lukehearn's blog

This is remnants of last night's snow. I haven't got a picture which truly justifies the extent to which it snowed but I can say it it was a bit of a shock when I opened the curtains this morning. Everything was covered in a blacket of snow.

Never in my life can I remember snow in April. It's a cliche to say it, but surely this is a sign of global warming.

Having been preoccupied with other things lately I have just had a chance to look at last weeks news and realsied that sadly Stanislaw Lem died on Tuesday (28 March).

A truly amazing man, and he had a wonderful "innings" aged 84 when he died. Solaris is a fantasitic book. I've read a little bit about Lem and I find his concepts fascinating. Definitely one of modern histories great scientist/philosophers/authors, and perhaps one of the few people who are so at ease with both art and science.

A coroner today finally announced that the Documentary filmmaker James Miller was indeed 'murdered' by an Israeli soldier.

Carrying a white flag and journalist insignia, James Miller was shot in the front of the neck (despite claims that he was caught in cross fire and shot in the back) while making a documentary in May 2003 in the Rafah refugee camp about Palestinian children caught up in fighting with Israel.

The last couple of evenings have been rather disorientating for me thanks to the seeming sudden change in seasons which we've had here in the UK. Of course its partly due to the clocks going forward but its so weird for it to still be light at 7pm. Nice anyway. It was only a couple of weeks ago that we were wondering if there would be any light at the end of the long tunnel which is winter in UK.

The VHS tape is officially dead according to UK audio-visual retailers. Although they will not be available from commercial outlets VHS will probably be around for a while because at present there is no more reliable or cheaper method of recording from TV. Technologies like DVD and sky plus are good but expensive. But does anyone watch television anyway. I know I don't. If there's anything which I hate with a passion at the moment, it is British TV.

(from left to right:) Jim Wood's Max Objects workshop and Adam Burt's Podcasting workshop from TakeAway Day2 (Thurs 30 March).

I actually attended Adam's workshop mainly because I have already had a number of Max msp lesson's with Jim.

I learnt a number of things during Adam's session, not only about how to Podcast but also it was interesting to learn about people's perceptions about the general podcasting 'hype'.

So its the last day of Takeaway today, with the final lectures wrapping things up very soon...and I'm actually quite glad! 3 days of this has been pretty intensive, and I'm starting to get a little tired and bored of being told off every 5 minutes. There's far too many rules and regulations in this place. If its not that we're blocking fire exits, its that we have "fatal trailing cables in public through ways". Seeing that artists tend to be of the non-conformist type, this may prove problematic for the relatively new centre.