stop motion video

a great little video

tennis

Well Murray is out of this year’s Wimbledon, however lots of questions remain…

ball boys / ball girls – surely teenagers displaying this level of discipline is a lesson to us all.  They stand at attention for long periods of time or crouching at the side of the net ready to spring into action.  During the breaks they run to their other duties ready to serve the players on court and in the mean time seem to play a subtle game of “who’s got the ball” by rolling balls to each other while the players are distracted.

As an experiment in community involvement it would be nice to see some teenagers at the other scale of social acceptability serving as ball boys – say as part of community service.  Stick a hoodie on each corner of the court!  Admittedly the games may take longer due to the attitude of the “yoofs” not wanting to do as they are told.  The ball would keep hitting them as they wouldn’t be able to see what is coming because of the hood (and trying not to make eye contact) and they couldn’t run very much as their jeans would be hanging around their knees.  Ball boys and Ball girls are, after all, there to add some entertainment to the normal activities:

(view video here )

Another thing that puzzles me about Wimbledon is, what is it with the towels?  The players seem to need to wipe their faces after each serve, or after strolling the length of the court.  OK, don’t get me wrong, this tennis thing doesn’t look easy and I’m sure it is a good workout but there has to be a limit – there isn’t enough liquid in the human body for the amount of toweling that these guys do and the poor slaves (ball boys/girls) are forced to run to them with the sweaty towel then walk backwards in a sign of humility as a cursory wipe of the face is made then the towel thrown back at the slave.  Down with this sort of thing.

Lastly, what’s with all the armed forces?  There always seems to be a sailor or uniform of some kind standing around the center court.  They never seem to be highly decorated officers just enlisted men.  Is there some Victorian tradition that requires the representation of military at all Center Court matches or is there a need for a military presence that I can’t figure out.  They are often seen when the TV coverage cuts to the score board so perhaps it is something to do with the security of the scoring system?

The Talking Heads Worship Challenge

A Challenge to all Worship leaders and church musicians:

• watch this video of Talking Heads – Life During Wartime
• find a worship song that will fit this type of choreography
• try it out with a congregation and let me know how it goes

A matter of perspective…

Today is (was) the 21st June, and as you would have noticed the suns rays were perpendicular to the Tropic of Cancer (at 23°30′ North latitude).  This means that the earth’s “circle of illumination” (i.e. it was light) all the way from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle.

So the equator received twelve hours of daylight, all of the North Pole and areas north of 66°30′ N have 24 hours of daylight and the equivalent area South has 24 hours of night.

So it is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the longest day of sunlight (17h 35m 17s in Glasgow today) and of course the shortest night… (all explained really well here if you are interested)

Which made me think, it’s all a matter of perspective.  In the North there’s more light, in the South there is less.  Is it good to have more hours of daylight or is it bad because there are less hours of night?  Does it make any difference at all since we don’t travel to Stonehenge, get up at dawn (which today was 4:31 AM in Glasgow) to look after the fields or animals or anything else that is governed by the sun?

More hours of sunlight simply means that from now on the nights are drawing in, it’s getting closer to winter and the best is behind us….  can you tell that I’ve got one of these:

the Pessimist’s Mug available from Despair.com

Books: Jesse Kellerman, “The Brutal Art”

The Brutal Art by Jesse Kellerman.  I think I picked this up in a 3 for 2 offer at Waterstones.  Wish I hadn’t bothered.

It is the (boring) story of an art dealer who (for complicated and non-interesting reasons) comes into the possession of a lot of drawings – a sort of abandoned flat full of thousands of A4 sketches that seem to patch together to form one coherent drawing but would take an inconceivably large space to actually lay out.  This part of the story drags along until a retired police officer gets in touch to say that the face of a cherub in one of the drawings that has been sold is the face of a child that was murdered years ago.

So there is a slightly interesting possibility that the mysterious artist who no one knows may be a serial killer – turns out he isn’t (hope I’m not spoiling this, but if you plan to read it don’t – if you are reading it stop!).  Then there is also a bunch of ‘flash back’ chapters that tell an even more boring parallel tale that eventually catches up with current time and adds nothing to the excitement or pace of the overall plot.

Reading this has been a total waste of time.  I often end up sticking with books like this waiting for it to turn into a slow-starting hidden gem, when will I learn to just give up if the story isn’t going anywhere, characters are boring and there is page after page of nothing happening.

On the up side the next book I have lined up was given to me by Lou from Biblo, who has put me on to many a good read in recent years and it pokes fun at religion and faith…. Feel like starting it now but at 2am I think I should leave it till tomorrow at least.

28th May !

What happened on the 28th May?

It was a Tuesday, there wasn’t anything special in my diary, it was the day after I blogged about Star Trek but surely that doesn’t explain this:

I try not to pay attention to the stats section of my blog page because I can’t really think why people other than the few I know about would read this.  I don’t aim to entertain, inform or debate, though hopefully occasionally I do some of these I’ve always bloged with only the intention of keeping a record for myself.

So why did I get 300 hits on the 28th?  My normal turn over of hits of 40-60 is confusing enough but 300?  I dug down a bit but there wasn’t really much to go on, just showing the same sort of searches and pages visited (and only one hit on the star trek post).

There has to be a glitch somewhere either in the total count or the specific pages visited which only adds up to around 30 hits.  This is going to really screw up my average figures.

Too hot to blog…

No it’s not.

We’ve had a few days of fantastic weather which and it is incredible how quickly we can get used to it. Normally in Scotland it is difficult to go very far from home/office/car without carrying a jacket, rain coat or umbrella ‘just in case’.  So I surprised myself by going all the way to Edinburgh this week with no extra clothes for wind, rain or hail.

Anyway, talking to a friend at the weekend she said that she preferred cold weather to hot becuase “if you are too cold you can generally do something about it, put on a jumper, turn up the heating – but if it is too hot there isn’t much you can do”  I have always had the other opinion that it is better to be too hot.  Now, I agree with what my friend said but I just don’t think I’ve ever been too-hot.

This week has indeed challenged this but in general I think that as a Scotsman living in Glasgow where frequently we experience all four seasons in one short afternoon and when each year we experience the strange sensation of trying to remember what that strange orange thing is that appears in the sky around February.

So it can never be too hot (in Scotland) and if anyone ever hears me saying “I’m too hot” please remind me of this fact.

BTW I think the good weather is about to break :-/

Movie: Star Trek

I haven’t been to the cinema for a very long time!  This used to be something I would do almost every week, but the number of idiots talking, munching, walking in and out, etc. as well as the lack of service and interest in customers at the big multiplex really started to get to me – so that it is only worth going to smaller places, or during the day.  Anyway, I’ll not go any further into that:  Star Trek

Is this the latest in the franchise or the start of a new one?  Will this film stand up to its heritage or embarrass it?  How can new actors take on well loved and well known characters?  How can Leonard Nimoy be appearing in this movie?

Well, IMHO, this film rocks!  The major “twist” that makes the plot possible in the Star Trek universe we all know manages to negate all the above concerns and means that whether or not you are a fan of the original series this movie can stand on its own merit.

I’m not actually a big fan of the original series.  It is something I remember from growing up but can’t really watch for long now, I prefer Enterprise and Voyager much more.  The new Star Trek pays enough service to the existing stories without becoming a parody of itself which would have been easy to do with so much of the original Star Trek has now become common sayings or jokes “Spock: Live long, and Prosper.” “Scotty: I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!” “Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy: Damnit man! I’m a doctor, not a physicist!”  This movie also manages not to take itself too seriously with enough light moments to break up the action.

What I didn’t like about this film was some of the production techniques, I think I’ve moaned about this before but why do directors keep using that shaky-camera-makes-action-look-better trick.  It is really annoying.  There is a bar fight where we can’t see what is going on, some running about becuase things are exploding scenes where we can’t see what is going on and even when JT Kirk meets Christopher Pike and they are sitting talking the camera is constantly moving and shaking – this movie costs $150,000,000 buy a bloody tripod!!

OK, some of this “shaky-camera-makes-action-look-better trick” may have been exasobated by the fact that we went to see this at the imax cinema.  This was my suggestion because I’ve not seen a non-imax movie at an imax and thought that a big space type movie would be good on the biggest screen possible – it wasn’t.  I really don’t think the ‘imax experience’ was worth the extra £3-4 other than the fact that people were much better behaved ( there were no “idiots talking, munching, walking in and out, etc” as mentioned previously).

So, in summing up.  Great movie, doesn’t spoil the franchise – not sure its one of those movies which you MUST see on the big screen, but certainly don’t bother with the imax.

Personal consultation from the Blue Man Group

amazing news….  following the last post I discovered that the Blue Man Group are available to give advice and help out with visual material.  I sent them a link to my other blog (christianvisualist.wordpress.org) and got an immediate response with some helpful advice, here it is:

The blue man group’s advice for ChristianVisualist web site.

The Blue Man Group

Blue Man Group at the Clyde Auditorium Friday 22nd May 2009.

If you haven’t come across the Blue Man Group before they are a little difficult to categorise, a mix between performance art, comedy and rock.  Their music has strong percussion with heavy guitar and totally unique sounds from the instruments they have invented.  The Blue Men themselves don’t speak, but it isn’t what I would call mime either.  They are very expressive, inquisitive, and quintessential outsiders… trying to fit in with their surroundings, while discovering how to be rock megastars by interacting with the audience, each other and the band.

The opening of the show was incredible – this is the best fan-video I’ve found and it just can’t show the scale of it.  And scale is certainly part of the Blue Man Group live experience.  On the four tear stage is a drummer, two percussionists, three guitarists a keyboard player two singers as well as the three blue men and all the instruments they use, but the show doesn’t always remain on the stage with blue men interacting with audience members and moving around the auditorium.

This is a true rock show with an awesome heavy sound…

“I Feel Love”

…but also a very funny experience

The Blue Man Group are an awesome live experience – if you get a chance go see them.  Failing that have a look at their web site or all the stuff on youtube just to get a flavour…