closing time

Hello anyone that still reads this blog.

I am putting it to sleep, to be replaced with this one.

Update your bookmarks.

Safe.

x

reckoner remix

my 'reckoner' remix

http://rapidshare.com/files/147737910/reckoner_mix.mp3.html

Use with caution

The new love of my life: Theresa Andersson

It's things like this that make you just want to give up everything you've ever tried because it will never be this good.

My new blog

My new proper grown-up media blog:

http://learningisfunblog.wordpress.com/

Newsflash...

Silly season

With deep apologies to Adam Buxton

don't panic....

This is definitely a good idea

There's no way this isn't a good idea.

...

if anyone reads this thing anymore i apologise for the lack of updates.
soon i am going to start making music again so i might use this space to post some tunes.

s x

Miss England runner-up

guilfest 1

long division

Gabe and Max's internet thing

Sex shop pizza and childhood heroes

Going away on a business trip is, apparently, a sign of genuine adulthood.

You’ve made it through the adolescent monotony of school and college; you’ve negotiated the intoxicating faux-independence of university; you’ve even managed to land on your feet – bruised and battered from uncomfy new shoes – in a bona fide ‘proper’ job.

A business trip, however, is the ultimate sign of grown-up life.

You are no longer chained to your desk like a newly purchased cat on probation, unprepared to face the outside world.

You are packed off to a Travelodge – more of which later - and trusted as an ambassador for the company.

It was this inflated sense of false optimism that filled my thoughts as I boarded a train from London Euston on Monday, bound for the Manchester Evening News for a week of camera training with their sister TV station, Channel M.

The week was interesting, and it was a privilege to spend time in such a highly regarded newsroom.

I even got to meet Andy Crane, the legendary children’s’ TV presenter from the late 80s and early 90s who has reinvented himself as a hard-nosed northern newshound, a kind of cross between Jeremy Paxman and – well, Andy Crane.

My evenings were spent watching Euro 2008 matches in my hotel room, with its sealed windows and sparse décor, venturing out occasionally to scavenge for food.

I find there is something quite sad about eating out alone – I wouldn’t be able to escape the feeling that everyone else in the restaurant would think I had been stood up – so I had the choice of cold supermarket pasta, a sparse Travelodge menu or what I came to know as ‘sex shop pizza’.

There were a number of reputable eateries within walking distance of my lodgings, but only a couple of takeaways, the nearest of which was located next door to an adult entertainment establishment.

As far as I am aware, the pizza joint had no connection to the adjoining building, but the stodgy cheese and tomato that gave me a stomach ache and filled my hotel room with a questionable aroma ensured I’ll never look at a Margherita pizza in the same way again

So that was my week up north. Hardly a high-powered executive business trip, but I return to the safety of Surrey feeling refreshed, educated and a little bit dirty.

First published here

radiohead cover portishead

Vote for my short film

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Parkour in Guildford (brightcove video)

Welcome to Get Hampshire

Welcome to Get Hampshire, your new one-stop website for all the news, sport and entertainment headlines across the county.

Powered by the Aldershot News Group and Surrey & Hants Star, gethampshire.co.uk also features video news and interviews, blogs, competitions, special features, and entertainment and event listings.

Get involved and interactive by signing up to have your say on all our stories. You can vote in our online polls, send us your own pictures and video, and also contact us if you’re interested in becoming a regular Get Hampshire blogger.

So join in our new community and look out for lots more additions to the site in the coming months.

Gary Waddock

Blogging from Brightcove. Stay tuned...

Disability Challengers

Blogging from Brightcove. Stay tuned...

How I wish you could see the potential of you and me

Disability charity opens new Farnham centre

For more see www.surreyad.co.uk

Ben Elton opens new college performance centre

how to fight loneliness

The journo in the corner

The England cricketer Andrew Flintoff once described his first meeting as a young Lancashire intern with his all-time hero Ian Botham.

“I just dropped my shopping,” he said. “I didn’t know where to look.”

For such a recognisable and seemingly confident personality to admit to bashful hero-worship suggests there is hope after all for the socially inept among us.

I recently found myself in a similar situation at a certain media event in London.

I arrived unfashionably early, and after chatting briefly to the press officer, was left cowering in a corner, buried in my notes as a procession of national journalists, broadcasters and academics entered and hobnobbed before me.

There was the BBC’s home editor, Mark Easton; Saturday editor of the Times, George Brock; former Olympian and sports journalist Matthew Syed; and City A.M Editor Lawson Muncaster.

I disappeared further and further into my corner, drinking the complimentary tea like it was going out of style and reading and re-reading the press release in hope of discovering a formula for invisibility.

You may have guessed from all of this that I am not a good networker. I never have been.

Put me in a room filled with people I’ve never met before, place a drink in my hand and tell me to “mingle” and I descend into a navel gazing, quivering wreck.

Not very convenient for a journalist, you might say, given that the old adage of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” could have been invented for the fickle world of media.

One a one-to-one basis, I’m usually fine. I can laugh when I need to laugh, I can nod and look serious, heck I can even stretch to a witty remark now and again.

But as a newly qualified rooky, how do I go about introducing myself to people who have been to more press briefings than I’ve had hot dinners?

People whose profound discourse I was reading only yesterday in The Guardian were now standing just feet away providing what more sure-footed colleagues would describe as “the perfect networking opportunity”.

I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to chicken out.

I stuck to my corner, eventually following the crowd into the event, simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief and choking on my supreme embarrassment.

Maybe in the future, people will no longer communicate face to face and the phrase ‘social networking’ really will be confined to the impersonal comfort of technology.

Until then I remain the journo in the corner, my innate awkwardness shining through for all to see.

In praise of radio

WHEN ASKED to describe his reaction to the invention of the radio, German physicist Albert Enstein said: “Radio is a kind of very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.”

A mangled kind of explanation from arguably the greatest genius of all time, but you can see what he was getting at.

Before the invention of the magical box we have come to know as the ‘telly’, families used to crowd round the wireless and listen for news of events from around the globe, interspersed with the occassional Noel Coward play or spot of frivolity from the likes of Arthur Askey.

Simpler times, some might say. In this modern age of ipods, bendy buses and ‘Kit Kat Orange’, it can often be hard to keep up with the latest trends in technology.

Not a day goes by, it seems, without another channel appearing on TV – the BBC is spreading itself increasingly thin across it’s ever expanding empire – but online radio is the pot of gold at the end of this digital rainbow.

I recently found myself with an unexpected day of leisure, so rather than going for a healthy walk in the country or visiting one of the capital’s many culturally enlightening galleries, I decided to stick some hot cross buns in the toaster and settle down for an afternoon of radio.

There is something brilliantly comforting about Radio 4’s classic quiz show ‘Just a Minute’. No matter what is going on in your life, you get the feeling that it will always be there.

You could be standing in the burning wreckage of your flat, your treasured possessions going up in smoke as your spouse bids you farewell for the final time, and still you would raise a smile as Clement Freud attempts to talk for 60 seconds on the subject of ‘what I did on my summer holidays’.

The main thing that struck me as I surfed through the stations and indulged myself in radio goodness is that everything is so much slower, and better off for it.

Television is becoming overwhelmed by the constant need to keep the viewer from switching over, flashing graphics and blaring adverts, just in case we get bored and contemplate doing something more wholesome with our time.

Radio, on the other hand, assumes that it’s listeners are more patient, and thus there is more opportunity for the ‘aimless ramble’ – an intergral and neglected part of communication.

On his Sunday afternoon music show, actor and writer Stephen Merchant is a master of this art.

The conversation between Merchant and his co-presenters spanned a variety of topics, very few of which I can recall off the top of my head, but such is the nature of this kind of unplanned spontaneous setup.

Comedians Adam and Joe have a similar ethos with their Saturday morning slot on 6 music, but to the point where they are just saying the first thing that comes into their head – and it’s very, very funny.

You don’t get that kind of spontaneous humour anywhere else. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, TV is packed to the rafters with ‘comedy’ panel shows which masquerade as platforms for comedians to indulge in topical banter, but are in fact as carefully staged and scripted as the Labour party conference.

So here’s to radio, the oft-neglected orphan of the digital revolution. Next time you find yourself pulling a cat’s tail, think of Einstein, and let yourself drift off into a magical, wireless world.

Sam Blackledge

Couple get engaged on rollercoaster

A loved-up couple had the ride of their lives on Friday when they got engaged on the tallest rollercoaster in Europe.

Jenny Harold, 28, took advantage of the February 29 leap year tradition to propose to boyfriend Patrick Hyde on the Stealth ride at Thorpe Park.

Rollercoaster enthusiast Patrick, 26, said he was amazed when Jenny popped the question.

Jenny kept her plan secret for almost two months, telling her now-fiance that the day out was a late birthday present.



“I did think something was amiss,” said Patrick.

“My birthday was a month ago, but she just kept saying ‘I’ve got something planned’.”

The couple, who have been an item for more than a year, had one of their first dates at the theme park so it was the perfect setting for Jenny’s proposal.

“I’m glad it came together – it could have gone horribly wrong!” she said.

“I just feel completely relieved.”

Stealth was introduced to the park in 2006, and now goes from 0-80mph in 1.9 seconds, producing G-forces of up to 4.8g.

First printed in: Surrey Advertiser Online

"You're like... the coolest person I've ever met and you don't even have to try"

Every so often, a film from the left field of the American movie industry has critics and cinemagoers alike falling over themselves to garnish it with praise and, very often, awards.

Last year Little Miss Sunshine scooped two Oscars - best actor for Alan Arkin and best original screenplay – unprecedented for a film with a budget of just ₤8million and no major stars.

In 2008, Diablo Coby’s Juno looks set to be the surprise hit of the season, having made an appearance in almost every top ten list of the past few months.

Telling the story of a 16-year-old who finds herself pregnant by her best friend, Juno is a witty, fragile, perceptive piece of work that says more in 92 minutes than an army of Orks and Hobbits could in more than nine hours.

Ellen Page is the undoubted star, and with a spot hosting Saturday Night Live lined up for next month, she will surely enjoy the dazzling Hollywood limelight for a while longer.

Page’s depiction has been described as spunky, quirky and razor-sharp, but there are subtleties to her performance that go deeper than her delivery of the BAFTA winning script.

She seems to defy the character’s tender years, to the extent that the penultimate, brutal labour scene serves as a jarring reminder that this all-conquering, Stooges-loving tomboy is in fact just a child herself.

Plaudits must also go to the solid supporting cast. Michael Cera and Jason Bateman - reunited after the tragic cancellation of Arrested Development – share low-key, intimate moments with Page, while Allison Janney and J.K Simmons are perfect as Juno’s parents, even more confused and lost than the teen herself.

The Academy Awards may not adorn this sleeper hit on February 24 with so many other great films vying for honours, but it’s a little gem to be cherished in an industry so obsessed with doing things on a grand scale.

Sam Blackledge

First published in Surrey Advertiser Online

the death of journalism?

The Guardian came over all self-pitying and masochistic today.

On Comment is Free, Martin Bell believes that newspapers and TV networks are "retreating into a comfort zone of celebrity stories, consumer news, sport, health-scares and crime...the coverage is mawkish, exploitative and highly speculative."

In MediaGuardian, Nick Davies goes one better, suggesting that the media is involved in the "mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda." Journalists have become "passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest," he says. "Not journalists, but churnalists."

While it is frustratingly true that much of a journalist's work nowadays involves wading through a sea of PR guff, most of the reporters I have met over the past year seem to be in it because they care about issues and want to tell the truth. If the Murdoch empire and increasingly media-savvy press departments block the way occassionally, then we'll just have to find another way around.

S

The RPM Challenge

this month i will be mostly doing this.

This is the challenge: record an album in 29 days, just because you can.

That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.

Anyone can come up with an excuse to say “no,” so don’t. Many of you are thinking “But, I can’t do that! I don’t have any songs/recording gear/money/blah blah blah...” But this doesn’t have to be the album, it’s just an album. Remember, this is an artistic exercise. Well written, honest music is compelling and undeniable no matter what it was recorded on. So put it to tape.

After failing miserably last year, I have got off to quite a good start and I have three or four 'finished' songs (although i don't think the word finished really applies to this project in any way). I am struggling with lack of gear and a crackly hissy snivelling computer but hey...

check out my efforts so far here.

Too Cool for Camden (demo)

My first foray into the confusing world of music videos.
Enjoy.

winter gets cold in ways you always forget

so...this blog appears to be fading away somewhat...i might keep it going if inspiration strikes...

having said that, 2008 looks like being a pretty awesome year for new albums, with hot chip and british sea power already putting in bids for album of the year.

here are some tunes to inject some life into your tired little january legs.

roll on summer.

x

Hot Chip: Ready for the Floor

Royksopp: Eple

Dizzee Rascal featuring Alex Turner: Temptation

!!!: Heart of Hearts

Spoon: Rhythm and Soul

Burial: Archangel

British Sea Power: No Lucifer

it's nearly time.

a million little pieces

happy new year. if you have a spare book voucher left over from xmas or just a few pounds burning a hole in yr pocket, buy this

scotch_mist