But first a quick test.

In December I visited Tasmania for the first time. I only had one goal: to spot a wild platypus and take a photo. Thankfully I found a very cheap and handy bike hire place and cycled out to a small reserve near Burnie, the port where our ship had docked.

Burnie, Tasmania

A platypus! I tried taking a good photo, but this was the best I could do.

Bike ride.

Broken knife!

Thankfully this happened during a practice session, not during a show.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I kept a diary for a year. All of it is in text files, sitting in a folder on my hard drive, backed up on various hard drives and in the cloud.

So now what do I do with it?

Well, it’s been handy to look up names of people I’ve met, or places I’ve been, but as time passes that will be less useful.

In 10 years time I could read through the whole thing, and see how much of a dick I was, but there’s no way I’m going to read through the whole thing now.

But I want to see how much I can learn about my life when I was aged 30 years old. So here goes!

First step: combine all text files into one. I’ve done that already, using Automator on OSX. It’s handy for stuff like this.

Step two: write a python script that filters out all punctuation, line breaks, tab breaks and spaces.

This leaves me with a huge list of over 200,000 words.

Step three: modify script so it counts up how many times I’ve used each word.

Easy!

Total number of unique words in the diary: 9,608. Is that a lot? I guess it’s a pretty varied vocabulary.

The top 10 most common words:

10449	 i
9310	 the
7244	 and
7115	 to
5633	 a
2871	 it
2705	 in
2573	 of
2327	 my
2280	 but

Boring!

Step four: import into a spreadsheet where I can scroll through the words and tag each one as either a Name, a Place, a kind of Food, an Action or an Object. The vast majority of words are none of these, of course.

This is more time consuming, of course. I decided to ignore all words I only used once or twice each, as they make up about two thirds of the 9,608 words. And I’m just not clever enough at python scripting to do anything like this automagically (and certainly not while unconnected from the internet) so I tagged each word by hand.

The results?

Let’s start with food-related words. I’ll share the top 24.

267	 food
227	 breakfast
126	 dinner
97	 pizza
47	 burger
47	 eat
44	 drinks
42	 lunch
34	 eating
31	 tea
30	 drinking
25	 shots
21	 pasta
21	 tasty
18	 cake
17	 mustafas
16	 cheese
16	 chocolate
16	 hungry
16	 milk
16	 yummy
13	 coffee
11	 crepe
10	 parliamento

I think this is quite educational. I mention “pizza” more times than I mention “lunch”. This doesn’t mean I ate pizza more times than I ate lunch, but I guess pizza is more important for me to record in my diary than one meal of the day.

Burger probably ranks so high because of the 8 Bacon Cheeseburgers in 8 Days project I undertook last September. Since then I’ve eat more burgers than I normally would do in a year, mainly to see if I can find a tastier burger. And, of course, with such a project in mind I’ll write about it in my diary more often.

Mustafa’s Hänchen Gemuse Kebab? The best kebab place in Berlin which happens to be right on my street? 17 visits in the last year, I’m guessing. And 10 trips to Pizza Parliamento, my favorite pizza restaurant near my apartment.

“Tasty” and “yummy” pop up more than I would have thought. I guess “yummy” is a word I’d use more in a diary than normal conversation.

Next set of results:

Places!

139	 berlin
127	 park
122	 bar
71	 apartment
71	 hotel
65	 ejc
61	 hot-tub
52	 airport
47	 gym
41	 prinsendam
40	 london
39	 bookshop
37	 cabin
32	 hill
27	 cafe
26	 boat
25	 theatre
24	 bank
24	 ubahn
21	 port

Berlin wins, of course. But there’s a lot to learn about me here. “Park” means Victoria Park in Berlin, where I go to juggle every day when the weather is good.

“Bar” is self explanatory, right?

“Hot-tub”? When the weather is good in Berlin I go hang out in the park. When the weather is good while I’m on a cruise ship, and even when it isn’t, I usually spend an hour per day in the hot-tup and pool. On a sea day I hang out while the sun sets, otherwise I hang out while we sail out of the port.

“EJC” isn’t just a place, but an event, which I mention throughout the year as I was part of the organizing team.

“Gym” in NO WAY means a place where I get fit. Instead it means the gymnasiums at juggling conventions.

The “Prinsendam” is a ship that I perform on six or seven times a year. And other words like “airport”, “cabin, “boat”, “hotel”, “ubahn”, and “port” just show how much travel is a big part of my life.

Next results?

Activities/Verbs. A top 20:

772	 went
568	 show
565	 think
441	 work
427	 juggling
385	 going
265	 chatted
265	 said
259	 sleep
244	 make
239	 played
193	 guess
160	 chatting
157	 met
152	 tried
146	 ate
146	 feel
146	 remember
141	 play
139	 found

This seems pretty standard, I guess. And saying “I guess” might explain why I do so much guessing.

Looking further down the list, I notice “116 sex”. I know for a fact I didn’t have sex 116 times!

And then “97 shower”. I know for a fact I had a shower more than 97 times!

“Combat” is mentioned 90 times. And “juggle” (as opposed to “juggling”) another 83 times, and “juggle” 80 times.

Way down the list is “uploaded” at 47 mentions, but that’s high above “downloaded” at 23 mentions. I guess this shows that uploading new content like podcasts and photography is more important. Or something.

Strangely “photography” only gets 68 mentions. I thought this would be higher, but it’s just down to word choice, I guess. That brings me on to the next set of results…

Things, objects, nouns, etc. The top 20:

375	 bed
298	 photos
267	 food
222	 room
214	 video
205	 ship
197	 music
183	 internet
183	 song
168	 club
152	 book
143	 podcast
139	 stage
130	 head
129	 shows
110	 camera
109	 game
109	 songs
100	 guitar
99	 facebook

See? Photography is very important to me. So is music and performing, and reading, and my online life.

I’m not sure what else I need to mention about this list of words.

And on to the final set…

People!

This time, to be a bit more inclusive, I’ll list the top 30.

279	 Julianne
242	 kim-nga
104	 luke
69	 kissha
68	 pola
62	 daniel
54	 declan
49	 olga
48	 eva
44	 karo
43	 alex
39	 doreen
37	 flo
35	 jeff
33	 dj
33	 nathan
33	 scott
31	 rym
29	 john
28	 billy
28	 kyle
26	 christine
26	 jesse
26	 tim
25	 jochen
24	 david
23	 nat
22	 corinna
22	 jessica
22	 jj
22	 lee

And let’s just start at the top. “Juliane” is, of course, my current girlfriend. I met her for the first time at the start of June, so she wins by quite a number of mentions in under three months worth of diary.

Second place is “Kim-Nga” who was my girlfriend last year. We were together from October to early January, so about three months again. Though “together” is funny word for a long distance relationship.

Third place is “Luke” which is me. This is because I addressed many diary entries to my future self, saying “Hey Future Luke, reading back over this diary, here’s what you did today. This is reflected in the song I wrote last September called Future Luke.

Kissha is friend in Berlin who I kinda dated in the spring. Pola is my ex-ex-girlfriend who still pops up in my life quite often. But in a good way, as we are still friends.

And then as I look down I see friends I hang out with in Berlin, people I’ve spent time with on cruise ships, people who have stayed at my place, people I’ve been to juggling conventions with, and people I met last year in New York.

Some people don’t feature much in my diary though, even though they feature quite large in my life. I’m not sure why I didn’t mention them more.

This includes:

1. Girls I met in Berlin, with whom I hoped to begin some kind of relationship, but for some reason it didn’t work out. So I’d think about them quite a bit, and mention them every now and then in my diary, but wouldn’t make it in every time I thought about them, only when I met them, or planned to meet them.

2. People I spent just a few days with on a single trip, and might have changed the direction of my life in a big way, but following that I didn’t meet them again.

3. People whom I chat with on an almost daily basis online, who are just part of my every day life but I don’t “do” anything with them worth writing about in my diary.

And then some people on this list are there for negative reasons. “Lee” was a very annoying guest entertainer I had the displeasure of spending three weeks with on a cruise in the spring. In fact, I didn’t spend much time with him, I actively avoided him, but the other entertainers kept getting annoyed with him, and all I heard from them were complaints.

Actually, I think Lee is the only negative placement in the above list.

Finally, in the 365 days I was aged 30, I had sex with 5 girls. I’ll not say who they were, but I’m glad they all made the top 30 above.

That’s it! This is such a weirdly abstract way to analyze ones life, I’m not sure if it is helpful or unhelpful. I don’t think there’s anything else I need to share about my life for a while.

Last note:

The longest “word” in the diary came out as “long-distance-non-dating-friend-with-no-benefits”. This is a specially invented term for Robyn!

Last week I took part in a recording session for the Friday Night Party Line podcast. The idea behind this podcast is: bunch of geeks have conversations about technology and society, and you get to listen in.

And I was drunk. So if you want to hear my drunken rants against flash mobs, plus discussions on many other topics, give it a listen. For some reason the suitcase full of blood seemed to resonate with other listeners. It’s quite long though, so don’t worry about just deleting it on download.

Notes:

Tonight’s Guests: Rym, Scott, Luke, Churba, Adam, and Victor

The Rapture!

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture

The Washington Post’s Outlook section invited 10 writers to sift through the world’s clutter and each nominate one thing – an idea, a tradition, a habit, a technology, you name it – that we’d all be better off tossing out this spring. What they got ranged from “The Simpsons” to “Democracy”. What thing would you want eliminated?

Original Article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/opinions/outlook/spring-cleaning-2011/?hpid=z2

Everyone “knows” that everyone else is a worse driver than they are, so what if we took humans out of the equation? Well, Google has been silently lobbying to allow robots to drive on Nevada public roads. How do you feel about this?

Original Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/science/11drive.html?_r=2

A bill has been introduced into the senate that would give the Department of Justice and individuals new powers to enforce copyright and trademark law against “rogue” and “pirate” Web sites that offer unlicensed copies of protected content or which sell illegal knock-offs of brand-name goods by taking them off the internet. Never mind the questions of the technological feasibility of this bill, what do you think of the possible ramifications of this, if it even passes.

I have a new podcast project underway! It’s called Luke’s Creative Podcast, and in it I chat with interesting creative people about what makes them tick. Head over to that side of my website to download episodes or to subscribe via iTunes.

I’ve put up two episodes now. Episode 1 was just me chatting about the project, the motivation behind it and how it developed over time.

Episode 2 a long conversation with David Friedman. David is a photographer, blogger, and inventor, with a lot of crossover between these different creative strands. You might not know him, but the chances are you’ve read some of his blog posts at Ironic Sans, as he has a habit of coming up with cool ideas that go viral.

Check it out!

I listen to a podcast which started on a forum I read called Atomic Trivia War 9000: The Podcast: The Game. It’s a lot of fun, though a lot of that fun comes from chatting with many of the participants on the forum for the last few years, so I already know and like their personalities.

Anyway, on the latest posted episode:

Posted By: JasonYou may notice right away that we’ve added some ambient music to the background. I’m torn about whether it works — let us know what you think.

Below is my impassioned reply. I think I might collect all my blog posts about podcasting together to make “Luke’s Guide to Making Podcast Luke Likes.”

I’ve not listened yet, but as soon as there is background music on a podcast, I generally stop listening. It isn’t needed. Your podcast is a lot of fun already, and the quality is in the guests and interactions. The editing is fine. You don’t need background music.

When background music works:
a. when it is specially composed or chosen to reflect and enhance the mood or emotions or themes of the content it is accompanying.
b. no other times.

Update:

So between writing the above and going online again to post it, I began listening to the podcast. It is worse than I imagined it would be.

For a start, I have an infection in my left ear at the moment, and can’t hear anything on that side, so I’m only using the right ear bud. The music is making it way harder to hear everything. It’s so bad I may listen to the rest on my laptop.

Second, while I was listening to the program I was walking around the promenade deck of the ship. At one end some music was playing, and the music playing under the chat on your podcast clashed with it constantly. I can’t always control other music in the background, in real life, when listening to podcasts, radio or audio books. If the real life background music was constant, I wouldn’t be able to listen to your podcast at all.

Third, I don’t listen to your podcast for your taste in music. I listen for the banter and geekiness. I really enjoy electronic music, and techno and drum and bass and all that, but music bland enough to work as background music is just that. Bland. (That said, the final credits music in this podcast is pretty cool, though I’m not sure I could deal with more than 10 seconds of it.)

Fourth, it constantly sounds like you are either still introducing the podcast, or are about to wrap it up.

Fifth, the music is setting the pace, in the listeners mind, of the conversation. Every comedic pause and pause for thought is filled with beats and bass, and is simply killing the energy. In a typical quiz show, they use music behind the question rounds for real effect, as the music builds or gets faster in some way, to create tension. In between the questions, when the hosts or contestants are just talking, there is no music.

Sixth, going back to my pre-listening points above, the music choice just doesn’t fit with the content. At one point you are discussing the history of Metropolis, and you guys are actually being interesting and informative, not just joking about comics. But the music is just bleeping away in the background, undermining the current level of conversation. Then there is a round about Greek Mythology, and compared to that the music is just trite.

And even worse, when someone makes a joke about learning the myths from anime or something, it isn’t funny. The tone has already been destroyed by the music, so a joke that was designed to be self-deprecating, when spoken over shitty techno, just isn’t funny any more.

Seventh, see points one to six again.

Music accompanying spoken words is amazing, when done well. You mention Bladerunner in this podcast, and a while ago I listened to a radio show where they discuss the movie. There they played a clip from the very end “… like tears in rain…” and with the music playing, I teared up myself!

Also I listened to the every episode of A Life Well Wasted in about a day and a half, and the music in that is amazing. Like I said, normally if there is background music in a podcast, I just don’t bother, but his podcast kept me enthralled, even if I didn’t particularly care about the subject matter.

I kept thinking “How has he managed to find all this music that matches the content and tone of interviews so perfectly?”

And then, of course, I found out he produced the music himself. Of course the tone of the two mediums fit perfectly, he designed it that way from the start! Of course, it takes him months to record and edit his shows. But you can tell! The care and attention and craft and skill and heart he puts into each episode is way more than I’ll ever fit into ten of mine.

But then, I don’t have to use background music I wrote myself (though I did write the theme music to my own podcast) because that isn’t why people listen. And you don’t have to use music either, because people listen for the banter and fun. You use of music is killing that. People here won’t point that out, because they are used to the personalities and format, and this change won’t put them off. But if this was the first episode I listened to, I wouldn’t have made it through, because I don’t know you, and the music is just a reason for me to turn it off.

Hello,
I’m Jan, I’m a Swiss circus artist. We don’t really know each others, we just shook hand briefly at the Bruxelles convention.
I’m mailing you because I study in the new circus school Codarts, a higher education in circus based in Rotterdam.
For my theoretical circus lessons, I’m writing an essay about the different working fields of a juggler.
I decide to send interviews to the jugglers I like. It would help me a lot if you would answer my interview.

1) What brought you to play on cruise ships? Was it your plan for a long time, or an accident?

“Along with Pola, my former girlfriend and performing partner, I created a juggling act called The Art of Juggling. I never intended to perform this act on cruise ships, instead I thought it would fit variety stages and gala shows. We made a version that fit in our street show, and we performed that at festivals around Europe in the summer of 2006.

In January of 2007 we performed at a small juggling convention in Scotland. We met another juggling duo there who told us our show would work well on cruise ships. But with a catch! Not many cruise ships just want a good 7 min act, instead they want a 50 min show. They said “If you can perform a 50 min show, we will recommend you to our agent in the UK.”

I wasn’t so interested in working on cruise ships, but Pola wanted to give it a go. I knew it would take quite a bit of work, but it turned out to be the right goal at the right time.

I had a lot of material after performing for seven years, and Pola and I could draw on our street shows for the way our characters would work in a longer show. That spring we were booked to perform at a theatre festival in Israel, along with a full-length show that the Israeli juggling convention, and that gave me the certainty that we could perform a very good and professional 50 min show.

So I sent some publicity material to the agent, and a few weeks later we performed for the first time at sea, on the Queen Mary 2, which at the time was one of the largest cruise ships in the world!”

2) I read on your website that you have a big passion for the reading of science fiction books and the writing of it!

“See the second part of my next answer.”

3) On cruise ships, is there a possibility to train? If no, not even “small tricks”? Do you get bored to be so much in the ships?

“I try to train every day, for at least an hour or two, but this doesn’t always work out. I normally train in the theatre, but not very often on the stage, because it is usually too dark, or other people are working. On some ships the theatre is too busy for me to train there at all. I sometimes juggle at the bottom of public stairwells, where I can take advantage of the extended ceiling height.

As for getting bored, I have loads of different hobbies to fill my time. I like making videos, writing music, taking and sharing photographs, etc. Reading science fiction is a long-time passion, and for the past three years I have recorded a review of almost every single book I’ve read. I release these reviews as a podcast, and at the moment I have between 3000 and 4000 regular listeners.

Writing novels is an extension of my love of literature, and I can certainly fill many otherwise-empty hours on a ship!

Having a good laptop computer is essential for me and my lifestyle, so early in 2010 I upgraded to a monster MacBook Pro. It heavy, which isn’t great for traveling, but as you can see, my hobbies are computer-hardware intensive.”

4) Is it hard to always behave the “right way” on a ship? (I’m asking this question because , as you know, on corporate events you have some rules on how you are allowed to interact with the clients. How is it on a cruise ship? Is it the same than on events? If yeah, it has to be very hard, when you are on the same ship during 2 weeks with the same client?

“I don’t find it difficult to behave the right way on a cruise ship. It’s just part of being a professional. I’ve never had any problems with the passengers or the crew, although sometimes I’ve made people nervous when I’m the last person back on the ship before it sails from a port of call!”

5) What about the stage performance; is there any format that an artist should respect to create his show?

“When working on a cruise ship I must have one show lasting between 45 and 50 min. On top of that I must have enough material to do another half show, typically 15, 20, or 25 min.

What I do within those shows is completely up to me. As long as I put on a good show, and entertain the audience, I have complete artistic freedom. Most jugglers think that the material I perform juggling conventions, nerdy stuff which only jugglers will understand, would be unsuitable for a cruise ship audience. I take the opposite approach, and respect my audience enough to go along with nerdy routines about site swap and trick names and other topics.

I format my show around two ideas. The first is that I want to tell my story, my life as a juggler. The second is that I want to answer people’s questions about juggling. You know, like how many can you juggle, when did you first start to juggle, can you juggle fire, can you juggle this random object, where is the most interesting place you have juggled, and all those kind of things.

So I combine these two ideas into a single narrative, and by answering different questions at different times I can swap different elements of my shows around from one performance to the next.”

6) Did hosting shows at conventions help you a lot with speaking on stage? Did the motivation to speak on stage came from there? Is your presentation on the cruise ships mainly about the juggling, or the speaking, or 50/50?

“Yes, speaking on stage or in public in any situation is good practice for performing. The only way to get good at anything is to practice hard and often. For the juggling skills this is easy, as you can do it at home by yourself. For performing, it’s a little bit different.

Between 2001 and 2006 I attended 15 to 20 juggling conventions per year, and I performed in some capacity at every one of them. I offered to be in every show, to host renegade and open stages, to host games sessions, and anything else I could think of. Maybe people got sick of me, but I got very comfortable on stage, and by continually trying out new material I developed a wide range of acts to perform on stage.

How much juggling versus talking I do in my show now depends on various factors. I often do 25 min shows containing very little talking, just 1 min of introduction, and then 5 min of juggling, and then another minute of introduction, and another 5 min of juggling, and so on.

To do this in a 50 min show would kill me, as so much juggling would tire anybody out. Also holding people’s attention purely with juggling for 50 minutes, even if spiced up with physical comedy, is a very hard task. Maybe I could do it, maybe not. Either way, it’s best to vary the tone of a show throughout.

So my 50 minute show is split three ways between talking (although I normally have props in my hands to demonstrate tricks), pure juggling routines, and physical comedy routines where the juggling and talking is less important than the clowning. These physical comedy routines often include audience participation, as me looking silly on stage is one thing, whereas getting audience members to look silly on stage is way more interesting.

Also, before talking about science fiction on my podcast, I presented the Juggling Podcast. In total I have recorded about 5 or 6 days worth of audio, the vast majority being me talking. Sitting down with a microphone, with no preparation except for a few lines of notes, and talking for 45 minutes, with no edits, and being entertaining and informative, is a difficult thing to do! Knowing that I can be generally entertaining, purely off the top of my head, gives me a lot of confidence as I walk on stage.”

7)When you play on a ship, do you usually play once, (like in the welcome or the good bye show) or do you present the same show over and over for different audience in the ship?

“I perform my 50 min show twice in one night, and then perform my 20 or 25 min show as part of a longer show twice on another night. Normally there are a few nights in between, and maybe a few nights either end, so while I only perform on two nights I might be on a ship for a week. Sometimes I perform just once on a night, and a few times I’ve been asked to perform my show three times. Three times in one night is simply too much, and the last show, while entertaining, certainly suffers from a lack of energy.

Some cruise companies are clever, knowing that I get paid by the week. They make sure I am on a ship for the last three days of one cruise, and the first three days of the next cruise. This way I perform my main show twice on two nights, and often my short show twice on another night, in the same time I would normally only perform two nights. It’s like 5 hours for the price of 3.”

8) Your website feels to me much more personal than websites of other professional jugglers. You show videos about the different places you travel, you speak about your other passions, which have nothing to do with your stage acts. Do you think the creation of your website like this helps you to sell your acts, because people see the human behind the professional?

“I don’t use my website for promotion. I have an agent who is very good at getting me work. When I worked with Pola, we would do our own promotion through LukeAndPola.com, mainly for street show festivals and variety work. As a solo performer it is now easier and far less stressful to leave the promotion and booking gigs book to my agent, who was happy to do it for 15% commission.

My website is really intended for people interested in me as a person and the kind of things I get up to. Many people see me on stage during a cruise and look me up online afterwards. They have no intention of ever paying me to work, but they’ll be interested to re-watch my routines, check out videos of me juggling around the world, might be interested in other things I do.

I’ve never use my website for promotional purposes, although without it I wouldn’t be a professional juggler now. 10 years ago my website was one of the most popular juggling websites on the Internet, and I constantly shared photographs, videos, tutorials, comedy writing, comics, reviews, and all different kind of things. Most of it was about juggling, but there was just as much about other things I got up to.

Because of my popular website I became one of the more famous jugglers internationally, despite not being that great at juggling, comparatively. This, as well as being known is an interesting performer, led to me being invited to many conventions around the world. I travelled from the UK to Europe many times, to the United States three times, and to Australia once. Those opportunities would never have presented themselves without my website.

Even now, years later, people often tell me how my website was the thing that inspired them to become a juggler, or when they began juggling it was one of their main inspirations. And many of these people never saw me at juggling convention, not for many years. Just how many people I inspired over the years, I’ll never know, but the e-mails trickling all the time, and random people I meet on my travels tell me the same story over and over again.

This, to me, is a way more important reason for a website than lists of clients I’ve worked for, or quotes about how great I am, or details of my show, or TV shows and media appearances I might have made. Really, who gives it shit about that? My validation as a juggler and performer is that A. I keep getting work offers, and B. I’ve helped inspire a whole generation of new jugglers.”

9) To work on cruise ships, is there a better country to officially live in, for administrative reasons?

“I live and pay tax in Germany. Berlin is a cheap place to live, so that suits me! If I worked abroad more, for over six months per year, I could probably apply for non-resident status in the UK or Germany, and pay tax in Switzerland or somewhere. I know a few entertainers who do this, but I’m not interested. I would rather live somewhere cheap, have to earn less money, and take more time off work.

Within the European Union being self-employed and living in a different country is very simple. When I moved to Berlin I just registered that I lived there, and within a few days I had registered myself with the tax office, and I registered myself self-employed a few months later when I was getting regular work.”

10) Are you making a lot of publicity to get hired on cruise ships, or once you got some jobs, others jobs come, if you did the last jobs well plus luck? About how much time do you invest in promotion?

“As I said before, I have an agent who I pay commission to find me work. I have very little interest in working directly with any cruise ship company, even if theoretically I could make a little bit more money. I believe strongly in going for the least stressful course. With my agent I might earn less per week, but with my agent I work many many many more weeks.

In a strict sense I invest no time in promotion. In a wider sense, again referencing my previous answers, everything I do is promotion. The more I share online, for free, the greater I become in the eyes of anyone interested in me. It’s like building a brand, if you want to use marketing speak.”

Thank you if you read the interview until here!

“My pleasure!”

If you have any useful information you want to share, I would be very happy to read it!
Thank you very much.
Best regards,
Jan von Ungern

“Keep reading science fiction novels and reviewing them for the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast. I also plan to review any fantasy novels I read.”

Win. 40 podcast episodes recorded and released in 2010. Each one of these represents a book read, as well as hours spend thinking about the book, time spent making notes, 30 minutes to an hour of recording, and probably an hour on top of that on the work per podcast.

It’s funny that this has, in many ways, be my biggest project this year in terms of visible output to the general public, and yet it is only worth one win point. Such is my life.

The good thing is that listener numbers keep going up! I must be doing something right.

“Be a guest on other podcasts.”

Win. I was a guest on the SFFaudio podcast a few times, as well as on the Geeknights podcast. Maybe some other podcasts too, although they don’t spring to mind at the moment.

“Doing some more Juggling Podcasts. I really miss the interviews I did with other jugglers.”

At this point I can say win, even though in the juggling section I said this was in the works. It’s a matter of semantics. There I said release, and here I say doing. I have done the podcasts, as in conducted and edited the interviews, however they are yet to be released. Easy point, even if this one was quite redundant. I’d not that I noticed when I made the list.

“I’m thinking of starting a new podcast about traveling.”

Win. I did this for a while at the beginning of the year. It turned out to be too much work. I visit so many places, and see so many different things, and the idea was that I would release one episodes per country I visited, or port stop I made on the cruise. This turned out to be unworkable, as the schedule would mean five podcasts per week in some cases. In the end I decided to stick to just making blog posts with my photographs from each stop in my travels.

This could be called a fail, however it was always going to be an experiment, and was more of a way to combine hobbies, those being traveling and photography and podcasting. That I tried it is enough, even if I didn’t keep it up. I learnt a lot along the way.

“If I’m going to do this, I’m going to buy a portable mp3 recorder with a mic attachment, so I can record easily while hiking across a city or up a hill.”

“Thinking about that last point, what I should actually do is see if my iPhone would work just as well, as then I need to carry one less gadget.”

These two are just stupid, they have very little to do with plans and goals for the year. I was just thinking with my fingers when typing, and somehow they made onto the list. But I did look into these things, and by a microphone for my laptop which also works with my camera, and I did use my iPhone as a voice recorder a few times too.

Final results for this section: six win points out of six! Nice!

And, as I said, I have a whole new podcast project which I’ll be talking about in the future.

” Keep improving my solo shows and performing skills.”

Win. I’m getting better at performing all the time.

” Work on my Room show project, a juggling theater show. I plan to have all the set building work complete by March, and 20 to 30 minutes complete by May.”

Partial win. I have worked a lot on my room project, but this constitutes many fails in this list. I never managed to get as far as I wanted to, mainly because it’s too difficult to work on such a big project by myself. As soon as I invited somebody over to help with the project, I worked quickly and easily, but the entire thing was too much work for one person.

Therefore:

” Perform a short version of the Room Show at the Berlin Juggling Convention in June.”

” Have an hour show finished by October, and put on a series of shows in my own home for invited audiences.”

Two fails. However, I give myself a partial win for the first one about my room show because I did without a cool video in August, and did write a lot of material, even if the video was the only thing I managed to present to anyone.

” Finish other juggling routines I’m working on at the moment.”

Win. Then again, I’m constantly working on new material, so I probably have more unfinished juggling routines now than I did at the beginning of the year.

” Run the British Young Juggler of the Year show for the sixth year. Also do a series of online workshops for those taking part, in attempt to raise the quality of the acts. Nobody has won a Gold Award yet!”

I marked this down as a fail, because I didn’t run the British young juggler of the year. I didn’t go to the British juggling convention at all. There are many reasons, really after running BYJOTY for five years in a row, I don’t think I need to prove anything to anyone and continue when my inspiration is running low.

I have written quite a few workshops about juggling and performing for my blog though, so maybe I should give myself half a point here.

” I’m in charge of the Open Stages at the EJC in Finland. That means seven or eight nights of zero stress and easy work as my superior organization skills result in everything running smoothly, and every night’s show rocking. Or so I hope.”

A win. There was a little bit of stress, but nothing serious. I ran five nights of entertainment, plus I organised the fight night, and hosted the opening show. On top of that I took dozens of photos every day, and uploaded them to Facebook in my blog. I probably did a bit too much but the European juggling convention, to be honest.

“Generally rock out playing combat.”

Win. Combat is one of my favourite things about juggling, and I think I’m getting better all the time. However…

“Beat Jochen in the final of a Fight Night 3 Club Combat tournament. I’ve won a tournament we both entered before, but I wasn’t the one to knock him out. ”

Fail. Jochen beat me in the final in Berlin, or maybe it was Flo, but I didn’t win there. And then at the European juggling convention, I messed around too much, and Alex beat me in the semi-final. Jochen went on to win.

Maybe next year!

“Release some more Juggling Podcasts.”

This is in the works. It’s a secret project at the moment, which I intended to release by the end of 2010, but it’ll be out in the New Year instead. It isn’t specifically about juggling, but I do talk to plenty of jugglers. Stay tuned.

“Release some interesting juggling videos on YouTube (I have a few good ideas).”

Win. I’ll let you judge if my YouTube videos are interesting or not, but I think they are.

” Juggle 9 clubs for 19 passes each with Pola.”

I think this is included more for nostalgia purposes than anything else. It was always one of our plans and goals for the year when we did the juggling podcasts, and generally made plans together for the year, but it’s not very handy when you no longer live in the same country, let alone in the same house.

” Also, depending other work commitments, I might enter Britain’s Got Talent.”

Fail. Although, judging by the reputation of Britain’s got talent, this might be a win.

In this section, I got six win points, one in the works, and six fail points. Not very good, considering I am a professional juggler, and juggling is one of my main hobbies.

I was a guest on the GeekNights podcast again. We recorded this back in September, so I can’t remember exactly what we covered, but apparently I speak very quickly.

“Tonight on GeekNights, we end the year with a discussion we shared with the incorrigible Luke Burrage on the historical legitimacy (or lack thereof) of the Christian Bible. Of particular interest is the Documentary Hypothesis and a solid book on the subject (The Bible with Sources Revealed).”