Ever thought about converting a chapel into a cosy little house? Or driven past a derelict barn and wished you could renovate it? Have you taken the plunge and bought a chicken shed that’s just oozing potential? And are you going to do something green with it?
Well, I had a call from a lovely chap called Greg Goff at Twofour Broadcast this morning who’s looking for an eco-rennovation project to film for a new series called House Wrecks to Riches. The team are currently filming a number of builds, including a warehouse, a windmill, a milking parlour and a lighthouse, and Greg is really keen to find a green project that they can add to their list.
The programme will follow a project from the very beginning, so you should have planning permission and be ready to rock and roll, but not have quite started yet. The production team will then come and have a look round the existing building and talk to you about what you’re going to do with it. They’ll then film through until the end of the year, which will hopefully be enough time for you to reach completion!
Your project doesn’t have to be huge, it just has to be green - and part of the interest will be in seeing how you interpret the idea of ‘environmentally friendly’. One thing I’ve learnt in the short time Kits and Mortar has been around is that ‘green’ definitely means different things to different people. The key thing is that green is at the centre of your build. That might mean a reed bed water filtration system, or straw bale building, or turf roofs, or using any other green technique or material.
It also doesn’t matter what you’re intending to do with the finished property, whether you move in to it as your primary family home, sell it on at a profit, or run it as a holiday let. The build can be almost anywhere - Twofour Broadcast are based in Plymouth, so most of England and Wales is within easy reach - and they are following projects on Anglesey, Essex and Cornwall
If you have such a build in mind, and you’re ready to take the plunge, get in touch directly with Greg Goff by email, or phone his direct line: 01752 727528.
There was one closing quote in the blurb Greg emailed me yesterday: “The UK needs 250,000 new homes built every year to keep up with demand. Each year we’re 100,000 short of the target… but there are 750,000 empty properties out there to be renovated.” Makes you think, doesn’t it?
I wrote this post yesterday afternoon with the intention of posting it on Strange Attractor, but technical problems have stopped me from being able to post it there at all. Horizon was, by the way, fab.
Whilst Kev and I were at the gym this morning, we caught an interview with Dr Brian Cox on BBC Breakfast, talking to Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams about an episode of Horizon, What on Earth is wrong with gravity. I’m looking forward to seeing the programme tonight, having already seen a number of outtakes on Brian’s partner Gia’s blog. Thankfully, Gia has grabbed the interview and put it up on YouTube:
Now, gravity is tricky. It’s the sort of thing, like mass, that seem pretty obvious. You drop a pencil, as Bill did, and it falls until it hits a surface that stops it falling any further. We all know what gravity does. What’s less clear is what gravity is, how it works, what makes gravity pull things together. It’s actually a pretty difficult subject to tackle in a six minute segment.
Unfortunately, Bill and Sian - and whomever produced and researched the program - didn’t prepare any decent questions. Gravity is one of those subjects where seemingly simple questions have horrendously complex answers, if they have answers at all. Bill and Sian went for the simple questions, but Brian had only a few minutes - if that, given that they showed two clips of the programme - to try to answer.
Now, to my mind, the job of the presenter in these situations is to act as a proxy for the audience and to ask the questions that the audience want answered. The question that I suspect the audience most want answered about an episode of Horizon is: “Why should I watch this programme?” That was a question that Bill and Sian spectacularly failed to address, even indirectly, because they were focused on small but unanswerable questions instead.
Bill concentrated on dropping his pencil and asking querulously, “Why is it so complicated?” and then giggling like a schoolboy, I suspect because he felt a little out of his element. “I thought it was dead simple myself,” he says.
Brian has some great stories to illustrate his point. Most surprisingly, he talks about how if we didn’t correct for the way that time passes differently in orbit to on earth, our satnav systems would drift by 11km per day. But he’s forced to talk about spacetime without being able to fully explain what spacetime is and, frankly, anyone would be forgiven for struggling with that.
Sian then says, “I’m still not sure what causes gravity.” Well, you and the rest of the physics world. That’s not a smart question to ask, because there’s no answer, and the lack of an answer is going to flummox people. The point of this six minute segment is not to solve one of the universe’s greatest riddles, but to spark a little curiosity in people’s minds. And I can pretty much guarantee that no one woke up this morning and asked, “What causes gravity?”
Indeed, I did a straw poll of my friend son Twitter and Seesmic, and asked, “If I was an omniscient being, what scientific question would you like answered?”
From Twitter:
jrnoded: @suw why 42?
michaelocc: @Suw Is faster than light travel possible?
adamamyl: @Suw: why, on taking government office do incumbents forget they have principles/spines? Or, why int a resignation, a resignation, thesedays
zeroinfluencer: @Suw: How to make an affordable Holy Grail (Assorted Colours)
londonfilmgeek: @Suw Can i haz an Aperture Science Portal gun, kthanxbai
The_Shed: @Suw Are we even close to knowing the truth about anything?
johnbreslin: @Suw: Is this like “does anything eat wasps?” how about, where does all the time go (inspired by the Time Snails in “Captain Bluebear”)?
aidg: @Suw Science q for the omniscient: How the universe was created or the story of creation from primordial soup to multicellular organisms.
meriwilliams: @Suw Why is life?
tara_kelly: @Suw Dear omniscient being: is time really as linear as we like to think it is?
From Seesmic, my question:
An amazing question from DeekDeekster, that I personally would love the answer to:
Jeff Hinz echoes MichaelOOC, but from the opposite angle:
Christian Payne takes the Prince Charles line:
Dave Shannon asks the hardest question:
You’ll notice that no one, not one single person, asked “What is gravity?”.
Then towards the end of the Breakfast interview, they bring up the entirely spurious issue of the asteroid that missed hitting the Earth by 334,000 miles at 8;33am this morning. Cue the stupidest question of the morning: “If gravity is such a big deal, how come that asteroid that Carol told us about didn’t crash into Earth?” That’s like saying, if the sky is blue, how come grass is green?
To add insult to injury, Sian ends up by saying, “See, that’s why he has a PhD and we haven’t, because he can understand these sorts of things and we’re still bamboozled” and Bill finishes up with, “You’d managed a major achievement this morning, which is that you’ve managed to explain something to all of us and made us both feel really thick.”
Poor Brian didn’t stand a chance. How can you manage to extract even a shred of dignity from that? How can you pull back from that and say something that will encourage people to watch your programme?
If the Breakfast team had thought for a moment and actually talked to Brian before the interview about what questions would make for an entertaining and interesting interview, ruling out questions that no physicist alive can answer, and including ones that perhaps the audience actually want to know the answer to, then I suspect things would have gone much better.
But to me, this is indicative of the attitude of the media towards science and technology: “Oh, look at those weirdos over there with their white coats and strange ways of talking. They’re not like us. They’re Boffins.” It’s an attitude based in ignorance and fear, and nurtured by the unnecessarily divisive split between science/tech and the humanities at school and then university.
Yet at times like this, the “I’m too dumb to understand you boffins” attitude is counterproductive. All Bill and Sian have done is put off people who might otherwise have watched Horizon, and pissed off the people who definitely will. Which is foolish, given that they are working for the very same organisation that commissioned Brian’s programme.
Richard Hammond, one of my favourite TV presenters responsible for making Brainiac and Top Gear such compelling viewing. I mean, I don't drive, and all I know about cars is that they have a wheel at each corner and go 'vrrooom' … why would I want to watch a programme about cars? But Richard, known affectionately as the Hamster, just made things so entertaining I started to think that maybe I might want drive myself again one day.
So I was very concerned to hear yesterday that the daft git had managed to crash the Vampire jet car at 300mph and was in hospital in a critical condition. His condition's stable now, and it appears he's improving, which is all good news, although no one will know how serious his brain injury is for a while yet.
I know there are thousands of fans out there who feel the same way I do, and they've come out en masse to do something about it. The people at Pistonheads.com have set up a page on JustGiving.com to collect donations for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, who flew Hamster to Leeds General Infirmary. Initially they wanted to raise the £340 that that single flight, but the last time I looked there were up to £36,895, and it's going up by about a £1000 every half hour as the network effect takes over. It's wonderful to watch.
So get well soon, Hamster. Looking forward to seeing you back behind the wheel and givin' it some attitude.
Last time I saw one of my friends on TV, it all turned out to be a weefib. This time round… the evidence is incontrovertible. And onFlickr.
Someone must have video, surely?
But wow! Our own Tom on telly. Whatever next? (*cough*me?*cough*)
Whilst I was in San Francisco, I had the opportunity to work on the Technorati Live 8 site. It was a concatenation of lucky events that led me to being involved, but I feel proud to have had that chance. The Technorati Live 8 site gives all bloggers a single point of reference to find out what is going on in the blogosphere. Amongst other things, we have resources there to help you contact the G8 leaders, and the Live 8 badge so that you can show support for the cause on your blog. We even have a version of the Live 8 Technorati tags page for your Treo!
Right now, I am watching the Live 8 London concert on TV, watching as thousands of people enjoy probably the biggest, most spectacular gig they will ever see. Part of me wishes that I had been there, but I can do my bit from my blog, as can every blogger.
There have been some cynical reactions to Live 8, not just from corners of the media but also from normal people, who think that it's a waste of time. Well, all I can say is this: We are privileged by an accident of birth. That is all that separates us from those suffering and dying in poverty. Nothing else. We have a responsibility to act and to do something to relieve the pain others are feeling, every day, with no end in sight.
Our leaders have for years assumed that they could do what profited them, what profited the big businesses that fund and support them. For years they have ignored the poverty-stricken and the disadvantaged because they saw no profit in it for them. And for years, we have let them.
It is time we remembered that our leaders are in fact our servants. We put them in power in order to represent us, but they have ignored us one time too many. We have a voice and we must use it to ensure that we send a message, strong and unequivocal, that we will not tolerate prevarication any longer. We will not tolerate their profiteering. We will not tolerate them ignoring our will. Debt. Aid. Trade. Governance.
Debt: Africa is crippled by debt it cannot repay. It's time to wipe the slate clean, to drop the debt, to stop profiteering off the poor.
Aid: Much more aid is promised than ever delivered. A huge overhaul is needed, not just in how much aid our governments promise, but how much money they actually provide and how it is used. AIDS is wiping out half the population of the continent, and we need to do more to ensure that it's insidious spread is halted, and that drugs are made available to those who need them.
Trade: African trying to earn a living are being driven out of business or kept in poverty because of unfair trade laws. These laws are drafted and enacted by the richest countries in the world, and guess who they benefit?
Governance: There's no doubt that there is corruption. There's is also no doubt that there are good people doing good work in Africa. We can't ignore the problem of fair governance when addressing the problems faced by Africa. Who benefits?
We do. All of us, because a stronger Africa means a stronger world. Every African who earns a good living, who has independence, dignity and health, who can provide an education for their children and security for themselves and the next generation, they all help our world be a better place too. We don't want your money, we want your voice
Live 8 is not about raising money, it's about raising your voice. Join billions of others in telling your leaders that you want them to act, now, to make poverty history. Don't allow the G8 Summit to pass without telling your leaders that you want them to take an historic stand, that you want them to drop the debt, reform trade laws and double aid.
Live 8 is the first rung on the ladder - there is a lot more that will need to be done. Turning out for a gig is a great show of solidarity but we need to keep the conversation going once Live 8 is over. Let this be a start, a new beginning. We must continue to discuss what is happening, what needs to happen, and what we can make happen. And we need to keep the channels of communication open, and keep the pressure on our leaders to do something constructive.
All the links you could possibly need are on the Technorati Live 8 site. Use them. Live8
Just watched last night's Dr Who and I have to agree with Tom that not only is Dr Who is a bit of a tart, but he's also a bit free and easy with gender/species/group sex distinctions. Good for him, I say. Bit jealous really. I never get to dance, let alone set up an interesting threesome with aliens.
Last night I had a dream. Yes, another one. I was on a boat, with Christopher Ecclestone. We were on a river, which was all well and good, but it ran along the edge of a cliff… which was at least a mile high. The water slopped over the edge in a 'your boat would go straight over' manner which scared the crap out of me. But it was ok, because Christopher Ecclestone was there to keep me safe and sound.
But anyway, moving on. I was talking to my mate Ewan about this, and more now than ever I think his take is right. Dr Who is is the last survivor of the Time Wars. The Daleks are all dead. The Time Lords are all dead. Dr Who suffers horrendous survivor guilt and that colours everything he does.
This episode, more than any other, exemplifies survivor guilt. “Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives,” says the Doctor as the victims of the poorly adapted nanogenes are finally cured of their ills. The joy in his face is unparalleled by anything else we have seen in this series - he is for the first time truly delighted that he has been able to act as saviour, in however an indirect way.
Consider Father's Day, the episode in which Rose goes back in time to try to save her father's life. The Doctor knows exactly what she has done, he knows the disaster she has caused, and he knows what needs to be done to put it all right, but he can't bring himself to engineer Rose's father's death. He wants him to live, because he feels he can't be responsible for even one more life lost. He's willing to sacrifice the unknown masses in order to safe the known individual - a logic that previous Doctors would never have followed.
For ages with the new series of Dr Who I was really puzzled by the way that the Doctor seemed so passive - very much unlike past Doctors. In the episode The Long Game, with the astonishingly sexy Simon Pegg as The Editor, (why did no one tell me Simon was narrating the Dr Who Confidential series on BBC3? I would have watched them, dammit!), both the Doctor and Rose are helpless and at the mercy of the Editor and his Boss, and they rely upon a secondary character to free them.
This goes totally contrary to our expectations of the Doctor as the Mr Know It All who can fix anything. In fact, I can't think of a single episode in this series where Dr Who has actually taken charge and been directly responsible for the rescue of anyone. Dammit, even the Dalek he tries to rescue, (before he realises it's a Dalek) ends up committing suicide because Rose's DNA has infected it. Damn you, Russell T Davies. Damn your ability to make me cry over a Dalek!
But as soon as you look at this helplessness in terms of survivor guilt, it all makes sense. The Doctor is haunted by memories of the Time Wars. He can't understand why he is still live when everyone else is dead. He has no one left. Nothing left. Just him and his Tardis. Is he a traitor for not dying with the rest? Should he have done thing differently? Sacrificed his life? To what end? Time Lords were always survivors and to die a meaningless death would never have been acceptable.
So instead he is left alone, trying to make sense of what happened, and trying not to repeat what he sees as tragic mistakes. Just how responsible was the Doctor for the death of all those Time Lords, all those Daleks? We heard him crying “It's not my fault!” to the last remaining Dalek. Is that truth, or guilt? Was it his fault? How will Rose react when the truth comes out?
The Doctor is obviously in love with Rose, it's clear as day, and has been for episodes. Will he lose her when all this comes to a head*? It surely must - all the episodes are building up to a climax in which we find out what really happened in the Doctor's past. What were the Time Wars? What happened to the Daleks? The Time Lords? And where was The Master in all this? What part did he have to play? Davros? Is he still kicking about? (Or should that be 'levitating about'?)
I wasn't a Dr Who fan until this series. The old stuff I could take or leave and really not care about, but this series has been fantastic. Russell T Davies has put together a through line that has totally hooked me. He's done something truly different with the Doctor - he's made him human, fallible, vulnerable. For once, the Doctor is not there to save us poor apes, but is instead saved by us. We are going on his personal journey, instead of a journey through space and time that he happens to be taking us on.
As a scriptwriter, I find all this fascinating, and I have to admit to a bit of jealousy. What I wouldn't give to have the opportunity to take a character like the Doctor and turn him on his head, do something really cool and interesting with him. Dr Who is, without doubt, up there with Battlestar Galactica as my all-time favourite scifi.
Anyway, it's 1.20am now - how the hell did that happen? - and whilst I could easily wax lyrical for another hour or so, I shan't. Time for bed. Christopher, are you coming?
* OK, I know Ecclestone leaves at the end of this series, which means a regeneration, which means the relationship is doomed. I was just trying not to think about it, ok?
It was nearly twoyearsago now that I sat in my lounge in Reading, watching Edge of Darkness on BBC4. That time round I missed the first episode. Tonight I saw it. Twenty years is no time at all. Two years is but a blink.
Llynedd, pan o'n i'n byw yn fflat fy ffrind Svet, des i arfer i ddefnyddio Sky+ i recordio'r teledu. Mae'n fendigedig - ti'n jyst setio'r peth i recordio rhaglen neu holl gyfres, ac mae yn. Jyst fel 'na. Dim ffys. Dim problem. Gwylies i fwy o deledu Cymraeg wedyn na'r holl flwyddyn o'r blaen, jyst o achos Sky+. Mae 'na lawer sy'n cael ei ddarlledu ar S4C mod i'n hoffi gwylio, ond mae'n cael ei ddarlledu yn y noson yn aml, ar ôl dw i wedi mynd i gysgu. (Ha! Dw i'n meddwl fod 'na lot mod i'n anghofio gwylio, a ddweud y gwir.)
Yn diweddar, dw i wedi bod gwylio S4C bob p'nawn Sul, achos mae 'na lawer o raglenni da sy'n cael eu ddarlledu, ac efo is-deitlau hefyd. Dw i'n trio gwella fy Ngymraeg, felly mae'n dda iawn imi i wylio'r rhaglenni 'ma, ond sai fo'n haws o lawer i jyst presio botwm a recordio popeth a sdim rhaid i gofio troi'r teledu ymlaen.
O wel. Pan dw i'n gyfoethog.
You may remember that last year I showed a little bit of interest in a British zombie flick called Shaun of the Dead, so it probably won't surprise you to hear that when my mates Ewan and Cameron asked me if I wanted to help them interview Nick Frost for The Podcast Network's Movie Show I had to think long and hard about whether to accept or not. Long. And hard. Oh, yes.
So, to cut a 1 hr 22 min story short, this morning I spent a very happy hour and a half talking to Nick and Ewan, (Cam had to bail for technical reasons), about everything from how pantwettingly scary it was for him to go from being a waiter to a real proper actor on Spaced, to how pantwettingly terrifying dying on your arse in front of 200 people when you're trying to be a stand-up comic is, to shaved bollocks. We did cover a few non-crotch related issues to, but I don't want to spoil the show for you.
Nick was a delight to talk to, and an absolute darling the whole way through, even when we were having a few problems getting the technology to behave - it was a telephone/Skype combination, and getting the levels right was a pig, if Ewan's muttering was anything to go by.
We have to do some jiggery-pokery with the audio before we broadcast, but the show should be up soon. (Well, I say 'we', I mean 'Cameron'. He who gets most turkey gets most string.) I'll post a link when it's up.
So, huge thanks to Nick! Sir, you are a star!
Best way to decompress: Eight episodes of Battlestar Galactica back to back. The new series, not the old heap of crap. Bestest sci-fi TV series, er, evah, I think.
Thanks for the DVD loan, Kate. Let's hope I don't get the bends.
For as long as I can remember I’ve held the dream that one day I would be able to build my own house. As a kid, I would go on holiday with my family down to Cornwall, to The Lizard, (the most southerly point on the British mainland), where we would stay each time on the same caravan site, Gwendreath Farm Caravan Park. We went almost every year.
It was there that I acquired my obsession with Celtic languages, in part at least from the amazing placenames - Porthleven, Perranuthnoe, Mawgan, Tregidden, Goonhilly, Praze-an-Beeble. I would read as much as I could find about the local legends and try to learn phrases in Cornish so I could figure out what the placenames meant.
I think it was there that I acquired my dream of building my own house. I loved staying in caravans. I loved how compact they were, how they utilised every last scrap of space: the way there were secret cupboards tucked away under seats; the way that tables turned into beds; the tiny compact gas stove. I used to sit for hours with a notepad and pencil and design my own caravans.
Now I think less about caravan design and more about houses. This isn’t a function of my current nomadic situation, although maybe it does explain a little why not knowing where I am going to be living this time next year (or even this time next month) sometimes bothers me so. It’s an inbuilt thing, something that’s skulked about in the back of my head since I was a wee bairn.
One of my favourite TV programmes is Grand Designs, a Channel Four production that follows people following their house-building dreams. Tonight, the programme followed a couple who had bought a derelict church in County Mayo, Ireland, and were restoring and converting it to a house. Amongst a slew of really crap house design shows, Grand Designs stands out as the one with serious taste and standards. No MDF. No lurid colours. No shock-value interiors. Just people trying their hardest to realise their dreams.
Watching tonight, I found myself filled with wonder at how beautiful the building was, how picture-perfect the scenery, and how fantastic it would be to wake up every day in a building with such soul. The photos can only give a glimpse of how beautiful it must actually be.
But if I’ve learnt one thing from years of watching other people convert a derelict house or build their dream home from scratch, it’s that such an undertaking is huge. For the couple in Ireland, things went pretty smoothly, but for many there is delay after delay, trouble after trouble, disappointment after disappointment, and you wonder how they keep going.
How do you get up each day, for months on end, and force yourself to go to work on a project which could turn out to be your albatross? How do you keep a job going, and run a building project, and not destroy your marriage or relationship at the same time? How do you know that, at the end of it all, it will be worth it? Will you still be as in love with your dream when it is realised as you were when it was but a vision?
The answer is, I suspect, that you just do. You get up. You get through another day. You keep your eye on the future, and you trust that it will all come good in the end.
I don’t know if I will ever be in a position to build my own house. But I am getting a lot of practice at getting up, getting through another day, and trusting that it will all come good in the end.
how about, where does all the time go (inspired by the Time Snails in “Captain Bluebear”)?
