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You can now receive alerts for updates on this blog on TWITTER. The Twitter-entries are created automatically by WordPress and consist of the entry-title and a short url.

The Unofficial Damian O’Hare Website on Twitter:

“Taking the Flak”: DVD Extras – gallery online

A gallery with screencaps of the extras on the “Taking the Flak” DVD is now available on the website.

TAKING THE FLAK: DVD EXTRAS

“The Grapes of Wrath”: Platform Event in Wimbledon and Previews

“(…) Damian O’Hare gave an exceptional performance as Tom Joad, returning from prison to find his family life ravaged by the prolonged lack of rain – forced to leave his family again but pledging to preach the word that the poor must band together for their rights. (…)”

(Source: “A powerful compelling epic drama…”)

Damian O'Hare as Tom Joad and Christopher Timothy as Pa Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath". (c) CFT

As regulars of this blog and theatre buffs will know by now, “The Grapes of Wrath” will go on tour after its highly successful stint at Chichester Theatre Festival. The first dates are 1 – 3 October at the New Wimbledon Theatre. Those of you who bought (or will buy) tickets for the opening night and aren’t sufficiently depressed by the current state of economy yet will be happy to learn that the New Wimbledon will host a special event that night:

“(…) On the opening night performance on Thursday 1 October, New Wimbledon Theatre will also be holding an exclusive pre-show Platform Event: Recession vs. Depression at 6.30pm chaired by Artistic Director of the Chichester Festival Theatre and Director of The Grapes of Wrath Jonathan Church and internationally renowned business expert Allyson Stewart-Allen who will be discussing the economic elements creating the Dustbowl, how California today is facing similar conditions, the impact of economic imbalance on communities and the challenges of bringing a specifically American story to the British stage. There will also be a brief Q&A session. (…)”

(Source)

You can find links to all tour dates in the sidebar of this blog; click on the venue you’re interested in and you’ll get directly to the “Grapes of Wrath” page of the respective theatre. Read the information carefully, many theatres offer concessions for members, students, under 18s, senior citizens, unemployed people etc. Also keep an eye on the local press; there’s always the chance of winning tickets.

By  now, previews for future dates are beginning to show up in the local papers:

What’s On: The Grapes of Wrath at the Theatre Royal in Plymouth

AllMedia Scotland: Christopher Timothy and Sorcha Cusack to appear in The Grapes of Wrath at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

And now for something completely different…

You might have noticed that the design of the website has changed, with a vertical navigation bar rather than a horizontal one. While I slightly altered some of the graphics, I kept the old-fashioned cartoonish “60s” touch of the original. I hope it will work for you guys.

Re-coding of website to improve access for the visually impaired

You hopefully didn’t notice, but last week the website was hacked.

Some idiot created two subfolders (I didn’t bother to check the content) and tried to link them from the front page. Luckily, the host noticed immediately that something fishy was going on, sent me an email and we managed to delete the poxy code. There was at no time a risk for you to catch a virus while surfing the website, so no worries. It was very likely not a specific attack on Ambarussa, either, because other websites were targeted as well.

To be on the safe side, I’ll upload the complete website from a backup, and I’ll use this opportunity to re-code everything to improve the access for screenreaders for the visually impaired. Being the html dinosaur that I am, I originally used the <b> and <i> tags for bolding and italics. However, screenreaders struggle with these tags, and so I’ll switch to <strong> and <em> instead. This might also solve some of the issues Mac users reported (I know, I’m a hopeless optimist).

As a consequence, you might encounter the odd 404 Page of Doom during the next days. Thanks for your patience.

Edit: And I have no idea why this entry disappeared for a day. Off to change my passwords now…

“The Brøken”: DVD out in the UK, gallery online

“The Brøken” is now available on DVD in the UK as well. Click here if you’d like to buy this movie on Amazon UK.

If you start watching, doze off five minutes into the movie, wake up in the middle for a moment, fall asleep again and then wake up for the last five minutes, you won’t miss much of the action and none of Damian’s scenes. I found “The Brøken” to be as entertaining, surprising and terrifying as London on a rainy morning in October. Which is pretty much the feeling of the movie right from the start. Personally, I’d rate it with 2 1/2 stars, but this is coming from somebody who thinks “Godzilla vs. Biollante” is great cinema and owns the “Eight Legged Freaks” DVD, so…

The screencaps of the movie are up on the website now:

“The Brøken” Gallery

Damian O'Hare as Anthony in The Brøken

Gallery updates and news from Allan the Herorat

I’m currently adding and switching the galleries, and while I’ve tripple-checked everything, it’s still possible that you might stumble over dead links. I hope everything will be fixed by next week. I noticed that links in the navigation bar are missing on some pages; I’ll correct those as soon as I’ll find the time.

The biggest addition is the new

THEATRE GALLERY

where you can find pictures from some of the stage productions Damian O’Hare’s been in. Check out the one for “The Countess” – the scanner’s fixed and there are proper scans from the programme now.

Then there are new galleries for Taking the Flak, The Broken and promotional headshots, plus additional pictures in the Fractured gallery. Och, just have a look at it yerselves:

And now for something completely different…

Allan, the Herorat “adopted” by this website, sends his greetings from rainy Tanzania (they’re approaching winter now).  His training in REST (Remote Explosive Scent Tracing) is coming along very well. They continue to research the optimal and least optimal soil conditions, moisture content,  and various concentrations of TNT to see the perimeters if he and his colleagues can detect TNT. Looks like he finds it interesting to have different concentrations of TNT and different types of soil to work with every day!

Through the work with these samples, Allan and his colleagues provide important data to find the best working conditions for rat detection technology, and it will help to figure out in which weather conditions, locations and scenarios they are most effective.

Allan’s trainers John and Abdullah keep telling him that he’s becoming stronger and stronger at clearly indicating samples of dirt that contain TNT. Go, rat, go!

One of the trainers with Allan

If you’d like to support Herorats as well, or maybe even adopt one of the four-pawed heroes, please go here.

Usual disclaimer: “Hero Rats” is the charity of choice of the webgnome running the website, not of Damian O’Hare.

Possible downtime

I just learned that the ambarussa.net domain is renewed half-yearly rather than annually. The next renewal is due by the end of February. I left my heart in San Francisco credit card info with the host, but I have no idea if they’ll manage to change the billing address in time. So there might be a downtime, but -

“No reason to panic; everything’s under control!”

Odds and Ends

DVD page update, dead “Titanic” link has been fixed

Various page update and correction of order

Dead link to “The Royal” gallery S07E06 has been fixed

Biography update

Dead “news” links all through the page have (finally…) been fixed

Still hunting the java bug crashing the Safari browser

“Time out” error on news blog: hosted externally on wordpress, there’s nothing I can do about that. Sorry!

So far for the odds. Now the ends: as per 1 February, I’m on my own here. Unfortunately, first P. and now her hubby lost their jobs, and it goes without saying that securing the roof over their heads and paying the bills takes precedence over collecting news for a website. Thanks so much for everything, it’s been great fun doing this. I wish them all the best and hope they’ll both find a new job very, very soon.

I hope you guys won’t be disappointed as there will probably be fewer updates now and news won’t be posted as quickly as you’re used to. I’m up to my nose in work and life and don’t have as much time for this website as I’d like to, but I promise that I’ll try my best to keep “Ambarussa” running – it’s fun!

Have a happy, peaceful and healthy one.

The Royal: Screencaps 7.8, “Pastures New”

“Now that’s what I call unexpected revelations…”

“Damned shirt-shortage. Well, at least I still have one…”

Screencaps for episode 7.8, “Pastures New”