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Writing: 2006

  1. My year in email

    Looking at statistics generated by Eudora for my email usage.

  2. My top tunes of 2006

    A CD’s worth of my favourite music of 2006.

  3. End of the first term

    I feel like I owe an end of term post about the acting classes, which finished just over a week ago, so, a quick summary.

  4. Some of Leslie’s ambitions

    An email Leslie Harpold wrote in response to the question “What do you really want to do which is completely removed from your job?”

  5. Leslie Harpold

    Leslie has died and we’re all going to miss her so much.

  6. The fundamental journey

    Our large group presentation went surprisingly well. We’ve also been spending a lot of time in neutral masks working on representing a long journey.

  7. Quick Twitter

    I made a page that only displays the most recent posts from my Twitter friends, and you can use the code if you like.

  8. Working in large groups

    The frustrations of getting a large group of people working together efficiently.

  9. Paul Morley’s ‘Words and Music’

    Summary of what I liked and how it excited me.

  10. Creation groups

    Although last week’s creation group was frustrating, it all ended OK in Monday’s performance. Now we’ve got a more challenging task, as a single large group.

  11. The Time When updates

    Some newish updates to The Time When: timelines, tags and favourites.

  12. Panopticon

    A description of an application I’d like to see built that lets me keep up with what all my friends are doing in real time.

  13. Your single social network

    Wouldn’t it be good if we only had to define our social networks once, instead of repeating it for every single website?

  14. Not feeling it

    Getting more frustrated and annoyed with myself, and feeling a bit out of it.

  15. Masks, tension and being upside down

    Our first encounter with masks, the first three levels of tension, and my inability to do headstands and backward rolls.

  16. What percentage of restaurants fail after one year?

    Investigating the frequent claim that 90% of restaurants fail in the first year.

  17. Week two

    Any hope I had of maintaining a decent frequency of tediously detailed writing about my LISPA…

  18. Deference and diffidence

    In today’s improvisation class we had a task that was both minimal but also tricky and very…

  19. Forward rolls

    I haven’t done a forward roll for nearly twenty years, and couldn’t do it well then. I managed it, but only just.

  20. First two days

    The timetable, the students, realising that I’m going to be doing this every day for a while.

  21. A beginner’s guide to freelancing

    Around 8,000 words of my accumulated knowledge from life as a freelancer.

  22. Not available now, but in future…

    I’ve found work for now, but here’s what my availability’s going to be like until next summer.

  23. Phil for hire, now

    At the time of writing, due to a large corporation endlessly faffing, I’m free for work until college starts.

  24. Work in 2006

    For a bit of balance, forgetting the acting, here’s how I’ve been spending my work time this year so far.

  25. Final Lilia Litviak thoughts

    One last thing… well, three. There are three thoughts I wanted to write down that sprung from the _Lilia Litviak_ performances so here they are before I lose my notes…

  26. Lilia Litviak performances

    All of a sudden it’s over. Two performances, and that’s it. Thankfully the thing seemed to work and people enjoyed themselves.

  27. Lilia Litviak technical rehearsal

    The technical rehearsal was difficult. I’ve no idea how good the final performance will be.

  28. Lilia Litviak dress rehearsal

    The dress rehearsals went fairly well, and the inexpensive costumes look great. But we’ve only the technical rehearsal to go before the performance.

  29. Lilia Litviak run-throughs

    We were prepared for our first run-throughs to be pretty ropey, but they were far worse than we expected.

  30. Lilia Litviak rehearsals

    The process of putting the play together, creating it pretty much from scratch, and how difficult it can be with a very stylised play.

  31. Lilia Litviak workshops

    How we started work on turning the script into a play.

  32. A lick of paint

    I’ve added some colour to the site at last. And I wonder how much Internet Explorer’s brokenness has cost industry over the years.

  33. Server move autopsy

    Painful details of why and how I moved servers again.

  34. See me in a play

    I’m going to be in a play about Lilia Litviak, a female World War II Soviet fighter pilot.

  35. This is on the new server

    If you can read this, you’re looking at the site on the new server. Hopefully it’s no…

  36. Moving servers

    Rather than spend this sunny day without work sitting outside, I’m in the process of moving…

  37. Captionless exhibitions

    I’ve been getting frustrated by exhibitions that don’t have any descriptions for their exhibits.

  38. 40,000 RSS feeds

    We’ve added a load of RSS feeds to The Time When. Yes, nearly that many.

  39. Encore Theatre Magazine

    The weblog is back in fine form with lots of top-flight passionate ranting.

  40. HotWired demo site from 1995

    A demo version of the HotWired website from 1995.

  41. Wanted: A walking map of London for Palm OS

    The map application I used on my old Palm Vx doesn’t work on my new Treo. I miss its walking directions and can’t find a more modern replacement.

  42. Summer clown school

    I’ve done a week-long clowning course at the City Lit which was lots of fun and very difficult. Really useful for acting generally.

  43. The Time When

    A new site I’ve built for the BBC has just launched, aggregating peoples’ memories and news events through history.

  44. I’m going to drama school

    In a few months I’m going to start at LISPA (London International School of Performing Arts), pretty much full time. Blimey.

  45. My new Whit Stillman website

    I’ve just moved my page about the film director Whit Stillman to a new site, powered by WordPress, which I’m enjoying a lot.

  46. ‘True and False’ by David Mamet

    My notes on the book, in which Mamet rants against acting eduction, acting teachers, The Method… everything other than the actor getting on stage in front of an audience and delivering the author’s lines.

  47. Ningbar

    I did a smidgen of work on Ning.com’s new “Ningbar”. It has some very clever CSS and Javascript.

  48. Foundation course final essay

    The final essay I wrote about the course — what had worked for me and what hadn’t.

  49. Category Archives with MTMultiBlog

    How to get the Movable Type MTMultiBlog plugin displaying entries in category pages correctly.

  50. New York Review of Books, 27 April 2006

    A few quotes/statistics from a review of books on globalization for me to remember not to forget.

  51. The Collection performance

    After rehearsals over several weeks we finally performed our ten minute scene in front of an audience.

  52. The Collection dress rehearsal

    Our dress rehearsal went almost worryingly well.

  53. The Collection Rehearsals part 3

    Continuing with rehearsals. Lots of fruit malarkey and finally getting somewhere with my character.

  54. ‘Sanford Meisner on Acting’

    Notes on Meisner’s enjoyable and inspiring book.

  55. ‘Respect for Acting’ by Uta Hagen

    Notes on the book, which has been required reading for my Foundation acting course.

  56. More rehearsals

    Continuing rehearsals for our ‘The Collection’ scene, trying to work out my character.

  57. The Collection rehearsals

    I’m rehearsing a scene from Pinter’s ‘The Collection’. It’s going OK, but is proving difficult.

  58. London Review of Books, 20 April 2006

    Notes from this issue, including the cause of revolutions, modernism and Weegee.

  59. New York Review of Books, 9 February 2006

    Lots of quoting from a review of Jimmy Carter’s ‘Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis’. On the unintended consequences of anti-abortion, pro-life and pro-capital punishment policies.

  60. New York Review of Books, 12 January 2006

    Notes from this issue. A couple of quotes and a couple of links.

  61. Acting update

    Although last term’s acting classes weren’t very inspiring, I’m still just about enjoying enough to keep me excited.

  62. BBC Innovation Labs website

    I designed and built a new site for BBC Innovation Labs, and I’m pleased with it.

  63. Goodbye TrackBacks

    After receiving 24,144 requests for mt-tb.cgi I’m switching off TrackBacks on all my weblogs for good.

  64. My new site

    I’ve re-built my site. It’s taken way, way too long. Here are lots of details about what’s new and what I’ve done.

  65. Movable Type’s over-enthusiastic sanitisation

    Movable Type does something a little strange with its comment filtering and formatting, which took me a few days to figure out.

  66. Ugh

    I’ve been ill.

  67. Mask class

    While the Drama Foundation classes aren’t inspiring me this term, my enthusiasm is being kept alive by the surprisingly fun and challenging Mask class.

  68. 46,000 junk TrackBacks a week

    The number of junk TrackBacks received by my Movable Type installation has shot up over the past few weeks. Any idea why?

  69. A trip to the Falkland Islands

    My account of what the Falkland Islands are like. Briefly: remarkably pleasant. Sociable and surprisingly pretty with great wildlife.

  70. Buggy New Year

    An error on my part coincidentally stopped Haddock Blogs publishing while I was on holiday. Sorry.