Seen this eBay auction?
Year: 2005
Lunch And Screenplays
I had lunch today at the cafe with Paul, Claire, Andy R, Sian, Bryn, Ruth, JTA, Liz, Hayley, and Jon, for the first public scrutiny of the script for The Film. As Production Coordinator (and Assistant Director), I’ll be keeping Paul and The Cast from killing one another. Or, at least, keep the former from killing the latter.
The good bits:
- The script, given a few tweaks, rocks. We’ve got a lesbian sex scene, a body mutilated by a train, a fire, beer, bad movies…
- With only a few exceptions, the cast and crew are highly motivated, despite (a) a delayed start to this point, which eats away at filming time, and (b) some of them having worked with each other before, and therefore knowing why they wouldn’t want to.
- The project remains ambitious, but this afternoon’s meeting makes me a little more confident that it can all be done.
- Did I mention that the script rocks?
The bad bits:
- I’m concerned by the balance of the complexity of the plot over the projected length of the film – can we realistically express all the things we want to in as short a time as we need to?
- Some of these characters will be hard to portray in a believable and likable way, particularly by cast members who have little or no experience of the performing arts.
- We’re still missing some key equipment, we haven’t contacted our proposed sponsors, and I’m only marginally closer to having everything I need to ensure a filming plan gets put together.
- There’s a particular couple of scenes that I think are vague and wooly, and will need some work.
So; it’s all coming together at last – given some time, space, and weather, we’ll be able to start filming next week, or even this weekend. I’ll be keeping tabs on progress on here, for those who are interested, and giving a couple of hints about what to expect, when… but only Troma Night folks will have access to the film plan and associated discussions. So, if you should have access and you don’t – sort out your Troma Night account now!
Ceefax On Scatmania
Do you remember Ceefax, that wonderful service from the BBC that seemed so cool until you discovered the internet? Well I do. And so does a Dutch consultant who set up a system, on the web, for searching Ceefax pages.
Well; in any case; I thought that his site was fun (in a nostalgic kind-of way) but hard-to-navigate, so I’ve developed a sensible front-end that’s far more reminiscent of the way Ceefax works: Ceefax Browser On Scatmania. Give it a go.
Aarne-Thompson Folktale Classification System
Would you know it: there’s an “opposite number” to the Dewey Decimal System (introduction to the system [PDF]) – which for the most part of a centurey has been used to categorise books according to their topic and content – for categorising folk tales: the Aarne-Thompson Classification System.
It’s horrendously difficult to find information on it online – most of the resources are in German (Germany, apparently, being big fans of both fairy tales and classifying things) – particularly information about the system itself (rather than about given tales classified by it), but here’s what I’ve managed to glean – it consists of about 2500 categories, subcategories, and themes, broadly broken down in a pretty random way. An entire story can be defined by it’s key themes as a series of numbers, for example:
Little Red Riding Hood is a “The Glutton”-class tale in which an animal disguises itself as a human with the intention of killing a child (I. K2011) . It carries a “what makes your ears so big” theme (Z18.1), and a non-fatal swallowing by a person by an animal (F911.3) which leads to their eventual rescue from the animal’s belly (F913). In some variations of the story, the wolf is then sewn up again – having been filled with stones – such that he eventually drowns (Q426).
Here’s another you might be familiar with:
Rapunzel (“the Maiden in the Tower”) is a tale of type 310 (“Magic Tales”), with four key themes: (a) a man promises his unborn daughter to a witch in order to save himself from death (S222), leading to a girl in the service of a witch (G204), (b) the girl is imprisoned in a tower (R41.2) [also, potentially – T381 (“Imprisoned virgin to prevent knowledge of men (marriage, impregnation)”)], and “lets down her hair” to allow the captor to climb (F848.1); a desirable suitor (prince or king) follows this technique and becomes her lover (L162), (c) the witch discovers what the girl has done, cuts off her hair, and abandons her in the desert (S144 – abandonment in desert); the prince comes, saves himself from the witch, but in doing so is blinded (S165), (d) finally, the couple are reunited, and the woman’s tears restore sight to the blinded man (F952.1).
I find this system a little bit scary and overwhelming. As Andy R said to me, “Perhaps Aarne and Thompson should have spent their time… I don’t know… finding a cure for cancer or something.” They’ve certainly spent a lot of time developing this very deep, very complex system for classifying fairy tales.
There’s a good-looking – but expensive – book, “A Guide to Folk Tales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System” by D. L. Ashliman, which, according to Voyager, can be found in the academic library at UWA. I’ve asked Paul to pick up a copy (Paul: it’s published by Greenwood Press in 1987 and can be found on the Arts and Humanities floor (Level F) of the Hugh Owen library – classmark Z5983.F17.A8). Could be interesting.
Anyway; sorry if that bored you. Here’s more information:
Tesco Delivery Service
I originally tried to post this message from my mobile phone, on the journey back from Norfolk, but fucked it up and failed miserabley. So here’s a second attempt:
On the way back, in accordance with The Tradition, Claire and I visited Tesco in Wisbech (The Tradition dictates that any Aberite who leaves Aberysywth to visit a real town – defined here as a town that has a Tesco supermarket – they must bring back Tesco cookies [mmmm…] for the folks back in Aber). Well, we have. First come, first served. They’re good, by the way.
In any case, while I was at the checkout at Tesco I was looking at a leaflet which explained the terms and conditions of their “spend £50 on shopping and get it delivered free” deal. The deal states that tobacco products, and baby milk formula products, do not count towards this £50 “free delivery quota”.
Let’s summarise – here are some products available at Tesco, which are available either seasonally or year-round, which you could buy £50 of and have delivered to your door:
- Fireworks
- Painkilling mediciation (as far as I can tell, the limit on paracetemol purchases only applies to direct “over-the-counter” purchases, and delivery may provide a loophole)
- Computer hardware
- Alcoholic drinks
- Firelighting equipment, including highly-flammable petroleum blocks, firelighting bricks, and lighter fluid
Here are the things you can order online, but which do not count towards your “must order £50 worth of stuff” quota for free delivery, no matter how much of it you buy (even if you buy £50, £100, or £150 worth of a single product):
- Tobacco
- Powdered milk for babies
Is it just me that’s a little confused by this? Why can I buy £150 of, say, kiwi fruit from Tesco’s online store, and have it delivered for free to my door, but if I buy £49 of kiwi fruit and £150 of powdered milk, I can’t? But as soon as I replace my mammoth powdered-milk order with, say, nappies… or baby wipes… or jars of baby food… it’s fine?
Is there something about baby milk formula that I don’t know? Perhaps something it has in common with tobacco, that makes the pair of them completely unsuitable for transit to paying customers, regardless of how much they want? No – that can’t be it, because they will still deliver these things, just not for free unless you buy other things, too. Then perhaps it’s an economic thing, and they heavily subsidise their baby formula… but they’ll still let you buy hundreds of pounds of it in-store.
Really; this has me completely baffled: Claire and I talked about it for awhile, and we can’t think of a single reason why they won’t count the value of baby milk formula towards your minimum value for free delivery. So… if anybody can enlighten us, please do.
In other news, we’re back in Aber. Cookies are available. And we’re going to the Ship & Castle this evening and you’re welcome to join us for drinks, discussion about the film, and perhaps a game of Chez Geek or Chrononauts. See you there.
Great Melton and Little Melton
Thought I’d share with you all some pictures of Claire and her dad that we took with his camera while out and about in Norfolk. Click for larger images.
We’ll be back with you Aberites tomorrow evening. I assume that Andy’s blog post relates to Paul‘s inability (or discomfort) with writing lesbian sex scenes for the film script? Perhaps I should offer my services… or, perhaps better yet, JTA could – the man who made a living out of writing erotic literature at high school, I hear.
Long journey tomorrow, and I’ve got a few more bits and pieces to fix over here, first. <sighs>
Norfolk
Claire and I’s grand tour of the United Kingdom brought us yesterday to Terrington St. Clement, near Kings’ Lynn, in Norfolk, where Claire’s dad lives.
As I anticipated, this has resulted in me here, too, helping to repair computers. Claire’s dad’s PC was a mess – Ad-Aware reported 183 malware/adware programs, Norton Anti-Virus reported 10 threats (2 of which were actually installed viruses). I don’t know what the solution is to the problems caused by hundreds of thousands of new people – who do not know about the risks – appearing on the internet, but I hope that somebody works it out soon: even the BBC have started to take notice of the increasing problem of “zombie” networks, particularly in the UK, which lead to denial of service attacks, spam floods, breaches of privacy, and annoying pop-up ads.
And there’s no excuse, really – Windows users can get AVG (anti-virus), ZoneAlarm (firewall), Ad-Aware (anti-malware/adware), Firefox (web browser) and Thunderbird (e-mail client) and be safer by hundreds of orders of magnitude than they are with Internet Explorer and a wide-open pipe. And all of this software is free. With the increase of the awareness of this problem by mainstream news sources, you’d think it would spur people into protecting themselves (just like the coverage of the “War On Terror” by mainstream media made people paranoid about radiological/chemical/biological terrorist attacks). Ah well.
In any case: we’ve been traipsing around North Norfolk, meeting people and eating excessively. I’ve just about recovered from a minor leg sprain I sustained while ice skating in Preston earlier this week, and all is well.
Glad to hear that Sian‘s Troma Night went well (can’t remember where I heard that from). Missing all you Aberites. Hope to see you all soon.
Preston
Things achieved so far:
- Got to Preston in three hours, which is pretty good going. We got stuck behind some idiots who seemed to think that “national speed limit” meant 30mph for awhile, but by the time we got to the big roads it was plain sailing. Without sails. Or a boat.
- Fixed my dad’s wireless network. He has a wireless network comprising his desktop PC, each of my sisters’ desktop PCs, and an ADSL router. Having recently gotten a new laptop he wanted to connect this to the
network, too, so he got an old USB wireless adapter he had and plugged it in. Hmm.. can’t seem to join the network: can see it, but can’t
join it. So he goes and buys a new adapter – this time, one which was of the same brand as the ones of which his network was already composed. Nope, still nothing. Eventually, has
patience at an end, he borrowed my sister’s adapter… and it worked fine.If you’re a network geek, see if you can think what the problem might be before you read on.
The problem was that his network had been set up to use MAC address locking – preventing access to the router by anything but a list of particular hardware devices (or, for non-geeks: every piece of networking equipment has a supposedly globally unique number assigned to it when it is manufactured: my dad’s router had been configured only to allow particular numbers to connect to it ). So, it was a simple challenge to allow these new devices access to his network. The net result seemed to be that there was one useless wireless adapter.
But here’s where things got really silly: it later turned out that his new laptop had a built-in wireless adapter, and he’d never known. All he had to do was actually install the drivers for it (to be fair, you’d think on a pre-built laptop they might have done that for him) and voila: he was on the network… two useless wireless adapters.
- Installed Firefox as the default browser on all of the IE-default machines we’ve come across.
- Met the puppies (4), the chickens (3½), the rabbit (1, with 3 others loose somewhere in the scrubland behind the house – kids on the neighbourhood sometimes catch one – at great risk and loss of blood [theirs’, not the rabbit’s] – and ransom it back), and the hermit crabs (2) for the first time. Re-met the dog (1), and the cats (4… 5…? 6??? who knows). My mum’s house is becoming quite the menagerie. I’ll try to get some pictures online before we leave here on Monday.
- Taught my parents to play Fluxx. My dad turns out to be surprisingly… lucky… at it.
- Drank mead from the holy isle of Lindisfarne, where my dad has recently been.
By the way – Paul: I’ve left a key to TheFlat with Bryn, so there’s no need to camp out at the cafe all day in anticipation of Troma Night tonight: have a good one, guys!
Right – off to watch Spongebob Squarepants.
All The Fun Of Aberystwyth
Aber‘s great this time of year – late enough that the weather becomes favourable, but early enough that the tourists haven’t arrived. Alec came down the day before yesterday for an interview for the PGCE course he wants to get onto, which was cool, ‘cos I haven’t seen him in a long while, and we barbequed some burgers and sausages on the beach.
Claire and I are off to Preston this afternoon: sadly my gran’s not well and can’t make it there, too, but it’ll be nice to see my family regardless… not to mention the new puppies. As usual, both my dad and Claire’s dad have got various technical things they need fixing while I’m visiting each of them; joy. You’d think going to see my folks might be a break from work, but never mind…
Quote of the day from Alex @ work: “This is Software Engineering…. it’s not… real life!”
RFC 2812 – Internet Relay Chat: Client Protocol
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TinyApps.org
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egghelp.org
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Hide and Seek In The Castle
Yesterday, as Claire and I ate our lunch, we had an idea. It was a gorgeous Sunday, warm like Easter break should be, so we thought – why not gather those folks who remain in town for a big game of hide & seek in Aberystwyth Castle. This was great fun last Autumn and the easter before: childish fun, running, hiding, diving over rocks and injuring oneself… fab.
We were surprised at how many people were able to join us: Matt, Katie, Sundeep, Bryn (until he was called away by the prospect of a barbeque with some friends in Llanbadarn), Liz, Andy K (recently discharged from A&E after burning his hand with a frying pan, the idiot), Faye, Andy R, Sian, and a mystery girl called ‘DD’.
We played until the sun went down, which always makes the game extra-fun and challenging, then retired to Kanes’ for beer (or whiskey) and chit-chat. By the end of the evening, the pub was ours alone.
Other people have things to say about the evening, too:
Dan And Claire’s Grand UK Tour
Well, the plans are set now.
On Thursday night (or Friday), Claire and I will be travelling up to Preston to spend the weekend with my folks. Hopefully my gran will be able to make it down, too. We’ll also get a chance to look at the new puppies (pic 1, pic 2, pic 3), who’ll be barely two weeks old by that point.
Then, on Monday, we’ll travel down the country to Norfolk and spend a few days with Claire’s dad, returning to Aber on Thursday (31st March).
Of course, this means that we won’t be around for Geek Night on Friday (which is cancelled) or Troma Night on Saturday (which Paul is taking charge of).
By the way – you’re (probably) looking at the new ‘style’ of my weblog. Comments welcome.
Seymore Butts
Is this actor real? Seymore Butts (say it out loud) is listed on the IMDb, director of such films as Anal Surprise Party, Female Ejaculation Review, and Tongue In Cheeks, as well as over 60 other films. Also performed in 50 films… most of which don’t have an IMDb score…
…so it’s an anonymous pornstar with a thing for doing it up the arse, big deal. But here’s the interesting thing: he was most recently in a film called Slaughter Party, which also starred… Lloyd Kaufman.
The world is a funny place.
In related news, you can read the full story of Will Keenan‘s appearance on the Troma Night bulletin board, including a video we sent back to him and Lloyd, thanking them, on a special thread we set up. Have fun!