Natural history, the meaning of life and racist taxi drivers

Turned on my PC on New year’s day to discover that it didn’t boot. The problem turned out to be a bad sector (which I discovered when I took the hard drive out and put it in another machine to check it). The problem seems to have been solved but worryingly video isn’t playing back correctly and the whole system seem s to be slowing down. I resolve to buy a new hard drive and copy everything to it – just in case there’s something more serious going on.

In any case, I can’t edit video properly – which is going to cause problems not just for the Gliese project but for another reason.

Having talked to my friend at the Natural History Museum, we’re going to put together a proposal to create a regular video podcast for them. I’d love to do this and it will give me the opportunity to do interviews I can then use in some of my other project ideas… however, the museum has no money and although I’m prepared to do it cheaply, I’m not going to work for nothing.

In order to convince the museum I want to edit a pilot from the footage shot for my Prehistoric shark documentary. I can’t do that until I get my editing machine working. And given that George goes into hospital for his operation on Monday, time is going to be short.

Anyway, I’m, seeing Raoul from the museum over the weekend and we’ll see what kind of a proposal we can put together then.



Article on documentary making
This morning I finished (in rather a rush) my article for Digital Video Magazine on documentary filmmaking. It included a diary of my shark documentary which was interesting to write – and I could have gone on and on - as it was, the article over ran by about 700 words. This would normally mean I’d re-edit it, but I know the folks at Digital Video and they know my situation with George and so they’ll understand that I couldn’t be quite as fussy as I’d have liked to be about the length.

Still, I think I’ve put a lot of good detail in the article, and it should be an interesting and informative read.



Interview
Today I’m interviewing a microbiologist about setting up colonies on alien worlds in Milton Keynes. Ok – I’m interviewing a microbiologist in Milton Keynes about setting up colonies on alien worlds… interesting stuff and got some great material from him. He’d obviously been interviewed before, and knew how to keep his answers brief and clear. He was also well aware of talking in complete sentences so should be very easy to edit.

He’s involved in some really interesting speculative ideas – for example he’s set up a group to fund experiments which link environmental research and space science – and he’s also got prizes set up for (among other things) the first person to circumnavigate the moon and the first person to climb the highest mountain in the solar system. He’s not expecting the prizes to be claimed yet, but sees space exploration as fundamental to what it is to be human. It’s these attempts to make the future graspable that I’m interested in for the documentary. Before you can reach for the future, you have to SEE it.

“we’re all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars” as Oscar Wilde said.

Racist taxit driver
On the way from the station to the university I got stuck with the traditional talkative genial racist taxi driver. He told me of how new Polish homless people are pushing our own good honest British homeless people out. He told me of how areas which were once happy and thriving are now no-go areas because of immigration. He talked a lot about people who he called “belligerents” – I’m not quite sure who these are, but I now know they carry machetties and come from “god knows where”.

I tried to point out that all the areas I’d lived in London (New Cross, Deptford, East Dulwich, Brockley) had been no-go areas 20 years ago and were now thriving and happy, but he didn’t seem to want to know. I even mentioned that statistically you’re safer on the streets today than you ever were – but this didn’t seem to sway him.

On the way back, I thankfully got a Muslim taxi driver who’s only worry was the traffic. In contrast to the previous driver, he thought Milton Keynes was a nice place to live. I suppose life is what you make it.