Rumours of my career change have been greatly exaggerated

Whilst rumours of my career change might have been greatly exagerrated, it’s been another good April Fool’s Day worldwide as individuals and businesses have thrown off any seriousness of the rest of the year by turning to Newsbiscuit-esque stories and ideas everywhere.  April 1st is of particular interest to me as a web developer, as an opportunity to proudly display the more playful side of a company, attract new audiences, and to make people smile.

So here are some of my favourites (apologies if a lot of these links don’t work.  Chances are, it’s not April 1st any more).  If you’ve been following me on Twitter today, you’ll have probably seen a lot of these already.

• Google’s gBall
  Google Australia joined the Google party early with the new pay-per-kick GPS enabled gBall.
• Slashdot – IE 8.1 supports Firefox Plugins, Rendering Engine
  Not a particularly brilliant or engaging story, but the first one I found of the year.
• Google’s CADIE
  The world’s first AI, took over Google sites everywhere; YouTube, Google Maps, Gmail and Google Image Search and my personal favourite – a 3D-glasses enabled Chrome.
• Opera Face Gestures
  The natural progression from mouse gestures, with a priceless video.
• Gamespot’s Umbrella Corporation requests bailout
  One for the gamers fitting in nicely with today’s G20 protests, Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation have requested government bailout for its failing company.
• XBOX’s Alpine Legend
  Another one for the gamers, and worth it for the video alone, yodel with Franz the Manz Long on Xbox Live.
• Lastminute Spar days
  Expedia may have been offering flights to Mars, but Lastminute had a far more relaxing Spar Days on offer today.

And lastly, in the papers…

• The Daily Express invisible car
• BMW’s magnetic tow technology
• Waitrose Pinana’s

Do you have any favourites I’ve missed?  Don’t forget, it’s never too early to start planning next years pranks

Yellow Superlambanana in a cage

As you might have guessed, I”m a big fan of large, public displays of art. It can be a small piece of graffiti on the wall that makes me chuckle, or it can be street theatre involving a 40ft tall mechanical spider. I try not to ask for much. So this weekend in Liverpool has brought three of them all along at once, and I”ve loved it all.

Super Lamb Bananas. Lots of people have heard the name by now. It was originally a huge 17ft tall sculpture by a Japanese artist named Taro Chiezo. As with a lot of great pieces of art it was originally met with a resounding “huh?” by the local population of Liverpool. However, when art lovers and travellers from all over the UK to visit, they all went “huh?” too. So it”s no great surprise that the 2008 City of Culture created 125 two-metre high versions and put them all over the city.

Everyone is still going “huh?”, but the persistence is making everyone grow to love these little genetically modified beings. Liverpool has painted its spirit onto every single one of the unique animals, and it now sits firmly alongside the Liver bird as a modern-day symbol of the city. And now, the 8th-9th September sees a huge amount of them on display at the front of St. George”s Hall, before they”re auctioned off for charity on Wednesday. The original experience was like the pigs I”ve talked about in Bath, but Liverpool did really beat them to it. And they used genetically modified animals (originally to highlight the dangers of GM crops). You can almost sing along to “Cities just wanna have fun” (to the tune of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun) as you parade madly through the distorted flock. And you probably wouldn”t get any funny looks.

Another Place, Crosby Beach

Another Place is much more serene, slightly disturbing and intense. I had no idea it was near Liverpool, but a helpful lady on the train on the way in had mentioned it as a place that would be great to go and see if I could find a bus. It”s 20 minutes from Liverpool Central on the Northern Line to Crosby, or Waterloo. Both an easy 10-minute walk from the beach that stretches for 2 miles, and is full of 100 statues of Anthony Gormley, staring out to sea.

I”m a big fan of Anthony Gormley, and this piece is reminiscent of Event Horizon where 31 statues were placed on rooftops around London. Designed to symbolise the relationship that man has with nature, Crosby beach is such a perfect location, with signs of industry to one side, wind farms in the distance, and a long sandy (often muddy) beach meeting the sea at the horizon. So perfect, that when it came to November 2006 when the exhibit was to be moved to New York, it stayed in what will hopefully a permanent home to these 100 figures.

During particularly high tides all 100 figures are totally submerged, swallowed by the sea to return the next day, slightly greener, a little more worn, but still standing. A lot could be said for this as a metaphor… But having already fallen in love with a spider, genetically modified lambs, and a city running high on enthusiasm and a will to enjoy itself… I think I”ll leave this one up to you….

La Princesse

Yesterday was the final day of La Machine”s incredible La Princesse. The weather has held out, with only a few light spots of rain whilst the rest of England has been submerged. But we don”t care, we”ve been watching Princess with awe. Even the people who turned up to watch her on the docks on Friday said they didn”t mind they had to do so in the midst of a monsoon.

“Have you seen the spider yet?” I asked the new guy in the hostel. I forgot his name already, sorry, let”s call you Gary. Because it was something like that. “What spider?” He replied. I”d come across the only person within 15 miles of Liverpool that hadn”t heard about this magnificent event. “Right, get your shoes on, you”re coming with me.”

A false start at 3pm had brought everyone out to rival Saturday nights huge crowds. The spider wasn”t doing anything until 7.30pm, but the rumours had been going round and everyone turned up anyway. These had made it to the tourist offices, and all over the city. I think it was originally on the web site, but later removed – so no wonder that everyone was excited. But it wasn”t to be, and La Princesse wouldn”t awaken from her slumber on Concourse tower for another 4.5 hours.

And what an awakening. She walked the path around St. George”s Hall with her huge entourage of drums, harpists, and full brass band. Spraying everyone in the crowd with water, and lowering legs to just slightly skim the crowd as she went. We”d waited hours in the spots we”d all chosen. But everybody was smiling, and everyone was happy that La Princesse had graced the city with her presence.

The finale was spectacular. I write this as I”m on the train back home, and as someone has just attempted to proudly point out – “yeah, but the London one had a narrative, and more of a story”. Well, Liverpool had fireworks, snow, fire and a water ballet (I think that”s the correct terminology)… Not to mention the spider made use of all of its surroundings, including climbing a building!

I don”t say this to downplay anything that the team accomplished with the Sultan”s Elephant, because both events were huge and unforgettable. Both were remarkable feats of engineering, media, and public interaction – and something that I hope we will see much, much more of in the years to come. La Machine have dared you to dream, but I hope that they also inspire each and every one of us that magic can happen in our streets and in the cities we live. Thank you La Machine, and thank you Liverpool.

La Princesse on Concourse Tower

Back in 2006, a time traveling elephant visited London, on command of an eccentric rich sultan who was seeking to find another similar time traveler in the form of a young girl who was haunting his dreams. Well, you all know the story.

And now, new agents used on a building due to be destroyed in Liverpool has created a creature we all know and love, only just ever so slightly bigger. About, 40ft bigger in fact (although the sizes seem to get larger every time I hear them).

Royal De Luxe, or rather La Machine as they seem to now be called have let a huge 40ft spider loose on the streets, and indeed buildings of Liverpool. And there”s no way I”m going to miss something like that! She goes by the name of Princess (ahhhh), and she started out in a cocoon on the side of Liverpool Lime St. Station last Thursday. And she is definitely magnificent, if, y”know, freaky as hell at night time.

As soon as I left the station though, memories came flooding back of the crack-addled elephant worshipers of 2006. Children and adults alike all filtering out of the station with only one purpose in mind. “Have you seen the spider?” “Where is the spider?” “Hey, dude, like, stop hogging all the Pringles.” Not the last one.

The media has worked its magic, and everyone knows about Princess. Everyone wants to meet her, and we all want to be her friend (through fear of being kept alive in some kind of spider-feeding larder deep underneath Liverpool station before being eventually chewed on by gammy spider-jaws, I”d guess).

And the crowds are huge. They”re expecting over a million people over the three days, and I counted at least 200 today. People line the streets everywhere, and if you’re unfortunate enough to get stuck in front of Princess (as I was) – you will die (I was lucky). I’m not kidding, as we all tried to move out of the way of the incoming spider, and people behind us just wanted to get closer and stand in the way … Someone actually, genuinely, and I”m not lying here, shouted “think of the children!”. And sadly they weren”t joking either, there did seem to be panic brewing among the group of, shall we say “dads”, children were leaving crying, men with pushchairs were looking angry, and apparently some Liverpudlians just need to relax. Still, we made it out alive, the spider didn’t eat us – and I’m actually rather looking forward to collecting other prominent phrases like “we’re all going to die” and “oh, the humanity”.

Speaking of crowds, don”t worry, Liverpool has opened all three of its restaurants for this event, and you will only need to queue out the door and down the street for 30 minutes. I”m sure it”s always like this. Really.

All said, these shows are incredible. There”s a very very good reason that they draw such huge crowds, and they”re a once in a lifetime experience that you”ll never forget and hopefully look back upon fondly, forever. Queues, crowds, and long waiting times mean absolutely nothing as soon as you see the spiders legs appear around the corner. And you”ll probably never hear a huge crowd in the hundreds of thousands cheer for a giant spider again. Unless it”s eaten all the killer bed bugs. Which is quite possible. The final day is tomorrow, and I can”t wait ]]> http://www.kevinblake.co.uk/the-spider-that-ate-liverpool/215/feed/ 0 53.4107780 -2.9778380 http://www.kevinblake.co.uk/this-little-piggy-went-to-bath/205/ http://www.kevinblake.co.uk/this-little-piggy-went-to-bath/205/#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:55:48 +0000 Kevin http://www.kevinblake.co.uk/?p=205 I’d planned on this being first post being all about the brave new adventures around England I’m embarking on over the new few days. It’s wholly different from any past brave new adventure around England, as for the very first time I have a Rough Guides to Britain. And all real holidays involve a Rough Guide, so this must be one too.

It’s my logic, I’ll do what I like with it.

Bath Abbey

I’m hoping to find out if we’ve become the “overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts, obsessed with toffs and C-list celebrities” type of race that Rough Guides claim we have. So where better to visit than the origins of British civilisation epicentre that is Bath. I have only tenuous links to make such wild claims but it makes for a great introduction, doesn’t it?

Bath is famous for many things, The mostly preserved ancient Roman baths (60-70AD), The Wife of Bath, Jane Austen’s residence for five years, it’s a World Heritage site, King Bladud… Wait….Who?

You probably all remember the story of late King Bladud of 3,000 years ago. He contracted a disfiguring disease (hit by the ugly stick). It was due to this that he was banned from the royal palace, and eventually travelled to the Avon Valley in his new line of work, “Swineherd”. Unfortunately for the pigs, they all caught “ugly” off of poor old Bladud, and it wasn’t before they went rolling in the hot mud around Bath that they became beautiful Disney pigs again. Seeing the miracle with his own eyes, Bladud joined in with the pigs in what would nowadays be called “mad”. But due credit to the guy, the magical springs did the trick and he returned to retake the throne. When he returned to the palace, he founded the City of Bath and dedicated it’s healing powers to the Celtic goddess Sul.

King Bladud's Pigs. Abi and Emily

And that’s why 100 pig sculptures have been modelled, painted, decorated, been displayed in the greatest commemoration of Pass The Pigs the world has ever known. Oh, and to get Bladud’s statue out of storage and into Parade Gardens, of course. They’ll all be auctioned on 31^st Oct 2008. So get to Bath while you can, or get ready to place those bids. If you don’t make it, hopefully old Bladud will be back on his perch in the gardens, with a brand new pig sculpture made from Bath stone. Let’s hope so.

You can buy a map of all said pigs in the tourist information for the extortionate price of 1 pound. It’s well-worth it though and an excellent way to explore the city, taking you places you’d probably raise an “eh” for, before. I managed to photograph 54 of them in my one day visit. If I had longer, I would certainly go and find the rest – but I still consider this to be a pretty good haul.

My first impressions of Bath is a beautiful city, full of friendly smiling people, grand impressive architecture, sprawling green parks, and well worth the short 90 minute train journey from London Paddington. You won’t regret it. Unless you’re Jane Austen. Or you hate pigs.

So I’m helping you, really. And in return, you can go ahead and watch their excellent short film ‘The Beachcombers’, which has been nominated into the top 6 of the Best of Borough Awards 2008.

• Watch and vote for The Beachcombers

And if you don’t like these sort of things, just vote for it anyway and go join the Facebook group. Like I said, shameless

Putting aside the rumours that Gormley himself is actually inside one of the life-size casts, I naturally wanted to find them all. So since I had this afternoon off from work and it’s not far from the office, I decided to stalk Antony Gormley’s creations for a little while. And I think, armed with a trackstick and camera I’ve managed to find all 31 of them. It’s very difficult to tell now, which are the same statues from different angles.

Three viewing terraces at the Hayward provide the means to see all of the statues, and as Gormley’s previously commented – it’s very interesting to become part of the small community on that rooftops, trying to find them all. Whether actively pointing them out – or passively seeing other people do the same. It’s also rather eery to have all of those lifeless bodies staring back at you.

And Event Horizon isn’t the only attraction nearby. Inside the gallery, there are a huge number of sculptures and exhibits , including Allotment II, 300 reinforced concrete life-sized units each modelled upon the inhabitants of Malmo. Every single one is different, and you can’t help but be impressed at the sheer number of them, as well as yes – as the guide says – it’s anthropomorphic heaven. Throw away all your 20th century ideals of not being allowed to have first impressions any more. These are concrete blocks, and you won’t be hauled off to jail for being sexist, racist, ageist or judging someone by their appearance in any way. You can’t help but find your favourites or make random judgements over what sort of person they would be. Well I couldn’t.

Blind Light, the namesake of the entire exhibition is a massive glass box filled with a bright white fluffy cloud. The result of this, is that once inside you can’t see a damned think. After wandering around, barely able to see your own hands held out in front of you – you will have no idea where you are. Ghostly shadows will occasionally pass by and if you keep going, you’ll find the edges of the box where spectators will see your face emerge from the mist. It’s very surreal, but a great experience, and yet another example of Gormley making the spectators a part of the art. Not one for the claustrophobic, perhaps.

I won’t list everything else, I promise. Go for yourself and experience the world through different eyes. What I will do, is talk about another Gormley gem in the mostly forgotten area of London that we call Greenwich. The Quantum Cloud stands at 30m tall, making it even larger than the Angel of the North at Gateshead. In fact, until the construction of the B of the Bang sculpture in Manchester, 2005 – it was the largest sculpture in England. The Quantum Cloud sits on the Thames, by the pier at the newly opened O2 Arena, formally known as the Millennium Dome. It’s formed of hundreds of 1.5m lengths of random steel rods, at the centre of which you can make out the 20ft tall man standing amongst the cloud. But don’t look too closely, or you won’t see it. Magic eye, eat your heart out.

Around the corner from Leicester Square, away from the glamour and excitement of the Spiderman 3 premiere comes the distant roll of thunder. This is the sound of over four thousand horses with a single purpose; to canter, trot, gallop, jump and put on one hell of a show for all of London. All to the tune of ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’.

This was the scene at Trafalgar Sq, St Georges Day 2007, where Spamalot cast and crew were on hand to provide coconuts to any who wished to take part, and to teach a cast of thousands how to ride Python-style. The current record holders, New York – with 1,789 attendees set in March last year. We’re British, and nobody is better at looking complete and total tits than the British.

We arrived around 17.40 and exchanged our already printed registration forms for fine pairs of coconuts, so to speak. These were to be our finest of steeds for the evening, and guarantee us a place on the throne of history. “That guy from Capital One” was on stage to keep the early-comers amused, before Ken Livingstone arrived to rally the troops and offer words of support. It’s St Georges day, so we should all be incredibly proud to be British as well as be especially proud of the fantastic institution that is the British Film Festival. After about four hours of Ken being on stage, I was awoken to the sound of clip-clops in my ear and enthusiastically threw my coconuts together in an insane frenzy. If nothing else, so that Ken would leave the stage before he had a chance to bound into another pride speech

Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, members of the original Holy Grail, Python crew were next up – to offer advice on how to manage your horse, as well as introduce the training video. Coconuts clipped, coconuts clopped, and coconuts everywhere embarked upon their slow but inevitable journey to becoming small piles of dust. That is to say, we were all pleased to greet them

And what followed was a quick trip to the local Cafe…
“Nine Kroenenburgs please.”
“Nine?”
“… Better make it ten”.
… And much practising of the lungs, clipping, coconut mexican waves (Tsunami’s, more like), and clopping before the big event.

This is what all of us had been born for. This was the moment that 4,382+ insignificant and small lives, would become somehow more meaningful and fulfilled. We would show New York – nay – we would show the world who makes the biggest, and greatest coconut orchestra of all time. And show them we did. There are surprisingly no youtube videos of the event at the time of writing, but there is no doubt in my mind that soon they will flood the internet by the .. tens. When that happens, we can show you as well. But for now you’ll have to just trust me

It amazes me now, listening to Sister Hazel as well as listening to Liam Frost on the way home. There is just something inherently wrong with any song that doesn’t have coconuts in the chorus. We were taught this at school when music class had no guitars, keyboards, or computer-generated music. Instead – a single Xylophone with missing keys, and an assorted accompaniment of random percussion instruments cobbled together sometime in the early 50′s. I managed to avoid exposing my coconuts on the train though. If the song wasn’t written with coconuts, they just can’t be added randomly. Or can they?

Anyway, this is a discussion for future debate, and I’m getting way off track. So, record attempt – great. We achieved greatness with over 4,382 musicians. And as a reward, the entirety of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the film version, not Spamalot) was aired on a huge screen in the middle of Trafalgar Sq. There’s a lot to be said for sitting on a cold ground, cross-legged staring up at a film with huge numbers of other people in total silence, aside from the raucous clip-clip, clip-clop of every coconut in the square whenever King Arthur trotted around the screen, and screams of Nii!

And that’s what it’s all about, so go on – give a whistle.

For the last two weekends, I’ve used the hot days to take in all London has to offer in the way of cheap music festivals that have high associations with things that are cold and tasty. It might seem like I’ve limited my options somewhat, but fortunately there have been two such festivals that fit the bill heavily sponsored by Innocent smoothies, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
The Ben and Jerry’s was a bargain price of 5 pounds per day (though Danesy got the tickets off of ebay for the slightly more normally priced 16 pounds). I had the pleasure of seeing The Wonder Stuff (of immense 90s fame) Jose Gonzalez, and some slightly less-knowns like Captain (fantastic singles out and about at the moment), Nerina Pallot and Vincent Vincent and the Villains. There was also a huge authentic wooden helter skelter in the middle of the park, and lots of little fair-type games around the outside. The positives being all important; I won a badge from magnetic fishing! Sadly, I also got a bit of friction burn on my elbow from the wooden helter skelter. That’ll teach me for not wearing long sleeves.

The best part of all though… As much free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream as you can eat! Did I forget to mention that earlier on? I started to feel ill but couldn’t get enough of ‘oh my apple pie’, or ‘phish food’. Mmmmmm.

The Innocent festival was massive. The north part of Regent’s park was literally jam packed full of people, as this one’s a free festival (for entry). We only got one free bottle of innnocent drinks (cranberry one). Still really good And that had The Puppini sisters, Whisky Cats, Nouvelle Vague, and finally Arrested Development as the headliners. I like my guitars and melodies a lot more than Arrested Development provide – but they were still very good – and it was a great day out in the sunshine…. Even if it did take over 45 minutes to queue up for 4 glasses of pimms, they made up for it though with the various signs dotted about all over the place, like: “No glass. No selling. No barbecues. And definately no selling glass barbecues”. Well I thought it was good…

The great thing about both of them were the high morals that the companies (at least claim) they stand for. Lots of charity work across the world, and do no harm were the themes of both. Great use of recycling bins, bio-diesel fuels, no plastic plates or cutlery, bike racks etc were on hand at one or more of each of the festivals. I even came away from the Ben and Jerry’s festival with a tree! Well, it’s a seed, and it comes with fertiliser and you can grow it in the Ben and Jerry’s pot it came in. Really good weekends all in all – I can highly recommend them next year!

Free ice cream. What more incentive do you need?

It doesn’t sound like your average game, but some clever marketing and people’s desire for a quick fix to being smart have already made the game a top seller in a huge number of markets, worldwide.

And so far, it’s been great fun I’ve learnt the secrets of Sodoku and become quietly addicted, and got myself a highly respectable brain age score. I’ll find a place on my sidebar to update my brain age on the blog every now and then. Hopefully I can top my current score of .. 73. Yep, that’s right, I have the brain of a 73 year old. Old and wise. Actually, it doesn’t quite work that way as it’s the lower the better – it’s demonstrating that there’re dead brain cells beyond my years.
Hopefully the next few weeks will improve… Especially if I write clearly enough so that Brain Age can recognise my chicken scratch handwriting