Having now had the chance to take a few snaps I thought I’d sort myself with some sort of photoshare thang. Dave, Rob and Greg put me onto Flickr which seems quite adequate for my purposes. I now have an account here which you can visit if you feel so inclined. Rah!

I’m tempted to say, ‘What About It…?’ It’s not like I’m even close to being bored. Being out of work has given me a chance to get on with a host of things I’ve been saving up to do for ages (almost like prematurely executing some form of retirement plans); it’s being in a job that’ll lower my spirits. How did that Smiths song go; “I was looking for a job and then I found a job and heaven knows I’m miserable now”? But then, that isn’t the attitude to take and I don’t want to be a burden on the folks so I’m going to have to find something very soon. And it’s going to be something awful, I just know it.

Whilst a lot of my skills are transferable and I can rewrite my CV so that it’s a bit more generic and it draws upon my wider experience, it still doesn’t look good to have been out of work as long as I have and given that I’ve absolutely no interest in working hard so that someone else can benefit from it I’m gong to have to make sure I move around a lot and keep myself from getting bored. And that means it’s back to temping. So with a heavy heart I took myself back to “Backup” last week. The place hasn’t changed since I was last there in 2002. It’s still depressing as hell (as Salinger might have said) and the same dispiriting wave of apathy still exudes from the staff whose practised grins still manage to make their faces look as if someone forced a coat-hanger into their mouths,  “And what sort of work are you looking for?” I don’t care. “And would you consider doing any industrial or catering work to tide you over?” I’d rather kill myself. Scratch that, I’d rather kill you, you insincere, vapid bint.

But again, this is not the attitude to take.  I’m currently waiting on some sort of monkey test that will determine my WPM typing and my initiative and grammar and spelling etc. Hopefully this won’t be as painful as I’m fearing and I’ll make a real effort not to whinge and moan on here. (Too late?). I might even have a job next time I post something. The real trick will be not allowing this to interfere with my Strategy For World Domination (henceforth to be known as SFWD).

Since last posting and thanks to a little help from my friends I’ve been pointed in the direction of a solution to my problem about getting the contents of a few of my DVD’s onto my computer. So, this week I have been mostly putting music videos onto iTunes. Whilst this is immensely satisfying and straightforward it is also ridiculously time consuming and fiddly as hell. Anyway I’ve managed about 10 discs’ worth of stuff so far and now have about 80 music vids and shorts stored away as compressed mp4’s. Anyone who knows me knows that I love music vids. A lot of my collection has been sitting here in storage whilst I’ve been living away from home and it’s been great re-watching a lot of my favourites including Chris Cunningham’s Aphex Twin promos, Michel Gondry’s Bjork vids and Spike Jonze’s bizarre creations including the Fatboy Slim “Weapon Of Choice” promo with a superbly choreographed Christopher Walken (anyone who’s ever seen Walken dancing in the video for Madonna’s “Bad Girl” will know what an achievement his strutting in the Fatboy Slim video must have been).

There’s still a lot more that I want to put onto the computer and the next project will be to transfer a few old family movies from various different VHS cassettes onto the computer and then re-edit it all. At this time I’ll also have a good look at some of my old group projects from uni. This should help me learn a whole lot more about the actual editing process for myself as although I was very active and involved in everything we filmed on my course, I somehow never really got a look in on the actual editing which was very frustrating at the time (especially as you tend to work with the edit in your head as you film). I can’t wait to get on with it!

So my Panasonic NV-GS300 arrived yesterday. Superior to the 280 I exchanged it for in that you can record from external digital sources. I still can’t get VHS and DVD onto it because I know not how. If there were some means of converting the analogue signal from VHS into a digital one or a digital cable you could plug into my computer from my DVD player then I’d be well away but I think the problem of people abusing this in order to pirate movies is obviously too great and so I can’t enjoy the music vids I’ve got on DVD in the same way I can with my music on iTunes. I can buy the videos again from iTunes but I can’t seem to put the ones I already own onto my hard drive. Most vexing.
I can however, now go out and film stuff onto DV and I can take snaps and transfer everything onto the computer so the whole thing hasn’t been a waste of time or money by any means.  Just need something film now. And to get my head around how Final Cut Pro works. That should take up the next few years!

I always feel very out of my depth when discussing all things Gallifrey. I’ve met people with ridiculous amounts of knowledge on the topic, but I should be alright here because it’s just my opinion and I do enjoy comprehensive information on that subject. BBC 3 has been re-running the adventures of the ninth doctor this week. I’d missed most of them when they were first shown. I couldn’t help but be struck how po-faced a lot of it was. I really like Christopher Eccleston in almost everything I’ve ever seen him in, from Shallow Grave to Our Friends In The North; from eXistenZ to Elizabeth, but he’s no Doctor Who, is he? There is no real charisma, certainly not much (successful) wit and disappointingly a real lack of the refusal to take anything seriously that made you feel so comfortable with the other time lords (which oddly seems to make everything less scary here). Maybe it didn’t help that BBC 4 showed Jon Pertwee’s scrape with The Green Death the week before which was fantastic stuff about radioactive, mutated maggots in a Welsh mine and a sinister chemical-peddling corporation controlled by a camp super-computer. I just didn’t get the same sense of fun in this recent series. Maybe David Tennant will be more fun but if his adventures are as disappointing as the Christmas Special then I won’t hold my breath.

Thanks to Marc for taking me out on Saturday and getting me good and drunk. It was great to catch up. We managed eight bars during the course of the evening and a variety of drinks that included an obligatory ‘Shady Character’ (don’t ask me what’s in them) at The Consevatory and a half-litre of bock beer that’s currently a guest beer during Easter at The Cardinal’s Hat. I was certainly in the mood for drinking and the only reason that the bock beer wasn’t super-sized was due to it’s being 7.2%! Due to the proliferation of very decent bars and the relaxed licensing laws it is now possible to have a decent night out in Worcester and happily there is now no good excuse to find yourself in one of the many unnecessarily poor clubs. Before Christmas my sister, Dave and I had wandered over to what was The Apple Tree in Lowesmoor, to find it has now become a very smart, comfortable and well-stocked bar called The Firefly. I just can’t believe it’s taken this long for the night life in the city to become interesting. Perhaps a lot of it is down to the University College Worcester finally being granted full university status as of last year. The city’s student population is only going to swell and so perhaps the appropriate thought it now finally being put into the place. Not before time but more importantly, not before I’m too old for a night on the town.

Don’t know why I didn’t mention it before but if you haven’t seen it already then do pop over to the BBC Film Network homepage right now and check out my mate Alex’s really rather good short “Bang! Bang!” It’s top stuff and very funny. I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing Alex and the director, Alex (yes, another one) the best of luck when they screen the film at The Director’s Cut Film Festival in New York next month.

That’s it, really. I just didn’t want to be accused of becoming a Grumpy Old Man ahead of my time and thought I’d venture something positive.

…In “Green Wing“? Firstly and foremostly; it’s not funny. Secondly; despite the hype, it’s actually woefully unoriginal. They try too hard (and fail) to do the smug, aloof comedy that Chris Morris was pulling off successfully in “Jam” SIX years ago. Many of the stylings and self conscious editing techniques were also used to much better effect in “Jam” and “Spaced” (which incidentally was SEVEN years ago) except that the programme makers of these shows had a tad more imagination than to repeatedly play around with the speed of the film; a trick, I think we can all agree, has had its impact significantly lessened by using it in EVERY OTHER SCENE. By setting the show in a hospital it has sadly become reliant on many soap conventions and now we’re all supposed to care what becomes of these vain, nihilistic
and frankly contemptable wankers. The show might have retained some charm and overcome these flaws but for some reason someone wanted to capitalise on the serial element and made the show 50 minutes long which has the effect of stretching out the tired plot; highlighting the show’s reliance on its hackneyed style-over-substance approach and makes you wonder how it can get by on so few jokes (that don’t come off). Also, someone should point out to the programme makers that using established comedy actors such as Mark Heap and Tamsin Grieg only serves to remind us that Spaced and Black Books respectively are more successful and effortlessly more rewarding than this (undeservedly) self-satisfied, confused tower-of-wank.

Too bad that April Fools Day falls on a Saturday this year, isn’t it really? All those thousands of possibilities for office and other workplace practical jokes and scams and hoaxes that will never happen because most people are at home performing practical jokes and scams and hoaxes on friends and loved ones instead. Of course there is always the opportunity to put in a well-timed call to colleagues and persuade them that actually they do need to pop in to the office because of that thing with the stuff, but only if your partner hasn’t hidden your mobile or coated the land-line receiver in Araldite.