‮hjap‮

Buggeration. It turns out that there already is a Paul Hamilton, he works for the RSC and is thus more successful and handsome than I, and naturally he's Equity-registered. So I'm not allowed to use my name for professional, performance-related purposes.

Insisting on the A J isn't enough, apparently. The rules have changed since Russell T. Davies or Richard E. Grant. This is Annoying. I don't even like the bloody name—my mother chose it—but the one thing I've always been most successful at was being Paul A J Hamilton, and now I'm not allowed to do that any more.

I need a new name. It's not going to be an issue until someone starts paying me for work, but I suspect it's better to start sooner rather than later.

From now on I want you all to refer to me as Loretta. I can pretty much guarantee that Pajhy McCloakGuy isn't taken.

I'm thinking about dusting off an old roleplaying character, but he's not likely to have sufficient Google presence. George Ominokouhai? Ian Spector Fuckup?

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/194463.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I was awesomesauce bottled tonight. Gods, but I've missed the stage.

And now, a gift for my loyal readers: your very own pajh-inna-box. Go to cereproc.com, and select William (Southern English) from the Live Demo list in the topbar (requires Flash). You can make me say anything you like. If you make me say anything nice about David Cameron, I will find you and kill you.

scattergather is already finding it useful for phrases like please drink my booze, I do not want it.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/193887.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

This evening was the first time—and the last, I hope—that I'll ever have to say Hello, you must be my daughter.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/193268.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

People are totally willing to pay me real money to talk into a microphone.

Form an orderly queue, ladies, there's enough pajh to go around.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/192752.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Random guy in queue in Scotmid: Thank you for the cookery.

I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/191856.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

The EHRC has requested that the BNP comply with the Race Relations Act. Well, I'm glad that's all been sorted out. What would we do without the EHRC to defeat fascism for us?

~

Following this moderately amusing exchange in recent Scotsman letters pages—which, for once, I had nothing to do with—comes the story of Larry W. Peterman, acquitted on pornography charges because of the records of what everyone else in the community was watching at the time. Further information in the New York Times. I love it when stuff like this happens: there are fewer dirty secrets, and the secrets that are left don't stay dirty when we know that everyone has a handful of harmless ones. The unbounded accessibility of information makes us all a bit more equal.

Related: via miss_s_b's random squeezings comes tyrell's insightful post: There is no more plausible deniability in the world. It's harrowing to hear of Neda Soltani's death, but the ray of hope is this: it can't be long before despots realise that they can't get away with this shit any more. If the state-sponsored murder of an Iranian woman doesn't hit your personal buttons, then remember Ian Tomlinson. That which affects Iran affects us all.

They've got guns and sticks, but we've got the Internet. The panopticon works both ways.

Next: find some way to empower the dissemination of information on tyranny such that that it will actually stop tyrants doing it.

~

I'm going to the Actor Expo tradeshow on Saturday. I'm not entirely sure what one's supposed to do there, but I've signed up for a couple of seminars, including How to make it big in Hollywood, from which I'm hoping that some generalized non-Hollywood-specific information can be extrapolated. If it turns out to be an hour on how to get a US visa I'm going to be disappointed.

Typically, neither my headshots nor my business cards are likely to be ready until after the expo. Oh well.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/191632.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I was in Macbeth with Ailidh Mackay
who was in Atonement with Keira Knightley (mmm)
who was in Love Actually with Colin Firth
who was in Where the Truth Lies with Kevin Bacon.

Anyone out there got an Erdos number, and if so, can we co-author something?

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/191138.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

It seems there's no escape.

The old phone died with a pathetic whimper, but the nice people at the Orange Shop told me that I was due for a free upgrade. So now I have this thing with a 3.2 megapixel camera with Zeiss lenses, radio, mp3 player, video player, and an ARM processor core driving quad-band GSM, GPRS, and UMTS. I'm told it makes phone calls too, but I've not found that function yet.

All I actually want is something that will allow me to sometimes make phone calls when I'm not near a telephone. Instead I'm lugging around a billion times the processing power of the Apollo missions on my belt, probably. Meanwhile, even as they cram unsolicited silicon into my pocket, I can't help but think about all of those proteins going unfolded.

Having said that, the radio is quite nice. I'm rapidly learning about the current standard of voiceover talent, and thus that breaking into the industry really shouldn't be very difficult. On the other hand, given the quality of the scripting, I'm not sure I want to any more.

This week on Kamikaze Cookery, I get into a fight with Jamie Oliver (figuratively speaking).

The usual deal. Go, watch, comment, tell your friends.

Normal blogging service will be resumed in my Copious Free Time. Right now, I am busy making a cookery show. And, y'know, working.

Behold, for The Perfect Steak is now available at Kamikaze Cookery dot com.

That is to say, the episode regarding the perfect steak is now available. You can't download the actual steak through the internet. I'm still working on that bit.

Go, watch, comment. Tell your friends. Subscribe to the RSS feed. And come back next week for more.

It wouldn't be a Strange Company project without a last-minute calamity, would it?

Episode One of Kamikaze Cookery will be up this afternoon. At some point. Right now, we are frantically re-rendering at Strange Company Towers.

For some obscure reason a picture of a steak had fallen out of the last render. You can't really do an episode on steak without it, so there will be a short delay.

(On a thread about why not to use text-to-speech software)

Imagine BloodSpell without Paul AJ Hamilton.

(and, independently)

Paul’s performance as The Master is, for me, the acting highlight of the film; his impassioned delivery in the closing scenes of the film still give me goosebumps[...]. For me, it was truly shocking to learn in the course of the interview that Hamilton’s prior acting experience was largely amateur.

(and this may be a good time to mention, again, that)

Paul AJ Hamilton is superb as the Master. His voice work suggests a background story that colors every line.

(...it might also be a good time to note that I wouldn't have included that last one unless it had cropped up, randomly, while I googled for the other two.)

I am apparently FAMOUS amongst people who worked on Bloodspell. Now it remains only for me to get to work on the rest of you ignorant bastards.

(Johnnie and Phil, I owe you both a pint. Ricky, if you're reading this, I think I owe you a pint already.)

And I should also point out from earlier in the first link that Text-to-speech engines are [...] not designed to be able to contain any emotive quality. Actually, it would seem that some of them are, and I might be working on one. I should know by the end of the month.

(It's something to do with phoneme extraction, I gather. They've not told me very much about it. I'm just a guy with a voice.)

Remember that ridiculous three-strikes-and-you're-out legislation to ban filesharers from the internet? All you'd have to do is be accused, not convicted, of filesharing three times, and then your ISP would be compelled to cut you off. The EU sensibly voted against it.

Now they're trying to sneak the same legislation into an otherwise dull, sensible and bulky Telecoms Package.

This doesn't just affect filesharers: it means that your ISP is forced to monitor your connection at all times, and if somebody else uses your wi-fi or your kids use your connection wile you're not watching, you can be cut off without ever knowing what you did wrong.

And the bill is going through on a Monday—this Monday—while all the MEPs are preparing for summer break and have better things to do than meticulously pore over dull telecoms legislation to look for the creepy shit hidden within.

You know the drill by now. Write to your MEP, because your MEP works for you, and make this stop.

cairmen has an excellent form letter here, and there's another one on BoingBoing here.

Coming soon: machinima activism.

For research, I am watching cookery shows on iPlayer. I've discovered The Supersizers go Victorian (available for 3 more days), a rather amusing account of a week spent on a Victorian diet.

(Spending a week on a weird diet for television? Wish I'd thought of that.)

And then, towards the end, one of the guests at the dinner party is my son from the last production I was in.

That's weird, but not as weird as boiled calf's head.

Today I was introduced to my new co-presenter on Kamikaze Cookery: Bunty, the Friesian cow.

I've worked with cows before, but that was back at school when I was Theseus to a particularly intransigent Hippolyta. I hear she's engaged now: I pity the guy, whoever he is. This, however, was an actual cow made of beef, and with udders and whatnot.

Fortunately, the fact that Bunty was female and a few years old meant that I didn't have to wrestle with terms like Buttercup is an individual unit of cattle or cattlebeast (but at least there actually is a non-gender-specific term). She was one of my more friendly and forgiving co-stars, but she did have something of a tendency to wander out of shot at inappropriate moments.

By about take four I was sounding impressively knowledgeable about where beef comes from and what you do with it, ably assisted from off-camera by Donna, who's been raising beef cattle since she was a wee slip of a lass and knows a hell of a lot more than I was able to get from Wikipedia. I'm not entirely sure Bunty knew what I was talking about, but she did have a tendency to swish her tail around with more obvious irritation whenever I was pointing out which bits on her were the most tasty.

And then there was the Clarkson Take, because there has to be.

I r srs documentary filmmaker. No, really.

Yesterday I:

• made four episodes of television and cooked on camera a lot
• made creme brulee with a hairdryer^[0]
• burned the crap out of my fingers on a digital thermometer^[1]
• ran around in circles on a hillside trying to keep a camera still
• successfully filmed a CRASH ZOOM IN^[2]
• lost my hat on Salisbury Crags
• drank lots of beer.^[3]

Tomorrow, I attend a Press Screening of some film or other, because apparently I'm in the movie-reviewing biz now. Then I see about replacing my hat.

At some stage I may get opportunity to watch Doctor Who.

--
[0] FSVO `made'.
[1] Thermocouples conduct heat. Who knew?
[2] Industry term.
[3] And one cider by mistake.

Half of my friends page has erupted in an enraged frenzy about self-declared fattist and narcissistic, imperious, self-absorbed bitch Ruth Fowler's article in the Grauniad today. Good on you all.

This comes shortly after a post on British Dining about Jay Rayner's idiotic allergy sufferers are all attention-seeking whiners screed in that self-same organ. I think that the Graun's Comment Is Free section is becoming a refuge for all those wankers who have been booted off the BBC's odious Have Your Say section. It's best just to ignore them and hope they go away.

The current flap appears to have been kick-started by that eternal beacon of small-minded nastiness the Daily Hate, who have denounced the Miss England finalist as being fat. Much as I hate to link to the Hate, go and have a look. There are pictures. (There would have to be, knowing the intellectual capacity of the average Mail reader.)

That's Chloe Marshall, size 16, BMI 26.03. Yep, she's a wee bit chunky on the thighs there, but she's smiling, she's got a pretty face, she's comfortable with her body and so should you be. Furthermore, she probably knows how to string a sentence together without infuriating the entire western hemisphere. Ruth Fowler, the Graun's resident fattist, has none of these qualities—although, for an allegedly serious writer, she does have an awful lot of nudie pictures on her shitty frame-based website.

One of these women is a normal, happy person. The other is an attention-seeking, misogynist, hateful, tiny-breasted, mean-spirited cow. To be perfectly honest, I know which of the two I'd rather fuck, but that's only because, as a wise man once said, woman unable to talk bullshit with cock in mouth.

Never before has the phrase I'd hit it been so appropriate. Doubly so, in fact.^[0]

If I had to take one of them out for dinner, I'd take the one who looks like she knows how to enjoy food—or, indeed, enjoy anything at all. Chloe Marshall might not be the brightest button in the box either—she is, after all, seventeen years old and a Miss England contestant—but I've seen no evidence that she's quite so utterly stupid as the bitter hag with the Cambridge First^[1], and she is, at least, a human being.

~

To my knowledge, to date, no terrorists have been caught with the use of the new anti-terror provisions. The ones that have been caught have had a tendency to announce their intention to drive flaming jeeps into airports by, um, driving flaming jeeps into airports, which was illegal before the new laws were brought out anyway. If I recall correctly, blowing stuff up was also illegal before September 11th, which makes one wonder what all those new laws were for in the first place.

This is what the anti-terror laws are being used for instead. Anybody surprised?

I've never met a terrorist and I don't need protecting from them. But I do need protection from officious council scumbags. Can I get some laws? Thought not.

~

All should read cairmen's excellent post on the bloodspell blog, in which he points out just exactly how copyright laws are doing the opposite of protecting the artists. Speaking as an artist, I'm not being protected by a blanket refusal to allow the release of my work. Nor are Bioware being protected by preventing distribution of a work that uses some of their art in a manner which is, pretty much undeniably, non-infringing. This really is taking the use of the phrase derivative work to extremes.

I've never met a plagiarist and I don't need protecting from them. But I do need protection from officious lawyers. Can I get some laws? Maybe—cairmen's post outlines how to start.

--
[0] While we're on the subject: never has the phrase I'd hit it been quite so inappropriate.
[1] It's a First from New Hall, so it barely counts anyway. And once you get into Cambridge, it's relatively easy to get a First as long as you buckle down to studying and eschew all semblance of a social life. I suspect that wasn't much of a problem for the Sociopathic Narcissist, since with a personality like that I doubt she would have been in much demand at all those garden parties.

Old Who: Y'know, just once, I would like to see an alien that doesn't look like an actor in a rubber suit.

New Who: Y'know, just once, I would like to see an alien that doesn't look like a marketable action figure.

( SPOILARZ )

And I suppose I should half-heartedly congratulate them for turning lowering the manufacturing costs on the inevitable action figures into some sort of art form. Cheapest spin-off revenue generator ever— but I must admit, if they bring out a plushie version I am totally getting one.

On a vaguely related note, since it grew out of a discussion of the Comedy Opening Sequence:

(22:57:27) pajh: Strange thing about television. Put some music behind it and use some framing, and you can generate Drama out of the most mundane shit.
(22:57:52) scotm: Sure. Just edit out the truly boring stuff.
(22:57:48) pajh: You should see the rough footage of me cooking.
(22:58:08) pajh: In a world... where pajh... makes an omelette.
(22:58:57) pajh: They said he'd never cope without butter. They said that that wasn't what the Fife Diet was about. Now... one man... and a jar of dripping... proves them wrong.
(23:07:10) pajh: In theaters now. pajh Makes An Omelette. Rated R for language.

Almost forgot to mention: Planet of Hats is by far the best joke that Rusty's ever done. Pomo and post-structuralist and intelligent and a geeky injoke for the Internet people that he hates so much! Was he feeling all right?

There's hope.

One hour of filming in the pub today.

Then we remembered to turn the microphone on.

I think it's time for one of my blood sugar-mediated mood swings.

Two more days of this.

On the train over to Fife on Friday, we encountered the first—but, I suspect, by no means the last—infestation of mindless jobsworth officialdom to plague Three Guys Argue A Lot About Cookery (title subject to change).

We were filming ourselves sitting at a table talking about the Fife Diet while Fife itself rolled into view beyond the window. Because we are Professional Televison People, the camera was balanced precariously on top of the bike rack across the aisle. And every time one of us tried to say anything, the bloody recorded woman decided to announce again that the next stop was Inverkeithing, as indeed it had been for the last twenty minutes.

INT. TRAIN CARRIAGE. DAY

Our Heroes are sat around a table, talking about the Fife Diet. Enter stage right THE TICKET INSPECTOR.

THE TICKET INSPECTOR
You can't film in 'ere, mate.

OUR HEROES
Why not?

Beat.

TICKET INSPECTOR
Because... there are people walkin' past.

OUR HEROES
Okay.

Exit THE TICKET INSPECTOR, satisfied. HOLD on OUR HEROES as the CAMERA continues rolling uninterrupted.

(TELEVISION SCRIPTS always have some of the WORDS in CAPITALS, usually PROPER NOUNS but also sometimes VERBS. This is because it helps DIRECTORS to CONCENTRATE after they've DONE all of that COKE.)

The mind of the bureaucrat is a simple one to understand, if not always this simple to subvert. You can't do that invariably translates as you are doing something slightly different, therefore Strange and Frightening to me, and you must be destroyed.

~

Most of the discussion on the Fife Diet has been going on over at cairmen's LiveJournal. This is because he has a vastly greater number of friends than I do, and as such is a comment on the quantity, not necessarily the quality, of such friends—although it wouldn't hurt if you buggers commented every once in a while. You know who you are.

Most of the commentary seems to be along the lines of:

But why are you doing this?
But you don't live in Fife.
But that's not what the Fife Diet is about.
You should be doing something completely different, or better still, nothing at all!

Fortunately, the response to all of these queries is the same one:

SHUT UP!

I am doing this for Science and, as already discussed, for you, the entertained viewer. As a result I am already looking forward to ten more swede meals before Saturday. The last thing I need is an existential crisis on top of my critically low blood sugar levels.

The only way to explore a concept is to push at its boundaries. The most popular, highly-publicized and critically-acclaimed experiment in local sourcing is The Fife Diet, so we decided to investigate it and use it as a stepping stone to explore the wider concepts of food miles and local sourcing. Thus, we've taken a strict interpretation of the Fife Diet in order to see just what, exactly, local produce actually means.

To take an early example: followers of the Fife Diet as set out in their press releases are allowed bread, for instance, as long as they make it themselves. We found out on Day -1 that the flour may be local, but the wheat that makes the flour is from Canada. This raises serious questions about what constitutes local, what we're all going to have to learn to deal with when the oil runs out, and—perhaps most important of all—how much hypocrisy we're all willing to put up with from hippies.

We could, theoretically, invent our own diet and call it the Edinburgh Diet and test that, but that wouldn't prove anything about the Fife Diet. Doing so would be irrelevant and pointless. Doing this instead has the potential to enlighten, and to inform and entertain. And I'm getting to eat vegetables, which may or may not be a good thing.

When the entertained viewer gives every impression of merely being a playa-hater or, worse, a bureaucrat, then I start considering quitting my diet. If I quit it now, then I've spent eighty quid, pissed off my managers, and eaten leaves, and none of us will have learned anything as a result.

(Although I have learned what happens if you make porridge with the wrong kind of oatmeal.)