A Break from the Quake

Yikes - what a week (or so). I've not got much to say about the terrible Christchurch earthquake, other than a) all my friends and relatives are ok, unlike some, and b) I can't decide whether I'd rather be here in Wellington away from the chaos or down there getting stuck in and lending a hand.

Anyway - it's so easy to become transfixed by the news as it slowly updates on stuff.co.nz, but to keep a healthy outlook it's important to limit your viewing of images of tragedy, especially when there's nothing practical you can do to help (apart from donate of course.)

So - assuming you HAVE given some money, here are a few random items of interest to take your mind off things:

Firstly, here's something I picked up that was blowing around the local supermarket carpark today:

Great use of the word "all" I thought. Cute drawing too. Interesting to consider from the point of view of visual symbolism. Fat people are stick figures with massive tummies. The only distinguishing feature between the different characters, apart from height, is their hair. They're all fat though. I wonder if the author had specific people in mind as she (I'm guessing) drew them? This particularly appealed to me because I have recently started a fairly focussed attempt to lose about 12kg. (2 down, 10 to go!) Thanks for the timely reminder, mystery author!

I recently had the experience of playing a support slot for Sting's Synchronicity show at The Mission in Napier. I was a hired hand, as was most of the rest of the band, and we managed to present a fairly convincing performance despite being quite under-rehearsed. The highlight of the day though, is summarised in this photograph...

 Don't we all look pleased with ourselves?! From left to right: Me, Matt Parlane, Shelley Hirini, Sting, Dean Barcham and Iain Riddle. The only people missing from this photo are Rod Williams (who we were backing along with Shelley Hirini), and Iain's wife Carrol who was behind the camera, and to whom we owe our thanks. Without her tenacity we would have missed the photo opportunity altogether. Sting was very approachable and friendly, as were the rest of the crew.

Once our work was done, we were able to enjoy the main show thanks to the hospitality of Howard Page - Sting's front of house engineer - who invited us to watch the show from his mix position. Top fella!

I've been recently enjoying watching the live video feed from the International Space Station as the space shuttle Discovery undertakes her final mission. She is currently docked to the ISS and tomorrow the first of two EVAs (spacewalks) will be undertaken to do various maintenance tasks around the space station. The video feed is almost live (maybe 30s delay?) and seeing the earth slowly rotating below brings back lots of childhood memories of dreaming about spaceflight. I never imagined back then that I would one day be able to just turn on my computer and see the view outside the space station's window, or even chat with the astronauts (via Twitter). How's this for an office window view?

Here's the best link I've found to the live video - on USTREAM. Here's the live mission audio only, if you don't need pictures. And here's a link to Soma FM's 'Mission Control' radio station which blends the live nasa audio feed with ambient electronic music for those so inclined... :-)

You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of potential ISS flyover times for your location. Go to this page and click on 'Sighting Opportunities'. I got up at 5:15 this morning and watched it fly over Wellington. Beautiful. :-)

And as a segue, here are a couple of photos of Christchurch taken from the ISS after the quake.

Ok... time to get back to the latest headlines from Christchurch. 

C-25 // I'm still here!!

Hi everyone! Yep – I'm still here. Thanks for the various concerned queries... Nothing terribly exciting to report, it's just been a busy time and I've been distracted by lots of things...

Anyway, there's lots to catch up on, so here goes...

1) Currently listening to...

I am geeking out at the moment listening to SOMA fm - my favourite online radio station. I usually listen to their 'dronezone' channel, but they are currently broadcasting 'MissionControl' - a blend of ambient music with a live audio stream from NASA who currently have a shuttle in orbit docked to the International Space Station. It's fascinating listening in to the radio communications between the astronauts and the ground crew. The other day I listened as they approached the station and then went through the whole docking procedure - quite thrilling! There's not much happening currently as the astronauts are all sleeping, but they are scheduled to wake up shortly and begin preparing for the first space walk of the mission. I'm also watching the live video feed from Nasa TV - it's currently just a live view of the shuttle from a camera on the station, lookin past the shuttle to the earth below. You can see the earth turning as they race around it at 17,000 mph. So intense and yet so serene...

Ha! They just woke up to 'Beautiful Day' by U2. :-)

Speaking of intense and serene, I've also recently been enjoying this podcast from sound recordist Chris Watson, who I met late last year while he was in Wellington. He is currently in Antarctica, making a new nature documentary with David Attenborough. There are some amazing images on the podcast page too, as well as some astounding soundscapes.

2) Study

This year is panning out to be an interesting one. I spent some time January doing some planning, but already some of those plans are being turned on their head as new opportunities and challenges present themselves. For instance, I had decided in January that I would do a couple of art and design papers at Massey this year, but after making some enquires I discovered that I was approximately 4 months late in enrolling! Yep - the deadline for 2010 was Oct 09, so that was a bit disappointing. I've looked around at various other options – there are quite a few – but I think I'm going to do some self-directed study instead, at least for the first semester. There are so many things I want to learn, it's hard to know where to begin.

One option is 'Processing':

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

 

Processing can be used to do things like this...

Solar rework from flight404 on Vimeo.

Co-incidentally, the audio used for this test film is taken from another podcast I really enjoy - RadioLab.

3) Upcoming Gigs - JediNites, The Waitings

I thought the first part of this year would be fairly quiet for gigs, mostly because That 80's Band is out of action for the time being, but I've actually ended up being quite busy with JediNites which is a 3-piece covers band comprising myself, Matt Parlane on bass and Chris Jones on keys/vocals. It's good fun - interesting and diverse repertoire and good players all round. I'm learning this song for tonight's gig at The Occidental. Hilarious! (although the spoken intro on this video is lame compared to the original recording...)

I've also got a rehearsal tomorrow for a gig with The Waitings (Karel Van Helden and friends...). This band comprises some of my most favourite musicians to play with, including Phil Hornblow and Nick Tipping. The gig is on Friday 26th Feb in Nelson.

4) Recording projects

Not much happening on this front at the moment, although I do have some drum sessions coming up soon with Andrew London of the Cattlestops and Hot Club Sandwich, plus a couple of other possible projects on the horizon. Towards the end of last year I played a bunch of drum tracks on Janina Nicoll's upcoming album. It was great fun and I was more satisfied with my drumming contribution than I've ever been on any project before. Not sure of release date yet.

5) Tessellations

Here are a couple of patterns I came up with over summer... The first inspired by a coffee table I was sitting at in Mt Maunganui one day, and the second by some fabric I saw in a second hand clothing shop... 

6) Design work

Just finished a new series of 5 titles for UCA, plus there were 2 last year that I never posted - 'Rainforest Baby' and 'Water Baby'.

I've also been doing some more casual work at Wellington City Council - Publication & Design, with more on the horizon. Also, I have a freelance job on at the moment designing the graphics and packaging for a 12 disc cd set for a client which is proving to be an interesting and challenging task.

7) Reaktor

Over the last couple of years I have been delving fairly deeply into Native Instrument's Reaktor. In particular I developed some customised sampler instruments for Stevie Starr's live show. I have had some requests recently to post a some tutorials on basic Reaktor building, so that's something else I'll be working on over the next while. Stay tuned! 

In the meantime, the Reaktor User's Forum is a good place to start.