“Any decent teleportation machine would also teleport the air that you are teleporting in to back to your initial position" 

This is something I just read in a hypothetical discussion about how loud the noise of the rushing air would be if someone teleported away, leaving a vacuum where they had been. Setting aside my surprise that Tumblr doesn’t have ‘teleport’ (or 'tumblr’ for that matter) in its spell-check dictionary, this got me thinking about the consequences of having a 'decent teleportation machine.' 

The first which came to me was that you could get an indication of where a teleporting person had gone to just after they leave. For example, say you are sitting in a room and the person next to you teleports away. If for example they had teleported to somewhere much colder then where you are then you’d be left for some time with a new cold spot where they departed from. This could of course revolutionise (among many things) air conditioning as a patch of air could be periodically reported to exchange with an area of air with the desired qualities (ie cooler, hotter, cleaner,..) 

Returning to the idea of idea of getting information about where someone went, suppose I was stood next to you and decided to teleport into the sea then prepare to have just over 80 litres of sea water lapping at your feet…

This does make me wonder about what the consequences in the Harry Potter world would have been if apparating had caused an exchange of matter and not just moving people from place to another. Especially if you think about splinching… 

Welcome back

So it’s been aaaages (like three week) - Infact, more than ‘like three weeks’…exactly three weeks since I last posted anything here. I could say it has been because I’ve been too busy but that would be a lie. I’ve just fallen into the trap of once you leave a gap after posting regularly, you feel like too much has happened since you last posted, you don’t know where to start and therefore it becomes too much of a daunting task. To combat this I have prefaced this post with a bit of useless preamble to get me going, I hope you enjoyed it. 

We’ve now done 16 shows and it’s going great! It feels like we'v e just got going here and now all of a sudden it’s our final week at the Roundhouse before the tour continues to Cardiff. The show is starting to find its stride as we are all getting to know the show and its such an exciting time! Rehearsals got really intense in the final weeks at the WMC and our first week here but now that the show is settling and I’ve got time to start training again its great. I’m on a bit of bounce juggling run at the moment which is going great! Aided by a ball donation for the kind Hugo so that I can start training 7 balls again. 

There have been some lovely pictures come up so here is a selection - High Fliers: Nofit State circus presents Bianco - in pictures. and Roundhouse’s facebook page. 

I have been keeping a show diary so maybe I’ll share some of the highlights from that on here at some point when I’ve got it at hand. 

#189

7 balls, 23 catches. 

#188

6 balls, 98ish catches.

A to B, one capital to another.

Since my last post I’ve moved out of my house in Cardiff and headed off on tour! Wooo, it’s all very exciting and I’m sure it’s only going to get more exciting as we approach our first show this Saturday.

Quite a lot has happened in the past few days so here’s a summary…

All the Bianco sandbags have been checked since one fell out of the roof and missed me by about 2 feet. I can laugh now but 5 kilos of sand from 8m could have hurt…

We had our dress rehearsal on Thursday and it was well received and in general went well. A few small issues including some truss that needs some TLC. All in all, nothing alarming though, and most importantly nothing that can’t be smoothed out in the next few days.

Getting out of the WMC on Friday night was an experience I’ve never come across. Our friends, the Crashmat Collective were doing their show Facade next door to us as we were dropping our rig to the floor and our exit route also happened to be their kitchen area. For anyone who doesn’t know their show, check this link and you’ll see why this was an issue. The result was that we had to wheel all our kit including several tonnes of rigging and sound equipment along side six 400kg sections of set past in complete silence. This also had to be done to fit around the courses in their meal. The result was a very heavily laden game of ‘Frogger’. This slight hold up combined with the sheer volume of stuff we had to pack meant that we were loading until 1am.

The following day was my 'day off’ and I spent it moving house. Emily very helpfully gave me a lift with my worldly possessions and after a day of cleaning and generally tidying the highlight was my plan for getting a plastic crate across town on my bike. It was a plan I was quite proud of and came from the need to return a crate I borrowed from a flatmate to move my stuff (thanks Jasmine).

That night I went to watch Sutra, it felt a bit weird to go back the WMC on my one day off considering I’ve been there 6 days a week for the past 3 weeks but still… I enjoyed the show a lot and would recommend it to anyone who gets an opportunity to see it.

The following morning was the big move to London! Complicated slightly by daylight saving I’m sure how I always end up dong long journeys with early starts the day after the clocks change! I can’t really complain though, I’ve been waiting for it to happen since, well October, I suppose.

The get in has been fairly without incident and not particularly noteworthy apart from the Roudhouse being an amazing venue. Anyone who is my Facebook fwend can see some pictures here. 

Weight a moment...

A few day’s ago I made a blog post whimsically names “Wait a moment…" If you haven’t read it and plan to understand what I’m about to rattle on about, then I suggest you give it a peruse. 

For those who have already read it, I have returned to it to correct the ‘middle-of-the-night-writing’, the content that time and time again proves I shouldn't blog after 10pm and expect it to be literary gold. for this reason it might be helpful if you got lost on any particular bit to skim/scan through it again. 

At the end of the previous saga I was left with a mental conundrum of the following ilk. I was confused about how the following to statements could both be true and yet be consistent with each other.

1: A tower, lying on one of its long edges is picked up from one end using a 1:1 pulley system. The lifting direction is kept at all times perpendicular to the floor. If, at any point the system is stationary (ie, the tower is held at a particular angle to the floor) the force applied at the lifting point will be the same as at any other angle the tower might be held at. 

2: When the tower is balancing on it’s end the the force applied at the lifting point is simply the force applied down on the other end of the pulley system. this could range from 0N to mgN where m is the mass of the tower and g=9.81m/s.

I struggled with the idea of these two being consistent as I struggled to see what was happening as you moved from one state to another. If you are counter-weighting a tower up onto its end, at which point  would a newton meter at the lifting point stop weighing the tower and start weighing the person counter-weighting the tower (which we can assume has less mass.) 

The key here is appreciating that they are completely different states, one is stable without any force needed (ie when the tower is on it’s end) and the other state requires an external lifting force to keep it in a stable condition (when the tower makes an angle to the floor that is not 0 or 90 degrees). 

The angle at which the tower moves between these two states depends on the dimensions of the tower and is simply the point at which the tower’s center of mass moves past the fulcrum. The other consideration is where on the end of the tower the lifting point is as this will make a difference to the stable points. The following diagram should help explain where these stable points are. 

 The a,b,c labels on the upright tower show 3 possible lifting points and the diagram shows the 3 stable positions for lifting point 'a’. the first of course is before you start lifting. In this positions and lifting force of between 0 and m/2 will result in no movement from the tower and any fore that exceeds that will cause the tower to start pivoting around 'F’, the fulcrum.

The next stable point is when the center of mass of the tower (which I will assume to be in the middle) is directly above the fulcrum. At this point a lifting force up to m will not cause the tower to move, any force above this will cause it to rise off the floor. While I am calling this state stable, if no lifting force is applied, the tower would probably fall over, with either direction equally likely. 

The final stable point is when the tower arrives on its end, which reacts in the same way to the first stable point. 

Lifting from points b and c have the first and last stable points just the same as b however the second stable point will occur when the following expression is satisfied;

2x=y

Where x and y are the horizontal distances between the line perpendicular to the floor and the fulcrum and the lifting point and center of mass respectively. 

So, there it is. 

p.s. None of this would work quite as I described it in reality because of my assumption that the center of mass is at the center of the tower, which it definitely isn’t. Don’t you love real life…

p.p.s One tower is a little over 300kg and we lifted two of them…

p.p.p.s Sorry for using weight and mass interchangeably  this is a side effect of the term ’counter-weighting’. 

p.p.p.p.s Anyone paying attention might have spotted that keeping the lifting pointing always pulling perpendicularity to the floor would be tricky. In my head I imagined that as happening by having the top pulley on a zip line type set up controlled most likely by a separate pulley system which would allow the pulley to be slid back and forwards in a straight line. I'm ignoring the associated issue of trying to hang over 600kg (generating over 1.2T when lifted) off what is effectively a tight wire… 

_______________________________________________________________

Correction:

p.p.p.p.s - I confused two ideas here, one of lifting two towers which doesn’t require a pulley on a zip line and one of tipping one tower up on its edge. The later which would benefit from a zip line would generate a force of mg/2 on the zip line. This is because there would be two top pulleys which would share the load,of which one would be on the zip line. This diagram should clear it up. All labels give an indication of force involved. To get force in Newtons, multiply quantity by g=9.81m/s.

So, for one tower at 300kg, that would be just under 1500N, the equivilent of 3 fairly small people, fairly achievable. Finally, it did occur to me that the zip line would not need to be under tension and could hang loose, while this would stop it running smoothly, causing the left hand counter-weighter to have to work harder. This would make the whole thing a little more manageable. 

Wait a moment...

I’ve just had a very interesting discussion with Hollie. It got me thinking so much that despite my initial aim of going to sleep at midnight, I just couldn’t resist crunching the numbers for it and blogging. 

It came from a challenge presented to the Bianco riggers. The challenge was to weigh one of the towers so it could be hung from the roof like so. They have a giant version of the newton meter you drag shoes around with in science lessons. There is however, still the task of generating enough force to get it off the ground using just four people. 

This lead me to the thought of how you could do it using levers to reduce the work which I explained to Hollie. It looked something like this. 

So the tower would be counterweight from one end, lifting it just an inch off the floor allowing it to pivot around its opposite end. This gives, by balancing moments;

mg(L/2) = FL      

where L is the length of the tower, m is the mass of the tower and F is the force shown on the scales in Newtons. The L’s cancel and shuffling thing around gives;

m=(2*F)g

This means just a single 82kg me could get the end of the tower off the floor to be measured as long as it was less then 164kg. 

From there, Hollie pointed out that the one inch off the floor would create error in the calculation. At the time I agreed, but I wasn’t worried (as sinθ is a good approximation of θ for small angles). Meanwhile, Hollie suggested lifting the tower to a pre arranged angle (30 degrees for example) and then adjusting the calculation accordingly and working from there. This however sounded like more algebra then necessarily and involves lifting the heavy tower quite far. 

My solution was to just lift the fulcrum an inch to make the tower level and then you know everything is hunky dorey. 

The thing that started to worry me was when I went back to have a closer look at my original approach. I wanted to see how big the error caused by the 1 inch lift would be. It was then I noticed that in theory no error at all would occur, the L’s canceled completely and so the horizontal distance between the lifting point and the fulcrum did not occur in the final calculation. Because moments are just perpendicular-distance multiplied by mass, this means that you should get the same value on the scales if the tower is held at say 45 degrees as when you hold it level to the horizon. This felt instinctively wrong. I mean, if you were to lift a long pole up from one end and gradually stand it up it gets easier to lift as it get more upright yeah? Here I was making a mistake and mixing up forces acting in different directions. There are two ways of lifting a pivoting object and usually we use a combination of the two. The two ways are marking below

We usually use the upwards arrow early on and then gradually shift to the sideways one and while we could in theory use the sideways force very early on there is one thing that real life throws at us…Slipping, if you just push sideways the bottom will generally move away from you, not good. 

The essence here is that a solid object inclined and supported in the vertical direction only by two surfaces of different heights will apply the same force to both surfaces (even if one is the floor and one is the end of a rope.)

So, theory says that F will always read the same no mater what angle the tower is at, as long as the pulley is always directly above the point you are picking it up from. This however still doesn’t sit with me quite right, imagine the tower if it lifting slowly in this way, eventually the the tower could end up balanced on it’s end, and then all the scales will be weighing is the weight of the person attached to the other end of the rope…wait a moment, when did that happen?

I guess I need to sleep on it, night.

ps I’ll let you know how heavy they turned out to be. 

Let's play a game

Hello people of the world - Is what I would say if I was supreme ruler of the world. However I am not… fortunately. 

Today’s music.

Following my paint related things of a few weeks ago, I have now finished painting my first wall in the bunkwagon and I’m very pleased with it! Here it is. 

Rehearsals are heating up now as we’ve just moved spaces to the WMC which is great. It gives us a dedicated training space allowing us to start really rehearsing scenes in full. I’ve also been doing a lot of rigging over the past few days.This has been great and I feel like I’m learning new things every minute. It has also let me understand the technicalities of the show that we are making a lot more. Nat put up a cool picture of the King poles in the new space. 

In other exciting Bianco news, a few new tour dates have been announced Including a very exciting 3 weeks in Bristol as well as time in Bangor and Narbeth. The schedule is filling up! Just 25 day’s until opening in the Roundhouse!!!!

That is all for now. 

Today, tomorrow and the next day.

The music that wrote this here. 

So today is my day off, so I’ve a had a very relaxed day of consuming the internet. 

I’ve watched, read and listened to a few things today that have me think about things, so here’s a selection. 

Cirque De Demain was a few weeks ago and a few videos of juggling acts that performed have come up on youtube. The first I watched was this act. I loved the concept and the main juggler is obviously very talented but I did feel he didn’t quite do it justice. The whole piece felt a little bit slow, especially considering the fact that there were 6 people on stage. There were a few moments that really caught me by surprise, throws and movement that makes you think ‘where did that come from?’. However, with that number of people on stage and with the styling I think the complexity should have been built more with less standing around staring at each other. Of course it is entirely possible that the whole piece reads differently live… Also, while the final trick is of course cool and hard and all that, it just didn’t seem to fit the rest of the piece at all. I found it shocking enough (in a positive way) when one of the coated people pushed the main guy about 2/3 way through but the idea of him climbing up into a 3 high was too far. Perhaps it could have been built to more through some more gentle person manipulation first but I’m not sure…

The second I watched was this solo piece by Audrey Decaillon. This had some very cool manipulation stuff, especially a lot of very original foot stuff which I really liked. The only issue that I had with the act is the same issue that I have with a lot of juggling acts. The problem of making that objects that are being manipulated (in this case clubs) feel part of the world. for this I am of course not referring to pure juggling/technical acts, then you can do what you want… However in this act she definitely is going for a particular persona. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it a character but she's definitely not just there to juggle. The bench for example made me think of a train station or somewhere where you would be waiting for something however she never 'played that.’ So back to initial thing of objects fitting the world, I ’d have preferred to see a stronger character and therefore give the clubs a purpose, or a reason to be there (even if that is just that there are there because they are… and that isn’t taken for granted.) Of course she could alternatively stripped away the confusing character and just juggled. But then it would hardly have been 'circus of tomorrow’…

I also watched a doubles trapeze act that I quite enjoyed. But there wasn’t much to it, just hard stuff done very well, bit traditional for my liking but yanoooo. 

Moving on to something I read. A blog post by Zosia Dowmunt which you can read here. I had the pleasure of being directed by Zosia last year for an exciting, crazy, tiring dance-theatre piece as part of the Rough and Tumble project with People at Play. (Some pics here). In the post she talks, among other things about the motivation of her latest performance that is in development. I mention this post mainly because it sounds so interesting and I am very sad that I will not to be able to see it when it shown in London in May. The idea of a piece of dance that is directly influenced by the audience’s interaction with it (through applause) is something that makes my head spin a little as the connection between an audience and the performers can be so complicated and interesting at the best of times. It immediately makes me think of how this could work in other disciplines aside from dance… Or even multi-discipline. Juggling seemed like an obvious one especially when thinking about looped material and rhythm. 

Spherical painted chickens in a vacuum

Hi everyone, it’s been a little while since I last posted, I’d say I’ve been busy, but I don’t think I’ve been unusually busy so I guess there’s no excuse. 

Tomorrow the whole Bianco company is meeting for the first time which will be very fun. Lots of new people to meet and old friends to meet again. The new exciting news is in the form of new tour dates being announced with exciting additions like the Edinburgh and Brighton Fringe Festivals!!! 

The past week has been a time for fun parkour, with lots of scary jumps, wall trampoline and singing (I say no more…) and it’s all going very well (including the hem, hem, LA-LA-LA!!! singing…) We have been gradually increasing in numbers and tomorrow will see us joined by everyone so it’s probably going to feel very crowded all of a sudden. 

In other exciting news, I’m getting two meals a day at the moment because we’re in rehearsals and it is AMAZING. Especially days like today, when we got Sunday dinner. While I do kind of miss cooking in the evenings, it is very nice to be able to finish training, go and sit down, socialise and eat, then just go home and put my feet up. Something I’ll definitely be able to get used to in the weeks to come. 

My current project is that of decorating the room in the bunk wagon (aka Nofit5) that I will be staying in over the summer. I haven’t started yet but I am starting to pull together a few ideas for a bit of colourful brushwork to brighten it up a little. It’s nice that I’ve got until the end of next month to get it sorted out and how I want it before I move in to go to London. 

On the decorating front however, it has however made me (not that I was unwilling) do some maths, unfortunately someone thought it was clever to only include coverage (11-13m squared per 2.5ltr) on the big tins, so I had to do some scaling to see how far the smaller tub will go. Although it did make me thing about whether there is more wastage in a small tub to corners and the stuff stuck to the sides compared to large tubs. I mean I know it’s a tiny amount but someone please confirm or correct my logic as applicable. Small containers must have a higher surface area to volume ratio then large containers.

Taking spherical chickens in a vacuum for example… a chicken of radius ‘r’ will have 4*Pi*r^2 square metres of feathers and (4/3) *Pi*r^3 cubic metres of chicken stuff in them. 

Now at this point it is tempting to just say cubed growth is faster then squared growth, so the volume is getting bigger faster then the surface area and so I’m done. However I kind of feel there is more then that going on so I’m going to get a pen and paper and do it properly.

Back in a minute.

Here is something to listen to while I’m gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok, sorted. 

So, if we assume chicken stuff sticks to the feathers to the depth of ’d’. 

Therefore, the amount of chicken stuff stuck to the edge is given by (4/3)Pi*r^3 - (4/3)Pi(r-d)^3       =       (4/3)(r^3 - (r-d)^3)

And so the percentage of chicken stuff stuck to the feathers is given by - Amount stuck to edge/total amount  Which is

(4/3)Pi(r^3- (r-d)^3) / (4/3)Pi*r^3 = r^3-(r-d)^3  / r^3

expand the (r-d)^3 and cancel gives

3(d*r^2-r*d^2)+d^3 / r^3

A quick stare at this and you will see it disappears to 0 as r goes to infinity. This shows fairly neatly that the percentage of paint, I mean chicken stuff at edge goes to zero as the container, I mean chicken gets larger. 

Fun isn’t it! My paint hypothesis was right, small containers do have more wastage. 

This however is not good for my painting plans….

According to the law of averages, nobody will care - WARNING - Contains maths, and juggling.

Here’s an interesting thing I learnt over christmas which I think a very small number of people will find very interesting.

To begin, anyone who doesn’t have a basic understanding of siteswap notation, go get one :) I’ll sumarise in a second but the wiki page explains it relatively well. We only need to concern ourselves with vanilla siteswap for the purpose of this although I suspect (but haven’t been able to find or construct a proof) that a similar result is true for multiplex and multi-handed siteswap. 

So, to sumarise siteswap. It is a notation for recording certain aspects of juggling patterns. A siteswap (or juggling sequence) in a string of numbers which record the relative heights a juggler would throw consecutive throws to juggle the given pattern. Hands alternate throws and throw at a regular rhythm  The number given is how many beats later the ball being thrown will land (and therefore be thrown again.) As I say this is brief and not meant to be exhaustive so if you’re unsure, check back to the link above. 

Moving on to the mater at hand. 

One result within the study of siteswap which comes up a lot is what the end of the wiki section of vanilla siteswap begins to talk about and is what I will refer to as ‘The Average Theorem.’ The  reason it comes up regularly (between jugglers) is because it is useful because it does two things very quickly. 

a) For a known valid siteswap it tells you how many objects are required to juggle it. 

b) It provides a quick indication as too whether a sequence of numbers in a valid siteswap or not. 

The average theorem essentially says two things, the average of the digits in juggling sequence is the number of balls in the sequence. And hence, if the average of a juggling sequence is not an integer (whole number,) then it can not be a juggling sequence (valid siteswap.) 

To see the average theorem in action we can look quickly at an example. 

Say someone walked up to us and said 'Is 61314 a valid siteswap?’ we  could calculate the average of the 5 numbers given to get the answer (6+1+3+1+4)/5 = 5 and be able to answer maybe. That is to say the average theorem hasn’t ruled it out. It turns out that 61314 is a valid siteswap (can be done a number of ways including the fancy 'Permutation Test’ or by checking the orbits.) Once we know that you can then use the average theorem to you that 61314 is a 5 ball juggling pattern. Yay! 

So, that’s the bit that any juggler could tell you, now for the interesting bit…

It becomes obvious quite quickly that the converse of the average theorem is not true. That is to say, if the average of a sequence of numbers is an integer, that does not imply that the sequence is a valid siteswap pattern. This can be shown quickly and easily using a counterexample. 432 has average (4+3+2)/3 = 3 however any juggler will quickly tell you that you cannot juggle 432 (from a cold start all three balls collide on beat 4.)

HOWEVER a partial converse is true.

Given any sequence of numbers which have an average which is an integer. Then there exists at least one permutation of the sequence which is a valid siteswap sequence.

Neat huh?

To check back to our example from earlier, 432 average at 3 so a juggle-able permutation must exist and happens to be the very common, jugglers favorite, 423. 

For fun I guess you could start averaging you’re shopping bill values (taken to the nearest pound) and whenever you get an integer, find the appropriate siteswap. Oh the fun you could have.

Burkard Polster gives a full proof of this surprising little theorem in his book 'The Mathematics Of Juggling, 2002’ which is in tern based on a proof given by Marshel Hall in 1952 to a theorem about Abelian groups that is is a special case of. 

(The only  receipt I can find at the moment is for £1.40, £1.40 and £7. How boring…couldn’t get that one wrong if I tried…) 

#187

Getting used to the towers. 

It''s that time of the year

Hi everybody! 

So the reading is going rubbish, I’ve had a very busy week and the few days when I’ve had the time and tried to sit down and read I just haven’t been able to focus. This was for a few reasons, one was I had a film watch list to get through before my free trial of lovefilm ran out and second main one was that I think I need a change of books for a while, something easier to get in to. While I’m enjoying ‘Thinking fast and slow’ it’s not an easy book to dip in and out of. 

While I’m on films, I’ve seen Les Mis and Django Unchained recently and both where great! both Anne Hathaway and Christopher Waltz are thoroughly deserving of their Bafta’s for supporting roles. Anne Hatheway’s version of 'I dreamed a dream’ was so very (additional superlatives needed) powerful and Waltz was just amazing throughout. What I thought was so interesting in Waltz’s performance is that in many ways he was playing a similar character type to the roll he had in 'Inglorious Basterds’. In both he was this all knowing, confident, wise and very mysterious guy, and yet he made them appear so different on screen. Also, considering Quentin Tarentino didn’t get the Bafta for best director, I am super excited to see Argo at some point. 

Also, I’ve just finished watching ’Super size me’ and I can’t believe I haven’t seen it before now, I feel like it’s only been out a few years but it came out in 2004! So, apart from making me hungry to the point that I had to go and make myself a nice health meal and resist the urge to run off to my local restaurant (choice of 0.65, 1.48, 1.67, 2.06, 2.21 miles.) Although, interestingly the estimate given by the NHS for the average number of steps taken in one day by people in Britain would only get me to the the nearest three. Then I guess I’d have to sleep there and walk back tomorrow…

Time to download a pedometer app onto my phone, although this isn’t going to count any movement I do while training. My old phone had one built in, I’ll hunt it down sometime as it’ll have a few years worth of data on it. 

Something new every week

First off, here’s some nice music to listen to while reading. 

And second off, sorry about the rubbish post yesterday, it was fairly naff. But if it helps, I had fun writing it, it made my think. 

So, to paraphrase Denis Waitley, let’s not dwell on what went wrong. Instead, let’s focus on what to do next. Any keen beans might have spotted that I have been blogging a lot recently. Any really keen beans might have spotted that these blogs have been once a day. And finally, any really, really keen beans might have spotted that this has been going on for 7 days now. Time to go back a bit… (Feel the woosh as you travel back to a time not that long ago. Seven days ago in fact.)

Last week I sat and listened to an interview on London Real TV with Tim “Livewire” Shieff. If you have some time then I’d say it’s worth listening to.  For me it was interesting because it is someone that I have seen a lot of thought youtube etc but I knew very little about. It was clear that a lot of things he was talking about were fairly new ideas to him, which of course is no bad thing, so it’ll be interesting to see how it goes for him.

He spoke at length about changes he has made to his lifestyle, including sleeping on the floor and changing to a vegan diet. While I didn’t agree with everything he said (a vegan diet isn’t for me, for example) it did fire my own mind off about trying different things is my life. Now I’m not talking about drastic thing here, I’m not about to go and live in a forest, or only eat something if I caught it with my own bare hands. It’s smaller things that perhaps part of me want to do anyways. So what I’m going to do is…(drum roll please) something different every week. That is to say, every week I’ll make an effort to do something different, ranging from doing a task every day, or a certain number of times every day, or just making more of an effort with something for a week. 

So this week, you guessed it. I started small and said I would blog every day, without fail. The idea is that if at the end of the week it has gone well, then it can be adopted into my life as it is, or it could be adapted, or if it didn’t work at all then lose it completely, but at least I’ve tried it. So the result is that I enjoyed blogging every day, but if I haven’t got anything to blog about then I shouldn’t do it. Last night showed that.

Next week will again be nice an easy in a way as I’m going to read everyday for at least one hour. This is simply because I enjoy reading but I never think to do it. 

Finally before I go, the other thing discussed in the interview was the idea of ego. This proved to be an interesting topic for Tim to talk about as he is so well know within the parkour community, and is undoubtedly a roll model for many young impressionable minds. At one point he mentioned “Not wanting to be someone else’s double” in relation to whether he could be a stunt man. He went on to say that he had so many of his own things to say. He also recognised that this could be a very egotistical or self-righteous view and while I agree I don’t an issue with this. Surely this is how original and creative work is made? Or how people come to get very good in whatever field they give their time to. If you don’t think you’re any good or at least can’t recognise your strengths then how can you spot your weaknesses? And for me being able to spot your own weaknesses is such a valuable skill. Also thinking your good at something leads to confidence and while over-confidence can of course be a huge issue a certain measure of it is definitely required to do things that nobody else has done. 

A good man once said~

‘Enough philosophical rubbish' 

Do Not Read Me - Waste Of Your Time

Time to try something out, blogging when I have absolutely nothing to blog about. Everyone else seems to do it… I guess there are a couple of possible outcomes here:

-LIST ONE-

1. I reach what I consider to be an interesting train of thought by considering my content-less blog post. Thus I end up running with it, resulting in it being posted and hence you are reading it. So I guess this is is still a possibility at the point that you’re reading this. 
2. I run into a dead end, causing me to decree this post to be a waste of my own time and more importantly yours (I include a future version of myself in that.) Now, while I cannot confirm that you won’t feel like you’ve wasted your time reading this, there is one thing of which I can be certain. It wasn’t a waste of my time writing this. While it does feel odd to type that, I can guarantee that if you’re reading this, then I guess in the next 30mins or so I must have resolved to post it and so decided it was at least reasonably worth my time. 

Ok, I think this about covers it, I guess I should go back up to the top and change ‘few’ to 'couple of’. 

What I have learnt so far: 

-LIST TWO-

1. I should write down ideas as I have them and not wait a minute. I’m sure I had a one somewhere in the 2nd paragraph but alas it has gone. 
2. Content-less blog posts seem to induce lists. 
3. Lists in content-less blog posts seem to contain two items. 
4. Point 3. is nullified when the writer is commenting on events in 'real time’. 
5. Point three turns out to not be true in slightest. 
6. 30 minutes was an underestimate, actual blogging time, 1 hour 15. 

Questions for the reader:

-LIST THREE-

1. Is it fun to read about edits I make if I include notes about them as I make them, even when they happened earlier? Or is it just annoying? (eg, I just spotted the 'numbered lists’ button.)
2. Would a list of lists be useful yet?
3. Will it ever be acceptable to use emotions (ie :), :( etc) as formal punctuation?
4. Does talking to yourself on the internet reveals a little too much about yourself?

Time for me to jump back to the start and see where (if anywhere) I have gone so far. 

Taking my own advise. Making a list of thoughts as I’m reading back through.

-LIST FOUR-

1. Twitter history - Retrospective edit - and facebook, tumblr etc.
2. Point 1 must be true, only two options (List One)
3. Point two isn’t clear (List One)
4. Damn, my spotify monthly allowance thing has run out. 
5. Just sent a preview to Hollie and the reaction was 'hah’ I guess this is good, so for now I will proceed, 
6. Edit, following conversation, Hollie suggested not posting this, compromise was made. Title should be 'do not read me - waste of your time' 
7. List of lists so far not necessary
   

So now, time to expand. List Five below will be list four again but with the initial ideas developed or explained. 

-LIST FIVE- 

1. This related to List One, point 2. I referred to my future self. This came to mind as I was just skimming through my twitter feed earlier and it reminded me of how glad I am that I use things like twitter, facebook, tumblr, youtube, vimeo etc in the way that I do. I use them largely, but of course not exclusively to record memories, some formats more then others. Twitter is my main online memory bank at the moment and it always makes me smile. Some people I know have chosen to empty their youtube accounts, I couldn’t do that. At least not without making sure I had copies myself, but even still when I think of how many other people’s videos have things that I don’t want to forget…
2. Self explanatory I guess, when I was making List One I didn’t know how many options I would have. While I did at one point have 4 options, they got slimmed down to just two and so I can guarantee (especially considering List Four, point 6) that List One, point one is true. 
3. It appears I got a little confused in my head while writing the first list. I think this was primarily caused by the way that I kept changing the number of items in the list as I thought more about it and in the end the ideas all got muddled together a little. Not sure how to explain it any more. Maybe I’ll return to this later if it occurs to me. 
4. Nothing more to be said :(        *New thought*, will be added below. 
5. Nothing more to be said. 
6.     “          ”      "   “     ”     
7. While a list of lists is not proving necessary, list titles has just become needed. 

*New thought*- Actually, maybe this should be added to List Three. It will become point 3. 

Ok, this is kind of it I think for now. Nothing new is jumping out.

Summary:

-LIST SIX- 

1. This is being posted. 
2. Title will be “Do Not Read Me - Waste Of Your Time" 
3. Talking to yourself on the internet is time consuming and relatively interesting. 
4. I’ve just proof read and wow, this post really doesn’t say much. But then again, the title did warn you. 
5. I’m glad I did it. 
6. List Five, point 1 is interesting I think, maybe something for me to consider.

And finally I’ll leave the question of whether talking to yourself on the internet reveals a little too much about yourself for another post. 

In fact, this could be added to List Three. 

My life in a film (Part I)

In the film version of my life today. I would have been standing in a giant doorway. The camera would be inside, looking out. Music would come in quietly at first. Close up on my face, cut to a long shot as an explosion is heard and the building behind me implodes (1min30 in music). This sends a cloud of dust billowing in through the doorway, obscuring me from view (Que slow motion shots of smoke from a few angles. The music would build and then as it reaches a crescendo I would walk out from the smoke and dust. I’d then walk up towards the camera. It would cut to a close up of the perspiration on my upper lip and a small graze on my cheek before I delivered some super cool action hero line. 

Funnily enough, this didn’t happen.

Today I did the first day of many with Firenza Guidi, director of Bianco. The day started with a completely unplanned activity, which arose because the Bianco set being unloaded through the back loading doors at Nofitstate HQ. Firenza spotted the opportunity and dove straight into putting us through our paces with a small improvisation activity. This was based around us bringing to life the space seen through the ‘frame’ created by the loading doors. This glamorous space is the slightly dingey alleyway that lies between Nofitstate and the old currently-being-demolished Royal Welsh Opera building. It was mid way through this when we were mid improvisation when two serious looking guys in white boiler suits walked round the corner with goggles  hard hats and dust masks. They then proceeded with a reasonable level of urgency to gesture upwards and then point for us to get away from the building and back inside, so we did. How exciting! 

To cut a long story short they were just being cautious. They were worried about windows blowing through while they were bringing down the opposite corner of the building but that’s not the point. 

More to come on 'the film version of my life’ as I think it’s an interesting idea. Taking aspects of your life, ranging from the mundane to the out of the ordinary and imagining how it would look if it would be in a film. It’s an idea inspired by something Orit Azaz has mentioned on a number of occasions. In the context of live performance she talks about 'the film version’. This is when you start thinking about all the things you would do with a certain piece of vocabulary if you were making a film and not a live performance. 

Maybe there is indeed a live performance that could be based on this idea. In a similar way to how Noodles is based on considering the line between on/off camera in TV. Something to think about I think.  

#186

5 Clubs

Finally over 50 catches :) next target - 100 catches. 

Figure of Eight and an Alpine butterfly

Yesterday Ellis posted some pictures from the Block R&D and I thought I’d share some on here as they’re great! If you want to see more of his photography, you can here.

Today was a day of swinging around in harnesses which was great fun. It was a second day of an introduction to rigging and counter-weighting and today was about pulleys, counter-weighting technique and wall running. For those don’t speak circus, counter-weighting in essence comes down to having two people in harnesses, attached to opposite ends of a rope. this rope goes up to ceiling and back again in a pulley system so one person can lift and lower the other person. We’ve been learning this in advance of Bianco which I will be performing in during the summer, as it is technique used a lot during the show.

Can’t wait!!!

Listen, let me tell you a story

There once was a dodo called Ralph who was scared of many things and spent most of his life hiding. His friends all laughed at him and called him names because he wasn’t like them.

One day a bunch of peach things came bounding through the forest and Ralph got scared. Ralph initially tried to fly but it’s short wings and rounded body meant he could not and so it had to settle for burying his head in the - oops, wrong flightless bird - had to settle for sitting still while his inquisitive buddies approached the peach things. 

The peach things killed all of Ralph so called friends, but he didn’t care as they were not kind to him. Unfortunately Ralph was the only dodo to survive and so the children lost out on their chance to learn about evolution. 

The End. 

My work here is done. 

'Block' - The Creative Journey

Right now I feel like my head is buzzing a little, I have so many things I kind of want to talk about and share. Not because I feel any are particularly important or noteworthy but because they are taking up a lot of head-space. So prepare yourself. Buckle yourself in and brace for impact and be ready to have a partition of my brain skimmed off the surface and hurled at your screen. 

Today’s music of choice has been M83’s Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming which I would recommend strongly. It did however, prove to be a little too stimulating to type to so I’m back to classical for the present. 

On Friday (as I mentioned in my previous post ,) was the Block R&D showing and it went very very well! It was well attended and feedback so far has been very positive. A few pictures have appeared on the twittersphere which I have retweeted and also Paddy Faulkner put a few up on his blog which I really liked. 

Possibly the highlight of the evening for me was the woman who stopped me on my way out of the door and complimented me on giving a strong performance. I can’t remember the exact words she used but it meant a huge amount to me as she spoke more about my performance quality than the tricks. This is an area that I have worked hard on especially in the past year or two and is starting to come together a little, I’m still very much at the beginning of the journey but I can at least see the first few stones on the path. 

The Q&A session afterwards was very interesting, hearing a lot of very thought provoking opinions. It was also interesting to hear a few things about ‘Block’ questioned, especially things that I had began to take for granted. These things I must stress were not questioned because they were wrong (in the same way you couldn't definitively say they were right), they were questioned purely for the reason that I have expressed, because when you are involved in something it’s very easy to take things as a given. That they are, just because they are. One question, for example was whether or not other more 'traditional’ circus equipment could exist in the world of 'Block’, for example cyr wheels and trampolines. This quickly lead to the discussion of Block as a piece of equipment in its own right (over which there was little doubt that it is) and whether the strength of block is just in a show where the language is Block or if it is as interesting, or more interesting to be doing other skills (ie acro, cradle or parkour) just in the landscape of 'Block’. 

Peter Cox spoke to me on the night about something that interested me greatly and had come apparent to during the showing that had not occurred to me at all before hand which was the immediate potential for comedy in 'Block’ which comes very simply from the very nature of the equipment. The thing that the blocks do very well is create tall, unstable and precarious looking structures. This immediately builds tension in the audience and so comedy can become a very strong tool to release that. As I mentioned this never occurred to me very strongly until I was playing it to audience. Then and only then, when I could sense the tension in the audience did it suddenly come to me how effective it could be to play with that tension (by being very tentative and sharing a characters nerves with the audience) or against it (by being very calm in an anything-but-calm situation.) 

So thanks to everyone who came along to see what we have been working on, including my Mum and Hollie who traveled a long way and made it very special for me. 

I guess all that can be said for now, is watch this space and lets see where this creative journey goes.