He’s been in Knowing Me Knowing You… With Alan Partridge, 28 Days Later and even Mission:Impossible, so what was he doing performing upstairs at a pub in town? Well, talking about and demonstrating Dad Dancing, and playing lots of funny videos which can also be viewed on Youtube. Highlights were Katie getting into an argument with a girl who wanted to take her seat; and the bento box beforehand at Mount Fuji, overlooking some hoarding covering the building work at Bullring.

I just got back from India. Still sorting out the pictures. Unfortunately didn’t make it to the cinema while out there, otherwise I might have seen something like this (thanks, boing boing).

I just had an email through from theatre maker Jane Packman – she’s taking her company’s new show all the way up to Bradford. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it, but hopefully it will find a good audience.

TREASURED – A SECRET JOURNEY

Following the success of Treasured – A Secret Journey at mac this summer, we’re excited to be performing it again in December at Theatre in the Mill, Bradford.

Treasured is a unique sensory experience for one person at a time, which invites you to venture into your imagination. It is a gentle, interactive performance which offers a fleeting experience of a different world, and features three specially commissioned pieces of extraordinary sculptural jewellery.

“It’s over in a twinkling, but the effect lingers…. A deft and imaginative experience from a new company with great potential.” – Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

When?
Wednesday 8th – Friday 10th December, performances every 30 minutes between 7pm – 10pm.

Where?
Theatre in the Mill, Bradford

What else?
There’s a trailer online here – www.janepackman.co.uk/treasured

Previous audiences have described it as feeling like a gift – if you can’t make it to Bradford yourself, please do recommend it to friends if you feel you’re able to… especially if they’re in the Leeds/Bradford area!

THE WOODS

Also a quick update on The Woods, a project which I’ve had in development for some time. We’ve received the funding to complete the project. It will open in February 2010 at mac.

The project has come a long way since its first development, in February it will be presented in an indoor gallery space as an installation in the daytime and a performance (for up to 30 people) at night.

Nice tidbit from the Guardian Guide…

During the filming of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray was asked to hire an assistant to act as a buffer between him and the studio. He deliberately hired a deaf mute who could only communicate in Native American sign language.

I thought it would be a great idea to copy all my RAW files into a single directory. Then I changed my mind and thought it would be better if my RAW and JPG files were all together. Instead of trying to work out where the files came from manually, I made a quick script. Continue reading »

My brother William just went to a piano course for a week. Here’s something he played, from memory just before he left:

Liszt Sonetto played by William Porteous

All that practice is really paying off.

I want to be able to send someone a package containing a Python script and the bare minimum for them to run that script on Windows. In Perl, this is quite easy, I believe you can just send your script with perl.exe. This is how I did it in Python. Continue reading »

Lots of stuff’s happened over the last couple of weeks. It’s been one of those years when I’ve booked off most of the year’s holiday in two day bursts.

Last week was the Green Man festival, where the was no green man, but there was a big tree ent who was happy to let us walk under him and write wishes on his legs. Doves were too loud and the singing was out of tune. I reluctantly quit early. The Flaming Lips played mostly new stuff, which was quite psychodelic compared to some of their recent output. The return to their earlier vibe was marked by the inclusion of She Don’t Use Jelly. It was fun and unexpected to see the band turn up in the morning to do their own sound check.

The week before we were up at Edinburgh for this little festival they have each year. Turns out, there was quite a lot on. We caught mostly small theatre shows, like Deborah Pearson’s little piece to a handful of audience in a tiny video shop where she had worked after immigrating from Canada. She had used her camcorder for it’s only outing to film her last days hanging out with her friends before leaving her homeland for good, and repeated verbatim every word that she said in the home movie of the end of her old life.

There was also a bloke walking to space. Well, the same number of steps, anyway. I love Live Art.

My bro came over to visit this weekend. He’s just come back from a gruelling five day residential piano course where he rubbed shoulders and had lessons from some of the best pianists in the world. We celebrated his survival by having an amazing curry in Lasan in Birmingham. Mmmm.

We also went to see The Illusionist, a beautiful hand drawn animation by the director of Bellevue Rendez-vous.

I’m a big google fan. But I’m open minded, so let’s check out the competition, bing. Let’s see how they score on a popular, and a not so popular website… Continue reading »

I’m really impressed with Flipboard, an app which really uses the capabilities of the iPad to deliver a novel and compelling reading experience. It manages to make your facebook and twitter feeds look like they were designed by a skilled magazine layout editor. I can see it being controversial as it also strips out all the adds. Makes me glad to be an “elitist” iPad owner.