Category: Notes

There were new contracts. There was a wedding. There was stolen oil. There was a 30th birthday. There was a trip to France. There was a short film made. There was a whole lot of theatre produced. There was a laptop, camera and iPad stolen. There was a laptop and camera replaced. There was the Arts Festival. There was the Fringe Festival. There was Galway, first for theatre, then the stag. There was catching up with friends over dinner. There were new restaurants. There were no penalty points, accidents, or incidents on the road. There wasn’t enough cycling. There was a wedding planned. There was a new band. There were great gigs. There was Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. There was this and so much more.

2013, it’s been swell, but I’m gunning for 2014.

Happy New Year.

Personal blah alert. For the last few weeks I’ve been on a healthy eating kick and it’s doing me wonders.

Plain and simple, the focus on fitness (getting fit and getting some way healthy through some cycling, weights and kayaking), has made it easy to focus elsewhere. By that I mean I’m more alert, more energy in the afternoons, able to work quicker, juggle a few more pins. Positive eating, positive thinking, clear focus. Of course, it’s not something that I decided to do on a whim, I’ve planned for a while to do it and now that I have there’s no turning back.

As much the recent change has allowed me to focus on my work, I’m finding more focus on hobbies – my photoblog for example has been given a new lease on life and my love of photography completely rekindled (after a dry spell), also resulting in Practical Photography reappearing through my door. Plans for other online and offline developments are taking shape

Working for yourself and working until all hours (I also run up to 30 gigs a year and I’m directly involved in running a theatre company) both in an out of the office meant some woeful eating habits over the years but even in the few short weeks a few changes have reaped benefits.

Nice how putting a direction on one small part of your life has an immediate (and positive) impact on other parts of your life.

Maybe I’m just going mad…

Or happy to know that it’s working…

So I’m back from Germany.

Sitting in my office, 24 hours later than anticipated.

Having arrived back in Kilkenny 16 hours later than anticipated.

I now have it confirmed as a fact that I cannot sleep on chairs. That, or Ryanair designed Frankfurt Hahn airport so it is impossible to get any kind of decent sleep.

Having had a most fantastic weekend away in Bad Soden-Salmunster, namely here for two gigs, myself and my brother arrived in Hahn on Sunday evening all set to go home. It was a bit foggy out, no big deal I thought. We disappeared into the terminal, pretzels in hand and in search of some coffee before checking in. No more than five minutes in the terminal and a flight to Oslo or Stockholm had been cancelled.

A quick look outside the door and the fog seemed an awful lot thicker than before. But, the other half of the group (who were travelling from Frankfurt Main) had departed no problem, though I guess the bigger airports handle fog an awful lot better than Hahn. No sight or sound of a delay, no warnings from the ticket desk or check in desk, so we advanced through to “the other side”, strolled around the duty free, drank more coffee and walked to Gate 7 around 9:30pm Sunday, boarding due at 9:40pm.

9:50pm. 10:00pm. An announcement that a flight to Milan or somewhere else has been cancelled, delays going up on the board but Dublin is still good to go. Flight time comes, 10:10pm, 40 minute delay posted on the board. No problem I thought, just means we’re arriving back in Dublin around midnight.

We never reach the end of the 40 minute delay, an announcement was made – that all the German-speaking passengers understood – that Dublin was cancelled and we could fly out the same time tomorrow night. Bloody great. They were now also diverting planes away from Hahn to Koln, but Frankfurt Main was still in the clear.

This was certainly where the MaxRoam sim card came in handy, phone calls back to the family, phone calls back to the office, phone calls in search of flights from both Hahn and Main (no chance of me sticking around another 24 hours to risk the exact same thing happening again). We joined the hour-long queue at the Ryanair ticket desk, a phone call to John informing me that we wouldn’t have to wait until tomorrow (Monday) night, but we could get out of there at 10am for €150 or so, the same story from Frankfurt Main with Aer Lingus if we were so tempted.

People around us were making phone calls, arranging collections, hotels in nearby towns. When the queue went past the main entrance to the terminal you could see the hoards of people trying to get a room in the B&B Hotel across the road. Crowded lobby, queue around the corner – “I guess we’re slumming in the airport so” I’d said to my brother.

They were giving out notices on what to do when your flight is cancelled, what you can expect – accommodation, meals, compensation etc. except when the airline can prove that something exceptional, such as the weather, comes into play.

So we arrive at the ticket window, secure seats on the Monday morning Dublin flight and look to kill 10 hours or so. Some cokes, shite coffee, a bag of onion rings keep us going for an hour all while walking around aimlessly. We discover a ‘casino’ upstairs where it turns out we’re not too bad at the video poker machines, my brother taking 200 euro in a few minutes (having deposited maybe a fiver in change). That certainly lightens the mood. About 1:30am or so we look to settle down, any half decent open space in the airport taken or coated with some crazy dust that was turning our bags and jackets an odd sandy colour.

We instead opt for the restaurant upstairs thinking the chairs look big enough. For about five minutes sleep. Five minutes here, ten minutes there, slump across the table for ten minutes, back to the chair for ten minutes and so the pattern continues until 5am when we’re all hunted out by the lady opening up, who in turn also sells shite coffee. For all the effort I would have been better off staying awake for the night with the pain in my neck and shoulders yesterday.

American pancakes and bacon at 5:30am and eventually we arrive back in Dublin ten minutes early. I was convinced the pilot was putting the foot down all the way in on the landing, no sense of slowing down at all, hitting the runway with a slap before jamming on the brakes. Rough night, rough landing, last time we’ll be flying to Frankfurt Hahn for anything.

Getting through the airport in Dublin was grand, no checked in luggage, straight to the car park to grab the van, only to park on the M50 almost as soon as we hit it.

Of course, there were some good points about Germany…

• The two gigs were awesome. We played some Seger Sessions stuff on the Saturday night to bring down the house. Some sketchy songs though on the Saturday night before all that…
• The staff at the pub / hotel and everyone in the group were legends.
• Got to day-trip to Heidelberg which looks better in real-life than it does in photos.
• The pub served pizza until 2am and Jagermeister was only 1.50 a shot. We reckon Jager and Red Bull (or big pump) will end up on the menu as collectively we must have consumed about 4,000 of them, give or take.

But, bed beckons at 3pm and all is temporarily forgotten.

Until the phone calls start when I switch my mobile on in the bed at 7pm and I’m reminded that I’m back in the real world…

I’m done for the Christmas, the office is closed, voice mail is changed, vacation autoresponders done and dusted and I’m set to enjoy some time with the family!

I’ve no blog posts scheduled and in a way, it’s liberating.

Eircom, on the other hand, seriously busted my balls yesterday and I’ve a post to piece together once I get over how untrained and unresponsive their staff are. Bar one guy I spoke to (out of seven – Eamon – actually made an effort to understand my problem with hotspot registration yesterday, fair play to him), the hour spent department hopping in the call centre was one I’ll never get back.

So, barring my topped-up Meteor mobile (Nokia E50 I’m using for Jaiku / Twitter), I’m cutting myself off for a week and before I do I wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas!

To everyone I’ve spoken to during the year, those who I’ve conversed with over email, Jaiku, Twitter, IMs, to everyone who reads the blog via RSS, and everyone I’ve had the pleasure of meeting during the year (from BarCamp in January through to PodCamp in September) or ArtLinks work through to December. To all who attended performances by The Devious Theatre Company and to my terrific company of actors and friends to the most talented bunch of individuals at KKM and in the office (past and present), I say this..

Happy Christmas to you all and may your New Year “be only savage…”

Here’s to meeting many more faces in 2008!

It’s been a while since I actually took a day or two off work with the intention of doing nothing (I took a week off in August to produce / direct / act in a theatre production which lasted from the crack of dawn to well into the night). This morning, says he with one foot out the door, I’m off to Sligo for a few days. No email access, no wifi, no mobile broadband, no TV. I’ve the Jaiku mobile packed and that’s about it.

I’m aiming to be at the house (family home) before 12, allowing for a stop in breakfast in Athlone around the 10 mark. Gotta love that Kilmartin roundabout. What I do plan on doing is

• Trying out my new wetsuit by kayaking on the lake this evening followed by some kayak surfing over the weekend.
• Following up the kayaking by trying my hand at sailing on Saturday / Sunday.
• Finishing the Vernon God Little script.
• Polishing off a blog theme I’ve been working on for another new venture.
• Taking in some of the WRC stages – the D70 and hiking boots are packed, along with the earplugs.
• Getting stuck into a few pints of the black stuff at a the Saturday night trad session.

Above all else I just need to get away for the few days so I’m outta here until Monday night. 8am is the “hit the road time” so to all, have a good weekend!

October has come and gone and so has the “Pink For October” campaign but over the last month I’ve become accustomed to the electric pink feel of the current blog template surrounding kenmc.com so I’m going to run with it for a while more, perhaps alter it up a little for Christmas.

I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a pink shirt (I’m sure it wouldn’t suit my skin or something) but I’m more than happy to incorporate the colour into a design and was happy to turn pink for October. Seen as it’s grown on me, I don’t quite feel like changing back. Just yet anyway…

Yep… this is my desk for the afternoon. I’ve shifted around from my own desk (behind the clutter of screens on the left) to the small one which normally houses a single flat-panel screen (17″). Actively going between all screens; L-R Aidan’s Inspiron 1501 (having the HDD repaired), 19″ Dell LCD, 17″ Dell LCD, 15″ MacBook Pro.

Thank God for the slide-out keyboard and mouse!

Got back to Kilkenny this afternoon (go on the cats!) after spending Friday evening / Saturday / Sunday morning at the family home in Sligo and I have to say, it was great. Even now as I lie flaked out on the bed with the laptop battery showing no life in the status bar, I have to say I feel recharged.

The weekend also gave me time to tinker around a bit more with the Nokia E50 which until now has simply been acting as a way to keep track of Jaiku and Twitter over the weekend, though it turned out to be quiet enough given something of a Twitter outage (or caching issues). I must really get around to printing that review. Which reminds me, I’ve created a separate blog to start storing all my reviews so they’re not going to be appearing here once they start hitting the web.

The trip up on Friday afternoon also gave me some much needed time to get thinking about one or two ventures which need opening up. Having found myself as a passenger instead of driving, I managed four hours on the road sussing out ideas, bouncing them off my brother (who can’t help but laugh and echo everyone else’s sentiments in “as if you’ve not got enough on your plate already”) – but it all helped. A few phone calls need to be made in morning off the back of a good afternoon’s work and testing that I clocked up on Saturday. At least the internet wasn’t around to distract me!

Long and short of it is I’m putting some wheels in motion this week in advance of an upcoming birthday which should make for some interesting developments over the next few years.

I will say one thing though – if you need to recharge your own batteries, drop everything and book a weekend over the west. Head for Sligo! The air is pure, the pints are cheap and the music is out of this world. Hell, I even got roped into the session… Now, I’m ready for another week.

Half twelve at night, I’ve a house to be tidying and I’m finding myself overly distracted by twitter, jaiku, bebo and God knows what else on the internet. Must mean I’m regaining a sense of normality.

Back to the office tomorrow after slogging it out in the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, this past week for Cannibal! The Musical. Judging by the estimated crowd numbers we’ve gone down well in Kilkenny – judging by feedback from those in attendance we’ve gone down ridiculously well in Kilkenny. Next thing is to find about 30,000 euro and take this baby of ours on tour in 2008 – any takers?

So much buzzing around my head for this past week, so much to do and write about having almost cut myself off completely from the online world, barring my Nokia E50 which was picking up Twitter / Jaiku SMS deliveries for the week. Note to self… don’t let the phone die out. I lost it for the bulk of one of the days this week (lost the use of it that is for not having one of the newer Nokia chargers in the theatre) and of course this resulted in a seriously scatty delivered of messages from Twitter which confused the hell out of me where I’d been monitoring certain discussions.

That said.. there’ll be a few reviews on the table, now that I’ve also added in the LouderVoice review plugin to WordPress (which drives kenmc.com and all my other blogs).

These come in the form of

• Nokia E50 – purchased around ten days ago or so with the intention of allowing me follow twitter / jaiku and divide GPRS use away from main mobile.
• Nintendo Wii, which I’ve treated myself to after Cannibal! (no, not with theatre profits, more with cheering up and wanting to experience more interactive gaming).

and likely more besides.

Reality sinks in hitting the road to Waterford tomorrow morning bright and early before getting back to the office for around 10:30am to fight my way through a week’s worth of emails.

I sure will miss the show though….

Cannibal! The Musical! which opens tonight is the latest end product off what has been a long production line running for The Devious Theatre Company of whom I am ‘Technical Director’. Where we have made efforts to make our job titles and job descriptions within the group quite refined and specific, when it all boils down to it you are the jack of all trades, similar I reckon in running any organisation where you’re a startup figure.

I’m on a week’s holiday from the office to concentrate on one of my other ventures and loves, the afore mentioned Devious Theatre Company which was established between myself and three others almost 18 months ago. In that period we’ve produced three shows, sold the rights to one, have become an arts-funded theatre group and have been able to drum up attention for ourselves in the local, regional and national press as well as regional airwaves (South East) thanks largely in part to our production of Trey Parker’s Cannibal! The Musical!

Opening tonight in the Watergate Theatre Kilkenny (and running until Saturday) means that myself and the rest of the DTC committee (or board) have been working quite literally around the clock to get the show to the a good state of readiness for tonight. EPKs were issued again on Monday, I did a radio interview with Beat 102-103 Monday evening which ran on the hour yesterday, props made and finished, set constructed and painting, lighting set – I spent the bulk of yesterday with the KilkennyMusic.com crew (great how all of these ventures have a connection to one another) organising the sound setup in the Watergate Theatre – programmes are being collected today, final touches being put to costumes, batteries replaced or charged for radio mics, front of house team organised, extra makeup being bought…. as I said – you are the jack of all trades. Well, we are the jack of all trades as no matter what our job title for the group, we’re doing it all…

Of course, its keeping me away from the blog for the bulk of the week as I’m sure as hell going to enjoy an extra hour or two in bed tomorrow morning. There’s a victory pint due in Cleere’s Theatre I’d say around 10:40 tonight (gives time to get out of makeup, costume, make notes ahead of tomorrow’s call) – victory at least in the sense that after 9 months of preproduction we’ve reached the opening night of one very large (and expensive) show and that much in itself for the core of us at DTC is a crowning achievement.

Right now, I’m off to collect some of the cast, make tracks for KCLR for an in-studio appearance around 11am. Streaming is available online at KCLR96FM.com (just beneath the ‘Under Construction’ sign). I will say though, the Twitter and Jaiku delivery via SMS is keeping me up-to-date with all the goings on. Might find the time to make a few tweets during the interval tonight 🙂

About 5:40pm yesterday it dawned on me that I’m on holiday. Or I should say “on holiday”, knowing that the meaning is pretty much useless to me as it involves no travel, no sun, no breaks, nada. Now, the trip I’m lining up to Toronto in November – that will be a holiday – until then I’ll enjoy these few days.

I’m checked out of the office for a full week but trading one long day for another with the opening of Cannibal! The Musical to the public on Wednesday. Having the holiday from work means I get to put time into the last minute advertising, set construction, moving into the theatre, liasing with lighting designer, organising the technical aspects of the production, taking technical rehearsals, dress rehearsals, more meetings than you can shake a stick at while hopefully getting at least one extra hour in bed in the morning.

Even though its not a holiday in the traditional sense of the word I’ll promise you that I’ll still get as much enjoyment out of it. I take a lot of pride in my work and have a great sense of job satisfaction, something I think we all find when working for ourselves and while I leave the office behind for a week I’ll draw the same sense of satisfaction out of The Devious Theatre Company. There’s something to be said to taking to the stage and performing in front of an audience – whether in the business sense where you’re delivering a presentation (last week) or in the arts sense where you’ve got a few hundred people in front of you (says he in absolute hope) enjoying (again in hope) the work that you and the others on your team have created.

When everyone sitting down is enjoying it you can trust that we’re enjoying it more.

Toronto won’t be able to come soon enough for me, or will the first weekend of September (Electric Picnic weekend, me having sold my ticket in order to cut myself off in Sligo for a weekend) as a real holiday will be in dire need come the final curtain next Saturday night.

For now though, my bag is packed and I’m looking forward to a week under 20k lights, wearing some kind of stage makeup, prancing around pretending to build a snowman, getting shot in the face, and all that goes on in between…. and I wouldn’t trade it for any holiday in the sun.

Keeping myself away from Twitter and other happenings until the bell rang at 5:30 on what has been a busy day. Why so busy? Well, today marks the return of Event Ireland to a two-person operation as John departed on Friday for pastures new in Waterford. I’ll echo his own thoughts leaving and say it has been a ‘divine privilege’ in having John here for the past 18 months and I wish him all the very best with the new job.

Of course, that has me jumping between my desk and John’s old workstation all day long flitting between 3 or 4 different projects while starting to get some new ones opened up. While I sneak ten minutes for a blog post (having delayed my lunch until NOW when its near on time to head home) I get to stare at a bundle of faxes that need to be cleared off my now muchos tidy desk (kicked off the morning with a big Summer cleanout – hey, we’re not in Spring territory any more, or Kansas for that matter).

Racing thoughts bring me around to the fact that I’m busy out – and happy out at the same time. I’ve got all the patience in the world and I’m quite happy flaked out on the couch doing nothing on an evening off but in giving someone a tutorial earlier this afternoon I was asked briefly “what have you planned for the week” to which my response was…

• Monday – Work to 6, Cannibal rehearsal 6:45-8:20, meeting re: organising Rockfall festival in Kilkenny 8:30-10pm, home for dinner
• Tuesday – Work 8:30 – 5:45, Young Irish Film Makers (of which I’m a board member) 6pm to collect costumes, outdoor photoshoot 6:30-8pm, return to YIFM, down to Cleere’s Theatre for meeting 8:30pm re: set design for Cannibal, assume return home 10:30 – 11pm.
• Wednesday – Work 8:30-6, Cannibal rehearsal 6:45-8:30pm, Paris Texas 8:40pm to 10pm (pre gig setup), gig 10pm – 12pm, return home likely around 1am.
• Thursday – Work 8:30-6pm, Cannibal rehearsal 6:45-9pm, meeting re: sponsorship of Telethon 2007 9:15pm, estimated return home for dinner around 10:30pm
• Friday – Work 8:30pm – 6:30pm, Equipment check ahead of Saturday gig 7pm.
• Saturday – Typical KilkennyMusic.com day, up early, pack the van and check the gear again, off to gig venue for 2pm to set stage, lights, leave by 3:30pm, return for soundchecks at 6pm, leave 8pm, open doors 9:30pm and let the madness begin.
• Sunday – Typical KKM / Devious Theatre day – up 10am, breakfast in town, leave by 1, empty venue from night before, return for further meeting at 3pm, leave by 4:30, home by five and catch up on TV from during the week.

Its a pain in the arse having your evenings planned out for you for the next two months but at the end of the day I couldn’t be happier! No doubt something else will crop up during the week but such is the way 🙂 Just a little note to myself!

That said, I also managed to clock up a 6 hour meeting yesterday and some 12 hours of design work at the weekend which I was happy about, plus the live blogging of the Liverpool vs Crewe Alexandra game from Saturday which made a nice mark on the LiverpoolAccess.comw stats for the weekend….

Maybe I’m just in a good mood going into the week?