Big Yellow Tutu

Livejournal has treated me kindly for the past few years but it is now time to move on, so this blog has a new home...

http://helenium.wordpress.com/

It looks a bit shoddy at the moment, I haven't had time to make it pretty and tidy it up. But from now on I'll be posting over there instead. Apologies to anyone this inconveniences, but LJ was driving me slightly mad. I want to add fun stuff to my blog layout, and LJ was holding back my dreams of sparkly wonder.

I'll be adding things like my Last FM feed into the new blog, so at least now you can all take the piss out of me for the amount of Girls Aloud I listen to.

Farewell LiveJournal and farewell the wonderful world of LiveJournal McFly Slash Fic.
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One of the first pieces of work that I got stuck into on arriving at Dare last year was the lovely script project for Sony Vaio with John Malkovich. John wrote the first scene to a story and each month he asked writers to complete the next scene. A winner was chosen in month and the story progressed from there. The final script is finished and is really rather wonderful. It'll now be made into short film animation and I've just seen the first character images. I love them, especially the mother and the contortionist. I can't wait to see the final film and to send it to all the winners from each stage of the project.

The final script can be seen here

I have no idea how this works, but it is beautiful. Apparently Lego use it at point of sale in some stores. I'd probably wet myself there and then if I saw this in a store. God, I love Lego.

Almost a year ago I was stupid enough to get the LG Prada phone. Simply because it was pretty. 9 months later and I've had enough of the bugs, the rubbish keypad, the make up smears it attracts and the fact that it only rings three times before going to answer phone, no matter how much I fiddle about with the settings.

I'm thinking that the next phone should be a blackberry, though I was put off by how very very boring they are to look at. Why blackberries need to look like remote controls is still a mystery to me. On my lunchtime stumble around the internet I found my saving grace - a place that paints your blackberry.

With any luck, come summer, I'll be sporting this super babe of a phone. yum yum.

Oh my word. McFly toothbrushes just spotted over at Popjustice. I want this toothbrush. It plays the sound through your teeth! I need this in my life.  A trip to Argos on my way home is now planned into the day. Oh I can't wait.

Things I discovered this weekend:

Nice food + booze + Son Of Rambow = naps in the cinema

Brockwell Park + tennis rackets = Chris getting thrashed by Helen

Good butchers + nice lamb = great curry and falling asleep by 10pm

Snow on Brockwell Park + a nice cafe = a wonderful fry up on Sunday morning watching people play in the park

Spitalfields Market + Helen = empty wallet. Oops.

Torchwood + deaths = trying to hide crying from Chris

David Tennant + anything = bliss.

xx

Staring at PowerPoint for 10 hours a day can leave even the bravest soul feeling uninspired. In a bid to make sure I don't go mad by the time summer is out I've signed up to rather a few lectures, talks, conferences, seminars etc over the coming weeks.

Last night I headed over to Imperial to attend 'Web 3.0: Materializing the conceptual worlds of the mind'. A title which would doubtlessly confuse my mother.

The whole idea of the night was to look at the  convergence of virtual worlds, cinema and architecture; looking at where web 3.0 could head now that film and architecture are becoming increasingly digital dependent. Or 'cyber', as BBC Breakfast would say.

The first speaker was Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus IBM Academy of Science. He's a bit clever. He talked through the advancements in virtual worlds, with an obvious heavy emphasis on Second Life. He started by explaining how we've been stuck in a rut when it comes to graphical representation of data and navigation in technology. Decades after computers were introduced and we still rely on buttons that say 'click here'. He defined Web 3.0 as "highly visual, real time and immersive" and so spawning a whole new way in which we use the internet. He broke virtual worlds down as serving 3 purposes:

1. Education and training; IBM already does a lot of this, they give lectures within Second Life and hold meetings there too. Apparently it gives a greater level of engagement above your standard conference call (rather obvious), mainly because people hang around and chat after the meeting. He also talked about training emergency services within Second Life, which I rather like as an idea.
2. Process rehearsal, management and operations; testing prototypes within virtual worlds and so increasing the time it takes to go to marketing with a product. This could also include testing of buildings before they're built in the real world. If only they'd had this chance when they built Oxford Circus tube station.
3. Marketing and sales; the tricky one. Selling stuff within virtual worlds, allowing people to test and, to some extent, feel products before purchase. I like the idea of creating a different environment for product sales though, if you're selling antiques why not create a virtual 18th century house for people to walk around in?

The second speaker was John Maybury, a film director of some prominence, though I'd never seen anything he's done. Saying that, the last film I saw was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I'm hardly knowledgeable when it comes to cinema. John wasn't great. His talk was basically "I'm old enough to remember Super 8 cameras, now I use digital and CGI. Isn't that great?"

Last up was Nigel Coates, an architect with a penchant for creating houses that look like giant ceramic elephants. His talk was great had it been about architecture, I was genuinely impressed with his designs, I'd happily live in a house that looked like a giant cotton reel. But, like John before him, Nigel failed to contextualize his work within the Web 3.0 discussion. Yes, he can design stuff in 3D; and yes, we should be creating more wacky designs; but i think it would have been more interesting to see how the virtual world should merge into new builds, rather than just seeing it as a testing ground. he touched on it briefly by showing an old man accessing virtual porn at home. You saw muff. Blimey.

I'm not sure that the evening has re-awakened my love for Second Life, I'm afraid that died about six months ago when I got fed up with vast, empty lands that take ages to load and inevitably crash my computer. I might revisit again at the weekend, if I can tear myself away from Zoo Tycoon, of course.

I've just been sat in a meeting about media spend. Zzz... My mind was wandering rather a lot. I got to thinking about a music version of Friend Feed or indeed if Friend Feed supports artist updates. I've only been using it for a couple of days, so this may all be pointless if I can go ahead and set up artist updates right now. Oh well. I'll carry on typing anyway.

I want something that aggregates all the content from my favourite artists' different pages as well as chatter online about the artists:

• Kylie added photos to her Facebook page
• Klaxons added a video to their MySpace page
• Popjustice wrote about the new Girls Aloud single
• Kelly Clarkson tickets have gone on sale at aloud.com
• Sophie (a fan) uploaded her Justin Timberlake tour photos to the Justin Timberlake Facebook page
• Dougie McFly wrote on the official McFly blog
• PJ Harvey twittered

Of course, you'd have sliders for preferences on what you want to see more or less of from each page and each artist. So if the Klaxons tour videos were great and Justin Timberlake is an amazing blogger you could opt to be notified more often about these.

I might play around with Friend Feed and see if I can set something similar up.
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I'm going through my backlog of emails this morning. How fun. I found an article from last week on Mashable about how web users go to Wikipedia pages for bands more than they do MySpace pages or dedicated sites. Apparently it's by a 2:1 ratio, which is rather a lot really.

Of course, and as the article mentions, it's easier to get info quickly from a wikipedia page - it's all on one page and arranged nicely with no snazzy colours and bad design messing life up. But for me the main reason I use Wikipedia over MySpace is simply that I can never find anything on MySpace. Their search function is utterly terrible. When looking for specific pages on MySpace I often navigate out of MySpace, onto Google and type in something like 'Post Office MySpace' (they have a MySpace page, you know, it's rather good).

Though interestingly MySpace say they have over 3 million artists on the network, with Wikipedia only claiming tens of thousands. Could this be because artist pages on Wikipedia are so very difficult to set up? I tried it once for the marching band and quickly gave up when I hit a zillion dead ends. I wonder if when they make this easier and allow track streaming we might see this ratio go nearer to the 10000:1 mark...
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p.s. if anyone does know how to set up a wikipedia artist page then do let me know!

This is rather a weird email to receive; usually I hear tales about the government tracking people from friends who watch too much TV rather than an email from Number 10 telling me that they are indeed following me.

But this week Downing Street launched their own twitter account (http://twitter.com/DowningStreet). It's rather nice really, the tone is very laid back and not just a stream of manifesto ideas. It tracks the PM's day as well as accounts of press briefings. I'd like a bit more editorial within the posts, rather than just a link to their press page for the latest updates but I guess it's easier to sum up your plans for lunch in 140 characters than it is to describe a political ideology.

Maybe this should start a new way of coming up with political ideas. If you can't describe it in less than 140 characters then it shouldn't be allowed. It'd make life a lot more simple.

From the BBC homepage today:



She's clearly older than we thought.
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Zombies + MySpace chatter = great film? Hmmm... possibly not. I went to see Romero's Diary of the Dead last night, hoping for a bit of a gore fest and some sweet popcorn. Because nothing in the world is better than sweet popcorn.

Diary of the Dead follows a bunch of students trying to find their way back home after a big zombie outbreak occurs. They're film students and also able to click a mouse, so of course they upload their footage of the outbreak to the internet. Romero's films have always had some kind of social commentary - racism, consumerism and now it's social media.

It's all handheld shaking camera work, and plenty of scenes that were just pitch black. ooohhh... the suspense. It sounds great, but there is only one scene in this film, it's just repeated for nearly two hours...

It's dark, there might be a zombie in the room, a girl is scared and a boy is filming
Girl: stop filming, help me, you don't have to blog everything you do, sometimes you need to wake up to reality
Boy: i'm helping the blogosphere regardless of whether or not I get eaten
Girl: arrrghhh! a zombie! kill it!
Boy: no! I'm uploading!
Girl: aaargghh! i'm being attacked!
Other cast member emerges from background: I'll save you! (shoots zombie in the head incredibly accurately)
Girl: Yay!
Other cast member: oh no, i'm bitten!
Boy: yes! i got it all on film
Girl: you're such a dick.

xx

This weekend I watched three rather shite films, simply because I was too exhausted for anything else.

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Dead man not taking souls back to heaven, alive man wants to be immortal, some heart needs to be stabbed, a goddess of the sea loves the dead man, a girl loves a boy, boy betrays her, big storm happens, some pirates have a secret club, some people like Jack, others don't, there's a compass that doesn't work, girl's dad dies, the boat has to go upside down, posh english men want to stab the heart, lots of boats fight each other and a dad sacrifices himself for son.

Confusing, too long and not even a Keith Richards cameo kept me interested.

2. Run Fatboy Run

Simon Pegge tries to win back his ex by running the London Marathon. He succeeds. Her areshole boyf doesn't.

Predictable and just not funny, I'm guessing that Pegge had nothing to do with the writing on it, or it would have been miles better.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Turtles fight stone army and monsters who both plan to take over world. Turtles win.

Good, only because it is about 20 minutes long. I missed the brain in the belly character though - where did he go?
xx

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I've said it a million times before, but I love Lego's digital work. If I had to pack up my box at Dare and then choose any company in the world to work for I'd pick Lego without a moment's hesitation.

Firstly, their site has something called the Lego Factory Digital Designer, a programme for your desktop that allows you to build anything you want with virtual bricks. When you're finished and happy with your design you can either click through and purchase every brick needed to make the design or print the list off to take into a shop. Wonderful. I'd play with this all day if either my boss or bank manager allowed it. You can also browse other people's creations and buy those, it's a bit like Lego took over every floor of Hamleys.

Then this morning I discovered Lego Touch, a lovely little app for the iPhone SDK. It's similar to the Factory in that it allows you to build Lego creations on your iPhone, using the touch screen, though obviously you are somewhat limited in the size of the creations you can build. I can't see people creating giant cities on this. Once you have built your masterpiece you can send it on to friends for 'build off' challenges, oh how wonderful! It'll be interesting to see the types of apps that come through now developers can get all clever with the iPhone.

This Lego app is even tempting me to buy an iPhone, though I might wait until they develop one that doesn't transfer all your make up onto the screen after a call, it's just icky.

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I can't stop listening to this and dancing along. I think I've clocked up 8 views just in the last two hours...

Is it wrong that it really reminds me of Chris?

It's from a children's show called Yo! Gabba Gabba, after a bit of research it looks like an amazing show - so far guests have included The Shins, Low, Biz Markie, Elijah Wood, Tony Hawk and Shiny Toy Guns. Blimey.

Is it also wrong that I keep getting Colin McRae and Tony Hawk round the wrong way in my head?
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I work right in the centre of London, Oxford St is a 20 second walk away and so I have every shop I could ever want on my doorstep. It's a very dangerous thing.

My wardrobe is already full, I cannot physically fit another dress in it. There is a strong possibility that I own too many clothes. So this month I am trying to quit the habit of buying clothes and beauty stuff every week. This means no new make up, no new shoes, no new clothes and not even new accessories. It's remarkably difficult.

I've lasted a week so far, but I've already had to stop myself from buying:

* new jeans from uniqlo
* new bright red nail varnish
* a plain black t shirt
* black dangly earrings
* highlighter fluid
* a lovely necklace from accesorize
* a stripey dress from Mango
* a subscription to Grazia
* skull earrings
* new undies

And that's just one week! I am doomed.

Last month I bought:

* a Batwoman t shirt
* a stripey sailor dress
* a red cardi
* a floral blue strappy top
* brown knee high boots
* new foundation
* new concealer
* big black hair clips
* white eyeliner
* a stripey necklace
* tonnes of daftly expensive food from John Lewis' food hall

Oops.
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Back at Holler I worked on a few Escada perfume campaigns for P&G; in my last few months at the agency I was on their new 'Moonsparkle' release. We got day trips to Geneva and many afternoons to spend looking at pictures of pretty models. Hard work. The campaign centres around the Moonsparkle band, three models who decide to form a band and make a pop video. Because that's what models do, obviously.

It's a bit of an odd idea, but the track that P&G commissioned for the release is utterly brilliant. I have listened to it 100s of times already and will doubtless keep listening to it for many years to come.
I've got the mp3 on my computer, so if you're as easily won over as me then just drop me a comment and I'll send it over.
xx

Jeremy sent me this brilliant cartoon last week but I've only just round to posting it.

For those of you who didn't know me when I was 14 or 15 ish you should probably be aware that I loved Kula Shaker. Absolutely loved them. Here is my list of shame...

1. I have every single and album in every format released, including ones I couldn't play (minidisc, and at the time - vinyl)
2. I have books on them
3. I have t shirts
4. I've a drawer full of taped off the radio gig bootlegs
5. I bought in store promo items on eBay
6. I went to see them live
7. I went to see Crispian Mills on his solo tour with the backing band 'Pi'
8. I went to see his new band The Jeevas
9. I bought the Jeevas albums
10. I went to the Kula Shaker reunion tour, and kept my AAA passes to add to the collection.
11. I sent away for the singles box to keep everything in
12. I bought the calendar
13. I've a cupboard full of posters
14. I bought a promo version of a single that looked exactly the same as the standard release but had one second more of silence at the start, so the time was different on the cd player clock.
15. I have all the promo versions of singles and albums.
16. I spent years looking for K on vinyl. Years and years.
17. I met them and got them to sign the drumstick I caught at a gig.

I'm sure there are hundreds of even more shameful things to add to that list, but I don't want anyone to be scarred for life on realising that people can really become obsessed with very shit bands.

x

I'm tired, a bit grumpy and very hungry. This makes it all better though - Klaxons and Rihanna doing Umbrella at last night's Brit awards...

I've been a bit slack in keeping this blog up to date over the past week, I confess that I've been busy re-doing my Bebo profile for the past few days, trying to get back into using it again. I still only have four friends, even my sister won't accept my friends request.

I've been quite busy over the last week, so over the course of the day I'll try to post a few thoughts about it all. Films from the weekend seems a good place to start.

We've lived in gang-infested Brixton for about a year now and I feel woefully detached from the community there. I rarely go to any shops on the high street and don't really venture to the bars. On Friday night we made our debut appearance at the lovely Ritzy cinema. It's owned by the same people as Clapham Picture House, the two cinemas are very similar - nice bar, decent wine, arty films and posh people everywhere. You can get Green & Blacks chocolate from the sweets stand, it's that kind of place...

We followed on the chipper middle class route and saw Juno - an unoffensive, reasonably schmaltzy look at teenage pregnancy and adoption. I imagine the mothers of the audience breathed a sigh of relief on seeing that if their darling 16 yr old girl got pregnant then she'd probably make a joke about it and then deal with the whole thing reasonably well.

The film is very funny though and well worth watching, Ellen Page is truly sweet in it.

We watched Sweeney Todd on Sunday, another film which is stunning but exactly what you expect it to be. Maybe I should read less reviews and watch less clips before going to see movies? It is strange to feel so little when coming out of a film that was beautifully shot, wonderfully acted, brilliantly scored and fantastically funny.
xx

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