democracy for china, part II

Ultimate Guitar report that seeing as Axl kept up his end the bargain, the Doctor will keep his too. So there you have it.

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keep me where the light is

In honour of my current trawl (third time already today) through the amazing John Mayer's Where The Light Is live album, I recalled this sketch from Dave Chappelle's show. Enjoy. Then go watch the old Samuel L. Jackson beer one. ("Ain't ya never seen my movies???") Then the Lil' John at the Health Centre one...



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mistakes and maladies

Currently cutting together footage from my former roommate's wedding from a couple of weeks ago. It is, without a doubt, the most painful editing process I've ever engaged in. It shouldn't be that hard: two camera setup for both service and reception, sync the clip, blam blam...

1] Corrupt tape. The camera covering the wide angles at the service was primed and loaded by myself, as my assistant for the day was everyone's favourite drummer from a former piano-driven alt. rock quartet, and although he had a vague idea what to do, was not to be trusted. However, when I started to capture his version of the service coverage, frames were being dropped everywhere... blips and crunches all over the place. Buggery.

2] 4:3 vs 16:9. Whole thing was filmed in anamorphic DV CAM. In a case of idleness on my part, I imported to a 4:3 timeline and didn't notice until AFTER I'd synced and laid out, from end to end, all the clips of the service. Currently going back and retrieving each one from the original captures to replace. Suicidal work.

3] Poor lighting. Reception in particular (as you can imagine) was in a lovely hotel, with very dim, atmospheric lighting. Buggery again.

4] Sound. Had no way of taking a line out in either the church or the reception (despite having purloined 100 METRES of XLR from the 'Box' due to time restrictions and unhelpful staff respectively.

Don't get me wrong. I'm pretty pleased with most of the pictures. The DiaryCam in particular was a stroke of genius (guests recorded Big Brother Diary Room-style messages for the couple) and worked a treat. But the edit is dragging on and on, and what little time I've been able to give it over a hectic couple of weeks has still yielded little tangible results.

Onwards!

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t in the barn: the aftermath

So I've just realised that with all the busy-ness over the last couple of weeks, I never actually got around to wrapping up coverage of T in the Barn. And frankly, I still can't really get my head around it. A day of frantic set up, the start delayed by a couple of hours... but it didn't rain, and all the bands showed up. And no complaints! (In face, our elderly next door neighbours can be quoted as saying, "Let it rip!" so there you go.)

It was a fantastic, if freezing cold, night. Music was great, people were great, and we managed to capture the feel I'd wanted, of complete participation. Pretty much everyone there had had some small part to play in making everything happen, whether helping setup, taking a turn on the kettles, doing a run to pick people up from the bus or whatever.

Best of all, we raised £130 for Tearfund and charity: water. So an extra whoop whoop for all.

A small selection of photos can be browsed here on Facebook. Thanks again to all involved. Roll on next year... and hopefully (but hush hush) there might be more, if Belfast-based, "collective events" before next summer rolls around...

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democracy for china?

Oh.

My.

Word.

It's actually happening.

Pity we're not eligible for the free cola.

plain wrong

I'll be honest, I've only ever had a grudging respect for Ruth Gledhill (she is English, after all, and you know how I feel about those people...) but if her current poll about US election nominees is serious, then I have to seriously question her judgement:

Check out 'Who Is The Better Christian 'here .

I'm pretty appalled, for more reasons than I care to even start discussing. It's satire folks, but not as we know it - and I'm pretty liberal! My main issue is that even though she's (hopefully) trying to cause a serious debate in a humourous way, it's a joke that requires you to be in on it to get it. And my fear would be that any non-Christian looking at it is going to go, "oh, my...."

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avast me facebookin' hearties!

Ok, so maybe I'm the last person to pick up on this, but you can go to settings in facebook and change the language to English (Pirate). I'm won over mainly because of the attention to detail... someone must've had a slow day at the office - or be very committed to the teachings of Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket.
Garrr...

1 2 3 4...

"...chickens just back from the shore" (1.15). Bloomin' genius.