East Coast

An assessment of today, a look at what I have achieved so far since coming to America. It is eye-opening and intriguing to consider where I came from and where I am now.

 

Thoughts run deep

Crucially it is a time to remember the real reasons I left a fairly cozy life in England and chose the challenge of making a life for myself in a whole new country. I was fully expecting it to be difficult, and have so far been proved correct with the tough times encountered and many obstacles to overcome.

Above all, I am happy, I keep a positive attitude at all times, even when things have been and are bad, I chose to bound over any set-back with a leap and a smile on my face. This has been the most valuable of all things that I have taught myself. It really does make things bearable. My motto or personal philosophy has evolved from telling myself “Everything will be OK”, to a more charged “Onwards and upwards!”.

In the nature of this self-reflecting post, I am pleased to share with readers a BBC radio interview that I partook in just before actually flying over here, almost 6 months ago. I have mentioned the interview in this blog before, but I only had it in tape form and no hardware means to convert it to a digital counterpart to put on here. That is until recently, my Uncle in Berlin was good enough to do the conversion for me and send me a CD. You may now hear it too by clicking on the little player below.

BBC Radio Interview

Listening to myself speak hither and thither about the dreams and aspirations I had back then, it dawns on me that they are still very much the truth, my passion is music, I am a composer and am happiest with a guitar in my lap and leaning over to tweak the soundscapes on the computer.

The realisation however that I have done next to nothing to actually put forth into action these aspirations, get myself into situations that would put me in a position to pursue my dreams did come as a bit of a shock and wake-up call. Why am I wasting my time trying to find gainful employment in fields that are only at best my 2nd, 3rd or even 4th hierarchal interest. This is New York, where dreams can come true. Where I am allowed to create such an opportunity for myself to live the life I want. There is all and everything in this little corner of the East US coast, should you look for it, you will find the things you require to play out your lifes passions. I haven’t been seeking such things till now, it is time to go hunting. What prize will I catch?

Has it been that long?

Wow, your eyes are not deceiving you, I am back, still surviving and here to tell you about my internship at Palm Pictures

Palm Pictures HQ Entrance

I have been here almost for three months now, all of them have been Read the rest of this entry »

These days, I’m constantly tired it seems. It’s 8:27pm here and I’m already shattered and thinking of reheating a frozen slice of pizza before packing in and calling it a night.

I’ve been trekking all over the city and procuring elite subway navigation skills. Sometimes fully laden down as needed in my laptop-in-a-rucksack ways, or otherwise with no burden and with a sprightly step.

Sometimes I have a camera with me, sometimes no, but I always make sure to appreciate any deserving moment, and I tell myself “That’s beautiful”. It happens a lot, especially at twilight, when the skyscrapers awaken and the windows of light freckle up. I’ll try and capture a shot like that soon so it may be shared with you all.

Oh, and I’ve been experimenting with panoramas somewhat too.

Walking under Franklin D Roosevelt Driveway, Brooklyn’s way over there! Aaaar.

I went over to Brooklyn to visit my mother’s old art teacher from her days at Pratt Institute, that was enjoyable, took photos, ended weirdly. Have to write that up here too.

It’s not just the insatiable furlongs of walking that are tiring but also this internship lark, PLUS a full-time continued search for PAID work. Bah, I suppose I shall have to vent about that in the following blog post won’t I?

I have to tell you, after a heavy days work interning, passing through the high-tech security (with a nod from the elevator porter) and exiting the posh high-rise office building (which also homes the likes of Google and up-scale design firms), and then heading to the Seaport Public Welfare Assistance center and applying for benefits plus temporary financial help feels really… weird.

I’ve been meaning to tell everyone about the automobile I decided to aquire and the hassle it’s given me since so I may as well do that..

Presenting one glorious ‘92 Subaru Legacy, All Wheel Drive (AWD). 118,000 miles, good for at least another 80,000?

For the whole teary story..

Read the rest of this entry »

Alright, so hey, enough pottering about and hibernating in Vermont…

View from Chucks house, Plush snow

Pretty as it is, I’ve decided to take a big leap and get back to the hustling, bustling New York City with the sole purpose of finding work/career/a life to call my very own.

I’m in a very privileged position and have contacts in Manhattan that I am able to stay with while I find some grounding. In emergancies I can also retreat to Long Island where my Grandparents seem happy to see me. Being in the actual city environment for an extended period of time should offer many more doors to me that I wouldn’t otherwise get in the isolation of Vermont.

In fact the cue to get down to the city would to be due to an eager response to one of the internships that I applied for using the same ‘warped-prose-cover-letter’ that I showed you all in the previous blog posting. This company were quite impressed enough to demand that I come down to their office to see them as soon as possible. OK, so this wasn’t a paid opportunity but it’s crucial experience, great for the resume and may lead to some stable employment. The company had a great website and seemed to be producing/distributing really interesting films, documentaries and music. I really liked vibe they had going. Check it out mmmkay:

http://www.palmpictures.com

I decided to take the plunge and come straight away to take up on this offer. I would potentially be able to find and take on some part-time paid work at the same time as internships are generally flexible with only 2-3 days a weeks work expected of you. You are volunteering to work/slave away for no pay after all..

Excellent, excellent, with some trepidation I make the first few steps to financial security…

I first did manage to squeeze in a visit to Karl & Susan, where we

Read the rest of this entry »

Hullo peoples!

I have yet again, an awful lot more stuff to update you all on but that can wait, because for now I seek work.  Yes,  I have lost a banana,  Yes I am back in Vermont, No, my roadtrip isn’t over yet, merely put on temporary placeholder whilst I see to raising some much needed and often desired monetary funds.

For y’see, my cash is running out at a rapid old rate,  I tried repeatedly to minimise such expenditure by say, for example bi-weekly non-existance but it’s still not enough.

Therefore my new plans for the time being are to get some form of job and for the next few months sit tight and put right my bank balance.   If all goes well,  I hope to set off West properly once the Summer heatwave finishes climaxing and it gets safe to walk on tarmac barefooted again.  Unfortunately since we are cooking the skin off the Earth with various forms of pollutants and evil emissions, this might mean setting off sometime in late November.  At least I hope it won’t be that long.   We shall see eh?

Since Vermont is THE place to be if you are a tree, there are generally a disproportionate amount of lumberjacks, carpenters, luthiers and beavers in this area, employment rates are up for the wood-workers and way, way down for the creative digital artist like me.   Sure I could hole away (much as I am now) and create lovely works of digital art on my laptop including many a web-site which incidentally a lot of beavers have been requesting of me (mylogisbiggerthanyourlog.com, DamUsAll.org,  etc) HOWEVER,  this isn’t very fun to do all on my lonesome,  in particular I get frustrated when I stumble or get stuck on some of the bits that I’m as good at in web-site development and thus lose a lot of motivation.  I’d much rather be doing this sort of thing as part of a team, creatively collaborating as a small company.   This way you get to share the job and allocate tasks to people who have strengths in that area which makes for better productions in the end (greater than the sum of its parts etc).
Anyway,  so here in VT there are NO jobs going for companies like what I just described.  I could create the opportunity myself by seeking some like-minded individuals but at this point in time I’m not ready to commit to starting my own business or any such thing as that is quite the serious investment of time and resources.

Therefore my eyes drift south to the city of New York where I have spent quite a bit of time at already,  you only need to take a quick gander a classifieds posting site such as Craigslist to see the sheer volume of job opportunities in the field of creative digital services,  take a look for yourself,  just the web design section:  http://newyork.craigslist.org/art/ Impressive eh?  With dozens of jobs posted daily,  I’m sure to find something,  especially at the entry/junior level.
And so for for quite a while now, I’ve been sending out emails with resumes attached and links to my portfolio website in hope that I may land an interview.   However I was beginning to get disheartened because I wasn’t even receiving any replies let alone offers of a chance to impress in an interview.  despite sending my dozens of emails in answer to the dozens of opportunities getting posted that matched my skill set,  nothing was happening..
I began to doubt that maybe my portfolio good enough for the standards that they require,  or perhaps I don’t have enough ‘commercial’ looking examples that would reflect real life results if I were doing this type of work.   Yes,  that is probably it,  most of the contents of the portfolio are of the ‘arty farty’ theme,  actually reflecting the type of work I had to do as a Computer Animator at University,  but I don’t want to get a job in that field at this time..  Hmm.  So it looks like I need to urgently flesh out my portfolio with different types of work..
So whilst I was getting underway with that (actually no I wasn’t I was madly procrastinating,  although have some quite good excuses, more on that later)
I actually receive my first reply to one of my applications!

“Register with our site navigate around and call on Tuesday to set up an interview.  We will be asking questions about the site to you
Thanks”

but on Tuesday I got:

“Hey Miles
The position has been filled  Keep in touch”

So I said

“I’m glad you were able to find someone to help you guys, saddened it wasn’t me :)”

and then they said:

“Thanks Myles,
Stay in touch we are growing fast!  Seriously stay in touch!”

Which was nice.

So, that didn’t work out, and whilst I’m sure they are definitely growing fast, it probably won’t be fast enough to require to hire me in time to save my finances!   However I was left feeling better that this sending out applications and resumes lark was actually working.  However it didn’t seem to be working very efficiently..  sending 30 applications to get 1 response,   looks like I need to step up my game!

I wondered also if what I was writing for a cover letter was any good.  Usually it was a fairly formulaic affair stating why I thought I my skills were good for the job and what it would be like to work with me, all in quite formal prose.  So for a change today I wrote a more perky and colourful one for a graphic designer opening for a start-up company headed by in-fact a chap from London, who graduated the Royal College of Art called Paul Worthington

It went something like:

“Hullo!

A little bit about me then…

Most critters of the galatic plane find me to be an oft oxymoronic character,  the jolly but nice, introverted type. Not afraid of ridicule, always ready to share a thought be it a spark of inspiring, blinding brilliance, or sometimes for good measure, a dud thrown in to keep people on their toes.

I have an excellent approach to work, sloppy back-handed perfectionist that I am.  I work very hard, very long and hard, and topsy-turvy, and going into overdrive when crunching to hit those all important deadlines

I am also laid back but always ready and willing to jump into action. Often, having mustered up enough steam, my hurricane of creation is an unstoppable all-coming monster wreaking havoc, both the good and bad, more fun that way.
I enjoy the titillating thrill of brainstorming and the rush of problem-solving.
At night I can be found, under the bed covers, basking the glow of a laptop screen, thinking and doodling new ideas and unique projects. they usually hit at odd hours like that.  Cheese helps too.

Since finishing up at University I decided to be adventurous,  to dump the smelly armpits of England for now and relocate to the States, land o’ th’ free and that.
Thus, I find myself seeking work in NYC.   I do miss my favourite bitter lager tho,  the creamy stuff,  if you’re reading this, you’re not helping! Mister Phil Worthington!!

So, if you dare,  interview me.
I may be contacted at all hours”

So this is the experiment there, did I go too far?  Or will I be rewarded for letting my inner inverted bunny-rabbit take over the reigns of typing for a moment.  Shall let you know if I get a reply or no.

There are some more things I want to say but the bunny wants to finish for tonight so I shall put him away and hope to see you guys all here again soonish.

Ciao.

Aaah,  I thought I would be going to Times Square again or something for the count-down to New Years Eve, however I read some articles in the papers that were essentially ’survival guides’ for the Times Square celebrations and I realised just how crammed and jam-packed the place is going to be.  Apparently once you’re there, you get penned in and cannot leave until midnight rolls by.  Add to that the large amount of security (mandatory rucksack searching by police) and the fact that the ‘bow tie’ area where they actually drop 7,000 pounds of confetti on the crowds gets totally filled up by 6pm.  Meaning that you wouldn’t actually see anything if you turn up later except maybe if you’re lucky enough to get a view of one of the large television screen…  Well not quite my idea of fun tonight,  especially on my lonesome.

So instead, I choose to practise my music theory in the relative peace and quiet of my Grandparents basement.  I run through the modes I’ve learnt on my newly acquired Yamaha Pacifica guitar.   Yes I have bought an electric guitar, finally I do my late-night recording sessions that I have missed so dearly.   Plugged straight into my Sound Interface Keyboard, and that into the Laptop, I can play and record in silence (thanks to headphones) in the early hours.   I will share with you here the good recordings as they happen!
Oh and the classic Marx Brothers movies are playing all night on public television so I might catch one of those too.

A happy new year to all and sundry.

My father announced that he was going down to New York to help his parents out for the holiday through to the New Year. I’d been meaning to visit my Grandparents on my previous trips up and down however I kept missing or skipping the opportunity. So it felt high time to go see them and help my father out some too.

So in my father’s truck we hurried down on the weekend before Christmas, I took with me my laptop, a new MIDI controller keyboard that I had ordered a week previous and some hard-drives full of music-making related material.

It was nice to be back in the little house of Merrick, NY. Mmm Suburbia. Much of the neighbourhood had attempted to out-do each other by filling their front lawn with assortments of kitschy inflatable snowmen, plastic raindeer and grotesque santas, their homes were lined with industrial-sized fairy lights and had transformed front yards into shining beacons of cheesy festiveness. It all seemed embarrassing to me in regard to the mild weather. Not a snow-flake in-sight.

I haven’t been outside of the house since Read the rest of this entry »

Hullo people, its been a while and certainly longer than can be excused, I apologise.

Things have ground to a halt in a number of areas in my life. I shall elaborate soon, The end of the year is drawing closer and it seems that a lot of things are in hiatus till the New Year emerges..

My Florida/East Coast trip long since ended last month and I have several entries to catch up on to bring the story to its conclusion. I promise those will be forth-coming..

So hang on folks, lots of ups, downs, backs and forwards as well as sideways to be documented here very soon…

Hurrah, I got one! Indeed, I was there at Times Square NYC taking in the atmosphere and also getting to grips with navigating around the city blocks. When I gave it some thought, the grid layout was actually pretty convenient, so long as you knew the two intersecting streets, you could locate any place in the city.

Osa had met me at Penn Station because she was coming from her other house in Long Island. We walked down to Times Square which is just a few blocks from the Station and my first Wii sighting was this:

 

Wii at Toys R Us at Times Square

Couldn’t miss that eh? This was the Read the rest of this entry »

Indeedy, my travel adventures have been coming thick and fast, in fact it’s been a struggle to keep up-to-date on the blog. Too much happens in too short a time period. I’m constantly playing catch up but I hope to manage it.

I’ve gotten myself to Washington DC and will be going to NYC again tomorrow. There shall be more posts shortly to fill in the Florida gaps but I thought I would make a different type of post today.

One of my interests has always been computer gaming and this weekend sees the launch of two new next-generation consoles. The Playstation 3 and my personal favourite the Nintendo Wii.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.. (do I have to grow up just yet?)

Since I will be in New York tomorrow, I’m going to go attend the big launch party at Toys ‘R Us, Times Square NYC. There will be acrobats, live music, pyrotechnics and more. It is said that Reggie Fils-Aime, the funny looking/acting chief marketing officer of Nintendo,will be there to hand out the first Wiis to the lucky gaming public.

Reggie of Ninty!

I’m gonna go along, snap some photos and take in the atmosphere for the night. I might even snap up a Wii if there will be enough to go around.

So, check back soon when I will post up my experiences and shots from the event. Should be fun!

Meet Alex, Kate and little Eloise. Our new bouncy, bubbling fun family.

They were my very kind and generous hosts for a whole week. I had a lot of fun with them and not necessarily related to getting to see Savannah for I was there to get to know Alex’s new wife and baby daughter!

Alex who I met at my first year at Teesside doing Computer Animation had decided he didn’t like the course in England and chose to go to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) instead to do Illustration. The SCAD workload is really quite something, whereas in Teesside we had all semester to complete about 5-7 projects to do from our 5 modules, at SCAD it was more like 2 projects every week, yes they were smaller projects but they still required many hours a day to finish them in time before you get the next project. No slacking here!

Alex certainly stuck to this regime and would for most of the day be at his desk drawing. Therefore I left him alone for most of my stay and hung out with Kate and Eloise.

We took some walks around the local neighbourhood of Savannah which was very pleasant.

Some example Savannah Architecture

There were some walks in the park, the weather was fantastic, it still shocked me not having to wear anything more than a T-shirt, in November! (I’m sure I’m repeating myself there).

I admire a fountain in the Park

This park fountain has been the setting of quite a few scenes in movies. I’m sure it gets a lot of use from the SCAD film students too.

Kate pushed Eloise in a pram as we prowled the rather scenic streets of Savannah. Eloise isn’t quite yet 1 yet at 10 months but she babbled away happily for much of the time, I wandered what she was trying to say or convey.

Kate is a lot of fun to be with, she’s a pretty young girl and has a great smile. She’s one of those fashion fiends and quite conscious of her self-image. She needn’t worry about such things so much for her image was fine and people look for more than that in friends and close loved ones.

It amused me when she asked if her hair was alright when we sat waiting outside a SCAD building for Alex to finish his class. Kate apologised for asking when I told her that she looked perfect, Kate turned out to be the most apologetic person I’ve ever met, she says sorry to just about everything. Despite my chiding that she needn’t apologise so much to me, she apologised about the apologising and then I new this to be a lost cause! Hehe. I love peoples quirky character traits.

In front of me there was a statement scrawled on the back of a signpost.

A message on the sign-post

I pointed out to Kate that the message has been my own personal motto for a long time now. She chuckled and tended to Eloises’ gurgles. I wondered what kind of person would feel so inclined to spread our motto there.

Alex emerged after a while with some friends, one of whom was a neighbour from across the street. A lot of students were living on the same road even though the SCAD campus is very dispersed.

SCAD friends on campus, the Wilsons on the right.

Much of my time was spent… Read the rest of this entry »

P.S

I am writing more entries on my laptop than what you see on the site here, but having trouble uploading them… stay with me folks, a lot of cool stuff coming your way as soon as I can muster it all.

P.P.S

Am I allowed to put a P.S before a post? Shouldn’t it be B.S? Would people take offence at that? Pr.S? P.P.S?? Ooooh the acronymage.

P.P.S.S

Hi friends,

So, what happened after I tried to get some shut eye in New York City Penn Station?

Well I managed about 3 hours of snoozing and awoke with time to spare before my train was due. Got a fruit smoothie to wake me up (almost as good as coffee but nicer) and also decided to purchase a couple books to read since I had a 14 hour journey ahead of me.

Train arrived on time and left about 5 minutes later with me settled on-board.

I attempted to catch up some more on lost sleep and dozed on and off through out the journey. When I awoke hungry, I ate the sandwhich and snacks that I had purchased at the same time as fruit smoothieness. Read quite far into my first book which, set in the near future, was about an autistic man who has been offered a treatment for his condition but it may change the very essence of who he is.. should he go for it?

Pretty good book, nothing fanciful in the language or narration but there is a bit of drama to keep things chugging along. A pretty good insight into what it must be like to be autistic, I’m always interested to see how other people cope with their own disabilities. The book is called “The Speed of Dark ” by Elizabeth Moon.

The Amtrak train took a long time.. however I enjoyed watching the scenery change. Whenever I awoke from a doze, the light had changed, the foliage had changed colour and the types of environment we passed was always shifting.

As we hit South Carolina and eventually Georgia, suddenly lush green junglelike shrubbery was everywhere and white sand, palm trees! My gosh, how dramatic the change, and yet it’s the same country, just passing along the East Coast..

The train was over 2 hours late in the end. It rolled into Savannah station close to 11pm, I had been sat in the same seat for 16 hours.. I stepped out into the warm evening and stretched my legs.

Concerned that my hosts were worried, I made for a payphone but was interrupted by an older black dude asking I needed a taxi, yes I decided, unsure if it was worth walking the indicated (on my GPS PDA navigation set-up) 3 miles at night.

Black dude drove me faithfully to the address I had been given and as I got my bags out, my friend from my fresher years at Teesside University stood waiting on the porch.

I felt tired and happy.

To elaborate, the reason for my severe delay in finishing the rest of the Montreal blog postings can be attributed to the frantic headrush of the past 2 weeks that have seen me tackling the huge logistics of an extended Florida trip.

If you can recall, I have been asked to pick up a van for a company and drive it back some 1500 miles to Vermont. I have decided to go ahead with this because I would be paid for my time, have the travel costs covered, get an opportunity to do some real-life US State-wide driving and also visit a large number of friends, family or relatives.

In order to visit relatives in a timely manner, I requested if I could get a paid Amtrak rail pass to chuff along the East Coast and make stop overs to visit people possible. Luckily the company agreed.

The huge logistics problem came about when I realised that I would have the mammoth task of coordinating a rally of visits with about 25-30 odd people that I have addresses and invitations for all the way down to Florida. I would need to schedule a day or two for each person and work out which Amtrak station is closest and if I need a Greyhound from there or not. Then I would need to check which days were suitable with everyone and make sure that it all lined up with the minimum of ‘backtracking’ up the railways.

Whew.

I think I’ve pretty much accomplished a good array of dates all one after the other which succeed their way down the East Coast.

My plans are:

WAY DOWN (Amtrak Train & Greyhound Bus)

Vermont - A ride down with my host Chuck as he had to go to NYC anyway

New York - Visit a friend of my mothers living on Mulberry Street, China Town in Manhattan.

South Carolina - My distant cousin who lives in UK but has a work placement for a year in the US

Savannah - My old hall mate from the first year at University who went to the States to do a different course

Florida - Visit a large number of relatives who have settled up and down the length of Florida

PICK UP VAN, DRIVE BACK UP

Stop off at any of the above who will be free to have me again

plus

Washington D.C - My cousin who I visited 3 years ago also

New York - My grandparents in Long Island.

Vermont - Drop off van and work out how to get a lift back home!

Thus it commences!

“Entering NYC”, a gull watches the cars pass under its domain

What happens now?

Read the rest of this entry »

Hewwo!

I’m afraid this isn’t quite the next Montreal post because I’m sat here at Penn Station NYC, laptop out typing away at 11:19pm in the Amtrak patron waiting lounge.

For the time being I will put up the rest of the photos I took with the ‘Non-Camera’ and hope to return to elaborate on the whole trip some more in the near future. This will give me a chance to write up the more recent and cruxing developments (see newer posts).

Essentially, I stayed with Michael and his partner Reajanne. They took me out to dinner that first evening but a headache came upon me most viciously and I started to feel queasy eating the posh french food. I had to eventually apologise and leave off eating any of the dinner. Took it home with me in a doggy bag, went straight to bed. Following day I got a chance to look around Montreal as Michael drove me around some. Then I was taken too….

*Enter pictures*

The Montreal Biodome (zoo) also where the Olympic Stadium resides.

Fishies and Gawkers

Birdies. (Or rather people watching the birdies). Note the ‘faux sky’, would inspire anyone to go on a humanitarian animal wellfare crusade.

My favourites! The cute penguins!

Then we went to the Chalet also in close proximity to one of Michaels Sons; Shawn who has a nice little family of his own..

Me. ‘Chaleting’

Michael reads a story (in slight monotone) to his Grandson; Liam.

Went back the following day to Montreal where I got to see a nice view that I made into a dodgy panorama.

Montreal (can you spot the Biodome/Olympic Stadium?)

Then Michael took me to his other son; Dylan and his partner; Sophia.

“Sophia, Vic (a friend of theirs) and Dylan

I liked Dylan, he was on the same wavelength as me and not nessacarily because he owned a hemp shop but he is quite interested in family history like me. That evening we went to a vegatarian restaurant and then a strip club(!), both equally quite new experiences for me.

It was a very short stay, especially with Dylan and Sophia but I have been invited back. I hope to take them up on the offer.

Blitzed back down to Vermont on the Greyhound whereupon I immediately started organising my Florida trip.. So, onto another post then.

The reason for my severe delay in finishing the rest of the Montreal blog postings can be attributed to the frantic headrush of the past 2 weeks that have seen me tackling the huge logistics of an extended Florida trip.

If you can recall, I have been asked to pick up a van for a company and drive it back some 1500 miles to Vermont. I have decided to go ahead with this because I would be paid for my time, have the travel costs covered, get an opportunity to do some real-life US State-wide driving and also visit a large number of friends, family or relatives.

In order to visit relatives in a timely manner, I requested if I could get a paid Amtrak rail pass to chuff along the East Coast and make stop overs to visit people possible. Luckily the company agreed.

The huge logistics problem came about when I realised that I would have the mammoth task of coordinating a rally of visits with about 25-30 odd people that I have addresses and invitations for all the way down to Florida. I would need to schedule a day or two for each person and work out which Amtrak station is closest and if I need a Greyhound from there or not. Then I would need to check which days were suitable with everyone and make sure that it all lined up with the minimum of ‘backtracking’ up the railways.

Whew.

I think I’ve pretty much accomplished a good array of dates all one after the other which succeed their way down the East Coast.

My plans are:

WAY DOWN (Amtrak Train & Greyhound Bus)

Vermont - A ride down with my host Chuck as he had to go to NYC anyway

New York - Visit a friend of my mothers living on Mulberry Street, China Town in Manhatten.

South Carolina - My distant cousin who lives in UK but has a work placement for a year in the US

Savannah - My old hallmate from the first year at University who went to the States to do a different course

Florida - Visit a large number of relatives who have settled up and down the length of Florida

PICK UP VAN, DRIVE UP

Stop off at any of the above who will be free to have me again

plus

Washington D.C - My cousin who I visited 3 years ago also

New York - My grandparents in Long Island.

Vermont - Drop off van and work out how to get a lift back home!

Hullo again,

A 3 part special! Stay tuned, gripping stuff, perhaps.

Well I decided it was time to make a little trip away from Vermont and get away from the hassles and frustrations of things like immoral Russians and futile car hunting.

In the little green book my mother had given me were a list of names and addresses, friends and family from all over who I could potentially get in touch with and visit.

I didn’t want to go too far just yet and so perusing the little green book I settled on Michael Maxwell and his family in Montreal, Canada.

We corresponded by email a couple times and yes he would really like to have me over,

“If you can come up a week Friday then we shall drive you up to our Chalet with us”, gave me a target date to aim for.

The next issue to solve was method of transport. Not yet the proud owner of a set of wheels (and chassis, engine, gear stick, pedals, ooooh a steering wheel, fluffy dice maybe..) it wasn’t quite time to bring into effect the roadtripping and so instead I thought it’d be nice to go up by train. A leisurely pacing, see the landscape and whatnot.

Well that wasn’t to be either, since at a Jazz Jam, connected to a wi-fi hot-spot, I phoned up Amtrak using the TTY (text phone service provided by Nextalk) and was told that in order to get to Montreal from Vermont I would need to get a train down to New York Penn Station and then from there a direct line to Montreal….

WTF?

New York City is like almost exactly the same distance from Vermont as it is from here to Montreal but in entirely the opposite direction.

Fools!

I went to a travel agent the next day and the lady there rather vigorously lamented to me that the Vermonter Train service to Montreal had been dropped with some budget cuts and all the Vermont travel agents were frantically appealing Amtrak to get it back running, I could tell I had hit a touchy subject and I started to fear that this newly agitated lady agent would any moment clasp onto my arm and beg of me to solve the problems, have mercy and get the Vermonter Train back in action.

Well I got away in one piece.

So with the train out of the window, it was down to the faithful Greyhound coach to save me, don’t they spell ‘grey’ ‘gray’ here? Confusing.

I was lucky, I found out I was just in time to take advantage of the special ‘weeks advance’ offer for next Friday and save myself $15, woot. So, with Greyhound Coach ticket proudly in my hand, I ambled away from the Brattleboro office and was all set for Montreal. Interestingly the ticket was the same price if I left from Brattleboro or Bellows Falls, they are a good hours drive apart, I decided to leave from Bellows Falls as my father offered to have me stay the night and then I could catch the coach the following day.

Bellows Falls, this was a mini adventure in itself. Staying over at my fathers place? Howso? Wherefor? Why?

Questions, qwestions, b’huh thems’ imaginary voices sure keep me busy..

The adventure was setting down my packed bags and things, wondering what space I would be able to sleep on, for my fathers abode was a single room above a stationary shop on Bellows Falls high street. Piled high in many places were my fathers possessions and commiserated work places for his art. A tightly compacted maze of clutter in which you’re lucky to find a place to stand, let alone sit, oh and sleep(!), consarn it.

In a way the room and it’s artistic clutter was a direct contrast to the sparseness of Karl and Susans’ place, oh how we suffer.

Well it wasn’t that suffersome really, my father cleared a space on part of the floor by the back window and was able to set out a small air mattress and a borrowed sleeping bag. The evening, I spent delving onto a half hidden Fender Rhodes , caressing dusty keys, the electric piano chimed away in it’s mellow glory whilst I stared absent mindedly at a fuzzy TV public broadcast documentary, visually apparent to be concerned with the recent US voting and polling situation which I couldn’t understand for lack of subtitles. My father emerged from behind another pile and produced a vegetarian stir fry from seemingly nowhere, at a portable single-hob gas stove. Cunning stuff. It was tasty too. We chatted quite freely, a rarity, I forget about what.

Soon after, pretty shattered, I called it a night and got ready for bed whilst a freight train thundered by outside. It tooted a low note and haunted across a bridge of rusted metal that crossed over the rapids of a silver river that cut its parallel way in front of a barely seen, green mountain face.

The view from the window of my fathers home.

I’m sure the word ‘consarn‘ is very close to the word that I’m trying to think of,  if any of you have any ideas let me know…

Meh,  a little deflated today,  small inklings of frustration seeping through the cracks.  I know things will be better,  just a matter of a good nights sleep and a positive week..  Smilie Face!

THE GOOD 

• My laptop rocks
• I’m beginning to get paid for work that utilises my creativity!
• Autumn is beautiful here in the Vermontonian wooded valleys,  golden leaves rain down in the wind
• I’ve been writing some new songs,  pretty high quality work
• Friends and family members being very supportive of me and my big adventure
• I’m going up to Montreal this weekend to visit relatives in Canada
• Seeing and being with the people over here

THE BAD

• My laptop didn’t work on the wi-fi hotspot in McNeils pub (damnit, it worked flawlessly everywhere else,  why won’t it let me drink and surf!?)
• My web-site coding skills need work (darn cross browser compatibility gets me every time).
• Internet really really sucks here in the middle of nowhere!
• Getting frustrated about lack of independance (can’t go anywhere without my Father turning up and giving me a lift to places)
• Car search is going slow (try to rectify the above problem, however all the decent looking car deals get snapped up before I can get anywhere close to checking them out)
• Still no digital camera (sorry folks, that one is long overdue for the blog)
• Seem to have gone a few steps backwards in the music theory I was teaching myself,  will have to relearn some stuff
• Banking sucks here in America compared to UK
• Finally got confirmation that I was ripped off by credit card fraud on the Canon camera I auctioned before coming over to the States meaning I owe Paypal 415 GBP (plus another 10 GBP for them doing me the service of failing completely to prove to the credit card company in question that I am the victim here.)
• Having to rebudget a lot of things for my trip due to the above (really could use that $800,  at worst I will probably have to put off travelling west until I have done some more jobs and reearned the money).

A few other odds and ends,  in general I’m doing pretty well I think.  Nothing every goes smoothly but I am confident that the experiences that are coming thick and fast will give continue to give me big pushes in the right direction and I will be thoroughly making the most out my time here as a young man with nothing holding me back from my potential to create and achieve.

Hip, hip, hurrah.

Been meaning to update people to the fact that I did another radio interview. Like the BBC one I did (and still need to somehow get into digital 101010110100101000.. format from cassette) this interview was only broadcast locally but still I’m sure there were a couple (dozen) ears tuned in between the hours of 8:30 to 9:30pm on Bellows Falls Community Radiostation; Wool.fm. This interview I am almost certainly going to be able to obtain a straight digital copy of to share it with all.

The interview went well and it was a jolly fun hour of waffling, who doesn’t want to talk about themselves to an interested audience eh?

Unlike the BBC interview, the show was done live and on the spot as opposed to when the BBC chap came with a recorder and mic to ask me some questions and then took away a CD of my music to intersplice with a monologue of yours truely, totally only 4 minutes. This time I got a full hour to myself and was able to play whole songs all the way through.

I was interviewed by a ‘Maya Costley’ who I had met previously at one of the Drum Jams (will have to talk about those sometime too). She had an air of youth about her, I was surprised to find out later she had and raised kids as usually she hides an amiable and pretty face under funky large skullcaps or various other headgear,  I had assumed she was quite young but today I was able to spot the odd strand of white hair.  She’s very nice.

Maya works at the Community radio station and was starting to pursue more local music acts for the show and thought I would make an interesting subject to drill.

Drill me she did, we got to talk about all manner of things from growing up in England and getting a ‘British Education’ to how I come to be sat in the chair talking about my lifes aspirations. I think it best to let the interview speak for itself when I upload a copy asap.

After the interview I showed maya how to use some computer software to edit audio material as she needed help with a previous interview project of hers, in fact the Bellows Falls Studio has this impressive audio workstation which apparently know one uses any more(!). It was just sat there, a whole mini studio begging (me) to be fondled and used for bloodthirst creative audio endeavours. I was told I was welcome to use it anytime and even invited to have my own radio show! I guess the interview went better than I thought! I am tempted of course but don’t know how long I will be in the area for..

“Not to worry” says they,

“Record some shows for us on the road!”.

You know what? That’s a jolly good idea. So watch this space for ‘Myles’ travelling radioshow’. Just need to obtain a microphone and audio interface for the laptop.. Mmmm.

Alas the rest of the week was quite boring, a lot of paperwork related infiltrations of local post offices and banks to sort out other things that needed erm.. sorting out.

Also had some really warm days where I just was lazy… aah bliss.

Oh yar wrote some new tunes too, if you’re all good boys and girls I may share with you a sneak preview..

Now to edit the timestamp of the post to make it look like I am keeping on top of my blog… (oops).

After trampling all over Boston, we were getting quite hungry and so made our way to ‘Government Center’ which is where the City Hall was. Getting off the tram, we were treated to a troupe of breakdancers performing in the sqaure and so watched them for a while. I thought they were pretty good and liked some of the coorindated dances they had going with up to 6 of them grooving to the gettoblaster at the same time. Skill wise I have seen a lot more impressive breakdancing in videos and from researching the passing interest in the dance form online, but still it was great to see it for real in the flesh. Bet ya didn’t know I took some breakdancing lessons at University? I don’t know if I can still do some of the spins and I seem to get dizzy more quickly these days if I bounce my head around, possibly a sign of my worsening hearing condition, related to the pressure imbalance in my head? Meh

For food we entered this long thin building which contained about 35 different food stalls up and down the whole length, take away foods from all over could be had from Greek cousine, Thai to brick oven pizzas and fish and chips. Mmmm, mouth watering stuff. Right in the middle of this ‘food market’ there was a large circular eating area with two floors so you could sit down and munch away. This is precisely what we did, I went for Thai..

An amusing incident was when I had to pay for the Thai meal with a $20 Travellers Cheque. This part was fine but I had to sign and date it as usual, didn’t know the day and so asked the lady behind the counter what the date was. 9 30 she said,

It wasn’t so bad with the being an ‘outsider amongst deaf peers’ really but when we all got back to Davids apartment Karl told me that Susan and David had decided I was mad at Karl for some reason, I quickly dispelled the rumour and said it was just a little difficult for me to participate in conversations thus I was being quiet a lot of the time. Certainly no-ones fault and definitely a temporary issue. Karl was happy to hear that I wasn’t angry or any such thing and agreed that I would be fully participating soon once I had learnt more ASL. He gave me a hug and went off to prepare for going out to the clubs tonight.

So go out we did, all dressed up and ready to party, however it wasn’t to be. We knew it would be difficult to find a club to get into with David not quite 19, but unfortunately everywhere we went to said, 19+ or 21+ only, so poor David couldn’t get into anywhere! I’m nut sure if it’s related to the fact that we were trying to get into gay bars as there were two bisexuals among us (not me, I’m pretty straight I reckon), however it’s more likely to do with the 21 being the drinking age in the States.

Well it was a bummer not getting to go into a club, we instead decided to go grab something to eat at a 24 hour supermarket, Karl and Susan had Sushi, David and Meg (oops forgot to introduce her too, she came out clubbing with us and was a 2nd year video art student friend of David, she was hearing but learning signing too.) had Ben and Jerrys. I had a chocolate sundae pudding. Weird what you can get at these hours in the supermarket..

It wasn’t such a bad night out but we had a long trek back as surprisingly the Tram services stopped from around midnight or so. With aching feet we got back to campus and went to bed.

Running out of time writing this entry here at Bellow Falls Community Radio Station… what am I doing here? That’ll have to wait till another blog post I’m afraid

So the following morning (this would be the Sunday Oct 1st), we packed our things back up and Karl drove us back to Vermont. Not before stopping off at the Cheesecake Factory mind you! Yum yum, supreme cakes that I got to munch on the roads back home.

Crashed out at Karl and Susans place as we were all pretty knackered. Got to talk to Karl some more about his life and past relationships which really helped give me food for thought about what I am looking for at the moment. For your information I haven’t been one looking for ‘fun’ with girls and have been on the hunt for more serious relationships but so far no luck there, usually the nice ladies I ask out are taken. I won’t bore people with the failed attempts to court ladies in the past but might talk a little more in the future about some things I’ve observed or learnt so far and my own thoughts on that huge word; ‘love’.

Karl took me home after his days work on Monday to Putney.

Gotta dash now though, plenty more to say, not enough time in the day wot wot.

Oooarrgh, well brain information overload this weekend and unable to contain all it for later consumption blog-wise however I shall try and recollect some of the best bits for ya all, but quickly to catch up:

“Side-notes”; The workshop went rather well if a little needlessly hectic on my behalf, made one or two tiny errors when instruction the kids what the do in the exercises (e.g. tearing up all the paper into ‘frames’ when folding them and tucking into each other book style would have been much better) but everyone was remarkably patient with me and for that I am grateful. To my surprise, I was handed a money order check for $200 as gratitude from Austine School for my efforts. I was all set up to do it voluntarily but being rewarded money for my time and ’skills’ *cough*.. was an extra bonus

That’s not all, the day afterwards, apparently a little review and evaluation was performed by the students to say how they enjoyed the Camp and I was informed that they enjoyed doing my workshop the most out of the other 4 activities they did also! So I must have done something right..

Highlights of the day would be the kids understanding a lot more about the concept of animation and video art than I expected, seeing some excellent flipbooks, chipmunks, and being asked what the ‘name of my car was’ by a small and intriguing girl with a face and demeanour of someone much, much older.

For your information, the car search still continues..

So the Leadership Camp drew to an end and Karl, Susan and me went home to pack and prepare for Boston.

We took about just over 3 hours to get to Boston, much of the journey I dozed off in the back of the car wishing I had my new camera as I watched the sun set through the rear window. The cloudscapes were sheer bliss providing a softly evolving illuminated backdrop for the wispy green mountains. Such is the rural landscape of Vermont and Massachusetts, green trees turning orange as they coat the hills and occasionally you can spot mist rise from the valleys.

Driving through the Streets of Boston was a wake-up call to the fact that I was suddenly back in a City environment, an extreme contrast to the idyllic towns and villages that dot Vermont, that said, the places we drove through seemed quiet, I was expecting more hustle and bustle to match the skyscraper-ed street blocks but the general pace of things seemed very laid back to me especially compared with ‘neighbour’ NYC.

Quickly we found the campus for the “School for the Museum of Fine Arts” which is where the friend of Karl was studying and who we were to stay with for the weekend.

David was a quirky fellow, I was surprised by the age gap between him and Karl but I found out that they had met when David were at a Summer Camp.  At 18 David was a well travelled fellow having already visited 15 countries,  details are a little sketchy as I tried my best to keep up with the conversation but when deaf people get together they tend to sign away at the speed of light and change topics at the turn of a .. er, whats the word.. hmm, meh… oki, at the turn of a turtle. Thus poor old me with 2 weeks ASL learning under my belt was a little overwhelmed.

In fact much of the weekend I experienced almost exactly the same situations of being left out when in group conversations, this has happened all my life among hearing peers because I find it difficult to hear what people say and as soon as the topic starts bouncing around I am lost without my contextual recognition. So it was a little depressing to experience the same thing among deaf peers but I kept reassuring myself that this was only temporary and it was just a matter of time before I could fully participate when I have learnt a lot more sign.

At least this time everyone could understand my troubles a little better this time and so made more of an effort to pause and tell me what the topic was and ask me some questions in super slow-motion signing. Thanks guys

We went out that Friday night to mooch around, found our way to what I was told to me the famous ‘Newbury Street’ known for upper class toffery. Again I got the feeling that the streets were quiet, not much going on, this would be about 10:30pm mind. Many of the shops were closed save for a the bars and restaurants. We did finally find an open Candy Store and proceeded to gorge our eyes on the sugary possibilities. I spied a table in the middle containing exclusive and rare ‘imported chocolates and sweets’ essentially containing my typical diet back in England from the age of 6-10, Cadbury’s Flakes and Kinder Eggs anyhow, awesome stuff.

The sweetie attendant kept offering us some freebie samples whilst at the same time nagging not to ‘mix the walls’ referring to the fact that the different sweets on different walls were priced differently. I proceeded to joke with her about the fact that ‘all local kids must be insominacs seeing as the Candy Store was the only place open within sight at this late hour.’, well it got a giggle.

After candy we visited a park where I was slow-mo sign informed ‘Good Will Hunting’ was filmed, having not seen the film yet I couldn’t comment much on this trivia, prompting the others back into their discernible conversations, and thus I descended into quiet gloom as I am prone to in a moonlit park such as this. It was silly of me as I battled against not being able participate fully in signed conversation versus the knowledge that I would be able to in the near future if I stick with it. I tried to stay positive but lagged behind the others as they continued on.

We got back to campus about 1am, since David is a fresher and living in the halls of residence we had to keep handing in a form of ID to the guard in reception until we wanted to go out. I was a little worried about leaving my Drivers Licence like that overnight but I can report that I got it back each time without fuss.

I slept on the couch in a communal apartment whilst Karl and Susan got a blow up mattress in Davids room. Zzzzz… Read the rest of this entry »

IT’S HERE!

“Dell Inspiron E7015″

I don’t have much time but I’m sat here on my new laptop that arrived ahead of schedule using the wireless internet at Austine School for the Deaf. In 2 and a half hours I will be giving my presentation to a group of deaf kids and then getting them to make some animations as part of the workshop.

I hope it will go ok, I showed Karl my PowerPoint presentation but it turned out I had gone far too indepth into the subject matter so we radically stripped it down to something much more simpler, which works out better for me because I’m hoping to sign in ASL to these kids, bit of a tall ordeal considering I only started learning it 2 weeks ago. Hehe.

After today I ride back with Karl and Susan and prepare to go to Boston for the weekend. I have more to say but it will probably have to wait till tonight / tomorrow.

Und Tschüss!

Hullo folks,

Saturday was groovy, went to a ‘music party’ at a house of a family obviously very into world music, many musicians showed up and so we all played upbeat jigs and folky songs. I didn’t have my guitar so drummed along on the various percussion they had laying around. The family’s music room was jam packed with instruments from all over the world, very very cool. People were playing all sorts of things that I’ve never actually seen but only heard of being used musically e.g. spoons, jews-harp, jugs, a part of a glass organ? Others played fiddles, mandolins, banjos and guitars. Oh and someone whistled into a mike. Mostly the men played instruments whilst many of the ladies danced around in the middle, however we did swap around some. Awesometastic fun, not quite experienced anything like it, felt like from another time if you know what I mean? One very happy house in the middle of another nowhere.

Oh Maya was there also, she asked me again if I could come in and broadcast some of my music or playing, I told her that I can bring in a CD of music and talk about how I compose, she seemed happy with that and so we exchanged emails. Got back late after all that.
Right, onwards, I spent Sunday-Monday with Karl and Susan at their place, the main reason for me staying over was to plan for a workshop I have been asked to do.

A workshop you ask? Although I mentioned it in the previous post let me elaborate. You might remember I mentioned going up to Visit ‘Austine School for the Deaf’ a few more posts ago, well Karl as a teacher there, is organising a ‘Leadership Camp’ and asked me if I would do a presentation and activity with about 30 deaf high schoolers as part of their Leadership weekend. I was surprised by his request but interested in seeing what I could do.

His idea was that I could talk about being a deaf student at University in England and show the high schoolers what my animation degree was like. With that in mind, Karl asked if we can do something interactively with the kids so they get to have a hands on experience.

As I said before, the act of animating is very, very time consuming and I’ve only been given 1.5 hours to do it all in! None-the-less, this is what I did with Karl, brain-storm a little and do lots of thinking. Finally after a few experiments it was decided that if I could split the workshop into two halfs, I could introduce the students to the basic principles of animation via pen and paper and drawing keyframes to create a very shot and simple flipbook. Then using that as an introduction to the methodology behind 2D animation, I would take them to the Computer Labs in Austine and load up either some animation software, or even a basic online ‘flipbook creator’. There is a flash online-based one that allows you to draw into the computer in black and white line-drawings and then play them back in sequence.

Go and have a go now! It’s a lot of fun!

http://www.benettonplay.com/toys/flipbook/flipbook_maker.php

Some awesome ones have been made so far by other people:

http://www.fabrica.it/flipbook/topvoted.php

I’m going to stress the point of how computers today have really helped the animation industry by allowing the workflow to be much quicker and far fewer stages required to create an animation than say in the old Disney days.
So with the plan of what to do with the deaf students sorted, all that is left for me to do tomorrow is make a quick PowerPoint presentation and burn some examples of my animations I’ve created at University to a CD to show them on the day.

Karl and Susan spent the rest of Sunday evening teaching me more ASL of which I tried to my best to assimilate even though I was quite tired from stressing over this workshop!

“Karl and Susan Signing”.

Karl also cooked us a spicy chicken-sausage risotto thing served with 2 slices of pineapple, a surprising and interesting meal, he could definitely open a restaurant I told him. I did the dishes afterwards to show my gratitude despite their grumbling that I didn’t need too, har!
Since Karl and Susan are both profoundly deaf, they have a fully equipped out apartment Read the rest of this entry »

Hmmm, the other day I was making lunch in the kitchen here as the sun streamed in through the windows along the wood floors, when behind me came an unexpected visitor. He seemed the slippery sort so I got my father to help me eject him from the house. Not before taking a picture first though of course.

“Unexpected Snake Fellow”.

A first for the blog, a short movie!
Snake movie (right click save as).

“Slithery Snake Movie”, captured with the Fujifilm camera.

OK so it’s not exactly a huge man eater, the movie is in .wmv format because I only have access to ‘Windows Movie Maker’, sorry Mac-Linuxy people, will rectify matters when my laptop is delivered.

This place is surrounded by all sorts of insects and small critters, not for those with quesy dispositions!

I went outside afterwards because some of the locals were playing ‘Frisbee Golf’ where they would trample all over the hills here and aim their frisbees at Chucks Sculptures, the objective being to hit the target sculpture in least number of throws. They very kindly welcomed me to the game and let me have a go. The frisbees were quite small and hard to throw straight but I started to get the hang of it after a while.

Only trouble was it was easy to lose the frisbee in the thick overgrowth of the hills and surrounding woods so most of the game is actually spent looking for your frisbee instead of chucking it around, in fact we lost one when headed straight into the woods for a huge oak tree as our target, doh.

Whilst trampling around I spotted a Praying Mantis and then a snake about 4x the size of the one above, pretty groovy huh? Didn’t have the camera with me unfortunately then as it’s a little too big to carry around just like that. However that said I have my eyes on the camera I will buy which is really small but still full featured.

“FujiFilm FinePix F30″

I think it’ll make a great blogging camera, plus it has some of the best low light performance for its class. check out the review of it here: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0602/06021403fujif30.asp

A bit of a short and disjointed blog entry for today, however I gotta go and fix some food, shower and prepare some animation workshop materials before Karl gets here at 4pm!

More on that later…

Ciao!

Funnily enough after battling with ‘the-worst-digital-camera-in-the-world’ I found a good Fujifilm digital camera here in the house! I guess had my host (Chuck) been here, he would have told me about his own camera, doh, however he has been away for 10 days but gets back from a business trip tomorrow. I had a sneak look at the camera anyway and took a couple shots, it’s quite a nice camera indeed, and so todays blog posting has some better pictures.

Wednesday 20th was split into 3 chunks. The morning found me lazing about on the couch, watching TV whilst practicing my ability to dodge adverts by flipping channels back and forth.
However, in the afternoon when it had warmed up a little, I got on with the given task of scrubbing down a collection of sculptures that are due to be shown at an exhibition sometime soon. I had been asked to clean off the bird droppings and dirt.

“dirty sculpture”

I spent a few hours on that, but it was fairly back-breaking stuff as there were 15 of them and each had to be rolled around and maneuvered so that I could get at their multiple undersides.

“15 ‘Rashomon’ Sculptures”, the work of Chuck Ginnever.

Just after cleaning the sculptures, I turned around and spotted a caterpillar making its way along a concrete wall.
“Pah that is an easy crawl thought I� and so proceeded to make things a little more trickier for it with some obstacles and a ‘reset zone’ where-upon I carried the ‘pillar back to the start a few times to see if he would get better and faster at traversing the course. The exercise was slightly voided since caterpillar got spooked a couple times by some militant ants and either froze or shot off in a completely different direction. None-the-less he achieved his original destination in the end albeit with an amusing roll and bump down the slope at the end.
I was having so much fun that I completely forgot to take any pictures of the little hairy feller, but never mind, I present here instead, a picture of the wall and an animation demonstrating roughly the path of said caterpillar.

“Path of mentioned caterpillar”.

The previous night Karl had asked me online what I was doing today because he wanted to ask me about a ‘Leadership Camp’, because every Wednesday night my father likes to goto the Jazz Jam at the Vermont Jazz Center I told Karl he could meet me there at the Jam and then we could talk some more.
Lo and behold Karl was there at the Jazz Jam and we sat and listened for a little whilst I showed off the new ASL I had learnt so far. Cool thing about signing is that it doesn’t matter how loud the environment is, you can talk away freely over music and loud noise without any such problems with understanding each other, that is once you’ve learnt the language sufficiently that is! I have a long way to go but Karl was very patient and spelling out words for me that I did not know. What Karl wanted it turned out,, was for me to take part in a weekend of activities that he was organising on behalf of Austine School for the Deaf, in fact he wanted me to give a presentation and host a workshop for about 30 deaf students, they would be from the 3 surrounding deaf schools (Connecticut, Manchester and Brattleboro). Well golly, I was a little taken aback, what could I possibly share with these budding deaf students? Karl went on the explain that the idea of the camp was to give deaf high school students of ages from 14-20 some inspiration for going on to further study. Karl had a Principle from the only deaf University in the World (!) attending to give a talk and another graduate ex-student like me to give a presentation. So it seemed to be that I could give a talk to the deaf students myself and tell them about what it was like for me to goto University in England and explain what I did, how I did it, and what I want to do next. Here comes the worrying bit.. Karl stressed repeatedly that my presentation and workshop should be interactive with the students so that then can essentially have a go at what I did at University..
“OK sure, so I did a Computer Animation degree, Karl wants me to show the kids how to animate�
“Wait-a-sec, how long do you want me to do this workshop for?.� To which, Karl whips out some poster print-outs that outline the schedule for the weekend. My name was already on there!

2:30 - 4:00pm: Activity w/ Myles de Bastion.

!!!

This guy moves fast..

Apart from being completely taken aback, it suddenly began to dawn on me a major problem, 1.5 hours to teach 30 kids how to animate? If you aren’t aware of this, the art of animation is one of the most time consuming things you can do as a creative profession, each stage takes a lot of time, concentration and (for the best results) specialist equipment like Lightboards, Graphics Tablets, Scanners, Cameras, Render Farms, etc etc. You need a lot of time, resources and endless patience to complete an animation. Thankfully these days you can do a lot of the work straight into the computer and skip past many of the stages that cel-based animation houses used to have to do back in the pre-Pixar ‘Disney Era’. But even so this requires at least a computer per artist and plenty of time.

OK, so we’re not looking to create a block-buster full length animated feature movie here, but the ideal would be to have each kid make their own small animation sequence, the simplest form of animation that springs to mind is good ol’ pen on paper cards which are then stacked and flipped through with the thumb to create a flip-book, I’m sure a lot of people have tried that at least once? Trouble is, it’s very difficult to make and view a convincing animation with this method for a number of reasons, one is the fact that altough paper is nice and easy to see through so you can trace your previous drawn frames, it doesn’t the type of flexibility when stacked into a flipbook that you need to rapidly flick through the pages in succession. Card has this elastic flexibility but you can’t see through it without the aid of a back lit surface such as a lightboard that professional animations use.
To get to the point, I feel that the kids are going to be disappointed by their hours work invested into a flimsy flipbook that doesn’t flip, hardly the way to inspire kids about animation!

Oh dear..

My brain starts to go into overdrive thinking of solutions to this near-impossible conundrum and as I sit here typing I have to admit I still haven’t decided on the best way to do it. Any animators out there, feel free to suggest something!

However I need to decide something by tomorrow because Karl needs to order in the materials I need, and thus I feel a bit pressured there. Shall have to email him and voice my concerns.

Aside from debating about the workshop, I enjoyed a tea (strawberry mmmm), and a couple shots of Jagermeister (Mmmm!!) with Karl when we went out to a bar afterwards. It appeared to be an Open-Mic night in the bar and had people taking in turns to get up on stage with an acoustic guitar and warble away, I didn’t pay much attention though as I had to concentrate more on what Karl was signing to me, it had been a long day too so my tiredness made things slightly more difficult, none-the-less we got to have a very nice chat and I found out a lot more about him and how he grew up in Boston but was actually from South Africa. I really like him and hope we can remain good friends in the future even if I move away from here.
Better end the post for now, will report back on the workshop and other things when I know more!

Good night all.

Good day,
This ‘dodgy’ camera actually has quite a feature set to my surprise, you can change the exposure, white balance and jpeg picture quality (super fine, normal), wow, and also it records movies! Unfortunately I only have an 8mb SD card to play with which is good for about 10 pictures at a time, not so useful..

Here are a couple shots I’ve taken with it, note that I had to bump the saturation up in Photoshop

Farm house I am staying at and the view over a valley opposite.

Last Monday evening there was a surprise phone call from ‘Isabel’, she apparently is my Grandfathers niece and thus is a distant relative of mine that I never knew I had. She phoned because she was in the area and was staying at the Putney Inn. She was part way through a trip to visit more of her friends and family and would only be around for that night only, hastily leaving the following morning.
I have never seen my father in such a hurry to change his clothes and clean himself up to be presentable. He usually has no sense of urgency and his personal appearance is a lower priority for him. None-the-less, that night we were out the door within 20 minutes and scooting off down the tree-lined dirt roads avoiding the pot holes and probably going faster than my fathers Nissan pick up truck can really cope with.
Meeting my cousin (once-removed?) Isabel was certainly an interesting experience, she was jolly and up-front, the type of person who will really tell you what she honestly thinks. She told me that she was the big mouth in the family and proceeded to prove this as she dished out the family dirt and secrets that were presumably meant to be kept inside the family. I liked Isabel, not just for being honest but she was easy to talk to and seemed ‘real’ if you know what I mean?
So before even our meal had been served I was versed in who the crazy ones were and those who have had nervous break-downs so far, I’m sure you get the picture..

She also invited me to her home in Buda, Texas which I will certainly be visiting probably in Spring when I start journeying out West. I’ve always wanted to visit Austin which is renowned for its music. Some of my favourite guitarists have come from there; Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons and Stevie Ray Vaughan to name a few. Must be something in the water over there.
We decided to get together again the following morning for breakfast and to see her off but left her at the Inn that evening because my father wanted to go to the ‘Drum Jam’ in Bellows Falls, although we invited Isabel, she declined and preferred to get an early night anyway.

The drum jam was fun, I had actually gone the previous week as well but forgot to mention it here, it’s held every week in the studio of a woodworker artist friend of my father, the work-tops are pushed aside and out come the drums, congas, bongos and sticks.
That night there were about 9 or so of us making a lot of racket. Someone would lead with a beat and then we’d all join in to add our own beats to interweave an ulterior tangle of rhythmic sound.
If I can I will see if I can get an audio recording of a session to give you a better idea, probably when my laptop arrives (still 3 weeks to go.. Hmmpf).
Oh ya, I met a girl called Maya at that Drum Jam, it was her first time there but we got talking a little at the end, turned out she does some radio broadcasting in Bellows Falls and always has local musicians coming in to play live over the airwaves, she asked if I could come in the following week and do something, I’m intrigued, but as to what I can ‘play’, I’m not sure yet, I’m more of a composer than a performer you see. Currently I only have my CD of music and an acoustic guitar with me, but there could be some possibilities though, wish Maya had been more specific about what would be suitable..
Anyways, if I am able to put together a performance then I will no doubt let you guys know.

Which also reminds me that, as some of you may already know.. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s see, I have a few days to catch up on here.

“*Gasp* can it be, a photo??”

Yup I went bowling on the Sunday in a bid to meet more deaf people locally, my father took me there and drove off to do some work presumably. I was fairly early but when I went in I spotted a couple of guys signing away, a younger jolly looking lad and an older feller in donning a cap over his white hair and weather tanned skin. As before I went up to them and attempted to introduce myself. I was able to finger-spell my name out to them and tell them that I had been invited by the deaf people I had met already. They were familiar with the names I gave them and said that I would be able to fill in for a team member who would not show up. All good and well so far!
Shortly after that people started turning up, and gradually the place seemed to be teeming with people signing to each other whilst putting on their bowling shoes and limbering up. Must have been 25 or so of us suddenly taking up half the bowling lanes in the place!

I spotted Kelly from the other night and went over to say ‘Hi’. She recognised me straight away and said it was good to see me there. She then introduced me to the chap in charge of the whole bowling bonanza called Ken who then assigned me to 3-person team.
I hadn’t been bowling in years so suffice to say I was more than rusty and ready to embarrass myself.

Embarrass myself I did on a few occasions but I also get in a few nice full strikes in there too! My team were pretty patient and were kind enough to give me plenty of bowling tips however it seemed that the more I thought about my technique, the worse I did! Oh well..

After 2 hours we had managed to play 3 games, it was enjoyable but I hadn’t been able to talk to people and socialise as much as I was hoping to, if I had to attribute that to any reason I would say it was because everyone was pretty competitive about their game and that didn’t leave a lot of room for getting to know people better and learning more ASL from them. Oh well, it was still a good experience on the whole. Oh yea my father sure took his time to pick me up, I was the last to leave! Mmmmm a car to call my own.. *daydreams*.

Thus onto Monday where I, yes indeed, I got my hands on not just any camera but quite possibly the worst piece of photographic technology I’ve ever used, but none the less, images! Read on! Read the rest of this entry »

Thus, as recommended by Karl and Susan, I made my way (with my Father kindly driving me there) to McNeils in Brattleboro at 8pm the Friday evening.

You would think it’d be relatively easy to spot some deaf people chatting away in a bar wouldn’t you? Just look for people signing avidly to each other. However most notable when we walked in was an absense of any such signing from anyone.
Hmmm, maybe they were at another bar? So we had a quick mosey around to the other local bars but either the deaf groups were not talking to each other or there was no-one out tonight.
As my father and I walked back to McNeils, I must admit to feeling a little deflated.
However, lo and behold as we walked back up the street, there, stood outside McNeils were some people signing! Read the rest of this entry »

So let’s put away the dastardness of dealing with inefficient large corporations, card fraud and other nasties as I talk a little about the pleasure I had to welcome two young deaf people here last night.

Let me quickly start at the beginning when I went down to Austine School for the Deaf in Brattleboro to enquire about the local deaf social activities, I had been informed that there is a sizeable deaf community in Brattleboro and the surrounding areas of Vermont so I was naturally keen to find out more.

The busy bubbly receptionist named Kim at the Austine School audiology department had me wait a short while whilst she attended to some weather-beaten senior citizens who had come in for their regular check ups, but then finally Kim came over and asked what I wanted. I told her I was new to the area and would like to get involved with the deaf communities, to which she replied;

“Hmm, I’m totally the wrong person to ask for that, why don’t I give you some email contacts who are a little more clued in to the local action”.

This was fine by me, so I went away with a couple addresses of whom I wrote to. The first probably doesn’t check her email so often as I have yet to hear from however the second address I tried, I got a reply immediately. He instantly told me that every Sunday at 4pm there is a deaf group who tend to go bowling and every Friday they meet up at a local pub/bar called McNeils at 8pm. Well surprise, surprise, this was my fathers favourite watering hole. So I agreed with my Dad to go check it out.

That was not all though, the guy (named Karl) asked in his email what I was doing tonight? Well here I am in the middle of nowhere just outside of Putney with limited means of transport, I told him I’d be out tomorrow at McNeils but gave him directions to here anyway. He didn’t reply to that so I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, it was getting dark and I kinda thought they wouldn’t make the trouble to drive out here (whilst getting lost and wet in the rain).

So a few hours later, I’m doing more research on the PC here when there is a knock outside. “It couldn’t be?”. Thought I.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, Well, Well, this is looking more and more like a case of credit card fraud, there has been some contact between Paypal, my mother and I. I was able to provide ParcelForce tracking information and a full email transcript between the ‘buyer’ and myself forwarded to Paypal and can only sit here and wait for the best outcome. It looks like someone in Russia was victim to a stolen credit card and the person that had won the auction and used the stolen credit card to pay for it is a very, very naughty person.

I’m concerned that I will end up being the only victim here as usually these credit card companies can brute force their way into getting money back from anyone and so the person who is going to lose the money is likely to be me. That’ll be 415 GBP + a fee straight out of my pocket for just being the trust worthy chap I am.

I have two great friends who are both from Russia so I suppose that meant that any potential warning flags that this Russian chap from eBay might be seriously dubious were quenched unconciously.

Oh well, I’ll wait and see what the verdict will be, if I lose the money then fair enough, you can say it’d be a lesson for me, ‘once bitten, twice shy’ and whatnot, but I’d rather just stomach the loss and go on trusting people than turn into some kind of paranoid old pessimist. I think having a positive outlook on life and people is important and in the long run is much kinder on your general well being. I won’t let a rotten apple spoil my barrel-full.

Hey hey, yesterday wasn’t all so bad, I had the pleasure of welcoming two very nice deaf people into the farm house here last night. I think they deserve their own post away from the current evils of credit card fraud via Paypal.  So let me just make a new post…

Hi!

Good news!

To solve the problem with Dell not accepting my UK VISA card to purchase my laptop, my Grandfather very kindly stepped in and allowed me to put the purchase on his VISA card so that I may take advantage of the limited time offer.

I shall pay him back as soon as I have wired money from my English bank account to here. Just writing a letter to Lloyds TSB to inform them of the details in order to do so right now..

Bad news!

I checked my mail today to be greeted by a message from Paypal that the buyer digital camera that I sold last month via eBay auction has now requested a chargeback to his credit card for the full amount. There was no information listed other than Paypal wanting to hear my response to this issue.

You can still view the eBay auction here (note the first comment from the winning buyer near the bottom):

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250015288465

Well of course I sent off the camera a month ago using ParcelForce, I have a tracking number that proves it was delivered and accepted at it’s destination. It was shipped all the way to Moscow, RU which seemed fair enough as initially the buyer covered the cost.

I sent an email to ask if the guy had received the camera ok but never got a response to that. The money for the camera had been deposited to my bank account already and I assumed all was well. Until now that is.

So it seems that altough the camera was delivered and accepted in Russia, the guy has now contacted his credit card company and has requested that the money be refunded in full. So I have a pending charge on my Paypal account for -415.54 GBP, charming..

To make matters worse, Paypal instructed that I log in to their ‘Resolution Centre’ and provide a response to this charge-back issue. So I do log in and enter the Case ID number provided and guess what?

We are sorry, we are experiencing temporary difficulties. Please try again later. If this error occurred while making a payment, avoid duplicate payments by checking your Account Overview before resending a payment.

Message 4011

Needless to say I’ve sent a barrage of emails to Paypals charge-back credit card department demanding why their service is not functioning properly along with all the information I have to hand concerning the transaction including the full email transcript I’ve had with this less than honest Russian.

I have yet to hear from Paypal or the dodgy Russian.

So as the gloomy grey skies open up and pour down on this chilly afternoon, you can imagine this has been a sucky day.

Apparently my choice suddenly became a whole lot easier when it came to laptops as I browsed some notebook review sites and one had posted a special offer for all ‘Inspir