I attended a talk several years ago about the Earthship concept, and have been meaning to join one of the regular tours to the Brighton Earthship but just never got around to it. When I spotted the tour as part of the eco Open Houses it just seemed too good an opportunity to miss.
I found it hard to justify driving to Stanmer Park to go and visit an eco property, so we got the bikes out and pedalled off to Stanmer House where the group assembled. There were probably around 80 people so we split into two groups and walked off through the Stanmer Organics plots towards the Earthship.
As John, the tour guide, was telling us all about the building process, and how the earthship works, I got to wondering if there were any you could stay in anywhere. My question was answered inside as there was a leaflet - "Eco Home Holiday Rental - the house that runs itself" - in Ger, Normandy, France. Sounds like a great way to experience "off the grid" living without committing to it for the long-term.
We're told: "The containers will be emptied regularly to prevent them from overflowing. Where we currently have bins we do not have any problems." Ah come off it... no problems at all? I've seen over-flowing bins, and a good percentage of the one's I've seen are broken (as in the photo above).
Windy Day Brighton Cycle - 16:9, Final Cut Express, iDVD experiment
This is a test movie I put together so I could discover how to use the 16:9 setting on the camera, to see how to edit with 16:9, and how to export it. I also wanted to see how I'd get on hand-holding the camera on a cycle.
It turned out to be a great lesson, but unfortunately a terrible piece of video. Sorry about that. Here's what I've learned...
In the first half of the film I was cycling with the camera resting on the handlebars, using my right hand to press the camera onto the handle bars. This is bad for two reason: first, I couldn't signal in traffic to turn right; second, the vibrations from the road through the camera has crippling effects on the recording.
Later I was cycling essentially one handed, which produced smoother film. It also allowed me to try out changing the filming angle.
Other stuff: cycling against a strong wind, while filming, resulting in me wheezing. Combined with the occasional loud sniff makes for some horrible sound. Gah. But it was a good exercise for me in blending and offsetting the sound from different clips---more so later in the sequence than earlier. Oh, and I learned that I need to oil my cycle: some of the squeaks and rattling sounds are embarrassing :-)
But that aside the 16:9 part kind of works. I had to jump through a few hoops to export the movie into iDVD. Although the 16:9 export from FCE has the right aspect ratio in QuickTime player, it imports to iDVD as 3:4. I don't have QuickTime Pro, so I couldn't use the official Apple workaround for this, or Anamorphicizer, so to get round it I had to pull the movie into iMovie08 and then export from that. It works.
Initially I was deeply unhappy with the output, especially when viewed on TV. Then I found the "Deinterlace Source Video" checkbox in the size option box from "File/Export QuickTime Conversion..." (which is where I also picked "PAL 720x576 16:9" for the dimensions). Lots of jaggies in the original, all gone when deinterlaced.
The version here is a result of exporting from iMovie08 using the "Share/Export Movie" menu, and picking the "medium" format.
This afternoon we spent a couple of hours at The Werks watching the highlights of the NaVloPoMo 2007 project. Some of the films were funny, some were sad, a lot were well thought out with a story to tell.
I used the video feature on my phone and recorded snippets of the afternoon, which I've edited in iMovie as a tribute.
I don't think I should give up the photography and switch to video any time soon . Having said that Node 101 is a skill swap style idea to help people learn how to produce video, so if it gets off the ground in Brighton, maybe I should head along.
Tonight is the December Final Cut screening at Komedia, and I've not had chance to blog about the last one I went to in October. As it starts in an hour and a half, I'll just quickly say it's an evening of short films. All sorts of short films: funny, serious, animated, local... I'm not sure if there are any rules.
We primarily went in October to see Dave's Work Socks, but I enjoyed every minute of the whole evening. Go to it, it's good.
Tonight is a Christmas special. With mince pies... but I'm going to miss it. 7:30 at Komedia, £4 on the door.
The wind and rain were both making a typical winter appearance today, but I've never seen such an amount of umbrella death. Every bin, every pavement seemed to be littered with the debris.
We were in the new look Sainsbury's in West Hove yesterday, browsing along the cereal aisle, and then we spotted it - "Adult Cereals". This isn't really a term I've ever come across before, I'd considered Cereals as a whole category, or maybe with sub-categories, such as muesli or cornflakes or whatever. So, does this mean that to differentiate the regular, every-day kind of cereal they need to be rebranded as adult cereal?
For the interested, the cereal offered in "Adult Cereals" were things like Fruit and Fibre and All Bran. Definitely NOT more interesting than frosties, cocoa pops or rice crispies.
We headed off for a quick bike ride today, and ended up getting home 4 hours later after a catalogue of missed turns and optimism that resulted in a 24.5 mile ride. Our first obstacle was getting through the cyclists and spectactors watching the Triathlon, from then on we were aiming to do a route we used to do quite often, but somewhere along the way we missed our turn and so ended up heading along the South Downs Way for a while. We took a look on the OS map and decided to head towards Southease railway station and catch a train back to Brighton - we even used the power of mobile internet to check that they run on a Sunday. We rolled up at the station (after heading off down the wrong road to Piddinghoe for a mile or so) about 5 minutes before the train was due only to discover that there were maintenance works on the line and they were running a replacement bus service. We didn't think the bus would like us and our bikes very much and so turned around and headed via Telscombe and back to Brighton stopping at Ovingdean for a slice of cake and a can of fizzy pop.
We tracked our route using the GPS unit on my Nokia 6110 navigator, and have added it to our collection of GPS routes.
That answers a question for me ... ... I'd been wondering if there was a cyclable route from the coast at Telscombe cliffs all the way to Southease. Nifty thing that GPS.
Posted by Miles Sabin on 2007-09-16 17:36:46
Wow, that's a long ride. I wish I had a GPS phone so I could track my cycle rides. The combination of GPS + Google Maps + photos + stats is brilliant...
Posted by Bruce Boughton on 2007-09-16 18:47:06
The event started, for the public (and for us thanks to a tip off from Andy) with a parade from the town hall, through the lanes to the Brighton Centre before starting for proper an hour or so later. Prior to the event starting, I thought it would all be a bit of a joke, but I hadn't been prepared for the sheer amount of effort that people had gone to, especially their costumes. As if growing a large amount of facial fur wasn't enough, at least one guy had painted himself silver for the occasion.
We met up with friends and headed off and the girls watched the 'tache competition whilst the boys spend an hour (yes really) queueing for beer at the bar (which had 5 members of staff serving for 2,300 people - nice). After finally getting our beer we sat down in comfort for the freestyle moustache and the partial beard categories. Jeremy, Kirsty and Rory headed home mid way through partial beards, and we spotted Dom, Fiona and Amelia and so went and watched a few more rounds with them before deciding we were all bearded out and needed to head home.
There are, of course, more photos to be perused. The next championships is in 2 years time in Alaska, somehow I don't expect we'll be attending.
Many thanks to Andy for telling us about Waves in Hove. They are a Dosa Diner, and carry dosas as well as idli, pooris and other indian "street food".
We headed out there this evening and gave them a try, and we'll be back having had a most satisfying eat on dhai poori, masala dosa for me and a spring dosa for Richard. All washed down with a glass of red for Richard, and a couple of sweet lassis for me.
Henry Butler from the Butlers wine cellar led the tasting, and for the cost of a tenner we tasted 8 different Spanish and Portugese wines. As a total novice in the wine tasting world, it was interesting to learn more about how to smell, look at and taste wine. Henry was an excellent and enthusiastic teacher.
The tasting started off very quiet and subdued, but before too many glasses had been consumer we got noisier and noisier.
Whites Pares Balta Blanc de Pacs 2006 - Spain Soalheiro Alvarinho 2005 - Portugal Castello D'Alba 2005 - Portugal Navajas Crianza 2003 - Spain
Reds Monte Real Reserva 2000 - Spain Clos Le Fites 2002 - Spain Quinta de la Rosa Tinto 2004 - Portugal Niepoort Redoma 1994 - Portugal
The white wines were split into unoaked (the first 2) and oaked (the second 2) with one each from Spain and Portugal. As usual I preferred the unoaked - so another nail in the coffin of oaked wines for me.
Next time, and I hope there will be a next time, I'll try and remember to bring a pen to make some notes, as somewhat unsurprisingly I don't remember too much beyond the first couple of glasses
As usual, my photos from the evening are all on flickr.
Despite having lived in Brighton for 5 festivals, I'd never ventured into an open house until today - and I'm converted. I visited 3 and found them all to be of a really high standard. The first was Rod Clark.
The second and third were both down Tidy Street. They were Shadow Box and SQ1.
I will be visiting more of them.
I managed to catch a few different street performances, the Deep Sea Jivers performed by Swervy World and Eco Pirates performed by Desperate Men.
It was quite a complex subject to talk about but Bob Nichol was excellent, very engaging, enthusiastic and able to explain things to those of us who haven't studied science in over 20 years. I'm still too baffled to consider either the supernova that will cause earth to vapourise, or the fact that there might be 11 dimensions. It was also the biggest crowd I've seen at a Cafe Sci since it moved to the Branch Tavern from the Terraces.
We popped into Fabrica yesterday to see what was on display at the moment and found Beneath the Stride of Giants by Brian Griffiths. It is a wooden boat, made from other people's junk.
Fabrica is such a lovely place to stop, it's always peaceful and cool and its often hard to remember it is in such a busy location.
Two thumbs up to Robert Harding Computers. My MacBook battery was going all wrong and had started to swell, and I was getting nowhere with AppleCare. Robert Harding gave me the clues and phone numbers which has resulted in a new battery arriving 24 hours later. They're goooooood.
eek Did they say why? More than a little worried. I had assumed it was stupid Americans doing clever things like putting there battery in the microwave or the like.
Posted by Jono on 2007-04-12 22:55:09
Battery They said my battery wasn't one of the Sony batch that was exploding or catching fire, so nothing to worry about: I'd just had a "once-in-a-lifetime" freak battery failure.
Posted by Richard on 2007-04-13 07:36:10
When doing a recent check on all the blogs at Brighton Bloggers, I spotted this message at the Brighton and Hove councillors site. Amongst other things it says
"During the six week period prior to local and general elections, there is a ban in place on publicising the work of councillors to unfairly influence votes. Because of this, all of the pages and councillor blogs on this website are to be temporarily suspended until after the elections have finished."
Since Jim broke his wrist, I haven't been to the climbing wall, and I've missed it. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across information that there is a boulder park in Hove Park, and so today we went for a cycle ride to take a look.
It is about 3 metres high and probably about 12 metres long with areas ranging from scramble, to slight overhangs. We spent half an hour there climbing, traversing and doing the odd scramble. I am really impressed to have something like this so close, and available for free. I'm hoping to start visiting on a weekly basis to have a play.
This evening we wanted some quick, but tasty food, and so decided to give Pompoko, a newly opened Japanese cafe in Church Street, a try. It has a counter service, and the food was delivered really quickly. Richard won on his choice of main course, having the Oyako Don (Soya poached egg with fried chicken) which was really lovely. I opted for the Pork Shouga Yaki Don (Pork marinated with honey, ginger and soya sauce) which was tasty and cooked to perfection, but just not as flavoursome as the Oyako Don. They do a takeaway menu as well, and I can see that this could become a bit of a regular "quick stop" for us.
We went to see Shiny Toy Guns at The Pressure Point this evening. Their track "Don't Cry Out" was featured on the Follow Me Around snowboard dvd by Mack Dawg Productions and as we loved the sound of them, we trotted off to HMV and bought the album. After a bit more surfing we discovered that they were coming to Brighton as part of their hectic UK and European tour so we headed off, and had an excellent evening, first being rocked by Viva Machine and then being hugely entertained by Shiny Toy Guns. I can't believe that it has taken me over 5 years living in Brighton to attend a gig at The Pressure Point!
Shiny toy guns are an awesome band, really like their over polished 80's feel. What did they sound like live?
Posted by Ben Sales on 2007-03-24 12:51:30
They were good, there were a fair number of people at the pressure point, though I doubt it was full - I guess Monday evening gig's rarely are... Don't Cry Out (my current favourite track) was really well perfomed and full of bounce :-)
Posted by Jane on 2007-03-24 14:08:41
February 21, 2007
Welcome to Brighton and Hove
These signs have been recently appearing around Brighton. Items 1, 2 and 4 sound reasonable, item 3 sounds a bit extreme.
The Cafe Sci this month was the most passionate I've been to yet. The topic was animal testing, with the presenter, Margaret Clotworthy (chaperoned by the Europeans for Medical Progress communications director), presenting a reasonable argument that alternatives should be evaluated to see how they compare against animal tests. Our co-host, The Exuberant Jenny, put her hands up from the start to say she held the opposite view. And so it kicked off...
I received the following email regarding some of the photos of the aftermath of the West Pier collapses and fire and the My West Pier project.
Dear Jane and Richard,
I saw your photos of the driftwood of the West Pier's Concert Hall...
I am an architecture student at the Technical University of Berlin. Brighton's West Pier is my diploma project.
My approach to the project is in short that if you want to rebuild the West Pier, it is necessary to collect the missing parts, the flotsam and jetsam, and reassemble them. Flotsam might not just be the driftwood at Brighton Beach, it may also be your stories and your visions of the pier.
I made two appeals in the newspaper 'The Argus':
"1. I want you, who took some flotsam of the collapsed and stranded Concert Hall, to take a photo of your part of the pier, where you have installed it now and send the photo via email to you@mywestpier.com!
2. If you took a part of the pier, you must offer a part of your home to build a new pier. Please look for the piece of furniture you would like to be part of a new pier, take a photo and send it to you@mywestpier.com!"
Maybe you can help me, because you have obviously been there!
Many thanks and regards from rainy Berlin,
Jannes
If anyone has any images to help Jannes, please send them on to him at the email address he mentions above.
Lens flare yummy lens flare!
Posted by Dave Hodgkinson on 2007-01-14 20:36:08
January 12, 2007
Yo Sushi!
I got an email from Yo Sushi! earlier offering me a voucher for 50% off sushi from the conveyer between 15th and 31st January. The voucher and terms and conditions can be found here.
We went to see Aladdin at the Theatre Royal the other night after I'd won tickets. It had been many years since my last panto experience, and many more years since Richard's last visit, but it was a fun night. 7 year old girls really, really love Chico - the one behind us was screaming "What time is it?" at the top of her (very shrill) voice. We thought Toyah was great, although I hadn't realised quite how short she is. I was surprised at how long the panto lasted, we started off at around 6pm, and didn't get out until 8.45pm - that seems to be a long time for small children to sit still for, but the majority of them were really well behaved and seemed to be loving it.
We caught up with some friends the other evening at Bom-Bane's cafe in Kemp Town. Emma had spotted a review of it in The Kemptown Rag and the Argus review made it sound so intriguing we just had to try it. We had the 27 chimes table, and had the Christmas set menu - smoked salmon blinis for starters, then beef wellington and finishing with either Christmas pudding or Christmas waffles. They have a great Belgian beer collection - the Blanche de Bruxelles was great, but the Mort Subite was just too sour for me. A great evening catching up with friends in a really unusual but lovely cafe.
We went to the cafe scientifique at its new venue on Tuesday after the terraces made it homeless. An interesting talk "Power lines to mobile phones: hot air or hazard?" by Alan Preece of the Bristol Oncology Centre". Beer was drunk, questions were asked, issues were raised. There seems to be proof that mobile phones heat up areas of the brain, but in research that speeded up responses, rather than causing any interference. Not sure I want my brain heated up, so I'm in the market for a hands free kit for my phone. The new venue worked out ok, a bit cosier than the terraces, and not as "cool" but nice and a good atmosphere.
Another busy evening last Tuesday, with both a Cafe Scientifique and a Sussex Geek Dinner to go to. We headed off to Cafe Sci and listened to Jim Skea of the UK Energy Research Centre talking about UK energy policy - what's science got to do with it? We stayed for the talk, but moved on before the questions and answers as unfortunately this talk was very similar to one we'd heard earlier in the year.
The Sussex Geek Dinner was held in the Black Horse again, and despite a slight mix up with the food (new owners, insufficient details on Simon's booking) the venue was good. Simon hosted well, despite his sniffles and a good crowd showed up. It was good to catch up with some familiarfaces, as well as to meet some newones. As long as Simon keeps organising them in Brighton, I'll probably keep turning up.
Now to get on and organise a Brighton Bloggers meetup for January...
We went to the last of our comedy events for the festival yesterday - Paul Merton's Silent Clowns. To be honest, I'd expected more talking about the films, but what we got was three silent films shown in their entirity.
Charlie Chaplin in The Cure, Laurel and Hardy in Big Business and Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr. All of these were accompanied by Neil Brand whose timing was excellent. A great afternoon of entertainment, and a foray into a genre of films I know very little about not to mention a reminder of just how amused I am by Laurel and Hardy.
We managed another couple of comedy events as part of the Brighton Comedy Festival. Last Sunday we saw the excellent Ross Noble at the Dome. Very funny, and judging from some of the reviews, he improvises a lot, changing a lot of his material from show to show.
Last night we saw Jo Caulfield at the Pavillion Theatre. Her show is all about things that make you angry and annoyed, allowing for amusing rants about argos, familes and leaving time to take audience suggestions - a lot of people in Brighton seem to be annoyed by cyclists!! She'd done her research about Brighton, being able to name various landmarks and appreciate the difference between Brighton and Hove (actually!) which is always a good sign. I thought her idea for a range of greetings cards were great - "Congratulations on your marriage, remember the gift I bought you for your first wedding? Good" .
Both of these have been "laugh out loud funny" for me. This afternoon we're off to see Paul Merton's Silent Clowns which includes a full showing of Laurel and Hardy's Big Business.
Also annoying was one of his ideas for Atheist Airways, which ended with pun of the pilot not saying what the cruising altitude was because he wouldn't commit to anything. Which is fine, except it's confusing atheists with agnostics, and even then an agnostic might actually say that the cruising altitude was something that couldn't be known. You know what... it's best not to analyze jokes.
For anyone who's familiar with his rants on The Now Show, you'll know about his problems with BT. So it was fun to see two large BT trucks parked right outside the theater at the end of the show, with some burly engineers standing around, maybe waiting for someone...
We joined ski safari at Alfresco's last night for their start of Season party. We've been on two excellent trips with them, to BC, Canada and to Colorado over the past couple of years, and so it was good to go and meet the people behind the trips. The evening was sponsored by Vail Resorts, and so I've brought my Vail Resorts pen and Vail Resorts post-its into the office, and we managed to have some tasty canapes and beer too. We discussed our next snowboarding trip ideas with them, and also learnt more about their new offerings - weekends in Switzerland! At one point Richard was getting advice (and olympic anecdotes) about Utah from Graham Bell (former British Olympic Skier) which was kind of fun (especially as Richard didn't realise who he was and wondered why he was so obsessed with the olympics).
After the excitement of looking at ski brochures, trail maps and talking to people about alternative snow trips - like Chile in summer, we headed off to the Black Horse Inn to meet up with the Sussex Geek Dinner. We missed Tristan's talk about plone, but did get to meet some interesting people. Nice organisation Simon!.
. Having said that 
