A few days ago, interes10 mentioned that London’s Natural History Museum was a fairly decent place to visit for a family day out.

Whenever I think of the Natural History Museum I immediately have images of the giant Blue Whale model in the Mammals hall, or even the huge fossil collection that inhabits the entrance hall.

Dinosaurs spring to mind.

Always.

Today I found myself back there again. But not for a family day out this time, oh no. My presence was required for a much different purpose.

Operation: BIG GNAW was my very own secret mission for today.

Part of an overall plan - PLAN 9 to be exact – I was to be at a set location, at a set time and armed with a very specific set of responses to a set of questions of which I had no knowledge. With a map in my pocket and some guidelines around exactly what I could and could not say, I set out.

“But what the hell is PLAN 9? What is Operation BIG GNAW?”

Allow me to explain…

Mr Dan Light (pictured, top), is currently in the process of putting together a sizzle/trailer for a new film entitled Loch Ghoon. The script, based on an original screenplay by Dan’s cousin Max, requires a few vox pops from everyday folk (that’s where I come in), shot in and around London’s Natural History Museum (NHM).

‘PLAN 9′ was the codename for the operation that took us secretly deep inside the NHM and BIG GNAW was the pseudonym under which my instructions were left for me. Along with a few other cheeky cameo stars, the aim was to get in, shoot what we needed and then get out again before we were rumbled by the NHM security.

Not an easy task.

I’ve tried filming in a you-think-it’s-public-but-it’s-not-really kind of place before and that did not end well. However, thanks to Dan’s meticulous planning (see above), the whole shoot went off without hitch.

Being a Saturday afternoon, the museum was naturally very busy. With Joe Public taking photos left, right and centre, somehow a small collection of inconspicuous-looking men gathered ’round a camera, interviewing each other suddenly became something rather normal. Par for the course in fact. Business as usual.

To the average passer-by, we were merely tourists.

Very, well done.

Rupert, Dan, James, Dan, Benny, Antonio, Katie, Saffron (and maybe a couple of others whose names escape me), excellent work all round.

There’s a Plan9 photo set from today’s fun and games up over on flickr and, if you’re interested in following the progress of Loch Ghoon, I suggest you stay tuned to Dan’s blog – if anything, it’s just a good read.

This is BIG GNAW, signing off…

PLAN 9: COMPLETE

Minor update:

Benny has put his videos and words together – ‘Assault on Plan 9′
As has Dan – ‘We go in. We get what we want. We come out.’

“I’ve just been to the Rick Astley Flash Mob at London’s Liverpool Street and it was frigging hilarious. I should be uploading a video as soon as I get in front of my laptop. Fantastic.”

spoken through SpinVox

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EDIT -  As promised, here’s the video:

EDIT 2 – Thanks to the immediacy of this post – I ended up appearing on The BBC’s ‘Pods & Blogs’ programme. I’ll see if I can get my hands on the audio and put if up for you…

Whee!

Sleeper hit of Mobile World Congress

Google it – it’s amazing.. If I could have one now, I’d get one.

Ewan’s written about it over on SMS Text News and on the right of this post there are two shots that I took next to my E61i for comparison etc…

Not soon after that I bumped into Jonathan Greene from Atmaspheric Endeavours – he  had heard about this amazing device too so I took him round to take a look.
He took liberty of shooting a Qik video…

You really do have to see this thing in action to believe it – It’s all kinds of awesome!

Alright folks,

Happened to be passing through London town yesterday and, whilst I was Jaikuing away, my new friend Steve from S60Blogger requested some photos of the BRAND NEW Nokia Flagship Store on Regent Street…

These I took and, after eventually uploading them to my Flickr (via ShoZu – my new favourite app) for the world to see, I thought I’d post some here… see below

WOOP WOOP!

And also, to show that there’s no favouritism, I also followed through on Stefan from Intomobile‘s request for a QIK video tour too!

Big love to Ricky Cadden, Symbian-Guru, who reported on these FIRST over at SMS Text News and then again over at Symbian Guru.

Top Bombin’ Chap!