Merry May

Last day of uni on the twenty-ninth, glad to have this semester (almost) done.

Work, work, work at the moment.

However, more interestingly, today is the last day of May, the last day of Autumn, and tomorrow the first day of Winter.

Fast run through of May, yeah?

Early May, Dad's birthday, lots of a very filling cake... Mmmm... Cake...

Moreover, Jesus Christ Superstar. Show was fantastic. So hot, it almost caught fire.

Middle of May, Tash's party, with a guest appearance from Jesus.

Also: JD's birthday; Pancake Parlour; Shopping in th

e city; Cancer (boo!); Crepes; Movie night.

Work every Wednesday (I have not been outside during daylight hours on a Wednesday this month).

In addition, I turned twenty. Fun things of note: Suit and associated items; items for my cuffs; subscription to a magazine I was planning to buy a subscription to next month; fan controller (see picture); enough money to fill my car up four times (or enough for two and a bit months); cards; hugs; and well wishes.

Plan for June: Work every Wednesday, and most Friday's. Study hard for exams, especially Math and Electrical Systems. Relax before another hectic semester. Visit friends all over Melbourne. Fiddle. Invent something. Increase my average sentence length...

Hope you've all had an awesome May 2009; now onto Winter!

Another post titled Fame!

And so Fame is over...

Upon reflection over the many years, school productions aren't just about the audience, aren't just about a great show, they're about taking out all the great moments we have when we bump in or out, have dinner together, or run the show.

And as usual, Fame has outdone itself with plenty of memories I will treasure forever... Confetti, a broken car, and the customary decorous conversation (yeah... RIGHT!).

I could explain how the show went, but if you don't know already then you should have bought tickets.

I could enlighten you as to the details of bump in and the construction of the set, or you could just look at the pictures and their descriptions down the bottom.

I could even inform you of our wonderfully exquisite conversation that we often had as we dined in fine restaurants, though I might not want that kind of conversation left in writing for the whole world to see.

So instead, just remember the days of hard work and hours of lost sleep shared by the crew:

Stewart Bell; Director.

Luke Hawley; Stage Manager.

Brett Pullyblank; Assistant Stage Manager, Locker mover.




Nic Frame; Assistant Stage Manager, Pain in the ass...

James Lescohier; I dunno, what did I do??

Jonathan Davies; Stage Crew.

Laura Matthews; Stage Crew.




Zabrina Batterham; Stage Crew, Locker mover.




Liam Burns; Stage Crew.




James Lee; Stage Crew.




James Panther; Venue Manager + more.

John Panetta; Lighting Design/Operator.

Steve Monkhouse; Lighting Queue person.

Alastair Bryant; Would-be Stage Crew.

Don Wallice; Sound, Music Industry teacher.

Matthew Sanderson; Wireless microphones/sound.
Linh Nguyen; Sound Queue Person.




Dale Krummins; Sound.

Steven Bowler; Pianist.




Kristy Kendall and Lauren Perfect; Dance and Choreography.




Clarabelle; King Cow...


There are plenty I have missed, let's not forget them too.

Thanks to all the cast too, though our jobs are usually easier without you!

We have lights!!!

So after two days of work (Thursday and today), we now have 95% of the lights hung from whatever they need to be hung from. Things like data and power are also 95% under control.

This is quite good, because it means we've done enough work to not really warrant the need to go into school again tomorrow (unless we want to work on the set).

Our IT guys, Pant and Rich, along with some useful but overall unneeded comments from the entire crew, managed to copy the entire pre-patched show to the GrandMA via a network connection. After which, they managed to install a wireless access point to the desk and connect a PDA to it and you can now control the entire show from anywhere within range, albeit on a very small screen and hard to do controls.

The pinspots, MAC 700's and Golden Scans were all hung from their various trusses today as the Cyber VL's had already been hung Thursday. The slight bow in the second truss indicated too much weight and we attached it from a third point to the roof.

The Miniscans also had to be hung from underneath the set which seemed a challenge as the bar we attached them to would rotate. My original idea was to attach clamps which sorta got ignored/not understood and wasn't used until we found that gaff wouldn't hold it quite right. In the end we used the clamps.

With a handful of extra pinspots we were a little stuck as to what to do with them, but I came up with the genius idea (if I do say so myself) of having them under the landing at the front of the stairs for a little bottom light (which I also remember Belly saying he'd like at one point) and it looks really sexy! Pant, however, will tell you it was his idea. We settled the matter by calling it "James' Idea." The whole design of the idea though involved me climbing under the set on the dirty dusty floor to put them in position and to address them correctly.

And so with the Parcans focused, the various moving lights in position, a couple of 2K's aimed at the stage and a hazer hidden away it seems like we're mostly up and going. I say mostly because we'll find work to do later, we always do.

Lunch today was also pretty fun. Luke took orders from everybody and we both went and bought it all from Hungry Jacks. I did the calculations and worked out the change... which mostly worked (everyone is out about 10c, some have more, some have less, I don't think you care though).

Make sure you take a look at the all of the photos at the bottom of the page that didn't make it onto this post. Also, there's a movie or two of people working.

A Fame Rehearsal

Well, I could tell you all about my day, or you could just read Luke's, Steve's or Jono's blogs...

I was there and did all that with them...

That's all I have to say really, I'm only writing this for my reference. Also this looks like my english homework to my mother...

Just a quick one...

Been playing round with the site and what not...

All my pictures/movies/music will be down the bottom probably, for you all to access as you want, and my link to Flickr and some people's blogs have been removed. Also, one new blog, Jonathan Davies (the roof bitch for Inheritance :P).

Also, expect more things for the site soon, I'm eighteen now, which means I can do a lot more with the internet (No Alastair, that's disgusting!).

Talk to you all soon!

Busy seems to be a running theme...

It's Friday afternoon, during my one and only spare during the day.

Homework to do, SAC's to study for and people to please.

I'm doing the latter, pleasing a bunch of you by doing numerous things:

• For those that have continually bitching and whining to me about the bus videos, they're removed, not even set to private. Reason: This weeks front page of the newsletter. They really seem like they're starting to get serious and I'd rather not get caught if I could avoid it. However they are not erased from memory and sit, encrypted, on a flash drive. I'm still considering allowing a few of you to have a copy. End of the year though (25th October) they'll all be up again, for the glory of us all!
• I've touched up a few of the photo's from Melbourne Girls Grammar Formal and plan to have them up very very soon (like tomorrow, when my upload limit for flickr gets reset). Assuming I get the time of course, I'm sure I'll manage.
• I've moved my computer outside on a permanent basis, so now can't be distracted by watching TV when I should actually be participating in the conversation we were having.
• I'm actually writing a post. Yup, I haven't done one for a while (I kept saying I'd do it tomorrow) so I figured I might as well keep you up to date.

And so what is keeping you up to date?

Well, since my last post I have been working hard to catch up with the school work I missed (still have an English SAC to catch up on, but that's tomorrow). Also, I have been to all the rehearsals for the school play, Inheritance (which has been fully discussed on Luke's, Matt's and Steve's blogs). I am the person that lifts the suicidal, depressed, farmers into the roof when they decide that life is just no longer worth living. Quite fun actually, who would have thought that killing people could be so much fun.

But I have only actually been at three of the four nights of the play so far, because I went to Izzy's formal on Friday 29th. My replacement, Martin Kinsey, did an excellent job of my work (the whole two cues) even if his feet were dragging on the ground. They did after all change the way it was going to be done (which is the reason why it didn't work that well).

Izzy's formal started with pre-drinks at somebodies place (You expect me to remember names! If it wasn't for my license I'd forget mine). Too many people there and it made it hard to talk to anyone (Not that I knew that many people to talk to, total of six). Izzy got a little tipsy after a few drinks, such is the price of not eating for most of the day (Actually, the same happened to me). The formal was fun, plenty of prizes (Compared to the three at ours), and music was good too (but the DJ had a Dale streak and played old music that no one wanted to hear). Food was fine, but I just didn't feel that hungry; but dessert was fun: chocolate ice-cream with chocolate moose and a choclate éclair. Ran though the rain to get changed (We could have walked, but the rain was evil, it also allowed us to get round the corners before the rest of our group). Taxi to afterparty, plenty of Pizza (Wasn't that right Christiaan? That's right, give Ian shit :P ). More dancing, but this time people had more alcohol in them. Didn't see Nick or Christiaan pulling off any smooth moves... disappointing... Went home, Izzy stayed the night (You know the story I think, if you don't then you need to ask me for it).

Pictures for the formal and after party are up HERE!

Also, last night of the play tonight, should be good, but we're all dog tired. This also means the after party for the play is on tonight. Late night perhaps? After my previous two? I'll be so tired tomorrow. Don't call me...

Ask me how my month was...

March has been a busy month, with lots of changes to my lifestyle...

On the first of March I moved house, leaving Dad back in Sandringham. The new house is much smaller and is nice and cosy.

However at the start of the month there was no gas, hence no hot water. The reason for having no gas was due to a major gas leak under the new house because the shower was not connected to any drainage, and the water would run over the gas pipe, which over time has rusted out.

And up to a couple of days ago, no phone line because Telstra was considerate enough to connect the wrong phone line to the house. Similarly there has been no Internet, so I wasn't able to update my blog, but now I have cable Internet (and a fancy new router) that keeps me sane for when there's nothing to do. I didn't have a computer anyway, cos something was seriously wrong with it; all it would do was to spin fans and that's it... no system ok beep... then it stopped even doing that... it just sat there... It now has a new power supply and runs fine, apart from only loading Windows every second time and being incredibly unstable. I only have to live with it till May though, when I get a new notebook!

In the middle of all this I'm involved with the year 10 play, Hating Alison Ashley, so my spare time created from my inability to be able to do anything at home has been used up there... Very very busy...

Oh and the Honours Society's Games of the World night was heaps of fun too. I have pictures of our School Captain dressed for the weekend!

Then I went to Sophie's 18th a couple of weeks ago (March 17th to be exact) and found myself a nice girl named Izzy (or did she find me?) and we invited each other to our formals (and mine was only two weeks away.. lucky I'm just so organised :p).

Wednesday the next week I got what felt like a stitch on my right side just under my chest, but it got worse and worse throughout the day. The pain spread up my body and into my right shoulder as well and it would hurt to breathe or move. Lucky the guys found it funny as I rolled on the ground in pain cos I didn't find it humorous at all (though I was laughing... which hurt). Panadol did nothing to ease the pain. 9 or 10pm that night (I wasn't really watching the time) I was taken to hospital. They prodded and poked me and at about 1am they decided I was in pain so issued me some Morphine (about bloody time). Couple of conclusion jumping moments later I was being taken into the operating theatre to remove my appendix.

Woke up the next day (about 4am) without any pain... feeling much better... and I didn't even have any Morphine in me yet! I was told that my appendix hadn't ruptured like they had suspected and it was completely normal, yet they removed it anyway. They asked if the pain from yesterday was still there and were confused with the outcome. Clinically, they had done nothing that would have an affect on the pain and its cure yet I was all better (apart from having a 10cm hole that never needed to be created). They told me I would most likely be in hospital for more than a week and I'd miss out on going to my formal, I was pretty sad about missing it. They ended up holding me in hospital for two days til Friday afternoon and I got a good experience of what boredom feels like, as I was unable to do anything in the hospital bed... Soooooo BORING!!! Had some visitors though which made my days really interesting, you have no idea how much more interesting my day would become when there was someone to talk to. No idea at all. Thanks to Martin, Alastair, Nick and Amelia for visits. A double thanks to Izzy for two visits. And another thanks to Simon for an attempted visit and a big bar of chocolate.

After a quick chat with the doctor I was allowed to go home. Dr Dyer told me I would be allowed to go to the formal, but I had to take it easy and no dancing. She suggested not too much drinking because throwing up would put me back in hospital. Also, not allowed to be sitting down for any great periods of time which eliminated me from heading over to South Australia these holidays (I'd be leaving now otherwise). Finally, I had to take it easy for the next three months and I wasn't allowed to do any heavy lifting for one to three months, which means I won't be able to help much for the next school play, Inheritance, and I'd miss out on the first half of the hockey season. I'm annoyed but thankful it ain't worse (like if they had went looking for what the problem was). Missed out on a week and a half of school, now have heaps of homework to catch up on.

Izzy helped me pick out a shirt and tie for the formal (Thanks for that, it turned out perfect). I was late to the before party at Amelia's but it was still fun, mostly photo's and talking which was a comfortable way to start the night. The formal itself was a good night, with lower than average food and quality music that started to head the wrong direction towards the end. Plenty of photos taken, I'll post a link when I finish uploading them to Flickr (There's another email address I've acquired in my travels, starting to get frustrating all these addresses). After party at Alastair's was excellent too; poker night worked well until Jess turned up and got distracting. Heaps of fun being dressed up playing poker and I had a very sexy partner helping me play.

The formal itself wasn't worth $140 but the whole night from start to finish definitely was, I had heaps of fun with everybody, especially Izzy.

Yesterday (Sunday 1st) I went to the Flower and Garden show with Izzy and that was a nice relaxing day out. Oh and flowers don't need water to live... nah...

Thanks all for keeping me alive (almost) during March, just hope next March ain't like it.

EDIT: Formal photo's uploaded - higher resolution pics available, send me a message. Anything with a _1 at the end has been edited and is at a lower quality. Again, just ask for the original if you want it.