Phil Gyford (personal)

Photos for 21 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

500

Links for 20 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-20T23:58:00+00:00

Giving What We Can: A pledge to give 10% of one's income to what they reckon are the most cost-effective charities. (via Preoccupations)
The Space Elevator Games: $4,000,000(?) up for grabs at the current games. The beginnings of a possible bit of future right here.
Ie6-upgrade-warning - Project Hosting on Google Code: Easy-to-slot-in warning to users of Internet Explorer 6 to upgrade. Please.
IT Jobs Watch, Tracking the IT Contractor Job Market: Tracks rates offered for different categories of IT jobs in the UK (permanent as well as contract).

What I should have said at playful on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

phil — 2009-11-19T09:39:49+00:00

Posted in Comments posted elsewhere

What kind of games require not much attention for not much time?

Links for 18 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-18T23:58:00+00:00

Cool Tools: Printed Space: You too can have your own Hilda Ogden style mural. Apparently that's “cool” now.

Week 335

phil — 2009-11-17T09:27:08+00:00

Posted in Phil Gyford's Writing

I enjoy reading BERG’s weekly notes about what’s happening at the young company. I wondered whether there’s scope in an even smaller work unit — me — doing something similar, and decided there’s only one way to find out…

There might not be enough to write about every week, but I won’t know until I try. I’m hoping that this process will make me feel a little more “in the world” as I’ve been mostly working from home, alone, recently. I also think it may help me confront or admit some things that, business-wise, I should be doing differently.

So, counting from when I began freelancing, this is week 335. Activity on Misfits is, for me, gradually slowing down. There is still work to do as we add new scenes and improve some of the features post-launch but I’m starting to surface from the five-days-a-week couple of months and the end is very much in sight.

Five days of client work each week hardly sounds like overdoing it, but when one has too many side-projects on the go, plus the inevitable business admin on top, it feels hard to sustain over the long term. Consequently, I’m now trying to devote Fridays to updating Samuel Pepys (half a day every week) plus other non-paying quasi-work activity. We’ll see how that goes.

Photos for 17 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

Simon on plinth - 6
Simon on the Trafalgar Square plinth as part of One And Other: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Mort

Simon on plinth - 5
Simon on the Trafalgar Square plinth as part of One And Other: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Mort

Simon on plinth - 4
Simon on the Trafalgar Square plinth as part of One And Other: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Mort

Simon on plinth - 3
Simon on the Trafalgar Square plinth as part of One And Other: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Mort

Simon on plinth - 2
Simon on the Trafalgar Square plinth as part of One And Other: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Mort

Simon on plinth - 1
Simon on the Trafalgar Square plinth as part of One And Other: www.oneandother.co.uk/participants/Mort

Links for 16 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-16T23:58:00+00:00

Facebook | SAVE THE FOUNDRY CAMPAIGN !!! The Foundry - re-house/re-locate: You can have all the fancy urban theories you like, but I'm increasingly thinking that if you don't own lots of expensive property, you can't control anything.
What Mother never told you about SVN Branching and Merging « Design By Gravity: This kind of stuff scares me, but this is a technique that's supposed to work.
Techtech2009: I was never hugely into techno, but I'm enjoying this mp3 blog. Great for working to. (via Haddock)
Word Spy - parahawking: “A sport where paragliders follow birds of prey that have been trained to look for and follow thermal updrafts that enable the pilots to stay aloft.”

Photos for 15 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

New glasses
Glasses: Collection No. 1 'Billy' by Mykita; Scarf: Grandma.
Hair and styling: Philippe Stephen.
Photography: Luci More.
Model: Phil, GYFO Agency.

How's the acting going?

phil — 2009-11-13T12:17:26+00:00

Posted in Phil Gyford's Writing

Fifteen months after finishing that two year course on “Creating Theatre” (read more), hardly a week goes by without a few people asking, “How’s the acting going?” If nothing else, it proves how rarely I see many people I know. Loose connections. The brief answer to that question is “It’s not”. Which is fine, but requires some expansion.

Which is understandable. I spent two years doing acting evening classes, then two more years doing a full-time course that was physically and mentally demanding. It’s understandable that people, you, would expect me to continue with all that. But, so far, I’m not at all.

The first couple of months after the course ended I was applying for parts in no/low-budget short films, as a change from the collaborative theatre that I found so difficult at LISPA. I had a couple of auditions, and got one small part, which was fun, but that was it.

It’s incredibly difficult to even get an audition for a student film that will pay no money and, when it comes down to it, if I’m honest, I’m not sure I want to act enough to go through that struggle.

I’ve always been impressed with people who suddenly switch careers part-way through adult life and, while I wasn’t setting my heart on acting, I wondered if I’d manage such a change. Part of me wanted to show that, although difficult, changes like this are possible. But it’s even harder than I expected and you really need to want to make the change.

I was more ambivalent. Not only had I got a career underway in one world (making internet stuff) I wasn’t desperate to get away from it. Although I felt in a rut, it was otherwise fine. In acting classes my mind would often wander to website ideas, whereas the reverse — thinking about theatre while staring at the screen — rarely occurred.

There are, however, many things I miss about acting, theatre in particular.

I miss using my body, rather than merely my brain and my tippy-tappy-typing fingers. That physicality felt good.

I miss doing stuff in the real world, that exist in space. Frustration with things that disappear when a screen is turned off is what makes me do these crazy courses.

I miss making things that might, hopefully, make people laugh or cry. That’s much less likely to happen on the web.

I miss the seat-of-the-pants nature of a live performance, surfing through it just ahead of a wave of disaster.

I miss collaborating with lovely people on something nebulous that eventually becomes almost tangible. It was very, very difficult, but when it worked it was a wonderful experience.

I miss being in front of an audience. I may be quiet, and spend most of my time sitting alone at a computer, but I love being on a stage.

But I’m not sure I miss any of that enough to start on the bottom rung of another “career” ladder when I’m not unhappy on the current one. To make a success of acting you really, really need to love it. For many of the people on my course theatre is all they’ve ever wanted to do.

Of course, I don’t have to try and make a living from this stuff. Most “actors” probably earn their money with other jobs and work on theatre, films, etc in their free time. But I fill my free time up with projects far too easily, so acting has a lot of competition.

Besides which, I don’t know what kind of acting I’d really want to do. I think I’d be far more picky than someone in my position could afford to be. I have little desire to spend weeks rehearsing something that’s not very good, just to perform it to friends for a handful of nights, solely for the sake of satisfying my urge to be on stage. It seems like a waste of everyone’s time. But only wanting to act in decent productions, with committed and talented people, is erecting even more barriers to entry than I already have.

That, then, is the long answer to the question “How’s the acting going?” I may find something I want to do with it again in the future. I’d like to, but it’s fine that I haven’t done so yet. There are lots of other things I want to do.

Right now I’m enjoying being immersed in the internet world again. There are many things I want to make, many people I’d love to work with, and enough paying work to more than pay the bills. All of which seems a pretty good position to be in.

Links for 12 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-12T23:58:00+00:00

BBC News | World | Audio slideshow: Night witches: About Russia's World War II female fighter pilots, what I was in a play about three years ago.
Penalty! Unnecessary Blandness! Redesigning the Worst NFL Helmet Graphics | Yes to Less | Fast Company: I've noticed that most of the more recent helmet designs (eg, Patriots, Buccaneers, Panthers, Jaguars, Ravens) are a bit rubbish. (via Daring Fireball)

Links for 9 November 2009

phil — 2009-11-09T23:58:00+00:00

Vintage Posters — SSPL Prints: Hundreds of old rail posters etc reprinted for the purchasing of. Very tempting.
Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose - 8 November 2009: “Dad, you make it sound like social media is ruining my life! It's NOT!”
The Online Photographer: Panasonic GF1 vs. Olympus E-P1, Part I: Solely for this quote: “These two [bundled] applications just can't possibly be as lame and useless as they appear to be … They can't be—right? Because if faced with a choice of working day in, day out in one of these environments or picking up trash by the side of the freeway with a pointy stick guarded by a fat man with a shotgun and a big wad of tobacco in his cheek, I would need time to decide. They both seem like they'd be torture, but least in a chain gang I'd be outdoors.”