Despite the lack of blog posts I’ve still been keeping up with my creative pursuits over the past few months, although personal matters have also taken up rather a lot of time. I’ve mostly been focusing on just two projects, the first of which was my show at EMF camp (www.emfcamp.org)
Electromagnetic Field or EMFcamp is a biannual hacker/maker/whatever camp with lots of talks, workshops and general techy stuff going on, all in a field cunningly set up with lots of power points (hidden in portaloos!) and Wi-Fi. Most of the talks were streamed and can now be found on the YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/emfcamp1), including my talk “How is the Universe Like a Lightbulb?” It went OK, but I was disappointed with my performance – some of which was down to being tired by the final day of the camp thanks to all of the awesome things going on (like giant “Guitar Hero” using huge poles with LEDs down them to show the buttons to hit, and “Fire Pong”) and some of which was probably down to me not really having any experience of how to aim comedy in such a big and only partially filled venue. Still, it was good practice and a good learning experience, and I got a particularly nice tweet about it afterwards, so despite the disappointment I’m overall happy with it.
Other highlights included reliving my youth by playing Super Mario Bros. on a NES, a talk about “X-Ray records” in the USSR (which doesn’t seem to be online, but the related documentary is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMCCYnDvpJQ), and my friend Cat’s talk “A brief history of effects in film” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrFwu-baYVo).
Shortly after that I found out that I’d been accepted into the “Science Showoff Talent Factory”(https://showofftalentfactory.wordpress.com) – a scheme for developing science performers. Since then I’ve performed at a Science Showoff set about how I am fed up with Schrödinger’s cat (video at the end of the post), attended training with and started to get to know the rest of the crew (who are awesome and you should check out their stuff too – links from https://showofftalentfactory.wordpress.com). I’ll be doing a lot of gigs with this group – the next is a Science Showoff as a fringe event for the SpotOn London digital science conference, but it’s open to all, so come along: https://scienceshowoff.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/science-showoff-at-spoton-2016-3rd-november-star-of-kings/
Also, a bunch of people I know are revving up in preparation for NaNoWriMo but I know that once again I won’t have time to write 50,000 words. However, recently I’ve also tried writing physics based limericks, so I’m going to have a go at making sure that I have one a day to post here. I’m currently looking for inspiration, so if there’s anything you’d like me to cover – maybe something you were confused about at school, or an odd effect you’ve noticed in your everday life – just let me know by leaving a comment! Or if you’re giving NaNoWriMo a go and want some support, comment and let me know what you’re planning.
Enjoy November!
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