Roundup

Weekly Roundup #002

Gavin Strange

07 Feb 2025 — 4 min read

Ay up m'ducks! How's it going? Good I hope. All good here, thanks for asking. It's been a busy week, both at Aards and here at home too. In the evenings I've been mucking about with all sorts of stuff; the first thing was tinkering with my K.O.II, which is a sampler made by Teenage Engineering. It's a little known fact that the dimensions of the device are the exact same as the modular bricks of Lego! So I set about replacing the top plate of my K.O.II with a brick-based one, because why not, it's bright and colourful!

But then, that meant I had a modular base to attach something else... a camera! Using suguru putty and a spare mount, I created an easy way I could attach my GoPro Hero 10 to the top of the device!

Well why the hell would I attach a GoPro to a music making device you ask!? Well, for the past few years I've really enjoyed adding in a 'musical intermission' smack-bang in the middle of my talks! I do it really to a) break up the flow of the talk and b) it then segues neatly into the second half of the talk about not worrying about skill level (as my music-making is pretty wonky!) when it comes to passion projects and just getting stuck in.

I show the music being played live as I use the MacBook Pro's webcam running through OBS to capture footage of me on the music making device, plus plugging in some realtime audio spectrum bars, to give it some life. I then 'project' that assembled virtual image to the output of the AV system at the talks. Now being able to attach my GoPro to the K.O.II itself mean's it's a much better image quality feed and super skate-film-era fisheye, everything that I love! looking forwards to debuting this on my next in-person talk!

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Next up, I finally finished my "FFFKSSSAKE" graphic! Are you finding yourself looking around at, well, everything and muttering the mystical enchantment known as "FFFKSSSAKE!" to yourself more and more frequently!? I know I am/ Well, join the gang, infact join 'The FFFKSSSAKE! Solidarity Union' - membership is free, all you need to do is to observe planet earth in 2025!

Later in the week I headed down to the big smoke to speak at the LEAD conference, the annual industry summit of The Advertising Association. Aardman's own Emma Hardie was due to give the keynote, but sadly she was ill so Lydia and I stepped in to fly the Aardman flag together!

Lastly, at the start of the week I had the pleasure of chatting with BBC Radio Leicester's Ady Dayman about being a Leicester lad myself and working at Aardman. Ady is such a sweetheart and was a proper cheerleader for Vengeance Most Fowl, we first met a few years ago too when the Greenpeace Turtle Journey film was released and I did a lil' radio interview in Nottingham. The BBC News team kindly made an article out of it and I shall now be known as "LEICESTERMAN"!

I'm sort of like a crap version of Captain America, just powered by Walkers Crisps and the holy spirit of Gary Lineker.

Thanks for reading, thanksloveyoubyeeee.

Gav.

WHAT AM I PLAYING?

Still not making much time for games at the minute, I treat myself to a cheeky Marvel Rivals game before bed every now and then, but that's about it.

I'm living my gaming life through the kids, who are enjoying the new Mario Party Jamboree game and Pikmin 4.

WHAT AM I LISTENING TO?

I feel like I'm reliving my 2000's era favourites at the minute, and that's no bad thing!

Paramore – This Is Why
Prodigy – Fat Of The Land
Slipknot – Iowa
Bad Nerves – Bad Nerves
Blink 182 – One More Time
Vein – Errorzone

Hot off the press - thanks to Spotify's autoplay it just delivered Vein's latest album from 2022 and boy it's a banger! Produced by master of heaviness Will Putney, I'm only a few songs in and it's beautifully brutal!

WHAT AM I WATCHING?

We're still slowly working our way through Season 1 of Severence, but as a family we've really enjoyed watching the Inside Out tv spinoff 'Dream Productions' on Disney+. It's really funny, inventive and a surprisingly on-point mockumentary of the world of filmmaking!