Video killed the radio star (and nearly me as well).

Okay, so it turns out that beard aside, Steven Spielberg and I have very little in common. I have created a video that I'm more ashamed of than Paris Hilton's parents would have been of her infamous taped collection of private moments (and not just because it reminds me that the rest of the world hears not my voice, but that of a slow farmer on drugs).

In my defence, it was my very first time and I was plagued with technical difficulties, but my dreams of making it big in Hollywood (California, not the one in Worcestershire - I could probably still hit some heights there) are in tatters.

The reason I was messing around with a video in the first place was to try and establish a clear winner of my Mo Farah portrait. Rather than pick a name out of the hat or toss a coin, I thought it would be a marvellous idea to ask people who I meet throughout the day a simple question - Geraldine or Kevin? Whoever got the most votes would win!

So I collected around four minutes of footage that I thought I could stitch together and hopefully edit into an amusing montage that would probably become a massive viral hit on YouTube.

Now as we've discovered, I have no idea what I'm doing, but not for the first time in my life thought 'how hard can it be?'. Only to discover that actually, it's really effing hard. It didn't help that the people I was working with were clearly not professional actors. If they'd been a little bit more 'with it', perhaps I would have stood a better chance and I'd be eyeing up a little place in Beverly Hills by now. You know what? Now I’ve started blaming other people, everything is beginning to make more sense.

After spending several hours trying to find a way of transferring the videos from my Android phone to my iMac computer, I thought I was ready to polish this little collection of video turds into one slightly more glittery one. Clever editing would surely save the day!

But alas, despite working without problems on my phone, once transferred to my computer the audio had changed from people talking to the sound of a thousand howling bees. I started to attempt to find some answers on Google, only to find a nice residential course on bee keeping in Swansea and an article on the decline of the howler monkey.

So, any editing would have to be done in-phone. After pottering around the app store for a while (and downloading some updates to my strip-poker games) I discovered an app called 'Magisto'. This appeared to solve all my problems as it offered a fully automatic editing service. All you have to do is choose your videos and a soundtrack and their advanced Artificial Intelligence would do the rest! Perfect I thought!

The example video on their website turned a collection of snowboarding clips into an amazingly slick movie that guys with shoulder length blonde hair and goatee beards would have described as ‘totally rad’.

However in reality, it turned out that the ‘Artificial’ was a little more dominant than the ‘Intelligence’. Admittedly it was a ridiculously simple process to instigate. After giving it the film clips and music, it popped off for 20 minutes or so to do its thing. I was really hoping that it genuinely was happening automatically and hadn’t been emailed to a poor guy in a Korean sweat shop who was getting paid tuppence an hour to knock out a nicely edited result.

It was with great anticipation that I viewed the final result. If this had have been edited by the enslaved Korean guy, I would have wanted my tuppence back and him put on double shifts with half rations. It had handily managed to edit out all reference to Kevin or Geraldine. What’s left is jumbled nonsense which, whilst it probably reflects what’s going on in my head, doesn’t help answer the winner of the competition. To top it all off, I forget to put a question mark at the end of the title name which annoys me every time I see it.

Get the popcorn laced with cyanide and check it out yourself!

So, you’ll just have to trust me when I tell you that, thanks to Keira Husky from my earlier post changing her mind in dramatic fashion at the very last second, we have a draw! Yes I know I should have asked an odd number of people to make sure a draw wasn't possible, but honestly I’ve had it up to my tits now so that's not going to happen.

The easiest, most practical solution is to share the picture. So, if Geraldine and Kevin could just let me know your age, smoker status, lifestyle and any dangerous hobbies, I’ll have an actuary work out who should get the picture first and for how long.

Only joking of course - there's no way I’m going to put myself through the hell of talking to an actuary! Congratulations both - you’ll get a picture each. Just DM me your addresses on Twitter and I’ll get everything sorted next week.

And if anyone wants to tell me that, in hindsight, it would have been simpler to have just done that anyway, wow thanks! I never realised! Here’s my open wound and over there is a bag of salt - you know what to do.

Having said that, I’ll probably have forgotten this in a few days and will try to make another crazy film, so please rub that salt in really hard.

MOmentous

So, as you’ve probably already seen on Twitter and Facebook, today I finished the picture of my very favourite, most inspirational moment of the London 2012 Olympic games.

There were so many highlights to choose from. Each day seemed to bring a clutch of new and remarkable success stories. But for two Saturday evenings running (<----do you see that clever use of a word there, my blog reading buddies? This isn’t even supposed to be a ‘funny’ post and yet without even trying a joke has appeared. What’s that? Just say ‘pardon the pun’ and move on? Okay then.), Mo Farrah had me dancing around my front room with delight.

Unfortunately, tonight of all nights, Blogger isn't letting me upload the picture to this site, so here's a link to the image if you haven't seen it yet...http://twitpic.com/apabow

Distance running is a funny old event. Unlike the 100m final which is over more quickly than the time it takes me to think of an example of something really quick, the ebb and flow of the five or ten thousand metres has you on the edge of the seat wondering exactly how things will pan out. Has he left it too late? Has he gone too soon? Has he been blocked-in, jostled and had nasty names shouted at him by a gangly Ethiopian?

The gently paced monotony of the early laps work up into a frenzied last 800m or so. As I watched Mo head to the front, kick on and then hold off the charge of his competitors, I was on my feet, jumping up and down as if that would somehow speed him along. During that final bend, my arms were pumping and I was shouting “Come on Mo!” until I was hoarse. I’m almost certain that I was more in need of a sit down than he was once the race was over.

Never before have I wanted a sportsman to win quite like I did Mo in those two races. Usually I’m far more detached - even about sports that I follow regularly. For some reason, I had a genuine sense of desperation for this person who I don’t really know and have very little in common with, to succeed and achieve the pinnacle in his races. The relief I felt when he did so was immense.

I’m still trying to work out exactly why my emotions told me that Mo’s victories were a matter of life and death importance to the world. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to answer that, but it is how deeply I felt about it.

No surprise then that I just had to draw Mo as my favourite Olympian. I already felt like I had a bond with him and inevitably that grows when you spend many hours staring at and interpreting someone for a portrait. Although he doesn’t and most likely never will know it, at some deep and meaningful level, Mo and I are good mates.

So, onto the competition! Thanks so much to everyone who entered. There were a broad range of possible subjects suggested that really reflected the breadth of the British success in the games.

Several people thought I was likely to paint one of Team GB’s pretty girls, which was a good effort and may happen at some point. But as much as I love Mo, the only time I would describe him as “pretty” is when used next to the word “amazing”.

In the end, two of my buddies from Twitter - Kev Bedford and Geraldine Banks both correctly guessed that it would be Mo that I was drawing. This is unless I’ve forgotten a correct entry from someone else - in which case, unlucky.

I’m currently trying to devise a tiebreak to decide the ultimate winner. If everything goes to plan, I’m actually going to video this, so Kev and Geraldine - you’ll both have to wait just a little longer. Don’t worry about that though because the anticipation is probably better than the prize itself.

To everyone else who is interested, I’m going to get a print run done of some postcard sized pictures. These will measure 6” x 4” and cost £5 including postage. All profits will go to Mo’s charity - the Mo Farah Foundation - who help provide life saving aid to people who face starvation and disease in East Africa.

I’ll be listing these on my Etsy shop in the next few days if you’d like to help a good cause in return for a small slice of Olympic joy.