1. “That’s how we do things in this country. Quietly, with dignity.” 22May07

    Since last Friday i’ve done exactly as I planned. I’ve relaxed and enjoyed the freedom. I’ve begun work on the outstanding essay, I’m 486 words into it and I’ve only just come to the end of the first issue so I think I will be okay. Especially since I’ve only used one quote so far. I might even reach 2,000 which is odd for me since I struggle to pad out my arguments. Once that is all finished I only have to worry about it being accepted and after that I can concentrate more on CSR and IdleTalk.

    Speaking of Idle Talk, I recently had a few discussions with the staff and came to the decision that we were going to have a bit of a shift in the system. The film department is near enough dead, it wasn’t as popular as we anticipated, despite people practically begging us to include one. Anyway, we decided to revert back to Singles. The big change however is that rather than updating the reviews as they come in, we’re going to release them monthly as a sort of webzine. This won’t require any additional coding since we’ll be using the same system. It just means that each writer has a deadline to meet to submit a minimum of 1 review per month.

    It’s been accepted really well, although I’m not sure if the email got out to all the writers since Hotmail hates the staff at idle-talk.co.uk email address.

    The QueenI recently aquired the soundtrack to the 2006 film The Queen. I remember watching ‘he Queen a while back and loving it becuase of the music. I’m really glad that the composer, Alexandre Desplat, is going to be doing to score for The Golden Compass. For those that don’t know, the Golden Compass is the first installment of the film version of the His Dark Materials trilogy which is to be released towards the end of 2007.

    Speaking of films, it’s just 50 days until the release of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoneix! I’m so excited. We recently got some clips of the film, in particular Umbridge’s speech for the first assembly of the year at Hogwarts. Everything about this film looks perfect. Dumbledore seems less agressive. It has the darker cinematography that Alfonzo Cuaron introduced in Prisoner of Azkaban and of course the best casting ever. I really can’t wait for this film, I’ll be there first in line on that Wednesday night at midnight to watch. It should be fantastic!

    Tags: , | Comments (0)

  2. Jam Packed 16May07

    Another new theme. This one has been adapted from Gurdit’s Almost Boxes theme and I really like it. I’ve been taking it easy latelly, I don’t want to stress myself out too much for exams (or in my case, exam). So I’ve been hanging out with people and taking life as it comes. I still haven’t completed the outstanding essay but I’m hoping to do it this weekend. So by 20th May I shall be free from the University’s clutches. That then gives me over three months to do absolutely anything I want. I think I’m going to stay in Canterbury for as much as possible since I tend to work on projects more when I’m here. I can also look out for part time jobs since most of the students will be going home over the summer. Time for me to weasel in and get one that I can hold down over my third year. It also means I can build on the CSR experience and be more confident on the mic with more practice.

    Summer has a lot of things on. Muse are playing two massive gigs at Wembley Stadium in June. I’ll be partying with everyone before and after those gigs. Then in July the new Potter film and book is released. That will take up a week since I’ll be seeing the film with various people and then cutting off contact with the outside world until I’ve finished the book. Then there’s also the Simpsons movie, Pirates 3 and numerous other plans. Jam packed.

    The radio show has been going well, we’ve been on the air for two weeks now and people have given us nothing but compliments which is great. We had a few minor problems last week when CDs were skipping but we recovered well and I tried my hand at mixing minidisk and cd playout with the jingles and the listeners were impressed by how professional they sounded.

    I’m also running a competition on MuseCast thanks to Dave at IMP Books. We’re giving away some copies of Ben Myers’ new book Muse: Inside the Muscle Museum. I interviewed Ben a while back for MuseCast and the changes sounded encouraging so I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the review copy of the book.

    Other than that there’s not much to report. I’m considering a format change to Idle Talk due to the high and low periods of updates. I’m considering turning it into a webzine of sorts where we post updates monthly, as a sort of issue. It would mean we could definitely chase up deadlines and manage the staff easier as well as giving us more time to work on our studies. I still have to discuss it with the editors.

    Tags: , , , , | Comments (0)