak my phone for it.

So, I keep looking, no doubt more will come to light once the App Store is up and running and I actually have an iPhone and am using it on a regular basis.

Thoughts?

Facebook "application" hell

2008-06-14T16:35:00.006+01:00

Some grabs taken from the Facebook profiles of 3 people.

I mean really???! How many of these even have an actual USE? How many of these actually GET USED??

I've been gradually looking for useful apps to add to my profile, and religiously blocking any attempts to get me to send a hug, bite someone, buy a drink for, etc etc etc. It's like having to deny millions of random bands on MySpace all over again!

So far this..

Is my block of apps on my profile. In order L-R and down...

Education & Work
Some basic profile info I include
My Web Profiles
A handy little app that allows you to create another 'app block' style panel for links to your other profiles online
Video
Because I want to upload videos every now and again
Notes
Linked by RSS to this blog, so updates are automatically shown on FB
Digg.com
Shows my recently Dugg stories on my profile (although I think this has been superceded by a better one that displays them in my Feed, don't think it's the same thing)
Pages
For things I WANT to support or keep tabs on this is it. It's pretty much like embedding MySpace into your profile.
Photos
Cos it's the law, and FB's implementation of photos is actually pretty good (could do with bigger albums tho)
Posted Items
Actually handy to share general links every now and again (even tho some might be shite)
Movies
Because I like movies and this is a good way of sharing thoughts on the ones I watch (in tandem with the blog), and the quizzes are quite fun too.
Wall
I'd probably put this as the most useless one of the lot (that I've got), there's better ways to communicate within FB, but at the same time it's used every now and again and I just can't give it up.

Not shown on there is TwitterSync, which (when Twitter sorts itself out), automatically updates my FB status with the most recent post on my Twitter feed. Groups and Events, both standard FB apps and useful in their own right and Revision 3 Player, which I'm gonna remove cos I forgot I had it.

Now after all Facebook is a SOCIAL network, and part of being social is having fun, so I'm not really knocking all the shite apps entirely, if people enjoy the whole Vampires vs Werewolf thing, knock yourselves out! And Scrabulous etc have proved pretty popular.

I just don't understand why some users have SO MANY apps installed, I can't see how they're using them all, they make the profiles load slower and the privacy issues must be all over the place! Also how come there's the demand for what are essentially the SAME BLOODY APP, just with different bells and whistles? Is that what were devolving to?

END RANT (for now)

3G iPhone

2008-06-10T08:09:00.000+01:00

A couple of quick thoughts on the new iPhone...

Still no MMS?!? WTF?!? WAAAA!

Any chance people can STOP going on about MMS?!?

Oh yeah MMS is so great, costs more than a text (over plan), limited file size and formats, I don't think I've ever sent anything useful via MMS, just stupid shit.

Apple won't support MMS because they'll go with email instead, which is better and I can still send stupid shit on it, and at the end of the day, a crapload of people will have iPhones, corporate have BlackBerry, a primarily EMAIL based device and all the other manufacturers will be playing catch-up!

Quit it already!

GPS!! Hurrah!!!

Until you're in a no mobile signal area and it can't refresh the Google Maps! :/

Have to wait to see what 3rd party SatNav stuff comes out before that's 100%

Apart from that roll on July 11th cos I'm getting a new iPhone!

Scratching - Round 2.1??

2008-05-20T15:27:00.004+01:00

Ok, went out earlier, got the 14 cards

Feeling a little aprehensive... after all, as I mentioned in the previous post, the last 14-card-combo didn't end too happily, although this time it's 14 of the same type.

Well I had to go through 10 sequential cards (the numbers are on the bottom right of the card) before hitting a winner with a value of £2, the only winning card in this lot.

Still in the game tho, let's see where this £2 leads... probably nowhere.

So far, over two rounds of the "game" I've put in a total of £4 and played a total of 61 cards, 58 pig ones and 3 of the £100,000 ones. All the winning ones have been pig ones, so for that card...

58 cards played = 46 lose + 12 win (1 in 4.83??)

Highest winning so far was on the first lot, being £20, and accrued winnings (which doesn't work but hey) of £61.

Slashdot.com - Stuff that matters

2008-05-20T12:26:00.000+01:00

Scratching Sensation

2008-05-19T19:40:00.007+01:00

Or minor gambling addiction, you decide. Well don't, because I already know the answer. ;)

It's not an addiction per-say, just too much time on my hands I think, anyway... I decided not to vlog this one, I think you've endured enough of me scratching for now, so here's just the words and pictures, but not together in a magical moving form (unless you blink really quickly and shake your head).

So, at the end of the last installment, I'd been left with a single card winning £1, well that one lost. Damn, so ends the streak and I put it down to the 3 different cards that I took on the last lot. I'm not bitter tho.

That card was part of a mass scratching between myself and three others (Jim, Carrie and Vic), various cards were scratched, mostly the pig ones and a few Indiana Jones ones, there were a couple of wins that got exchanged for more cards and then subsequently lost, but that's the nature of the beast.

So starts a new round. I went to the shop, spent £2 on 2 pig cards and one of them won.

Shit picture I know, no macro function on my old N70. So I got one if the little pig symbols, first one, it's a £10 instant win! Huzzah.

10 more of the same please

So far the only thing I'm rolling in is scratchcards. Moving on, this is the part where you, if you feel the need, can go back and re-watch the middle part of the last video, and imagine that the cards are these new ones, and try and channel some positive energies to me.

The positive energies worked thank you!! Out of these 10 cards 4 of them won..."HOW MUCH?!" I hear you scream in moist anticipation...£14!! True it's not the £8,000 yet but I'm still in the game, this time a combo of 2x £1 (sequential cards btw) a £2 and another £10 pig. Now I should go right out and get some more in the hope that I don't skip any of the cards on the roll, but that ain't gonna happen tonight, so I'll probably get them tomorrow.

My concern is that we're now into the same situ as before, 4 cards winning £14, does this mean I'll only be able to get 11 of pig ones again? Will I miss out on the big win? What of the odd card I saw the shop assistant put to one side before tearing me 10 fresh ones of the roll? Will I ever cash in a card? When will I find something better to do?

Scratchcards - More...

2008-05-08T22:53:00.003+01:00

(again if you're on Facebook click "view original post")

Scratchcard - The outcome

2008-05-08T14:50:00.003+01:00

Ok, here it is, what did I do with that winning card?

(for people seeing this on Facebook, you'll have to click "view original post" up there, cos there's a video here)

Let me know, comments here, twitter, facebook wall, youtube, email, text, branded guinea pig

Showreel update (April 2008)

2008-05-05T16:48:00.002+01:00

Not many additions, but it's been updated with a few bits from the past month.

Not sure about the Twango.com/Ovi encoding, but thought I'd give it a go.

Be sure to check the website, also updated and thouroughly iWebbed until I learn better CSS n stuff.

www.mattgrover.me.uk

LOL

2008-04-29T17:46:00.002+01:00

I didn't realise it did this automatically now. LOL

Ain't no calculator

2008-04-22T21:06:00.001+01:00

Best spam email subject EVAR!

2008-04-20T17:49:00.001+01:00

What a way to make a living

2008-04-14T21:25:00.003+01:00

Well it's pretty normal actually, although I shall endeavour to reuse that post title when I do something worthy of it. In this instance I've just spent a few days on a corporate gig, shooting a few interviews and then cutting them together with a load more footage shot by myself and others, a load of photos and some funky music.

What's great about jobs like this is, you're working with friends in a reasonably relaxed, yet productive environment, and can end up in not the usual places for work, such as editing in a conference room (above).

It does seem a bit of a haphazard layout up there, and I did comment on the fact that the table looked more impressive the other day, but at least today everything was working pretty well.

Day 1 of edit, FCP sees the DSR-25 deck, but refuses to do anything with it.

Day 2 of edit, FCP refuses to acknowledge the existence of the replacement DSR-25.

Day 3 of edit, FCP happy in it's fluffy-comfort-blanket of the DSR-11 (Matt now happier knowing he can playout)

Surprisingly, the cheap 500Gb USB2 HDD that was used for this job (not my choice, but read on) held up pretty well (I think it's a Seagate), I was getting soooo angry with it to begin with, only mildly frustrated with it about 2/3 of the way through and slightly shameful about the remarks I made about it towards the end.

We've decided to rename it the "FTL Drive" (read:BSG) as I kept having to wait for it to 'spool up' all the time.

The other thing I realised is how badly I need to upgrade my PowerPC version of FCP to an Intel Native/Universal one, I'm sure half the performance issues would be solved by this (that and an 8-core MacPro maybe), the hobnobs made things slightly better tho ;)

The other thing that this editing setup has going for it, is despite cutting on my 1.83 Macbook with a USB HDD and a random assortment of other stuff, there's a projector in the room, which day's 1 & 2 (non-working decks) had the timeline and canvas on and day 3, had a projected output preview, NICE! (Although as there was no r/c for the deck we had to live with the timecode and DVCAM displayed on the screen, I think the client was ok with this)

Anyway, a good job, well done, now hopefully the AV guys will make it look all pretty when it's projected at the event. :)

Self Employed - Needing a new office

2008-04-08T12:54:00.003+01:00

Above you can see a picture of my current "office", you can also see that I need a new one, as the dining table is not the best place to be, although slightly more comfortable than being cramped upstairs in what I shall now affectionately call "the stationary cupboard".

Some points of note:-

Dirty MacBook, Twitteriffic and Pownce constantly open in the background (or foreground in this pic)
A Wafer Thin (in an Allo Allo French accent) ham and salad cream Petit Pain (roll)
Orange Squash
Losing lottery ticket (three "lucky" dips, one number circled)
Notepad, 2008/9 diary which doesn't start until June!, Accounts book
HMRC form for becoming Self Employed (did it online tho)
P45
Mobile phone (not ringing)
Confirmation letter for the "Becoming Self Employed" workshop at Horsham tax office
Some nasty nasty Potpourri stuff

This is what it's all about, living it up, cold calling, downloading PDF's (when the links on the HMRC site ACTUALLY WORK!), and figuring a game plan.

Pownce it!

Villareal gig

2008-04-05T01:01:00.002+01:00

Just got back from a top notch Villareal gig at The Albert in Brighton, one of the songs played being "The 7th" which I did the video for ;)

Pownce it!

Today's lesson -

2008-04-03T22:46:00.002+01:00

You can't afford to um and ah about taking jobs, cos someone else will have it.

Why was I umming and ahhing (!?)? Well because there was a potential job for Mon-Wed next week, I was free Mon & Tues, but got plans on the Weds, so i said, I'd check about weds and get back within the hour.

Checked about Weds, stuff was still on but I decided that I should really take the job if it was offered as I'm still building initial contacts, phoned back, around half hour later and the job's been given to someone else. Damn.

Fair enough, I'm not kicking off about losing the job, shit happens, but at the same time I think being a little more ruthless with my decision making is in order, especially at this stage, which brings me to the next point, why is everything cropping up at once?!? At the same time how worried would I be if *nothing* was coming my way!!

Pownce it!

In the words of Queen...

2008-04-03T12:35:00.003+01:00

(dum dum dum) Another on bites the dust.

Kinda (but unintentionally) following on from my previous post about Stage6, I received and email the other day about VideoEgg..

Dropping like flies eh? It seems, much like DivX behind Stage6, VideoEgg will continue to operate, producing online advertising content aimed at social networking and online communities, which actually sounds quite interesting. Although far too much to read right now as I've spent all morning reading up on how to sort out my tax and capital allowances, none of which is making a great deal of sense, but I'm buggered if I can afford an accountant at the mo!

Pownce it!

You cannot be serious man!

2008-04-02T18:03:00.003+01:00

A simple bit of contact spring cleaning gone awry??

Really?!? Somehow I don't think I'll be pressing that Merge button! Why won't you show me the problems and let me select which ones I want merged? No because that would be FAR TOO CLEVER! What is this? WINDOWS?!?!?

Showreel - March 2008

2008-03-31T14:12:00.000+01:00

Stage6 RIP

2008-03-31T13:42:00.004+01:00

I am actually a little sad about this one, for a variety of reasons. First, wtf am I on about? (a question that readers of this blog frequently ask themselves I would guess)

I recently discovered that Stage6 the DivX video sharing community has been shut down :(, for those that still don't understand, it was basically YouTube for DivX (a high quality video codec). Having known about DivX for a while, I've only recently come to enjoy the fruits it gives forth, it's actually a pretty good codec, comparable to h.264 and it's now become a staple in my list of standard playout formats.

Now don't get me wrong DivX is still going strong and will continue to, however the lack of a social networking site based on it, is a major bummer. I'd recently set up a profile on there to house my showreel and other stuff I'd been doing, but apart from that I'd been watching stuff on there for ages, why? Because quality wise it pisses all over the others.

And there was some pretty good content on there too! The usual amount of stuff that shouldn't really be on there (possibly one reason it's been shut down??), but also because of the higher res, other independent stuff apart from chavs with phones.

Anyway, I'll miss it for one, and although I need to investigate Veoh a bit more, as that's what they're sending people to now, the first video I tried to put on there wouldn't upload. Good start.

Feeling a little ill now...

2008-03-26T12:09:00.002Z

If there's one thing i'm not a fan of, it's cold calling.

Working in production you have to do a lot of it, so I've kinda got used to it, figured out how to talk to people, learned the skills of convincing people to take part in Programme X for Channel Y. But I still don't really enjoy it.

Welcome now to the world of being freelance. Now I have to call people to sell myself! rather than whatever programme I'm working on. That ain't fun!

What do I say? How am I supposed to pitch myself as a cam-op/editor when I've just done nearly three years researching? Of course I can operate and edit, but then I need to get in the door to prove that first!

It's also, because it's new territory, slightly difficult to know whether these calls are going good or not so good, obviously some you can just tell that they went shite, but some I don't know. I guess I need to suss out what, and how much, information to give across and what to expect back.

So I guess this is a new chapter in the career world, and thus blogging one. A chapter that's been hinted at for a few months now, with the odd gig here and there, now it's full on, a new direction, more crazy adventures (um...), heartbreak and tragedy, romance and triumph... or am I just being a tad melodramatic?

I dunno, am I excited? Yes. Am I shitting myself? Yes. Still.. party on, this is it, so let's do this!

And again...

2008-02-07T10:46:00.000Z

...and do they really need that damn siren going as well!?

I hate commuting

2008-02-06T10:21:00.000Z

..well sometimes it's alright, but certain days suck.

..yay for Victoria, this was after they actually let us in, then, after deciding that the Victoria line was gonna be sick, I fought my way through to the District line (by the time I got to the platform I was listening to "Get In The Ring" possibly not the best thing to be listening to at times like this), was vacuum packed onto a train, made my way to Embankment to change to the Northern Line. All trains within the next 10 mins were going to Edgeware (I need High Barnet, the other side), not a huge problem, I'll just change or get off at Camden. Of course I fail to do that, and thus have to get off at Chalk Farm and then come back to Camden.

Oh and I had to stand (AGAIN!) from Burgess Hill to East Croydon, at least I got to sit down between Croydon and Victoria, it's not unheard of to have to stand all the way to London!

Every 7 seconds

2008-02-04T22:14:00.000Z

GODDAMMIT!

Y'know, I like the BBC iPlayer, despite it's lack of Mac download support, it fits into my ever evolving viewing lifestyle, more on demand.

I can get home, pick a programme to watch, one that may have been on 5 days ago, but I was busy, and watch it, it's a good concept, which is surprising, cos I think most people thought it was gonna suck. The quality's not bad, on my 13" MacBook or Powermac's 19" CRT it looks ok, and I even plugged the MacBook into a 32" Sony Bravia, and to be fair, once you're sat back in a chair, it's not that much worse than the nasty artifact laden digital standard def.

However, there's issues.

The organisation of it could do with a little improvement, maybe top picks from each category on the front page rather than just 5 or 6 programmes from all that's available.

I haven't explored the whole RSS side of it yet, but then iPlayer appeals more to my impulse viewing side rather than the scheduled series, although if I can RSS an individual series, say The Choir so that I'm alerted to each new episode (much like a podcast) that would be handy I guess, depending on what you've got to handle the RSS at this end.

Downloads, ok still no d/l for Mac (or Linux), cos the Beeb loves Bill too much, but again, I'm not that fussed, this is more impulse, channel surfing, see what's on, and the downloads expire at the same time as everything else afaik, so there's no huge benefit there apart from...

Streaming. Oh good god. When it works, it's brilliant. The other 20 odd hours of the day it's a pain in the arse, especially if you're into a programme that you're watching then about 10 minutes in, it starts stalling, and you get this stupid twirly dots thing pop up EVERY SEVEN SECONDS! (yes I timed it). I don't want to have to shout CUNT at my screen every seven seconds, I'll become a geek with tourettes!
Please BBC for the love of god do something..

According to the iPlayer help page, under the streaming section...

"Why is my programme not playing smoothly?

If your network connection is not consistent, you may experience problems connecting – the video will pause and a circle will spin on your screen. You can check your connection speed at www.speedtest.net.

This link will take you to a website outside bbc.co.uk. The BBC is not responsible for content or software downloaded from external sites.

Check that your connection is not being shared with others that may be downloading or uploading files. Network traffic may also build at certain types of day, so you may wish to try later."

Uhuh. No.

I did the "speedtest", confirmed I'm running around 2Meg, not great, but it should cope.
"Network traffic", yes lag exists but..
"you may wish to try later", no I want to watch the programme now, I'm already watching it later than it was originally broadcast for Christ's sake!

I was gonna post something along these lines to the suggestions message board on their site, however you can only do that between 8am and 10pm, so that'll have to wait until tomorrow lunch or something.

Possible solutions...

More servers? I'm not sure on how many they have, but I'm sure more would be better, I'm guessing YouTube has a fuck-ton more than the BBC.
Larger buffer? Yeah, I think this one's a winner, I can wait a few more seconds for my programme to start if it means it won't cocking stop! So A larger buffer would be nice plus..
Continued buffering while paused? Wait doesn't pretty much every other Flash player out there do this? YES! It appears that the iPlayer doesn't, there's no progress bar that I can see to indicate that it does, so why the cock not? I pause it, go grab a drink, by the time I get back it's well ahead, so even a bit of lag shouldn't affect my viewing pleasure.

Needless to say I'm a little irritated (not just by the now horribly cliched use of the 'i'), I want to like the iPlayer, I want to believe that I can bookmark it on a Mac Mini under my telly and use it on a regular basis, I want it to be part of the family, but right now I still have reservations about that certain look it has in it's eyes, that suggests that it may not be altogether there and if I invite it to stay, it may start rifling through my dirty washing looking for crumbs.

Only time will tell I guess (and whether I remember to post a polite version of this on the BBC message board), right now I'm gonna try to finish watching the rest of the programme about people getting it on in Second Life.

Hmm..

2008-01-31T10:55:00.000Z

Ever have any of those times where you're plagued by indecision, uncertainty, doubt, lack of conviction etc, all topped of with a bit of a head cold.

I'm at one of those times at the moment, looking ahead, not sure on the path to take and all that and to be honest it's pissing me off and getting to me. I need to figure this shit out and soon!

I started out in all this with a clear idea and sense of direction, right now it's kinda like staggering though a misty bog at night, looking for the batteries to put in an oil lamp. Shit analogy but still...

I'm sure I'll figure things out soon, but right now I feel crappy.

Bosham

2008-01-02T13:13:00.000Z

Disappointingly pronounced Bozzam, something I obviously refused to do all the time we were there.

It's an ok place, twas cold and wet and reminded me that I really do need to get those boots from Millets, but it's another day out to a random place and Vic was happy cos she got to feed ducks.

Unfortunatly I neglected to take my SLR with me and

so was left with only the shiteness of my Nokia, so snapped a couple of pics and then sicked up on my phone out of spite.

Also working on a website idea, could be an interesting one, that may work on a small commercial scale, y'know, like 50p/quarter from ads or something. Stay tuned.

The end of another year

2007-12-31T16:15:00.000Z

Well, December 31st has rolled around again, another year over and done with and a new one just about to start.

What of resolutions for 2008? Well I'm still working on mine, got a few hours left yet, to be honest, although I DESPERATELY need to sort my own place out again, that's quite a hefty challenge, so my resolution will probably be career orientated, well I don't smoke, don't drink and I've always been shit with money, so career it is.

Last (this) years? Can't remember, may have been to actually get a car, the previous year's was to sort my damn license out. Achieved (finally!) and crossed off (Dec 14th marked 1 year), I eventually got the car in July, thanks to some parental financial help, and have recently installed my new stereo ;)

I have some ideas for how the resolution will go, well I have some ideas and a vague to-do list for next year's career moves, just need the concise version for midnight.

2007's been an odd one, had some pretty good achievements and at the same time, things have maintained a reasonable status quo, so I think a bit more focus and stuff for 2008 is required to properly move things forward. Not that 07 was totally shite, I kept on the path I decided, it was just a bit of a slow one ;)

Anyway 2008 and Jools Holland are just around the corner, so on with the cheesy countdowns, watching others get wasted and crappy programmes that look back at the events of 2007.

Happy new year!!

Almost Christmas...

2007-12-21T10:59:00.000Z

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1642765133

http://www.scroogeyourself.com/?id=1643144809

Floatel

2007-12-04T21:54:00.000Z

Another camera gig, but with a twist...

Welcome to...

The Floatel!!!

Yes it's a hotel that floats. It's also shite.

So all the way up to Liverpool, well Nantwich (which I've just remembered is Greg's haunt, which I didn't remember at the time, sorry Greg) for the hotel then onto Liverpool.

Anyway check out these 'beauty' shots of my room, 'key' and view...

Apologies again for the shite quality, well Nokia apologises in spirit. How's me, sat waiting at Oxford services takes your fancy??

No well, Patrick and some kit then.

Anyway, twas a fun day, despite being a shite hotel and getting bugger all sleep the night before the shoot! Now I'm home an fucking knackered, so my bed and sleep beckons.

What did I do last night?

2007-11-24T10:03:00.000Z

Oh yes, that's right I went to see Queens Of The Stone Age at Brighton Dome.

Were they awesome? Yes they were.
Did I suffer some permanent ear damage? Yes I think I did.
Was I disappointed that they didn't play Feel Good Hit Of The Summer? Yes I was.
Was I over the moon when they opened with Hanging Tree? Hell yeah!

Enjoy some shit photos from the shit camera on my Nokia.

Norfolk and cocking trains

2007-10-08T21:45:00.000+01:00

Today I was seconded for a little jaunt up to Norfolk (or thereabouts at least) to film an interview with this guy for a BBC Worldwide thing. (Yes, that's pretty much all I knew/know)

All went pretty well, (his name's Richard West btw), the stuff, looks good, sounds good, or at least it did when I shot it, Tom (prod.) got everything he wanted, all cheers....

The guy has a Williams F1 car in is garage!

Basically, we were talking about teamwork in F1, he's worked for McClaren, Ferrari and Williams and now does management consulting.

The guy has a Williams F1 car in is garage!

so got back to the office at a reasonable time, I checked in with the production I'm actually on, then got out early so that I could get home to see Megs and give her, her present and card (as it's her 10th birthday), got a train that was a whole hour earlier than I usually get...what time to I get in??

Yes that's right, the SAME COCKING TIME AS USUAL!!!

The trains are a joke, a big shite joke and I hate them, I pay getting on for 4 pissing grand a year to ride the damn things and they can't even timetable them properly or get them to run to the damn timetables, I was late this morning and I was late this evening.

Bastards.

Still I touched a real F1 car in someone's garage today. :D

Three months of practically nothing...

2007-10-03T17:46:00.000+01:00

...then I'm working full tilt again, is there no nice middle ground?

So I'm back on Resource Review for a spell, the first batch is proving mildly stressful at the moment, with things coming right down to the wire (and possibly tripping over) thanks to some drop outs at the last minute.

Not all ICT stuff on this one, got a good mix, although to be fair, I'm probably looking forward to the ICT Hardware stuff most (although the "Green" and "Outdoor" progs should be interesting), but then that's the geek in me. And filming at Shakespeare's Globe was quite nice and Matthew got several rounds of applause from students of various nationalities for his 'performance' on stage.

Doing some more camera work, with stuff at Brook Lapping and also the odd freelance corporate gig, such as the trip to Bolton and on Sunday just gone was a job for Cancer Research UK for one of their 10K runs at Hampton Court Palace, the day for which started by filming some deer making their way out of the early morning mist, followed by copious amounts or runners and volunteers.

All in all an enjoyable day, although carrying the Z1+Tripod around on my shoulder all over the field, left me slightly bruised :/

The other thing the day confirmed for me was exactly how crap the camera on my Nokia 6630 actually is!!

Still...
WISPA'S ARE BACK AND HELL YEAH!!!

Bolton

2007-09-13T18:04:00.000+01:00

Long old day yesterday, starting off for me at 4am, driving over to Tunbridge Wells for around 6, then up to Bolton for Lunchtime (thankfully I didn't have to drive that bit), do some filming and then back to Tunbridge Wells and drive home by about midnight. Wake up far too early this morning feeling like I'd been out on the piss all night and doss about all day bar typing up an invoice.

Another momentous landmark appeared yesterday, apart from being my first corporate gig, it was also the first time in my life I'd ever stepped foot inside a football stadium (Wembley Stadium not included as it's pretty much multi purpose and was kitted out for a gig at the time), the one in question being the Reebok Stadium, home of the Bolton Wanderers.

It's smaller than it looked from the outside.

Pownce

2007-09-05T15:08:00.000+01:00

Web 2.0 is all the rage, and I'm registered on various Web 2.0 sites, Facebook, MySpaz, Digg and for a short while now Pownce.

Pownce is apparently like "Twitter on steroids", Twitter is basically the "Status Update" bit of Facebook, it's called 'micro-blogging'.

Now Twitter I've not touched, I update my status on FB a fair bit, from serious to ridiculous statements, and for actual blogging, well.. you're reading it, so I'm still a bit in the dark as to whether Pownce is filling a useful niche in my life, so the features, or the different things you can send:-

Messages:- As I said, like Twitter or the Status Updates on FB. I rarely use the status updates for any real serious application, more that I feel the need to change it on an ongoing basis. I can kinda see an advantage to this aspect of Pownce in that, you can use it seriously and targeted, whereas your status on Facebook simply crops up in the news feed to everyone of your friends. How does this apply? Not sure, it's not as immediate as an IM or text (SMS), is it more immediate than sending an email?? Hmm.

Links:- Looks pretty much like a message except it's got an http tag attached. There are times when you need to bung a link over to someone, I can do that on email, in a Facebook message (which are basically my two main forms of online communication now) or if the person's online in an IM. Hmm.

Events:- Facebook has an events section, allowing you to create an 'Event', say a gig or a party, send that event to your friends, who can then RSVP to said event online. Handy. There are various levels of privacy available, so if you're having a party at your house you can keep the Event hidden from the rest of Facebook, or if it's a gig, advertise it to the world, then, post event, people can upload pics, videos, discuss, all within the event's page. Cheers.
Pownce is a lot simpler, allowing you to simply post the event details publicly or to select friends. Quicker, so for a informal get together a lot less hassle, but for bigger events, more a reminder tool??? Hmm.

Files:- Pownce allows you to send files to other users, a standard account can send up to 10MB and a Pro account ($20/yr) can send up to 100MB files.
Now this for me could be the hidden gem, or not so hidden as the case may be. Email is the usual method for me to send a file over to someone, but a lot of email systems, especially company (corporate if you prefer) ones have poxy 2MB ceiling on their attachment sizes either in or out, not the best as I work in film/video/broadcast and files can be a tad bigger than that! And even some other email providers will start to quake under larger file sizes. Ok what about IMing the file? Well, MSN Messenger is what most people I currently know currently use and file transfer on that it bigshite, sending a sub 100k JPEG is painful enough at times! FTP? Yea there's FTP, I could upload the file to my web-space, send people a link to the file to download it, but then if I'm in a situation where I'm bunging files around, that'll probably rape my bandwidth, plus it's a bit of a hassle.
So the whole File side of Pownce is intriguing, send (potentially) up to 100Mb files, people either pick them up immediately (I think) or next time the log on and it's there.

There are other file options out there, which I've yet to fully explore, there's one called Tubes or something that sounded interesting, but at the time I looked was Windows only, cross platform is better thanks. Then there's the issue of my MySpz headline "How many sites does one man need?"

If you're on Pownce add me, plus if you actually know me I've still got my 6 invites if you wanna have a lookie.

http://www.pownce.com/MattGrover/

What shows WOULD I buy from iTunes???

2007-09-04T14:29:00.000+01:00

Just been pondering as i commented on the lack of British TV stuff in the iTS, as to what shows i'd actually buy (from wherever) from the store.

By the way, it seems the British offering currently consists of:

Genie In The House (Nickelodeon) - Disturbing kids tv offering
Jongleurs Unleashed (Paramount Comedy) - Stand-Up stuff
Comedy Blue (Paramount Comedy) - possibly British
The World Stands Up (P.... C....) - some Brits in it.

Oh yay.

Anyway...

What would I buy...

Lost
Battlestar Galactica (not gonna happen)
Heroes (nor this)
possibly The 4400 as I'm getting into that now.
also The Night Stalker sounds intriguing but dunno what it's like.
My Name Is Earl (dunno what network)
Jericho
Bionic Woman - maybe, but again i think it's NBC and I'm not entirely sure if it's good yet.

Yes I am a geek.

Anything British if it were to appear?

Lead Balloon - Bloody good, but it's more of an impulse watch thing as are..
The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, and other similar ones.

Dramas???

Wire in The Blood - but my girlfriend watches it as well, so I'm quite likely to see it broadcast, I have been tempted with the DVD's if I get them cheap enough.
There's nothing else that I can think of that I actually WANT to follow over "watch it if it's on".

There's no way I'd buy any sort of reality or "talent" show.

Well the BBC are ditching production on various dramas, I'm hoping we're gonna see a decent 16-24 episode series that can compete with the Yanks, I've a feeling it's gonna be more expensive one offs and 6 episode blips and maybe another Dr. Wo spin off :/

TV Shows in UK iTunes...

2007-09-02T17:41:00.000+01:00

...finally!!!

Official AAPL link

But wait...yep as expected, no British ones. But then I don't watch Dr. Who anyway (c'mon, y'know that'd be the first in there, well if the BBC gets over itself with the whole charging thing and drops the cockPlayer).

So, is it worth it?? Well they seem to have arrived with less fanfare than they did in the States on their initial launch, maybe everything's being overshadowed somewhat by NBC/Universal's imminent departure from the store, but anyway...

I've been waiting for TV shows in the UK store ever since the original launch, my TV viewing habits have changed considerably over the past couple of years, moving away from the traditional schedule driven pattern and more towards a hip, funky on-demand lifestyle for my main programmes with my "traditional" style sitting down watching TV generally being more 'impulse' viewing if you will, sit down see what's on.

So being able to get the series I watch downloaded podcast stylee to my Mac, so that I can watch either at home or on the train to/from work is ideal.

Now of course that option is pretty much already available to me, should I wish to pursue it, albeit, it's not legal and involves file-sharing (BitTorrent has only ever worked once for me, it's shite, don't know what all the fuss is about...or I'm missing something), hoping the description matches the content and that the connection's good enough, oh did I mention it was illegal, thus not something I or anyone should do.

Do I want to wait a good decade for Heroes to reach BBC2? No. Do I have regular access to a Sky Box? Normally, no (I do at the moment but that's not the point).

Sky have done a pretty good job of securing deals with the Yanks to get Battlestar and Lost pretty quickly, the last series of Lost aired literally a few days after it did in the US, so props to them... if I had the option of Sky all the time that is.

So anyway, I'm very tempted to buy a season pass for the next season(s) of Lost and Battlestar (unless that dissappears with NBC which I have a feeling it will...wait it's not even there now!! DAMN!), so again is it worth it?

Well let's have a look..

All 3 seasons are currently listed at £32.99 on the UK iTunes Store, each are the full 23/24 episodes and are the (now) standard iTunes video res of 640x480 h.264, I'm not sure on the file size as I haven't bought an episode yet, i'd hazard a guess at around 350Mb tho, and I'm pretty sure 16:9 & widescreen aren't letterboxed as files.

Compared to a DVD box set, Lost Series 3 will retail at somewhere around £50, so iTunes is cheaper, but then you don't have them on a 'physical' media..get over it, no DVD extras, ok that's valid, I'm normally a geek for extras but for some reason I'm not that fussed about them for the shows I watch, whereas for a film DVD, it could be a deal breaker.

You don't have to wait half a year for the DVD to come out, true, but is that a worthwhile comparison? Kinda as regards the fact that I'm, paying for the episodes, but not kinda (?) as the download is instead of watching the broadcast.

Yeah? But what's the quality like??? According to Apple (for the movies at least) "Near DVD". Oh.

iTunes - 640x480 h.264 QT

DVD - 720x576 PAL MPEG-2

So DVD's are a higher picture quality, on both res and compression, HD?? Not fussed at the mo so we'll leave that one.

What's the alternative download option tho? Well, if you were on of those pirate people, there is the BitTorrent, File sharing option, how does iTunes compare to that?

Well there's a massive price difference for starters, that's assuming you're ok with breaking the law every week. The end product is essentially the same, a single episode each time, no extras, but the BT/FS options aren't encoded by the studios or Apple, they're done by some enterprising young scallywag somewhere over the pond, so surely the quality won't compare to pro stuff that you pay for from the store??

Well let's compare an episode of Lost series 3 (Greatest Hits). I previewed the episode, full screen, in the store and used the standard Mac screen cap for a few shots, then I opened up a DivX version that I'd been given to test with, played it full screen in Quicktime Player (Perian thankyou) and screen capped as best i could the same shots without being too anal about it.

Here's the stats for the DivX vid:

iTunes wouldn't give me the stats on their one :(

Now for the screen caps (iTunes on the left, DivX on the right and hopefully clicking on them will take you to the relevant page on my Flickr account)...

Now I don't think there's a lot in it, I think the iTunes one's a bit over saturated, but at first glance, it could be ok. BTW it may be worth noting that currently I'm either watching this stuff on my 19" CRT or my 13" MacBook, not a 40" HD LCD ;)

Anyway, I'm gonna ponder some more in a bit as I have to go out now, but would be interested in people's thoughts on this...

Geordie World

2007-08-31T17:05:00.000+01:00

Windows Vista - Part One of dunno

2007-08-20T13:16:00.000+01:00

I've been using Microsoft Windows Vista for less than an hour, probably less than half an hour so far and it's already sucking my will to live.

My Ex-Wife has just got herself a new laptop to replace the one she had that got well and truly trashed. I'm not sure if this is a work issued one or not, it's got the Business Edition of Vista on there, but no Office or anything (hence why she came to me to get it set up with Office and AOL for her).

This is my first experience of Vista, my old PC still has XP Home SP2 on it, and that remains in the cupboard for most of the time as I'm pretty much a Mac person now, but try not to let your preconceptions of that get in the way, I still use Windows a fair bit as most offices are kitted out with XP based networks and I've been intrigued by Vista for a while.

There's a lot of posts online (that usually get flamed to shit by Windows Fanboys) that simply state "Vista Sucks", so far, I'd have to agree, since starting the laptop up and going through a few simple tasks it's been a horrible horrible experience;

StartUp - Took it's time (I didn't time it), then this Welcome to Windows type box appeared, well the box appeared then the contents followed a few minutes later all the while teasing me with a "Open this at startup" checkbox that wouldn't un-check until it had fully loaded.

IE7 - Now IE7 is a hell of a lot better than most previous versions, the button that views all of your open tabs in thumbnail, cheers and I've used it on several XP machines. However it took ages to load, changing the homepage was an overly laborious task, it's got Google and Norton toolbars (not IE's fault but it all adds up), it went "Not Responding" for a bit (as does pretty much everything in Vista it seems) and when I typed in a query into the live search field it took a good few seconds before actually bothering to look.

Control Panel - Took ages to load, I had to wait for the progress bar to fill up before it showed anything, then it was a new fangled 'user friendly categories' view, and when I told it to go to classic view THAT took ages as well even just to load the damn icons!!

A brief look around the folders - or not so brief as each one (documents, Photos, Music), with nothing in took a good few seconds to open and display the nothing in them.

Windows Update - No longer has a handy start menu shortcut (that I've seen), so through the slow control panel again, then before it can run it has to upgrade Windows Update, fair enough, yes please, screen goes dark, dialog appears saying Windows needs my permission, trackpad clicks before I've realised and it's installing shit, oh no password input then?....Control panel dissappears.....I wait a minute or so...is it done?... load Control Panel AGAIN, go to Windows Update, run it again, well it seems to be done, thanks for letting me know, XP was all about those damn speech bubbles, Vista's considerably more cagey, balance anyone?

31 updates (approx 60Mb), started at 13:08, it's now 13:33, it's still going.

So is this Vista's fault? Is Vista really that rubbish that it seems to be at the moment? Well that's clearly not the whole problem.

It's an HP laptop (Compaq nx7300), apparently it's running an Intel Celeron M processor (1.83GHz I think) and by the looks of it is kitted out with about 512Mb RAM, and Vista clearly doesn't like that, I'll be suggesting that she maxes the RAM in it as soon as poss (before madness sets in)

So the hardware is making it sluggish, is that the hardware's fault? Not entirely no, the system should be scaleable, you're gonna notice performance differences between systems obviously but it should be useable for Christ's sake! An the vendors should put an appropriate OS on their hardware, XP would probably be reasonably nippy on this laptop, Vista is a wheezing old man.

Aero - Fresh new Windows look, gone is the 'My First Computer' look of XP in is the 21st century snazz of the Vista desktop, get rid of "Start" in it's place the Windows flag, squash the windows control buttons, make the taskbar dark, change the colour of the windows. Transparency? I think I've already mentioned the performance issues here, plus I think you have to pay extra for that.

13:52 Windows Update has finished and finally restarted, the clock now reads 04:52. Thanks. Change the TimeZone and we're back again. Oh and yay, I have a speech bubble telling me that updates were installed. Thanks.

Everything has a progress bar - Control Panel has one, Help has one, the cocking folders have one, what do you think that tells you about system performance, the fact that they coded a damn progress bar into the folder views!!!

Norton - Before you go off on one, I know it's not part of Windows, but this machine shipped with it and a shitload of others do. Back in the day (we're talking DOS 5 & 6 here) Norton kicked ass, Norton Commander, cheers! Now Norton sucks ass, I tried a Mac version once (thought about it to clear PC viruses off to save me inadvertently sending anything), it nearly killed my iBook, I took it off, cleaned up the mess and all was good. I used to have it on my PC, I took it off because the negative effects on performance were just ridiculous, and guarenteed this current HP laptop would benefit greatly from not having Norton-cocking-internet-safety-bollocks on it. Engage your windows firewall, don't click links in emails selling you Viagara, don't accept random attachments and steer clear of porn sites.

Another speech bubble asking me to "Help Make Windows Better", maybe Vista's chatty after all.

I'm supposed to be installing some AOL and Office software on here, if I'm honest, I'm a little concerned and not at all looking forward to that particular process. I'm typing this on my MacBook btw, mainly cos I was running Windows Update so just left it alone, also because I feel much better typing it on here (despite Safari 3's annoying little quirks)

OK, I need her AOL username/password to d/l the latest version and Office can wait. One final niggle (for now), clicking the big 'power button' in the start menu, doesn't shut the computer down, I think it hibernates it, maybe they should've had a sleeping bear icon instead.

Would've preferred Starscream but...

2007-08-17T07:43:00.001+01:00

I AM 78% MEGATRON

Take the Transformers Quiz

Kevin Smith

2007-08-08T00:29:00.000+01:00

His films may be a tad hit n miss, but his Q&A's are top!

(facebookers click ORIGINAL POST or whatever it says up there)

Getting moist yet??

2007-07-28T10:37:00.001+01:00

YES!! I got my stereo out!

2007-07-26T12:08:00.000+01:00

Thanks to the handy Pioneer Removal Tools I got off ebay..

I managed to get my stereo out of the dash, of course the cradle came with it, but still mission accomplished.

Now to get the thing wired in to give me something while I save up for a new one...

...bugger...

And all the Almera has is these two block connectors and the aerial lead, damn.
Looks like whatever car this stereo was in before the guy stuffed it in mine, it was literally ripped out, Halfords have previously quoted me £40 for re-wiring, joy. I can get a harness adapter for around £8, but I still have to wire the damn thing up. Hmm

After many years...

2007-07-20T21:43:00.000+01:00

Well it took me a fair bit of time, but I've finally joined the world of the automobiles with a not entirely brand spanking new Nissan Almera, but T reg and in pretty good nick...

And it has a spolier, electric windows AND MIRRORS, although I do need to get the stereo wired in, hopefully that'll stop me humming National Express :/

Btw, too that picture in a Halfords car park, clearly the first place to go (well technically the second, I had to get petrol first.), what do u think I bought???

Also have a token picture of me, behind the wheel about to drive on my own for the very first time...nervous.. slightly yes...

Nothing in particular

2007-07-12T16:06:00.000+01:00

Bored, so writing a post, really bored, unemployment starts off ok then turns pretty shit. Starting to get more than a little concerned now, especially on the money front!

On the plus side went to the Brighton Barfly (or to call it by it's 'proper' name The Gloucester) to see Ghosts last night, cheers. I randomly discovered them as one of the free singles of the week on iTunes, then we heard them on the radio (different song), utilised my coke credits to get the album, saw them last night, top band basically.

While all manner of kit was failing, the lead guy started playing a random theme tune on his guitar, put it to the crowd, I correctly guessed it was Beavis And Butthead, cheers me ;) (apparently, according to my girlfriend, that's pretty sad, i don't see it myself)

The first band The Stillers, were good solid comedy rock, the second band, The Sonic Hearts, were better than I thought they'd be when they started, from Liverpool and the lead guy was pretty funny.

anyway, I'm bored, running out of money and bored some more.

Awseome!

2007-07-07T15:08:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Simon Drake for pointing this out to me!

NB: Facebookers, this is a youtube embed and doesn't appear to show up in the notes, click "View original post"

New hotness

2007-07-05T11:52:00.000+01:00

Coca-Cola are running this little iTunes promotion at the mo, with special packs you can win iTunes song credits, you're also entered into a draw to win an 80GB iPod.... guess what arrived this morning :D

So... without further ado, heres the suitably geeky unpacking shots (as is the law with all new Apple gear), note all these pics were taken with my iPhone.

All pics should link through to the relevant Flickr page and no, I don't own and iPhone :( that is somewhat revealed in one of the pictures too... I CAN DREAM CAN'T I!?!?

Check this shit out!!

2007-06-30T16:32:00.000+01:00

Bob Knopfler - Cop at http://www.bobcomic.mattgrover.me.uk/

This is what happens when you're out of work, at home and bored.

Feel free to post any comments back here, ideas, suggestions (no I'm not gonna stop, at least not for another 12 pages i think).

Enjoy :)

2nd Threadless pic

2007-06-28T21:37:00.000+01:00

Put another one up, put a little more effort into this one tho! ;)

Spot the deliberate mistake...

2007-06-27T12:00:00.000+01:00

Oh dear "Will", no scam this time

Ooh fancy!

2007-06-26T12:11:00.000+01:00

I've updated the template/layout on both my main blogs, mainly as Blogger told me there was a new layouts option available, so I got sucked in to that, have just spent best part of an hour dropping some of the previous sidebar stuff back in, only for my Flickr thing not to work, need to figure that out.

There's now a feed of the recent Mattereviews posts over there ------->
and on the MR blog itself, there's the recent comments, which currently consist of myself replying to Mike. Cheers Mike, at least I know one person looks at these things occasionally and I'm not just typing to myself!!

TV on the cheap

2007-06-25T10:05:00.000+01:00

I either got into TV at the wrong time or trying to be slightly more positive about things, the right time. I digress...

As I'm looking for work at the mo, and this may sound a little "out-theree", I've been browsing the various jobs sites (productionbase and the like) and applying for the various jobs I find. What I have noticed, and I'll get to the specific instance that's prompted this post in a sec, is that the whole "multi-skilling" thing is really hitting hard now.

Of course this isn't a new thing, but I think the big big push started around the time I did, around that time is when the BBC announced it's Creative Desktop initiative which got all the editors up in arms, and I think things have really snowballed since then.

I'm currently at Researcher going on AP level, now at a very basic level a researcher is a contributor and fact finder, obviously that's not how it works in today's industry which thankfully means I've had a lot of very good experience in other areas, some which would normally be attributed to an AP's role, some to a co-ordinator and a fair bit of technical.

But it seems that in today's industry's climate, increasingly the roles within the production team are becoming blurred and the jobs that are advertised, especially at Researcher level are more DoEverythingForResearcherMoneyOrJustUnder roles. This especially with the surge in digital startups delivering their content solely via web pages and thus working to negligible budgets.

When I took stock of my options just over two years ago when I started, I decided to go the editorial route in TV for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that; looking at the career path, I could set myself a target of AP (Assistant/Associate Producer) which would give me the most well rounded job role, i.e.; writing, shooting and editing, based on the Creative Desktop model and where people were speculating the industry was heading.

Now I find myself in a position where at least half the researcher jobs I look at involve a broader job role than my initial AP target! And when you look at AP ads from the same places (if they've posted them), they're practically the same job.

So... where does that leave me? Essentially I could get what I want, probably sooner than I'd expected, from my job role, doing a bit of everything, getting the broadest experience, but at what cost?

The post that prompted me to write this I saw this morning on one of the various job sites, advertising for an Assistant Producer. I thought I'd have a look, see if it was something I could feasibly apply for, and while reading the post i got to a line which read "Must be an experienced director...", hold on they must've copy-pasted the wrong job ad in, so I scroll up to check and no, they're advertising for an Assistant Producer (Director). Now AP's have been required to be able to shoot for some time now, but to specifically state 'Director' in the job title is a new one on me at least.

In factual at least, as far as I'm aware the next step up from AP would be to P/D (Producer/Director), but now it seems that job is being eroded into the AP role, at least that's what this particular ad would imply. And this is not for some random internet startup.

Now obviously I've been aware of the whole "multi-skilling" thing from day one, but today I'm mulling it over (again), is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Good:- Get a wide and varied job role, encompassing many skills, building on many talents

Bad:- Slower career progression? With more AP and PD roles being given Researcher titles?
Money and this is quite a significant thing to think about.. (I'll use random numbers here to illustrate as rates vary (and we don't live in the 80's anymore) and I'm not gonna go look up the pact figures this morning at least)

Researcher: £500/wk +
Assistant Producer: £750/wk +
Production Co-Ordinator: £450/wk +
Producer/Director: £900/wk +
Camera operator: £750/wk (3 days) +
Offline Editor: £1000/wk

Total: £4,350/wk (approx)

That'd be pretty good for an AP (Director) wage wouldn't it? Or in some of the cases I've applied for, a Researcher wage. And I forgot sound (classic TV mistake ).

It's an interesting time for TV people, this kicked off with the introduction of satellite and digital, and a shitload of smaller and niche channels with substantially lower advertising revenue and thus production budgets, but now those budgets are shrinking even more with the greater diversity of niche programming available online, and although I'd love to be earning four grand a week as a researcher, I also, simply and like everyone else out there, need work.

So was this a good time or a bad time for me to get into TV? A bit of both I think, but then that's just the way it is, cest la vie and all that. If I'm gonna stick with this route (as opposed to a technical one, which is an option), I just need to be the best damned multi-skilled worker I can be.

After all, it's quality not quantity ;)

NB: Note that I didn't mention the company or where the AP(D) ad was, any industrious people could probably find it, but my intention was not to criticise the company who placed the ad, merely talk about my observations of the industry as a whole.

more random brilliance...

2007-06-21T18:47:00.000+01:00

Finally...

2007-06-19T20:43:00.000+01:00

Got a picture (taken by Greg) uploaded to Threadless, just need to get pics of the others now!

Click on the pic and check out the t-shirts cos they rule!

Day Out: Broadcast Live & Panavision

2007-06-19T18:43:00.000+01:00

Well well, I'm out of work so what does that mean? Apart from looking for more work that is?

It means days out, in this case to a work related trade show, namely Broadcast Live 2007, and to a work related shop at Panavision. WooHoo, I know how to live it up!

So.. Broadcast was ok, a bit small, but I had a good look around, picked up the usual assortment of shite leaflets and stuff.

(Got some free mints this time!), the obligatory paper bag that you collect at the main entrance split quite badly so that got binned, however, fortunately I had acquired one of those shite little bags like you get from JD Sports from the people on eht TV-Bay stand, this bag was suitably adequate for carrying the show shite to Greenford and back.

I had a butchers at the new Panasonic AG-HPX500 camera, totally P2 and HD at 1080i/p in DVCProHD (100Mbit), had a good chat with the sales guy, explained I wasn't totally sold on P2 yet, and mentioned a couple of things, one being XDCam HD which launched him into his big pitch, but still he was pretty cool and we had a good chat... he quoted me just over £10,000 for the camera body+ viewfinder + 4x 16GB P2 cards, I thanked him and went about my merry way.

Actually that's not a bad price, bear in mind you'd have to stick around another £6,000 on there for the lens and then consider the post side of things, eg how you're gonna transfer your footage from the P2 cards (there are several options for this and could potentially add another few thousand to the bill), plus then you've got to add, Tripod, bag, any extra batteries and charger, camera plate, and probably a couple of other bits. It'd be nice, but I don't think I'll be looking for £20k's worth of financing just yet.

I am more sold on P2 now, he's done his job, and there's some major moves going on with the production on P2, the BBC have invested heavily in it, it's being used more and more in the indie sector, and could actually give Sony a run... of course Sony is releasing it's ExpressCard based cameras soon, so it could go anywhere... probably Sony.

So after Broadcast Live (at Earls Court incidentally) it was off to Greenford and the Panavision Store!!

With my trusty tube map and made my way to the Central line and realised that I'd forgotton to bring the Google Map I'd printed off to tell me where Panavision actually was. Damn.

A little bit of trying to visualise the map from memory and heading in what turned out to be the completly wrong direction, I had a Maccy D's (6 nugget meal, thanks), utilised the power of the internet on my phone and found a map, retracked, orientated and BOSH I was on my way to the store.

A long trek around Greenford, which is a scummy place, I came across my goal. Panavision.

A little faffing about and trying to figure out where to go I decided to go and ask at the main desk, she made me sign in and then directed me through the door, past the coffee bar and it's on the right. Yes it is, past the coffee bar and GOOD GOD it's actually IN Panavision, like in the workshop, COOL!

The shop is actually quite small, much like you'd expect a gift shop to be, but it served my purposes, I managed to purchase the workbelt, belt 'buddies' and lens cloth that I wanted (items that didn't really justify trekking all the way to Greenford in Middlesex for but I wanted to go!!) and made my way out, feeling suitiably cooler for seeing the inside of Panvision UK, the various production slates that adorn the shop's walls and the many large B&W set pictures that adorn reception and the corridors.

(In my slight concern about not being allowed to take pictures, not wanting to look like a cock taking pictures and just my general crapness, I only managed to get a couple of 1200x1600 blurs, which I'm not gonna post.)

Now I have a cool carrier bag and my trousers will not be pulled down by my kit.

So finally to round the day off, I've been playing Dr Cockknockers' Brain Training DS on the train, slipped over on Trafalgar Street in Brighton, yes slipped over, which annoyingly I think that's the 3rd time this year!!! (In various locations), This time resulting in ripped jeans and a bloody knee. I recovered quickly tho, kept it cool.

And now I'm gonna be sad and watch the Panasonic P2 DVD I picked up at the show.

I'm practically related!!!

2007-06-16T23:02:00.001+01:00

Website update

2007-06-10T12:40:00.000+01:00

Just to let all in the iEther know that I've made a few updates to my site, mainly the addition of the Kit List page, which will itself continue to grow as I learn more stuff, buy more stuff and remember the stuff I've forgotten that I already own/know!

REBEL AND REVOLT!

2007-06-03T17:37:00.000+01:00

As I think everyone knows, the accepted method for opening a Kit-Kat is to slide your thumb down the groove beween the fingers, thus tearing the foil and allowing you to snap off and gain access to one of said fingers.

Why is it then that Nestle have seen fit to, at least on the two finger versions, wrap the foil the other way around so that the ends are over the groove, therefore negating the need to "tear the groove" and creating a small sliver of foil of, by habit, you do open up a can of thumb on it's silver ass.

Do they think they're making our lives easier by doing this? Why do they feel that we'd benefit from not having to tear the foil? Are there people out there who so desperately want to get at the chocolate fingers that an extra second or so could be potentially life threatening??

Please, everyone, I urge you to write to your local MP and help to rectify this abhorrent behaviour before I get started on Smarties tubes!

WTF?

2007-06-02T17:18:00.001+01:00

how does that work?

I'm a secret lemonade drinker

2007-06-02T11:02:00.001+01:00

What the hell?

2007-05-30T20:21:00.001+01:00

How the hell did the whole Madeline McCann thing explode into the massive media circus that it's become? I mean The Pope for fuck's sake!
As far as i'm aware this whole thing started with this couple leaving their very young kids alone in their hotel room while they went for a meal and she got snatched. While it's harsh any time a kid get's taken I fail to see what's so special about this case??

A little tip for ya

2007-05-26T11:45:00.000+01:00

Don't use Disk Utility to verify your iPod's disk while it's connected to iTunes... as it fucks it and I just had to restore it and re-sync my library, which consequently lost the files I had stored on there. bugger.

Good God this is amazing!!!

2007-05-24T14:25:00.000+01:00

YouTube... CHEERS!

Yesterday

2007-05-23T12:57:00.000+01:00

I saw a seagull killing a pigeon.

Busy Busy

2007-05-12T21:09:00.000+01:00

So very busy, and another busy week coming up, filming Monday to Friday at various locations around the country, looks pretty certain that I *won't* be doing any camera work tho >:/ fucking yay.

Hopefully going to see Spidey 3 tomorrow tho, which despite the mixed reviews should still be fucking cheers!

There's been a shitload of stuff I've thought to write about during the week, but just haven't had the time to type anything up, hopefully things'll settle down a tad after next week and allow me to catch up with shit, send appropriate emails that I need to and generally start progressing forward again. In the meantime I bought some phono-to-jack adapters and a headphone splitter jumper from Maplin.... oooh the excitement.

Spot the deliberate mistake...

2007-05-02T10:41:00.000+01:00

Oh dear oh dear.

Middle of the day

2007-04-25T13:28:00.000+01:00

Yep it's that time again, the time when you've had or are having lunch, and demotivation takes over (except for the saddos that work through their lunch break!!), you start checking out MySpace, Facebook, writing in your blog. The odd stifled burp reminds you that you eat far too much MaccyD's, but at least you have a guilt reducing bottle of Evian on your desk rather than the death ridden Coke, that adorned it this morning.

Fortunatly you have your laptop set up on your desk as well as your main work computer so that you can check twice as much email and see what joyeous spam you've got in the past 10 minutes, that and get Limewire going on the next episode of which ever prog you fancy (if it appears in the bloody search list and with the right episode number!).

But then the time ticks on, you know that in a few minutes you'll have to pick up the phone again, leave some more poxy voicemail (why don't we just call them messages anymore?) and look for someone else to allow you to jabber into their electronic voice mailbox for fun. Bastards.

Although, maybe you have someone actually booked in to talk to, maybe they'll actually be there, maybe you'll talk to the person you actually need to, and then maybe they won't shoot you down with their verbal ground to air missiles, distributing their dismissive flak in your general direction.

Maybe you're far too attacked to the grubby looking hole punch you rescued from the cupboard on your return after the break, but hell at least you've got your nice big desk back by the window, even if it gets covered in kit every couple of days.

"Excuse me I believe you have my stapler"

PS my filing cabinet acts as a foot stool.

Didn't see that comin'

2007-04-20T22:38:00.000+01:00

Went to the Doc's earlier today, couple of things I needed to get checked out, my ears being one of them, basically (and I already knew this) they're chock full of wax (yum!), I'm basically wanting them syringed so I can bloody well hear again, but noooo, the poxy nurse has to do it, a week Monday!! Combine that with the fact that my right ear is KILLING ME! and yay for next week.

The other thing was headaches, over the past few months at least I've been getting a fair few headaches, usually in the same place, front part of my head, behind the eyes, and at least 3 times a week if not more.

First thing I thought was to go get my eyes tested, as I spend most of my life in front of a computer and that's probably it. Went to the optician's, she said, "Yep you need glasses y'all", although I'm only just over the threshold for needing them so she didn't think that was the cause of my headaches, so she referred me to my GP. Okay.

So after a fair bit of faffing about (I missed one appointment and I still don't have my glasses), I went and saw the Doc' (if only he was Brown), had a little chat, explained, as best I could, what my headaches were like, the fact that my main concern was the loss of concentration and "fuzziness" that accompanies them, which is basically the same feeling I got when I was messed up after Dad died, so I'd really like it checked out.

After going through the questions, he basically thinks that (oh there was a blood pressure check too, it's up "but only a smidge"), they sound like tension headaches, but I'm not particularly stressed at the mo, so he's putting them down to "painkiller headaches".

At this point I mentioned that I'd seen a documentary about this some time ago involving Codine.

Yes he says, Codine is pretty bad, Ibuprofen/Neurofen (which is what I normally take for headaches) is similar, but not the worst.

So basically he believe's I'm essentially addicted to the stuff. Great. Thanks.

To be honest, he's probably right, I haven't really had a headache since I've been of work (past two weeks), which made me think that it was something to do with my eyes and VDU's, but then I've been using my Mac, I've also had chronic earache for most of the time off and have been taking....wait for it... Neurofen for that. DOH!

So NOW, I need to pick up my prescription for Beta Blockers (medicine of choice in the late 80's I believe), take it for two months, NO PAINKILLERS, then stop. And see what happens basically. Hopefully the headaches will stop and I won't be injesting far too much ibuprofen.

Although I'm gonna pick up the shit tomorrow, I'm postponing the start date for a week, cos god damn does my ear hurt and I'm not dealing with that for a week, hopefully Nurse Pam will sort that out, it'll ease off and I'll be Blockin' away.

Hopefully I'll get some glasses at some point too, although the slightly lower pay packet I'm gonna get this month ain't gonna help that one!

I just watched Brick as well, pretty good, I'll post my verdict to the "reviews" blog, but probably not until 2moro.

L8r.

A Whole Lotta New Going On

2007-04-20T13:44:00.000+01:00

New Phone, (Nokia 6300, bit of a downgrade, but it's ok), New posts on my "reviews" blog as I saw The Prestige and 300 recently, and hopefully after the Doc's this avo I'll have new ears! YAY

http://mattereviews.blogspot.com/

Just..

2007-04-13T21:58:00.000+01:00

...when you think Lost is gonna actually answer some questions and fill in some blanks, it gobs a big fat greener in your face!!

Still good tho.