Alice in Wonderland Premiere

Eleanor Tomlinson, who is starring as one of the Chattaway Siters, (roles invented by TIm Burton for the film) was looking gorgeous at the London Premiere this week. Why does this concern me? Well, she is the sister of my Godson, Ross Tomlinson, (see this post) who is also an actor to be watched.

Eleanor, who was such a sweet child, has gone from strength to strength. She was in the Illusionist and Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging. Look out she has a great future ahead of her.

Online video in schools

My Drawing school is beginning to be quite successful, but it is noticeable that most of my hits come from California, the home of all things digital – a really wired society.

The trouble with UK viewings is that schools seem to disallow YouTube point blank, which is a terrible shame as there are amazing things on there. I’ve been trying to upload lessons to TeacherTube, but it is a horrible site to deal with. They don’t allow widescreen and it takes me at least ten attempts to upload a video. Once they are up, I seem to get good viewing figures, but I’m so frustrated with it.
Can you help me? below is a test video from wordpress, who host my site. It’s a great service, but pointless if it can’t be seen behind firewalls. I know some education authorities ban anything from wordpress.com too. Crazy!
Can you see this video on your school network? I’d really like to know. Do you have a special teacher login that lets you see sites the the kids can’t see? Can you have this site approved for viewing videos?

Snow: It’s Back

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It would be so useful to know. please make comments below. You can do this without having to give your email address.

Around the world by Zeppelin

In case you missed it, you can still see Around the World by Zeppelin a fabulous film about a 21 day round the world voyage by the Graf Zeppelin in 1929.

The story is told from the viewpoint of the young journalist Lady Grace Drummond-Hay, reporting for the Hearst media empire. The film is based upon her letters and diaries and told exclusively through archival and newsreel film from the time, this film relives the incredible voyage.

It is told in a wonderfully slow and graceful way and has some astonishingly ephemeral moments that must have seemed trivial at the time, but are now a fascinating insight into the times. You can see it on BBC iplayer here

Vinnie Jones – Big Bother

Vinny Jones quite impressed me when he first came in the Big Brother House. He’d obviously decided to be mister nice guy to improve his public image. He even stood in and stopped a bullying situation before it got out of hand.

But he’s not managed to keep it up. He comes across as the most irritating, self absorbed bully.

I only worry that the people who vote on Big Brother are the binge culture louts who approve of that kind of behaviour, and that they’ll let him win. We shall see.

TENET – Word Of The Day – build your word power

A tenet is a basic principle of belief.

It is a tenet of mine that that David Tennant was the worst Dr Who ever.

He will be exter-r-r-r-r-minated!!!!!

Learn a new word every day.
Repeat it and remind yourself what it means at least three times in a day.
Try to use the word in conversation or writing today.
Get a dictionary and look words up.

More of my dodgy past!

Since the last video seemed to amuse a few people – here’s another. Listening to the old tracks certainly got me in the mood this weekend (yes, Authors work seven days a week, y’know?) I seem to have broken a mental barrier concerning the stories I’m writing at the moment. I hope my editor agrees!

Flamazine were named after the Smith and Nephew burns ointment. Our guitarist, Laurie, used to sell their products and Flamazine was one of their best sellers. The idea was that our music might be a balm for heated emotions. I think we hoped we might get a bit of sponsorship too.

My dodgy past

I’m trying to get into a rock and roll mood for the stories I’m writing at the mo – or rather the character I’m trying to draw – so I’ve been listening to my younger self and thought you might like to share!

The band was called Flamazine and we were around in 83/84. I’m the singer! The Keyboard plaer is the now much respected producer, Marius deVries, who has done very well since. Sadly, when bands split up, it’s often worse than a divorce, so we haven’t spoken since. There’s more Flamazine on Youtube if you look.

Dancing on ice

Kristina Lenko

Kristina Lenko – the real star of Dancing on ice for all us sad Dads of a certain age – is not on Dancing on Ice this year. Is it going to be worth watching?

Not worth watching for Heather Mills, surely? Can she really hope to turn herself around with a British audience? The British don’t like people who meddle with their national treasures. I suspect she will never be forgiven for marrying Paul McCartney and will either be voted off first or kept in to make her feel the pain more and more each week.

Ah! don’t you love the mob?

Drawing School – How to draw a poodle

I was asked by YouTube friend, Savannah, to show how to draw a poodle. That’s a bit tricky as people have different ideas of what a poodle look like. There are big ones and little ones and some are shaved into weird topiary shapes. I hope this one is okay.

YouTube Tags – Where did they come from?

YouTube is a fascinating way of not doing any work, especially if you are promoting videos rather than watching them. I find I’m getting a little obsessed with my statistics on ShooRaynerDrawing, where I give drawing lessons.

It’s happened in the past with other sites. Back in the late nineties, when MP3 was just getting going and the ipod hadn’t been dreamed of, I started putting audio, music and stories, onto the much missed MP3.com. It was actually possible to make money from uploads in those days! I think I made about $40 – which I immediately spent back on the site in promotion. It might have been a bit of a scam but it was fun – quite like a sim city kind of game really, building your little empire on the net.

Since then, XML and tagging have come into being and the choice of tags is quite important if you want people to find you in all the noise. So I’ve been fine tuning my tags and watching to see if they have any effect, and they do. Getting your tags right does bring in more hits. These are not people randomly finding you, but you making sure that your video gets put in front of people who might be looking for it.

HOWEVER! This morning, while tweaking one set of tags, I noticed three tags that I would never have written myself – Visual Art Media – That’s just not in my vocabulary. It sounds American or academic. Or it sounds like the terms a professional tagger would use while summing up a site – standard tags.

SOMEONE has been adding tags to my videos on YouTube! It wasn’t me and I don’t have anyone working on the channel with me. I can’t imagine a hacker being so helpful, therefore it must have been someone at YouTube dropping in a few tags of their own to “help” me along!

Hmmm! Not sure how I feel about that.