I made my friend Matt a birthday card the other day, it had a little comic strip on the front. It made me realise I often write little comic strips for birthday cards and at work and for fun sometimes.

I started doing it a little while ago after hanging out with some friends who had a comic collective called London Underground Comics (which I don’t think exists anymore the co-founders seem to be Modern Monstrosity now) and enjoyed everyone I met there having their little characters and story lines and their passion for the medium, so I started doodling every now and then.

I have no real talent for drawing, but I quite enjoy writing these little comic strips, especially little three-cell shorts, so I thought I might as well start recording them for posterity. I think I may have put some up here before that I once drew for Nedry‘s tour blog, the strip I made for Matt’s birthday was inspired by those.

Anyhow, I’ve made a new page in the above menu for them, Occasional Comics, where I can add some blurred mobile phone pictures of any I write in the future just in case anyone else out there might enjoy looking at them.

65daysofstatic will also be releasing their recent film re-score for 70s sci-fi epic Silent Running next month which I am sad to say I missed whilst they were playing it live this summer. With artwork like this from Version Industries though, I don’t think it’s one to miss out on.

The original 'RecBike', 2010

This week I was recording on set with Brendan McNamee at Blunt Films for a film supported by Brooks, so travelling by bike was the only logical choice. My van is also broken, but I think that had I had the choice, I would have gone by bike anyway.

The set-bike I use now is my Surly Cross x Check with Shimano Alfine hub gears and various other wonderful and carefully chosen parts that I can ramble on about all day if prompted, but essentially it’s a very strong bike that I have designed (with the help of the wonderful work of Brixton Cycles) to be quick, whilst supporting a great deal of weight. Last year I also used a vintage Raleigh ‘Bakers’ bike’ that I was restoring for Time Based Arts, with a fetching wicker basket on the front. It was a romantic notion but it doesn’t have the storage for a more substantial job.

The current 'D-Loc', 2011

The equipment I required for this shoot this week piled onto the back of the bike easily in two panniers and a Peli 1560. The weight was a great deal more than the recommended maximum for the rack, and I imagine the rims as well, but I have used these specific parts a lot in the past and have a more realistic idea of what I can throw onto them now, which is always impressive. It makes the front of the bike quite twitchy and difficult to control so ideally I’d like to spread the weight to the forks as well, but all with time.

Using this format, I managed to get onto the bike…

• A Sennheiser MKH60/MKH30 mid/side combo and an MKH416, both in baskets in the Peli case.
• A Sound Devices 744T and stereo pre-amp cabled up in a Petrol location bag with 3 Sony batteries and 2 MP1 batteries and a Kryptonite D-lock in one pannier.
• Various spare cabling and cards, tools, appropriate clothing, a 17″ Macbook Pro, an Alesis pocket recorder, clip mics and various other miscellaneous gubbins in the other pannier.
• A boom pole and a mic stand on the rack and a bottle of Lucozade in the bottle holder.

Unloading on set

En route to the set I managed to navigate across South London and climb to the top of Sydenham Hill with the greatest of ease (I may have exaggerated the level of ease, but I did get there eventually). The main advantage of the bicycle (in general) is it’s ability to navigate urban environments and transport the gear closer to the location for unloading and setup. At the end of last year I recorded a VO for a film that required me to meet the actor at his house. He was only 10, and his schedule permitted me 20 minutes between homework and dinner time at around 6pm. It is no mean feat to get this kind of equipment from central to suburban London at this time of day and it was executed with such ease on the bike.

I have been worried that once on location, the bike becomes rather cumbersome and something of an extra worry. But I have found that I can quickly unload and lock the bike up where required, carrying the equipment, or in some cases, I can use the bike as a centre of operations, using the Peli as a large table-like surface for working on the laptop or arranging and rigging equipment. It also proves a quick run-around and has been used for nipping down the road to get missing cabling by other members of the crew as well.

Emmet showing off

I certainly need to try and spread the weight across the length of the bike to improve stability when fully-loaded, but I see the bicycle as a realistic alternative to vans and cars for transporting equipment and working on location in urban areas where there’s an advantage to being mobile. I have ideas for making the equipment more secure in an accident (that mainly involves  loads more Peli cases) and I think there could be some quick adaptions to the the bike for specific jobs under varying circumstances.

In a wider sense though, as technology gets smaller, I see no reason why the bicycle couldn’t be utilised more and more for other location media applications, perhaps for camera work or even OB. The mobility of the bicycle presents an advantage when recording, filming or broadcast equipment needs to be in a location where vehicles just can’t get through quick enough, or through at all.

For the time being I’m just going to potter around to jobs known as that sound recordist who is a little eccentric about his bike.

Alginate setting.

Last week my housemates Emile and Kim created a golden aubergine for their friend as a present. How cool is that! I think it’s worth writing about in case anyone else wants to make golden fruit of vegetables as a present for their friends.

Resin Pouring

Emile stuck the aubergine on a skewer and put it in a jug, filling it with a quick-setting alginate. When it is dry it resembles silicone and is squashy and rubbery. He then sliced it in half to remove the aubergine, and cut a little hole in the top before replacing it in the jug. The alginate will not stick to anything at all, so we ate the aubergine for dinner, no waste.

He then mixed up the two parts of a quick-setting resin and very quickly poured it into the newly formed mould. It sets pretty fast once it’s going so there was no time to waste, and it turns into plastic when it’s dry so you don’t want to spill it anywhere.

Bare resin aubergine.

It took a little while to dry. Once it was done, there was a stump where the hole in the mould had been which needed cutting off, and there was  a little bit of sanding and touching up to do around the seams.

Finally Kim (aka Queen Midas) covered it in gold leaf. I have no idea how she did this as she did while I wasn’t there. She seems to be a bit of a pro at gold-leafing though, apparently she went through a phase of plastering everything she owned in gold leaf. She still has a golden boom-box in the house.

Et voila. One golden aubergine. I for one would have been over-joyed to receive such a present. You can safely use this as a hint for my next birthday.

Anyway, it’s back to work now, got to get winter over and done with. I’ll sign off with a link to Nedry’s new Apples and Pears single which is now available. Handmade with three remixes by Sideshow (aka Fink), Ambeson, and everyones favourite Leeds boys, Worried About Satan. Get them while they’re hot. You can also buy the tracks as downloads from Boomkat.

Oh, and there’s some photos I took here…

The future of the Velodrome is currently under threat. A number of factors are leading to the site struggling to find the funding it needs to maintain the deteriorating structures and facilities and no doubt the impending completion of the venue for the upcoming 2012 Olympic track racing is not helping the case.

As a member of the group of cyclists who call Herne Hill their own, I will be attending the public meeting on the 6th of October to hear in more detail the plight we are facing and perhaps find a way to contribute to the solution. I am very confident given the strength and size of the community that the future of Herne Hill can be secured but if you have any interest in cycling, track racing or would like to have an interest in it, now’s a good time. You can come down to the meeting, come down on a Saturday to get involved or just show an interest on the link below.

Herne Hill is a wonderful place and will stand for another 100 years given a chance. Register your interest in the campaign at http://www.savethevelodrome.com and check out the normal website at http://www.hernehillvelodrome.com.

After a bit of a summer of frolicking about the place I am settling back into the more mundane tasks of life and returning to the blog. I’m trying to find the little bits of fun that break up the monotonous boredom involved with having a career and making money and rubbish stuff like that.

One of those things will be one of my favourite times of year, the Bicycle Film Festival’s annual visit to London! If you don’t like bikes and stuff you should still check it out as there is always some good films that are worth watching regardless of the bicycle related orientation…

You should probably be specifically interested in two films by Brendan McNamee…

12 Miles of Style (as part of the screening of ‘Riding the Long White Cloud’)

and

We’ve Got It On Tape (as part of ‘Urban Bike Shorts’)

… the latter of which is based around music written by Alex Myers and myself.

I’m in Italy now touring with Nedry. Those links again…

http://nedrymakesmusic.blogspot.com
http://www.thelineofbestfit.com

http://nedrymakesmusic.blogspot.com
http://www.thelineofbestfit.com

We’ll be away until June. Check them out!