Falling Sky

Nosh of the Nation

Being the Farmers Market junkie that I've become in my old age, I don't find myself in supermarkets all that often these days, especially with Waitrose's online shopping supplying the vast quantities of Moo needed to sustain my lumbering bulk. Still, I'd be a berk not to realise how important supermarkets are to many when it comes to getting in the groceries, so it's been good to hear about recent campaigns by various stores to be more right-on (or at least be seen to do so). From fair trade to free range to locally sourced goods to eco products, it's about bloody time and means that those without the means to buy direct from suppliers don't have to compromise quite so much at the shops, unless all they give a damn about is price and nothing but, in which case we're all fucked. Here in Scotland, much like other stores, Tesco's have made a big deal about sourcing products from Scottish providers, and in 2006 they held their first annual Scottish food fair/showcase/exhibition in Edinburgh, called Enjoy the Taste of Scotland (not to be confuddled with the Taste Festivals). This year, it headed west and is currently plonked in the middle of George Square in Glasgow all this weekend. Attendance is completely free, with a nice big range of suppliers (some of whom we've already met at markets) giving samples and stories about their various products, plus a load of cooking demonstrations. So it's free, but is it worth your time? Being at the cutting edge of new media (ie we've got blogs), the missus-to-be and I managed to shuffled our scruffy selves in yesterday for the press day. You can read the good lady's review here - as you'll see below what hers lacks in alcohol mine shall truly make up for...

Aaaand Relax

Phew. After all that, I need pandas...

...a genuinely funny guide about cats through the eyes of engineers...

...and a cat playing a theremin. You know, the woo-OOO-ooo-ooo-OOH noise from Good Vibrations. The expressions are mint.

GLORIOUS.

Off to Glasgow tomorrow afternoon to preview this weekend's Enjoy the Taste of Scotland food festival which promises to be awash with top nosh from suppliers across this fair land - the missus-to-be and I will give it a jolly good blogging tomorrow, highlighting any particular products you should get your sticky mitts on. Given the huge amount of nibbles I plan on nibbling at said event, it's probably fortuitous that we'll be buying Wii Fit tomorrow. A weekend of board-based lurching, stretching and toppling over surely awaits, but for once it'll be in the safety of our own home.

To Hell With Etsy

I've had a shop on Etsy for well over one & a half years now. During this time I sold 18 pieces of artwork and Etsy cheerfully took my money for the fees and commissions. I've had more than a few misgivings, and I've slowly been spreading my artwork to another online store in the hope of reaching a more European market, but still listing new work at Etsy when produced. Then last night I receive the following email, telling me... er, what exactly?

Hello,

I wanted to pass on some information to you about mature listings. Here is what our Dos and Don'ts have to say about items that may need special attention due to their content:

*Mature content is: sexual activity or content, profane language, or graphic violence as shown in an item. *These items must be tagged "mature".

*The first thumbnail image should be kept appropriate for general audiences; additional images in the listing may show the item in its entirety.

*Mature content listings will remain in all public searches by default; users can restrict results by using the exclusionary search term "NOT mature" ("opt-out" search status).

*Artful representation of the nude human figure is allowed. The context of the nudity determines if it is a mature content item (see above).

*Items are subject to staff review on a case-by-case basis. If the staff evaluates the content to be mature, you will be asked to add the tag "mature" or remove the listing entirely. Please be sure to comply with these policies! If you have any questions, feel free to contact support [!at] etsy.com

For more information about our guidelines, please read the Dos and Don'ts of Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/dosdonts.php#a4

Best,

Amber

Etsy Support

I read this over a couple of times just to be sure I wasn't missing something. Was I being asked or told to do something? I was perfectly aware of the (patronisingly titled) Dos and Don'ts of Etsy since they were first issued after their dreadful Constitution and had figured that, as my nude artwork clearly did not contain sexual content - well, no more so than the plaque on Pioneer - I clearly didn't have to do a thing. Nothing had been said since, and nothing in the above email seemed to relate to any of the artwork I was selling. Considering I haven't produced any new nude artwork for months, it couldn't have been prompted by a new piece, so what on earth was it for? Suitably perplexed, I reply:

Hello,

Why have I just received this email?
Thanks,

Jon Nagl

Ten minutes later, back comes...

Hi Jon,

Thanks for getting back to us so promptly. Please add the 'mature' tag to to nudes that you feature in your shop. Also, Etsy does not allow URLs that direct to other e-commerce sites, so we ask you to remove all links that link to outside e-commerce sites from your shop. Let us know when this is completed, so that we can give your shop the 'OK'. Thanks so much.

Best,

Amber

Etsy Support

The latter point first - I'd put a link to my Dawanda site in my profile where I was selling artwork on Etsy. It had been up there for a few months, but if they asked me to remove it, fair enough, that's understandable.

But... a mature tag? Let's just remind ourselves what that represents:

sexual activity or content, profane language, or graphic violence as shown in an item [....] Artful representation of the nude human figure is allowed. The context of the nudity determines if it is a mature content item (see above).

In other words, my life drawing artwork, unbeknownst to me, contains sexual activity and/or content. And if I added a mature tag to every nude piece I had on sale, I would be admitting as such. Friends, there is NO FUCKING WAY. And here's why.

One doesn't get to keep a lot of principles in this sordid world that wears you down with debt and depression, but if nothing else I have always stayed true to my artwork. That sounds like a terribly pretentious thing to write, but it's true - I never got into animating for advertisements (pretty much the only way a non-CGIer like myself could've progressed after four years of hand-drawn animation study) because I despised the thought of my artwork being used to sell expensive shit to children too young to understand cost, debt or having enough to make it through the month. Working minimum wage wasn't much fun, but at least I could look at myself in the mirror. What I do now for a living has absolutely no connection with the five years I spent at art college - all that I have from those times is a worn-down videotape of a short animated film and the ability to draw and paint, so it's something I'm pretty precious about, pulling out of life drawing last year when I felt I was getting too price-fixated about my pictures. My day job isn't a part of me, it's just something I do, but artwork - that's personal. Whenever I've sold a piece of work it's a thrill, not for the money (though, y'know, that doesn't hurt) but for the validation, the thought that someone felt that something I'd done was worth putting on their wall or giving to someone as a gift. What could be more of a compliment than to be paid for a piece of artwork, that money representing hours spent by that person in their own day-job? It's a hell of a feeling, assuring me that those five years weren't wasted, not in the least, and that while the work I do to pay the bills could be done by anyone with a modicum of sense and legal study, the work I've put into a painting is unique, the result - for better or worse - all mine. In other words, I give a damn about my artwork. It's not like selling supplies (which seems to be the be all and end all of Etsy these days), it's not like selling print after print of the same picture - these unique pieces matter to me, and are far more than just a commodity.

I'm trying to explain to you why this would be such a big deal to me, what that simple request represents, why my reaction is of fury and indignation. How dare they? How dare they insinuate that my drawings, my paintings are nothing but cheap titillation? That the years spent learning how to accurately depict the human body on paper or canvas was done with no higher purpose than giving someone an erection? And that most puritanically fucked-up and damaging concept of all that I've always railed against when it came to life drawing, that nudity = sex?

No. I will not accept that my artwork is 'adults-only'. I will not accept that a painting of a groin (of either gender) is pornography. I will not agree to this demented mindset that views the naked human body as something to be ashamed of. Adding one simple little 'tag' to my nude artwork would have only taken a few seconds, but it would represent an acceptance of such puritanical thinking. I responded:

Thank you for the prompt response.

The request to remove the link to outside sites is fair enough and I would have been happy to comply. However, I find the suggestion that my artwork requires tagging as 'mature' genuinely offensive considering all the artwork is expressively non-sexual and no more explicit than that seen in unrestricted public galleries. I shall therefore close my Etsy store forthwith.

Jon Nagl

Within minutes I had shut down my entire Etsy shop. It means I haven't got my money's worth from the listing fees I paid for the items that were currently on sale, but fuck it. The silver lining is that it'll now give me the impetus to list all my artwork on my Dawanda shop, rather than the selection that's currently there. In the long term, this may well end up being financially better too - with the US$ staggering around the currency markets like a doped kitten, the Euro looms nicely over UK£ right now, which is good news for anyone wanting to export to the Eurozone. Dawanda, unlike the American-hipster-centric Etsy, is very much a European site, complete with French and German language versions, so I should be reaching a new, closer audience with an exchange rate that actually benefits a UK seller. Pricing up in US$, by contrast, has been a depressing experience and one I'll be glad to leave behind, along with the whole childish, faux-naive, too-cool-for-school mindset of Etsy that's been both infuriating and at times downright unprofessional. No, I won't miss it, though I will miss the 200+ people who had favourited - oh, all right, hearted - my store and could all have been potential future customers. Whether any make it over to my new store or not, I don't know. If Dawanda should ever gets squeamish about nude artwork, I will certainly close up shop there without a second thought and take it all to jonnagl.com - but hopefully I'll never have to take such a step. One expects better from Europe, but then I'd also expected better from Etsy, which started so well and went to hell. Good riddance to prudish rubbish.

PS: Their emails to me stated at the bottom that "This email is a private conversation between you and Etsy. Please respect this confidentiality and refrain from distributing this communication without permission from Etsy." Normally I would respect such a statement, but a) I wanted others to see exactly how they communicated (ie poorly) and b) if you're going to treat my artwork with disrespect, expect to be treated the same in return.

Head Music

Beth Gibbons, Portishead Gig @ Corn Exchange, Edinburgh, 12.04.2008, originally uploaded by LiAnG_c.

I'm pleased to report that last night's Portishead concert was as good as hoped. So, what's to tell? Well, getting the downers out of the way first:
- The venue was as drab as predicted, a flat-floored hall with no apparent concession towards acoustics - with sloped floor and better sonics, Glasgow's ABC or Academy would've been far more suitable.
- The audience, as feared, contained a fair number of chuntering dipshits who use live music as a backing track for their bellowed conversations. Sadly this wasn't confined to the fringes of the bars, with berks in the 'main' audience blethering throughout both support and headline acts, including inane yapping about "this is my favourite song, oh I can't wait to get home and listen to it" while the song is still being performed. Are some people unable to think without automatically yelping said thought to their fellow schmuck? The performance of Wandering Stars was sublime and delicate, yet there was a tangible wall of background noise from all the many people who'd paid £30+ quid for a ticket to this concert, only to spend it talking shit. It was all horribly reminiscent of the infamous José Gonzales gig of two years back and is enough to make me swear off Edinburgh audiences, but this review of Portishead's London show suggests a similar problem there, with one dipshit interviewed - 'Owen Raven, banker' presumably being rhyming slang - saying "[s]he was just dreary. But then, I've only listened to them a couple of times before. It didn't bother me when they had to go off for the technical problems. It was an excuse to go to the bar." I'd thought the relatively high ticket price would keep away all but committed fans, yet that complete & utter banker represents a notable number of people who seem to buy tickets on a vague whim - 'oh, Portishead, I heard them on This Life a couple of times, yeah why not'. Fuck that mentality and fuck them.
- Lowlight of the night was surely the two student twats in front of us shouting the stupidest, dumbest conversation I've ever had the immense misfortune to hear while we were trying to listen to Hawk & A Hacksaw, made all the worse by the fact that we'd got a good location about 10 rows from the stage. We'd been standing there for a few songs and greatly enjoying it, at which point these two lagered-up cocks lurched through the audience and staggered to a stop in front of the Lass before bellowing away at each other constantly about girls, foreplay, football - christ, I wish I was making this up. Everyone within a metre of them was clearly getting increasingly fecked off but, naturally, no-one said a thing until the Burd (oh, how I love her) asked them to be quiet or take their conversation over to the bar. A normal human being would feel suitably chastised, apologise and gone off to the bar to continue said chuntering, but these immature, irredeemable fuckwads stopped for a second as the feeble neurons in their skulls briefly sparked, then bellowed "FUCKIN STAND IN FRONT OF US THEN!" and would not stop no matter how many times we emphasised they were ruining the music. We gave up and moved back a few 'rows' where quite a few people sympathised with us. It was profoundly depressing for me - when you love music so much, when you connect with others over bands, you (perhaps naively) imagine that fellow fans will be good people, like-minded souls - and at many gigs that's been the case. To find you share a beloved band with foul idiots is strangely disappointing.
- This'll be hugely hypocritical of me, having taken many pictures at concerts myself, but the huge number of cameras/phones in use at this gig was maddening. If you're in the first few rows (as I suspect the photographer of the good photograph above was) you're likely to get a decent snap, so fair play, but the number of people I saw holding up cameras further back in the audience and no doubt coming away with blurred, nonsensical images was ridiculous, not to mention the many others filming entire songs on their phones. When you can't see the stage for all the glowing LCD displays on cameras and phones held aloft, something seems screwy. It's as though for some people an event is only real if they've got some digital record of it, no matter how blurred or bland, yet many were clearly spending time trying to compose shots or change functions when they could've just enjoyed the show - it just seems like a barrier, a filter between the music and the person. I dunno, maybe I'm just a crotchety old bastard...

Rants over. Now, GOOD STUFF!
- I'd heard the support act, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, a few times beforehand and never really paid much attention - while slightly reminiscent of Beirut or bits of Neutral Milk Hotel, it just didn't connect. Live, however, their music worked really well, excellent musicianship and some energised rhythms backed with strings, accordian, clarinet, trumpet and a couple of other intriguing instruments. Mostly instrumental, it felt as though initially the audience viewed them as a novelty but the first song won most people over. I missed most of the second half of their set due to the aforementioned pair of pricks, but that first half was grand, the music conjuring images of Eastern European villages and Mexican mariachis.
- Then, of course, the main act. Portishead played as a six-piece, with lead guitar, bass guitar, two sets of percussion, keyboard and vocals. Ah, the vocals. Beth's voice is, if anything, even more versatile and affecting than that last time in 1997, able to go from cooing like a theremin to shrieking like a death metallist possessed and everything inbetween. She's an incredible performer, seemingly pouring herself into the microphone with agony at points, but between songs was clearly loving the gig - even from a distance we could see her beaming as the audience roared approval for every song. Machine Gun, in particular, went down an absolute storm - and with good reason, the sound of that percussion battering around the hall was stunning - and to see something so (relatively) harsh cheered by an audience that could've just been there to hear Sour Times was really quite heartening.
- Talking of which, to counterpoint the above frothy rantings, much of the audience was great and clearly well into the music. The fact it was on a Saturday might've meant a lot of people had been drinking since the afternoon but it also seemed to loosen up the audience as well. While not always a good thing - clapping along to songs really should be left to Dire Straits gigs - it was great to see so many people reacting to the new music so well, and it felt like the band thought the same.
- The black-clad band as a whole was on top form and did their recorded work justice. Burrow's guitar playing was especially good, at one point conjuring up Joy Division, later veering into drone-metal territory, a very good place to be. While Portishead aren't a band for on-stage theatrics - much like Radiohead, they pretty much stand where they are and make this amazing music - it was thrilling to watch them playing.
- The visuals were well chosen, blending between live footage of the band shot from fixed cameras and various pieces of film depending on the song. A strange animation of forests and beasts, children playing on Super-8 film, electrical lines stuttering, even something as simple as the [P] logo being distorted to fuck, suited the music well.
- All the same, I quite happily spent much of the concert with my eyes closed. Partly because I was bored of all the LCD screens but mainly because, with some live acts (Pelican, Isis, Sigur Ros) the music being played is so rich, so deep that it's a pleasure to just shut your eyes and focus utterly on the sounds. There were so many points in this show when I could do this, the first coming to mind being when Mysterons kicked in, theremin sounds curling around taut percussion and Beth's plaintive singing. Absolutely gorgeous, the sonic equivalent of tasting something so good that you want to briefly shut off all other four senses and give it the focus it deserves.
- For the curious, the setlist is here.
- Oh aye, on arriving at the gig we were given a little lanyard with a littler USB stick attached, suitably P-branded. Popped it into the Precious after getting home and up popped a brief but enjoyable staccato of images and sound, as though someone were skipping through a DVD of the making of their new album. I might pop it up on here sometime for any fans of the band who didn't get to see them live, and as free promo items go it beats postcards.

In summary? Fucking marvellous, well worth the wait, even if I came away just that little bit more misanthropic than before. And while I've been tapping away furiously like a berk, the missus-to-be has started, finished and published her own account of the gig, which no doubt makes more sense than my wibblings. Next up - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Glasgow Academy. Expect fire, brimstone and facial hair.

You'll Never Live In A Penthouse Again

[REC]

A few weeks back I went along to see George Romero's Diary of the Dead, having enjoyed his previous films. It was shit. Pretentious, pedestrian, shallow and hypocritical, it's biggest crime was failing to be remotely thrilling or scary. Having started the year with a cracking piece of handheld terror in the form of Cloverfield, it was infuriating to see how flawed Diary was, given its potential. I came away from it thoroughly narked and imagining how good, how intense, how scary a good bloody zombie film could be filmed handheld, if only it were done right.

Thank fuck, then, for [REC], a Spanish film that's been doing the festival rounds since last year but just got a UK release this weekend. At 85 minutes it's brief, breathless and incredibly efficient, the majority of the film set in just one tenement location. It has no message, no moral, and being near-real-time there's hardly enough time for character development, narrative twists or any of that malarky. Instead, like the aforementioned Cloverfield, it's more of an experience, a ghost train par excellence, the film a device to run the audience through a wringer of tension and fear. And, praise the lords, it works.

The less you know of the plot the more satisfying it'll be - I had little idea what happens in it aside from TV crew with firemen gets trapped inside a tenement building and things get badly, bloodily wrong. And, oh lordy, does it. As with Cloverfield, the opening 15 minutes are deliberately quite bland and uneventful - of course, we know something's going to happen sometime, but it's the wait that lets the tension start to build. It cranks up that much further once things do start happening, delivering a few superb "HOLY FUCK!!" moments on the way. The premise and actual use of handheld filming is extremely believable in this film, moreso than parts of Cloverfield and far more so that Diary, becoming increasingly more frantic and desperate as the film progresses. Likewise, by being restricted to just one location, a feeling of intense claustrophobia and panic is built up. [REC] definitely deserves to be seen in the cinema, with surprisingly effective use of sound and the moments of darkness all the more powerful for being near-absolute. It's not particularly gory but still not for squeamish types or those unlikely to enjoy an hour of sustained terror (now, why does that sound so strange?).

[REC] is very much a film to experience, to react to, rather than sit back and watch passively - as it progressed I became aware of adrenaline in my veins, muscles tensed and eyes boggling just that little bit wider than usual. There's an American remake of it out due in October which, if it follows previous US remakes of non-English-langauge horror, will be more polished, more CGI'd and far less effective (still, you never know), . Horror fans should leap at the chance to catch this at the cinema, as should anyone who liked Cloverfield and fancies something a little harder. Indeed, just like Cloverfield and 28 Weeks Later the film seems focused primarily on terrorising the audience, rather than the subtler drawn-out fear of The Orphanage (still on, still essential). This reaches its climax in a truly dread-filled final 15 minutes that manages to give some fascinating context as to what's been happening and deliver a really, really disturbing sight that's been replaying in my brain at bedtime for the last two nights. Not enough to bring on sleepless nights - no film's managed that - and I'm bloody glad I've had no nightmares featuring said sight, but remarkable nonetheless. It's rare enough to have one film come out and give me the willies, but two within a month of each other? Happy days!

Not-bad teaser trailer below (it doesn't contain any footage from the actual film, but you'll get the idea...)

All Work And No Play Makes This A Dull Blog

Dearie me. It's been intolerably quiet in this little corner of the interweb over the last fortnight and the more days that go by without posting the harder it gets to actually sit down and bloody write something. Simply enough, I've been jolly knackered thanks to a wodge of extra hours I've been working, so that by the time I've got home and dinner's out of the way there's just no joie de blog left in me. I dunno, life just seems to fly by in a blur of work-sleep-work-sleep-work-sleep-WEEKEND!-sleep-work repeated ad nauseum. Quite feeble really. Goodness knows how anyone has the energy to work a full-time job and raise a family without any help from robotic servants or magical powers.

So, what's been going on in Naglville lately? Aside from the aforementioned increased work, not much at all. Tonight the fiancée and me are off to a concert together for the first time since, bloody hell, October 2006, to see our beloved Portishead blow the roof off the Edinburgh Corn Exchange just down the road. Having already heard the new album and been suitably impressed by it (proper write-up once released, but it's a heavier, chillier beast than their previous albums and is likely to be a right ear-clobberer live) I'm exceedingly excited about tonight. I last saw them live at the Southampton Guildhall in, oh god, November 1997 (the ticket's in my college cuttings book) and that was stunning, one of my favourite gigs ever, with me particularly bewitched by Beth Gibbons giving the sort of heartfelt performance that made by 20 year old indiekid heart leap. Going by the glimpses of live footage from ATP, they've still got it in spades - a seven-track performance went up online late last night, but I'm not watching it until tomorrow, just to make tonight that little bit fresher and surprising.

Haven't worked on any artwork for the last few weeks either which, like blogging or going to the gym, becomes more intimidating and infuriating the longer I leave it. Bloody ridiculous, but I'll get something done tomorrow or fall asleep trying. Until Thursday I'd not been to the gym for over a fortnight either, but have got back into the swing of that in the last two days. A particular highpoint in exercising occured yesterday on the treadmill when a rather long Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan track came on the iPod shuffle and I went into some kind of zen-like state of bliss, running for double the time I'd normally do (or manage). I thought that fast relentless chuggy metal (System of a Down, Torche - not Melt Banana, that'd induce a hernia) or fast electronica (Orbital at their technoist, particularly Rewind) made the best workout music, but turns out it's a bunch of blokes clapping and singing lyrics I cannot possibly understand. If I ever do a proper run, I'm filling the shuffle with Qawwali chanting.

What else? Saw [Rec] yesterday which really deserves its own post, so hopefully I can manage that in the next 24 hours, but in summary - brutal, brief, claustrophobic, genuinely terrifying finale, bloody good horror. Currently reading Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene which is as good as it's modern-classic status suggests, managing to be both scientifically thorough yet accessible to a lumbering berk like meself. The only problem I have is that it's taking time to read - as with Brian Greene's wonderful superstring books, you can't just nip in & out of the text like a lightweight fiction - and I'm desperate to finish. Not because it's not enjoyable - far from it, it's a cracking read and I'd recommend it to every one of you - but the book I read before it was Master and Commander, the first of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, and it was such a joy that I'm now gagging to get into the second one, Post Captain. I got hold of it a couple of days back and it now sits on the table like a wicked temptress, calling me away from the joys of genes with the promise of 19th century shenanigans. But nay! I shall be strong!

Hurrahs and huzzahs to the BBC this week for enabling the BBC iPlayer for use on the Wii Internet browser. It's all very well using said player on computers, but as the Wii is hooked up to the television this basically allows you to watch iPlayer shows on the telly rather than a monitor, just as it should be. We had a go at this on Wednesday - Doctor Who Confidential kept pausing every five minutes or so, most likely due to too many people on the neighbourhood broadband line at the time (6:30pm) but when we had a second go an hour later with Transatlantic Sessions the entire programme streamed without a pause. Picture quality is inevitably sub-broadcast but still finer than YouTube, while the sound quality sounded good to these ears. Good to see they're not averse to putting full-length features up - Danny Boyle's Millions is up for another day - and we'll probably pop Later with Jools Holland on sometime next week, what with it featuring Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglova playing music from the wonderful soundtrack of the wonderful soundtrack for the adorable Once, and Goldfrapp playing from the spookily dreamy Seventh Tree, the perfect soundtrack for a nice sunny Spring, if only there were one rather the rerun of Autumn we're currently experiencing.

Anything else? We're now onto the second series of Jeeves And Wooster and it continues to be a sublime pleasure, even better than I thought back in - gulp - 1991. It's incredibly comforting to watch, for reasons I can't quite explain, but it's all so cosy and makes one wistful for a world of politeness, decorum, tailoring and omnipotent manservants. Following on from that, the third of Stephen Fry's podcasts - sorry, podgrams - is up and waiting for you on iTunes (don't fear, they're still free). Very nice too - such is the loveliness of Fry that it could be half an hour of him reading the ingredients for Frosties and it would still be charming. Of course, his writing is far more interesting than the ingredients for Frosties, so it's a class act all round - I particularly enjoyed his previous piece on dancing and the inability to do so, being similarly hapless at cutting a groove. No doubt I'll end up quoting it verbatim when people start asking about there being a First Dance after the wedding...

I'm still waiting for Mario Kart Wii and my vinyl copy of R.E.M.s thrilling Accelerate to come through the post, the former of which undoubtedly leading to hours, days, weeks flying by in our little flat as the Lass & I challenge each other to tournament after tournament of wheely madness. I still remember just how much time during my study in Dublin was spent on Mario Kart 64 with my housemates - I would regret it and wonder wistfully that if I'd spent all that time animating I might be a better artist now, but to be honest it was a bloody good time and therefore jolly well spent. Though goodness knows what kind of driver I'll make when I inevitably learn to drive one day and go tearing down roads, looking for mushrooms and checking the rear view mirror for blue spiky shells.

Oh, and I baked some raisin flapjacks last Saturday. They were lovely. Go me!

Stars Under Ice

There's a whole bunch of fascinating pictures at this National Geographic News article on unknown beasties discovered under Antarctica earlier this year (dear god, look at those starfish!). I was tempted by the globular bulbousity of the sea pig, but I reckon this photo is the best of the bunch.

Photograph by DTIS camera/NZ IPY-CAML

High-powered cameras photographed this sea star or a starfish of the genus Labediaster (lower left) surrounded by brittle stars on a seamount 492 feet (150 meters) below the surface of Antarctica's Ross Sea.

Landing Now At Terminal 5...

Bravo to the BBC for the new iPlayer trailer, released on the 1st April for rather obvious reasons. Chuckle value aside, there's also some admirably realistic effects work in there (well, within reason) and it all looks very pretty. YouTube stream below, higher-quality iPlayer version here for the next few days.