Autons

First aid and invasion of the autons

By On July 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

This week I thought “Why not do a first aid course?”. The company offered us all a day out at the American Red Cross, to learn CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), basic first aid, and some tips on when to use an AED (automated external defibrilator). It was rather a jolly day, despite being constantly reminded not [...]

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A whole lot of gay loving

By On June 30, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Last Friday, New York became the 6th US state to behave like a western democracy and vote in favour of the legality of same-sex marriages. This is excellent news.  I was best-man at the civil partnership (as UK law treats same-sex marriages) of 2 very close friends, and it was a deeply moving, beautiful [...]

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Catherine Tate and David Tennant signing autographs

Much ado about Tennant

By On June 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment

“We’re going to see David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing”, Haley said to me in November 2010. “We’ve been here before”, I thought. A couple of years ago we joined the RSC so we could buy advance tickets for the London run of Hamlet (starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart). [...]

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Tolkien and psycholinguistics

By On May 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

A good friend of mine has written a book. I’m quite excited about it. Being an academic I know lots of people who have published, because in universities that is the convenient way that pen-pushers measure how clever, hard-working, REF-able, or just highly-cited regardless of research quality you are. Publish or perish. Most of [...]

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Dance fever

Chaotic pendulous ball

By On April 1, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Its generally at this time of year that I remember about Facebook. During the normal course of my life I am happy to say that I can stay away from Facebook for large periods of time. However around Easter is traditionally when the Chaos Ball is, that is the Cardiff Uni, School of Physics annual [...]

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Make your own Planck model

By On March 8, 2011 · Leave a Comment

I love making time-lapse films, so I’ve done another one. Stuart has made a very nice Planck model, so we thought a quick explanation of how to assemble it would be the perfect accompaniment. I’m behind the camera and you can see Stuart’s hands doing the work.

You can get your hands on [...]

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A day in the life of a short film

By On February 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Making a video is like a Cadbury’s Double Decker; there is a period of time beyond which I forget how much I dislike it and have a crack at another one. In the case of a Double Decker it’s the idea of nougaty chocolate that lures me in. With videos I rather like the [...]

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Welsh college of Dirty Beasts

By On February 8, 2011 · 3 Comments

When I was much younger than I am now, I had the books of Dirty Beasts and Revolting Rhymes, by Roald Dahl. I have a lot of sympathy for Roald Dahl as an author. He does what Enid Blyton dares not. Make stories for children (and about children) where you can say ‘fart’, dirty [...]

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A lapse in concentration

By On February 6, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Recently I’ve become a little obsessed with making time-lapse videos. My modest equipment is an Olympus e420 (which is a digital SLR camera – I’ve had an Olympus OM10 since I was about 12 and loved it), a 25mm-50mm zoom lens, and a strange device called an intervalometer. This last esoteric piece of [...]

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