It’s actually quite frightening, the confusion and uncertainty more than anything. The news is terrifying making you really feel as though you should evacuate whilst at the same time telling you not to leave. The reaction of the residents is very varied with many saying we should leave now and get further north and others saying it’ll be fine and just to go about our business.

We have no knowledge of hurricanes or even massive storms and that worries me. I am worried about driving anywhere during high winds and today we realised that Huntsville could lose power, which not only means potential boredom but no water and no air conditioning with very hot weather predicted.

We then went to Wal-Mart to rent a dvd and saw dozens of people clearing the shelves of food and water. We stocked up as best we could but we are left with an LED pen light, water and various crisps and nuts. Not the best preparation.

The hurricane has already disrupted our shoot and cost me a lot of money, lets hope that’s the only damage it does.

We picked up the hire car, which is an electric blue tonka toy/pimp mobile and set off.

After a great night’s sleep in our new Houston home we headed straight to Huntsville to get our bearings of the town, as it was Sunday there were very few people around and the town’s usual hubbub wasn’t there. However, it was a great way to drive around and show Kate the town. I found it incredibly surreal to be back there, a place I truly never thought I would return to.

The surreal feeling hasn’t faded and we are now facing day four. I was intending to blog every day but so far the days have blurred and so far I haven’t shot a single minute of footage or taken a single photo. We’ve spent time putting in ground work talking to people and re-finding people but I don’t know what has prevented me from filming.

In honesty I know that a large factor is that I am extremely exhausted and I think my body is limiting me. I haven’t really had any time off this year, a few days here and there but nothing substantial. I am used to working myself into the ground but the last few weeks have been particularly tiring and my body thinks it’s having a rest.

I am really enjoying being back in Houston and Huntsville and I can’t describe how wonderful it is to see everyone again, but I need to regain focus and not waste the opportunity. As is my nature I am playing down the situation and we have actually met some wonderful people that will really add to the film, one especially this morning but I don’t feel we have hit the ground running in the way that we did last time.

We have an interesting day tomorrow and I know we will film so perhaps a slower start will actually prove incredibly beneficial, I think it really will.

Now all we have left to concern ourselves with is the slight matter of Hurricane Ike to worry about.

In 36 Hours I will be on a plane headed back to Texas!

It’s been in the works for months now but I’ve been finding it difficult to blog. One of my favourite bloggers, a while ago, gave a summary of things that put her off a blog. The main turnoff was negativity. This has stayed with me and has stifled my blogging. She has a point but I think learning how to remain productive under any circumstances is important. Lesson learned.

The decision to go back to Texas was very split second and half of me is screaming that I am crazy to spend the money and the other half is on it’s knees thanking god for the break (well a break in my style which means working really hard at the same time…)

I knew one way or the other that I needed to go back, the project was never finished in my mind and I need to be able to move on from it so that I can start other projects.

Even though it’s been a lot more expensive (due to petrol costs, air fare etc) it’s such a wonderful feeling knowing I’m going back to finish a project that has meant so much to me and just to be on shoot again, somewhere I am always the best version of myself.

As I know what I’m going to this time I am a lot more laid back about our plans and that is really wonderful as I stressed myself beyond belief last time. I also can’t help but compare my life now to my life a year ago, so much has changed.

In fact this has been the year of change for me and my entire family. Everytime I think some part of my life is stable it gets thrown on it’s head whether it be job, friends, money, or living situation. I really believe change is a good thing. The trick appears to be learning to adapt to change rather than it being a definite end and beginning.

I know that there are many things about myself that I need to change as well, generally to treat myself better. I need to finally give up smoking, exercise and eat better. Texas is hopefully going to be the turnaround, one last hurrah and when I step off the plane on my way home I want it to be with a positive attitude to a new lifestyle.

36 hours to go!

We went to see Why? at Cargo on Monday night. They were absolutely brilliant. I was determined to take a roll of film and so casually manoevered (gently pushed) my way to the front.

Their photographer was there, trapped by the side of the stage and in some jammy swapping I managed to get myself at the side of the stage. I’m really happy with the photos. The rest of my Why Photos are here

“I got into phone sex because I thought: ‘Why not get paid for talking dirty, instead of doing it for free?’ It brings up my self-esteem so much, knowing guys are looking at my pics and wanting to talk with me. Wanting me to take them to a whole other place, filling their fantasies… painting that picture in their mind for them.”

Phone Sex Operators

by Phillip Toledano. Interview by Rosecrans Baldwin

To read the rest of the article - The Morning News

Phillip Toledano’s new book Phone Sex (July 2008, Twin Palms)

via Pan Dan

It had really been bugging me as I really couldn’t see what everyone’s problem was. I had always seen Glastonbury as the festival that didn’t lean to one particular music genre, they have had Kylie and Shirely Bassey in recent years, and even had Neil Diamond this year. Nevermind that tickets usually sell out before the line-up is announced. Wasn’t this the festival that was just as much about the experience as the line-up?

I’m very much determined by the line-up so haven’t really ever considered Glastonbury (which is usually a stupid move as they tend to have anyone and everyone I’d want to see) and so didn’t even think about it this year. To be honest when I heard Jay-Z was playing I regretted that decision. What an inspired choice, I thought.

Then the criticism began and I really was shocked by it and couldn’t figure it out. If it had been a festival such as Download that is aimed at particular music fans I would’ve understood. Why were people so bothered? I was a little ashamed of this reaction of a demographic I supposedly belong to, are we youngsters really that narrow-minded?

I’ve been thinking about it for a few days, is it that it’s hip hop?, surely it can’t be as Lupe Fiasco and Dizzie Rascal, both playing this year, haven’t had any backlash. And if an act like DJ Shadow had been billed no-one would’ve minded, perhaps even Kanye West would’ve been accepted.

Is it what Jay-Z represents, are Glastonbury fans against someone with that lifestyle, wife, and bank balance? Is this just absolute snobbery? I think that’s the most plausible reason.

Amy Winehouse got it right when she asked ‘where the black people were’ during her performance, a point that no-one seems to mention, that festivals essentially attract middle-class white kids, also rarely remembered that the biggest buyer of most hip-hop are white kids. She also was incredibly positive about Jay-Z as was Beth Ditto during her set. It was great to see that at least the fellow performers could go beyond the ignorance.

And then he performed, I really suggest you watch the set as it’s simply amazing. As despite the reported critical reception the crowd is enormous and everytime he pauses the entire crowd fills in the lyric, I couldn’t be more proud to see all the naysayers proved wrong.

Jay-Z’s full set at Glastonbury

Anyway The Economist make the best print adverts.

The first one is by far my favourite, when I first saw it I had to cut it out and put it up in our flat. It’s so wonderful

They have started doing some other really creative advertising campaigns on other mediums but the print ads, in my opinion, continue to amaze.

Below and example of their non-print ads

One of the older ads, there are a lot more, all fantastic

It was the post below that really caught my eye, it’s really wonderful (and I really hope he doesn’t mind me showing it here…)

It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. I categorised myself as a geek growing up, and still do really. I always thought being a geek meant you had obsessive tendancies and people generally thought you were weird. I can completely understand the group below. Five years ago there were so many different varieties of people like this, it must’ve been wonderful that it started becoming more acceptable to be great at computers, or anything techy in general. Now it’s the cool job, I really realised that while visiting an editing suite recently, even the real tech people there looked like they could have jumped out of Vice magazine. How did this happen, how did they spend the time learning their trade and still be cool? Is it that people are starting at the bottom rung of a ‘cool’ industry an learning on the job.

I remember the tech guys being large bearded men, the best kind of people in the world, now they are fringed skinny fashion boys. I can understand why the group below felt, if the cool kids were geeks, and they were still not seen as cool, who were they?

Needless to say after reading this I have no idea whether I am a geek or not anymore. I have a technological science degree and I really still love losing myself in a day of fiddling with code, but I do work in the creative industries and I don’t keep up enough with technology. Maybe part-geek, definitely lacking the chic

Nerd Nation Was Here

There is a civil war going on amongst the geeks. How was I not told?

It turns out the geek community is split right now. Since hipsters have recently adopted so many of the traits of geek culture - the dress, the hair styles, the nervous ticks, the social awkwardness, the lack of hygene - true geeks have been working to reestablish their authority.

It should be noted that such a discussion would have been very helpful to my status in elementary school. Alas, all of this is two decades too late.

Moving on, the battle line has been drawn. Those labeling themselves as “true geeks” have decided that one must be studied and committed to the sciences and technology to be truly considered a geek. Anyone that dabbles only in the worlds of entertainment and/or liberal arts is an impostor - labeled geek chic - worthy of disintegration by ray gun…if ray guns existed.

TRUE GEEK vs GEEK CHIC

To ensure their rightful thrown remains intact, the true geeks have cultivated a number of behavioral traits (or markers) that anyone labeled geek chic would find inaccessible. The primary marker of a true geek today is geek humor.

Geek humor is rather complex. Some subcultures do not understand the humor of other subcultures, but that’s for another blog post. The one thing most true geeks can agree on is xkcd is funny as hell.

xkcd is a comic started by Randall Munroe. Born in 1984, Munroe is a programmer and graduated with a degree in physics. Before and after graduation, he acted as a contractor for NASA. He also likes to “go to goth clubs dressed as a frat guy so [he] can stand around and look terribly uncomfortable. At frat parties [he does] the same thing, but the other way around.”

True geek? Yes.

Munroe’s comic came to life after he realized his stick drawings along the margins of his notebooks needed their own gallery. He started xkcd by scanning his work. Here’s a sample:

I don’t get it, but I’m not the audience. There are a lot of true geeks out there that eat this stuff up. His audience has been growing by leaps and bounds, and today xkcd is so lucrative that Munroe has left his gig at NASA to draw full time.

A few weeks ago, Munroe posted this comic:

Again, I don’t get it, but xkcd readers did. True geeks immediately noticed coordinates in the banner at the bottom-left frame: 42.39561 -71.13057 2007 09 23 14 38 00

Interpreted, these are coordinates to a small park in North Cambridge, MA, on September 23, 2007, at 2:38 PM.

The xkcd forum lit up. People starting talking about what these coordinates meant. It was soon understood that this would be a gathering of massive, geek proportions. People started making plans.

Jason Tocci, author of Geek Studies, got wind of the event and made his way there. Here is a bit of his report:

As I walked into the park, I saw some college-age guys milling about, making eye contact with me to see if I was there for the event. They greeted me as I approached; one was from Long Island, and another was from Russia. He flew here just for the event, and had to get help from others on the XKCD forums in obtaining a visa…

By 2:30, hundreds of happy geeks were scattered across the park. A small group was competitively trying to see how far they could extend tape measures before they bent (as suggested in this post). A few were in costume or carrying props; I spotted one furry, a guy in a cape, a few people dressed as stick figures (e.g., tape over a white outfit), several people with foam or papier-mache weapons, and two people holding up “citation needed” signs (as in the Wikipedia reference from this post). The folks with fake weapons had playful battles for onlookers.

The center of the playground was especially densely packed with mostly college-age men and women shoulder-to-shoulder in t-shirts referencing XKCD, Penny Arcade, MIT, and countless obscure jokes about science, math, and video games. I hurried to the center of the throng, taking pictures as I went, as people started a ten-second countdown to 2:38. After the cheers that followed, some started chanting “Ran-dall, Ran-dall,” calling for the creator of the comic to appear. I noticed a giant, unfinished version of the comic strip that started it all, affixed to the fence against the basketball court.

Randall Munroe appeared next to the strip just as people were calling “Speech! Speech!” All heads turned and the crowd quieted as he shouted, “Thanks for showing up.” Laughs, and he explained that the original strip ended wrong; apparently, wanting something enough does make it happen. Cheers, and he explained the next step: This means the comic needs a new ending, so he brought some markers. “It’s like Wikipedia,” he shouted, and in no particular order, people made their way to the strip to finish it in their own ways.

To me, this is a truly beautiful thing.

This meetup shows how an audience can be empowered by the Internet and, more specifically, social media. There are true nerds all over the world, many of whom want to find like-minded people. Yes, we have seen this many times before with flash mobs and MMORPGs, but who would have thought that a comic strip, a web forum, and mapping coordinates would be what is necessary for true nerds to organize? I would love to know if Munroe had any idea what he was starting when he posted that comic weeks ago.

I wish I could have been there. I wouldn’t have fit in, but maybe that is to be expected. Who fits in among those who do not fit in? The xkcd meetup proves that, even in the face of competition from the geek chic, the true geeks have staying power in American culture.

Source: Willie: Oddball Observations on Culture and Communication

Architecture used to be about making a statement and companies and institutions wanted to to say something about what they were. The only building of late that I think has done this is the Mayor’s office. Which, love it or hate it, does make a statement and is striking.

As much as I love old architecture I do love modern buildings that are innovative and interesting. This house by Seifert Stoeckmann, shown on Apartment Therapy, really struck me. Although the exterior is really not that thrilling the concept and design of the inside of the house is amazing

I really love the idea of having a room that can slide out into the air, how wonderful that would be on a summer morning, or at night if there was a clear sky, sunsets, sunrises, when you’ve burnt sausages and filled the house with smoke… anything. It’s simply a wonderful idea.

More pictures and information at Seifert Stoeckmann’s website here

Source: Apartment Therapy

Images: walking.about.com azschmidts.net Apartment Therapy

I had the pleasure of a completely unexpected call from a former classmate the other night, calling all the way from Pakistan.

It’s probably been close to a year since I last heard from Ali and to be honest I expected never to hear from him again, which made the phone call all the more fantastic.

Ali will be an amazing filmmaker, there’s no doubt about that. It’s in his blood. During our Masters I began to really like Ali as he lacks many of the social graces I do, in that he can’t tolerate bull***t, speaks his mind and isn’t afraid of putting people’s noises out of joint if they don’t agree with him. I’m not saying I always agreed with what he said, and that can be said from his perspective of me, but I certainly admired his complete focus to filmmaking and his constant desire to learn.

It was the first time I’d spoken to him since he completed his film and it was wonderful to just talk about the experience of making our respective films. We both shared an emotional rollercoaster in the process of the shoot, his far more so than mine as he was filming in Pakistan last summer throughout all of the numerous changes that happened in his country and the process left him drained and exhausted.

For the both of us the films had been less about an assignment as part of a course but our first chance to make films that we were desperate to make and to engage in something we were extremely passionate about.

Making a film about the Death Penalty challenged every sense of ethics, morality and justice that I have and really made me re-evaluate my own opinions in a way that has changed me forever. It was not an easy process and was mentally draining. Something I truly hope happens with every film that I make.

Ali’s experience was one that I can’t possibly comprehend, seeing his country combust whilst looking at it through a lens. Day in day out viewing political meltdown, death, grief and all the while dealing with the logistics of the shoot, while feeling as though you have to put your personal views of the situation to one side to remain impartial must have been unbelievably difficult. My experience pales in comparison.

Although he remains dejected about a large amount of the process, and still doubts and still feels frustrated it felt as though the experience had been worthwhile. Even though it feels like hell whilst it’s happening I can’t imagine Ali ever doing anything that wouldn’t push him to the extremes.
Making a light-hearted, safe film is just beyond his comprehension, and I hope mine.

More than anything the conversation made me feel extremely guilty that I haven’t picked up my camera for months. He was still in a place where the film was still consuming him and was still a massive part of his life, and I was jealous. It has been nearly a year since I finished the cut of my film that I submitted to uni and I felt ashamed.

I haven’t stepped back from documentary in any way but I have from filmmaking and my personal work. Although I have decided to put off attempting to be a full-time filmmaker for the time being, due to my lack of experience and need for further training, I am not using the camera enough and I am not in the mind set of just simply needing to be working at my filmmaking that I know Ali can never stop doing.

The phone call couldn’t have been more of a wake-up call and any better timed. My drive has returned and I have promised myself to make another film I care about before the end of the year.
So thank you Ali, even though you feel the film has pushed you to your limits you haven’t given up and you should be proud, and I can’t wait to see it.