New Year, Different Difference?

A slightly belated "Happy New Year" to you, Chinese and/or otherwise. The picture on the left is Twilight on Gerrard St, London, which is the main drag of Central London's Chinatown area. The place looks magical, with lanterns swaying in the breeze attached to absolutely every possible stationary object. New Year fills us with optimism, that this time, things will be different; we will be different.

On my way to the gym this morning, I remember reading a statistic saying 97 % of all people who make New Years resolutions break them - 8 % of the total actually break those resolutions in the first 10 seconds, and it is with this thought in mind that I'm feeling pretty proud of myself about making my way to the gym on this freezing occasion, a full 1 months and 11 days into the UK's new year. But this was not a new year's resolution - I decided to join a gym in September.

Why did I not pressurise myself with a New Year Resolution this year? Because with an NYR, I'll get 364 chances to fail - guaranteeing that every time I don't reach my expected goal, it's time to resign myself to endless telly, feeling dejected about the sheer mountain of unfinished business shouting for attention, and hoping that next year will be different.

So today, I'm going to challenge the popular assumption that an arbitrary day, zero hour, "wipe the slate clean on Day 1" mentality is the only way to get back on the self improvement train, and say instead that any day, at any time, when we make a conscious decision to do something different, that's when persistence, determination, and that elusive, sparkly feeling that we're "on our way" is a great and just reward.

Like many people, I'm interested in goal-setting, personal development and self-improvement, and writing down my goals and aims helps me to focus more. (If you're looking for a goodie, I humbly suggest Getting Things Done, which I overhauled my life with a year or two ago). Last time I did this was in November - not conventionally a month for that sort of thing, unless it's your birthday, perhaps.

Be Excellent to Each other!

Anyhow, this week I received some interesting emails, including one from the BBC, one from a short film producer, and the continuation of an exciting music project I'm currently sworn to secrecy about. All of these emails represent a move in the right direction - and I have to confess it's all a little bit scary. I know I'm on TV already, which is a massive achievement, but these projects represent quite a big leap and I wonder why taking that step into the unknown brings up such feelings of vulnerability, even though what I want most in the world is to be knee deep in Music, TV and technology for the rest of my days.

I'm beginning to realise that the big change for me this day, 15th February, is that it's time to be ready for the next level, which I've spent my whole life preparing for, so this year is as good as any. It's time for all that hard work to be translated into amazing opportunity, and although it's a petrifying concept, I think I can handle it. So Happy New Day to you, dear reader, and wherever we go, let us go boldly, as a certain Starship Captain or two might say. Live long, and Prosper.

lots of love, LJ x
spoken through SpinVox tweaked by LJ

I wish I was Hiro from "Heroes"...

... because if I just concentrated really hard, I'd suddenly have a whole glut of time - then there'd be half a chance of completing the gargantuan schedule of errands, documents, and general odds and ends well before this weekend - you see, on Sunday I'll be on the telly for around 24 hours and therefore unable to do anything apart from drinking copious amounts of coffee and wrestling with AV cables, which is why the sudden rush.

So, I've decided (in the time-honoured "Let's play Minesweeper" tradition) to post a little bloggette (is that how you spell it?) on the art of procrastination instead. In honour of this, I will now decide exactly what font to use for this article.

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Right, After a few minutes of deliberation, I have decided to use the same font anyway.

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I am, as you possibly know, a fully paid up geek -I actually had a conversation on the phone this morning with a business colleague about the fact that the number "42" was mentioned in Stargate Atlantis the other night - they agreed it was a humorous reference - we both snorted appreciatively.

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Apart from the encyclopaedic knowledge of sci-fi and pointless but amazing trivia, my geekiness is displayed with superhuman skills when it comes to organisation and recall... although this streak comes in useful when I'm reviewing technology (I actually do read the manual - and enjoy it), I also get far too much enjoyment from colouring in the cells in Excel, so it's a constant left-brain/right-brain battle for me.

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This week I amazed some people at work because I have absolutely NO desktop icons OF ANY KIND on my laptop's Desktop display, as I like things to look neat and tidy.

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On the other hand, at the moment (this is where the title of today's blog comes in) my Real World Desktop is currently invisible under 25 items inventoried below for your "pleasure":

1. many DVDs of varying importance
2. promo bags from CES (Alienware, UA, Panasonic)
3. contact lenses (unused)
4. Sharpie Markers (wide, black)
5. keyboards (Creative Prodikeys music keyboard)
6. microphones (one for Skyping, one for Singing Vocals)
7. business cards (copious quantities from CES, mostly entered into my system)
8. handbag (why??)
9. dri-wipe marker (there's a bit of velcro on its side -probably from before it emigrated...)
10. Belkin USB hub (rotating 4-port)
11. some post-it notes (these appear to be from an infinite source, I can't remember buying this many)
12. a 15cm ruler (blue, transparent)
13. Wacom Graphics Tablet (pen resting on groove)
14. Galileo thermometer (showing 25 degrees Celsius)
15. Musician's Union Newsletter (unread)
16. Ergostation and Laptop (this bit looks quite organised)
17. Receipts (Marks and Spencer, Muji, Borders)
18. Nokia phone for review (with box)
19. indeterminate USB cables (who knows what the other end fits into?)
20. JVC Everio Camcorder (on telly with this over the weekend)
21. PDA cover (I was looking for this)
22. phone bill (laughable)
23. notepad (inedible, medical-style scrawl)
24. towering pile of paperwork (terrifying)
    and of course,
25. nice cup of tea that I'm drinking (now lukewarm and therefore undrinkable)

Let's keep the RW desktop a secret, boys and girls. It'll all be back to normal next week, once I've completed the editing for two videos - one for Virgin Media about the future of gaming (I'll post a link here when it's done) and one for this weekend (which I'll upload to Youtube in advance of the airing for anyone who wants a sneak preview). Meanwhile, if you need any post-it notes, just let me know :-)

Back in Blighty - Back to Work

So I've finally returned back to the UK, absolutely tired out, and completely and totally culture shocked by the craziness that is Las Vegas and the ridiculousness that was CES.

I found out that there were 2 million square feet of exhibition space of which I probably only managed to get across a fraction- and even then that was with incredibly hard work and very, very, very comfortable shoes.

For now I'm back in the UK - once I've finished unpacking and sorting through my email, I'll be spending time getting ready to talk about JVC's MG330 HD camcorder on QVC UK . For the purposes of this blog, and for general curiosity, I've found out that a) QVC is the biggest electronics retailer in the world, b) Marco Polo House, where the studio is, was named after real broadcasting Satellites in Space and c) the UK arm reaches 21 million households, which explains why people come and chat to me in really odd places like Milton Keynes British Rail Station.


Actually, it's great fun when people come and say hello most of the time - although I once got recognised at a certain large 24hour supermarket at 3am buying Imodium - that's the not-so-glamorous side of life in the public eye - "Hi LJ, how are you? Oh, not too well I see" was the gist of that particular conversation.


On the plus side, when I was flown over to QVC in America, where it's the 5th most watched channel in the States, I went to the mall the day after the show, and someone came up to me and said "Wow, you're that videogame girl from England!" - that made my week!


So I'll be broadcasting live for 24 hours on the 27th January and it will feature JVC's hard drive camcorder that I took around CES with me to Vegas. So that should be quite fun. It's still quite surreal chatting away to my phone and I really am enjoying this blogging service, it has to be said. SpinVox might even come over and film me doing this which should be even more fun, although I don't think it will be very telegenic to have SpinVox film me doing what I'm doing right now which, at the moment, is my laundry :-)


I can't believe it's already halfway through January... I'm in the studio with Graham Wood working on some exciting music projects, and this week I'll pop over after the initial recording session to do what is known in the trade as "Tweakage" - I'll also be composing a mini ident (that's about 3 seconds of music) for a digital device, which is always exciting, as I love to take into account the acoustics of the device, and what it looks like before working out what tune it should have!


spoken through SpinVox tweaked by LJ