General Update Post

I don't have anything specific to write about but the last few days have not been uneventful so I'll attempt a brief digest of the more interesting bits.

As I think I've alluded to before, work's been pretty stressful recently. The last three months of 2006 were particularly bad with a lot of late nights and weekends, not just for me but for many of the others working with me on HPatOotP. This has not gone unnoticed and since the beginning of the new year there've been a few changes made to our working practices which should enable us to produce much better work more easily. We had some happy clients on Friday and I think we've carried on the improvements into this week. I stayed till 7.30 at work tonight simply because I felt motivated to do so. We were on a bit of a roll and I wanted to maintain it.

I also had another brush with technology somewhat unexpectedly. Last night our router at home perished so today's lunch break was spent scouring Tottenham Court Road for a replacement. Thankfully, experience with the last one meant I knew what I was doing wen it came to setting the little blighter up and we were all back online, with greater security and encryption than before. Running ShieldsUp! from www.grc.com seems to suggest we're pretty stealthy internet-wise at Atrocity Mansions now, which is a bit of a relief. Unfortunately because I'm using some decent encryption rather than the utterly discredited WEP I can't get my Nintendo DS to connect to the net which is a bore but better than running a vulnerable system.

Yesterday I met up with a lot of friends from a defunct company we used to work at for lunch in a pub close to Atrocity Mansions. It still amazes me that of all the close friends I've made in the industry the majority of them come from that one studio, which filed for bankruptcy over 6 years ago leaving us all owed a lot of money in unpaid wages and a whole year's work canned on a project that has not seen the light of day outside Norway. Perhaps it's because we went through hell together on that ill-fated show and the aftermath that brought us all close together but to be honest we were all a tightly knit group before the excrement ever hit the air-conditioning there. I don't get to see many of them very often as they're spread around the world, mostly still in visual effects so get-togethers can be tricky. I think most of the crew who still reside in London were there yesterday and it was grand to see them.

I finally submitted my short film to onedotzero, a prestigious short film and music video festival. I'm sure they'll reject it but I'm quite excited that I actually finished something that I deemed worthy of entry at least. A few friends who also have films ready to show have been working with me on a Google Calendar with all the submission dates for festivals we might want to enter. If you have a film then click this button:

and you'll find our calendar. Might be quite handy. If you could keep your fingers crossed for me on the onedotzero front I'd be very grateful. Whilst it's no matter of life or death it would give me a certain kind of satisfaction if it were accepted.