First, at stations.stupidstupidity.co.uk you will find a little web app that I’ve developed in order to allow people to track what stations on the UK railway network you have visited. Still in its trial stages, contact me if you want a go.

Secondly, I’ve put up a small batch of photographs onto my Flickr page. These are visible on the ‘Photographs‘ page on here.

Lastly, a new piece of radio work has also gone up online today. Well, it actually went up a while ago, but as I didn’t get my grade back for it until today it’s remained private…

Have fun!

Some people reading this will get the relevance, others not. But it’s important to mark this day in some way, even though those who read this and get the relevance won’t think so themselves.

Oh well.

Haven’t really thought about it much today, despite the fact that I haven’t done anything.

That can only be a good thing.

The aim of the day was to go to London, and interview some trainspotters for a ten-minute audio piece that I have to do for a university assignment. Ignoring the problems I had in getting the ticket, the idea did not come to pass either.

I alighted at Clapham Junction, which was unusual in itself, as usually I’d go the whole distance into Waterloo. On crossing the footbridge, I did see a rail enthusiast, looking out over the footbridge into the South West Trains yard. With my equipment still in my bag, I didn’t go over to speak to him, and decided that it would probably be best to go and ask permission from the station to do any recording. So off I went to the ticket office to see if they were able to help me. They said that I needed to go and see the station supervisor on Platform 9. His office was very helpfully unmarked, so after wandering around platforms 8 and 9, I asked a member of platform staff who directed me to the office. Where I was then told that I needed to get permission from South West Trains beforehand (also, the fact that I had left my university ID at home probably didn’t help either…). Besides, I couldn’t find any other spotters at the station, so even if they did let me record there, it wouldn’t have done much good.

I had been told that a common place to go spotting was the ends of Platform 6 at London Bridge station, so I got on the train to Waterloo where I got my audio recorder and microphone out of the bag, and headed towards the Jubilee Line to London Bridge, decided that although I probably should go and see the station staff about the recordings, it would no doubt be easier if I didn’t and then play dumb should I get approached. Seeing the spotters on the end of the platform, I approached them and asked if they’d mind if I quickly asked them a couple of questions. The first gentleman said that he had come down from Leeds to get numbers, and didn’t want to miss any while I was interviewing him. Fair enough, thinks I, not a problem and I could mention that in the piece. The other two gentlemen say that they are only there for a short time as they are then going to Liverpool Street. I make a mental note to visit Liverpool Street at some point during the day to see if anybody else is there, and possibly try and recognise the people I’d seen at London Bridge – recognising people is not one of my strong points! – to avoid any awkwardness. Walking away from them (which is the only thing one can do when one is rejected), I wondered what my next course of action would be, not just for what I was going to do with myself, but also what I was going to do with the audio piece that I now have a week to do.

I decide that I will visit King’s Cross, picking another of London’s termini out at random, thinking there might be some people spotting there. It was probably around this sort of time that I decide to just record stuff. A bit of train-related ambience, something I could put into the background of my work. I boarded a train returning north of the river, heading into Charing Cross (looking out as I did so for anybody who may be on the ends of platforms with notebooks, nothing). From there to Embankment and to Monument on the District line (at that point possibly also thinking of going to Stratford).

It was while at King’s Cross that I realise that the idea of interviewing trainspotters isn’t going to happen. I think I knew that anyway when I was turned away by those at London Bridge, but carried on regardless. It was here that I decided that I would just carry on recording what was going on around me.

And, my, isn’t there a lot of sound out there?! It was amazing going round and just listening to what was going on. The station announcements, people talking, trains coming and going, music coming from shops, building work going on, all sorts of stuff goes on out there but nobody listens.

I guess this has kind of come from last week’s Media Theory lecture which was on soundscapes, and the sounds we hear, and the fact that I was recording this soundscape meant that I was paying attention to it more myself.

I won’t bother giving you a train-by-train synopsis of my travels from now on, because – lets face it – it’s quite boring really. But these are the places I recorded sounds from:

• King’s Cross
• St Pancras (which, incidentally, seems more like a shopping centre which just happens to have trains leaving from it rather than a railway station which has shops in it. The toilets there are free though!)
• Walk along the South Bank between Blackfriars station and Southwark bridge
• Stratford’s Westfield shopping centre
• Walk between Camden Road Overground station and Camden Town Underground station
• Between Camden Town and Euston on the Northern Line
• Euston station
• Victoria station
• Victoria to Clapham Junction
• Clapham Junction to somewhere on the train (wasn’t paying attention)
• London Bridge, from concourse to underground station

My main problem now is this.

I have until next Wednesday, so basically a week, to work out, research and produce this ten-minute piece of audio. I did think at one point that I would be able to use the recordings made today for it, but one of the main problems with that is the lack of a potential audience for it. The piece is supposed to be a podcast, so it should ideally be something that can be run as part of a series. It should ideally have something that will make people want to download and listen to it (although I think that the idea of ‘podcasts’ as something that you download is one that will shortly be changed to something that is streamed, but that’s another post for another time!). I think there might be some people who would want to listen to it, but who exactly? I’ll probably still produce something with these, see what happens, but I’m not sure if it will work for this particular assignment brief. There might be some scope in doing it as a ‘other places’ podcast, but I’m not sure.

The lessons learnt from today’s expedition can be summed up (though if you’re a regular viewer of my site and my writing in general, you know how bad I am at ‘summing up’) thus:

• Plan ahead. Don’t leave recording stuff to the last minute.
• If you’re going to interview people, make sure that there are people to be interviewed. It’s okay going out on an ad-hoc basis, and for radio, to get vox-pops that’s not a problem either. But when you’re planning on getting people out there to give you some of your time, make sure they are actually going to. If people around then are okay to be interviewed, then no problems. The person from Leeds would have been ideal for my piece had he been okay to interview as that was kind of the angle I wanted.
• Have a backup plan. Essential for the times when things don’t work as planned. I don’t really have one at the moment.
• When you summarise, be brief.

I think that will do for now. This is the fourth blog post this month, and I’m sorry that it’s a biggie.

(As an aside, maybe that’s how I go about posting more, just leave myself logged in…)

Do you remember when the calendar changed from 1999 to 2000? And a lot of people said that we shouldn’t be celebrating the change of millennium until the 2000/2001 change?

It is quite obvious where the problem here lies, and it would be quite simple to resolve. Instead of the denominator for the new ‘ten’ of a number to be at the beginning of the list, it should be at the end.

Therefore:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 10 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 20

And so forth.

So the years would have gone from 1999 to 1990 then to 2001.

Obviously such a large-scale change of how you count is not going to happen. But it makes more sense. As does counting in Base 12.

In fact, to take a current example of my uselessness, I started typing this around twenty minutes ago with the first line and have just switched tabs to find this page.

I say this because despite constantly saying I’m going to do stuff here, it never quite happens. And I come here today to see that, aside from the post with the Facebook image on it, I haven’t posted in pretty much two months.

It’s not as if I’ve been busy. Well, I have been, but too busy to take a few moments out and post about how busy I am?

There are some bloggers out there who post daily. And yes, I know with Facebook and Twitter and the like, personal blogging is really a dead – or at least dying – art. Still, it’s quite nice to have some of my random thoughts out there. Even if only I am reading them.

So what is the point of this post?

Well, like most posts I make in this vein, there is no point other than to make a post.

And to say that I will try and post more in the future.

Which we know won’t happen.

With the new Facebook group image being a weird size not matching the size of the users thumbnails, and with a bit that has an overlay, have a template to use to create your own image.

You can freely use and distribute this template, no copyright is on it. Because I’m that kind

Seagulls: Another photo from the same day, not much point in making a new post. Bit of cropping, minor level editing in Photoshop.

Images licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence. For more information, go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/. Please contact me if you have used this image in your work, or you would like to use the image in ways not permitted by the Creative Commons licence.

Animated GIFs… remember them?!

So, as I know I don’t update this site as much as I could, here is the first annual What Richie G did in… list. I will be going through my Google Calendar for the past year, picking out key things that have happened, adding ones in that didn’t end up on there (if I remember) and, maybe, adding a few little incidental anecdotes along the way.

If you want a more wide view of 2011, then may I direct you to Geoff Marshall’s audio review of 2011. What follows below only sees what I did.

JANUARY

Okay, so photo taken at the end of December '10, but couldn't think of anything else to illustrate January. Taken during the closure of Reading station for signalling/bridge works

After the bitterly cold December, came January. In January, I started working at the Barnstaple campus of Petroc on Fridays, which gave me my first proper taste of commuting to work on a bus, given that I decided that as the X7 bus goes from my village to the college at the times I would need it to, it would be ideal for me to catch. Also, I could claim my bus fares back from the college, something that I wouldn’t be able to do if I drove as I wasn’t business insured on my car.

On Tuesday 11 January, I had an interview at Gloucestershire University. This meant that up until the early hours of the morning, I was doing some audio editing so I had a sample piece to take to interview with me. This piece can be found here. By the Friday, I had the response from UCAS telling me that I had been given an unconditional acceptance. I was happy, and told a few people at work about it, but decided to keep it a bit quiet for a while.

Well, it was only a few days actually, given that, as I was rightly told, I couldn’t not tell my line managers at work, so the following Monday they were told. And other than taking my car for it’s service a couple of weeks later (which wasn’t a major event really), that was pretty much it for January.

FEBRUARY

February brought a couple of changes. In fact, the first week alone was rather interesting.

My recording kit, used for recording the Tube Challenge radio piece.

Thursday 3 February saw me going down to Bournemouth for another University interview. To be completely honest, the only reason I went down for the interview at this stage was because I had already booked the day off work; as I had already been accepted by my then first choice, there seemed little point. However, I was rather glad I went down, as it looked to be a better place. I will say that as Glos. Uni were in the process of closing down the campus where the radio courses were held to move them to another, I cannot say for certain what I ‘missed’, but the other differences were that Glos lean towards the journalism side of their media courses where Bournemouth give a more general overview (or so it seems currently!). Interview done, it was just  a case of waiting for UCAS to respond…

That same evening though, was a worship group practice at my church. Not normally something I would put as a ‘major event’, but the key part of it was that it was for a service I was leading on the Sunday, and the practice was made as I was trying to introduce a few ‘new’ worship songs into the church’s repertoire. It kind of worked – a couple of times since I have done one of the songs I taught that morning, and they are beginning to sing along now! The service involved some card tricks, a bit of sleight of hand, and then getting the kids in earlier than they’d normally come in to share with us a bit more. The thing that shocked me slightly was at the end of the service when one member asked me when I was going to start the Local Preacher training course… I had a bit of a good response in that I needed to get Uni out of the way first!

There wasn’t all that much else that happened in February – at some point I would guess that I got the response from UCAS that Bournemouth had accepted me, but I can’t remember exactly when that happened.

MARCH

A group shot of the 'Two Choirs in Concert' event at South Molton Methodist Church on 20 April 2011. Not in the picture is me, because I was taking the photo.

March 2011 – the month I reached a quarter of a century old and… actually, I think that was it for March pretty much. Oh well.

APRIL

Doesn’t really look like much happened in April either.

The problem with doing this like this is that I’m at the basis of an online calendar that is limited by what I put on it. So if I don’t put anything on it, I don’t know I’ve done it when looking back.

MAY

Nope.

JUNE

Ah, now here’s something.

A few of the teams wait for the next train to arrive at Bayswater on the Zone 1 Challenge, 3 June 2011

The annual Tube Challenge Forum Zone 1 Challenge. I didn’t do all that well, and annoyingly I did worse than I initially thought. I’m disappointed that I came last, but at least I didn’t end up wandering aimlessly around Earl’s Court station in a state of mild confusion brought on by dehydration this year. I also managed to do the follow up ‘warm-down’ Random 15 event the next day for the first time in the three years I’ve done Z1. And of course, staying with my friend in London, as I did for this weekend, is always a treat, even if some times it does seem a little rude on my behalf…

I remember now, June was an odd month as I didn’t work in the library at all during that month. I had a fortnightly job there, and the two main things I did on a Saturday during June happened to fall on the days I would’ve been working in the library. The second was the training day for last summer’s New Wine FM.

JULY

July saw me end my employment at South Molton Library. I had been working there since I left school, so around 9 years or so. During that time, I saw the new library being built and opened, and a few children grow up from babies and toddlers up to senior school age. As I’ve said before about the library job, it’s the job I’ve had the longest, but I’ve probably worked there the least amount of time.

JULY AND AUGUST

Millie and I pose for the camera at New Wine 2011

Then of course there was New Wine, the annual Christian confereval (a mix between conference and festival – could also be a festerence, but that sounds like a disease), two weeks – one at the end of July, the other at the beginning of August – spent in a tent doing radio stuff as I have been for the past few years. Some important God things happened that week that were important to me, but I won’t go into them here. Those people who know me will know what those things were, or at least could have a pretty good guess. Another radio piece that’s found it’s way onto this site is an interview I did with a couple of members of Fat and Frantic – click here to listen.

AUGUST

So to the rest of August! August was actually quite busy for me, and the reason why I left the library job during July (so I didn’t have to worry about having to work on Saturdays, or arrange shift swaps etc.). After New Wine, time was spent sorting some computer and audio wiring out at a couple of Youth Centres in Exeter, stuff that had to be squeezed into the other things I was doing. The following weekend, I went with some friends to Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, the first ‘proper’ festival I’ve ever been to, and, rather surprisingly, had a bit of a God-moment. I won’t go into it here though, maybe another time. Overall, Cropredy was a good time, and one that might happen again next year, but who knows. Given who is organising it, I don’t even know if they know… (hello Martyn, just a small dig there!!!)

Richard Digance at Cropredy - somewhere in the video image is me, a rather 'meta' version of Photographs of People Taking Photographs...

The following weekend was a family get-together at my grandparents. Nothing too interesting happened, I only mention it because it happened, and (in the spirit of this post) was listed on my Google Calendar.

There was then the slightly odd situation where, despite not being at work (at the college) throughout the summer thanks to my term-time contract, I had one more week to get through which was this week. So this was my final week of working at the college (chosen at this point as it meant that I would get paid for August without actually having to work it), and a chance to tidy up a few loose ends, reclaim all my stuff (I say ‘all’, there’s probably still loads of stuff there that is mine, a few photography books spring to mind), and say goodbye to colleagues. It was a surprisingly emotional time my last day actually, after all, I had been there for 8 of the last 9 years, and quite a major turning point in my life because of what was happening next.

But first, Greenbelt at the weekend (I finished work on the Thursday to allow myself to go to Greenbelt on the Friday!). This year, I went with the aim of getting there early, and to meet up with a friend who was there earlier, to get a pitch relatively central. Actually, it wasn’t all that central, but not too bad (I was closer to the ‘action’ last year, and I arrived late!). A good weekend, seeing Milton Jones again, who did possibly make a little dig at those people who video their performances on mobile devices and upload them to YouTube… (a post I haven’t quite got to reposting yet involves a video from last year, click here to view the video on YouTube). Also saw Adrian Plass, well, I say ‘saw’, unfortunately (and I think Mr Plass would appreciate the irony), I was stuck behind a pillar – another very funny man.

Another brilliant piece we saw was Daniel Bye’s The Price of Everything, info about his 2012 tour dates is on the page linked to, and I would recommend seeing it – if he’s anywhere near where I’m likely to be, I’ll probably go again (and possibly film it on my camera and upload it to YouTube…). I will also admit that I had completely forgotten about this until I came to write this piece. So there was a bonus about me doing this, even if nobody reads it.

I can’t actually remember what else I went to see at Greenbelt, nor if I will be able to afford to go again this summer. Time will tell.

THE BEGINNING OF SEPTEMBER

The first couple of weeks were a bit dull really. I had finished work, and wasn’t due to move to Bournemouth until the 17th, although it was the 15th when I went down. The day before I moved down though, I spent the time preparing by… erm… finishing off the wiring of the youth centre in Exeter. I would imagine that it wasn’t the way most soon-to-be university students prepare before moving!

THE END OF SEPTEMBER TO THE BEGINNING OF DECEMBER

Leroy dressed up as a cheerleader for some reason or another. Can't exactly remember why now...

If I’m honest, these couple of months kind of went past in a bit of a blur, and I’d imagine the first term of University would do that to anybody. Certain aspects of the ‘arrival’ were good, time spent settling in (which didn’t go too badly actually), finding a church to go to, involvement with the university Christian Union, and soforth. Some of the ‘academic’ aspects of my university experience were good, if, unfortunately, for some of it a little disorganised. Hopefully the new term will be a little more organised!

Only two main assignments have been done this term, the Media Theory essay being the ‘large’ one to do, with it being the first essay that I’ve ever written. We had to self-assess the work; I gave myself 55%, but when the actual result came back it was 65%. Both of which are a pass, and I know where I went wrong (and indeed knew where I went wrong when I wrote it), so I’m happy.

The other assigmnent was the 4-minute audio piece, the re-recording of Stanley & Miller: Local Detectives being ¾ of the piece, the other quarter being an advertisment for a Christmas event for the CU. As I am still awaiting the assessment for these, I will refrain from loading it onto here until then, but they will be (keep an eye on the ‘Radio’ page of the site).

DECEMBER

Liam puts the finishing touches to the Flat 103 Christmas Dinner

And so we come full circle to December 2011. Still at University a week after term finished to help with interviews for next year’s potential students, I found myself giving guided tours around the campus, and I wish I had a pedometer for it as there was a lot of walking involved! It was paid work, and as when the opportunity came up I hadn’t arranged my return to Devon, I decided to go for it. It was fun, even if they were TV students rather than Radio students, and I think I actually learnt stuff about the uni that I didn’t know before! It was a shame that the SU had closed for Christmas at that time as it meant that a) I couldn’t show them the SU bar, and b) couldn’t actually use the SU bar, but they understood that it was because of Christmas so weren’t too annoyed about it.

Boxing day at my grandparent’s house didn’t go too bad, if a little dull this time around (past years have been more interesting) but I think it was because there weren’t that many of us this year. New Year’s Eve was quite good fun, being invited out to one of the pubs in the village with some friends. The first time I’ve been in that pub since 31 July 1999 when I fell off my bike and was bleeding all over the floor, and it was a good evening, even if we did miss the rather overhyped moment when 31 December 2011 became 1 January 2012.

2012 and beyond

So what will happen in 2012?

New Year's Eve 2011/2012 at the Miner's Arms

Well, here’s a rough synopsis of what I’ve planned so far:

• Back to University on Friday
• Start being part of the BUCU committee
• Turn 26 in March
• More University work
• Tube Challenge Zone 1 (end of June/beginning of July probably)
• might somehow chuck in a Full Network Challenge
• Pass first year of University
• New Wine
• Maybe Cropredy again
• Hopefully Greenbelt
• Start second year of University

And of course, not for one instance believe that the world will end during December 2012, but will be secretly scared on the day they say it will just in case it does happen.

Well, that was 2011. See you next year.

• Very old chest freezer, one you’ve had as long as you can remember but that your household acquired second hand. Must be at least 20 years old, doesn’t close properly except with something heavy put on the lid, generates ice/snow like it’s the North Pole.
• Extension lead, now presumed dodgy.
• Somebody cooking vegetables for Christmas Dinner
• Either luck or blessédness (depending on your theology or lack thereof)

What you need to do:

• Open your freezer, looking for vegetables to cook for Christmas Dinner. Most of these vegetables need to be cooked in one saucepan as the oven broke last year meaning you’re having to cook a roast dinner on four electric hobs – although last year it was two camping gas hobs.
• Notice as you do so that the ice/snow that is usually stuck to the side of the freezer is loose, take ice off freezer and throw into sink.
• Turn around to the sink to melt the ice by running the hot tap.
• As you do so, notice that the freezer is now making some rather ominous noises.
• Turn around and notice that out of the vent is coming smoke, and inside are sparks.
• Swear.
• Turn off freezer at mains.
• Pour pint of beer to calm nerves.

What’s probably happened:

Mum noticed a while ago that the kettle (which is plugged into the same extension lead as the freezer) was acting tempremental. She wrongly assumed that it was the kettle (which is also rather old, probably also around 20 or so years old). In fact, we assume now, it was the extension lead. Given the defrosted state of much of the freezer’s contents, we think it probably stopped working at some time on Saturday. As the freezer generates one hell of a lot of ice, this ice also defrosted, and somehow ended up going from the main body of the freezer into the electronics bit below. Then, for whatever reason, the freezer starts to restart, the water on the electrics (the fan, the thermostat, whatever) starts to cause the machine to smoke and spark. It was very good timing that I happened to be in the kitchen at the time it happened, otherwise I doubt I’d be able to type this message to you in such a jovial fashion. In fact, I’d quite probably be without a home.

But, that didn’t happen, I am here to type this message to you, and I realise it has no effect on you whatsoever.

Hope you’ve had a fire-free Christmas, unless it was the one in your fireplace and it was supposed to be there. Have a good New Year too.