So, Three Months Later...

I feel vaguely hypocritical - having given Hannah Newcombe a scolding for letting her blog lapse, I find myself having done the same thing (albeit not on such a grand scale).  Three months have passed since I last posted on here.

What's happened?

• I've helped build a conservatory.
• I've finished the second season of The Murkum Show, plus spin-off Greasy Food With Gonce, and been putting in some brain-juice on the third run.
• I've made progress towards filming the next set of Papercuts episodes.
• I've started writing Cylinder and Miserable Series 4 (as threatened earlier).
• I've put in a few months of doodling on my second Papertowns drawing.
• I've bought a new camera - a Nikon D7100, which is very, very nice, and will be used for all future instalments of Murkum Show, Papercuts etc.
• I went to Root Hill again - my 9th time.  Really starting to feel like part of the woodwork now.  Enjoyed it very much.  Was able to take a car for the first time.  Also took the D7100, and had a horrible moment where I thought it was broken, but fortunately it turned out that the £900 camera was fine, the problem was with the £20 memory cards, which were in fact fakes and have now been sent back and refunded.
• I launched a new website for YBC... and then had an embarrassing hiccup where I forgot the admin password.
• Probably other stuff I've forgotten to mention.

So, there you go - a quick recap of all the stuff that I never got round to blogging about in more tedious detail over the last quarter of a year.

Oh... and I might have slightly started writing A Salesman Beneath again, after a nearly-3-year hiatus.  Hm...


- The Colclough

Never Twice the Same Circle

Sam suggested recently that I should do a post on how life has changed over the years, and I've decided to take up the suggestion, focussing specifically on the seven years since I first went to Root Hill.


I'd just finished sixth form, back in 2006.  I didn't know what I wanted to do next.  I'd barely started work on my giant mosaic project.  Cylinder and Miserable had only just started, and Grace and Caffeine wasn't even a twinkle in my eye yet.  I still had Arthur & the Punk in post-production, and the likes of Day-Glo! and The Probe Has Succeeded hadn't been so much as storyboarded.  Yateley Baptist was just two years into Adrian Reynolds' pastoral tenure, and the end wasn't remotely in sight.

In myself, I knew there was something wrong with me in terms of a chronic inability to empathise, but I had no idea what caused it or what to do about it.

And Root Hill?  New, bit scary... we had Andrew 'Moneybags' Sadler as one of the leaders, and we went to Guildford for the Tuesday outing, with Laserquest, boating and other things.  Other leader Dave Hollands was sometimes seen waving a tape-writing camcorder around, and the resultant video was available on either VHS (yes, really!) or DVD.


Fast forward seven years to 2013: I've been on the Root Hill camp eight times.  Andrew has been replaced by Jim Sayers (after a transition period in 2009 / 2010), and Guildford has been replaced on the timetable by Horsham, from 2011 onwards, because they shut down the Laserquest in Guildford.  The choice of churches on the Sunday morning remains largely the same, although I've switched my habits from Chilworth to Dorking in the interests of a shortened commute.  I took over as the videographer in 2008, and killed off the VHS option; my temporary successor went widescreen the next year; this year the video was shot by another newcomer, using a DSLR, and will be released exclusively online.

The people have nearly all changed - almost nobody else from the 2006 camp was still there for 2013 (one or two exceptions, but not many), but I'm not complaining.  I came into Root Hill as one of the youngsters, and felt a bit lost among the established friendships between the older campers; now, I am the older campers, and it's a lot easier taking on the younger ones as they arrive rather than trying to make my way around the whole new camp all in one go.  For me, the 2013 crowd feels much more like home - and feeling like home is, in my books, a very good thing.

But in spite of all the changes, Root Hill remains very much as it always was.  There's still a big pile of wood chippings next to the bonfire area each year, which I like to go and perch on top of to chew over things on some of the evenings.  The timetable and the menu barely change at all, in their major components at least.  And that's where the title of this post comes from: Root Hill is largely cyclical - it's ended up being a bit same-old-same-old, but it's a good kind of same-old-same-old, which is precisely what I keep going back for - but the cycle never repeats itself perfectly.  There's a degree of circularity, but it's never twice quite the same circle as any of the previous times.

This whole 'people' thing leads into another point of change over the last 7 years: the shift in my understanding of myself.  Five years ago, I was presented with the answer to why I struggle so much with people: it's a high-functioning autistic-spectrum condition, most likely a variant of Asperger's Syndrome.  In the half a decade since July 2008, the diagnosis has gone from new and shocking (I kinda wish my old Tailcast blog posts hadn't got wiped off the internet, as the one I did about my initial reaction would be good to link to for back-reference) to being fully accepted and normalised (as I mentioned a couple of posts back).

Adrian left Yateley Baptist four years ago after five years as our pastor.  We found and called his successor Andrew Wigham a few months ago, and he has moved in and started his work over the last two or three weeks.

I've passed my driving test, and been driving for long enough to pick up all sorts of terrible habits - palming the wheel more frequently than the gearstick, for example - and I've had a younger sibling get married, since 2006.

Cylinder and Miserable has run for 2126 episodes (1920 of them published, and counting); Grace and Caffeine has long since folded (after 178); cross-continuity spin-off Fort Paradox has had time to appear from nowhere, make strides, get forgotten, and get revived; the mosaic got completed, moved, damaged, repaired... I don't even know if it still exists, to be honest; Portal and its sequel got released, I got into them, and I found my other niche in life as a Portal 2 test chamber architect; The Probe Has Succeeded is very old news indeed, and my animation efforts have more recently been focussed on the likes of Papercuts and The Murkum Show.  What's next?  Who knows.

I probably missed a lot of stuff.  But you'd get bored if I went over everything.

Sam: thanks for the suggestion.


- The Colclough

Rest in Fleece

I recently wrote a blog post bemoaning the apparent passing of Hannah Newcombe's blog at http://hannahlikessheepbaa.blogspot.com, and suggesting that I should mark the anniversary of the last post with a virtual funeral.  Well, it's now a few days (weeks?) on from the anniversary, and I have prodded the corpse to double-check that it really is dead, and guess what?  It hasn't twitched.  It looks pretty dead to me.

So here goes the funeral!


As a non-relative of the deceased, perhaps I should begin by outlining how I came to meet them.  Well, it's Root Hill's fault.  I met Hannah for the first time at Root Hill 2010, and found my way onto her blog via her pair of trainers with somebody else's blog address on them (as one does).  This conspired together with other elements of RH2010 to inspire the beginnings of my own blog - this one you're reading here right now.  The two blogs intermittently goaded each other on over the next year and a half, and a good time was had by all.  Or at least by me...

I had suggested that the funeral should take the form of a selection of my favourite posts from the sheepy one's blog, along with an explanation of why I liked them; however, this could present something of a difficulty as there are quite a lot of posts on there (a quick bit of math says 219!) and I've never been very good at picking favourites.  I thought about giving it a shot anyway, but soon realised that the sheer number of posts I'd have to re-read and sort through is overwhelming.  However noble my intentions, and however much I might enjoy re-reading some of the old posts (which I do sometimes), I just don't have the time to systematically go through all 219 of them.  Between the challenges, the ramblings, the huge web of Doctor Who and Hitchhiker's Guide references, the ad-hoc remarks on life as it happened, and the occasional, wonderful moments when my own creative output got put in the spotlight, there are too many posts on there for me to pick out just a few.


Other features of the funeral were going to be a selection of music, and some thoughts on food.  Music first:

In a suitably lamentative and funereal mode, and in keeping with the prevailing spirit of sci-fi nerdiness, I nominate This is Gallifrey from the Doctor Who Season 29 / New Series 3 soundtrack, by Murray Gold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-SBNgu1hO4

...followed by Tim's (characteristically baroque) suggestion, the aptly sheepy Sheep May Safely Graze by J. S. Bach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIUCRXMM4pE

Sam suggests Fade To Black by Metallica - I know virtually nothing about rock (you see, I'm assuming Metallica is rock... I could even be wrong about that, for all I know!), so I don't necessarily understand the connection apart from the fading-to-black-usually-denoting-the-end-of-something thing - but I'm sure Sam has some underlying reason for the choice, so here's the link anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4qr3GfTp_Q

And to conclude the musical interlude, something I came across via Hannah's blog, which fits well with one of our shared interests, and also somewhat reflects my feelings over here at A White Horizon now that I'm one of the last two survivors from the little circle of Root Hill bloggers (hannahlikessheepbaa isn't the only one to have gone down over the last year or two; Sam's the only other one still going that I'm aware of): Type 40 by Chameleon Circuit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGqrrmZXtqg


And finally, the after-funeral lunch.  Sam remembered something important which had slipped my mind - Zombie Fluxx - and used that as the basis for his food suggestions: Sandwiches, Donuts, Coffee and the Zombie Brains.  That's a good game, Zombie Fluxx.

And for my nominations: as a semi-regular repository of Whovian enthusiasms, Hannah's blog absolutely must be commemorated with Fish Custard, a la The Eleventh Hour.  I also nominate pizza, in memory of various (usually Root-Hill-related) past events - but not Yorkshire Pizza of Death.  I think one of those is quite enough for one lifetime.  I'm tempted to suggest lamb/mutton, but really not sure whether that's an appropriate interpretation of "likes sheep".


Hannah, thank you for the blogging.  It has been a thoroughly enjoyable... thing.  What's the proper collective noun for a period of time during which multiple people write blogs that play off each other?  I have no idea.  But what I was trying to say is, it's been a thoroughly enjoyable one of those.

Rest in fleece, hannahlikessheepbaa.  So long, and - because we can't let you pass into the blogospherical afterlife without cracking some sort of Hitchhikers' joke: thanks for all the fish.

And custard.


- The Colclough

About That Letterbox of Yours

You remember in my last post I told the Root Hill types among you to watch your letterboxes for incoming DVDs?

I know for a fact that none of you will have got what you're watching for yet.

I swear it's not for lack of trying.  I've printed all the address labels and everything, and I would dearly love to get the things in the post.

But can I get anybody to sell me fifteen DVD-box-size padded postpacks at anything like a sensible price?  Yeah, right.  Last year I got them in 3-packs from Tesco, which worked out at 33p per envelope.  Fair enough.  This year, Tesco have been out of stock for weeks (literally, weeks), while the post office only had half the number I needed, and were after £1.39 each for them!  Combining that with the amount postage has gone up in the last 12 months, I could almost make a loss just on the post and packaging.

Still got one or two other ideas on where I might be able to try, but I haven't had a chance to try them yet.

So the long and short of it is that you can relax your letterbox-watching vigilance, because the DVDs haven't been posted.  I am very, very sorry for the delay.


- The Colclough

Things Achieved: First of February

Morning: got pinched and punched for the first of the month, by one of the accountants.  Not sure that really counts as an achievement, but I think it was a first for me, so there you go.  Apparently I have to remember to say 'White Rabbit' before she has a chance to attack me on the first of March, to forestall the pinching and punching.  As the Americans say, go figure.


Afternoon: unpacked the future out of its little cardboard boxes and put it on the shelves.  'The future' as in the future of household lighting, in case you're wondering.  We'd taken delivery of a new range of LED bulbs, and as Kings' employee-most-known-for-being-paranoid-about-the-light-bulb-shelves, it fell to me to help optimise the shelf layout, produce and implant the colour-coded shelf edging strips (they're really nice edging strips, if I say so myself; I should have taken a photo), and put all of the relevant information into the till database.  I also made a promotional page for the shop's website as well, which you can see here.

They're rather expensive (prices starting at £9.99 for one bulb), but with the up-to-25-year lifespan and the 80% energy saving, they will more than pay for themselves.  The lifespan and the efficiency are the same advantages touted for those ugly compact-fluorescent bulbs over the last few years; but the LEDs have more: they turn on instantly - you don't have to wait for ages between throwing the switch and getting some light - and the bulbs actually look decent, unlike the hideous convoluted bulkiness of a CFL.  I'm rather looking forward to the day the CFL becomes extinct and LED bulbs take over the world.


Evening: finished making the DVD copies of Root Hill on Camera 2012.  Really.  Pictures to prove it:

The stack of finished DVDs

Preview of the main menu

Now I just need to put the blighters in the post.  Watch your letterboxes.


- The Colclough

Trailerish

Having mentioned in my last post that I've finished video editing for Root Hill on Camera 2012, it occurred to me that I should stick the trailer on ye blog, for completeness' sake if nothing else.



Not much else to say here right now, only the trailer.  And if you didn't like it, then just be grateful you didn't see the first draft.  It was pretty terrible.

Normal blogging service will resume whenever it resumes.


- The Colclough

What the Wacom Can Do

After a minor case of unsubtle hinting, I was given a Wacom Bamboo Pen & Touch graphics tablet for Christmas.  I hadn't really used graphics tablets much before, and my last attempt (borrowing Tim's tablet, which is also a Wacom) produced this rather unimpressive bit of scribble:

A concept sketch for Fort Paradox 115: my first graphics-tablet drawing.  Srsly.

However, I was pretty sure that my initial failures were just teething trouble.  After all, I spent my first two or three weeks in The GIMP being hopelessly confused and (whisper it!) almost missing Photoshop, of all things - before it suddenly clicked one day, and I've been using the program for all sorts of things ever since.  I expected a similar thing would happen with the tablet, if I had one of my own and was able to get some practice.

It looks like I expected right.  This morning, I finished this (a rather better piece of scribble, if I say so myself):

Blue in the Firelight, January 2013

I almost crashed GIMP during the production process, as the image had so many layers; in the end I fixed the problem by separating the thing out into three different files - one with the initial compositional layers, a second to tidy up the line art, and a third to add the colour.  You can see a higher-resolution version of the finished picture on my DeviantArt page, and you might notice it cropping up as my new avatar on DeviantArt and on Steam.

Where next?   Well - here's a bit of good news for the Root Hill attendees among you - I'm very nearly finished the Root Hill On Camera 2012 DVD: the video segments are rendered, the disc menus are authored, and the print components have been designed.  All that remains is to produce the physical copies and get them in the post.  And once that little project (little... haha, right) is off my slate, I'm planning to try and get back to animating something.  So many ideas drifting around right now, including Papercuts episodes 5 onwards (waiting on script delivery from a guest writer or two), Arbitrary Stopframe Series 2 (waiting on... um... me getting round to it), The Murkum Show (working title, waiting on me figuring out what it's actually about apart from having lots of Doctor Murkum in it), and the long-planned Fishy Business remake Empire of the Pond (which has recently seen some movement on the test-illustrations front).  But more recently, the idea occurred to me that I should try doing a quick-and-dirty (that fatal phrase...) graphics-tablet cel animation featuring my little-known character Elbows Dude in a variety of improbable scrapes, which he solves with his elbow powers.  Right now, I honestly don't know which route I'll be going down next, but all five of them have some appeal, so I'll hopefully be picking one and getting down to business before too long.  Watch this space!


- The Colclough

Excuses: A Luxury Assortment Pack

Pick an excuse; any excuse.  I've got loads for why I've lost "First 12 for '12" so badly, and you can take your pick as to which (if any) you feel like accepting.  What follows is a list of other stuff I've been doing instead of winning my own blog race...

Drawing big geometric doodles with Sharpie pens - as mentioned earlier.  Iteration 4 is now in progress.  No Sharpie yet, but I've plotted out the basic forms in pencil, and so far it looks more like a grapefruit than anything else.  Might show you a WIP photo eventually, but not yet.

Trying to design aliens - part of an ongoing (if intermittent) effort to work out what the major races of Universe XGT look like, in collaboration with Tim.  The designs range from ones sprung entirely from my own imagination, via some intermediate co-designed ones, to a few species where Tim has said what they look like and I've taken it upon myself to interpret that in pencil.  I've got one or two species presenting headaches at the moment, but once they're sorted out I might do a post featuring a selection of the drawings.  Maybe.  Watch this space.

Occasional cooking lessons - I haven't set fire to the kitchen yet, but I've had a go once or twice.  This afternoon's masterclass was in the preparation of pasta bolognaise, which turned out more or less edible.  However, I can't say I did it all myself, and I've got my doubts over whether it'd have been anywhere near as non-poisonous if I had.

Developing a bit of a musical superiority complex - I was given two CDs for Christmas, little sister got one too, and I have to say I think I got the better end of the deal, not just quantitatively but also qualitatively.  She had something by some chap called Michael W. Smith - whose parents, I can't help thinking, were rather clumsy to have missed out the 'H.' that everyone knows should come between the 'W.' and the 'Smith', but that's another story.  I had Jurassic Park OST by John Williams, and Karl Jenkins' Requiem.  From what I've heard of MW(H)S, he sounds like just-another-pop-singer sort of thing, and I can't say I'm especially impressed.

Jurassic Park, on the other hand, is John Williams at his finest.  If you let me count a whole film series (e.g. all six Star Wars episodes) as a single musical opus, then I'd probably say JP is outclassed by SW, and maybe also Indiana Jones, but in terms of musical achievement within a single film, I think I'd vote JP as Williams' masterpiece.

Requiem, meanwhile, is a bit of an odd album, but quite a fascinating one.  It actually comprises two unrelated suites of music, setting three separate text cycles in a total of four languages (Latin, Japanese, Welsh and English, in order of appearance).  The first, and by far the longer, of the two suites is the eponymous Requiem, and I've found it fascinating listening: considering that a Requiem, by definition, is a funerary work, a mass for the souls of the dead, it's a lot less sombre than you might expect.  Elegaic in places, yes, but in the end it's actually rather uplifting.

Keeping up with Sherlock and stuff - I've seen episodes 1.1 and 1.2 twice each, and 1.3, 2.1 and 2.2 once each, plus read the script for 1.2, so my do-list for the rest of this week includes catching up on 2.3 before it goes off iPlayer on Sunday evening.  Between Moffat and Gattiss writing at their best, and the brilliant casting and acting of Cumberbatch and Freeman, I've found all five episodes so far to be very good.  Much looking forward to the next one.  Before you ask, I can't make any comparison to the recent feature films, as I haven't seen those.  But I can compare Sherlock to Doctor Who, and I'd say the latest series of S (so far) has been much more rewarding viewing than the latest series of DW.

Completing the Root Hill DVD 2011! - yes, at long last.  The discs are in the post (well, most of them; I ran out of disc labels so the last few copies will be sent in a few days)... after four-and-a-half months in the planning and execution 8p

Writing the pilot script for a new animated series which might be the successor to Arbitrary Stopframe - when I laid AS Series 1 to rest back in December, I don't think I'd even come up with this idea.  It grew out of the production of Smells Interesting a couple of weeks later if I remember right.  The general concept is that it will feature three characters (new ones created specifically for the show), paper-cutout animation, and dialogue, with less emphasis on technical virtuosity relative to AS, and more emphasis on strange, random humour.  Maybe as much as 2 or 3 minutes per episode.  No idea how many episodes (if any) will end up getting made.  We shall have to wait and see.


Statistics:

• First 12 for '12 status: 9 down, 3 to go - I've lost. Oh well.
• Latest book read: the end of 2 Samuel from the KJV
• Latest film/TV watched: Middlemarch (1994 BBC version), part 6 of 6
• Latest music listened to: Requiem by Karl Jenkins
• Latest edible item eaten: that spag bol
• Predominant colour of clothes: shabby blue-greys again
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook and Word 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post), Skype
• Webcomics posted today: Fort Paradox Backstage

- The Colclough

Preview Time for the Third Time

Root Hill 2011 was my sixth year attending the camp, and my third time as official videographer.  As per last year, I documented events with my Sony camera, and edited the footage in Sony Vegas.  Yes, there's a bit of a Sony theme going on there, despite the fact that Dad works for arch-rivals Samsung.  And as per both of the previous years I videoed (2008 and 2010), I have made a little trailer.

It's a bit different to my last two Root Hill on Camera trailers, this time using a pared-down "less is more" approach.  But I think that's a good thing, as it wouldn't do to just keep repeating the same old ideas and let them go stale.  Those of you who weren't there will probably be hopelessly confused, but for those who were: I hope you'll enjoy it.

Two things to watch out for in the trailer:

1. Josh's reduced afro.
2. The Mistake.  There's at least one 'error' that I'm aware of, but I decided I liked it so I let it stay.  I'll be interested to see if any of you can work out what I'm on about.

Just a bit of DVD menu authoring and disc burning to go, and then it's on to the post & packaging!

Okay, there wasn't much text in this post.  But then again, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and Vegas tells me there are 2376 frames in this video, which - at least in theory - means it's worth approximately 2.4 million words.  And I think there should be bonus points awarded for Root-Hill-relatedness, maybe...


Statisticables, again:

• First 12 for '12 status: 4 down, 8 to go - still at the back, but closing the gap
• Latest book read: still A Brit Different
• Latest film/TV watched: still Sherlock
• Latest music listened to: Ode to Jim by Phil & Has, as featured in the Root Hill on Camera 2011 trailer
• Latest edible item eaten: still that hot chocolate
• Predominant colour of clothes: same stuff as earlier today
• Programs and web pages currently running: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, Firefox (tabs: MatNav 6.1; Blogspot Dashboard; Blogspot Create Post)
• Webcomics posted today: n/a

- The Colclough

Not Having That One Come True

I don't usually act on the content of my dreams.  I usually disregard them within minutes of waking up, and proceed with my day as if the night's imagined shenanigans had never happened - which, of course, they actually never have (except as an illusion inside my dozy head).

But today, I made an exception to this generally-hard-and-fast rule.

I had a dream last night where I found myself unexpectedly in the middle of the next Root Hill camp (this might have been brought on by the fact that a booking form for said camp turned up in the post yesterday morning).  For reasons nobody bothered to explain, the 'Root Hill' camp wasn't at Root Hill at all, but in some sprawling, very badly designed conference centre.  But the main weight on my mind was that, what with it only being the end of November at the moment, this meant the event was taking place some nine months early, and I ended up trying (somewhat awkwardly) to explain to people that I was still working on the camp video from last time.  I remember wondering what happened to all that editing time I should have had.  All those months...

And then, after briefly catching sight of someone in my peripheral vision who may or may not have been Ellie off Countryfile, I woke up.  And having woken up, I thought: no way to I want to let that happen.

So I fired up Sony Vegas after breakfast, and did some more work on the video.  I've confronted the huge blob of football footage which I'd been dreading for weeks and I've beaten it into shape (I don't know why, but it always seems to be very easy to just stand there and let the camera roll and roll and roll when there's football going on, but it's never so much fun to watch the stuff back), and I've chosen a couple of little snippets from the concert to feature in the main highlights reel (not too much of it though, as the whole concert is included on the DVD as a separate video track), and I've tidied up most if not all of the odd loose-end clips that were scattered through my raw footage bin.  Today has felt like a very definite slice of progress.

Whether or not you (the Root Hill-ers who ordered a DVD off me, that is) get to see the fruits of my labour this side of Christmas is still up in the air, but if you don't, then it'll hopefully not be too far into the new year.


- The Colclough

Stuff I Made: September 2011

Been a while since I did one of those several-different-paragraphs-on-unrelated-subjects blogs...


1) Arbitrary Stopframe: I mentioned the other week that I was working on an idea for Episode 11.  Here it is.





2) Painting: did a little painting the other day, experimenting with paint surface effects and trying to make it look like running water, but I forgot to photograph it yet.  Also did more to the kingfisher - new photo follows.

Untitled Kingfisher Painting - now with some paint on the kingfisher!

3) Root Hill on Camera 2011: pretty much finished editing the Concert reel (runtime circa 70 minutes).  Might go back in and add some video filters on one little segment, but otherwise I think the Concert's all done and dusted.


4) Writing Megastropulodon: now nearly 2/3 of the way through the third draft for the opening episode.  Haven't decided yet whether my next move will be the third draft for Episode 5, or starting work on a first draft for Episode 2.


- The Colclough

Arbitrary Again

So, I'm back from Root Hill (might blog about that later), and Doctor Who is back on the air (I'm still confused, but my gut reaction is that I liked Let's Kill Hitler better than A Good Man Goes to War, even though there wasn't as much bashing of the Fuhrer as the title might lead you to expect).  However, it's gone half ten at night, and unlike certain other people, that's a bit late for me to be starting to write an ambitious blog post.  So I'll just leave you with a couple of little videos.

I forgot to embed Arbitrary Stopframe 8 when I uploaded it a few weeks ago.  I've just uploaded episode 9, so I may as well take the opportunity to rectify my mistake, and embed both at once:






Now that I've finished my big crazy glut of travellings, I might try and get back to doing these things on a weekly basis.  Ooh, how ambitious.


- The Colclough

Signing off (for now)

So, the Twenty Questions challenge is over.  Pretty much.  It has resulted in my most bloggingest month ever (sorry, I couldn't be bothered to work out how to say that in real grammar) with 18 posts in August, and it's prompted me to think through some questions and come up with some answers which had never occurred to me before.  I'd probably have gone my whole life without attempting a scientific comparison of the relative merits of sheep and cows, for example, if Hannah hadn't included that on her question list.

It's also made me pretty tired of staring at ye olde Blogger Create Post screen.

Anywho, I'm off to Root Hill tomorrow, so I'll be internetless for a week.  No more Blogger Create Post screens.  No wordsmithing races or challenges.  No animation, probably (don't panic though, I'm working on an idea for Arbitrary Stopframe Episode 9 for when I get back).  No webcomic updates (well, Tim's going to look after Fort Paradox as it's his turn this week anyway, and Cylinder and Miserable will get some bonus strips online tomorrow).  Goodness knows what else will happen though!  After all, it was thanks to meeting H and one or two other things that happened at Root Hill 2010 that I started this blog in the first place.  Who knows what RH 2011 might precipitate?

But before I head off, I've got one little loose end to wrap up from Twenty Questions: Sam gave me 5 extra questions, and I only answered 3 of them so far.  Here are the rest.


Sam's questions, #4: "Which do you prefer: Motorhead or Metallica?"

I really don't know.  I've never really listened to either.


Sam's questions, #5: "Who is your favourite Stand Up Comedian?"

Another case of "I don't have a particular favourite".  But if I had to choose one, then maybe Jeff Dunham. For Achmed.


For those of you who are going to Root Hill, I'll see you there.  For the rest, see you afterwards.


- The Colclough

The Better Side

No, nothing to do with ITV1's current tagline.  That's "The Brigher Side", anyway, not "Better".  And I'm more of a BBC watcher.

More to do with the fact that Saturday had some really bad bits, and some really good bits.  (Hannah's blog post in the small hours of the morning about good and bad experiences was rather timely, as it turns out.)  I won't depress you with the bad bits of my weekend - I'd prefer to ramble about the good bits instead.

The big news: I've finished making those blasted DVDs at last!  After waging an epic war against my DVD burning software, ranging across three different computers, I finally nailed it down on a little old laptop and compelled it to do my will.  So now I've got a nice neat row of finished RH DVDs sitting in a cardboard box by my desk and waiting to be put in the post.

I also decided that I was finished with my latest painting.  It involved six different layers of colour (each allowed to dry before the next was applied), and although I actually put the last one down on Friday, I thought at the time there would be more to do.  But on Saturday morning, I went back and looked at it again, and I said to myself "nope, that's enough.  I'm going to call it a day."  And then, for lack of a better title, that's exactly what I did.

#004: A Day

Yes, I  do realise that I have committed a truly atrocious pun right there.  My sincerest apologies to those of you with delicate linguistic sensibilities.

I also made more use of my new webcam.  It's rapidly turning out to be better value for money than anything else I've ever bought (not difficult, considering how little I had to pay for it).  Skype is much fun.

And I've done the illustrations for Fort Paradox Episodes 33 and 34, which feature a new experimental art style which I've never used for any other cartoon before.  It involves biros, I'm quite pleased with how it's come out.

And now for something completely different (and altogether nerdier): on Saturday, I used Linux for the first time.  My Grandad was asking if there was a free operating system he could use to recondition an ancient PC of his, so I made him a Ubuntu installer disc.  But before handing it over, I thought I'd try it out myself in demo mode on our family laptop.  It more or less worked, except that the laptop's optical disc drive is basically shot so it took ages to read the disc and load the software.  It took me all of two minutes to find my way around the OS though, and I already like it almost as much as Windows, and much better than Mac OSX.

Since I've already got a perfectly good Windows installation on each of the machines I use regularly at the moment, I'll probably stick with dear old Microsoft for the time being.  But I got a very good first impression of Ubuntu, so you never know - I might end up going the whole open-source hog someday!



My stats, for the next-to-last post of the 11 For 11 race...

• 11 For 11 status: 10 down, only 1 more to go... who will be the winner?
• Latest book read: *still* that commentary on Ephesians...
• Latest film/TV watched: haven't seen anything in a few days, and I've actually forgotten what the last one was...
• Latest music listened to: How to Train Your Dragon OST by John Powell (2010) currently on speakers
• Latest food/sweets/whatever eaten: crossaint and cowjuice for breakfast, unless you count the bit of jelly sweet I'm currently chewing on
• Programs and web pages currently running: Outlook 2007, Word 2007, Windows Explorer, Skype, Firefox (tabs: Blogspot Create Post; YouTube; Blogspot Dashboard)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1130; Alien President #9

- The Colclough

Ready to Burn

More good news for the Root Hill crowd: I've just finished engineering the DVD and designing the packaging.  All that remains now is to burn the the data onto the discs, print the paper bits, and assemble the cases.

And of course, do battle with Royal Mail in a gallant effort to get the things into your letterboxes.

For those of you who bothered to order a copy (all 16 of you), here's a couple of sneak-preview pictures of what you can expect to receive soon so long as RM don't mess up and lose all my packages like they did last time I sent DVDs by post.  For those who didn't, here's a tantalising glimpse of what you're missing out on this year (mind you, it's not too late to place an order)...

The front cover of the box...

...and the main menu

By the time I've got everything in the post, it'll be about 4-and-a-half months since RH 2010, although production time has been closer to 3-and-a-half, as I didn't even start editing until the beginning of October.  Which all means I've done the job a lot faster than I did last time (the RH 2008 DVD took me 6 months).  And the really nice bit is that I'm pretty sure I've done it better this time round.  More / better achievement in less time.  That feels good.

If / when your discs arrive, I'd be very interested to hear what you think of them - anything I should have done differently?  Any bits that go on too long?  Anything you wanted to see more of?  (Apart from the Yorkshire Pizza of Death - that was censored for health-and-safety reasons.  I didn't want to be running up psychiatrists' bills.)

8]

And finally, my stats...

• 11 For 11 status: 3 down, 8 to go - which means I'm currently winning by 1 post.  *deranged cackle*
• Latest book read: The Runaway Train (first draft) by Hannah Newcombe
• Latest film/TV watched: Pixar: 25 Magic Moments
• Latest music listened to: The NeverEnding Story OST by Klaus Doldinger & Giorgio Moroder (1984)
• Latest food/sweets/whatever eaten: a yellow fruit pastille - preceded by other fruit pastilles!
• Programs and web pages currently running: Word 2007, Outlook 2007, Windows Explorer, Firefox (tabs: MatNav x2, Blogspot Create Post; hannahlikessheepbaa.blogspot.com)
• Webcomics posted today: Cylinder and Miserable #1119

- The Colclough

The Root Hill Trailer

This one's for the RH crowd: here's the preview, at long last...




- The Colclough

Writing, Drawing, and Both

This post is basically a collection of little updates on different projects I've got on the go.

Megastropulodon, the TV Series version: I've hit writer's block with the first draft for the closing episode.  Written a couple of dozen words in the last fortnight, if that.  Getting annoying.  It's not that I don't know what I want to happen, it's just that it doesn't want to happen on the page.

The Root Hill video: I re-did the intertitle graphics this morning, as I wasn't happy with the way they'd turned out when I did them the first time a few days ago.  New version is much better.  Video definitely getting there now.

My surreal semi-untitled story about a failed packet-mix salesman: going well, albeit sporadically.  Wrote chapters 7 and 8 on Tuesday, which took the word count into five figures.  Chapter 8 ends with one of the most random sentences ever - and it's only 3 words long, so its randomness-per-word ratio is through the roof.  I do have a plan for how to start Chapter 9, which will make some sense of that random sentence, and I'm looking forward to penning it.  Just haven't got round to it yet.  I could email you the book so far if you ask nicely =]

Alien President: most of you probably haven't heard of this one yet.  Last time I saw Tim, back in October, I asked the random question (probably influenced by sleep deprivation): "What if George Darlan became the next president of the USA?"  Darlan, for those not in the know, is a notorious extraterrestrial inventor and self-proclaimed philanthropist, from Tim's webcomic Brothers in Shells.  Tim seemed rather taken with the suggestion, and I've started writing a short webcomic series dealing with this bizarre hypothetical scenario.  I've finished 8 episodes so far, with scripts written for quite a few more, and I'm planning to start posting the series online next week.

'The Answers': coming along nicely.  Will hopefully be on here by the end of the week.

Um... yeah.  I think that just about covers everything!


- The Colclough

Saturday and Stuff

Spent Saturday in London with friends from Root Hill.  Despite having been to RH itself 5 times, this was the first time I'd been to any reunion thing.  Partly because I'm not a great traveller, and because it's expensive (although, to be fair, Sam's train ticket was a lot pricier than mine), and because I'm not always in the loop with these things, and so on and so forth.  But it was a good day.  It was good just being around other people instead of staying in the same house all the time.  Not sure how good my presence was for the other people, mind you, but it was good from my POV.

Started the day with a scenic tour of some of London's train stations while we waited for people to turn up, and as soon as we'd got the group together we went to Leicester Square and split up again for lunch - I say 'split up', although most of us ended up at the same table in KFC.  KFC was, as usual, KFC, so the food wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  (Random aside: my first introduction to KFC was in Hong Kong, where there was at outlet in the shopping centre that we lived on top of.  We spent a lot more time at the McDonalds though.)

Then came Harrods.

I don't like Harrods.

I think I went once before, years and years ago, but I didn't really remember much.  But it only took me about two minutes after walking in the door this time around before I decided that the shop really wasn't my scene.  The whole building seems to be a labyrinth of small spaces, filled with far too much stuff and far too many people, with nothing to indicate where the exits are.  We got split up and a bit lost somewhere around the second room, and out of the original fifteen/twenty-ish-strong crowd, I ended up touring the building with a splinter group of just 3 or 4 other people.  I think I kept mumbling something about the exit most of the way around the building.

There were two bits that sort of appealed: the Lego area within the toy department (whatever some people might say, you're never really too old for Lego), and the audio-visual department.  The AV area was showing a looped clip of Avatar on most of the screens, but I think they'd set up the TVs' colour balance wrong - yes, it's a very colourful film, but I'm sure the blues and greens weren't that overblown in the cinema.

The photo frame upstairs was unforgivable.  They had this 5 x 7 inch photo frame (not a digital one, just a bog-standard photo frame) made of metal settings and crystals, that looked just like some average piece of aluminium and cheap-coloured-glass tat from a downmarket gift shop, but apparently this one was made of rare and expensive metals and gemstones instead… so they had the nerve to ask £35,000 for it!  I kid you not.  A photo frame with an asking price of thirty-five grand.  I just stood there and stared in shock, and mumbled things about broadcast-quality 1080p HD cameras, very nice cars, and employing a full-time servant for a year, any of which would cost about the same amount of money.

Enough about that.

We relocated to the science museum for the rest of the afternoon, which was much better.  Last time we were there, I didn't get to see the 'Birth of Hi-Tech Britain' gallery, and had a nagging sense of 'should have done that' at the back of my mind ever since, so I took the opportunity to make up for the omission.

Dinner happened in the basement of a Pizza Hut in Piccadilly.  A lot of the pre-dinner conversation involved talking to Hannah about Doctor Who and the relative merits of Steven Moffat - it's nice to be able to talk to someone about DW without having to stop every two minutes to straighten out the chronology or explain what an Ood is.  My younger brother and sister have some sort of working knowledge of the show, but they can't always remember what happened in what order, and they'd probably draw a complete blank if I mentioned 'Hartnell' or 'Pertwee' or something like that.

The pizza, surprisingly, turned out to be an avocado-scented sock instead... uh... no, actually, it was pizza, just like it said on the tin.  I won't bore you with a long description of the pizza.  You already know how it goes - dough, sauce, cheese, etc etc.  (Speaking of avocado though, are you reading Fort Paradox, and if so how is your brain coping?)

So now it's over, and I'm back to the usual set of other stuff.  I'm nearly finished editing the Root Hill video (just 2 or 3 months in the cutting room this time, instead of 5 ish!), and I'm starting to think it would be a good time to cut together the aforementioned trailer.  Watch this space.

And finally: I'd like to say thank you to everyone who responded to my 'How much have I told you?' research exercise last week.  I'll post the 'answers' - i.e. a list of who/what all those things are, and where they come from - later this week, so you can find out what those names are all about.  8]


- The Colclough

Two down, one to go... and then, redrafting

Finished a couple of things today.

One was writing the first draft of Megastropulodon! Series 1 Episode 5, Eggs of Devastation.  At the final count, the draft comes to 29 pages, 65 scenes, 6400-and-something words.  Obviously, it's far from being ready to shoot, and it'll take a lot more drafts before it's good to go, but I've got it past the first hurdle: the bones of the story are out there on the paper.  (Word-processor, actually, but never mind.)

So now, I can get started on Episode 6.  And once that's done, it'll be back to Episode 1 to start on Second Drafts.  And so on, and so forth...

My other achievement today has been to finish reading this paper on 'the Distant Starlight Problem' - an objection sometimes raised against Biblical creationism.  In short, the author does some clever stuff with Relativity theory, and eliminates the problem.  But it's taken me nearly three days to read, because it's one of the two most confusing things I've ever tried reading, and I had to keep stopping for long breaks to prevent my brain melting.

I should point out that it's not really Dr. Lisle's fault that it's confusing.  The confusing-ness is down to the Relativity-Theory-based nature of the article, so it can largely be blamed on Einstein and/or on the fabric of the universe itself.

The other most confusing thing I've ever tried reading was Donna Haraway's 'Cyborg Manifesto'.  If you've never read it, don't bother.  If you'd never even heard of it until you read this paragraph, be very grateful.  It got inflicted on me during the second year of my media degree, but I never finished reading it, because it was making no sense at all, and I was getting the melting-brain feeling without any worthwhile payback.  It was a prime example of mere human philosophy (possibly drug-induced, judging by the psychedelic pseudo-logic involved) setting up frameworks and theories that had no practical bearing at all on the real world, despite an impressive-sounding claim to be able to explain basically everything.

The big difference between that, and Dr. Lisle's paper, was that Lisle is talking about the real world and his arguments are built on established scientific principles (mostly Einstein).  So despite the sensation of molten neurons starting to trickle out of my earholes as I read, I felt that I was getting something worthwhile out of the exercise.  Namely, an answer to the 'distant starlight problem'.  I don't think I could really summarise what he said without confusing you, but if it's an issue you've ever worried about then I'd recommend taking a look at the paper - just make sure you pack your head in ice first to stop it going up in smoke.
 
Be ye warned: the rest of this post consists of a couple of thematic left turns...

Yesterday, my best amigo Tim posted the 86th and final episode of Sidewards, his bizarre but rather enjoyable spin-off from my main webcomic, Cylinder and Miserable.  The ending caught me by surprise, as I didn't know how many strips he'd actually written.  But it's been great fun reading the comic.  I mean, it's about squabbling, half-psychotic bacon sandwiches committing industrial sabotage... what more do you want?

Speaking of webcomics, have you been reading Fort Paradox, and if so what's your reaction?  Has your grey matter survived so far?

And finally, on another not-really-related note, a quick update for the RH crowd: I went through the various segments of the video the other day (I'm editing it in 4 different parts to stop Vegas crashing) and added up the runtimes - and the total came out at 33 minutes 19 seconds, which is within 4 minutes of the 30-minute target runtime.  So the good news is, the video might actually be closer to completion than I'd realised!  The next step will be to watch through the segments, check for boring bits, and trim accordingly.  Once that's done, I should hopefully have got the runtime down to 30 minutes by natural wastage, and then it'll be time for my Workflow Pudding - designing and making the nice shiny chapter-heading graphics and things.  If you thought the 2008 video was good, you ain't seen nothing yet!


- The Colclough

Verbosity for a Good Cause

I've ended up taking an unplanned break from the Root Hill video edit over the last couple of days.  I was away from home yesterday (as per the blog post about demolishing Godalming), and today I ended up writing my monster movie script instead.

If you've been reading this here blog for any length of time, you'll have come across my ramblings about Megastropulodon Attacks! - and some of you might also have gotten wind of my plans to write a TV mini-series using a hugely expanded version of the same story.  By 'hugely expanded', I mean that the events shown in the existing short film will be stretched out across the whole 6-part series, to become the ongoing narrative arc which ties the different episodes together, rather than being condensed into a single lump as per the current form.  The existing characters all appear, with a few new additions - some who stick around for the whole series, others who only appear in one or two episodes.

I've got the basic ideas planned out for what will happen in each episode, and I'm currently working on first drafts for three of them.  I'm hoping to rope in other writers to do some of the mid-series episodes, but I'm doing at least the first one and the last two myself.  So I've completed the first draft of Episode 1 (29 pages, 6700-and-something words), and I'm currently beavering away on Episode 5.  For several days, if not weeks, it got stuck around page 11, and I thought I'd written myself into a cul-de-sac, and would have to scrap half of what I'd got and write something different.  But yesterday, I suddenly had a few minor epiphanies, and added together they pretty much got the storyline back on track.  After having one more spark of inspiration shortly after breakfast this morning, I spent a lot of today writing, and came up with over 2000 words - 8 or so script pages, or more than quarter of an episode.

The evening has gone downhill a bit, and the successful-writing-spree euphoria is already wearing off, but at least now that I've blogged about it I'll be able to look back later and bask in the retroactive smugness of having made so much progress before the day soured.

And if you're one of the Root Hill crowd, don't worry - I'm sure I'll get back to the digital scissors soon.


- The Colclough