Ali Bongo’s Book of Magic
When I was six, my grandparents bought me Ali Bongo's Book of Magic. Here it is:
It's the best magic book for children I've seen - hell, it compares well to many adult versions. Most magic books are dry, technical affairs - lists of instructions and often-cringeworthy patter - but Ali Bongo's is a delight.
It starts off simply, with scientific 'tricks' requiring no skill, before moving onto close-up effects using household1 objects. Then there are simple tricks to impress friends at parties, and classic effects like the cups and balls. The setups get more elaborate as the book progresses, and I had great fun building trick boxes and cardboard scenes, while nagging my parents to buy me sponges, handkerchiefs, ribbons and pom-poms, as I appropriated half their kitchenalia.
All the magical secrets are said to come from 'Pongolia', a wonderfully-realised land somewhere between 'the Middle and the Far East, surrounded by a range of magnetic mountains', and stories of this far-off land litter the book. Similarly scattered are cartoon introductions to famous magicians:
(secrets blurred out, as Mr Bongo would have wanted) as well as guides to stagecraft, costume, patter, and generally putting a coherent act together:
That kid is totally me.
I performed everything in the book. If I knew any children interested in magic - and, now I come to think of it, I do - I'd buy this book for them without hesitation. I can't think of a better introduction.
Ali Bongo was a stage magician in the 50s and 60s, but is more famous for his behind-the-scenes work. He was advisor to the Paul Daniels Magic Show in the 80s, and the David Nixon show before that. He designed countless effects: his tricks were always amongst the most quirky and elegant in the Davenports catalogue, and I'm sure I bought plenty. I haven't been active in the magic world for nearly ten years, but Ali Bongo still turned up from time to time. He was the inspiration for Jonathan Creek, and last year became President of the Magic Circle.
Ali Bongo died a few weeks ago. I'd love to have met him. RIP Mr Bongo - you made a big difference to me.
- genuinely household too - other magic books have been known to push this definition somewhat [↩]
Red rag. Bull.
In Friday's photoshop class we were tasked with manipulating a supplied image in 'ethical' and 'unethical' ways. We were then given a picture of the Pope.
There wasn't time for anything unethical.
High jump
The Grand Canyon Skywalk is a glass-floored platform over a 1km drop. Stepping out apparently takes some nerve. I'm ok with heights, and would possibly have more trouble with the $80 fee, but survival instincts might be hard to override at those distances, and I'd undoubtedly tread carefully. So a jumping picture is pretty ballsy:
Kudos.
WALL-E did it, 35 minutes ago
See, you shouldn't mess with WALL-E. It's like the Harry Potter parodies where they take drugs and sleep with each other - it's just charmophobic sneer masquerading as comedy. But, just this once, I'll let them off:
Humanism on Little Atoms
Anyone wondering about this 'humanism' thing I've been wittering about lately could do worse than listen to the BHA's Andrew Copson on the (always excellent) Little Atoms podcast. He gives as eloquent an explanation as I've heard, and does a fine job of defending its principles.
The BHA takes out the Daily Mail
Friday: The Daily Mail publish an article essentially describing the British Humanist Association as a bunch of Christian-hating nutbags.
Today: The BHA publish a line-by-line refutation, demonstrating how the DM is wrong about almost everything. It's pretty funny.
Erik Johansson’s photoshop skills
Erik Johansson's reality/photoshop mashups transcend impressive into annoyingly good and finally depressingly so. Worth a look. The spilt coffee is my favourite.
Three days
Hello! I am still here. Life is rushy rushy at the moment, and full of ups and downs. I suspect I've forgotten more blog posts than I've written lately. I've been particularly busy over the last few days, and this is the first chance I've had to sit down.
Thursday
I photographed the BHA's Daniel Dennett lecture. I helped them set up the hall, then quietly flitted in and out of fire exits during the talk itself. I also got to meet the Professor and a few other intellectual icons who were hanging around, which was excellent. I had my Professional Photographer hat on for the evening - not that I am in any way a Professional Photographer; this was just the attitude I was trying to adopt - but inside I was poking my brain to make sure it was really happening. The lecture photos have yet to be processed as I literally haven't stopped since that evening, but I'll link to them when they're online. I'm also currently photographing as many humanists as possible for a uni documentary project, and I managed to get a few shots for that too. I was a happy person on Thursday night! I'm having a ball doing this kind of work, even if I can't quite believe it.
Friday
I was at university, which was normal, but had a fairly exciting public contretemps with the head of my course, which wasn't. My class was having a critical assessment, where everybody lays out their work-in-progress around the room. We then form groups, each of which is assigned a few projects to analyse and feed back on in front of the class. My group looked at one project about abandoned toys, and we noticed that of the four images, three had the toys a similar size, while the fourth was a bit larger. We mentioned this in our analysis, and it started to niggle at me. Just because there's a pattern doesn't mean it needs to be maintained, after all. Then another group made a similar comment on a project involving photos of a park - of the five images, two sets of two had some formal similarities, and the fifth 'didn't fit in'. I didn't think this was all that important - documentary images are surely more about the topic than the aesthetics - although I didn't say anything.
Then came time for feedback on my project. My 'happy humanist' pictures are mostly headshots, but two images stand out as being quite different: a couple of people posed in a happy way, and are full body shots. The group mentioned this - not as a criticism, just a comment - and when I had a chance to speak I remarked on it. The conversation is eroded through overaccess, but - with the aforementioned pattern-critiques in my head - I must have said something like 'yep, those two are different, but I don't care much about that as the concept is more important'. My teacher leapt on me: "you should care". I can't remember the details, but it degraded from there. She was clearly very bothered about my 'not caring', and in hindsight I suspect she thought it was a premise, rather than a conclusion - that I was just dismissing the criticism, rather than considering it. But at the time I was a bit lost. I questioned why it mattered that two images were different, given my overall concept, and was told it mattered because of 'consistency' and 'if I want people to take me seriously'. I did not react well to this last comment (it's a conclusion, not a reason, and not a very good conclusion). Then I, not wanting to say 'I don't care' again, must have said 'I'm not bothered about...' which went down even worse. I was being told off for the first time in years, wasn't entirely sure why, but I was bloody well not going down without a fight. It's just a shame it wasn't over something actually important. My classmates did their best to pull me out of the fire, but it was pretty awkward for a while, and it's not something I can remember happening before.
I apologised afterwards in case she'd thought I was being rude or deliberately antagonistic1, but we certainly didn't resolve anything. I think it's great she cares that I don't care, but it's a shame she couldn't see that I do! I was pretty bothered about it for a few hours, mostly because I felt I'd embarrassed myself in front of everyone. A few very nice emails from classmates have reassured me, though - I'm not sure they necessarily agree with my point (hell, I'm not sure I necessarily agree with my point) but they could see what I meant, and didn't think it warranted the attack it got. So that's good.
It's a weird event. I don't argue with people much, let alone authority figures, in public. I might ask awkward questions, but I'll back off pretty quickly if I'm not completely sure of myself. I must be getting more confident about that kind of thing.
Today
Tonight I ran the music at a dance evening. I've done it before, and that time I spent a week worrying. This time I was much more relaxed: I knew it had been fine last time, so after a few hours setting up an iTunes playlist I didn't give it much thought. The evening went ok, but I got a bit grumpy at my inability to use a microphone. I have to announce which dance the next song conforms to, and I just could not do it: no matter what I did, I couldn't make my announcements understood. I tried raising the volume, speaking across the mic, different tones of voice - everything I could think of, and I still got a steady stream of confused looks whenever I said anything. Maybe my voice just isn't suited to amplification - who knows - but this felt like a total failure at the time, and I wasn't Mr Happy Chappy McGurk at the end of the evening. I'm a bit better now, but it's still annoying. Next time I'll just buy a scrolling LED sign.
- I wasn't either - I felt like I'd made myself look silly, but I wasn't worried I'd gone too far [↩]
Tuesday braindump
The New York Times has a surprisingly clear essay on why jokes are hard to remember:
Really great jokes, on the other hand, punch the lights out of do re mi. They work not by conforming to pattern recognition routines but by subverting them. “Jokes work because they deal with the unexpected, starting in one direction and then veering off into another,” said Robert Provine, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the author of “Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.” “What makes a joke successful are the same properties that can make it difficult to remember.”
People sometimes ask why I despise the tabloids so much. Here's the reason: the front page of the Scottish Sunday Express this weekend exposed the shocking behaviour of the now-18-year-old survivors of the Dunblane massacre. It's an utterly despicable piece of journalism, and Andrew lays into it appropriately:
They, or at least some of them, are drinking and fighting and having sex and then posting about it on social networking sites. That all sounds pretty reasonable to me, and it’s actually good to see that the shooting hasn’t totally wrecked their abilities to live normal lives. But the Express seems to think that that’s somehow Not On. No, these people are Dunblane Survivors, and that means they have to spend their every waking second Honouring The Memory Of Their Fallen Classmates. If they do anything else, like have fun or something, they’re Shaming Their Fallen Classmates.
The Sci-Fi channel is aiming to shake its 'geeky image', by changing its name to 'SyFy'. Apparently they a) only have the 1980's definition of 'geek' and b) have no concept of the people who watch their shows. Patronising cretins:
During its fourth-quarter earnings call, parent General Electric said Sci Fi racked up a double-digit increase in operating earnings despite the beginnings of the recession.
Nevertheless, there was always a sneaking suspicion that the name was holding the network back.
“The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular,” said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network.
qwghlm has a thoughtful piece on the reasons Twitter has taken off a few years after the rise of blogging, and why 140-character-brevity isn't indicative of short attention spans:
Watchmen (and the other examples Johnson cites and expounds upon inEverything Bad Is Good For You) show that when consuming media, depth and brevity are not totally irreconcilable; you can concentrate on something difficult and concrete as well as enjoying content 140 characters at a time. And yet Twitter often gets demonised as a posterboy for the inanity of Web 2.0. Perhaps that’s no surprise, with its chief characteristics of brevity and ephemerality, the exact opposite of how we have consumed media in the past. Given that “value” of old media was often measured on its length (writers being paid by the word) or durability (all those books and records on your shelves), what’s produced in new media is often characterised as comparatively worthless, particularly by those who cut their teeth in the old media.
Finally, the iPhone 3.0 software was announced today. Lots of cool stuff: picture-messaging, cut-and-paste, control of bluetooth devices (great if you have one of those house-controlling boxes) and turn-by-turn navigation, meaning I can finally leave the sat-nav at home. It's seems to be just me left disappointed by the lack of video recording (maybe I've missed something). After seeing the Nokia N95's impressively high-quality recording of Thriller last week, I was really hoping it'd come to the iPhone. Hopefully they're leaving that for a hardware announcement this summer...
Darwin newsletter photo
I have a photo in the latest edition of the Natural History Museum's Darwin 200 newsletter. A credit, too. Yay!
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
