Blog

Bolt Croppers would be quicker.

This is something that’s been sitting in my ‘to-blog-about’ list for a while now and I guess I was waiting for it to be ‘finished’ but it became clear that ‘finished’ was quite hard to define for this little project so here it goes…

ThePremise

Last year I was living in Bristol and part of my home security was a padlock. Four Digits, each 0-9, 10,000 combinations. My starting thought was, did it mattered how much I scrambled it? What was the security risk of say only changing one number vs the convenience of being able to open it nice and quickly each time. Now I wasn’t the only person who opened this lock each day, there were at any time something between 10 and 20 people sharing this particular access so I thought I’d find out what everyone else was doing…

From then on a began to make a note of what number I found in the lock each time I got to it. I feel it’s safe to say that I got a good cross section of times as my schedule was very irregular at the time so I wasn’t likely to always following the same people in/out on a daily basis. The only weighting I can think of that might exist in my results are toward people who come and go more regular vs someone who perhaps is a way for long periods of time but I can’t do much about that. It was important to me not to mention this to people, I didn't want to change their habits.

Over the course of perhaps 2 months I collected 52 results which I entered in to a spreadsheet which I kept stored on my phone. After 21 results the padlock was replaced with a different style padlock.

This gave me 2 data sets to play with

Set 1 - 21 Results, padlock #1

Set 2 - 31 Results, padlock #2

WhatIDid

So the two main things I wanted to do was to take the modal score for each digit and then to find the mean. The mode was simple enough,find how much each digit occurs and find out which cropped up the most.

The mean was more tricky, just doing a standard mean calculation wasn’t going to cut it as I needed to be doing this all modulus 10 because if you twist it one place beyond 9 in this case you get 0….not 10.

So, to do this I did something that apparently is how they calculate average wind velocities. I split a circle into 10 sections, with 0 being straight up, 5 straight down and the rest spread evenly in between and then using vectors started adding arrows together.

So imagine you start at the centre and the first digit is a 5, so you draw an arrow directly down, with length 1, and then say you get a 3 so carrying on from where you left off you draw another arrow of length one, this time in the direction of 3. Then you keep doing this for your whole data set. To see how this is a mean imagine doing the number 0,1,...,9 in sequence, you would draw a 10 sided regular polygon and end up back where you started, they all cancel out. Here’s a quick sketch to show the principle for a few data points, 0, 3, 5, 1, 3, 0.

I included the resultant vector as a dotted line and by comparing to the reference circle you can see it looks like it’s about 2. Finally as a check, because I picked numbers that didn’t cross around to 9 which would confuse things at this point we can check this by doing a simple mean calculation to get 13/6 ~2.17

So I scaled this technique up to my whole data set by building a spreadsheet to do the hard work and this is what I ended up with.

As you can see it was a bit of a beast, I’ll include a version that you can browse yourself to have a look at the nuts and bolts if you’re interested but here I’ll just give a summary. I'd wanted to do it with polar coordinates as it would have been way more elegant but google sheets seemed fussy about radians.

The orangeish band on the left is where my data set drops into from a separate page, 4 columns, one for each digit in the code. The next 8 columns generate cumulative x and y coordinates for the resulting vector at each point and then the spaces between each of the greeny/red bands give the resultant combined resultant vector, scale it back down to a length one vector, give its direction and then also give the strength of the result as a %. I am able to give a strength (sort of like a level confidence in the result) because as I keep adding vectors I can keep track of how far away from the centre it’s travelled. If results keep agreeing then they’ll get further away than if they disagree and cancel out. 100% confidence would imply every data point was the same (hence they always start green - there is only one data point) 0% confidence would imply they cancelled out perfectly and ended up back where they started.

The final greeny/red band is the strength of the whole 4 digit prediction. The thing to bare in mind is that all of these are cumulative, working their way down the page and recalculating as each new data point it added and hence the data set gets larger.

WhatISaw

The first thing I should mention is that this is not exactly my data as I received it. This padlock still exists and is still securing homes so I'm not going to give away the code. For this reason I've introduced a systematic change into my results, adding the same number to each of the digits. This also has the advantage of allowing my to simulate the two different padlocks having the same combination despite the fact that they didn't, allowing me to compare them side by side.

Padlock#2

Padlock#1

Padlock#1&#2

First addressing the modal results, both data sets seem confident that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th digits are 2,3 and 4 respectively and the 1st digit appears to be in the range 8-1. Looking at the frequency breakdown across both data sets we see this very clearly and some other things show up.

As you can see now considering both data sets together there are four clear peaks visible showing the four mode’s, 1, 2, 3 and 4., this is in fact the code. That there are definite peaks here and not an even distribution indicates that people do not scramble completely at random and there is a level of system to this. What we are seeing here is that people scramble and often leave at least one digit unscrambled, everyone does this in a different way and they cancel each there out to leave an indication of the original number. Looking back through the data 29% of all codes had at least 3 of the 4 digits correct where people have gone for the convenient option of just changing either the first or last digit, 53% have two digits or more and 73% where 1 or more digits are correct. Just as comparison, here are the expected outcomes as %’s. This shows this result is well beyond what you’d expect from random mixing.

The other thing to note in the graphs above is further evidence of systematic scrambling. Secondary peaks can be seen 3 places either side of the mode which indicates a particularly convenient twisting distance. The only graph to not exhibit this characteristic is the fourth digit however this was the digit most often left unchanged, staying the same in 50% of cases. This can also be seen in the high confidence the predictor has is the 4th digit which goes up above 65%. This is even higher when only data set #2 is considered.

To the left is the full data set for both padlocks with conditional formatting to indicate how close to correct the value is. This ranges from perfect (Black), to completely wrong ie +/-5 (Light Gray). The main thing to be gained from this is that it highlights the difference between the two padlocks and the fact that they encourage different behaviours. In the top 40% you can see t is darker slightly left of centre indicating a preference to change the last digits more than the first. I do however also notice a run at the begininng of just changing the middle two digits significantly while leaving the ends unchanged. The bottom half of the data shows a different story with the first two digits regularly changed and the end digits changed less often.

Also evident is that the top 40% is darker in colour than the bottom 60%, this is backed up by replicating the chart from earlier but splitting it back into two data sets, this indicated that padlock #2 encouraged more random mixing than padlock #1 in this situation.

One final characteristic is that in every frequency graph for data set #2 it is clear that the secondary spike that corresponds to 2-3 less than the modal value is always larger than the mode spike. Given that the padlock was orientated as per the image above when in use that indicated a preference to pull with the thumb to scramble. This is based on a right handed user.

Finally I have graphed the predictions over time alongside overall confidence. As you can see the overall confidence seems to have settled at around 40-45%. Going back to initial image of arrows moving around a center point this means that on average for each new data point with its associated length 1 arrow the resultant point moved 0.4-0.45 units away from the centre in the direction of the mean result. Instinctively it feels that because that number is staying the same the result is getting no less certain however it must be noted that that number staying constant only indicates that with each new data point the the result is getting more certain at a constant rate.

Click here to view the spreadsheet in google sheets. To explore data set #1, #2 or both combined enter 1,2 or 3 respectively into cell 'L5'

Whatcanwelearn

You don't need a huge data set to get in the right territory but you'd have to be quite persistent to learn the code for a lock this way. However, there is an easy way of making this sort of attack impossible, always scramble to the same number...

Something like this would get everyone setting into 0,0,0,0 consistently. But then all it takes is one person to 'just pop out' and only change one number and it will be very obvious...

And finally, bolt croppers would be quicker...

Showreel 2016

C ześć

(This is about as far as I got when I started this post three days ago, time to finish it... To be fair though I'd just got back from a gig in Oxford and had been up since 5am so I'll excuse myself.)

Here's a boring-update-post.

Welcome to 2016, enjoy your stay. Gradually trying to drag myself into something resembling productivity after a festive season of getting really into board games and not a huge amount else.

I've posted a two videos in the past few weeks the most notable of which being my 2016 showreel which can be seen here

I had been becoming increasingly aware that my showreel was getting very out of date as it was from 2013. This was particularly noticeable since was released within a year of when I decided to go full time as a circus performer. Definitely glad to finally have got out an updated version.

The other video, Dynamix juggling is a juggling training video of some of the tricks and sequences I was working on over Christmas.

This week and last has been all about swinging trapeze, maybe more to come on that... watch this space. And in non circus news I moved into a new flat before Christmas and now that I've put up shelves it's lovely.

The shelves haven't fallen down, thanks for asking.

JJJ

Journeys, John Street and Juggling

WARNING, reminiscing on the way...

After a 5 year occupation Nofit State Circus is moving out of its John Street building, a place which has been my own personal circus home as well as for many others. I rememeber the first day I went to the building and it was as empty as it is now that we are leaving (in fact emptier...more on that later.) It was very early in my Nofitstate life, I'm pretty sure after Parklife - Pontardawe and we drove to John Street to drop some set off. I went in first through the back door and there was literally nothing in the building... We were moving in the first things. Fast forwards September 2010 to December 2015... Journey's, the final show in John Street was on the weekend and it was quite a whirlwind. It was definitely the most technically challenging show that I've found myself head rigger for, with many aerial acts (7 hoops, 7 trapezes, 3 ropes, 4 silks, you get the picture...) a tightwire, ropes in the foyer, trapezes in the offices to manage alongside as I often find myself, performing several acts as well. Here are some of my highlights...

Juggling

I haven't performed a solo juggling act in a while now (except the section in my solo show) and I forgot how hard it is!!! I went in to my creative process for my Journeys act with one primary aim, to make an act of 100% new material, not a single trick from any of my old routines. This is such a tall order but so good at the same time, it forced me to push for tricks that have been too difficult for me to perform in the past and make new tricks entirely. In the end I'm really happy with all the material I've made and I'm looking forwards to running it more at any opportunity. In the end I didn't end up performing only new material as I made a concession to myself two days before the show when I needed an extra bit of material to fit the music and I knew in my routine for this section it was crucial the tricks where totally locked down otherwise it wouldn't work as I wanted it to. I can live with this, this is part of the reason I wanted to make lots of new material, because moments like this show why it's so useful to have an expansive back catalogue of material to draw from when you need to.

TheFoyer

First let me begin with something from my hometown. Newcastle has a training and performance space called Dance City and my favourite thing about the building is that from the moment the building was opened the breakdancers of Newcastle decided that the best floor for them to dance on in the entire mulit-million pound centre was the floor of the wide open foyer and so that's where they dance... This means you can be there working on a project or just popping in to use the toilet and there are often dancers just inside the door, training. And you can sit and watch them as you eat your sandwiches, or wait for the receptionist to be free. A similar thing happened to me at John Street, after trying every bit of floor in the main space and several other rooms I decided that the best balance between ceiling height and lighting for juggling was the foyer and so it regularly became my training space (it also had the added bonus of not being scheduled the way the main space was so I could basically be there wherever I wanted.) For this reason it became important to me that that is where I wanted to perform for Journeys, to juggle where I had always juggled, in the foyer.

The next challenge, to put aerial in the foyer... This proposal was put forwards by Paul the director and turned out to be the most challenging rig I've done so far but I got there. The night the performers all trained together on their ropes and silks in the foyer gave me goosebumps, to see people come to the front door look through the glass and then do what they don't usually do there, look up was great, then they'd edge their was through the door, look around to work out was going on and then carefully edge their way around the room to wherever they needed to go, the building was electric that evening.

Legacy

We made a mess, but it is our mess, and it is beautiful.

We left polystyrene all over the floor, we threw paint around rooms, left holes in the ceiling, drew on the walls, wrote poetry and made art voicing our disapproval that we have to leave because we couldn't not do these things, it would be rude not to honour our old home in this way, I wish I could be a fly on the wall when the first bull-doser arrives.

“Each thought, each step, each breath; Every beat of the blood pumping heart, Moves us inexorably forwards. We have no choice in making the journey; We can only decide on where we wish to go”

I'm not sure what more I can say, so here have a few thousand words, courtesy of Mark Robson, Spike Clark and myself.

Delta S

Delta S, or as I prefer ΔS is about chaos, about entropy and its many form. It's about divergent thinking and linear ideas. It's about the way that we approach problem solving, both on a personal level and beyond.

Or at least that's what I like to tell myself.

I guess what Delta S is really about is that simply it is about nothing. It exists as a window into my brain which I place there on a platter, all grey, and vulnerable and simply there....

Delta S began in a notebook, as a list of machines, things I wanted to make. Few of them had beginnings and none had an ending. And this is largely how the show was began, I did some shopping and then Saz and I hung out in a workshop and made things, out of bits of string and the sorts of things that you find in that drawer you have in the kitchen called “misc.”

I am so very excited about the future of Delta S for many many reason, one of which is because I am excited to see it and feel it breath, it's a show that can really live, develop and morph. Delta S is a show that for me is that is less like a film and more like a diary. A film is created and may get remastered by some technical genius down the years but stays essentially locked in time in all but the details. A diary continues to change.

Next for Delta S is to make it richer, I look forwards to spending more time with the props, the universe of Delta S is one where every thing has a trick, I have a connection with everything in my environment and everything has a connection with me.

For that, I need to get better acquainted with sledge hammers.

I'd like to thank everyone that has been involved in Delta S so far, from Nofit State and their huge amounts of support through The Up and Out Network, Arts Council England and of course the team of people that exists alongside one man and his dreams. Finally I would like to thank one last group of contributors to Delta S, the audience who came to see my showing. You were as generous in your immensely helpful feedback as I could ever have hoped for and it has given me so much food for thought. Thank you for being present and in the moment, with me.

For more information click here.

Lee

Oct '14-Oct'13

So, I’ve kind of just realised why I often include music in the top line of my blog posts. Having just read back through my last post which was a few months back now, I clicked on the music, it started then I started reading, and it really took me back. So here’s this posts’ music, I hope you appreciate it as much as my future self will.

For a bit of fun I think I might write this post in reverse chronology and see how it goes, it seems fitting in a way since right now I can kind of see how my life is sitting for a while, so I’ll start at the end of my plans and work back to my last post.

So my exciting relatively new news is that I’m going to be touring Europe next year with Bianco, Yaaay! Looking forwards to it a lot and can’t wait to see what it entails. The only confirmed city so far is Limerick but there’s a lot of talk about some exciting places, so more on that as it gets released.

Before that I currently have a chasm (by my current standards) of a gap in my schedule which I’m looking for fun things to fill with so anyone know anything exciting happening in mid March through to mid/end April? BJC2014 is the only thing currently vaguely on my radar.

And that brings my to exciting news #2 which is that we’re taking Bianco to Perth, Australia for a month!!! We’ll be performing at the Perth Festival for the whole of February so anyone from Perth, get it on your diary, ical, filofax, sticky note, arm or preferred personal organisation device. This is such an exciting trip for me as it’s over 17 years since I was last there. As I remember so little of the year I spent there it’s always been very high on my list of places I wanted to visit, so to be able to do that is amazing. The set, tent and all of the other 1000’s of things that it takes to do Bianco (minus the people, and a few assorted bits and bobs) have all just left the UK and now are going to be on a ship at sea for the next few weeks until we see them on the other side of the world. Hope WA is ready for us!!! (Although they seem to be since they put us on the cover of the program, booom)

And the final part of the trip down under is a little holiday time that I get over there before having to fly back so anyone around in early March, I’m looking at the possibilities of flying over to the East so anyone Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, parkour people, circus people, interesting people, people with feet, anyone at all in Australia give me a shout and I’ll start making plans!

So before that I’ll be taking some time to train in Cardiff and Newcastle and anywhere else that takes my fancy over Christmas and through January. Should be fun, got a couple of plans but nothing major so looking forwards to taking to see people, train and have a good festive season.

That brings me up to what I’m working on at the moment, I’ve got a couple of bit’s a pieces on the go at the moment which is fun. The main one is a solo act I’m working on the be shown in a warehouse in Cardiff in December, I’ve been working on it pretty consistently since the end of tour now and it’s starting to come together now. It’s a tumbling and manipulation act and I’m having a lot of fun exploring the the themes of waiting, restless play, logic and the lack of. I’m so happy to be making this act as it bring together so many of the skills and ideas I’ve wanted to have in an act for a long time now so I’ll let you know how that goes, perhaps over the few short weeks before I perform it or maybe just after I’ve got it out the way next month.

The other show which I just started working on today is called “Too Excited To Sleep.” It will be a Christmas cabaret and so far I’m doing an ensemble acro act but I think that particular show has a lot more surprises to come so we’ll see.

And back into the past we delve, my past couple of months have consisted of lots a training, including a decent amount of acro which has been great. lots of act development and quite a few trips to Bristol. Bristol seems to be where it’s at, at the moment with great shows happening all the time. Recently I’ve seen The Carny Villains and The Invisible Circus’ “Under the Dark Moon” at the Creative Common where I performed earlier in the year. Also Fireproof Giant did a really nice chilled out set recently at The Looking Glass and The Island hosted a show called The wedding which was something very new and very daring.

Will blog again in the next few days, it’s hard to be myself when I feel like I’m catching up but that’s it, a year of my life!

#198

To be tidied up.

#197

Autumn 2013 Hartlepool Precision Jump Sampler.

#196

Putting the new wall tramp setup through its paces at Dynamix, longer video to come sometime soon.

#195

Club-hoop balance. Something I was playing with tonight.

#194

back balance to front balance.

Not the best one I did on the day but the only one I filmed.

Bianco - Day 222

First off, my album of the week Passenger - All the little lights.

Last night was my last performance in Bianco 2013 but I’ll come back to the end, at the end.

Going right back to Brighton when I last wrote anything, we then moved to Bristol. There we where performing on the Creative Common, Bristol is an amazing city which I hope to spend more time in the future and was extra special because of a number of old and new friends and even some family who I enjoyed catching up with.

From Bristol we dipped back into Wales with time in Narberth and Bangor, nature tipped its hat to us and gave us amazing weather for practically the whole time.

We then did a quick stop in Stoke-on-Trent where we did just 4 shows that were all different! On a challenging schedule we moved up to Edinburgh for a month at the Fringe! In Edinburgh we really smashed it with sell outs night in night out. The thing that really made Edinburgh special was the huge number of other things happening, despite a few issues in the company with illness and injury the show was so solid that we had confidence to be able to really relax into it and enjoy it and also to enjoy the Fringe. I saw so so many other shows in that month including some great ones. So many in fact they might merit a blog post on their own.

So from Edinburgh we moved to the final stop in the tour, Brecon. A much more chilled out affair compared to the high pace of Edinburgh where we had gone up to 8 shows a week. Despite quieter audiences compared to what we had got used I cannot think of a more fitting way of ending the tour, being close enough to Cardiff to have lots of Nofitstate friends come to see the tour out with us.

And that brings us to the end. As I progressed through the tour my mind increasingly moved to the end of the tour, in a kind of curiosity I wondered how it was going to feel. How would the final week be? The final day? The final show? The final act? The final curtain call? The final blackout? When you’ve been doing the same amazing thing with the same even more amazing group of people you just never know how you’ll be when it ends. The bubble is being burst, slowly as we begin to go our separate ways and are forced to say “Until next time” but we will all take a little bit of the bubble with us and hold it close to us.

As I went in to the final show I could feel it wasn’t a normal one, the energy in all of us was something I’d never experienced before, it wasn’t just a group of performers giving their everything which we did every day. It was a group of performers savoring every minute of the two hour show, as if we wanted to make sure we took in everything, our eyes brightened and opened, our ears twitched and our skin prickled.

The curtain call is something I never want to forget, we bowed and the audience gave us back as much as we had given them, we didn’t want to leave them and none of left the main space as we usually did in the final moments, preferring to stay together and with the audience. We got an encore we bowed again and then we celebrated, self indulgently we called for ‘one more tune’ the band played, we danced, a company of 50 together not caring if we had an audience of 400 watching what for me was a private celebration.

The first people had to leave that night, partying until they absolutely had to return to their life, 24 hour on we are leaving bit by bit, one by one and we slowly pack up and prepare to move on to the next wonderful adventure.

#193

Some acro bits from Edinburgh. Part inspired by having lots of bases…

#192

Hula shoulder bounces.

A little over 3 years ago I started learning this trick, and now I can do it!

#191

423 reverse half spins and corrections

#190

423 half spins and corrections

Today's list was really easy

501
3
423
441
531
51
504
4
53
534
71
7531
615
5551
633
7333
74414
7441
567123
5550
552
522
5
744
645
91
8444
94444
66661
633
(4,2x)*
(4,4)
(6x,4)(4,2x)(4,4)*
(4x,4x)
(6x,4)*
(8x,4)(4,4)*
(4,2)
(4,2)*
9131
d19131
d171
642
753
6
7
(6,6)
(6x,6x)
75
(6x,4x)
63141

What's the time mister wolf?

Here’s a nice album.

Just did the first show of the week and it was a good one! The first one back after a day off is sometimes a little ‘spongy’ but today was good, with the only small negative being that my voice started to go during the second half.

This morning was great fun and a real workout! I was teaching counter-weighted aerial hoop with Blaze and it was very successful. We were teaching a load of youth circus kids from Nofitstate and Circus Eruption and they seemed to really enjoy it and get a lot out of it.

The next few days should be nice with pilates, rope training and even a swinging trapeze taster session! Scary stuff.

Again I feel I must mention Calum’s amazing effort, raising money for the Mamie Martin Fund. Aside from the good cause, check out the past few days, they’ve been brilliant.

A couple of days ago I shared my first list and I thought I’d give a summary of today’s. The list was

“List 30 things that I did do but now don’t”

Here’s a couple…

Make videos every few few week
Carry a tin opener with me
Dislike red or stripey clothes
Always wear hats
Have opportunities to wear a suit
Wear a watch

It’s funny that now that I’m reading this back I realise how much of this has to do with clothing or personal appearance, which to me feels out of character.

Die Suppe ist zu heiß.

Today, by the power of a random number generator I selected in the most random way I could my list for today and it was #29! Wooo! how exciting. As it turns out, #29 was…

“List 10 things about Albert Einstein that I didn’t already know”

So, obviously I couldn’t just say ‘He was German’ or ’ He developed the general theory of relativity’ because I knew both of those but also I didn’t feel I could just put 'He was born on the 14th of March’ or 'His first child was called Lieserl’ because that is boring and not interesting.

N.B however the fact that his first child was illegitimate or that it is unknown whether she was adopted or died of scarlet fever is quite interesting and therefore could have made it on to the list. But…it didn’t.

I did try to check of these against a few sources so hopefully they are all correct but it is still possible that some of these are just wrong things that a fair few people know rather then just a few….

So, in no particular order(except the order I found them in)

#1 He was visiting the US as Hitler came to power in '33 and so didn’t return to Germany (probably a fairly good move considering he was Jewish and so his work had become one of the focus’ of the Nazi book burnings)

#2 As a child he was given a copy of Euclid’s Elements which he referred to as the 'holy little geometry book.'

#3 During his autopsy, pathologist Thomas Stoltz Harvey removed and preserved Einstein’s brain without family consent in the hope that in the future we could find out what made him so intelligent. He dissected the brain and sent bits to various pathologists for them to study.

#4 Einstein joked that he was recognised so much that he started to reply “Pardon me, Sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein.”

#5 He never wore socks. (This seems to be fairly common knowledge to the point that I don’t know how I’ve never heard it before) He didn’t wear them because of how much it annoyed him when he was young that his big toes caused holes.

#6 In 1930 he received a patent for a type of refrigerator he invented with Leo Szilard. It never went in to production because it was no better then the other technologies of the time.

#7 The diary of his last known girlfriend reveal that for his 75th birthday he was given a parrot which he named Bibo and 'cheered up’ by telling jokes.

#8 Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4 and his first words came out over dinner one night when he said “the soup is too hot.” Asked why he had never spoken before he replied “Because up until now, everything was in order” (The story comes from Otto Neugebauer and unfortunately I can only find one place that quotes it in full but I’ve included because I hope that it is true)

#9 Once while teaching he was approached by a student who complained that this years exam was the same as the previous years! To which he replied “yes, but this year all the answers are different.”

#10 He claimed his second greatest idea, after the theory of relativity was to add an egg while cooking soup, giving a soft boiled egg without the need to wash an extra pot.

Well, that was fun. Tomorrow, list #16!

Lists of lists

Today I made a list of lists! Sounds a bit fractaly but…well it is.

The idea was to start writing lists of things to get me thinking about them. Depending on the topic they will work in one of three different ways.

The first is reflective, making me think about things I have done. An example of this is ‘List 30 things I did yesterday that were productive’.

The second type is creative/provocative. These are ones that make me think, plan or construct my own ideas, one example is “List 20 ideas for videos and short films I could make.”

The third type is research, these concern things that I don’t know enough about and so by having to make a list of attributes I’ll have to get out there and find out about them, ie “List 30 things about modern UK politics that I didn’t already know”

This broadly covers all the types of lists I am making although some fall in between categories. The plan is to complete one list per day for the next 31 days and today I started with “List 30 potential lists” job done! So I’ll let you know how that goes and will share any interesting lists or ideas caused by lists as I get to them.

Kis gyerek ne maradj itt

Yeah, nice one Lee, so much for regular posting… Although it doesn’t feel like it, the calendar says it has nearly been a whole month since I last posted, thanks for the reminder Ellie. A lot has gone on in that time, here’s a summary of some of the less important stuff.

We’ve now done 34 shows and have went from London to Cardiff and now on to Brighton! It was nice to be back in Cardiff for a week to see familiar people and places but was possibly just too short for a show with this much set up. The get out in London was a mad one that I won’t forget for a while. I started my working day at 12 for notes and presets, did a show, notes and preset again and then finished the second show just before 10pm. I then worked through the night until 6am when the sun rose and we sat down with a loaded van and a beer.

We’re now in the tent and it’s great! So good to be in our own space with the knowledge that the show can stay the same until Edinburgh when Madame returns. Next week is going to be a fairly tough one in some respects, with a bank holiday coming up we will be doing 5 shows in 3 days on the bank holiday weekend. Also, 3 of them have the potential for them to be very hot and sticky as they’re matinees.

Recently on the getting-hooked-on-other-people’s-skills-and-badgering-them-for-tricks-list has been hula hoop, had some proud moments I must say. Might film some of my tom foolery at some point for people to have a giggle.

The big news in the company at the moment is much awaited and anticipated release of Fireproof Giant’s soundtrack album. It really is a great album and can be downloaded here. In other band related fun check out what Calum is up to.

In other news we’ve done a couple of promo outings in Brighton and I’ve loved every minute of them, I even made the local paper during one of them and few very funny pics have cropped up. Here’s one or two of my favourites.

So now, in more recent news. I went to see Faust by fellow Geordie's Bad Taste Cru and only wish I’d gotten there a little earlier to get a better view. We then all headed off to catch the second half of La Clique in the wonderful Spiegel Tent before partying the night away with the rest of cast.

Time for two days off…

As always, more pics here and random rubbish here.