Wedding plans #1 - Venue

Wedding plans underway

So Anna and I have finally set a date for our wedding. I wanted late next year (Maybe Spring or something) she wanted early next year. Since she always wins these discussions, it will be early next year. At this stage it looks like being the 2nd of March.

It is going to be small. So small that I’ve had to cut back our guest list. It will be under 100 people. I’d love a lot more people there, but we are also trying to keep costs low.

We plan to hold a (short) ceremony at Edinburgh Gardens.


Probably not at the rotunda because even though it looks nice in this picture, it is close to noisy trams and usually has ugly graffiti on it, etc.

Across the road from here is a hall where we will have a basic reception-type gathering afterwards. There will be finger-food and drinks available, but not a sit down meal. (We just can’t afford it.)


So as you can see, there will be plenty of room for everyone to sit or have a dance if they like the music I have picked for the evening.

After the ceremony a few of us will take the time to get some photos around the place while the rest of the guests can either come over to the hall and get started on some beers, or if they are after a more substantial meal, maybe that would be a good point to get an early dinner elsewhere before coming to the hall. Though there will be plenty of finger-food so no one will go hungry!

So far we have tentatively booked the two locations but are yet to pay any money because we need to find a celebrant available on the day we need first. This is the next step then we can hopefully lock in the day and send out some invites.

I will let you know how this progresses via this blog and will post soon about our celebrant hunt and honeymoon plans.

Thanks for reading.

The Troll Bridge

Last week I had the privileged experience of working with an amazing group of people on an amazing film shoot. The film was Troll Bridge and I encourage anyone that can to seek it out once it's done. The story of this film began about 9 years ago when the director Daniel wrote an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's short story 'Troll Bridge' It's set in Discworld as many of his books are. Personally, I'm not a fan of his work but the great thing about Troll Bridge is that it is actually just an amazing story that doesn't require any knowledge of Discworld or Pratchett's work. I won't go into a synopsis of the film here but I do encourage you to look at this link which includes a synopsis and tells you all about the film itself:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snowgumfilms/terry-pratchetts-troll-bridge (yes, it's a kickstarter page, no I'm not posting it here so people will donate - it's just a good overview of the film and the story, donations have closed.)

Last week we shot the bridge scene. The main part of the actually-quite-long short. It was amazing for a number of reasons. For a few of us it was an ending to 9 years of watching this film grow into something amazing. For others it was the first film set they'd been on, or for others their first time working with Snowgum Films. It didn't matter who had done what before though, because we all came together and worked towards the same goal and from what I have seen so far - it is amazing. Seriously.

For this shoot my job was flicking light switches. Literally, that was pretty much it. But then I was given another job - writing down measurements for each shot to help effects guys when they are adding in trolls and whatnot. I also helped move lights and the green screen around. To me it didn't really matter what job I had, I just wanted to be a part of the shoot since I had been on most of the shoots for the film (I didn't get to go to New Zealand) - in the first shoot for this film I was an actor (well, an extra).

The shoot went for 5 days, there are plenty of photos of it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/snowgumfilms/sets/72157629473394444/

Do check it out when it's done.

A sneak preview of what the final shot might look like:

My Top Ten Songs of all time, at this stage.

So I recently made a cd of my top ten songs of all time. It was quite difficult to do and doesn't really reflect what i've been listening to these last few years because it was an all time list and had to include a couple of songs from my past that mean a lot to me. I had a lot of trouble narrowing down the list to ten, so I included 7 bonus tracks, which are in no particular order, although the top ten is in order. The track listing begins with songs 10 to 1, and then the 7 bonus tracks.

1. 10. Father and Son - Cat Stevens
2. 9. Run To Paradise - The Choirboys
3. 8. Life Is A Highway - Tom Cochrane
4. 7. California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade - The Decemberists
5. 6. Footloose - Kenny Loggins
6. 5. Shine On Me - The Lucksmiths
7. 4. The Shining - Badly Drawn Boy
8. 3. Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
9. 2. The Boy With The Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian
10. 1. Nice Day - The Salteens
BONUS TRACKS
11. Close To Me - The Cure
12. Disco 2000 - Pulp
13. Passenger Side - Wilco
14. Mornings Eleven - The Magic Numbers
15. It's The Nighttime - Josh Rouse
16. Scientists - The Guild League
17. Sister - Sufjan Stevens

If you don't know any of these songs I would recommend giving them a listen. I also recommend making your own top ten list. It's quite difficult to do if you like a lot of music.

Week 2 - My trip

This week was full of work. It felt like it never ended. Working nights is tiring and it feels like I have no spare time to do anything else. I go to sleep late, I get up late, I don’t get a chance to see anyone. There was a highlight during the week though – I had Wednesday off and made it down to the Northcote Social Club to see Gary Olsen from The Ladybug Transistor playing with his Australian backing band. There were 7 up on stage so it was a good complete sound and they played many of my favourite Ladybug Transistor songs. I had a nice meal beforehand and went to Sarah’s place afterwards and played guitar hero for a little while before sleeping on their couch (it’s a quite comfy couch!)

The question i’m getting a lot this week, which is hard to answer is “Did you enjoy your trip?” – Usually not a difficult question, however it is when you had the trip I had. Usually the people asking the question don’t have time for a long answer and are generally expecting ‘it was great’ or ‘awesome’ or ‘it was so great’... the shortest answer i can give is “Didn’t enjoy Africa, enjoyed Europe and London at the time but looking back at my time there makes me depressed”- so obviously that answer usually precedes further questions, however most people are asking in passing and don’t have time for explanations so i have to say ‘it was great’ but i really don’t mean it. Usually I just shrug my shoulders, but most people don’t accept that answer.

This weekend I went out past Ballarat to slightly past the middle of nowhere for a film shoot. We were shooting Troll Bridge. It was a very well organised shoot. I was very impressed with everything about it. The only disappointing thing about was that out of all the crew roles on the set, my role was the one thing I have never done before. I could have done any of the other jobs (except make-up/sfx) but i was given the job of Data transfer guy or something. My job was to transfer the footage from the cameras to a hard drive. Very very exciting. I felt fairly useless pretty much the whole time I was there. On the second day I managed to do a little filming for the making of documentary. I got a couple of good shots, but most of it was fairly average.

And that was my week. How exciting!

Tonight is Oscars night which I am looking forward to. It should be a good night.

Week 1 - The Plan

So i’ve decided to do a weekly blog. Lately I’ve found myself having to answer the same question a lot, to a lot of different people, and I thought, maybe it would be easier if i just wrote it all down and then when i was asked certain things by people I could just say www.glenngreening.blogspot.com.

Not sure how it will work because that would pretty much end any conversation I have fairly abruptly, and maybe being asked the same question over and over again by different people won’t happen all that often in the future. Who knows? Anyway, the idea is to at least start a weekly blog about what I’ve been up to and what’s been happening with me.

So this week people have been asking ‘what’s the plan?’ as i’ve just come back from overseas and am up in the air as to what i am going to do now. I’ve been asked the question so many times lately, which is fine, but it’s annoying when I don’t have an answer to it. I don’t really have a plan. I guess my plan is to figure out a plan?

So at the moment I am staying with Jarrod and Georgia who have been awesome enough to let me stay in their spare room until i find somewhere to live. The plan is to look for a place to live. Today I looked on the internet and i have a big list of places to visit on Monday. I also emailed someone about a share house but I’m still not sure if that’s what i want to do.

Really not much is happening these days, but i’ll try to update this every week if i can remember as i get my life back on track. And if no one reads it, that’s fine. At least it’s something that i can look back on myself if I want to.

Xmas cd

Hello,
Some of you will have received a mix christmas cd from me but without any tracklisting because I didn't have time to make a bunch of cd covers. So I have posted the tracklisting below. I hope you like it.

1. Sufjan Stevens - Get Behind Me, Santa!
2. Mavis Staples - Christmas Vacation
3. Sufjan Stevens - Put The Lights On The Tree
4. The Ravonettes - The Christmas Song
5. Ciao Bella - Christmas Time
6. Sufjan Stevens - Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!
7. The Eels - Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
8. Wham - Last Christmas
9. Sufjan Stevens - Did I Make You Cry On Christmas? (Well, You Deserved It)
10. Bright Eyes - Blue Christmas
11. Calexico - Gift X-change
12. The Handsome Family - So Much Wine
13. Sufjan Stevens - Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!
14. John & Yoko - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
15. The Lucksmiths - The Thought That Counts

My favourites are all the Sufjan Stevens songs, and also track 15. Hope you like them.

My world tour of Libraries!

Our trip is only a few months from the end so I thought I'd put together a little blog of all the libraries we have visited throughout our travels. This blog will take you through photos of many of the libraries we have seen.

What better place to start than the Alexandria library in Egypt!

#1 Alexandria Library, Egypt We went to Alexandria for two days. This library was huge and very interesting to explore.The library is designed in such a way that the windows are angled so there is never direct sunlight shining through them, but there is still plenty of light. The outside of the building is supposed to symbolise a rising sun, with the planetarium (top picture, left) symboling the earth. The planetarium was closed when we were there.

#2 Austrian National Library, Vienna

This library charged people to go in so we didn't stay too long. We got as far as the part where you needed to have tickets and then left. We got in for a second though before we were asked for our tickets that we didn't have. I got a sneaky photo of it but it is out of focus so I didn't put it up here. The photo above though was before the main part of the library so we were allowed there. To see how great it is inside, have a look here - you will need quicktime installed to see this properly.

#3 Prague Library, Czech Republic.

We visited the Prague Library on our last day it Prague. It felt quite uninviting to me and was hard to find (which is why we didn't go till the last day). I liked the statues at the fountain though.

#4 Berlin Library, Germany

The library in Berlin was undergoing renovations, or some sort of work that required a big banner to be put up in front of it that shows what it would look like if it had a huge ad covering most of it. I really didn't see the point. But the interesting thing about this photo is the courtyard. This is where many many books were burned during the war. I can't remember if this is the Berlin Library, or a University library, or if it only used to be. But it definitely held a lot of books during the war. The library below may be the proper Berlin Library.

#5 Staatsbibliothek (State Library) Berlin, GermanyWe didn't spend too much time in this library. Had a quick look at the catalogue but couldn't understand much of it due to my not knowing any German.

#6 Small local library, Berlin, GermanyThis was our hostel located between a library and a record store, which you'd think would be great. But it was a terrible, terrible hostel. Great library though. I didn't get any photos inside. But they had board games! What a great idea!

#7. Amsterdam Library. This library is easily my favourite so far of my world tour of libraries. We spent a lot of time here as Liz was applying for a job in Scotland and was making use of the free internet quite a bit. You didn't have to sign up or book in to use the computers so that was handy. This library had more dvds than a dvd store, more cds than a cd store, and I think they had some books too! They also had so many computers that no one ever had to wait. More than I have seen in university libraries. They also had a nice little cafe with newspapers from all over the world, and any magazine you'd ever want to read (but the coffee was not that great).

#8. British Library, London.
Yes, it was a little windy on this day. This was a pretty awesome place to visit, inside they have original and handwritten writings from all sorts of people from history- Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Captain Cook, old maps, and even some Beatles lyrics written on the back of coasters and plenty more interesting stuff to check out. To get into the proper part of the library you need to be a member, to be a member you need to be researching something.

#9 Salisbury Library, England.

This was a really nice little library. In fact it was a really nice little town in general. This library had RFID in action and it was the first time I'd seen it being used. Looked very interesting and I can't wait to see it happening back home. They also had other ideas that I liked. I stole a bunch of flyers from this library so I could steal/borrow some of their ideas.

#10. The Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Scotland

We were in only in Glasgow for a weekend so this library was closed. Looked nice though. Around the corner was this...

#11. Anderston Library, Glasgow, Scotland

This library was closed also. Didn't look as nice or as interesting as the Mitchell Library, just a door in the wall.

#12. Library inside random Highlands castle, Scotland.

We stayed in a haunted castle during our tour of the Highlands. There was a small library in the castle. Didn't find many good books there though, didn't find any ghosts either.

#13. National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.
We didn't go inside this library. We didn't have a lot of time in Edinburgh. Although, we did get a chance to see the place the first Harry Potter book was written and some of the places that inspired it. We also saw Dolly the sheep in the museum, and the Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle.

#14. Belfast Central Library, Northern Ireland.

We only popped into this library for a minute to check if they had free internet, which they didn't. But around the corner we found...
Library Street! Our hostel was on this street and down the end of this street was the...
Library Bar! The night we went to the library bar it was pretty much empty except for us. In fact most of Belfast seemed empty (and also closed) the whole time we were there. I thought the library bar would be full of rowdy librarians, but there was nothing! I hope their libraries aren't this quiet!

#15. Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland.

This library was basically one long room that looked amazing! I would have loved to get a photo but couldn't so I bought a postcard instead. It's the first postcard of ever bought without the intention of sending it. I just needed a picture of the inside of this library. Oh, and the Book of Kells was interesting as well. It was quite awe inspring seeing the work that went into books made so long ago. So much tiny detail used and so much care taken.

#16. National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

We didn't actually go inside here because we were on our way to see the bog men in the archaeological museum but I had to get a photo of me here anyway.

#17. The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ireland.The Chester Beatty Library houses an amazing collection of writing, books and art from all over the world. The work on display encompasses many different regions and religions. All of it is very old and very very interesting. Well worth a visit if you're ever in Dublin. Unfortunately photos were not permitted. It also has a very nice roof top garden with nice views of the surrounding area.

#18. End of the Road Library, Larmer Tree Gardens, England.

This small library was in the middle of the hidden away part of the music festival we went to. They had some good books here, and they somehow survived the rain on the first night.

#19. Liverpool Library.

The three pictures below are all from Liverpool, and are all the same building. Not sure if this library has 3 different names, or if it's 3 different libraries. It was all closed when we were there (a Sunday) so I guess I'll never know unless I go back.
#20. Xaghra Library, Gozo, Malta.
This library was only open about three days a week, in the mornings. I went back another day and checked it out. It was the most bland library I've ever seen. But it was great that this Village had a library at all. I wish I'd gotten a photo or two of the inside.

So that's all I've seen so far. Still have Africa to go though so I may see some more, but I'll be on a tour so I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to. I'd thought I'd finish with this last shot of me holding the hand of Demetrius Phalereus (350-280 B.C.) who was "The inspirer of the Foundation of the Ancient Library" - This photo was taken in the foyer of the Alexandria Library. I hope this blog wasn't too boring for you. I hope at least someone reads it.

Glenn 2.0