I have been a bad boy by shacking up on another continent for a few months. I travelled from England to Banjul in Africa, filming a bunch of lunatics drive ramshackle cars (including a hearse, ex GDR trabant, a cadillac and a stretch limo).

I pointed a camera out of the front windscreen and took a picture every 7 minutes (on auto in case you were wondering). Here are the pictures all stuck together, giving you the Plymouth to Banjul challenge in three minutes.

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I made this with my old mate Toby.

I Just downloaded a plugin for firefox that allows me to post blogs directly from the browser window. Now, you may be thinking that that’s exactly what you do, but it’s handy to be able to login with one click and post when you are inspired, or drag stuff from the window you were browsing in to the blogging window.

As for WiFi in my glorious city of London I am still amazed at how backward we are. I am hoping that by next summer I’ll be able to work from wherever I want, whether it be the grass outside St Pauls, a cafe or my back garden.

Ok, He’s a genius.

I loved this song he made with Cocker man the pop singer (said in a Vic Reeves style of course) cunts are still ruling the world.

I have been slack on the gypsy front for the last few weeks and I apologise. In fact I have been busy with all sorts of other malarkey, including the preparation for the Plymouth the Dakar rally with the boys at Rally ACE.

What brought me back to this cathartic little device (after all, no matter how many viewers one has it is a conversation with oneself), is my falling upon the wonderful musings of Tim Ireland.

Tim has made a few politically oriented blogs that have really caught the imagination of the public, but as soon as I came across them ‘SEO’ cried out. For one there is the quite blatant link to ‘Search Engine Optimisation‘ at the top of the front page of Bloggerheads as well as well placed references to ‘Boobs’, and anything that might capture the attention of masses of search engine traffic.

It is a self publicising anti government rant that rattles its saber, but seems to be about the promotion of Mr. Tim above any high ideal.

OR is Tim just living in the real world. Do we have to combine a savvy street wise knowledge of the markets maintaining our innocent desire to do good.

Is he using his marketing powers like one of the X men? ‘Marketing Man uses eloquence to destroy evil’.

It makes me wonder about the power of Blogging when to get noticed now you have to ride on the back of the spectacularly stupid, ridiculous or any old bandwagon to get noticed. If Tim is managing a balancing act between the absurd and his integrity then perhaps I have learned something today.

Right! I’m in the market for a bandwagon.

In fact I am going to get hold of Tim Ireland and ask him for one. He seems to be good at them, so I am starting a get me on the bandwagon campaign.

Gimme.

Tits. And arse.

I have just installed a great plugin that translates this blog into a multitude of languages.

I don’t know what I’ll do if people start chatting away on the blog in Chinese, but all are welcome. It’s not too busy right now so I won’t be worrying yet ;0)

I was on the welsh borders this weekend around the Forest of Dean. It is an absolutely gorgeous part of the world, with wooded vallies rolling like waves into England from the black mountains.

I left my computer alone for the weekend, preferring to enjoy the 14th birthday of my daughter without any distractions from the cyber realm. In fact my daughter is one of the few children who enjoys a reasonably computer free existence. There is one in the house, but she prefers books and the magical realms of literature to the world wide web.

Everything in small doses.

This is an assortment of video I have been doing over the last few years. Video has been a passion of mine ever since I used it to make a living whilst I was in Thailand.

I was always a bit more focused on the underwater realm rather than the dollar at the time, but have no regrets.

Since then I have made travelogues, received grants to make arts pieces, filmed festivals, band videos and promos for entertainments companies.

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Due to the desire to show people where we are going to be on each day of the Plymouth top Banjul rally, I have been taking a closer look at Google earth.

The resolution has improved greatly, with London now at 10cm resolution. I was floating about over the houses of parliament this morning, and took a peak at the top of the London eye.

My girlfriend was almost convinced we were looking at live footage when we zoomed into the Grand Canyon, which has the added feature of terrain mapping. Click on the globe to download a Google Earth file showing where we will be going in the rally.

This cyber gypsy is off gadding about again in the early days of December. I am setting my compass for the desert dunes, leaving a winters London behind and rallying off with the boys and girls from ACE.
Some old buddies from Koh Tao have decided to take part in the Plymouth to Banjul rally. it’s a poor mans Paris to Dakar, with cars costing £100 and the destination being the capital of The Gambia, Banjul. It’s actually a bit further than Dakar, because we are just that little bit more stupid brave.

We hope to be keeping everyone posted along the route by updating our blog at rallyace.com and if we have the facilities we’ll post daily video’s, and perhaps immersive video (QTVR) of our wonderful surroundings.

What will be really great is to see the lads again, it’s been 8 years and it will be marvellous.