I'm back at my parent's house for a bit, going back to Wales tomorrow but it seemed more sensible to stay here while I had some gigs. It's weird being back, a little like going back in time. Spike (my parent's dog) is getting very old now, it's sad to see but he's still pretty happy. Our romahome needs some serious work doing on it to deal with the rust, so I have to get it checked out and make sure the engine isn't knackered before giving the go-ahead for that.

As for the gigs, first up was Reckless Moment in Leamington. I usually enjoy this gig a lot, but this was a day where I'd inherited all of my Mum's genes. I spent most of Monday knocking things off places, walking into things and generally making a mess. The gig was no different, I was ill prepared, had set the sound up wrong and managed to punch a light fitting on stage and cut my finger open. Not a good gig for me. One of the worst feelings in stand-up is walking off stage knowing they were nice and that you could have had a lovely gig but you didn't because you messed it up.

Next up was XS Malarkey in Manchester. I'm always a little nervous about this gig, the first time I did it, I had a mediocre gig so when I went back I was determined to show them what I could do. As a result, a had a really nice gig - one of the best of my career I thought at the time. Well, how do you follow that? It was my first 20 min set at XS, so I was keen to keep up my record. Again, XS was a lovely gig, and if anything I had a better gig than last time (but for longer) lots of people said nice things to me and I saw two big rats on the way home.

Finally was a gig in Tewksbury, which was meant to be a local gig (it was booked when we lived in Bourton) it was an odd gig, the audience decided I was too weird for them. They didn't like my material (a few bits of it worked but mostly they didn't get it). There was a table of people who loved me, then the annoying people who didn't would start to chatter, so I'd engage with them, get a really good laugh off the rest of the room by calling one of them a $lag and then perform some more of my material for the nice table of 7 sat to my right. It was a dancing game which I can't say I won, they wanted filth and chat, which I proved I could do but didn't want to. An odd gig for me, everyone else had a nicer time, so I think they get it out of their system with the strange man in a hat.

I get to see Jem again tomorrow (yay!) then we've got a week to sort out everything for the wedding.

It seems black uses up less energy on a computer than other colours (as it isn't displaying anything) so why not use www.blackle.com (or the UK version http://uk.blackle.com) and thereby help save the planet.

Obviously this alone will not save the planet - but it looks cooler than Google so I'm using it anyway!

Today I've been thinking about Gig-A-Tron and where to take the project next. There are lots of things I want to do:

1. Better mouth images and movement.
2. Better audience reaction detection - I have some big decisions to make here!
3. Some sort of conversation mode which reacts quickly to what I say - I may have to change the system to take a mouse input for this to work on stage - which would be a bit of a shame.
4. A more coherent structure to the show.
5. I'd like to talk about some things - like the roots of AI and its definition (but in a funny way) as I think that'd add to the show as well.