Having just put together a new showreel disc, I thought I’d upload the pre-menu montage onto here, in case anyone is interested. It should play okay, but let me know if you have any problems (I’m still trying to figure out the best settings for YouTube uploads; all tips gratefully received.)
Over the next few weeks, there’ll be more stuff going up at http://www.youtube.com/juliansimpsonfilm. I’ll try and keep you up to date as things get added.
I’ve banged on about this before, but I was looking at TED.com again last night and I still can’t quite believe what an unbelievable free resource it is. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and consists of a series of conferences at which people at the bleeding edge of their fields give short lectures on what they do or what they predict for the future. It was at a TED conference that Al Gore first made the climate change presentation that became “An Inconvenient Truth”. At the TED website, every single one of these lectures is available to stream or download for FREE.
There are more ideas here, more invitations to think differently or to be inspired, than anywhere else online. Here is a smattering of some of the best bits… (I’ve linked to some of them before, so apologies for any repetition)
Sir Ken Robinson on how schools kill creativity:
Malcolm Gladwell gets to the truth of what we want via spaghetti sauce:
Clifford Stoll spends 18 energetic minutes on, well, everything:
Writer-director JJ Abrams (Lost, Alias, Fringe, MI:3) on mystery:
Steven Levitt (Freakonomics) discusses the merits or otherwise of child carseats:
That’s a tiny selection of what’s available. I post TED lectures her and on the Little Brain now and again but I urge you to visit TED.com and explore for yourself. You can also subscribe to the TED video podcast through iTunes.
Go be inspired…
I know, I know, the title of this post makes me throw up in my mouth a little too but you have to get those search engines wet somehow…
Anyway, I left Twitter. That’s not news to anyone. What may be news is that Twitter isn’t the be-all and end-all of social networking. It’s great if you want to talk about Strictly Come Dancing or AA Gill shooting a baboon but an awful lot of it is just sound and fury signifying nothing. Since bailing, I’ve been looking at a few other options presented by this here internet and I’ve re-acquainted myself with a some old favourites too:
RADAR is a photographic version of Twitter. Instead of saying something, you take a picture on your phone, caption it and post it. I used to have an account there, which I’ve forgotten the password to, so I’ve just opened a new one and there’s nothing there yet but I’m going to make a concerted effort to put stuff up everyday and see how it goes. There’s something really cool about seeing people lives chronicled visually and it allows for a lot more creativity than most tweets – most people seem to avoid the standard friends and family pics and really try for something more abstract and interesting. Go see.
TUMBLR has been a favourite place of mine for a while. If you haven’t visited the Little Brain, go have a look around. Tumblr is a mini-blogging site that allows you to post pics, links, text, music; pretty much anything you like. You can follow people and they can follow you and it has a great interface. If you have an iPhone, the Tumblr app is a joy.
DELICIOUS is an old favourite; a way to post and share bookmarks of interesting places you’ve found online. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s surprisingly useful. Again, I forgot the password to my old account, so I’ve started a new one here
STUMBLEUPON has to be one of my favourite things on the whole internet and I’ve been neglecting it for far too long. If you like to surf the net, Stumbleupon is the best board you could hope for. You sign up for a free account, tell it what kind of things you’re interested in, then hit the “stumble” button and it randomly takes you to a website it thinks you might like. If you like where you go, you hit the “thumbs up” button and it marks the site as a favourite for you and your followers. Then you just hit “stumble” again… Kiss goodbye to a lot of hours with this puppy! Again, I have a new account there.
All of these sites, except Radar, have toolbar buttons for your browser, which make them really easy to integrate into your everyday web use and allow you to share your finds with people as you go.
Despite leaving Twitter, I still want to stay in touch with people and I hope these sites will provide a new and interesting way to do that without sucking as much time out of the day as Twitter seemed to. I hope some of you give them a go and I’d be very glad to hear of any similar recommendations you may have.
That’s a lot of words without swearing. Now fuck off and explore.
UPDATE: I’ve added a “My Lifestream” banner to the sidebar here, so you can see new posts etc on the above named sites. Unfortunately, Lifestream doesn’t seem to support Radar yet but all the others are there.
Saw this on Boing Boing this morning and wanted to pass it on.
That’s all.
By way of an update: I’ve been away from Twitter for one week. In the two weeks prior to quitting, I wrote 30 pages of the screenplay I was working on. In the six days after I quit, I wrote 45 pages. ‘Nuff said.
Between now and Christimas, I have to write a major re-draft of the “Sniper One” screenplay, an outline document for a new TV series, a pitch document for a different TV series, inevitable re-drafts of New Tricks and a radio play. Christmas is the deadline for all of this because, as of January, I should be directing again. Looks like I picked the right time to leave Twitter!
I was browsing my collection of TED podcasts this morning and this one struck me as providing just the right inspiration for a cold weekend: Tim Ferriss’s unique brand of life-hacking…
By the way, I think this is the design I’m happy with for the blog for the moment. Any thoughts?
I’m currently reading “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, which is well worth a look.
I’m still arseing about with the design of this website so if it looks weird as you’re reading this, it will only be temporary.
Please don’t comment on the design yet as I won’t know which version you were looking at.
I’ll let you know when it’s done and you can feel free to mindpuke all over it then.
Fuck y’all.
The delightful Mark Boardman, who I met on Twitter some months ago and whose company on there I’ve enjoyed ever since, has written a great piece on social networking (that just so happens to mention me once or twice along with Sarah Pinborough – who she?). Read it now…
You wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and see a sane, rational human being. Presumably that’s what everyone thinks they see. And yet we all know the world is chock-full of dribbling cretins. Here are a few indicators that, far from being the most sensible person you know, you may actually be a fucking idiot…
1. You’re worried about immunising your child against various dangerous diseases because you believed Jim Carey/Jenny McCarthy/the Daily Mail when they said that vaccines cause autism.
2. You gave a shit on any level at all that Nick Griffen was appearing on Question Time. (Give yourself 2 points if you also thought that hardcore BNP supporters might have been dissuaded from their beliefs by an argument mounted by a left-wing black American woman)
3. You were surprised and appalled by the ‘revelation’ that MPs play fast and loose with their expense claims.
4. You think that the signing of the Lisbon Treaty means “the end of England” and that this is in some way a bad thing.
5. You have ever put a “BeatCancer” hashtag on one of your tweets (as if the only reason we haven’t found a cure yet is because not enough people were reminding scientists to look for one).
6. You’ve ever fired a science advisor for stating scientific facts (admittedly, that may not be many of you).
7. You thought Season 7 of The West Wing was a return to form.
8. You’ve ever said that the shopping in Leeds and/or Brighton is “just as good as London”.
9. You’re optimistic about Windows 7.
10. You’ve ever written a list-based blog post.
UPDATE: For your listening pleasure, I have experimented with attaching a song to this post. How nice am I?!
