This weekend I was down in sunny (for Saturday at least) Shoreham-by-Sea, home of my grandparents, former location of my Dad’s school (which was knocked down and replaced by a library and community centre, and after moving around a bit is back on the other side of Shoreham) and now home to the DaveNLet gestalt entity, former flatmate(s) and now landlord(s). There was a warming of their house and a barbequeing of some food (courtesy of my AWESOME grill skillZ) before we wandered down to the beach - they have one nearby, so it is Law. As is also Law, one of our group was mad enough to strip to his pants and run into the sea. Well done Pete.

There were a bunch of kite-surfers, and the chap above saw me taking photos and started buzzing the shore in front of us. Unfortunately, shooting with a long manual focus lens with a broken focusing ring meant that the potentially fantastic close-up shots of him hanging upside down from his kite about 10ft in the air are merely of an indistinguishable blob in front of a very crisp distant ship. It was a very nice ship though.

 

It seems that I am in Lisbon. This is not particularly a shock to me, as I booked up my tickets, hotel and registration for YAPC::Europe back in May - a spectacular feat of organisation by my standards. So, here I am in the land of custard tarts and not-as-bad-beer-as-everyone-else-says, eating custard tarts and drinking beer.

In a situation that I hope does not become a YAPC tradition for me, I awoke this morning with a colossal hangover and not a lot of actual sleep and have spent the day quietly contemplating the Corporate Perl strand of the programming, while occasionally breaking away from the conference rooms to eat custard tarts, of which there were many.

Plans for this evening seem to involve eating lots of tasty food and not getting hammered on Sagres. I suspect this will be an easy task, and not only because the restaurant we are considering only serves Super Bock…

 

I’ve had my shiny iPhone for a week (almost to the minute) and it’s lovely. The camera even works alright.

 

Joe, Marc, Tim and Adam

I seem to be knackered. After a simple day yesterday of watching the rather excellent Stingray Sam, eating noodles and then watching the also excellent Timecrimes I went to sleep.

This morning I woke up stupidly early, eventually ignored the thunder, lightning and rain, and then wandered down to Canterbury to spend the day shooting my brother’s band, Black Sun Down. Hopefully they’ll be able to use some of them when they get their website in better shape, but until then you can make them feel special by looking at their MySpace and Facebook pages. They’re quite good.

 

I went out to take some photos at lunchtime today, I don’t do that anywhere near enough anymore…

 

As we get towards the end of the year there’s normally an upswing of interesting gigs, with the christmas spirit overflowing into the pockets of the promoters as they drag acts out for a once yearly showing. So, despite a singular lack of interest from you, the viewing public, I’ve dragged my lonely carcass along to a bunch of gigs recently and do you know what - y’all missed out. However, rather than write about Frankie Boyle and the Alabama 3, both of which were pretty good, I’m going to focus on this weeks gig, one of the best I’ve ever been to - Ben Kweller at the Union Chapel.

I first saw Ben Kweller when he was heading up Radish at V97 - my second ever music festival. I was there to see Ash (in their first gig with Charlotte Hatherley), Kula Shaker (in one of their last big gigs) and Stereophonics (who may have had a The in those days), and popped along to see what the minor fuss about this “new Kurt Cobain” was. I thought they were excellent - poppy alt stuff fronted by a tiny child (although he does only have three years on me, he has aged remarkably better). I grabbed the album and heard they’d split, which was annoying. Anyways, I picked up his first solo album, liked it a lot and have been on his mailing list keeping an eye out for a gig in London ever since. Annoyingly he always seems to appear when I’m out in the US, especially annoying as he plays a lot around New York, the place that I’m normally visiting, so I grabbed a ticket for last weeks show early and have been sitting waiting patiently ever since.

So, Union Chapel - fantastic venue. Sticking a gig in a nice church adds to the atmosphere and if it’s one quite as nice as the Union Chapel, complete with candles around the rotunda (I’m not even sure if that’s the right word, but I’ve been wanting to use it for ages, so I’m going to pretend that it is) then it works rather well.

First up was Carrick, Ben’s tour buddy and singer/song writer/guitarist for Everybody Else. Despite the not particularly favourable reaction from the rather partisan crowd, and his annoying hat (my hat fascism is unpredictable and well known), he’s got a voice on him and I grabbed his band’s debut album, which isn’t bad at all.

Having randomly bumped into a couple of my step-brothers friends (who I’d met at my dad’s wedding where I tried to make up for their rather lowly employment as waiters all day by filling them with rather fine whisky, as I slowly slipped under the table into unconsciousness) I moved down to a closer pew for BK.

Rather than the more full band that’s on the albums, this was a solo acoustic tour, with Kweller supported by Ben Kitterman, aka Kitt, on dobro. I barely remember the names of songs that I like from albums, let alone setlists at gigs, but they played stuff from all over the place with a Neil Young cover, songs from friends, songs that Ben doesn’t normally play but Kitt likes and a fill-in on the piano as Kitt went to fix a broken string. There was setlist negotiation between songs, an apology to the soundman as Ben did “that thing that made the microphone pop in soundcheck” again and random power downs of the stage lights as small animals zapped themselves on the daisy chain of wires (I assume). The atmosphere can be fairly well summed up by a moment early in the gig where Ben stopped mid-song, grinned wildly and apologised for losing his place, as Kitt had pulled off a rather excellent lick on his guitar and put him off. To be fair to them both it was a rather excellent lick. They closed out with Penny on the Train Track and I found that all the buses outside of the church took me somewhere useful, even though each went somewhere different.

It was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to - excellent atmosphere, great music, great venue and random gig partners. I tried to take some pictures with my little camera and as normal none of them really came out (although the venue didn’t seem to care about cameras and there were a couple of useful SLRs out in the audience). However, this morning I got a mail from Kitt thanking me for putting up my favourite picture from the night, telling me my caption for it was great (’Yes I know it’s crap quality, but it’s not every day you get such an image showing the love of a boy for his dobro playing buddy…’) and letting me know that Ben is using it as his myspace picture. And that, my friends, is pretty awesome.

Anyways, you heathens get a second chance - he’s got a new album coming out at the beginning of next year (it’s sounding a little bit country at the moment, but bear with it) and as is normal will be doing a tour to support it - he’ll be playing at Koko on May 15th, if you want to be sensible and buy a ticket. I’ve not seen them on sale yet, but soon you will have your chance to show that you do actually have musical taste.

• BenKweller.com (even if it is actually kweller.net)
• Ben on twitter

 

For years I’ve been interested in the way that people interact online, from chatting via the terminal at college, through blogging LiveJournal, to the constant barrage of Twitter and it’s new ilk. These days these are all rolled up under the rather inclusive banner of “Social Media” a term that I feel has little meaning. Last week saw one of the largest social media gatherings in London so far, Amplified08. Largest, at least, in terms of an event to talk about social media as a concept, rather than meeting through social media (and normally trying to drink a sponsor’s bar tab).

I won’t talk much about the talk that me, Annie Mole and Chris Meade presented, as Nicole over at the London Geek Girl Dinners has already done it much better than I on their blog and the slides are up on SlideShare. However, the big thing I took away from the talk was what Chris said - books aren’t about the paper, they’re about the words and the experience they inspire inside your head. When we get over the hurdle that the constant interconnectedness of the medium and the content of a book the ebook will take off, but until that time it’ll be slow going.

The conference itself was great, although the overriding feeling I left with was one of mild confusion - what was it meant to be? It was billed as the meeting of the “Network of Networks”, getting the groups within social media together under one roof to talk. However, the sessions themselves seemed to be a bit short (as we discovered when we thought we had an hour, only to find that we only had 40 minutes) and the fray of people outside of the main conference room was not an environment entirely conducive to conversation. I had a really good time, talking about books, the parallels between improv theatre and interaction in social networks and the future of online video. However, the most useful conversations I had were sitting in rooms waiting for sessions to start, or carrying on conversations after they ended, as well as a short time in the overflow pub, talking with Rachel Clarke and Steve Lamb. Part of the stated aim for amp08 was to set up amp09 to lead to amp10 as a big social media event, but this really felt like the ground work, basically a scaled up version of Tuttle and the other groups that meet regularly.

It was organised where it needed to be, it was disorganised where it needed to be, but overall it didn’t have much direction, which I think was probably a good thing. The purpose will crystallise over time and I don’t envy the organisers the task of collating these opinions and trying to drag out the ideas that will form the basis of amplified09. However, I’ll help where I can and I suspect that anyone else who likes talking will do the same.

Overall I think my take home from the day can be summed up quite neatly. I bumped into Christian Payne shortly after turning up and he told me that he was interviewing as many people as he could, asking them one question - “What do you think the future of social media is?”. I ran away before he could get his camera out as I can’t answer the question other than with another question - “What do you think social media is? I’ve not got a clue…”

 

I wandered away from the post London Perl Workshop drinkathon while there was still free beer left in the pub and then spent a while getting back to the station because of the view above. Somehow I’ve not actually taken many (if any) pictures of the BT Tower before, so it was nice to finally give in to the cliché.

 

This is the sort of photograph you take when you’ve been playing Dead Space for too long. It’s a dangerous thing seeing every scene as an over the shoulder moment before a necromorph tries to chop you up in an artistically pleasing fashion.

 

Another from Brentford. I took this because of the colours, shapes and lines - I didn’t even notice the sign until my dad pointed it out on flickr…

 

I went out for a wander with my camera for the first time in a month yesterday, on a wander with the London Photobloggers up the grand union canal from Brentford. I put up a few more piccies over on flickr. The other attendees were Lorissa, Ben, Tom, Stuart and Scott, who all run rather excellent photoblogs.

Edit: Neil was also there, but I missed him out because I am bad. Sorry Neil.

 

I want my own plasma globe.

I am in Edinburgh doing touristy things. Which is scary as I don’t normally like being a tourist. I have drunk interesting things, eaten tasty things and, as ever, taken some photos. Today - Leith. Tomorrow - Holyrood and home.

 

Yesterday I went and took some photos. No big deal, you may say, knowing that my love of carrying my camera everywhere is inevitably leading to an increasingly advancing old age fraught with back troubles and the hunched appearance that carrying a rucksack full of gear will bring. However, this time you would be wrong, as I went to a place with shiny, flashy lighting gear and models and took photos of the latter using the former.

Having met Imajes in the pub after the screening of Eden Lake I went to a few weeks back, he told me of his idea to get a bunch of people into a nice location with lighting and I signed up and kicked in my contribution to the costs. However, being a mere padawan in the world of “studio” photography I didn’t realise his talk of lights meant strobes rather than continuous light, and after that realisation I realised that I had no idea what I was doing. But never mind, comfort zone left and piccies taken, it went rather well. There will be more piccies from me appearing from the shoot over time (and there are already a bunch up in the flickr pool), but here is one of my faves for now, of the lovely Tiffany.

 

Today was the second London Transport Museum scavenger hunt and after enjoying the last one (and winning) I signed up for this one as well. Rather than the more random “stuff involving transport in London” theme of the last one, this was all about The Roundel, celebrating its 100th birthday this year. I will not bore you with the details of the fantastic work of Team Schleger, but we won the “first past the post with most correct clues” prize, arriving second (after greeting the first team outside the pub before another run around St Paul’s station to try and pick up a few rather cryptic clues) with only three clues and one challenge missed. When they took our team portrait it was noted that I had now been on the winning team for both scavenger hunts…I think I better wear a wig next time. More for vanity purposes than any particular changing of my appearance, but any excuse that I can get away with is a good excuse.

 

Shot at The Temperance, where it looked like they had a smoke machine running upstairs. On further olfactory investigation that was discounted and we blamed it on a smoky kitchen hidden somewhere below. I like the idea of a pub built in a refurbished temperance hall.

 

It worries me that today, after a day of wandering around places for Open House London, taking many photos (although not in The United Grand Lodge [which was rather excellent, leaving me loaded up with freemasonery propaganda leaflets and a masonic be-symbolled collapsible cup, bought from the masonic gift shop], as they didn’t allow photography, or in St Anne’s Church, as I shot a bunch of stuff there a few years back), my favourite picture is this one from the bottom of the staircase at the Linnaen Society.

 

Happy Birthday Forbidden Planet! It’s their 30th anniversary this year and this weekend is their instore celebration. I wandered down this afternoon after seeing Danacea’s twittering about the organisation of the weekend for the last few weeks. I didn’t manage to grab a “I <3 FP” badge but did find some bargains in the shop, Gaetan, Karne and Michelle at the counter, MykReeve outside, and a platoon of Stormtroopers from the 501st UK Garrison, the same guys who came along last time.

It wasn’t as busy as expected, as it was pissing down with rain and the front of the shop is surrounded by roadworks, but when I left things seemed to be kicking off again, with Danie trying not to fly away, attached to the large crowd of balloons in her hand, and the Troopers waving at kids and molesting pretty girls, just like normal.

The weekend’s events continue on Sunday, with giveaways and a 30% off voucher on the website, that I totally forgot I had a printout of in my pocket until just now. Arses, now I’m going to have to go back tomorrow.

 

Taken at the Eden Lake screening the other day, as they set up to record the Q&A session.

 

As Beth has already mentioned, I finished my current circumnavigation of the worldEurope with a wee trip up to Edinburgh for the festival. I’d not been up before and my impressions of the experience were based mainly on reading Richard Herring’s blog for the last few years - I expected tiny empty venues covered in stalactites, dripping tuberculosis laden water upon the heads of an abused audience and slowly dieing comedians both. I was not disappointed.

We started off from Kings Cross on the Flying Scotsman, which was a rather good sign in my opinion, and had a rather nice trip up, with the eating of chicken drumsticks and a sack of M&S Orchard Mix (that’s not just any old dried fruit, that’s M&S Orchard Mix [capital letters required], which makes me 65% better than you and your bag of raisins) accompanied by the occasional tappy-tappy as Beth (in the interest of SCIENCE!) tested the in-train wireless, and found it wanting.

The train arrived pretty much on time and a happy cabby deposited us outside of our flat, where we were greeted by the sarchastic shouts of the DaveNLet gestalt entity, who after only a small amount of negotiation buzzed us in to a rather continental ‘the inside feels like it’s outside’ stairwell leading up to the flats. The flat itself was quite nice, with a comfy sofa, a selection of showers and a rather excellent cupboard containing shelves.

After only a small amount of watching the Olympics (a situation which occurred several times during the long-not-weekend, as I will now refer to the Wednesday-Saturday span) we departed and started our joint aims of frequenting shows and the various branches (2) of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.

So, shows:

First up was Joan Rivers, in full anachronistally rude flow. I will happily admit I laughed my way through an hour’s worth of occasionally to-the-line material which mainly caused tensing in the people sitting around me, but I also got some rather nice photographs of her scarily expression-full face for someone so full of botox and lacking in original bone structure. She is 75, so there must be some props for turning up at 23:45 in a ridiculously hot and humid air-raid shelter shaped tent, stuck deep into Edinburgh’s hillside (The Underbelly’s White Belly).

Next day, after some research through the freebie festival listings (that we discovered later was only 4 venues worth) plans were struck and we went to see Abie Philbin Bowman and his new show, Eco-Friendly Jihad:

After the last night’s experience of losing a large quantity of my bodyweight in sweat, I followed Mr Bowman’s advice and removed as much of my clothing as I could get away without shocking the audience and settled in to listen to his tale of falling for an Al-Qaeda recruiter who wanted to save the planet by killing westerners and returning the remainer of the world to the eco-friendly lifestyle of the past.

Shortly after this we ended up in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, where I planned to remain for a while, but foiled this plan by looking through the list of shows in my notebook, where I noticed that I could slip in a visit to see Richard Herring do his new show, The Headmaster’s Son, before my next booked ticket. So I did.

Being the reason why I was finally prompted into going up to Edinburgh (although originally I wasn’t going to bother seeing him as there were loads of preview shows in London, all of which I managed to miss) I felt that kicking him some of my ‘hard-earned’ cash was only fair. It was a rather good show, with a chunk of self-examination as well as the playing of a trumpet and the normal round of cock jokes. However, naughty Mr Herring did overrun by 10 minutes which left me running down a rain slicked street to the Underbelly’s second location to catch Richard Sandling.

No piccy for Mr Sandling, as I felt slightly self conscious pulling out a camera when there were only seven of us in the audience, including two Underbelly staff members. I first heard about him a few months back on Londonist and there seemed to be an element of kinship - he talks a lot about videos and how they are great, as well as being slightly obsessive. His show was excellent, despite his slow death by consumption (including a break in the middle of the show to try and poke his lung back in as it was dangling on his chin after a coughing fit [poetic license]) caused by performing for a month in the wettest tent lined cave, complete with mysterious dripping sound behind me, that I’ve ever sat in. Well, only tent lined cave I’ve sat in, but still. When someone does a show that is about the obsessive collecting of videos, why we should be celebrating the 30th anniversary of VHS rather than punk and the problems of making fun of science fiction at cons (calling Billy Piper a ‘fat mouthed bint’ not good) it seems they are talking to me. The discussion between Jack Bauer and George Smiley was also quite inspired.

Brief break then on to see Andy Zaltzman run Political Animal, which I thought was a political comedy show, but turned out to be a selection of comedians doing chunks of their shows, which was actually rather good. Apart from Mr Zaltzman there was a geordie girl whose name I have forgotten, Mark Olver and Glen Wool (who Adam accidentally heckled, making the gig into almost my concept of hell, as there was audience participation AND I was sitting next to a heckler…I am very much one who believes that hiding in the dark and not getting picked on is the secret to experiencing comedy shows to their full).

Next day my plans to see Dr Bunhead detonate jelly babies and also experience a bit of non-comedy by going to Involution, a play pimped on the Sci-fi-London podcast (that I look after the RSS feed for), fell through due to tiredness, apathy and a need to be happy and bouncy rather than surrounded by children at 10am and watching a play about a dystopian post-genome world respectively. Instead, I went to see Andy Zaltzman do his proper show - I’m a big fan of him through his podcast with John Oliver, of Daily Show fame, which is quite excellent. He is the master of the overblown simile (as several minutes of using cricket to describe something that I’m not entirely sure of any more, including a discussion of how you should check the shininess of the faces of people coming at you to see if they were going to move during the pitch so that you could hit them correctly) and has quite crazy hair - a marvellous combination. As I was sitting underneath his water glass at the foot of the stage there are again no photos, but suffice to say that he was excellent and his hair was suitably mad.

I stuck around at The Stand after Mr Zaltzman to see Simon Munnery’s Annual General Meeting.

Mr Munnery was the first comedian I ever saw, as Alan Parker Urban Warrior in my first week at university, and he has over time become more and more surreal. He was as mad as ever and still has his most excellent venn diagram describing venn diagrams, as well as an inflatable kangaroo with a stickytaped on cardboard cutout face of Richard Dawkins. That’s pretty much all I need to say. He ran out of time, so the audience decamped to Lord Bodo’s over the road for a pint and a continuation of the show, ably helped out by the table of locals outside who joined in as much as they could.

Then followed a most excellent dinner at the SMWS Queen Street rooms and then a slightly frenzied cab ride to see Stephen K Amos.

Mr Amos was rather strange - he was totally down the line funny comedy. After a couple of days of seeing vaguely edgy and surreal comedians he was just very funny in a rather effortless manner. His jokes and observations were nothing new or out of the ordinary, but were just excellent. Which was a bit of a weird thing to get my head around. I may also have been a bit tipsy.

After the show the rest of the posse decided that going home was a plan and I wandered back to the underbelly to catch Andrew O’Neill’s Totally Spot-on History of Industrial Britain.

He was rather good, although a slightly knackered audience didn’t help. Any show which talks about the industrial revolution, disses mills and ends with the Terminator music and a call to arms against Richard Dyson can’t be bad in my book. I wandered back to the flat, this time not in the rain like the previous night, and picked up some chips. They were also not as good as the previous night’s, although slightly less rain wettened.

Next day we packed up the flat and after a swift half went to see Rich Hall give a reading from his last book and new book - he is quite excellent. Less angry shouty, but still shouty, than his comedy persona I now very much need to obtain his last book and keep an eye out for the next one - hints of the short fiction of Woody Allen and David Sedaris, but with a more frequent use of the word fuck.

Anyways, that was it. Next time, and there will be a next time, I will do a bit more organisation in advance (so that I might actually get tickets to see Henry Rollins or not be 20 minutes away from seeing John Wheeler from Hayseed Dixie with only 5 minutes between shows). If anyone wants to go and play at the festival next year let me know.

 

Saturday night was the last night of racing at Walthamstow Stadium. There were tales of emergency meetings on Sunday and new bidders, but as far as I know the sale is all done and dusted, and while there’s no definitive “there will be flats here soon”, there’s a distinct feeling that there will be flats here soon.

I went down to the Brighton track years ago for a big family night out and much fun was had by all - my supplied 20p per race bet (a whole 10p above the minimum bet and EVERYTHING) led to a profit of £1.20 on the night, and IIRC the profits went straight into the hands of the local sweetshop. After that I didn’t go back until a few years back when the flickr posse decided to go for a play. This time I bet a whole £1 (one) on each race, a whole five times the minimum 20p bet, and came out a couple of quid down. However, this time I was legally allowed to drink beer and all was good. So, the tradition continued and I’ve been going along to the dogs once a year or so and rather liked the place - crap food, but good night out. So, while not particularly emotionally attached I did want to go down for one last flutter.

As did the rest of the world, his mum, all their friends, neighbours and the guy who lives round the corner whose name noone remembers, but you always invite him around for a BBQ, even if he has never acknowledged the invitation or turned up.

The queue of traffic stretched right back up Walthamstow High Street to the station and following Anna’s advice I ditched the bus half way there and beat it to the stadium by about 10 minutes. The queue at the stadium stretched round the corner, and a slightly dodgy looking geezer was selling complimentary passes in an effort to get the queue moving. His dodginess notwithstanding I purchased said pass, skipped the queue (after queuing in the wrong queue for a bit, listening to the people in front of me diss Connecticut as a crap state that doesn’t even have skiing) and then had to elbow my way through the throng to try and find the flickr posse. Luckily, as I’d been along before and spent a bit of time exploring the place, I knew some tricks and utilised the mysterious and secret tunnels to avoid the throng, and eventually popped up in our regular spot in the stand, meeting up with Anna, Jane and Rooney.

Races were run, the crowd thinned out a bit, a “no race” was called on the penultimate run and eventually they were done. The staff had piccies taken by the finishing post and the public invaded the track:

They then started stripping the place for souvenirs, tearing signs off the walls and ceilings and removing any form of fixture that could be easily (or not) hidden about the person. We strolled around a bit and as the track lights went out and the crowds cleared out we looked around the slowly deserting stands, including the public enclosure (the cheap seats) that we’d never sat in.

The bookies packed up their boards and lights, leaving piles of betting tickets behind and as the crowd finally cleared out there was a rather heavy level of devastation across the stadium. There was talk from one random guy (who asked me to take his piccy) that the next day’s meetings would sort things out, but even if they did then they’d have to do a refurb to replace a lot of the randomly missing signs. I did see one guy walking out with a plastic pint glass full of a sand with a delicately removed piece of grass perched on top, which seemed properly appropriate.

So, if you want to go and watch some doggies throw themselves after a pretend rabbit then your choices are now limited to Wimbledon and Romford, both of whom were advertising themselves outside of Walthamstow. I’ve not been to either, but I doubt either of them will be quite as specially furnished and random as The Stow.

My piccies