cardboard robot ninja pirate monkey

please sponsor me

link : http://www.justgiving.com/thehunts

please if you could spare a few quid, could you sponsor me and my brother for the london to brighton bike ride that we are doing in aid of the british heart foundation.

apparently its at LEAST, like 10 miles or something.

its actually 56.

would be bloody lovely if you could. id love you always x

you know nothing...

...was the title of the 'she says' evening which i made a cameo appearance at a little while back.

basically the nights entertainment was centred around innovation and future thinking. how to spot trends and how to get in the right mindset to be more progressive in your own creative. the whole idea of doing a talk on innovation - while it sounds pretty good - is actually a lot harder than youd think. when chatting about the structure of the evening with lady lariu, we quickly realised that there may be people coming to this night thinking that we are going to tell them about a bunch of technologies that are really groundbreaking which then they can go and exploit in their next projects.

this was not what we wanted at all.

its hard to explain to people how much work it takes to remain 'at the cutting edge'. its not just having a passion for what you do and a keen eye, its being willing to sacrifice sometimes all of your spare time to doing extra research/learning/thinking off your own back. for commercial gain or not. sometimes its a very lonely place to be. when youre sitting in bed on your own reading about MVC design patterns for as3, or whatever your current obsession is, it doesnt leave much time for a social life. ive been trying hard for a long time to strike a balance, but i still find myself coming back from work, having something to eat, and then getting into another 6 hours of general constructive dicking about on my computer. it is and will always be a mystery to me why my brain is at its most productive between the hours of 12pm and 4am.

maybe i should become more nocturnal.

but anyway, after the talk i promised some people that i would put the presentation i gave up somewhere, but as it goes, most of it is in brief notes for my sake, not slides that people could read. sooo, in an attempt to make amends, i thought id write it in a nice long post on here for all to ignore as they please...

do i really sound like that?

see me talk!

from the 'she says' september event on forward thinking and innovation.

http://www.shesays.org.uk/last-event.aspx

along with other lovely people talking about their shiny work and products. nice

forward thinking and innovation talk

after doing a short introductory (well, probably not short enough) piece at tonights she says night - on forward thinking and innovation, i was asked to make available the links and reference that i talked about in my part of the presentation.   soo, i figured the quickest way would be to post them on here.  many are repeated from things ive already posted about, but at least this way theyre all in one place.

plus then if anyone wants they can have a nosey around at other things that ive been collecting

/r

why blog?

along with a million other shitty blogs (probably mine being one of them) produced a day, the real use and maybe lifesaving purpose of this personal form of expression is really coming to be seen. 

throughout the crisis happening in burma, in an exceedingly censored state, vital information is being finding its way out from the country via the extensive social networking and user generated content sites that now exist. link:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7012984.stm

what some treat as a reason to be able to talk about what they ate (and then later pooed out) for their lunch others are able to use as a way to bypass fierce military intervention - giving them a way to be able to tell the world about what is happening in their country, without putting themselves in immediate physical harm. 

i think for me, this is the real point of blogging.  aswell as the pointless tat, its important for people to be able to voice their opinion.  people dont have to read things they arent interested in, but at the same time, the more blogs i read, the more i realise how different peoples lives are.  its easy to get blinkered into thinking that the world is the same, even the news and media can make other worlds seem disproportionately far away.
and for another thing, when so much content on the internet is advertorial and prescripted, worded carefully to give a certain point of view or way of looking at things, i find it highly amusing that people actually have such voices.  the comments left on blogs have to be some of the funniest things to read, and really, can totally validate or break a persons arguement in just a few words.  they are so good sometimes that  you can actually make a blog just out of them...

more rocketnumbernine

last days of april

skate sunshine bmxing and killa kela

i cant stop grinning

well, what can i say.

last night at the underworld in camden was one of the best gigs that ive been to in a long long time.
the line up seemed too good to be true, appleseed cast, samiam and jeniferever.  not knowing the last band but being big fans of the other two, i went along with high expectations and well, i wasnt disappointed.

aside from samiam actually turning out to be a somewhat bland band called 'the sam i am', the discovery of jeniferever made it all worthwhile.
a beautiful mix of explosions in the sky come mogwai type layered guitars with stunning vocals coming out of someone you wouldnt expect to have such a lilting voice, i think they really took a lot of people by suprise.  more than one person i heard state afterwards - i want to be in a band like that.  high praise indeed.  with the whole room in near blackness, the occasional bathing of light from the stage put everyone into a somewhat reflective mood leaving an atmosphere that i think most will find hard to forget in a hurry.  it was like being held gently on a warm summers day.

and then the legends that are appleseed.  they just keep getting better.  and better, and better.  well, they were never crap in the first place, so theyre just as good as they always were.

playing mostly newer stuff, with a couple of loved oldies like steps and numbers thrown in to please the already more than happy crowd, things just went from good to better.  my concerns about the new drummer were pretty much proved wrong, apart from that i dont think he has quite the same energy as josh baruth had, he lacks none of the technical ability and im sure he has the heart too.  my friend chris assures me that when he saw him drum in unwed bride he was more than amazing, so yeah, i hope hes enjoying himself with the cast.  we enjoyed watching him.

along side all of that i was there with some of my favourite people in the world.  the only one missing was rick, which was gutting, cos i know he would have been left as speechless as i was.  but to everyone else, chris and emma (lovely to meet you finally by the way), james and his lovely lady jules and mr pete and the equally smashing helen and all of chris's friends, bandmates, fans etc (ha) im so glad you were all there.  it was a night ill cherish.

bbc 1xtra uk takeover

"UK Takeover has become THE annual event on the British hip hop calendar, and part 4 promises to be bigger than ever. If there's one gig not to be missed this year, whether in person or live on 1Xtra, this is it!" - Rodney P

http://www.bbc.co.uk/1xtra/events/details_uktakeover.shtml  -  bank holiday monday 29th may.  nottingham rock city