And this morning with the arrival in my inbox of the Qype Weekly Newsletter, it turns out that somebody’s decided they like the cut of my opinion-jib as well, conferring on me the prestigious and hihgly sought after titled of Qyper Of The Week.

I feel like I should be provided with some sort of purple ermine robe, or something.

The main challenge I’ve found with writing reviews – as any regular reader of my blog will attest – is keeping the wordcount down to something readable.  Personally I prefer reading reviews which have a bit of substance to them and actually tell you something, other than just “We went here and it was pretty good”.  But where to draw the line?

So far my reviews seem to have been fairly pub-centric: of the 13 I’ve written, 6 are pubs, 1 was a bar, 2 were takeaway places, 3 are restaurants, and there’s a coffee shop.  What can I say?  I really like pubs.

If you’re interested in reading my reviews, they’re found in the QypeReview category of this blog, or people reading by RSS are already subjected to them without having any say in the matter.  Or you could always go read them on the Qype site, or even join Qype and write your own – far superior and more accurate – reviews.  And then get involved in the awesome community of people, join in their multitude of brilliant & free events, etc. etc.

Checking for poison...

Argh! So much going on here at Humpy Towers – I’ve barely had a chance to comprehensively narrate all of it in an overly bombastic manner, such as is typically the custom…

The big news though is that tomorrow night – misleadingly, April Fools’ Day – will see the first instalment of Andy (of GoodDrinksEtc) & my new project: Whisky Squad!

We’re running a monthly whisky tasting club, with the idea being to keep it affordable & relaxed, and give people a chance to experience a range of whisky tastes & flavours with a bunch of like-minded enthusiastic amateurs.

The intention is to keep the group to a maximum of 12, and each month to run the tasting to a different “theme”, which will more than likely consist of a grouping of whiskies that Andy & I come up with along some thin justification, and which fit into our budget.

The first session filled up almost instantly, and so now all that remains is to get on with it.  More information to follow soon, I suppose.

On the offchance you’re interested, the place to look is www.whiskysquad.com – and/or follow us on Twitter, under the unsurprisingly selected name “whiskysquad“.

The obvious question, however, arose about how best to celebrate hitting the milestone of 1,000.  Not that it’s an important milestone, after all – it only looks impressive because we’ve adopted base-10 as our default counting system.  In hex it’s 3E8, and if we used that system (thankfully we don’t) then there’d be no arbirtrary celebration due until hitting 4,096.

Still, counter rollover’s something we’re trained to get excited about, no matter how thinly justified it is (take the year 2000 for example – after starting the numbering system retrospectively following the adoption of a new calendar measure, and then skipping a few increments due to religious predilection, we all went batshit for 2000, which was really if anything a year early owing to their being no year zero) – when our family was driving around New South Wales in 1988 we tittered expectantly because the car’s odometer became completely full of 9’s.  And there was a special roadside photographing ceremony next to a shopping centre carpark in Byron Bay when it clocked over to all 0’s.

So you can imagine how my pulse raced when I peeped at my Friends box to see this:

(by way of description: Josh I went to primary school with, Dave's in a band I love, Rudy & Mich are from Gang Show, Julie's an old & close friend, Susan's a friend's housemate who comes to the pub with us, and Shannon went to my high school)

The day was near!  My learned colleague Doc Brown also spotted this, and made a public assertion that when I hit 1,000 the only proper way to celebrate would be to fly the people not already here to London, and carry on in epic fashion.  Notwithstanding the fact that many of them I haven’t seen in years – even the ones who live not too far away (not pointing any fingers… Paula… Connie… Ellie…) – it’s a fairly big-budget project.

Still, the day crept closer…

(Wes was a Gang Show lad, Jason I met through old schoolmates, Anne is involved in morris dancing, Jamie I used to work with, Ali's from Gang Show, and Maris used to run a theatre group I did backstage for)

On the eve of victory however – as I accepted an invitation from number 1,000 – I looked at the box to see the following:

(Daniel was my PL in Scouts, Steve's a mate from ages back, Benji was highschool, Ben's a morris man, Prashant's a friend of my brother's, and Fraser's also a morris man)

Could it be?!  In the time that I’d found a new recruit, 2 existing ones had cut loose from the herd!

It’s easy to get a bit paranoid about this sort of thing: Facebook doesn’t provide you with any sort of feedback when one of your friends drops off the surface.  You often hear of people having “list culls”, where they start to apply some sort of minimum standard to their criteria and separate from the people who don’t make the grade.  But with nearly 1000 it’s hard to know who’s popped off, much less be able to pin them down as to why…

There could be any number of other reasons – maybe they’ve just left Facebook for productivity maximising reasons, or they found it too intrusive, or they just got bored of it.  Perhaps they were someone you met at a party who you found interesting at the time and resolved to keep in touch with, and then left uncontacted for so long that neither of you really have any recollection of how you got on the other person’s list.

The Facebook platform providers seem to have made it fairly difficult to keep track of this sort of thing, as well.  And so being a fundamentally lazy person (as many programmers are), I figured that it wasn’t worth worrying about, and carried on adding people from my past whose names floated past in the stream of ether.

Still, it wasn’t very long before this happened:

(Trish I met through a friend & housemate, Gordon's an old Rover bloke, Rob's an ex-workmate, Kellie's married to an OLD friend, Sarah used to date a mate of mine, and... I have no idea who James is! Uh oh...)

I looked nervously at my bank account, and reasoned that there’s no way I can afford to even buy everyone in the list a pint, let alone fly them here.  As Doc Brown seemed to be the only one who’d noticed instead I thought that it’d be fun to see how far past 1000 I could get before she busted me for not throwing a massive party.  Anticlimactic, but cheap.

And soon enough…

(Matt's a morris man, Mark is a Gang Show dude from Melbourne, Dom's a London mate, Dave's one of my oldschool buddies, Tate used to date a housemate, and Russell's from Comedy Capers!)

Being a fairly sharp operator she busted be when I got to about 1,003.  However really there ought to be some sort of commemoration or celebration here, and so I thought we’d do what comes naturally here at Humpy Towers – yes, it’s an excellent and realistic picture of an octopus wearing a party hat.

Rock on.

Later, in 2008, my collection grew with the acquisition of the Dwight Schultz cartoon-bearing coat hanger of Captain “Howling Mad” Murdock.

And now – in January 2010 – I’m proud to announce that my quest has finally ended: on Thursday I took delivery of the final, enigmatic, missing piece of the puzzle.  The highly sought after but tricky to locate 4th member of the team – Lieutenant Templeton “Faceman” Peck, portrayed in the TV series by Dirk Benedict.

Now that the full set is assembled, I’ve got no idea what to do with them.  Sell ‘em on eBay, I guess.

Of course it’s a little foolish to assume that there’s only one of each.  See, I’ve had an eBay saved search running this whole time, so whenever the things happen to turn up I’ve bid on them.  And now I have 14 of the bloody things.

Still, amid the confusion of what it’s all for or what it’s meant to mean, I’m also experiencing a great sense of closure – all 4 members of the A-Team, immortalised in a tacky plastic childrens’ coat hanger format in poorly represented cartoon form.

And, of course, the ugly question of “What’s next?” rears its ugly head.  I wonder if they ever made Dukes of Hazzard picnic plates?

Yeah, well… that.

Following an EXTRAORDINARILY successful tour of Adelaide, Canberra, then Adelaide again, I’m now in Melbourne on a fairly warm (36 degree) day, waiting for my lift to head in to Alexandra Gardens on the Yarra to pass the last few moments of 2009.

So, y’know, hope everyone else is having a top time of it, and… see you on the other side, I guess!

For the record, I’ve had an exceptional 2009, and if it’s possible for next year to even approach this year’s level of awesomeness, then that’s a fine thing.

1. It’s absolutely critical to recognise an environment where you’re not going to be able to get any writing done.  For me, 2 biggies were home, and work.
2. Along similar lines – ensure that your writing tool of choice is one that you’re comfortable working with, and don’t have a hateful or spiteful relationship with.  For example, if you despise your handwriting or find writing by hand for long periods painful then make sure you’re using a laptop.  If you’re using a laptop, ensure that it’s one you’re happy using and not one which you hate with a passion and would much rather see pitched into Plymouth Harbour.
3. Keep writing – when coming up with an idea for a 50,000 word story it’s incredibly unlikely that you’ll entirely prepare the story in its entirity in your head.  You’ll write a few thousand words and then realise that you don’t know what the characters are going to do next.  It’s critical at this point not to sit there wondering, but rather get on with writing another part of your book – even if you don’t know where it’ll fit in.  Though the finished product – should it ever become one – will be read front-to-back, that doesn’t mean you need to create everything in order.  And the best way to be a writer is to write – sitting around thinking about what to write doesn’t make you a writer.
4. For the purposes of Nanowrimo, don’t focus on wordcount – if you just keep writing then your brain will throw more things at you to put in the story, and provided you just keep on going then there’s not much chance that you won’t make it.
5. Don’t delete anything.  The point of the exercise is to write 50,000 words of story rather than finishing with a story that’s 50,000 words long.  If you write something that you think is crap then cut & paste it into a section at the top or bottom of your document and leave it there in case there’s something in there you can reuse or integrate later, especially if it was character backstory – it all helps shape the characters in your mind.
6. The Nanowrimo word counter thing locks off at midnight on November 30th, so you really do only have the month of November to upload your word count.  None of this pesky finishing-typing-that-night-and-uploading-the-next-morning…  Hence, my profile page is advertising the fact that my novel was 2,845 words long.
7. Lots and lots of really cute girls seem to do Nanowrimo.

Having said all that, I failed to make it to 50,000 words.  Had a great time though – I wrote what I think was just over 10,000 words.  The trouble being that with the debacle of the craptacular laptop I wound up writing most of it in my moleskine notebook in pencil (presumably the same way that many iconic writers have also done throughout history), so in the back of my mind was the idea that the more I wrote this way the more I’d have to subsequently transcribe from notebook into laptop in order to be counted in the total (by the automagical Nanowrimo word counting jobbie).  I didn’t think this would be a barrier, but every time I sat down to do the transcribing, it turned out it was a barrier.

The actual process of writing I enjoyed immensely – it’s the first time in many, many years I’ve tried to write straight fiction, and I was quite pleased with my initial premise (the idea was that a multidimensional being appeared on Earth, who had caused The Big Bang to take place, and therefore proved that evolutionary theory was correct but also gave concrete evidence that all religions were incorrect).  (Yes, a comedy, obviously).  It was incredibly revealing too, I thought, as to where the limitations in my “writing style” are – the bulk of the 10,000 words was straight third-person past-tense narrative (Mike did this.  He said “blah”.  Then this happened.), so should I ever want to develop my writing abilities it’s pretty clear there’s evidence for new devices on the stylistic pallette.

(I’m equally aware that in blog-form I not only have the third-person past tense, but also endlessly talking about myself.  So at least there’s variety there, eh?)

In all, I think I will either have a crack at it next year, or I’ll just get on with finishing the story I started, because it was a massively enjoyable process – and now armed with a shiny new WORKING laptop and the knowledge that getting out of the house/office to write is quite a pleasant way to spend time (admittedly it’s probably not going to work to go to Plymouth every time I want to write a chapter).

November wasn’t, however, a total dearth of achievement: whilst not participating in Movember in any sort of sponsored way, in the spirit of the thing I concluded the MOnth with this fairly impressive Derek Smalls-esque arrangement.

Oh no wait, this one’s me.  Always get them mixed up.

Almost a shame to get rid of it, really.  Not enough of a shame that I’d keep it, however.

Adelaide: Dec 12, (busy on the 13th), 14, 15 (morning)
Canberra: Dec 15, 16, 17 (morning)
Adelaide: Dec 17-30
Melbourne: Dec 30 – Jan 4

And if you’re in Adelaide on the 19th and can make it to this: (Facebook Event Page) that’d be fun too!

Talk soon…!

There’s no point in instigating a cockup if you can’t tell everyone about it, right?

Back in June Emzo kindly bought me a ticket to see Teignmouth alt rock legends Muse in November for my birthday, and ever since I’ve been pretty damn excited about the idea.

Bop & Tom wanted to come along, so inexplicably I bought them a couple of tickets off eBay for the Thursday Nov 12th gig as well, and we all sat back & waited for the date to arrive.

As it’s now Tuesday, I thought I’d contact everyone and form a game plan on where to meet, at what time, etc. on Thursday night.

Emzo emailed me back politely informing me that our tickets are for Friday night.

So now not only will I have to jump through some unnecessary hoops to get Bop & Tom their tickets (more frustrating now, because I forgot to take them with me when I saw those guys on Friday night), but it also transpires that I can’t make it to the gig on Friday, because – somewhat ironically – I’m going to Plymouth for the weekend, and my train leaves at 19:00.

No idea how we screwed this up, because my gig calendar’s usually pretty well meticulously accurate.  But in this case, I think the clusterfuck of:

1. me buying friends tickets to go to a gig on a different night to me
2. me arranging to go away for the weekend on the same date someone’s bought me a birthday present ticket
3. me having to arrange specially to meet someone to pass tickets over when I’ve been to that person’s house within the last 96 hours

warrants an epic Captain Picard-style facepalm.

(You sort of need to squint a bit to see this, or click it to focus on the details)

]]> http://jasonbstanding.com/2009/11/i-am-a-thundering-great-pillock/feed/ 5 http://jasonbstanding.com/2009/10/a-further-15-seconds-should-have-about-14-minutes-and-7-seconds-left-according-to-popular-belief/ http://jasonbstanding.com/2009/10/a-further-15-seconds-should-have-about-14-minutes-and-7-seconds-left-according-to-popular-belief/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:57:55 +0000 jasonbstanding http://jasonbstanding.com/?p=1947 There’s not much more to this than blatant self-promotion -- the other week our morris dancing team (that would be The Westminster Morris Men, in case this wasn’t yet abundantly clear) was filmed as part of an ITV News piece to promote the upcoming premiere of the new film, “Morris: A Life With Bells On“.  And the only reason I’m mentioning it is because you can see my beardy mug peeping towards camera in a couple of places.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKkPeQx0aCo

Now, just waiting for the scripts to start rolling in.

(Incidentally, the team will be performing at a screening of the film at the Everyman Cinema in Belsize Park on October 31st -- more info on the team website…  I won’t be there, but if you’re in the slightest bit interested in seeing what all the buzz is on this movie, this would be a perfect opportunity!  Provided you live in easy reach of London, I mean.  Go on, get amongst it & get involved!)

Nice, also, to finally appear on the TV screens of my adopted home in a presentation that isn’t about genitalia.

ISLAGIATT

I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

For some reason I’ve made a habit of doing silly things in the month of November.  Customarily this involves ridiculous facial hair, however as I reached the zenith of human achievement in that arena last year, the hunt was on for a new challenge, and somehow I got caught up in Kat’s wave of enthusiasm for the literary mountaineering exercise known as  NaNoWriMo.

The idea of this strangely named thing is that your personal challenge for the month is to write a 50,000 word novel.  Hence where “NaNoWriMo” comes from – a sort of non-acronymmal contraction/hybrid of “National Novel Writing Month”.  Even though the nation in question is the USA.

Initially I was extremely wary of the idea – the longest single piece of writing I’ve ever done was in 1994, with a charming 4000 word piece entitled “The malolactic fermentation in Australian table wine”, which lacked anything in the way of plot development or intriguing characters.  In point of fact, the only intriguing thing about that was how to write 4000 words of scientific essay when your experiment had produced no useful analytical data at all.

Since then, of course, I’ve routinely knocked out blog posts around the 2000 word mark, and that’s what this job will require – about 1700 words a day for the entire month, in fact.

Yes I know – sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it?  I was teetering on the brink of saying “there’s no way in hell I’m doing that”, but then Kat mentioned that if you make it to 50k you get to wear the special t-shirt.  Game on.

You can check up on my novelwriting progress here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/504408/

I’m still not convinced that this was a good idea, but too late to back out now, eh?