Everyone’s looks for a magic bullet at one time or another. In my case, I wasn’t sure what it was, except that a road trip seemed important. Not so surprising, when I’d just spent a large chunk of time cooped up in the studio. So, when I got invited to show Cognition Factor at the 2008 Grahamstown Film Festival, I made plans to ensure that a road trip was also what I got. I’d been to Grahamstown once before in 2000. At the time I’d promised myself that when I returned to the festival I would bring my own show. Eight years later, with Cognition Factor locked and loaded, the time was ripe. It was unfortunate that I had to leave town the day before my daughter’s High School dance, slipping out of town in dawn ... read more

Distilling some kind of message for future historians while offering entertainment at the same time is not as easy as I'd once thought, or maybe it will be after I get back from the Kalahari as I have been persuaded by my AD, Mike, and my best friend, Mike, (USA botanist), to take a 'quick' trip up to Augrabies Falls, tomorrow morning, to the Southern edge of the Kalahari desert, for 6 days. The Kalahari is reputedly the 'cradle of mankind', or it was last time I looked, but things change and anyways, the kalahari, 'is' one of Earth's most desolate and primordial places, whatever your scientific belief, so I'm taking extra fuel and water just in case. We'll shoot some scenes in the desert, and also of the falls. There may be beautiful flower displays ... read more

O illustrious denizens of compound interest in the fascination of dreamtime avenues, O Greeters of the dawn, O mindspring overloaders and resistors of note: Yeah though we walk in the shadow of bomber Harris, we fear no fear for we are the cut and pasted, the transplants of civilisation, the x-pollinators of memetic positivity, the destroyers of evil myth and unbelivers in lies, transhumanic fad creators, photons of half-life in the blue beam of fractal reality where an infinity of waiting for schroedinger's cat can't prepare the unwary to grok the fact that it's not all black...we each view reality through our own rosestta stone where understanding intent can give one powers close to those described in Sun Tsu's 'Art of War' where it leads to understanding that continually uploading the correct memetic technology is one ... read more

Edinburgh. Met Iain M. Banks as planned, handed him over a copy of the Headspace movie and told him to stay in touch, which was a lot better than the day before when we got thrown out of the book festival because we honed in on Stephanie Turner, the so-called 'Press Officer' who was mostly out to lunch, even when doing her job, (stephanie@edbookfest.co.uk), and lets not forget about the pasty looking youth serving books who told me to 'hang on just a second' before calling security because I'd pointed my cam at him. Muttering something about; "invading my privacy", he comes back with a security guy who has more than a passing resemblance to 'Jaws' from the James Bond movies. Jaws, not so politely, asks me to switch my cam off, which I'd already done ... read more

Sitting under the palm trees on Ibiza surrounded by Gods and Goddesses I could not help but thrill to the synchronicity of it all, even though I don’t really subscribe to any ‘pattern’. In a background window, my hilarity may even have cheered up the jetlagged Goddesses for some short time but after a few hours of core dumping the table folds back into two cars, Richard W. and girls, plus Dennis Mckenna, in the one car, Joey and I in the other. Joey looks at me and we both start laughing. I guess we both know that, although it’s after 2.00 AM, we’re on Ibiza and the night is still young. Though we attempt to follow Richard, Dennis and the girls back to Richard’s place to persuade Dennis into coming out with us, we get ... read more