thursday 31st october
last night was truth or date more than trick or treat until those crazy kids downstairs rang the bell. we let it ring. it rang again, i opened the window to see danny looking up at me with 'trick or treat, you idiot!!' as if we didn't have slightly more important things to worry about. like fences.

wednesday 30th october
'i wish they'd find some way to control the subjects a man studies; a maniac with a lot of knowledge is a threat.' - meat beat manifesto, satyricon.



tuesday 29th october
sitting at work with an email from new york saying positive things (they liked it!) and all my toys (apart from lbc) round me. i have hot ribena, a clean desk, a fixed laserwriter and 'the streets' downloading. i'm just getting on with things, one at a time.



monday 28th october
three pictures taken from my driver's seat whilst waiting for the lights to go green, southbound over london bridge at 6.55pm.



sunday 27th october
the snowy season is about to begin. i know this because the ski show is in town. it's the same old trade show shenanigans with everything and anything even remotley related to snow-holidays on sale. it was windy last night; today traffic lights are across roads, trees are splintered as if struck by cold lightning. we are experiencing, in the words of the deluxe, 'leaf drifts'.



saturday 26th october
hitman2 and sunshine.

friday 25th october
as i washed up, bored from being at home for almost an entire week, i saw the clouds.



thursday 24th october
this new project's a sticky one. finding out where to start is always the most difficult and thinking about it whilst rip-van-sofaing it has raised as many problems as good solutions. no photography, no footage, no text. hmm. it's best-guess time and hope they like it.however much i want the storyboard to be faultless i know it's going to be a starting point. the problem is time.

wednesday 23rd october
i thought i was well enough to go to work, so i did. i ended up grumpy, with little done and snappy. so i came home, felt bad, apologised and started again. i felt better by midnight as i flipped the screen down and still bad. although at least i'd got something done. shame about the flat tyre.

in the lift paul from pd3 said, 'there's no point in coming to work; it'll make it worse.' i should have listened.

tuesday 22nd october
wake up. cough. put kettle on. run bath. bath while drinking lemsip. get out. blow nose. ring philip. dial up. cough. blow nose. it's a routine almost. i've been lying on the sofa for three days now and, in every sense of the word, nothing. being ill with nobody to comfort you is no fun. the nail is sore but at least it's still on.

for my birthday those crazy kids downstairs made me a crossbow and a baseball bat which both definitely work. so who says they don't need to go to school?

big well dones all round to the sonleys, who are expecting thier first (out of i would guess three). jen was always my number one mum wannabe and now she's going to bloom. go, girl! ;-)

monday 21st october
there's no way i can work today. it's urgh. capital u.

sunday 20th october
chumpy cooked one of his sunday belters which i'm sure did me good. ain't horseradish sauce brilliant?

saturday 19th october
three hours in bed followed by a throat of fire. my flatmate, holly and steve have all had the bug that's been wiping out london one person at a time and today, the day after successfully getting lots of very bizarre, difficult and possibly ethically questionable work it was my turn.

friday 18th october
two days into being a year older (however that works) i feel rather run down. it's been a big week with lots of fun stuff and i have to be ready for the drinks tonight so it's time for an afternoon nap on the studio sofa. then it's clerkenwell house with gemma, ade, tom, fiona, funkstar, deluxe, hol, chimp and b-boy. starsky and hutch on the toilet door and possibly a game of pool. if i'm up to it.

thursday 17th october
lee evans at the arena with the chimp, matt, b-boy, laylah and her friend, whose name i have already forgotten. i'm looking forward to the weekend so i can tidy my room, wash clothes, play games, watch dvds and cook. the weather has broken this week bringing cold winter winds and clear skies. i plan to stay inside where it's warm. it's time to wear jumpers and coats and drive with the heating on.



wednesday 16th october
it definitely doesn't feel like a year ago today.

this afternoon i am doing exactly what i want to. out of everything i chose boarding with the boys: it's peejay, sorry, sonners, funky, steve and me. on the slope with my video camera and black fingernails too sore to even touch, let alone fall on. the question is, will i be able to keep off the rails this afternoon?

...the answer is 'a definite no'. third run and the 12-footer was jibbed, badly, followed by the same again with fewer falls. we took footage and were told off by a slope attendant with a face like a mudslide and an attitude of a thunderstorm. funk stayed in the bar after nandos as we had a feeble attempt, this time on worse snow after the grooming, catching him up soon afterards just in time to see gerrard half volley the second and unfortunately last against macedonia. the chocolate covered scorpion, lizard and fly glasses provided the entertainment as did the rocking singalong to 'high fi serious' on the way home as we raced against the ski-laden mg. a queue to the blackwall tunnel later plus a little more driving from charlton and i was home, tired, a year older and still slightly concerned over what i should be working on this week but so far haven't.



tuesday 15th october
last night was supposed to be stu and timmy's birthday drinks but after last night and before tomorrow i need food, sleep and quiet.

monday 14th october
the design museum debate was a strange one to call. i can't really work out whether it went well or not, just that there was an unfair question at the end.



sunday 13th october
we drove around town looking for vegetarian sunday roasts, receiving looks that suggested insanity. it was cold and wet which made it difficult to see through the condensation in lbc. after an hour we had reached where we started from and the white horse was open. later, after a caffe nero coffee and some note-taking about stock levels and staff attitudes (holly is one of their head honchos) i drove home, parked on the drive too close to the wall and slammed the door shut on my little finger nail. after an hour's worth of short breaths and hopping around it went black. i'm gonna lose that nail soon, i just know it.

scrawled on walls:
gatecrash your own fantasy,
conformity is a reign of terror
reinvent history.

saturday 12th october
a lie-in at last. washing clothes, tidying up, going to sainsbury's, writing this, marvelling at the jay and silent bob dvd i now own.

friday 11th october
for no logical reason i woke up eager this morning. hang on a sec... ...right. i was up with a clear head despite the reasonably late night. i saw an arse on the back of a bus as i drove into traffic, having to park at the end of our road to save myself what could have been an hour of gridlocked boredom. it cost me £11.50 for the priveledge of working instead of waiting but i was happy with the tradeoff and so was lbc. i had php for flash to learn, fonts to build and cookies and databases to understand and ldb had a great view from the third-floor and was very excited by his journeys in the lift, tokyo-style.





the semicolon is a pixel too low and maybe the space break is too wide.

thursday 10th october
last night tonight.

she's got a cold. the voice at the other end didn't sound like her. i said say something so i know it's you and not someone else. 'you've got disgusting big hairy scabby feet.' diagnosis: she's fine.

the end at lunchtime.

wednesday 9th october
turok with the danny and robbie (them pesky kids!), who are making catapults and bow-and-arrows from 'ordinary household items'. i weep for the future...

tuesday 8th october
turning a tap on loudly is supposed to be scary,apparently.what is this? 1982?

after ten minutes of cameras whirring too slowly into focus on partially obscured low quality shots of housemates talking average american shit (with zero personality) i found it tempting as hell to walk out of 'my little eye'. but i persevered, fidgeting in my seat, trying to get into it, wondering if any kind of motive was around the next cheap shock tactic. it wasn't.

my problem with this film is that i didn't care about any of it. nothing glued together, there was no... substance. the idiots didn't do anything, had no interests, motives, aims, plans, they were in the wilderness and trusted strangers. it was a film of nothingness, of boredom. the third person perspective seemed to undo everything i find valuable in horror films - the fear of the unknown, darkness, of knowing something's out there somewhere. watching you. being filmed from wall-mounted cameras always meant your view was interrupted by scenery. not once did i feel any empathy or as if i could sympathise. i was watching it, never involved, never experiencing the action.

maybe it's scream's fault for dispelling too many horror genre myths. or maybe i shouldn't watch horror films in the cinema. but don't go to see my little eye; see pitch black, even if you already have.

actually, no; go and see it - if only for the post-film analysis. you'll find it more rewarding than the film itself. we did.

hello, maname!

monday 7th october
email in 1, steve: real purdy. 'george, can i keep her george. can i love her, and squeeze her and kiss her and hold her. can i george? can i?!'

email in 2, ade (after inviting him out for my birthday drinks, after i got drunk and made someone i've never met before cry at his): 'oh no! birthday drinking!! we had tom's bash the other weekend. i got absolutely c****ed on absinth and got pissed off with all the punters in the gardening club on covent garden!! then upset some folk in kfc, and to top it off, called the hot dog man a 'f***ing c**t'!! to be fair i deserved a kicking! i promise to be on my best behaviour!' i want to know is what does he mean by 'upset some folk in kfc'...?

further to all the chaff we've been watching recently: on the way to work x-fm announced that every time a presenter mentioned gareth gates, will young or any other chaff cash band they had to put ten pounds in a swear box. it will be given away as a prize at the end of the year. i think it should be mandatory and across all media.

on a different tack it's clearly kinky boots day here in the studio.oh yes.

sunday 6th october
roast dinner at tim bobbins with peejay, jen and two huge dogs. it has been too long since i've seen the sonleys properly and had a full catch-up with their lives. we ate meat and vegetables and drank coffee and talked as the sun shone through the eaves. they're back now and i feel so much better. we need more of this. right, folks?



then it was funstar deluxe's. despite taking gifts i came back with more than i took: gandalf's back and now i'm caught in the pop rivals spiral of hell. it's too intruiging to avoid yet too annoying to stand. manufactured pop can eat itself.

satuday 5th october
a road trip to philip's paul's roomes and then i drove the fox to tower bridge. window sofa shopping and meals outside, but only just.



friday 4th october
long shadows, fresh air. as if london's preparing itself for hibernation. summer is for going out, winter for staying in. autumn is the transition and that's why it's my favourite season.nothing to do with birthdays - honest.



thursday 3rd october
chumpy and i finally made it to sainsbury's tonight to get the usual trolleyload of food. not particularly news-worthy, i know, but a fully stocked fridge is a feast of opportunities. (ooh, cheesy.)

from now on there's no need to ask what our evenings are spent doing. with a sales patter that goes something like: 'ground-breaking squad dynamics system (s.d.s.) creates incredibly realistic enemy and allied squad ai. enemies you encounter will react to your movements and skill. they will back off if outmatched, camp behind objects, strafe and roll to avoid fire, even run away at times. some units will actually surrender to your mercy. you'll also get to work as part of a team, as your squad rushes enemy forces, or provides cover fire for you. all-new weapons including variable payload cruise missiles, gravity disrupter beams, and the swarm bore each with unique traits and damage. watch an unlucky foe as sworm bores sever each limb. infect an enemy with a poison dart, and see what he had for lunch. use the remote controlled spider mine to see around corners and set it to explode or release gas. zoom in using the new sniper rifle or tek-bow to get the head shot!' it's easy not to feel the fever. how can you kill four-storey dinosaurs in your living room with weapons like this and not feel good about yourself?



wednesday 2nd october



tuesday 1st october
music on the web.

find out who wrote that advert's score here. then go here so you can download it. alternatively get loads of pop will eat itself and try to work out all the samples. you won't be able to get them all (honestly, you won't) so go here to see how you did. they're only the people that put the des rep on the map you know.

'rae + christian emerged in the late '90s as a successor to the many stellar british production teams of the '90s, updating the rich urban grooves of soul ii soul and massive attack with a bit more emphasis on classic hip-hop. the duo of mark rae and steve christian, often helped out by vocalist veba, began recording together in 1995. grand central records released several of their collaborative singles - as well as a few solo singles by rae - beginning in 1996. the duo's debut album, northern sulphuric soul, was released in late 1998. sleepwalking followed three years later. the duo hooked up with kinetic in late 2001 to mastermind the hypnotic collection anotherlatenight for rae + christian's chill out favorites like riton, dubble d, capoeira twins and more.'


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