TODAY (Sunday 23rd September) sees the last ever Nicky-Tams Pub Quiz to be hosted by myself and my good friend Stuart. Old time regular host JC may also make an appearance.
If you are in, or can can make it to Stirling at around 8.30 / 9pm, stop by Nicky-Tams Bar & Bothy on Baker Street. We'll be playing the best music in town, hosting the quiz (general knowledge / name-that-tune / picture rounds) and giving away prizes.
Between Stuart, John, Hammy and myself, we've attended or hosted the quiz EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY for YEARS and YEARS and, honestly, I'm really sad to say goodbye to the stupid bloody thing. I'll do a proper little post about it soon.
Please say hello and spread the word, especially to any old regulars. Ta.
Between 2006 and 2009 most of my artwork stuck to a pretty rigid format. These "Red & Black" drawings, as I call them (despite often including blue), were the first things I ever exhibited publicly and became popular enough to encourage me to take a few (itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie) steps towards selling work for actual money. Money I could spend in shops.
In June 2006, Flesh Design in Edinburgh put on a group exhibition titled Rouge with the theme of, um, rouge (red). I had been invited to submit work by RueFive and would be showing alongside many people I still consider friends. People like Elph, Gopherhead and Concetta Barbera.
At the time, I'd been playing around with a dip pen and figured that a few drawings using red ink might work for the show. I didn't have any "good" paper to draw on besides a big stack of smooth manila card left over from a college project so, rather than leave the house, I just used that.
The ink took to the cardboard surprisingly well - it stayed bright and didn't bleed. Further experimentation found that, if I took my time, fairly fine detail was achievable without making an almighty mess. Great. This'd work. All I needed was something to draw.
God knows where my ideas came from, but they came. They weren't good ideas, but they were better than no ideas. Six fingered hands and balaclava'd characters abounded. What I lacked in drawing ability, I made up for in patience (I still do this).
Somewhere along the way I started using acrylic paint to add black backgrounds. Doing this made the drawings really pop. It also made them kinda spooky, like goth or something. When framed (using simple wooden frames that matched the colour of the cardboard), they felt like weird comic panels and the glass made the acrylic seem completely flawless. People sometimes thought that the drawings were printed or cut outs glued to black paper.
I find this early work, like everyone finds their early work, hard to look back on. I wasn't a particularly good draughtsman and many of my ideas, with their Bunny Suicides humour (which I didn't even like at the time), make me cringe.
After the relative success of Rouge (I sold work!). I made more Red & Black drawings. Loads and loads more. I made them for shows at Analogue, Recoat, Here and Amble. I got better at making them and some (like the ones on this page and these ones), I still really like. I drew so many of the bloody things that I was scared to draw anything else. They were reliably straightforward to produce and generally well received. I covered entire walls with them. It got a bit silly.
It's been a few years since I last made any Red & Black artwork. I still have the cardboard and the pens and there's some part of me that wants to revisit them. A bigger, smarter part of me wants to leave them behind as a weird period in my life that's over now. Anyway, making an arse of the background and having to start again was always so unbelievably frustrating that my old heart probably couldn't take it.
I've put a small collection of these drawings over here: Red & Black Drawings. I will add more of my favourites whenever I get the chance.
I'm no power user, not by a long shot. Scripts, hacks, codes, plist edits and the Terminal all give me the heebies. I keep my 3D dock on the bottom and, hell, it doesn't bother me.
Despite this, I probably dabble with slightly more advanced things than the average user. I dabble with Markdown, I dabble with the occasional beta and I do know my way round a keyboard shortcut or two. I also use TextExpander. I use it loads.
In brief, TextExpander is an app that runs in the background on your computer. It allows you to set shortcuts for longer pieces of text. For example, when I type "dgw", TextExpander replaces it with "davidgalletly.com" (in my head, "dgw" means "David Galletly Website"). When I type "dgt", I get "twitter.com/davidgalletly" (David Galletly Twitter). With little effort, you can use TextExpander to remember your phone number, fix your most common typos and add today's date.
Reading Dr Drang's recent post on using TextExpander to search a site using Google made me say "hey, I do that... kinda".
I don't really like using Google to search anything other than, um, Google (as I say, I'm no power user). Maybe it's habit, or aesthetics, or ignorance, but I like native searches. Besides, the sites I most regularly search format their results in a more useful way than Google usually will (in particular, image resources such as Flickr & Dribbble).
The first snippet I made was for BBC News. I rarely search for news stories and, for a long time, I'd just type my query into Google and hit the 'news' tab. The results were never great. Upon visiting the BBC site and noticing that the search URL was pretty simple, I realised that dropping it into TextExpander and adding a fill-in field would be super easy, even for me. The result:
It worked! I assigned it the abbreviation ";news" and was good to go. All I'd need to do to search BBC News was type my shortcut, type my query, hit enter twice and kablamo, there was the page. Pretty good.
Hit enter twice, though? Tsk, that's a wee bit annoying. Kinda spoils the feeling that you're performing a magic trick. There's gotta be a way to fix that. Sure there is! TextExpander can include special keys inside a snippet (Enter / Esc / Return / Tab). With a quick update, I was good to go:
Now I just type ";newsblue tits" + enter and I've instantly searched the BBC for breaking blue tit stories. Instead of never checking the news, now it only takes me 6 keystrokes. I quickly added snippets for searching Wikipedia, Thesaurus.com, Flickr, Dribbble, Pinboard and GMail:
So, by typing ";flicklogs" and hitting enter, I've searched Flickr for logs. Typing ";mailsatan" + enter gives me all my Satanic emails. And ";wikiwojtek", teaches me about a cigarette-smoking, beer-drinking soldier bear "Wojtek the Bear"). I recorded a wee video of my system in action:
To people who really know what they're doing, this is incredibly basic stuff. To me, though, it's really powerful. I'm gonna try Dr Drang's Google snippet on a couple of sites too but, y'know, the best thing about TextExpander is that it naturally shapes itself to how you work. Even if you're a dunce.
Featuring: Withered Hand, Small Feet Little Toes, Conquering Animal Sound, Quickbeam Hosted By: END OF NEIL Venue: Old Town Jail, St. John Street, Stirling, FK8 1EA Date / time: Saturday September 1st, 7-11pm Tickets: £5 (available here) More info:Freedom Versions Finale on Facebook
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Creative Stirling are a great bunch - a community interest company started by Joe Hall with the intention of kicking Stirling (my hometown) up the backside by acting as a cultural hub for the city.
For, jeez, nearly a year now, I've kept in touch with Joe and, despite our schedules never quite lining up correctly to actually work on anything (if I'm even eligible as a Stirling-deserter), it's been amazing to watch the progress she and her incredibly hard working team have made. Offices, studio space, workshops, exhibitions, gigs, murals, and pop-up shops have all been launched by Creative Stirling, bringing some much needed energy to the town.
I've been meaning to talk about the project for a while and, as possibly the busiest 3 months of my life finally come to a close, I'll hopefully get a chance to do so in a little more depth soon. For more information about what's going on, check out the following:
The gig, though. The gig. Go to the gig if you can. I'm not sure yet if I'll be able to make it along but, if you're anywhere near Stirling, go see Withered Hand (and friend-of-the-blog JMSSCT's Conquering Animal Sound). It'll be great. If you do see me, say hello.
In June, the wonderful! Beautiful! Spectacular! Alex Horne didn't see sense and signed up to a lifetime of rubbish when we got married out at The Cruin on Loch Lomond. To make matters worse, She's now going by the infinitely-harder-to-spell-down-the-phone moniker of Alex Galletly.
Alex is the best. She'll light up a room. She'll make everyone happy. She's way out of my league. Without her encouragement, I'd be a wreck of a man and without me holding her back, Alex'd probably be The Queen by now. Despite her massive flaws (she's left a BLOODY MUG ON MY BLOODY DESK), I wouldn't change a thing about her and goddamn it if she didn't look amazing on the day:
From the first time we went out for dinner, to getting engaged in Philadelphia, to moving to Glasgow together, to getting married - we've been really happy. It's disgusting. When people ask "how's married life?" they're often disappointed to hear "it's exactly the same as non-married life", I guess that doesn't sound so romantic. The thing is, non-married life was great, so being married is great. It was already romantic. Urgh. Seriously though, if we'd had any doubts I imagine there'd have been tears and arguments. Without stress, planning our wedding was, dare I say it, fun.
We had an amazing day surrounded by friends and family. The weather was crap, but it's always crap so that didn't matter. There was laughter, tissues-at-the-ready, drinking, rolls-and-sausage and dancing. It was great fun. The speeches were good. No fisticuffs went down. I didn't get jilted. I've put some more photos over here.
Big thanks to everyone:
The staff at The Cruin were unbelievabe - they were friendly, helpful and made the day run really smoothly. Once everything kicked off, we didn't need to think about a thing. The venue is beautiful, the food was delicious, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a Loch Lomond wedding without hesitation.
Alex's vintage dress came from Dragonfly Dress Design and her flowers from Sparrow and Rose. Both run from Elderslie St. in Glasgow's West End and were wonderfully accommodating.
Music was provided by The Wild Cigarillos, a ceilidh band from Edinburgh. They got everyone up dancing and were brilliant at explaining what the hell to do for the inexperienced (myself more than anyone).
Our humanist celebrant was Sheena Johnston. Sheena was great. She met with us a few times beforehand and put together a ceremony that was really warm, personal and, y'know, human. Many of our guests mentioned how good the service (is that the right word?) was and, as humanist weddings become increasingly popular - to anyone looking for a celebrant, honestly, Sheena is the best!
Stationary was provided by me! I'll maybe put up some images soon - despite being produced in a frantic rush, it all turned out ok in the end.
Our photographer was Nikki Leadbetter. From our first meeting, Nikki has been a complete pleasure to work and hang out with. She understood exactly what we wanted (informal / plenty pictures of guests / catch the atmosphere of the day) and worked really hard all day with enthusiasm, energy and a big smile on her face. Nikki put all our guests at ease and we're really happy with how our photographs turned out. Hire her, she's great.
Lastly, thanks to our friends and family for spending the day with us and for all the amazing gifts. We've got a pile of thankyou cards still to be sent out (sorry) - everyone seemed to have a blast. Thanks to my best man Fergi, and to the bridesmaids Kirsty, Nicola and Tara for all your help too. To Fergi, Mark, Chris, Steve, Steven, Darren and Stuart - that weekend down in Manchester was one of the funniest I've ever had. Cheers.
To our parents, we couldn't have done it without you. Malcolm & Mary Galletly, Fiona & Ian Horne - very proud to have you looking out for us.
Burnistoun returns to BBC Scotland for its third (and final) series this week. Iain Connell & Robert Florence's fictional-town comedy is a really nice mix of Scottish humour, wordplay and weirdness and is worth a watch.
I know that, as a fairly traditional sketch show, Burnistoun can divide opinion. The genre hasn't exactly been fashionable of late, which is a shame. In the no-laugh-track / post-Curb / post-Office world, it's easy to forget that sketch comedy has given us some of the best. stuff. on. telly. ever. and, like Limmy's Show alongside it, when Burnistoun hits, it hits big. I really like it.
I was motivated to mention this / draw a picture when Rab urged people to watch more written comedy. To "tell the telly people you've seen enough panel shows". Hell yeah. Who want's to live in a world where there's more of this than this, or this, or this? Throw more money at the writers, costume departments and set designers, please.
Via their production company Bold Yin, Connell & Florence have recently been encouraging growth, collaboration and innovation in Scottish comedy. A wonderful thing. We've got some of the funniest people in the world living up here and, with a poke and a prod, they might get a little of the attention they deserve. AndyDee, I'm looking at you. Let's get Swatpaz on the TV too.
You can watch the new series of Burnistoun as it airs on BBC iPlayer and there's a bunch of old episodes and clips on YouTube. Rab (who, incidentally, Alex & I spotted in the town the other week but were typically too shy to say hello to - sorry) also has had his fingers in a lot of other pies. Pies close to my heart. Heroquest, anyone?
This is a risky post for someone who likes to imagine his entire audience is made up of snobby teenagers. I'm going to, tentatively, raise the subject of... um, acid jazz.
Oh, and if that isn't enough, I'm getting there via aggressive rollerblading.
...
*cough*
...
Righto, now that it's only us cool kids left - I'll continue.
Over time, I've slowly been collecting a number of obscure-ish songs based mostly on nostalgia for my early teens. Back then (1995-6), I, like many of my friends, got into the inline-skating boom in a BIG way. I wore the gear, had the moves and watched the videos.
Through these videos (think 30 mins of dudes jumping down stairs) I got my first introduction to music proper. Before then, I'd had little exposure to anything beyond Disney theme tunes or my little Michael Jackson cassette. Hearing something new - a surprisingly mixed bag of pop-punk, hip-hop and unexpected gems got me psyched in a way that only a kid with a wallet-chain can be. Through many, many many repeat viewings, I knew all the words to every song and loved them with all my XXL-covered heart.
Royale at Stirling Skatepark
Myself, circa 1996. Note the pink t-shirt / cut-off white jeans / kneepads on my shins(?) / claw arm style
Revisiting this soundtrack of my youth, if you will, has not been easy (I've hunted before). Many of the tracks were obscure even in 1996, let alone after nearly 2 decades. Some were only released on small US / Canadian labels and, with limited access to the (often uncredited) videos, I'm often searching by little more than a handful of lyrics and a misremembered melody. I never bought CDs back then, y'see. They were too hard to find and too expensive.
Anyway, to the aforementioned acid jazz (Hijack by Marden Hill above / below). This track, which I discovered through the intro to the 1996 classic* Hoax 3: Broken English, has proven to be one of the most elusive. Unlike the other music featured in the video, the intro had no artist credit. Searching for the lyrics "You're taking over, I'm taking orders, you're taking all of my time" proved fruitless and name-that-song apps yielded no results.
Hoax 3: Broken English intro
My desire to find the tune soon outgrew all fondness I had for it and "Hoax 3 intro" quickly wormed its way to the top of my "music to get" list. Over the course of months, nay, years, I'd frequently take a little time to sniff around YouTube comments and messageboards to see if I could get any closer.
Then, last week, a breakthrough! Midomi recognised the track! I had a name (Hijack), I had an artist (Marden Hill) and the hunt, for the most part, was over.
Marden Hill, from what I can tell, were a prolific UK-based acid jazz outfit that some credit as being the first band to be labelled "trip-hop". They haven't been active since 2002 and possess neither website nor Wikipedia page. There's a nice wee discussion about from 2008 over at Soundological which includes a recent comment from bandmember Kevin Saunders. The internet is a wonderful thing.
Despite my discovery, Hijack remained slippery. It wasn't in the UK iTunes or Amazon MP3 stores (yet it was, infuriatingly, available in the US) and other, less honest, means of procurement turned up dead ends due, I guess, to the track being a bit of a niche commodity nowadays. The album it comes from, Blown Away, was available but, Christ, did I want an hour of this stuff? It's a fair stretch from my usual tastes and there's only so much flute a man can take. Add that I've not bought a full album for one song (remember that?) in years. It felt crazy... almost nostalgic.
I weighed up my options - wait it out a little longer, hoping that it either becomes available on iTunes / through some music nerd's blog or (and this is what I did) bite the bullet and pick up a second-hand copy of Blown Away through Amazon Marketplace for £8.20.
So, yeah, the CD arrived today, intact but with (appropriately) dusty joint-totin' cover art. I popped it into my computer and invited Marden Hill to sit alongside Punky Brüster, Herbalizer and The Cherry Poppin' Daddies in my "Skate Video Nostalgia" playlist. And, y'know what? After a couple of spins, I've decided it was worth every penny.
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*I'm only half-kidding with this. I may be all about skateboarding nowadays but, honestly, Hoax 3 was a thing of beauty. It a was wonderfully rich (I might be wrong, but I think they used film rather than video) tour of the world, full of colourful European streets and bleached-out American schoolyards. You can watch the full thing here.
In 1991, the sci-fi / chiller miniseries Chimera "BBC Chimera, 1991") aired on the BBC while I was spending a week in Center Parcs with my parents. Being the summer, I was allowed to stay up a little later than usual to watch TV. Usually we'd find a film or a sitcom or something that we could all enjoy. I was 8.
One night, one horrible, dark night, however, I picked Chimera. Silly idea. I'd caught a little of the first episode back home and, although nervous (ep.1 featured a stabbing by an unseen aggressor!), I was curious enough to stick it out. Mainly because there'd been talk of... a monster!
Episode 2, for the most part, was fine. Actually, being a fairly serious production, it was low on monsters and kinda talky for an 8 year old. It mostly confused or bored me. Only the scenes that centred around a couple of kids - a brother and sister who had an imaginary friend called "Mr. Scarecrow" - really caught my imagination. As is the way with horror stories, imaginary friends don't often turn out to be all that imaginary and, true-to-form, in the final shot Mr. Scarecrow went and showed his bloody face. As the credits rolled, I knew my life as an innocent, happy, fearless child was over.
Looking back (above at the 5 min mark), it seems Mr. Scarecrow didn't actually show his face, just his stripy jumper. Goddamn it though, that must've been the freakiest stripy jumper in the whole-wide-world because I got scared. Really, really scared. (SCARED!). That night (and each subsequent sleepless night for at least the next 6 months) I was haunted by a face that I'd never even seen. I knew, I just knew that, right outside, the dark of Sherwood Forest was full of Chimeras. One was up on the roof. One was peeking in at me through the window. One was even preparing to slowly open my door and, when he did, I'd see that stripy jumper and I'd be dead.
Chimera, despite showing its age, seems a fairly interesting watch. Someone named SonofChimera has uploaded the whole series as a YouTube playlist. From what I can tell, Mr. Scarecrow (real name Chad) (...honest) is a genetic experiment - a chimera being a combination of different species, in this case, man & monkey - who causes havoc when he escapes from a fertility clinic. He's a tortured fella who's handy with a knife and wears dungarees. Most importantly, you very much do get to see his face.
As soon I get the chance, I'm gonna sit down and confront Chimera, my biggest childhood demon. Maybe if it's rubbish, I won't be scared anymore.
Today, Jonnie Common has announced that Hair of The Dog is now available for free download from his website. The album, a reinterpretation of Master of None (best record of 2011 in my opinion) features remixes by Geese, Dems, Found, Ben Butler & Mousepad, OnTheFly, River of Slime, GRNR, A La Fu, Miaoux Miaoux and The Japanese War Effort and is most definitely worth a listen - it's free for Christ's sake.
For those, like myself, who are a little, um, wet behind the ears when it comes to electronic music, I'd recommend checking out GRNR's brilliant remix of Bed Bugs as a good starting point - a real treat of a track with a great rap(?) by Jonnie and an all-trumpeting, all-squelching climax.
Visit jonniecommon.com for more information and to download the full album. The original tracks can be heard on Master of None which, for the millionth time, I really recommend.
To celebrate the now-freeness of Hair of The Dog, I put together the little video at the top of this post using footage from the launch gig (an art/installation/music collaboration between Jonnie, Zero Waste Design and myself) at Mono here in Glasgow last November.
Footage from the night was scarce - we were super busy setting everything up and whenever we did remember to shoot something, my wee Nikon's video mode kinda struggled with the low light and our shaky hands. I was pleasantly surprised to get anything useable at all.
For the past 6 months or so, I've been regularly contributing to the US edition of WIRED Magazine, specifically illustrations for Mary H.K. Choi's TV / entertainment / pop culture column in the Play section.
It's been great. Having a regular magazine gig is an exciting, scary and rewarding thing. It's the kind of job I'd imagine having when I used to think, "man, maybe I could work as an illustrator" back when I was studying graphic design and feeling fairly unenthused about a future in a studio discussing typefaces with tastefully-shirted men. And, when I accidentally fell arse-backwards into actually being an illustrator, it's these editorial briefs with their sketches, drafts and deadlines that most make me feel like I maybe, possibly, just might have some kind of future being my own boss.
As with everything I do, I see only the mistakes. I beat myself up for procrastinating and live in constant fear of 'blowing it'. Every other artist out there is more talented, wittier and more proffessional than me. I'm often uncomfortable with the style I can easily fall into and I meticulously budget 6 months in advance for when the money, inevitably, dries up. But, for now at least, I'm happier than I've ever been. I feel more like a grown up than I did a couple of years ago when I was working part-time in the same stockroom I'd worked in since college and I feel less depressed, ashamed and washed-up than I did a year ago when I took a job as a web designer for a company that I did not fit.
The above drawing, part of a larger piece (featuring Bert from Sesame Street on drums) in the May edition of WIRED is maybe my favourite thing I've done for them. It made me laugh while working, which is rare, and I got to retrofit some little animations (something I'm still learning) in there too for the iPad version. Compared to how I often feel about my work, it makes me extremely proud to say that I'm 'mostly happy' with how this guy turned out.
Thanks to everyone who has helped and encouraged me over at Wired - Mary, Bradley, Alex, Tim, Christopher and Meighan have all been awesome. Go buy it, read it, and keep your eye out for my daft drawings. Well, unless I blow it.
Oh, and the best thing about having your work in a magazine? It impresses your mum.
My friend Steve McEwan is an odd fellow. He likes to amuse himself in baffling ways - weird drawings, weird videos and now, weird music.
Recently, and completely out of the blue, he posted the above track on my Facebook page. It's pretty incomprehensible and features my voice 'remixed' to a bouncy wee beat alongside footage of a man with a lawnmower.
I was at once amused, confused and embarrassed. Was he having a laugh? Taking the piss? Bored? I don't know. There's another one called How To Fix A Car That Idles Poorly too.
Transworld have put out a new skate video out called The Cinematographer Project. 13 of the best filmmakers in skateboarding were invited to produce 3-5 minute sections and the end result is pretty frikkin' impressive.
One particular part stands out above all others - Alien Workshop's. AWS have forever put out amazing stuff. I must've watched Photosynthesis a million times growing up (when we visited Philly, Alex had the pleasure of having specific ledges and stairsets pointed out to her every 5 minutes) and I've always loved Alien's distinctive art direction and cinematography (lots of found footage / collages / animation / photos edited in with the skating). Their work is immediately identifiable. Many hate on the arty stuff, wanting only skating, but I think it creates a rhythm and helps a part feel like it's been crafted rather than, like many videos these days, Final Cut to within an inch of its life.
The Cinamatographer section contains some of the best skating I've ever seen. Alien Workshop's team is arguably the strongest in skateboarding right now (so happy that Dill is going for it again) and seeing those guys together in such an intense little clip is edge-of-your-seat exciting. Watch it and then buy the damn video ya cheapskate.
Oh, and Jesus Christ at Bledsoe's tail slide (up top), Dylan's front board, Gilbert's switch flip, Omar's hippie jump and Grant's nose blunt (above).
On the recommendation of Marco Arment (he's usually spot-on when it comes to product reviews), I've decided to give Studio Neat's Cosmonaut Stylus a try. It arrived this morning in a beautiful little box.
I've played around with it on my phone and, yeah, it's pretty good. It's well made, it's heavy (in a good way) and it works. I was on the lookout for a stylus for drawing with when I re-enter the world of tablets and I can already tell that this one'll work great on an iPad. On a phone, it's maybe a little chunky (if you're going for detail it definitely obscures exactly where you're drawing, but nowhere near how badly your finger does). Also, slightly more pressure than I'd expect is needed to register a tap - possibly because I'm being fairly ginger with it on the smaller screen. These are nitpicks though, on the whole the Cosmonaut is really nice to use and I'm looking forward to trying out some 'proper' drawings soon.
Draw Something
I'm not a massive fan of app-of-the-moment Draw Something. It's has loads of problems and if, like me, you've played a whole lotta iSketch over the years, it's kinda boring in comparison. Playing Draw Something using the Cosmonaut does improve things, however, and I'm gonna stick it out in the hope that the forthcoming update, at the very least, adds a frickin' undo button.
If you'd like a game, my username is davidgalletly.
First off, let me apologise about the un-classy self-serving sales post. I will keep this short.
Like most of the world, I'm selling an iPad 2. It's a black, 32gb, wi-fi model in really good condition. It's the first ever thing I've sold on Ebay - hence this post. There you can see more photos and information. I even made a horrendous video of myself to accompany the auction to prove, as someone with no feedback, that I'm a real person.
If this is of interest, you can find it here. As a wee incentive / apology for clogging up your RSS with what is essentially a big advert - should someone buy this gizmo who reads my site, let me know and I'll chuck in a free print or something.
The auction ends tonight (Monday) at around 10pm and it can be picked up in Glasgow tomorrow if that's helpful.
Sorry x
Update on 2012-03-22 13:50 by David Galletly
To follow up from this post - my iPad sold for a price I was very happy with to a nice chap.
