Yello -Touch

A new album! WooHoo!

What if Earth had rings like Saturn?

The view from afar would be somewhat familiar, after all, we know Saturn. Now, can you picture how the rings would appear viewed from Earth’s surface: Paris, Rio, somewhere near Greenland? What would be its appearance at day, by night? You can check it above, and wonder what myths of creations, what religions would it inspire.

A fabulous work of imagination by Roy Prol. Imagination, but not pure fantasy! We don’t have rings around our planet, but we could have. The rings rendered by Prol respect the Roche limit, and the most curious thing is, we may have had rings not that different from those.

With not very pleasant consequences.

Astronomer John O’Keefe speculated that the planet may have formed “a ring system like that of Saturn” at the end of the Eocene, which lasted “between one and several million years”. As can be seen on Prol’s animation, the rings, despite their beauty, would block part of the Sun’s radiation, causing a global cooling.

In the end of the Eocene it may have caused global extinction, but could this be the most beautiful fix for global warming?

LAURIER TIERNAN - "You Will Die as You Have Lived" music video

A short music video that I directed with my good friend Tee L for Laurier Tiernan and Prograde Records (Tokyo). It took much longer to complete than anticipated, the shoot alone took 9 hours thanks to bad weather. We hope you like it even though it's a little strange. Thanks for making all my ideas work Tee!

Knights Of The U.S.S Enterprise.

Holly's Text The Nation.

H.

A year ago today our world turned upside down. In a GOOD way. Happy Birthday H. We love you more than words can say.

Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn' ft Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)

Mr Dennett again . . .

Just another chance to hear the wonderful Dan Dennett speak again. I had the chance to hear this talk earlier in the year in London.

Daniel Dennett - Breaking the Spell from Leslie A. Zukor on Vimeo.

Still here but busy ...

That says it all really. I've just started a new job and it's eating up the hours. Plus my daughter's rapidly approaching 1 year of age so most of my weekends are spent chasing her around the house making sure she doesn't destroy anything.

Which she then destroys during the week.

Sigh ...

I'll update as soon as I can.

Or when they invent the 5 day weekend.

One more thing....

One more thing before I go. I stumbled on the trailer for what looks like the most INSANE film ever.

I doubt I'll see it in the cinema (along with most people I suspect) but one evening I'll get the drinks in, load up on pizza and enjoy what will no doubt be an appalling bit of hokum!

I wonder why it's so quiet?

Well... It's been quiet because my daughter's teething. Which means it's been anything but quiet for us.

She's developed this new scream that we've dubbed "The Velociraptor". She's now officially louder than "Disaster Area".

We're all off on holiday today! WooHoo! Two weeks in Devon to wind down and MAYBE get some reading done. I've been meaning to finish volume 3 of Stephen Donaldson's "The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" for yonks. Now's my chance.

In the meantime here's a short vid.

It was a lovely day last Sunday so we went for a walk in the local park. While we were there we saw this guy doing somersaults n' stuff. "Yay!" I thought, "Time to play around with the slo mo setting on my camera!"

HOLZILLA!!

LOOK OUT! SHE'S ON THE LOOSE!!

Ghost Busters (1954) Trailer

A good mate just sent me this.
It's a work of genius!

NTB Iconic Icons - Bob Dylan

I've posted the new National Theatre of Brent's Iconic Icons episode in the NTOB section on the right hand side of the page.

It's the box at the bottom that looks like it's empty, it's not, just hit play or follow the divshare link. This weeks icon.... Bob Dylan.

The BBC website labels this as 1 of 3 episodes and also mentions that it's an occasional series. I'm guessing that means it's not on every week. I'll keep my eyes open for the next one.

SOEXCITEDSOEXCITEDSOEXCITED!!!!

Just some more pics...

The National Theatre of Brent's Iconic Icons!

Iconic Icons Wed 29 Jul 2009 18:30 BBC Radio 4!

I was in the audience! It was a boiling hot day and VERY uncomfortable in the venue. The show was fab though! Very interesting to see a radio comedy recorded, it all seemed very low rent. I guess you don't really need that much, just a room with good acoustics and a couple of microphones!

Just some pics....

Tunes I Like Right Now...New!

I've cleared out all the old tracks from the "Tunes I Like Right Now" player and posted some new ones.

They are.....

Films - Gary Numan (you can never get enough of the Numanoid!)

An Ending (ascent) - Brian Eno

A Duck Is One Mean Machine - Cassetteboy

I Lived On The Moon - Kwoon

In For The Kill - La Roux (the 80's are back!)

The Front Fell Off!!

Blimey.... I laughed and laughed. Monty Python would have been proud of this sketch.

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E

Mitchell & Webb have really hit the ground running this season. This sketch sums up everything that winds me up about "Alternative Medicine". It's called "Alternative" because there's no, repeat NO evidence that it works. And yet it's huge business especially in the UK and U.S.A.

This sums up why I hate football....

Funny cos it's true!

When the rock & roll nightmare comes, the devil's gonna make me eat my drums!

They came, they saw, they went to 11. Spinal Tap played their 1 date World Tour at Wembley Arena on Tuesday night and my ears are still ringing!

I was impressed they didn't do any schtick, they just played an awesome gig and relied on the fact that the songs were strong enough (and funny enough) to stand on their own. So apart from dwarfs dancing around an inflatable Stonehenge the "jokes" were kept to a minimum, with just little bits of banter between songs.

I soon realised that these guys can really play! They sounded very assured and tight, making a noise that Metallica would envy. Chris.... sorry, Nigel Tufnel's guitar solo (though overlong) was masterful. Dave St Hubbins voice has lost none of it's power over the years and Derek Smalls proffered lukewarm support on base.

A wonderful night was had by all.

But there's more. During the first few songs official looking women with clipboards were roaming the arena. It transpired that they were looking for women to go up on stage and dance with the band during the song "Big Bottom". They picked my wife!!! Luckily people took along camera phones so the moment has been recorded for posterity. Or posterior.

If you know her, she makes her first appearance around the 1:47 mark.



Stonehenge!!



And just for the hell of it, the video for The Magesty Of Rock!



Tap were supported by The Folksmen. Brilliant!

Downloads

The divshare downloads will be up and running again on the 8th of July. You all hit the download limit for the month!

The Baloney Detection Kit

Hmmmm I want one. I wonder where they sell them?

Galactic Center

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

How small do you feel now?

Christopher Hitchens

Love him or hate him, Mr Hitchens is always fun to watch. I don't always agree with him (his views on Iraq for instance) but you can't say that he pulls his punches. He's ruthlessly honest about his opinions and happy to stand up for them. Enjoy.

Earthrise.

JAXA and NHK videos from the high-definition television camera aboard the Kaguya Lunar orbiter.



Stunning.

Eyes . . .

Nativity. . .

I took this picture years ago. It's a nativity scene outside a department store in Madrid.
WTF? Flipper was present at the birth of Jesus?


How come SpongeBob SquarePants didn't get an invite?

Gold, Frankincense & Tuna.

Once

It was a slow morning at work so I decided to bung my copy of "Once" into my laptop and leave it playing in the background.

I ended up watching it all the way through. I love this film.

I saw it for the first time last year. My sister-in-law had given it to me as a present and, I have to say, at the time I was a little disappointed (don't tell her that!). However, she's got excellent taste and I'd heard some great reviews, but I'd also heard the negative ones so approached it with caution.

It's a Marmite film. You will either love it or hate it.

It's, and I shudder to use the word, sweet. Really, really sweet. Not in a vomit inducing way, but a warm, fuzzy, sad, funny, uplifting kind of way. A really touching tale of two ships that pass in the night. It got labeled as a musical on it's release, it's not. The music is integral but it's not a musical in the "Chicago" sense.

The plot focuses on a busker with dreams of making it as a successful musician, he's also dealing with the breakup of a long term relationship. He meets a young Czech immigrant and together they realise that they share a love of music and are both in similar emotional situations. The actors wrote and performed the songs in the film and are so talented it makes me ill.

Give it a chance. Go on.

Schrödinger's cat.

The Window Hope Has Opened . . . .

then gets hit with the brick that rationalism threw and lands on the pavement that reality provided.

Daniel Dennett Lecture "A Darwinian Perspective on Religions: Past, Present and Future"

Dan Dennett is a towering figure in the world of philosophy, this is a video of a lecture that I was lucky enough to attend a few months ago.

Richard Dawkins says in the introduction that he's the kind of philosopher that scientists like. That's because he's spent his entire career keeping pace with what the scientific community are doing.

It was a fantastic evening.

I highly recommend his book:

Voice Over . . .

Last night I was up quite late finishing a Voice Over I've been doing for a video game. At least with all the advances in home studios I don't always have to travel up to London to do this sort of thing in a professional studio. A decent mixer and microphone and you can do it from home.

However..... This is an example of some of the dialogue.

"The purpose the game is to position the orange ball in the large circle so that it matches the one in the smaller circle.
This can be achieved by using your controls to click on any ball which is surrounded on all sides.
This action will cause the rotation of all the balls around the one that has been clicked to rotate anti-clockwise which will move the orange ball in the direction that is required"

Now... try reading it aloud so that it sounds interesting and makes sense.

It's not as easy as it looks! For some reason the phrase "This action will cause the rotation of all the balls" caused me to corpse repeatedly. In the end I got it done and mailed off the wav files to the client.

However, because it had taken me so long to get the above section right, and because I hated the way it was written, I included 1 extra file in the folder. I present it to you below.

New songs......

I've added 3 new songs to the "Tunes I Like Right Now..." section.

In The Name Of Love by The Thompson Twins

Magic by Mick Smiley

Savin' The Day by Alessi

As you may have guessed these are all from the "Ghostbusters" soundtrack and are therefore brilliant. I'm getting all excited because the Blu Ray is out this month!



Who you gonna call?

Saturday morning ritual....

The one thing I HAVE to do on Saturday mornings is have the radio tuned to BBC 6. Actually, the word radio is inaccurate as it's a digital channel that I get through my Sky box.

Saturday, BBC 6, 9:00am = Adam & Joe.

They've been sounding the horn for geeks like me for quite a while now and have had a small but loyal following since their TV show on C4 years ago.

Radio is a great fit for them. The music is usually great but you listen because you want to know what they thought of the new "Star Trek" movie and the like.

Nerd Nirvana.

Here's a video by one half of the team, Adam Buxton, that he made for the Spoon song "Don't make me a target." This wasn't the official video. But it should have been. Check out his YouTube channel here.

Snuff Box.

A short clip from the very underrated TV show "Snuff Box" that starred Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher.

It was, and is, genius. Shame nobody tuned in.

Don't watch this if bad language offends you. Because you WILL be offended. When I saw this sketch for the first time I didn't stop laughing for twenty minutes.

Long weekend. . .

It's been a long sunny weekend. Saturday was a loss to me as I was working, but today has been a wonderful day spent with my family and a few friends.

Beyond that I've been rejoicing in my new desk! Yes, I AM that sad.

We've spent what seems like years getting our basement done. Actually, that's because it DID take years. Our first builder (note the use of the word "first") didn't do anything for a year, so we gave him the boot.

But in the end we went from this......







To this....









A great little nook where I can put my ever increasing collection of books n' stuff.







Oh.... AND use it as an office.

The books now need alphabetising. I'll get around to it one day. The desk went in last weekend as the one we had before was in danger of collapse. I'm pretty sure that only good will was keeping it together.

On the way home from our friends house today I took some pictures of the river that runs past the bottom of our garden. Hmmmmm.... What a great day.

Tunes I like right now....

I'm adding a new section to the right-hand side of the page called "Tunes I like right now....".
It'll have a few tunes in it for you to listen to.

They won't be there permenantly though. I'm going refresh it every now and then.

First up:

Zero by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Like Emily by All About Eve.

Spirit On The Water by Bob Dylan.

The Willows By Belbury Poly.

And just for the hell of it:

The closing theme from "The Tripods" by Ken Freeman.

The Pool Of Fire. . .

A friend of mine said to me recently "You have a high tolerance for this stuff don't you!".

I was visiting his house and had stumbled upon some god awful Sci Fi show called "The Starlost"on the TV, it had been made sometime in the 1970's. By any reasonable standard it was total crap, however, it starred Kier Dullea and that was enough for me.
He was right though. I seem to be able to sit through the kind of TV that makes most people run for the hills.

So.... to "The Tripods"

It was a show made for the family teatime market in the mid 80's and, to be honest, it's rather shoddy. It's a great example of the BBC trying to film something for £2.50 that a Hollywood director would have trouble bringing to the screen for £80 million. So, 10/10 for effort.

I have a huge soft spot for it though. The acting may be atrocious and the script leaden, but it tries SO hard. The model work is some of the best the BBC ever produced, and the Tripods themselves look really cool. Fact.

It's a show that's developed a healthy cult status over the years. Not just the show but the music also. The soundtrack was written and performed by Ken Freeman and has been available on CD for some time. For many years though only season 1 of the TV show was available on VHS and DVD, but at last it's available as a DVD box set that contains both season's 1 and 2.

"But wasn't The Tripods based on a trilogy?" I hear you ask!

Yes. The third season was never made due to low audience figures, so the 3 of us that were watching it were left hanging.

"But wasn't it crap?"

Yes. But I love it. I have a high tolerance for this stuff remember.

Cosmos Episode 1

Finally found a replacement for the lost "Cosmos" vid. You can find episode 1 in full and my origional post here.

I wonder what will happen?

STEPHEN!!!

What REALLY happened....

I can't help but love this. Partly because i'm a fan of "Family Guy" but mostly because I think that Christian Bale is an overrated cock.

Mwahahaha! At LAST!

The tickets arrived today!!

WooHoo!

I will be there on June 30th at Wembley Arena to witness the triumphant return of England's loudest band "Spinal Tap".

This is part of the 1 date "World Tour".

"If we're going to do a World tour on only one night, at least it's this world"
Nigel Tufnel

"This show will be dedicated to all of our drummers who have passed on, either to their reward or to middle management at Sainbury's."
David St. Hubbins.

"One night is not enough, and it's way too much!"
Derek Smalls

National Theatre Of Brent UPDATE!

As you may know from an earlier post I am a HUGE fan of "The National Theatre Of Brent". It's been through many different forms over the years, the most well known being the combinations of Patrick Barlow & either Jim Broadbent or John Ramm.

Rather annoyingly none of their shows (TV or Radio) have ever been commercially released, so I've spent a long time searching the net for any material.

While on the hunt today I realised that "All The Worlds A Globe" has been repeating on BBC7 along with "Desmond Olivier Dingle's Compleat Life and Works of William Shakespeare". BUM! Missed them both! Thankfully I found most of "Globe" and will replace 7 of the episodes I have posted here because the quality is better. Some nice chap also put up a torrent for "Shakespeare" so I have added that to the NTOB section. The quality isn't great but it's better than nothing.

Also added to the playlist that already has "Mona Lisa", "Messiah" and "Greatest Story" is a new one on me "Joan Of Arc: How She Became A Saint".
It was written by Patrick Barlow and has Jim Broadbent and John Ramm in the cast. Dawn French plays the lead role.

They can all be found on the right hand side of the page under "The National Theatre Of Brent".

My origional NTOB post is here.

As if that wasn't enough it turns out that the NTOB are set to return to the radio this year with a NEW series. It's titled "The National Theatre Of Brent's Iconic Icons".

I managed to get 2 tickets to a recording of an episode... WooHoo!
The episode I will attend is about the iconic icon Bob Dylan.

It never rains but it pours.

If you want to download the files click on the DivShare logo.

Update!!!

Bloody hell! It's been a while. I guess having a new baby can do that. Time is something I don't seem to have much of at the moment, but I'm sure by the time my daughter is 18 I'll have got used to it.

I'm going to update a bit more often (cough!)and try to keep an eye on things more. I've repaired a few dead links so all is up and running again. Yay!