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

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

PC Building, Overclocking and CES Mania

It’s Day 2 of CES, and I am still shellshocked by the whole thing… not only did I attend Tiger Direct’s annual PC building race last night – I left there with a PC building apron and a great bit of footage! That’s already on Virgin’s site. This was like a modern-day gladiatorial event, with some of the audience shouting so loudly, I could feel the sound vibration going right through my camcorder!

I then went on to Corsair’s Pirate Party, which was even more surreal that I expected – there I got to chat with Fugger and Kingpin, two of the world’s premier overclocking afficionados.

They talked me through exactly what overclocking involves, and then showed me a computer that looked like it might have been built by the Borg. I’m FTP-ing the footage across right now, while I’m in the “Blog Pit” in the Sands Convention Center, Vegas, before recording some audio voiceover material in the booth to go with the piece.

To have a look at the video footage, which will probably be available tomorrow, UK time, just head on over to http://www.virginmedia.com/digital

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

Vegas or Bust

It’s crazy out here! I’m at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show – and it hasn’t even started yet, and I’m already overwhelmed. Nothing you see on the telly can truly prepare you for the opulent experience that is Las Vegas. Mix that with gadgets and I’m in a very happy place indeed. That, plus the fact that the hotel I’m in has a sushi bar downstairs that is absolutely incredible.

 

I’ve just been trimming footage for my video blog with Virgin Media, which should be reachable here: www.virginmedia.com/digital and it’s taking a lot longer than I thought – I got off the plane and haven’t stopped since, there’s so much to look at, and hopefully the vid will give you a taster of the gadget banquet that is CES.

Tomorrow (today!) I’m going to the Yahoo! keynote speech, and visiting Gibson to see their self-tuning guitar, which sounds heavenly. I once tuned someone’s guitar at Stratford Platform 8 because their B string was so painfully flat, tuning was the only non-violent solution.

 

Currently I should be asleep, but I want to ftp those files over to Virgin so you get to see the vid at around 5pm UK time – too excited about “nearly live reporting” to sleep a full night, so I’m going to finish sending these files over, and see if I can get a quick bath and snooze in before Yahoo’s keynote speech at 11am. Back soon!

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info

Speaking Freely

“Hello, this is me actually talking to my blog, yes, Talking! I’m using SpinVox which will convert any ramble into my telephone into hopefully something intelligible that you might want to read about life, the universe, gadgets and everything else. Basically, they give you a phone number and then you can blog away to your heart’s content – Spinvox will then send your blog a text transcript – either to Draft, or Real Live Publishing, depending on your demeanour and/or blog settings. So here goes:*

I’ve just finished answering all the questions for the virgin media xmas forum which was quite exciting, although it took me a lot longer than I thought to complete… it turns out that there are lots and lots of questions that don’t just require desk research, but actually speaking to Real Humans, which I try and avoid as much as I can first thing in the morning.

Other news, on my website http://www.ljrich.com/ you will actually be able to get a £5 voucher from Firebox if you click on the Firebox Voucher link on the menu… just enter your email and then Firebox will kindly send you £5 with no minimum spend which I think is fabulous.

I’m also trying to get everything sorted for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Vegas, where I’ll be filming in January 2008. The more I’m told about this, the more bemused I am.

I’ve been constantly given warnings about how crazy Las Vegas is and how absolutely ram-packed it’s going to be and how it’s just going to blow my mind and that it’s some kind of Gadget Heaven. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll either be swallowed up by some gigantic technological black hole, never to return, or I might just get it over and done with and be assimilated at the show. Let’s hope that Borg OS is compatible with most browser platforms. I bet it’s incredibly efficient…

You know, I’m currently somewhere between really looking forward to this trip and really being quite worried about it. I’ll definitely be updating you on how it all turns out. Thanks very much SpinVox, you rock! speak to you soon. Bye.”

*note, I spoke this to Draft and tweaked it so you could click on nice links before publishing, but really I didn’t need to adjust very much at all- most excellent! www.spinvox.com if you fancy having a look.

spoken through SpinVox tweaked by LJ

also see http://www.ljrich.com for more info