Author: Ru

Twittervlog Season 2

Makes me laugh to think of things in terms of Seasons.

Wreck & Salvage and Next To Heaven – two of my favourite places (check them out) – have talked about starting and finishing Season 1 or Season 2 recently, so…¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ Instead of apologising for disappearing for 2 months, I can make out like it was all carefully planned, and that Season 1 finished in August and Season 2 is starting in October.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ Yeah.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ [throaty American voice:] “Twittervlog.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ Season Two. October One”.

I’m psyched about getting back to it. I have so many ideas exploding out of my head like brain spaghetti – so many things to show and do and say and touch and smell.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ See you tomorrow.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ No, really.

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Hi. It’s me. I’m back. This is the Central Scruuuutinizer.

FIVE WEEKS WITHOUT A COMPUTER.

FUCK.

Well, I guess needed a stint in rehab.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ My internet addiction had gotten pretty bad.

About 24 hours before I left, I thought I’d hit rock bottom.

Then I did a long haul flight with a 2 year old.

Then I landed in Canada, and all those happy smiling people took care of me.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ They’re everywhere.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ They’re just like they are on South Park, only nicer.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ Even the Customs/Border guy just said “Welcome back” with a smile and waved us through.

With the exception of the night on a remote island that a sasquatch jacked our campervan and broke my Powerbook, it was a luminous trip.

Anyway, this is a videoblog, not the ramblings of some jetlagged fuckhead, so I guess I’ll start posting videos again.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ I have quite a lot.¬¨¬®‚Äö?тĆ Five weeks’ worth.

Oh, and I have 1130 unwatched videos in my Subscriptions folder, 1143 messages from the Yahoo videoblogging group and 2118 unread messages in my Inbox.

Oooh, yeah, I can feel that internet juice squirting round my arteries again.

See you tomorrow.

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Although I’m on holiday in Canada, I’ve been doing some videoblogging this weekend for The Big Time Out festival in Cumberland, BC, the village on Vancouver Island where I’m staying with my sister. I’ve set up a videoblog at TheBigTimeOut.tv and uploaded a bunch of videos to it – it all just came about in the last couple of days.

Anyway, Saturday night’s headline gig was Michael Franti & Spearhead. They’re *amazing*, and Franti gets the crowd going crazy – but I’d been told I couldn’t film them, and certainly couldn’t post images or music to the internet. As it happened, I cheekily took a couple of minutes from the side of the stage and posted it anyway – I knew he wouldn’t mind. But in the spirit of not breaking his copyright, here’s a silent fixed camera Lumi‚Äö?†??¬¨?Üre of his shadow on the screen at the back of the stage.

When I filmed it, it didn’t even occur to me that it’d be a way around the copyright thing. I just thought it’d make a cool Lumi‚Äö?†??¬¨?Üre.

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4), Flash Video (.flv)

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James Bond iPod Karaoke #2

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Yesterday evening, on the way home over London Bridge in rush hour, listening to my iPod, I was overwhelmed by the urge to flip open my phone and record this for the VlogDeathmath.com Drunk Underwear Karaoke Challenge.

It’s not for the win, just something silly I did in one shot last night to get the ball rolling, because nobody else had posted on yet. And to show people that they don’t need to get too freaked out by any issues of quality, production values, nakedness or anything else. You just need to cut loose.

So it’s not on the scale of Anarchy in the UK, but it was fun to do anyway.

The rules of the latest Deathmatch are to use any or all of the words Drunk Underwear Karaoke as a basis for your video.

I wasn’t drunk, or in my underwear (i was tempted) but yesterday was my last day of work before a month-long holiday in Canada, so I *was* totally lightheaded with joy. Or maybe it was that I’d lost my wallet and hadn’t eaten anything all day.

Turns out that the challenge was designed to attract non-videobloggers to the Pioneer Two Boots movie theater in New York where these entries will be screened on 11 August. If I’d known it was going to be shown to an audience on a big screen when I recorded it, I would have done it at twice the resolution. And I would have done it in my underwear. And I definitely would have done it drunk.

So – videobloggers – come and join the party. You’ll get your videos shown on a big screen in New York. What are you waiting for? Get drunk, get naked, get down…

UNLEASH HELL

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

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Seeing Prince’s opening night at the 02 Millennium Dome!

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I was quite excited. Can you tell? The whole thing – before, during and after – was pretty intense.

I’d almost forgotten how incredible he is, what an amazing performer and musician… and how many hits he’s had.

“I GOT MORE HITS THAN MADONNA’S GOT KIDS”

Check out his Singles at Wikipedia

Oh, and then scroll down to see all the songs he’s written for other people.

He plays guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drums, percussion, saxaphone. And composes, arranges, produces, performs everything at high levels of perfectionism.

AND HE ROCKS

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Meeting Up With Tim D from Reality Sandwich

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For you map freaks out there, the locations in this video are:

Turnham Green Station (Map)

Leon, Ludgate Circus (Map – Website)

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“Who will he bang?” Gritty Street Poetry Reading

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This was an off-the-cuff video comment I was suddenly moved to make for Gogen while listening to my iPod on the way to the tube on Friday evening. But then I got drunk and forgot to post it.

Thanks to Gogen for reminding me about this song. Lyrical gold.

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Signs Of The Times – Portrait Of A British High Street, 2007

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More inconsequential nonsense, no ranting or babies today. Just stood on a spot in posh & leafy Chiswick and pretended I was a CCTV camera. Kind of like the way that Coppola used the camera in my favourite movie, The Conversation. But with a phone.

It’s interesting what you notice, if you stop in one place and zoom in and out with your camera or your brain. My phone is helping me to see things in the world around me that I’ve taken for granted and blanked out.

Today has been a day for noticing how much things have changed since I’ve been alive. Not just non-smoking pubs, coffee bars and CCTV – I was flicking through Microserfs and thinking about how futuristic the email and geek lifestyle seemed in 1995, and how real it is now. And then I came downstairs and found this post from Gogen, about his memories of the 1980s. I said everything else I’ve got to say about that in my comment there.

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