Closed for business

I started keeping a blog in 2006. It seemed to be a good way of sharing things that interested me with the wider world. And, for the past eight years I've kept adding to it. But the blog has been overtaken by more immediate forms of social media now, and the various Vines, PInterests, Flickrs, Snapchats, Twitters, Facebooks etc. are what people visit these days. I don't get many visitors any more. It's a lot of work to keep this blog open when no one is reading it.

I've therefore decided to close up shop, maybe permanently, but certainly for the immediate future. It's been a fun thing to keep and, of course, the archive will remain.

You can find my original blog pages from 2006 to mid-2011 here.

And this blog carries it on up to the present day.

Thanks for visiting over the years.

Maybe I'll see you on some other social media platform soon.


Stevyn
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My Recent Appearance on QI

Now THIS was fun to do :)



That was my brief cameo in the Location, Location, Location episode of the recent Series L.

I do worry that my IMDB entry will now include 'Jason Manford's Toilet'.

Mind you, the BBC subtitles people did a good job:

Good old Steve Colwen!

Video copyright (c) 2014 BBC, QI Ltd and Talkback TV.

Z List Dead List

Comedian Iszi Lawrence's live Z List Dead List gigs are inspired.

The format is very simple; three or four people rock up to the stage and take it in turns to sing the praises of a real person from history that history has kind of forgotten. Then the audience votes for their favourite and the date of the gig becomes XXX Day in honour of the winner. I took part in one of the early shows and was delighted when my choice, the wildly eccentric Cornish vicar Robert Hawker, won on the night.

Well, now Iszi has started a podcast too. And I appeared on the first one. You can listen here. And you can hear all of them here or subscribe on iTunes.

The Useless Objects of Katerina Kamprani

Katerina Kamprani is an Athens-based architect whose design project, The Uncomfortable, intentionally evokes feelings of extreme discomfort and frustration. Described on Kamprani's Facebook page as 'a collection of deliberately inconvenient everyday objects with no meaningful purpose.'

It's suggested that 'Part of the discomfort comes from trying to imagine using these projects. It sheds some light on the connections between motor skill and the brain. Looking at these objects feels like an error message has been delivered to the nervous system: it creates the most delicious malaise and disquiet.'

Hmm. Not so sure about that. But I love the playful inventiveness of it.

Found here at APlus.

The Wildlife Landscape Sculptures of Wang Ruilin

This is beautiful work - Wang Ruilin's 'Dreams' series of sculptures show powerful animals carrying little worlds on their backs, a staple of many mythologies.

The sculpts, some life-sized (not the whales obviously) are all made of copper.

See more at his website here.