Hi folks -

Just thought I’d let you all know that I’ve recently completed another short – called “Child’s Play” – no relation to the 80′s horror flick with Chucky in case you were wondering. We made the whole thing in a week as part of the 168 project – a great LA based competition that I’ve been involved with for the past couple of years.

This year we had a superb team with some excellent additions to last year’s crowd, including the fabulous Mr. Tom Cooper co-writing and c0-directing with me, and the wonderful Kevin Ahronson as our DoP (ahronson.com – his website doesn’t talk about his video/film work anymore since he’s trying to give it up, but he’s superb – if you’re getting married or otherwise in need of a photographer I heartily recommend him).

Anyway, we’re all eagerly waiting to hear if we’ve made the shortlist-  should know in a few days.

More news later. In the meantime here’s our facebook site for you to go and like -

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Childs-Play-Team-10-168-Project-2011/130595750345623?sk=wall

Hello all -

Firstly and most importantly, I’m now a Dad. My first son was born two days ago and both mother and baby are doing fine. Maybe more on this later, but I’m somewhat knackered and have just logged on to make a quick post.

Secondly, being a Dad now and all, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future and what’s in store for my boy further down the line. The uk government have just announced a massive increase in university tuition fees which is somewhat ironic, but more than that I’ve been pondering health what with all the time spent in a hospital over the last couple of days, and the fact that my mother’s cancer has returned after approximately 15 years.

It’s strange how cancer cases have skyrocketed in the last thirty years or so. I was talking to one of the midwives about how scarily prevelant it has become, and we were struggling to make sense of it – and then I remembered this stunning video.

For years people have feared the horror of a nuclear war – the potentially huge loss of life, the environmental damage of so many nukes, etc, etc. Just how many nuclear explosions can the earth survive? Try and answer that question for yourself before watching this – it’s a brilliant graphical represention of every nuclear explosion up to 1998. I honestly had never considered the implications before.

We make the artificial distinction between a nuke fired in anger and a ‘test’, but environmentally speaking, what’s the difference? Have we already had our nuclear apocalypse?

I look at the numbers of cancer cases, and it makes me wonder.

====Briefing:

This is an utterly urgent message which we are relying on you to treat extremely seriously. We understand that you will experience the urge to delete what we have posted here, believing it to be fraudulent. However, we will provide evidence of foreknowledge of future events. We will provide unrefutable evidence that we are knowledgable with hidden matters that you know nothing about. ie: Black budget programs.

We emphatically implore you to get this message out for us. Please, spread it far and wide. We understand the viral nature of the Internet, as our team is registered with (and monitors) many of the Internet’s alternative media and truth websites. We believe you (on the Internet) have the power to get this message out for us, “if you believe us” (which you must). We will post this message on as many forums as we can today, but we need (and are requesting) your help for the message to continue.

Please understand that if this message doesn’t take off, there will be no second chance. We will not have the ability to try again. We repeat: This message must take off. There will be no second chances. We will lose access to the Internet for an unknown period of time in three hours from now and may not be able to access the Internet (properly) until January 2010.

We cannot reveal where we are based as we are in active duty working under an international program that you are not aware exists. For our own safety, and for the safety of our team, we sincerely cannot disclose anything about our service. We understand that this will cause skepticism, but we do have knowledge of two events that will occur by the end of this year, 2010. These events will verify that we are indeed “in the know”, and that what we are saying is factual.

====Evidence (of our foreknowledge):

A fireball enter the atmosphere this year. You will not miss it. It will glow green. It will most assuredly be televised on every news network across the globe. This fireball is not a meteor. It is part of a larger plan which will precede further artificial astronomical and atmospheric anomalies. The object has already been launched, and we understand that it cannot be turned back or stopped, which is why we couldn’t release this information before today (but now can). We do not know the date of impact with Earth’s atmosphere, except that it will be this year. We do know why it was launched, but we cannot fully reveal that information in this message.

If we had written this message before today, the object would not have been launched. But now that the object is on its way, there’s no way for it to be turned back. However, it is necessary that the object is launched for reasons that we cannot disclose at this time. The information we are providing to you now is known by many in the scientific, military and black budget communities, and by certain branches of government. Our lives are not at risk by divulging this information, as many people know about it. We are divulging the information because we need to establish credibility (with you). We understand that you require some kind of evidence if you are to believe our message and requests.

When the fireball enters Earth’s atmosphere, you must go inside and stay inside for no less than three days. You need three days supply of water, food and any medication you require, in your home. You need to make sure you do not need to leave your home for three days, for any reason. If it is imperative that you leave your secure area, you must stay out of sunlight. This message is for the entire population, world wide. The air will be ok for the most part, but you need to stay inside for reasons we cannot disclose. There’s no reason to panic or be alarmed if you simply stay inside. Do NOT go outside for any reason. Do not open your doors. Keep them locked. Close the blinds. Keep a TV or radio on.

Once this event passes, you will know that you can take what we are saying now, seriously:

====The Event:

Within 12 months of the green meteor, four large portals will open in places equally separated across the globe. We do not know the exact dates that they will open. It might be right after the meteor. It might be after 12 months. We do not know the exact locations of all of them, except that they will be close to the equator. These are not fake portals (ie: conspiratorial illusions). They are previously extinct, natural portals. There will be a lot of anomalies around these portals once they’re opened, so you will know where these portals are at that time.

They will not be overtly reported by news networks (as portals). Those that live within 100 miles of each portal will know about them, because activityy will be visible around the portals. However, populations will be moved away from these areas due to manufactured disasters created by agencies who want to secure these portals for themselves, try to keep them secret, and use them for their own purposes. They will move populations away from these areas at all costs. We are with an agency that is working to ensure that these portals are not hijacked, but we can’t secure them until we know exactly where they all are.

What we need you to do is stay away from these portals, because at the time we secure the portals, it will not be safe to be near them due to conflict. Also, certain organizations will stop at nothing to keep the portals secret. We can’t tell you where they are (because we don’t know yet, precisely), except that those living near them will see them (and will be relocated), and that’s how the locations will become apparent. You need to use the Internet to find and spread information about the locations. Once you know where they are, please stay away from them so that we can secure the portals. You must stay away from these portals. They are not inherently dangerous (themselves), and the activity around them will not be inherently dangerous, but a time will come when they will “attract” danger. We do not know exactly when that will be, so it’s best to keep away from the portals.

Recap: Keep an eye out for populations being moved (there are 4 locations). Once you know where these areas are, post the information to the Internet along with the message that people need to keep away from these areas (for a radius of 100 miles). Do not go to these areas, because once conflict starts, it will be extremely unsafe and we cannot ensure anyone’s safety. Nevertheless, we must secure the portals.

Signed,

“The Agency”

—cut—

====Information Release Process (do not spread this part):

[SNIP]

So… the axe falls on the arts pretty heavily then. Guess we all saw that coming. Scrapping the film council was probably the most unexpected development and there seems to be mixed feelings about it ranging from a Skywalker-like “Noooooooooo!” to “Good riddance”.

Personally I don’t really know how I feel. I voted knowing that I was probably voting away a substantial slice of arts funding for the country as a whole, and I have many artist-friends who scratch their heads in befuddlement at how a fellow artist could do that, but there does come a time when there just simply isn’t any more money, a fact that the previous government must have been well aware of given that a certain ex-minister pointed it out in a rather shocking note to his successor.

It all brings up a rather interesting point – should the arts get *any* government funding?

My perspective is perhaps somewhat clouded by the fact that I’ve never personally recieved any arts funding from central government, but I wouldn’t say it’s held me back in my career. Art should be commercial shouldn’t it? Otherwise what’s the point? People should be willing to pay to see any shows or films I produce, otherwise what is there to drive me towards producing quality?

Of course, having said that I can’t help but notice that nearly all of the groundbreaking theatre work of the 20th century came out of the communist sphere of influence – Brecht in East Germany, Grotowski and his theatre laboratory in Poland… the freedom to experiment is what ultimately produces the greatest art, and how else could that freedom be ensured other than by public spending?

Nevertheless I would be very uncomfortable living as a fully publically-funded artist in a country where the entire working class lived in poverty. Surely there must be a better way? How did the contemporaries of Shakespeare survive other than by popularity?

Oh yeah, patronage. Any big businesses or independantly wealthy individuals out there fancy paying me an annual stipend?

Thought not.

As promised, here’s the link to our short film – it’s entered into the Virgin Media Shorts competition.

http://www.virginmediashorts.co.uk/films/entry/343963/speak-now

Just finished my first film shot in HD – astounded by the results. It may not make a huge difference on the small screen, but for the big screen it’s the only way.

Had a great team working on this one too – the idea and script came from an old school friend Tori Morris and her writing partner Lou Fitzgerald. Directing with me was the inimitable Anita Wadsworth, and our DoP was the fabulous Kevin Ahronson.

We’re entering this one into the Virgin media shorts competition – uploaded it tonight, so it should be on their site in a day or so. Will post a link here when it’s up.

Excited!

Hello and welcome to the wonderful Mr. Matthew Barker who has recently joined the blogsphere.  He has some terrible political views but he’s also a ginger so he can’t be that bad. I’ve added a link to his blog over in the links section and I warmly recommend you go and check it out.

In other news, the election is over and I can’t say I’m delighted with the result, although this coalition lark seems like a jolly wheeze for all concerned. Not the best outcome for the conservatives though given the election result – opposition would have been the quickest way to a Tory landslide – probably within the year, but actually I’m not sure a Tory landslide would have been the best option for the country either, all told. From my last post you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m a raving Thatcherite but nothing could be further from the truth. It is true that when it comes to the economy I have a more right-wing outlook, but when it comes to social justice issues I’m as left wing as they come, and the only reason I’ve been able to support the Tories unreservedly and with a clear conscience throughout their recent campaign has been because of their astounding commitments to social justice issues coming through the likes of IDS.

And it seems to be paying off.  So far, we’ve seen nothing but good announcements from the Con-Dem coalition on this front – raising the tax-free allowance to £10,000 – increase of CGT to 40% – 5% pay cut for ministers – to name but three –  and I think the liberal democrat influence has really helped with that.  It’s given Cameron the permission to embrace his centrist instincts whilst simultaneously legitimising distancing himself from the extreme Tory right, and similarly it’s allowed Clegg to ditch some of his party’s more extreme loony-left policies without a big scrap. Both parties stand to loose a few supporters and possibly a few MPs, but the end result is probably worth it. Time will tell.

Anyway, there are other reasons to celebrate. It’s been a while since I’ve properly updated this blog, but the last few months have seen me win two awards for film-making.

The first was for a screenplay that I wrote for an American competition called “Write of Passage”, closely linked to the 168 project that I entered last year, and again this year – Judith and I flew out to Hollywood last month to see our film screen at the 168, and I’ll be linking an online version here in due course (sadly I never managed to get last year’s offering online, but this years already is, I just need to post the link).

Then just a couple of weeks ago I entered, along with my disgustingly talented collaborator Anita Wadsworth, Croydon Film Festival’s 48 hour challenge, and to our combined great shock we won that as well. The finished film is called “Tying the Knot” and we will hopefully be posting that online too  in due course. You can read  a piece on it here:

http://www.performance-insurance.tv/blog.aspx

Spurred on by this, I’m currently simmering with two other projects which could be very interesting. More info as and when there is some.

I am twice as old as you were. When you are my age, our combined ages will be 126. How old are we?

Working on an exciting new project – not ready to write much about what it is just yet, but if you want you can read some stuff to do with it over on Judith’s blog – http://judithkingston.wordpress.com/

Something I feel I can safely say, confident that this government will never have the junk to make it happen.

It takes a lot to defy the great ol’ U S of 8, (Bob was a moron), and this country has never been particularly good at making that happen, but when it comes to poor old Gary you’d think someone, somewhere would have an ounce of compassion.

I guess everyone’s too busy holidaying and triple checking their claim forms.

Looking at the software I use regularly and wouldn’t like to be without, I see that most of them are free and that I heard about them by word of mouth, so I thought I’d share the love.

So…

10) Vixy Beta
Still beta software so not without it’s problems from time to time, but this is a very useful, desktop based piece of software which will convert online .flv files into .avi files that you can save to your hard drive. For the non-technical amongst us, this means you can point it at the web address of a youtube video, or similar embedded video online, and it will ‘copy’ that video and save it to your hard drive in a format that you can play. Pretty cool huh? Also very easy to use. http://vixy.net/

9) 7zip
A worthy successor to Winzip and Winrar and other file compression utilities, this will compress and unpack a wide variety of file formats and does so more efficiently than predecessors. http://www.7-zip.org/

8) Comodo Firewall.
Excellent free Firewall programme, easy to use and configure and offers good protection. All of you paying annual subscriptions to Norton or McCaffee are wasting your money. This, combined with Avast, will do the job better and for free. http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/index.html – NB I notice they have developed their product range to include antivirus protection and other products – I’ve only used the firewall, can’t vouch for the others.

7) Avast Antivirus.
This is a decent piece of free Antivirus software, guaranteed free for the lifetime of the product. Plays nice with Comodo. Go check it out – http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

6) Spybot S&D
By far the best spyware shield on the market, and free. Go get it. http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

5) Esword
Perhaps less useful if you have no interest in the bible, but I wouldn’t be without it. With plugins for just about every available bible translation in english, plus a ton of foreign languages, and a huge range of commentaries and other scholarly material, Esword is the premiere free bible study programme. Includes Greek and Hebrew texts, with and without Strongs numbers etc. If you ever wanted to study the bible in its original languages for free, look no further. http://www.e-sword.net/

4) Gimp.
Why buy photoshop when you can have this? Awesome image manipulation programme. Really does rival photoshop for functionality in my opinion. http://www.gimp.org/

3) Open Office
Similarly, why buy micro$haft office when you can have this? Does pretty much everything the commercial programme does, only better – plus a few things it doesn’t do like .pdf creation. Save yourself £150. Go check it out: http://www.openoffice.org/

2) Firefox
In my opinion, the king of internet browsers. STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER RIGHT NOW. Honestly, everything about this programme is better – even the name. Microsoft are so rubbish at naming things – if they made toilet paper it’d be called Microsoft Butt Wiper. Firefox is just such a cooler name and look at the logo! An enormous fox with its tail on fire! Attacking the earth!! Who would not want this programme?!? http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/
NB If I could, I’d block people from reading this blog in Internet Explorer. Who knows? Someday I might? Download Firefox now just in case!!

1) linux
Chances are your computer runs windows. Some of mine do, but some of mine run Linux as their primary operating system and it’s great. Honestly, there are so many good things I could say about it that I don’t know where to begin. Trouble is, most shop bought computers come with windows pre-loaded, and if you’re anything like me you feel a bit weird about erasing windows to replace it with linux – kindof like you’re throwing away money. If you build computers though, or have old computers you’d like to re-condition, then linux is definitely the way to go. Takes a bit more configuration than Windows, but if you use a well-supported flavour of Linux, like http://www.ubuntu.com/ then you’re less likely to have driver issues etc. What’s more, ubuntu lets you “try before you buy” by loading a DVD based version of the desktop from windows to try it out.

I’d recommend all of the above as decent software, but a word of warning – if you mess up your computer don’t come crying to me. Only install and use stuff if you’re sure you know what you’re doing.