Room with a view
Upon awaking this morning, the view from our bedroom was this:
Would have been lovely had I not had to drive to work in Eastbourne in it, and had Sarah’s trains to uni not been cancelled.
robpannell.com
photography • videography • web design
New toy
My plan was to save up and buy myself an iMac and some pro recording equipment so that I have the basics for making myself high quality videos, which after all is the point of my newly registered business.
The first part of my plan went without a hitch. I saved my money and stowed it away safely. Phase two however has not gone so smoothly. Apple announced a while back that they were to release a new improved wonderful awe inspiring operating system. Knowing that if I bought a mac at this stage I would have to spend near £100 upgrading when this new system was released, I decided to hold off, stick the cash in an account and wait. since then apple have delayed release and left me pining for my potential iMac.
Last week I was asked to do another video for a previous client. Whenever I’ve needed to record a voiceover I borrowed equiptment from a colleague. He’s only gone and broken it!
So I have been forced (it took seconds to convince myself) to buy the recording gear for myself and hook it up to my PC until apple get their act together.
This of course means that I now have the necesarry gear to begin my project of reauthoring the audio for the Trumptonshire kids programmes as previously blogged about. YAY. time to get writing scripts! After I’ve made the video I’m being paid for of course…
My blogs seem to have been very boring of late. They’ll get better I promise!
P.s. apologies for the lack of entries over the last 8 days. Life got in the way.
Lunch time
During a normal working day, I take half an hour for lunch, during which I sit in the staff kitchen and either read, watch a video on my mobile phone, watch whatever someone else has chosen on the TV or join in the many conversations that occur.
Today I entered in the middle of a conversation about how old people are when they have their first child. Thrilling stuff I’m sure you’ll agree, so I contributed a couple of points and then got stuck in to ‘The Baltic With Bob’. It wasn’t long until the conversation had turned to my manager’s engagement party and how one woman in particular has ‘a thing’ for me, or more accurately, every bloke in our company, or even more accurately, every man on the planet. The next time I ventured away from the safety of my literary journey I found the conversation had drifted on into ‘my favorite motorway service station’. Shortly after this Neighbours started on the telly and so silence fell upon those in the room. It’s odd the things people talk about and how conversations develop.
Most of you will have heard that Apple are releasing the ‘iPhone‘ this year. Well, I’ve seen a couple of spoof videos about it that are very funny, unfortunately my favorite has been taken off youtube due to copyright infringement, but here a pretty good one that’s quite funny anyway.
Birth Control
This evening I had a conversation with my best mate in Southampton, which I really enjoyed. I miss having a mate around that I really really really know.
The main points of the conversation were that we don’t see enough of each other, my car needs fixing, he has a Christening to go to and that Birth Control isn’t. Seriously, it’s not. Think about it, an epidural is birth control. The pill and condoms are conception control, hence the name contraceptives. We felt quite strongly about this and decided we were going to write a letter. Only we didn’t know who we’d send it to. So I said I’d publish it online and hopefully the person in charge of these things would happen to read it.
So there we are. Job done.
Surf’s Up
It came!
My new board is here and I’m bursting to go and use it now. I doubt I’ll get the chance for a little while yet though. I know that none of you care that I have a new bodyboard, and I know that none of you particularly want to see any photos of it. But nevertheless I’m going to put some in this blog entry. If I can’t use the board yet I’m at least going to talk about it. So there. Oh yes, I got a bag with it too.
And now here’s a man doing crazy things that I want to be able to do.
And now on to the sad news. The Big Story has been cancelled this month. And so has the following one, and the following one…
The plug has been well and truly pulled while the church reassesses its approach to things etc. I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I think it’s very likely that the big story won’t be happening again, nor Sublime, the youth church that hosts it. I’m really going to miss it. I’ve been working on Big Storys for about 7 years I think. It’s been a really major part of my life, particularly my church life, and I’m probably going to lose contact with a lot of really good people who I really don’t want to lose contact with.
So here’s a tribute to the big story. It’s one of the promo videos I made that played on the big screens to kick off the event. All memories now…
Normal service resumed
Sorry to anyone who’s PC may have been confused upon visiting my blog or website this morning. Somehow a few pages on the site were compromised and consequently the site was disrupted somewhat.
All is well again now and passwords etc have been changed so hopefully a recurrance is unlikely.
I started work again this week after my 17 day break over the Christmas period. Consequently I am in a state of semi depression. It’s dark when I go to work, dark when I leave work, I have huge backlogs that I’m told will last us for around 3-5 years, and although I have 16 days holiday to use before October, I haven’t actually got any booked yet, so I haven’t much to look forward too at the moment.
On the up-side, I ordered some new Bodyboarding gear last night which is all very cool. So that is one thing I have to look forward too, and hopefully it will make a lot of the year much more fun. You never know it might even help me get healthy!
When the cats away
Sarah is away for a few days at a conference in reading. It’s something sciency that relates to her PhD (if this were an audio blog, you would now be hearing the wooshing noise as Sciency stuff goes flying over my head). This of course means it’s time for a lads night so yesterday I got in the budweiser, dusted off the poker chips and sat back watching ‘The Blue Planet‘ (which is one of the most awesome documentarys ever – but thats for another time) until everyone arrived. It was a great night. Although some of the regulars couldn’t make it – Neil & Matt, we had some new faces in.
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‘Deck Hands’ – Aka Rob P. A self applied title as he went out fairly early and did most of the dealing. I wanted to call him ‘The Vicar’ because at one point after going out, he started reading my bible while we continued our sinful game! 
The Flusher’ – Aka Phil N. He caught everyone out for a lot of chips with a flush. At one point he had so much cash that he was (affectionatley) referred to as ‘The Flushing Banker’ Phil won the game after several tie breaking rounds of one card high draw. 
The Riffler – Aka (the other) Rob P – aka me. So titled because I can riffle shuffle and constantly complained how hard it was to do with Pete’s brand new stack of Casino Royale playing cards. 
‘Bud Eye Pete’ – aka Pete T. Look at his photo to decipher this cryptic name. Pete managed to balance 13 poker chips on his elbow and then catch them . here’s a demonstration:
‘Sarcasto’ – Aka Stephen P or Stevie. Every word that leaves his mouth has a sarcastic twist on it. It’s a skill that takes minutes of practice. In answer to a question asked in song by many a youth and football fan – Sarcasto ate all the pies. I watched him do it.
Stephen – aka Stephen B. I know, inspired isn’t it! Stephen is the ‘safe’ player amongst the group. He usually tends to have a sizeable pile of winnings for the majority of the evening, However last night he was 3rd to go out. We didn’t steal any of his chips while he wasn’t looking this time. After the game people drifted off home and only The Flusher, Stephen and I were left, so we started to watch the x-files movie. I hadn’t seen it before, and it was surprisingly good. Phil left about half way through and then Stephen went home once it ended. I then watched telly for a whiole and finally got to sleep at around 4.30 this morning.
Sarah isn’t going to be home til around 7pm tomorrow I think, so I still have a fair amount of time to mooch about and do relatively little.
Right. Time for breakfast (it’s now 14:28)
Rob Pannell Visual Productions
It’s a new year and a new start for lots of things. One of which being my business. Whilst still an amateur, last year I earnt enough money on the side doing videography and related jobs that it was worth telling the tax man about, so just before Christmas I sent off my form to register ‘Rob Pannell Visual Productions’ with the tax office.
I figured if I’m going to be official I should do something about getting my works online. So I’ve updated robpannell.com with some better info and uploaded a few of my videos to youtube so that I can embed them into my videography page as examples of my work (which hopefully will improve in the near future).
One thing I did back in 2004 with the aid of another cameraman (in the shape of my good friend Nick Mack) was to edit my own wedding video. It seems like the only thing currently in my collection that any of you might be interested in, so here it is if you fancy a peek:
