Thursday, February 22, 2007

It's all brown

Memory. It's one of those thing which make us what we are.

As per usual I'm going through my backlog of podcasts when of all things the Tubridy Show talked about memory, loosing it and the earliest memories.

My earliest memory is colourful. White Lego and brown, lots of brown. Well it was the 70's. The Lego (tm etc) was curved, probably from some kind of rocket, but I was making a well and for some reason I was in the very dark brown kitchen of someones house. I would describe it as a sort of pre-school set up in someone house before all the legislation for creches came in. I suspect I had gone looking for a lego piece that had rolled off on me when in walks the "teacher". Big glasses, straight centre parted brown hair, long brown dress.... let's just say she dresses to match her kitchen.

That's it. If you think back your earliest memory will be a disconnected detail. You might remember why you were there. You might remember what you were doing and who yo were with, but you won't remember what followed. It's not our most vivid memory, or the 10 seconds we'd be willing to live over and over (which are probably intense and enjoyable).

Why does memory do this? I suspect its a survival technique, after all most of life is too boring to bother remembering. The years of going to school, walking past the playground, yet you'll remember the day the dog showed up in the playground during classes.

So what is your earliest memory? And do you have follow-through with what happened next?

take care,
Will

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Monday, February 19, 2007

No Cigar

I think we did well, but "Birds, They Still Fly" won neither the direction or the writing awards at the Cork Arts Theatre. Congratulations to Amanda Neri, the director of "Our Man in Baghdad" who won thedirection award, and the play won one of the writing awards too.

Will

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Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Opening night

Opening night went well, there were only three problems...

forgotten lines.
forgotten lines.
costumes falling around the ankles. (Male and during a spotlight)

I'll type more when I see the rest of the entries tonight, and I think it's fair to not rip someone else's production to shreds when you don't see the show but only the after effects. (If you don't like it, don't stay there, walk out).

take care,
Will

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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Opening night is tonight

and I'm not fine.

In fact I'm nervous and I'm not going to be on stage this time.
But the lines are learnt, the set is ready, the costumes are built...

And thanks to the members of UCC MedRen society for the weapons, and thanks to Peter and John for lending their chainmail. I actually spray painted jumpers to serve as fake chainmail, but brought the real thing for the cast to try on and come to their senses.

They didn't.

So tonight I'll be presenting the jingling cast in very heavy chainmail.
I just hope they don't fall over on stage... I don't think they can get back up with the weight of that stuff. And for the record, chainmail is not very flattering.

here goes...
Will

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Friday, February 09, 2007

Bare Cheek Faced

I shaved. This sound silly until you realise that I grew the beard in case I needed to step in and take over a role myself.

It's not needed and so it goes.
Also weapons, costumes and equipment is now arriving, lots of it... I don't know if the people read the last entry, or if I peaked too soon.

The rehearsals are now better too. So much so that I'm moving closer to the micromanagement of getting a fine tuned performance rather than trying to stabilise a show to just put it on.

48 hours and a good dinner makes a world of difference.

The bird should fly on the 13th.

take care,
Will

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Wednesday, February 07, 2007

It will be all right on the night...

... is a load of bollix.

Its 6 days to opening night of "Birds, They Still Fly" (13th and 15th February 2007) and things are falling around my ears a bit.

The play is a costume drama (end of the Crusades, almost 13th Century and part of the Cork Arts Theatre's Cork One Act Drama Festival and contest.

Access to the venue before opening night is a problem...
Contacts with costumes and equipment have fallen through...

I'm off to buy fabric to sew the costumes right now (and trying not to succumb to the fumes of the "chain mail") and see if I can get the weaponry needed for the production in time.

The actors are a good bunch, but there is too much prompting with only 6 days to go...

The only reason things are all right on the night is because a lot hard work in done before the night.

It's like being back at the code face...

take care,
Will

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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

We are the web

Michael Wesch the Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology of the Digital Ethnography working group at Kansas State University put this 4.5 minute description of Web 2.0 together.

Boy is he good...



Any chance of getting he at the next Barcamp Cork? Or indeed the next Irish BarCamp, BarCamp Galway? Or at least have Bernie get him over for the Tipp Institute.

Will

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Sunday, February 04, 2007

Not watching

I got a comment from my (very quick) post about a TV inspector visit.
Actually two. Grannymar and another who said...

"You have to love the way that just assume that everyone has a TV"

The thing is... EVERYONE assumes I have a TV. And when they find out I don't the first thing I'm asked is, how do you do without?

Well there are a few things. How much TV do you sit down and watch. Frequently people come in and turn the television on in order to have background noise.
Then there are the grazers (as opposed to the grazrs) who sit down like good couch potatoes and let the rays wash over them.

How many programmes do you sit down and watch. Appointment TV?
With the exception of news, very few.

I'll take news first. The TV news will be repeated on the radio and written about enough to be seen on web so that I'm fairly up to date with news. Podcasts are another matter. I have jumped ahead to listen to "how the Vista DRM allowing hardware to be shutdown at the behest of the RIAA and MPAA is a risk" on the Security Now podcast but I'm only on January 18... so some news podcasts are simply being skipped.

Then we have appointment TV. Well, I'm a Sci-Fi buff. I can rely on getting updates on plot on the web (Wikipedia should have a spoiler warning slapped on it). And the DVD box sets come out eventually.

But there are things that have to be watched. That is where, as Piaras Kelly put it, the Water Cooler Effect 2007 kicks in. To quote Piaras, "In the past co-workers used to huddle round the water cooler to discuss the highlights of last night’s TV viewing. But now "..."if you missed it on TV though and the clip was worth watching, it’s safe to say that it will end up on YouTube."

Thanks to the net I've seen inmates seeing the impact of her bullying on the UK and world political scene. I've seen the bits that are talked about...

At the moment I'm the odd man out.

Somehow I don't think I'm going to be the only one.

take care,
Will

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Friday, February 02, 2007

Authenticity and sex

While at Barcamp SouthEast Ireland I mentioned to Conn Ó Muinneacháin that I had a backlog of podcasts to listen to. He recommended that I delete them, but I'm glad I didn't.

On the player when leaving the conference I heard the January 5 New Scientist Live podcast where Sherry Turkle talked about what the next 50 years will bring for life sciences and the interaction of society with technology at the New York Academy of Sciences.

She said....

"In our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us that sex was to the Victorians; threat and obsession, taboo and fascination"

-- Sherry Turkle quoting her own words from Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet

So it sort of qualifies as an overheard.

She wrote those words over 10 years ago (the paperback came out in 1995, and goodness knows the first publishing date, so it could be 20 years old) and while she was talking about the interaction of robots and people, the same applies to all tech and culture today.

We value blogs because they are written without a filter.... it's real.
Documentary makers are currently in the running for this years Oscars.
Bloody Big Brother and all the reality TV that bombards us.

We crave reality. We place a value on authenticity far above that of a parable.
Think about the reaction to the business blogs not written (obviously) by a person, but by a press release polished piece of drone. They are the abhorrent.

I have so got to start work on the "Carney Girls" series of fiction blogs.
Expect to see bits on Feb 15.

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