Moving to Coventry and attending university has changed that slightly, the line drawn between away and home has been considerably blurred to the point that I now see both locations as home, rather than one or the other. I have been asked to sum up both locations  with an object that represents them, this is a difficult task for me as I have come to feel that Coventry is as much my “home” as living with my parents at the  home they made for me. Physically the two locations are quite different, my parental home is set in rural Kentish countryside and is surrounded on all four corners by green and bird song which in Coventry is replaced with city sprawl and the noise of the seven o’clock number 41 bus rumbling at the bus stop outside. This is however a shallow comparison, physical differences between the two locations aren’t what makes one a different home from the other; arbitrary emotional attachments to both people and places in each location are what make one unique from the other.

My question to you is what means home to you? Not surprisingly to many it is a different place than that where they currently reside, be it their home-land or a place they grew up. Coventry to me is my second home its very different from the parental home but its also where my friends are, a place where I am happy and secure and while these are intangible ideas they are what makes a home for me.

Image Sources: www.freefoto.com & kent-english-homestays.co.uk

So as my fingers dance over the keys of this board and tap away words of arbitrary meaning, each future post to this blog will be heavily adorned with the theoretical language which I have learnt and understood as part of my degree. Just so I am using what I have learnt in a practical manor in the hope that it will spark my brain back into working like it should, rather than doing what it has become accustomed to – just sitting there, like jelly.

It’s nice to be back in Coventry, this year I have a nice place to live, my own bathroom and some amazing flat mates. Can’t wait to get back into creating some more Joey Brannigan episodes and working on some big university projects.

Well I went up to Coventry last week and as per usual I ended up in Browns with Joey sat sharing a pot of tea chatting about the next big thing to do with our video projects. During which we had some “Herbal Supplement” and hence forth began thinking of the stupidest thing we could do with twenty quid. It takes a special mind to understand our thought process, as we came up with the idea of spending it on scratch cards… it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I waited for a short while in Browns while Joey crossed the road to the newsagents, I pondered what I might do with the winnings if by some ungodly stroke of luck we actually won something, an idea began to form revolving around something to do with midgets but soon fizzled out as Joey had returned with our paper nectar of mystery and amazement. To be honest scratch cards really shouldn’t have kept us as interested for as long as they did, but we had just taken a “herbal supplement” and drunk copious amounts of green tea which is enough to get anyone high – or maybe we are just odd.

It took probably more than half an hour for us to complete all the cards and as it turned out we did infact win some money, by some I mean we didn’t get any sort of jackpot and although some of the winnings would have been great had the card been bought on its own in total we made a loss of about six quid. Oh well not a lot else you could buy for six quid that would give the kind of suspense and entertainment that a couple of pieces of scratchable metal covered, cardboard cards gave us. You should try it some time.

Human logic dictates that if a person creates something then they believe they have the soul right to ownership over that thing, copyright law is is in their favour here as it protects anything you create from being copied by someone else without your consent. However the above scenario goes completely against that logic. If it were the case that you worked for a company then sure, it’s allowed you are being paid to come up with ideas that the company can profit from but in the case I gave you just signed up to a community to learn from it and submit your work for peer review to learn what to do better. Unfortunately small print is a bastard and that scenario wasn’t made up the truth of the matter is when you enrol into any university part of the contract between yourself and the establishment is that they own in full any intellectual property rights you claim ownership to while being a student.

That means that its just everything you submit to the university as part of your course they own the full rights to right? Yes but unfortunately there is more. I recently found out that it doesn’t matter if you submit material as part of your course, the university I attend claim full ownership over anything I create and profit from during the three years which I spend attending. Does this sound at all fair to you? I am paying them to teach me, again I am paying them! A popular community website deviantart introduced a similar clause into their terms and conditions small print which made them very unpopular with the community and caused an uproar during which a vast number of people left in disgust at the “greedy corporate monster” that the communities administration seemed to have become. I don’t see any such uproar happening in response to the similar clause in university enrolment, mostly due to people enrolling to university not even bothering to read the small print, I myself didn’t receive a copy until after I enrolled and even then saw no point in reading through a complex legal document as back then to me university appeared to just be an extension of school; how naive I was and what a pain in the arse hindsight is.

This can cause problems later on in life as any student alumni whom later on post graduation makes a lot of money from an idea which they produced while at university faces the big black cloud of uncertainty hanging over their head for the entire span of their career. Much in the same way as someone who suddenly becomes president of the United States hopes that all those hookers they slept with while young and stupid don’t go public with their story – it sounds stupid but that only illuminates the utter stupidity of the small print which we fail to read upon enrolling at university and the fact that it can wreck havoc with your life later on down the line when your university’s lawyers send you a notice demanding 90% of all gross profits from the idea that you came up with that they legally own all IC rights to, just because you thought it up while bored in a lecture.

Why are we spending years of our youth getting deeper and deeper in debt just to pay an administration while giving them the right to claim ownership over any and all work you produce while with them. It makes no logical sense to me and thus is pure and simple bullshit!

We did almost head off to Cardiff, but instead we decided to save that one for another day when we have daylight on our side. Also stay tuned for the three countries in a day challenge, where we have to have breakfast, lunch and dinner in a different city in a different country. Not too difficult considering the United Kingdom is made up of three countries Breakfast in Scotland, Lunch in England and Dinner in Wales. The challenge is to leave Joeys at midnight and get back to his house 24 hours later. It is either we do that or go to Wales for a day spending the night before getting the boat to Ireland and spending as long as the country captivates us for. This will result im sure, in a host of twitter blog entries and creepy hotel reviews.

Until then, the photos of today. We had ourselves some fun!

I had an enjoyable few hours last night shooting with Ben, he has bought himself a new camera and wanted to get out and take some night shots. Having nothing else booked I thought why not and we walked into town to get some long exposures.

I don’t like taking expensive equipment out and about on my own at night so it was a good opportunity for me to get some shots in I hadn’t been able to do, we took some long exposure shots and then had the idea of a photomanip which could be done with some benches. Above is the one I took of ben, Bens one will come once he has a more powerful PC to work on (this weekend). Enjoy!

p.s. Finally the photo based blog has something photographic on it!

Filming went well also, we got all the shots we needed and hopefully they shall prove their worth as the entire day cost quite a lot of money. After filming we all felt the need for the pub and thus I drove us towards Britain’s first non smoking pub, a fantastic, traditional, old pub on the way to Bluewater. I can’t for the life of me remember what it’s name is, other than it is easily my favorite to visit. We all had a drink and then I drove us back the interesting way… through London! Haha, yes London, it proved to be an interesting escapade and paid off I think; seeing as we got home in good time with out too much congestion in our way.

So yeah, all in all 340 miles in total today. We drove a hell of a lot more last weekend and pretty similar the weekend before so I would guess that all in all I have driven 1000 miles for our latest film