My Nerd Corner

Anyone that knows me well enough knows that I have a considerable amount of "Toys" for a nearly-twentytwo-year-old. My collection has been forever growing since I got my first job, probably even before that if I'm honest. This is first time I've ever revealed the entirety of it (or of what I display in my room) on my blog and I thought it would make a nice post after the last one. It reflects all of my interest in Nintendo, retro video games and of course Doctor Who.

RIP Gizmo

28/08/09 - 24/05/16

One of our two much loved family cats. Mum found him at about 8:30 Tuesday morning. He's not had great health for the last couple of months but, we believe he may have been poisoned. Whether it be from weed killer, antifreeze or something similar, he went out Saturday morning and didn't come back the same. He wouldn't move very far, hardly ate anything and kept himself hidden away under the beds and sofas. I can't believe he's actually gone. Not even 7 years old!!

Thankfully, we still have his brother Charlie to keep us company. Its going to be odd only having one cat in the house though after having them both for about six and a half years since since they were kits.

RIP Gizmo <3

Everything That's Happened In May & More!!

It's been almost a month since I last posted anything and I feel like I have a lot to catch up on. On the 1st of May, I had a rather long trip out to Trafford Centre in Manchester with my mum and a close friend. The place is absolutely huge! It took about two hours to get there and all day to look around all of the shops. I ended up coming home with two new puppets which are still yet to be officially named, although myself and my friend Jo who also drove us there came up with the names Manny and Maple between us. This day also marks the first day I had ever been in a Selfridges store.

There's been a few things I have gotten back into. I've started watching Doctor Who and going to the gym more frequently again. There has also been a fair few stressful instances at work again recently. Our cash machine broke and everyone expected that we do cash back. We don't. I've had a fair amount of Costa's with my friend that I met from my first college course, Peter.

The wether has been considerably better this month so I have been making the most of it, with the exception of filming. Myself and my mum went to Wollaton Park a couple of weeks ago for a pick nick and a kick about after a long day shopping around Nottingham city centre. I managed to get quite a few good action shots of my mum that day, which I'm not sure she's greatly pleased about. It had been ages since myself and my mum had done anything like this. We used to play about all of the time on the garden when I was still in school but, hardly ever now.

Recently, I've gotten into bad habits of staying up late. My new regular bedtime is now more like 2-3am, which is not healthy. All I seem to do with this time is scroll through Facebook on my iPad or watch videos on YouTube. I've been playing The Sims Freeplay a lot recently too. None of it is healthy. I have however been trying my best to not stay up as late as I have been but, sometimes I just can't help it when I find an adorable, obscure video of David Tennant, a man whom's birthday it was recently. Would you believe he's now 45. It seems only yesterday he was living his childhood dream of playing the 10th doctor, of course I still watch all of the episodes today.

Last weekend I went away for a couple of days with my mum, dad and auntie. We went on the Friday morning and set off to Whitley Bay Holiday Park. We've had been there once before and decided to go again. Friday we didn't really do much, we didn't even go out to see the onsite entertainment. I didn't bother doing that any of the nights because I almost know exactly what its going to be like if its a band playing, give or take stage presence and quality. Saturday we went into the town of Whitley Bay, which was quite nice. Nothing had really changed from the last time and we went to Sambucca's again for lunch, where I also sampled their Nutella cheesecake. Sunday, we went to the Beamish living museum which was certainly very interesting. There was a lot to see and plenty to get around, with a tram and bus service connecting all of the areas. It was quite a fascinating day and probably the best part of the holiday. Monday was the morning we had to leave the site so it was more of a rush around to get off home and not forget anything in the process. I was quite happy to be going home, feeling satisfied. I do worry a lot when we go away incase we ever get burgled but, thankfully that didn't happen. It's always a relief to get home and be back to normality.

I have been trying new things lately out of inspiration from listening to Doctor Who audio books, specifically the tenth doctor collect that was just released this month. So, naturally I decided to have a go at writing my very own radio play. I only started this other night and I managed to reach page 7, including a full page of charter ideas and motives. I really have missed creating my own story. This is another thing that I used to do all of the time when I was in school. One of my old English teachers shot me down for it because one seemed a little too repetitive. It did bother me but, I'm glad I've found a new way of writing and portraying my creative ideas that suits me more. I'm really enjoying it.

In other news, my favourite group of guys; The Piano Guys turned 5 this month and also released a new music video: The Jungle Book / Sarabande (Mayan Style). I would like to take a moment for this part of my blog to congratulate them on how far they have come in such a short space of time. I still remember the first day I discovered them back in college and when I instantly fell in love with their ideas. I hope I get to see them live again soon, even if I have to wait until next year!

Rediscovering Old Original Songs...

Recently I've been searching around my room for a specific old scrap of paper from an old A4 graph book. This wasn't my best choice to write my ideas on but, it must have been the closest thing to me when the ideas came to mind all those years ago. I'm not 100% what year I wrote this but, I believe it was before my college years whilst I was studying for my GCSEs in school. If I had to guess, I'd say I was about 13/14 when I wrote this. I vaguely remember writing this song but, I can definitely remember that it was one of my first intended with the accompaniment of a piano. It's quite a sad song really and I notated any actual music for it although I can still remember the vocal melody in my mind which must be a good sign.

In the image I have shared of this work, you'll notice a little lightning strike sort of shape against the word 'inside' at the bottom right corner and a similar thing that was later scribbled out just underneath. I got into a habit of using these shorthand for what would my musical equivalent of half a turn. A turn that doesn't go back to the root and just goes the starting note, one note above the starting note, back to the starting note and then one note below the starting note. these were not necessarily performed any faster, it was just a quick pitch reference for me that probably wouldn't mean anything to anyone else without a full explanation just like this. It doesn't help when the symbol I draw does suggest to myself going back to above and beyond the starting note but, I know what I mean. I didn't use these kind of things very often, although I cannot deny that looking through old lyric books that you would not find any more.

Filming Music video No. 2, Part 2.

On Wednesday 6th April I met up with Kieran again to continue filming. As before we met as his house but, this time before leaving to go to the city recorded a short moment of him leaving the house. We were a little more stuck for ideas this time around. I had a re-read though all of my notes and we seemed to have already used most of the ideas. The weather was a bit on and off all day with showers and then sunshine so it was really difficult to predict what we were going to achieve by early afternoon.

We decided to walk towards the city centre but, then ended up walking up towards the old windmill. The area had a small park, and of course the windmill was quite an interesting landmark to feature. We walked around this area for a couple of minutes and later found a rather nice set of stairs with bold black metal railings. We decided to use these for simple shot of us juts walking down them and talking we only did one take with it, but it seemed to look good.

After we had finished with that location we headed off towards the Arboretum. When we got there, the first thing we did was head towards the bell tower with cannons on all four corners. On the way, we found a nice open area which we figured we could use for a later scene of myself playing guitar but, we tried to stay focused on what we wanted to do with this area. We ended up using two different  locations for the camera to sit on the tripod as we climbed up onto the bell tower just to record ourselves having a bit of fun. It was a bit of a mess around really. We were jumping about all over the place. We wandered down to the bridge and I really wanted to include an argument scene. Under the bridge just seemed to be the perfect lighting set for the argument to take place. We recorded several takes on this, in hope that if we mash it up it would give it a greater effect. After that, we were done with the Arboretum for the day. We knew that we would have to come back to adda additional scenes but, that was waiting for another day though, before completely finishing for the day I decided to record the passing of the sun though the clouds. I still need to get some more footage of the sun, as weird as that sounds but overtime I have a day to myself it's cloudy and when I'm at work it stays sunny! How unfair is that!?!

Simple Plan Live! 22/03/16

I can't remember the exact age I was when I discovered Simple Plan but, I'm going to guess that I was about thirteen years old. The first song that I heard by them was called, "When I'm gone" and I instantly fell in love with the track. Before that, all I really listened to was Green Day, Avril Lavigne and the Plain White T's other than that I'd listen to whatever was playing on the radio. It's crazy for me to think now that just a few days ago I watched Simple Plan perform live and that I was in the same room as them. I don't go to many "big gigs" really so, I'm easily starstruck. I didn't quite freeze in front of them though. I went with my friend Chantelle and we got a decent spot on the Balcony to see all the crowd overhead. The gig wasn't sold out but, my it was busy. The view of the stage from where we was was pretty decent because of the height, we stood close to the sticky balcony railings all night, even going with out refreshments to make sure nobody could take our spot.

Before Simple Plan played there were two support acts. One was called 'The Bottom Line", they were from London and the other was called, "Ghost Town" those guys were from California. The Bottom Line opened up the gig, I can't remember what song they started with or ended with because I still don't really know their songs. I did't know any on the night, I remember having a look at their music a couple of weeks before but, I couldn't remember what either of the bands sounded like. Ghost Town seemed a little heavier but mostly because of the vocals. They're only a three piece band (Vocals, guitar, drums no bass) but, still managed to make a rather big impression. I think a lot of people were still questioning why they didn't play first though because they didn't get the crowd moving as much. The Bottom Line managed to get much more audience participation and even took a chance with a odd kind of stage dive. Someone came on stage with an air bed with "H.M.S BOTTOMLINE" written on the side with yellow electrical tape and he managed to do it too for a good minute, he was a little shaky though and did look like he was going to fall at any moment.

Once Ghost Town had finished, it seemed a big wait for Simple Plan. If I remember right Ghost Town finished at about 20:45pm and Simple Plan where scheduled to be on stage for 21:05. Both myself and my friend still didn't move, we were quite content watching them set up the stage. They had four huge white cabs. They were already onstage but, hidden by a cloth until later. I couldn't tell the model from where I was sat but I believe them to be the same as the ones the used in the music video for one of their newer songs, "Boom". From where we were stood we could see some of backstage storage space and could mostly see where all of Simple Plans guitars were kept. They brought so many with them for one show but, as a guitarist myself I find it understandable.

When it was finally time, the whole room lit in red. They started off with the first Track, "Opinion Overload"from their new album, "Taking One For The Team" and then followed on with the second track, "Boom". Thankfully they didn't just play songs from their new album, they actually played quite a selection from their complete discography. I'd Do Anything, I'm Just A Kid, Shut Up, Jump, Crazy, Your Love Is A Lie, Jet Lag, Astronaut, The Rest of Us - Just to mention a few. I managed to get a lot of footage of this gig. I was quite happy to stand and record for a while. I recorded about severn minutes of the two support acts and then another fifty minutes of Simple Plan. I'm not quite sure how my camera lasted that long (battery wise), I knew I should have had enough space because I used a 32GB micro SD.

I think the only problem I had with the night was that it was over so soon. I think I would give anything for them to come back and play next year. They did say at the concert that t had been quite a while since they had lasted played in Nottingham. Oh, and now I have another new poster for my wall, two band T-shirts, a necklace and a keyring. All Simple Plan of course. I did decide to buy The Bottom Line's album though because I quite enjoyed them, I managed to convince my friend to buy a copy too but, I managed to get their lead singer Matt to sign the Disc for me.

Filming Music video No. 2, Part 1.

So, a couple of days back on Saturday was the first official day of filming for my next music video. I managed to get a few ideas down before we got started, most of which were not written down until early morning the same day. Even though I had so many ideas I didn't really know what to expect as an outcome of the day, this is the first time I've even been outside my comfort zone filming as I'm not usually in front of the lens. Most of my work with a camera if myself taking a photo of something else so this really is a big difference.

We started of brushing over all of the ideas that we had come up with and seeing if we could piece together more of a storyboard and then soon set off for the city for the first load of footage. We went to a few locations in the city but, only a few because we had already decided that we wanted to go to Wollaton Park not much later on in the day. We mostly stayed outside of Primark and around the Market Square.

When we got to Wollaton Hall we tried to record some friendship activities but, tried to keep it minimal. I remember cutting my finger in the process and getting blood all over my jeans. By the end of the day (well, from 12pm to about 5pm) we managed to film a good 40 minuets of footage at least, it's almost quite upsetting that we most definitely won't be using all of it or that we will but, it will be chopped up or sped up. I can't wait to move along to the editing process but, we still have a lot more things to film before we make a start on that. I for one need to film some instrument parts and some sunrises/reverse sunsets.