This already feels like a year ago. Incredible.

Jog On

If you're feeling inspired, here's the mix I made for myself to soundtrack my shorter training runs. I saved it for the last 10K of the Marathon, but actually found that by then neither music, nor adrenaline, nor gels, nor spiritual enlightenment, was ever going to help me go any faster.

♫ 10KMIX (DOWNLOAD)

Fatlip - What's Up Fatlip?/Today's Your Day
Devin the Dude - What A Job
Devo - Whip It
Bloc Party - The Prayer (Does It Offend You, Yeah? Mix)
Feist - My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Mix)
Caribou - Sundialing
Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Phoenix - North
Blur - Sing
Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
Vampire Weekend - Walcott
Hot Chip - Out At The Pictures
Graham Coxon - Freakin' Out
Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm
QOTSA - You Think I Aint Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire
(Warmdown Bonus Track)

ENJOY!

Meine beine sind gefickt!

A massive, heartfelt thank you to everyone who sponsored myself, Dom and Harriet, aka Team G.B. this weekend.

Despite an unabated rainfall, anxiety-fuelled insomnia, a ludicrously early wake-up time, blisters, chaffing, bowel-turmoil and not to mention the stupid matter of 26 miles between the start and the finish, I managed to get round in 4:09:58.

More importantly, we managed to raise over £4,000 for the Gideon Baws Memorial Fund, which is brilliant and makes it all worthwhile. Our legs might not be happy, but we are. I hope we did Gideon proud.

Very special thanks to the Berlin support team, who came out with a hand painted banner to cheer us on in the cold rain. Thanks also to our great friends at RunDemCrew who enthusiastically eased the task of 18 weeks of training. I doubt very much we could have done it without them.

(the smiles pictured are lies)

My shins

Long time since I posted. Been way too distracted with work, offspring and mortgage applications to be 'socially interacting.' Screw that!

And any scraps of free time have been dedicated to a kamikaze mission: a week Sunday I'm off to Germany with my good friends Harriet and Dom to run the Berlin Marathon. I never thought I'd be able to run a marathon and with 10 days to go I'm still to be convinced.

So far we've been training for 17 weeks. One word: Fucking Relentless. I must say that the canal-ways of Hackney, while occasionally stunning and always fascinating, have become unimaginably tedious. When we hit the starting line we'll have covered 430 miles in preparation.

I've got shin-splints, scabs on my nipples, a missing toenail and ankles that creak like a crap pirate ship. But it's all for a great cause; while thousands of gym-dorks run around half-heartedly collecting money for arbitrary charities, we really mean it, man. We're raising money for the Gideon Baws Memorial Fund.

We've joyfully smashed our target already, but if you feel inclined to contribute anything to a cause that is, needless to say, very dear to our hearts, then please do. HERE

Thank you KX

For Ana

Sorry we missed your birthday. Here's a belated gift.

♫ Nappytime 2 Mix (DOWNLOAD)

The XX - Hot Like Fire (Aaliyah cover)
Max Richter - Lullaby From The Westcoast Sleepers
Pedro - Assembled By 33
Memory Tapes - Swimming Field
High Places - From Stardust
Nosaj Thing - Quest
Aphex Twin - Alberto Balsam
Caribou - Sinuses
Worrytrain - Hospitalized
Dakota Suite - The End Of Trying Part Iii (Hannu.mp3
Cocteau Twins - Cherry-Coloured Funk (Seefeel Mix)
Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)
Johann Johannsson - The Flat
Zbigniew Preisner - Meditation
Ólafur Arnalds - 0952


kx

Shynola update #2

Here's a sneaky teaser of what we've been slaving over. Finished this week. Fun fun project and very happy with the way it came out. In your cinema 13th Aug. I urge you to see it.

Shynola update #1

This blog hasn't had a look in recently. Up to our armpits in work is the cause, plus hours and hours of training. More on which later. Very happy to announce that a few weeks ago the shackles were removed from our computers and we were allowed to go outside to collect our reward: a fine D&AD 'pencil' for our Coldplay video. The D&AD's are a hard bitch to please, so it actually felt like we had earned something. Jimmy Carr presented and died on his arse. Here's my review in a facial expression.

Melt Down Mix

♫ Melt Down Mix

Parsley Sound - Stevie
The Flaming Lips - Borderline
Pictureplane - Goth Star
Gold Panda - Quitter's Raga
Miwon - Darting Ropes
July Skies - Corinivm
Gang Gang Dance - Dust
Four Tet - She Just Likes To Fight
Akiko Kiyama / Karel Fialka - Misida Monarchy / The Things I Saw
Matias Aguayo - Rollerskate
Caribou - Jamelia
F.S.K. - My Funny Valentine
A-ha vs Songsmith - Take On Me

For Saul

First ever mix for my boy. He loves to dance for as long as mum or dad's back will take it.*

♫ Saul Loves Dancing

* - not long.

First attempt

First attempt at using Painter. I have no idea what I'm doing, let alone what any of the F-keys do. Picking up a brush would be one hundred times easier, but would have a fatal lack of undo.

El Secreto

Photo by Draken

Congratulations to Juan José Campanella and the brilliant El Secreto de sus Ojos, which won Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. I saw this film a few months back and it really stayed with me. I've been urging my friends to see it ever since. It has an unforgettable sequence in the middle. Not sure it is better than Das weisse Band or Un Prophète, but neither of those films need the publicity El Secreto will now get. The lead, Ricardo Darín, stars in Nueve Reinas, which is good fun and also worth checking out.

Been waylaid in scriptwriting to do any drawing, but now we're done (!!!), I'll make an effort. Any spare time I've had recently has been spent doing this:



10 miles in 01:37:28.

It felt A LOT longer.

Avatarded

Feel cheated? Bitter that you were cajoled into contributing to Avatar's repugnant box-office takings? Well, put those glasses, which you numbly clutched as you staggered out of the theatre, to better use: chopping onions!
It's in proper old-school 3D, costs less, takes up far less of your time and has a better story. For the full experience add your own voice-over of unnecessary exposition as you chop:

"Chopping the onion's cells creates propanethiol-S-oxide-ium. This wafts upwards, mixing with the water in your eyes to form sulfuric acid, which burns and causes tears."

Yeah, OK - but what's for dinner?

After three hundred yards, exterminate.

I've spent the week writhing in bed with an astonishingly painful ear infection. If you've been thinking about getting an ear infection - DON'T. They're all hype. It has however, given me time to write a grumpy rebuke to my favourite rag The Independent. I must admit, my ear felt a tiny bit better at the exact moment I hit 'send.'

"Friday's article, 'The age of the killer robot is no longer a sci-fi fantasy' (22/01/10) which forewarned of the emerging use of robots for war was so melodramatic, biased and inaccurate that I feel compelled to suggest that it may have been better written by an apathetic robot than by Mr. Johann Hari. Did he perhaps fall asleep at the keyboard while watching Transformers? (Can't blame him there.)

He supposes that a robot soldier would have to make difficult decisions, may make mistakes and in the wake of inevitable errors those responsible may dodge culpability. Sound familiar? While quick to brush off any advocacy as "techno-optism," his own assumptions show generous favour for human capability, a blind eye for history and a ludditian lack of imagination.

Mr. Hari suggests that a robot finds it "almost impossible to distinguish an apple from a tomato." In reality a robot could easily sift through a thousand fruit and sort them into type, weight and ripeness in a fraction of the time it would take a human. I suggest that Mr. Hari finds it almost impossible to distinguish his elbow from his tush.

It is wrong to presume that the role of a robot would be identical to anything familiar to us today - who can predict what a battle of the future might consist of? Please don't say James Cameron. I imagine that the reason behind developing robot technology is to perform tasks too dangerous or technically impossible for us mere mortals. And one would hope that their introduction would reduce unnecessary casualties rather than cause more. I wouldn't go so far to say that this is commendable, but these are highly sophisticated tools, that's all.

The creation of a robot will not provide new reasons for war, just a new tool to undertake them. The reasons for war - territory, religion, resources... - will remain the same. The fault lies in the willingness to deploy them, not in the machines themselves. A better headline may have been 'The age of the peaceful humans remains pure fantasy.'"

Richard Kenworthy, Hackney, London