BohoGeek

thought for the day : advertising as data packets.

2011-02-17T09:13:00.003Z

I don't come from an advertising background, and the other day a prospective copywriter was patiently, (and somewhat patronisingly) explaining to me how a creative team is made of two, not three, and certainly not one, and how a copywriter and a creative should go off into a room and come up with a range of ideas backed up by visuals and copy, and then the artwork would be created from these concepts across a range of media.

Once I came round I suggested that an advertisement is like a phone call. It's an interaction where you receive some information.

A phone call is just little packets of data. So why can't an advertising campaign be broken into little packets of data.

In fact better yet why can't the information be broken down into little bits (like the internet) and then shared around by, well, the internet. Like an idea.

And then the next part of that is that the bits should really be the information, not an association, or implication, or a complete abstraction (e.g. Coke == Happiness. Really? wtf? it's a brown fizzy drink.)

To me a good advertising campaign is one that *is* the product, and the message.

The famous Word-of-Mouth does this, but rarely does it involve your colleague standing on the table and insisting (every 15 minutes) just how much you have to go see True Grit, starring thingy, by those guys, the ones who did Fargo. It's fucking awesome.

Advertising should involve small, reasonable, undemanding, unthreatening and often very brief moments in which a small amount of directly relevant information is shared, preferably in a way that is useful, timely, personal, fun and contextually relevant.

I suggested that all campaigns should start by breaking what they want down to those pieces of information, understanding them, and then working out what they would look like in a map, or a wiki, or in a game, or sponsored links, or a fortune cookie. or on twitter. And in a bigger way how the information would behave if you got to make a video, or a banner campaign, or a poster, or had to explain it to your mum, or to the woman next door, the one with the dogs. And then finally how would you let that information go, how would you open-source it so that the world could take the idea and make it their own and your campaign would live for the next five years despite no media spend or new creative because people actually used that idea to break up and share their own information, maybe about something completely different.

And I suggested that when you think like that digital feels innate and obvious and easy.

And that's what I think copywriters should do.

[ I am aware that none of the above stands up to scrutiny. But it's about ways of seeing, not physics]

Five ways of Watching : the difference between YT and cinema

2011-01-24T05:52:00.002Z

We've been showing some of our YouTube ads on television and in cinemas around the world and watching YouTube as I do (surreptitiously in meetings, on ping, on my phone, whenever I should be doing something more important, and occasionally intentionally), i just kept thinking how extraordinarily different these experiences were.

Online is such a fragmented way of watching anything - infinitely more distracted - and more flighty - actively consuming but entirely fickle, not attentive to arcs, or detail or narrative.

On Demand - where I carve out time and stop and actively watch. I'm looking for story, script and immersion, but not production quality. I actively want to watch a programme and I am committed to it.

On TV - where I (rarely anymore) sit and let the TV wash over me. It's passive. Time passes really fast. I'm not engaged nor am I proactively changing the channel. I comfortably consume. QI til I die.

On DVD - I am attentive to the narrative, atmosphere and nuance. But in my slippers and a hoodie.

On the big screen - I am completely committed, I have physically visited a theatre and am attentive to intimate detail, I will follow complex storylines, loops and twists and I will analyse and contrast.

So nothing new there... but when I see our little ads (like this one below from Germany) run across all those media (and embedded on blogs as well) it makes me think.

Culture Hack Day :: notes for my 'what if the web is a fad?' talk

2011-01-23T02:50:00.002Z

The ROH’s Culture Hack Day last weekend was just awesome.

I strongly recommend checking it out for all the background. Photos.
I gave a rather vague (shall we say, optimistic?) 5 minute lightening talk about the future of everything. Then a most enjoyable Q&A alongside Claire Reddington and Leila Johnstone, and in the rather esteemed company of lots of cool folk.

It was wonderful to be able to talk about culture && tech in the same breath, to geek out on an ungeeky subject and not feel like I should just shut up and sit down...
(anyway...)

NOTES FROM MY TALK... (this isn’t a write-up, I didn’t really know what I was going to talk about and this is just trying to collect it together - so apologies if it is incoherent)
Big thanks to Rachel Coldicut, Erin & Katy and to Kim Plowright for getting me there.

What is this for?
Good hacks turn data into magic.
Raise the bar.
Open eyes.
Change the game.
Unlock minds.
glimpse the future.

Where are the data sets?
No idea.
Someone told me a funny story the other day about a client who asked "is the web a fad". Hilarious, because they were looking from the bottom of the mountain - they hadn't even begun to climb. But from the top of the mountain... well, yes, "the web" probably is. All those websites and browsers and protocols. "The web" is 15 years old. The internet is 40 years old. Data is centuries old. And data is exploding, capturing, organising, formatting - but presenting, interpreting?

What can we do... well What can't we do?

Here’s the structure.
the web - fad (see above)
web apps - good.
closed enironments - bad.
proprietary systems - really bad. death to innovation.
net neutrality - everyone should know how bad this is.
the power of open systems - ditto but good
so the “web” is probably imperilled - (i’m not completely convinced)
but data is alive and well - so true.
and the internet is alive and well.
We’re amazing at collecting/ organising/ interrogating / distributing data.
We're poor at presenting and representing in a human way
Context: For example like you might look something up in an encyclopedia or in the fridge and you get peripheral data (like the length of the article or the smell of the fridge) that helps shape your understanding of the original data.
Likewise: How much nicer is it to experience data physically? Why can’t computers show us things in a ‘real’ way. Anologue/digital anxiety - need to find consolation in the physical as every aspect of our lives becomes more digitized and less tangible.
In ten years we're not going to be opening laptops up. we're probably not going to be looking up websites in the way we do now. Do you? I look for information. Websites are like business cards. Or portraits. They are generally dumb data.
We'll be working on multi-surface systems which are linked or talk to each other via the internet, in multi-screen (or non-screen) environments
Already we can see that the primary input technologies are going to be ‘touch’, ‘speech’ and ‘gesture’, all very human - no more keyboards or devices. and fortunately the leaders in each of these technologies are three competitors. apple - touch, microsoft-gesture (kinect) and google-speech.
So the next challenge is going to be taking all this ever growing mountain of data and humanising the experience of interacting with it.
It is the beginning of the beginning and the most exciting time to be working in these fields - every step forward is a journey of exploration.

… and then how does this apply to cultural institutions....

BTW the digitisiation of our physical reality is genuine. I think people would have spoken up if they could show that CD sales aren't declining, that digital book sales didn't just overtake real book sales, why kodak is going to the wall or that the kindle was Amazons best selling product of all time over christmas... I don't hold a moral view on these things - I just observe them and I believe we can begin to look at ways at making the physical and digital interact more solidly.

is all gd.

Listening to bird song, and discovering how to hear : Chris Watson at Port Eliot Festival

2010-07-27T20:15:00.006Z

This talk by Chris Watson was my highlight of Port Eliot Festival this year.

Imagine yourself in a remarkably large, very dark, circular room, say 25ft diameter - there are around 30 people on chairs and the floor, a laptop, a surround sound set of 8 speakers, and a really rather garish mural (though it was very dark).

The artist, Chris Watson, then takes ten minutes to lovingly and mellifluously recount how he came to record the 18 hours of bird song you are about to hear from around the estate over 5 days, carefully edited and layered it into a 42 minute audio journey and explains the technology behind the soundscape. He guides you through the journey like a buddhist preparing you for mediation: a visit to the pheasants in their pens on the estate, down to the mud flats and the popping mud, "and then, amazingly, it rained!" and the lightest raindrops echo in counterpoint to the popping mudflats. Under the aggressive tidal waters of the bay and out into low-tide at midnight with only the owls and the foxes and the achingly beautiful groans of the oaks in the dead of night, and then, inexorably we emerge into the incredible cacophony and social jamboree of the dawn chorus, with it's many characters and voices.

then you sit in the dark and listen to that happen and it was the most exquisite 42 minutes. It was extraordinary.

Then a rather odd thing happened. the next day I woke in a tent, in a field in Cornwall and I heard the birds. It was like I was hearing something for the very first time. (it was our third day). And it was just as beautiful - even though I don't really care for birds.

So that's nice. But it's not quite everything - the (very quick and rather clumsy) takeaway for me is that it wasn't just that birdsong is beautiful. It was that what Chris does, like all artists, is to take something we look at everyday and turn it sideways so that we look at it fresh. And it is by forcing us to turn off the filters that we use that we see things anew. And I think we should try and do that with everything we do. Just turn it sideways and make it magical. Make us adjust our media filters... and then, maybe, just maybe, in this world of noise and drama, the next time people might actually hear you.
Just for a moment.

Anyway...

More about Chris from the Port Eliot website:

Hailed as “the David Attenborourgh of radio” and creator of Port Eliot’s much-loved Nature Disco, award-winning sound artist Chris Watson is working on a special event for this year’s festival. Fresh off the plane from the North Pole, where he was working on the BBC’s Frozen Planet (to be broadcast in 2011), Chris came to Port Eliot in May to record for a unique new sound installation – ‘Dusk Until Dawn – A Soundscape around Port Eliot’ – which he’ll be presenting in the Round Room. Watch this short video to find out more:
Chris Watson recording at Port Eliot from Port Eliot Festival on Vimeo.

data are trivial but important

2010-07-05T16:17:00.010Z

[Slightly less insane version of an earlier post]

Start from the principle that data are trivial. They don't mean anything on their own. Even as complex sets. They need to be parsed. To be valued, filtered, extrapolated, translated, visualised.

Some other starting points:

The world is full of data and they are non-specific.

To each person a particular set of data has different values.

To each person most datasets are trivial.

Datasets can be fiscal, emotional, political, artistic...

Values can be tangible or intangible.

Media channels are multiplying.

Streams are infinite and mutable.

Identity is fragmenting & converging.

Data is physical, meta, and imaginary.

The individual has no choice but to filter and prioritise.

In other words: how do we choose what to watch?

I don't care about Iran's nuclear secrets.

I do care about Lady Gaga's shoes.

Most people don't care about the Google Book Agreement

But Michael Jackson's death was equivalent to a DoS attack on Google News.

I do care that it's raining, but not if it's not raining here.

Which of these is the most "valuable"? How do we filter and unconsciously make that decision? How does anyone prioritise and value one dataset over another?

Can society assign value when overwhelmed with information? What happens tomorrow when every channel is saturated contextually, in real-time - like a simulated bout of schizophrenia?

Are we going to be all right?

Hospital Art

2010-05-26T09:40:00.001Z

I had a week in hospital recently which was interesting and gave me a lot of time to fill.
Amongst other things (such as learning to solve a Rubik's Cube on YouTube) I made a collection of psuedo-art-pastiches taken with my phone (Nexus One)... some more pastiche than others.

Anyway - I thought I'd share it:

Edward Tufte at Intelligence Squared

2010-05-20T21:36:00.002Z

Decided I was feeling well enough to go to a talk last night by Edward Tufte - God of information design. (like I was going to miss that...)

Needless to say it was fairly awesome. Enough for me to tell you it's available online.

Honestly if you ever design anything with data i.e. content i.e. anything - it's worth watching this long but incredibly thought-provoking man. He makes his insights just as relevant to web-pages and slides and art as to data-vis. or statistical analysis.

Here are my take-aways

6 principles of evidence:

Compare. Nothing is visible without contrast
Causality & Mechanics. Aim to describe how or why it went from A to B as well as the fact of going from A to B.
Use multidata sets - data works best when it is contextualised by other data sets - i.e. allows comparison & causality
Tell a story - when the content becomes secondary to the form all is lost.
Integrate - all is content - pictures and words only got separated at Gutenburg (necessarily by process). Humans will always try and integrate words and pictures.
Be credible. Document every source.

More generally:

Put it on the same page. Non-adjacent content is non-comparable (example ppt)
Humans are good at deciphering. NYTimes homepage has 400 links and still gets 10m daily users
Web sites which Pitch have the ethics of the marketplace not the validity of websites that inform.
Put content over process. Don't just do/use what is easiest/you know/you're told to. Do what is right for the data,
Don't cherry pick - data only has validity when it has integrity.
Only drug-dealers and web designers call their customers users

If you're interested I found some proper, fleshed out notes here by Mia Ridge

and some sweet sketch notes by someone called Lucy : http://twitpic.com/1p7h00

Who to vote for...

2010-05-03T17:07:00.003Z

Who to vote for?! Such a dilemma, especially as this UK election is dominated by the personalities of the leaders of the three main parties - who are in turn: dour, smug and eager.

Basically no one wants to vote for any of them - but someone has to be in charge.

Of course we don't get to vote for that person. That is out of my hands. I get to vote for someone from a group of people that I simply don't know at all.

It got me thinking about the bit where you put the X next to the name - who is that?

For this election I decided to research my own local candidates and decide to vote for the one that would represent me best in Parliament rather than for the national party.

Turns out (thank you theyworkforyou.com) that my local MP actually voted exactly as I'd have liked her to in the past parliament. Whereas the others keep telling me about their personal histories rather than how they would have voted on the same issues.

So I've decided that however much I may despise her party and all it stands for - I completely agree with her.

Surely there must be a site that does this? Asks all my candidates how they would have voted on recent debates and only accepts Yes, No or Abstain? That's how I want to decide. Data!

Is Data Visualisation the New Photo Journalism?

2010-04-26T04:50:00.002Z

I was chatting with David McCandless (informationisbeautiful.net) the other day. He seems an incredibly nice and switched on guy. I missed a talk he came in to give so we were swapping ideas over coffee and I pitched my Data Visualisation as the New Photo Journalism opEd at him.

It basically goes like this: In the c.20th people didn't have the freedom to travel that we take for granted today. As cameras got lighter we sent out visual reporters to capture and make sense of the unknowable, inconceivably vast mass of humanity, conflict and strife that was becoming accessible. The photo-journalists of the middle part of the century captured, in single frames, images that defined the world at that moment so we could digest and understand it over coffee and croissant.

Today we are in a similar situation with data.

We are literally overwhelmed with data having mastered the art of capturing and interrogating our daily actions - yet have not found adequate ways of distilling that into something that makes sense to normal folks. Ways to make data into stories. Ways to visualise all this noise and make it real. Instead it just terrifies us. This is where people like David come in. And Aaron Koblin. And Jonathan Harris... and we need many more.

Visualisations of data whether political, economic or environmental have to go further than just taking a snapshot - like a chart or a graph - they have to reach in and pull out a story that allows us to see, read and understand complex naratives that describe the world today. It's an extraordinary feat when done well. I think it will be the true successor to photo-journalism in the c.21st.

David smiled politely and said, "Yes. That's pretty much what I said".

Here's something fun of his: [link]

How brands can avoid being digitally anti-social.

2010-04-21T05:08:00.004Z

I have a couple of friends who only talk about themselves and their achievements. I love them dearly but really, they are awful bores. I don't introduce them to my other friends and I don't really listen to what they say.

On the other hand I have friends who tell me about their friends, about gossip, and ideas, and news, and politics and life..., and then they talk about themselves. And by then I am ready to listen and share all the interesting bits with my world

This is everyday real-world social ability, but it transfers pretty directly to social media. Guess that's why they call it social.

But it doesn't explain why lots of brands still use social media to talk about themselves.

I like the ones that listen to their users, interact at an individual level and that talk about interesting stuff first and themselves second.

In other words have fun, or are useful, or at least interesting rather than treating each buzz, tweet and post as a branded broadcast opportunity.

I like the @cocacola stream for this. Even though I don't like coke. And the @virginatlantic is useful, and very personal. @microsoft - your tweets seem somewhat self-obsessed. (You too @Google! - though not quite as bad)

slight tangent about four kids on a ferry.

2010-04-08T13:07:00.005Z

I met these kids on a ferry to Manly.

They were spectacularly well-dressed, say for an MGMT gig in some obscure Hoxton cellar. But here they were on a ferry with a load of white, overweight tourists. Going nowhere.

I love their hair. Immaculately coiffed and huge and difficult to like.

I love that one had underwear that matched her blinged-up ipod in diamonte pinks. I love the conspicuous 'um'ness of the dress /hot-shorts/pant-suit meets laura ashley on crack. I love her satchel.

But more than that I love that they're on the Manly ferry.

I blame the internet.

Flash is like sugary buns

2010-03-31T21:51:00.005Z

You know what the problem with sugary buns is? They're bad for you. Yet they're also yummy.

Same with Flash.

A Flash based-site is typically super shiny and nice, but bad for the user.

If a feature can only be achieved in Flash and not HTML it's often form over function.

We know this. Flash navigation, Flash weight, Flash accessibility, Flash SEO... all bad in excess.

And all that makes Flash web designs the krispy kreme of healthy web-browsing.

Admittedly Flash has its place, like cakes.

Flash can be good for interactivity, video, games and, well, flashy bits.

But not a full-rounded diet. At least not for the consumer.

Regardless of the iPad in the face of HTML5, Processing and things like O3D - it's (still) time for some design firms to call in the personal trainers and lay off the donuts.

I just don't want to see another branded 'loading' graphic. Surely that's a sign in itself. A branded loading graphic... Please.

Why the Catholic Church should top YouTube on your iPhone.

2010-03-23T23:23:00.005Z

Here's some quick questions.

How many views do you need to be the top hit on YouTube's "most viewed" tab?
How many Catholics are there?
How many views does the pope average? (youtube.com/vatican)

At a guess:

150million'ish
1 billion'ish
10k

It kind of follows that if 1 in 10 Catholics watched Christmas Mass once - the Pope would be number 2 on every iPhone in the world. (behind a child having his finger bitten)

In my opinion this isn't leveraging your community.

(just in case: nb. this is not a serious post)

12 Days, 3 Countries, Different Planets

2010-03-23T23:15:00.002Z

I recently travelled to the Google offices in Japan, Hong Kong and India. Here are a few Nexus snaps taken along the way. I'm not about to write a travel essay but it was interesting to see quite how mannered and controlled Tokyo was - no one will ever tell you you are wrong even if you really are very very wrong. (Culturally, linguistically and probably creatively).
In Tokyo everything is behind glass, behind screens, or behind fixed miles; in Hong Kong there is still the glass but all the guts are on the street, in the pavement shouting and noisy, drunken and decorous side by side the English expats and the Chinese expats; in Mumbai everything is on the streets, the toilets, the houses, the people, the dogs, the cats, rich and poor and it feels unbelievably fluid and fast and vibrant.
Not sure which I preferred I genuinely liked all of them in their own way and can't wait to get back (and I'm not just saying that).

Branding is like politics

2010-03-23T23:13:00.000Z

Thinking about a brand as a political party approaching an election.

We know political parties understand branding. At a certain point in the political calendar they begin to identify their users, divide them into supporters, undecided and opposed groups. They create maps of safe, marginal and challenge seats. They publish brand statements: manifesto's outlining their beliefs and their values. They flesh out central characters and aggressively market against weaknesses in their competitors offering. They patiently listen and articulate the key concerns of their users, then demographically and geographically they market specific messages through PR, through broadcast and through social marketing. Then we all vote.

Then the parties immediately ignore everything they have learnt about their customers and three or four years later they start all over again as if we remember nothing.

That's politics - what about branding?

Consumers vote with their feet, their wallet, their mouse, their blah...

So the parallels are well noted - but how do brands reflect that? Brands are more consistent because they know there is no single day on which everyone is expected to vote. Instead we vote every day and every day we make marginal decisions which affect how we will behave.

Everyday is election day for a brand, so everyday it makes sense to know your political map, know your marginal seats, know your manifesto, know your messages and to listen to your constituents.

There is no first day in office for a brand, there's just the incumbent and the challenger. And, just as in politics, it's much easier to be the incumbent. So it's an election worth winning. Everyday.

Canned Cannes

2009-08-10T19:03:00.003Z

So a few weeks ago we went to Cannes Advertising Festival to congratulate the winners of our 48hr advert contest; talk to important people about using YT in big, bold and creative ways; and spend much time marketing Display Advertising to a demographic who were mainly there to get drunk and whoop when their colleagues won prizes.

Packed into the busy schedule was a Young Lions masterclass on the Creative Lab and YouTube by our own Andy Berndt which I will post as soon as it goes live. Meanwhile the preso in full: http://bit.ly/ytcannes

But mainly I'm posting this to share the interesting (& award winning) creative ideas that I photographed for my team:

Google Wave : nu-email, sharing, IM and just, like, everything

2009-07-05T16:31:00.002Z

I know you don't have time to watch this mind-blowing demo about how Google guys have reinvented email with built in real-time, collaboration tools, playback, intelligent spellcheck, IM, social sharing and publishing tools - But you really, really really should. As you wont I put this link to the inside peek as well: about wave
However nothing is as good as seeing them run through their product - you do really come away thinking - 'wow - this is world changing' - if you a geek that is... Awesome.

The 'replay' function - where you can watch a thread develop over time is a-maz-ing.
The publish to a blog and live update is amazing
The simultaneous translator tool is amazing
The contextual spellcheck (yes, 'contextual') is amazing
The live-multi-editing tool, drag-and-drop photo sharing, instant inline forms & polls, mobile formating, embedability (I don;t think that's a word but... amazing)

Who knows if it will all work? - and who knows if we'll use it? It may crash and burn. But I love that they've dreamt this crazy utilitarian masterpiece up - it is a working vision of the power of HTML5.

Oh - and it's all open source - the actual app code for everyone to make their own versions - for free. Of course.

Overviews:
techcrunch
pocket-lint

Coolest, Fastest , Latest

2009-06-12T10:25:00.003Z

Life is really going quite quickly.
Sometimes there is such a surge for the latest, the coolest, the fastest, the fabbest that I barely have time to register, let alone post posts.
So I'm using Posterous to do just that (so sorry Blogger but you feel old...)
I will continue to write sporadic posts - (keep meaning to share my Venice thoughts!)
Meanwhile you can check just what I think is noteworthy - over here...
http://tomu.posterous.com/

Meanwhile - here's a now slightly old but still hauntingly cool T0S-mashing use of the YT api that I still love:
This is just one example you can make your own at www.yooouuutuuube.com

Fitzwiliam abandons Bassetti: Art Fund logo just too ugly.

2009-05-31T09:28:00.005Z

Nina told me that the Fitzwilliam had refused Art Fund cash because they refused to have the art fund logo beside it (it is pretty awful...). I refused to believe it until we found this in the Times:

May 31, 2009
Biteback: Fitzwilliam's no loga stance means no lolly
Richard Brooks
No logo, no lolly. Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum has rejected a grant of £80,000 from the Art Fund, which gives wads of cash each year to museums and galleries to buy art. But the “tit-for-tat” deal would have meant the museum showing the fund’s newish, pink-and-black heart-shaped logo beside the funded picture. Its refusal has now lost the museum not only that money, but other funding from the V&A and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. So, the Fitz’s plan to purchase a £175,000 work has collapsed — at least for now.
Its director, Timothy Potts, quoted in the June edition of The Art Newspaper, takes a splendidly purist view that “logos are the currency of marketing, and this introduces a promotional element into the galleries which we regard as an unacceptable distraction”. Hear, hear, particularly as I have found out that the painting is a 1616 work by Bassetti called Dead Christ Supported by the Virgin and Mary Magdalene. A pink-heart logo would look a tad naff next to a pietà.

Things to make you go 'oh'... volume 1

2009-05-26T22:23:00.009Z

I might have mentioned Posterous.com recently - it's been battling with evernote as my place to put stuff. It's kind of winning on the 'oh. that's cool - I'll look at that again later..." stakes. Evernote is, of course, better overall but I am beginningto think I'm not organised enough to be worthy of it... chaos is life after all...

Anyway here are some posterous posts from the last month or so that you may find interesting....

Creative Hub Blog: 27 Visualizations and Infographics to Understand the Financial Crisis http://tomu.posterous.com/creativ...

Creative Review - In Birth, In Life, In Death, with Google http://tomu.posterous.com/creativ...

Young Lions Ad contest. http://tomu.posterous.com/young-l...

Photos of Projected Clothes - Puma Uses Models in Underwear For L.I.F.T Ads (GALLERY) (pictures, images, etc.) http://tomu.posterous.com/photos-...

Obscura Mint Plaza Building Projection - 7 HD projectors over a 6,000 pixel platehttp://tomu.posterous.com/obscura...

YouTube and Sprint Team Up for User-Generated Homepage Adhttp://tomu.posterous.com/youtube...

Zeitgeist Europe 2009 - Day Two Opening Video http://tomu.posterous.com/zeitgei...

texts from last night http://tomu.posterous.com/texts-f...

The Hummingbird and the Elephants - Cannes Young Lions 2009 http://tomu.posterous.com/the-hum...

Yoostar. Weird, karaoke-for-actors-(or non-actors) green-screen into the original film thing? - good christmas present?? http://tomu.posterous.com/yoostar...

How Google's cute "doodles" became Satan's pawns - Ars Technicahttp://tomu.posterous.com/how-goo...

newsmap.jp - still going, still cool http://tomu.posterous.com/newsmap...

Periodic Table of Typefaces http://tomu.posterous.com/periodi...

AK-03 Columbia Glacier from Cliff http://tomu.posterous.com/ak-03-c...

Rosling on the Swine flu alert - News/Death ratio: 8176(!) http://post.ly/WcX

canneslions's Channel http://post.ly/WZq

Tag Galaxy http://post.ly/WZk

Gizmodo - Manhattan Mapped Without a Horizon - Here & therehttp://tomu.posterous.com/gizmodo...

What is truth anymore anyway?

2009-05-17T17:34:00.007Z

"Fake" is, apparently, one of the most common comments left under YouTube videos.

Wikipedia is (nearly) as trustworthy as the Encyclopedia Britannica. (true)

The moon landings were shot on a soundstage (untrue)

We all know you can't believe everything you read - but when French composer Maurice Jarre died in March 2009 and the obligatory purple prose rolled around the world few would have expected that these obituaries would become a part of a bigger story that asked some interesting questions about how we validate information on the internet and what the future holds for our understanding of 'truth'.

The Jarre obituaries were spiked by an undergraduate in Dublin, Shane Fitzgerald, who, in an attempt to survey the untested reliance on wikipedia by bloggers, stuck in some anodyne, yet completely fabricated, quotes within hours of Jarre's death. They were positioned intentionally to fool lazy bloggers, and were taken down by moderators twice the day after Jarre's death - but the third time Fitzgerald's post lasted 24 hours, enough time for the too-perfect lines to be picked up, not only by bloggers but also by sources of repute in the UK: the Guardian, the Independent, and even the BBC - and all too quickly these sources were then used to retrospectively validate Fitzgerald's dodgy posting and the quotes gain complete credibility. (Being an English wiki I'm guessing the quotes had no impact on French media coverage)

Spectacularly successful in his deceit (and perhaps a little embarrassed) it took Fitzgerald three weeks to own up. The Guardian was the only one to address the fraud adequately - if slightly tetchy - the rest just shrugged and corrected the online version, the printed editions remain archived in libraries across the globe. Understandably the 'project' became a story in itself (mainly in Ireland) - yet not one flogged to death by those who had most to learn - the journalists, the bloggers, the wikipedia moderators. For example how 'true' can a wikipedia article get? At what point should historical or science articles be locked? Should biographies face a 48 hour lockdown after a subjects death? Should journalists be taught how to look at the history of a wiki entry? (which would have instantly caused doubt in this instance...) Do paid-for-copy services such as Knol actually have a genuine future? Should journalists have to cite or hyperlink sources for online material?

Or are we all too lazy, too pressured, too trusting? We are entering an age where almost every piece of information is digitised for consumption and tools exist to manipulate that information without trace. Everything is possibly fake, forged or fraudulent. I researched this whole piece online without really checking. Maybe I didn't even research it - will you check? So where do we turn then for the 'truth'? Does it just become an article of faith? To me this a question posed but not really answered because no-one is in charge - it's a conundrum for the cheerleaders of crowd-wisdom, a challenge to cash-strapped news outlets, a challenge to rationalism - but it won't be resolved.

A BBC journalist I know recently used an unsubstantiated wikipedia entry about a film stunt. He was horrified to see it become the reference point used by moderators to validate the same wiki entry. This is a slippery slope - undergraduate experiments are probably the tip of the iceberg. But who knows.

YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall

2009-04-18T13:26:00.007Z

So quite an intense night at Carnegie Hall last Wednesday when the YouTube Symphony Orchestra finally made its debut.

The results of this project have been amazing. 25 million channel and video views. 30,000 subscribers. And PR uptake like no other, from TechCrunch to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, CNN, Reuters & the Guardian, from NBC to the BBC.

It was a stellar evening of entertainment, as 100 winners from 31 different countries assemble to perform Tan Dun's Internet Symphony No. 1 - Eroica, written especially for the YouTube community, under the watchful baton of world-renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and classical superstars such as Mason Bates, Composer and DJ; Measha Brueggergosman, Soprano; Joshua Roman, Cello; Gil Shaham, Violin; and Yuja Wang, Piano. Every single winner auditioned on YouTube along with over 3,000 others from 71 countries.

Below are a lot of feeds relating to the event:

Photos:

Video:

UGC content

view CNN report // view BBC report // view CBS report

BBC

Print/News:

NY Times // AP Release// all 621 news articles »

Twitter:

Twitter stream [#YTSO]

The Concert:

Act One // Act Two // The global mash-up video

Simple, Clever, Useful - color filters for Google Image Search

2009-04-09T20:35:00.006Z

In terms of doing something in a really simple useful way I'm really impressed by how uncomplicated Google's new color filter is.

Yes I know I work there - but it is! I really don't see how that would cloud my judgement ;)

Check for yourself. Or look at my trees....

Before:

After:

The future is even more touchy: touch computing without screens from TED

2009-03-30T14:32:00.003Z

Two years ago I posted that famous Jeff Han multi-touch demo that became Microsoft Surface.

This amazing demo is similarly compelling - and I love that people are angry in the comments, always a good sign with new tech, things that take us way out of our comfort zone.

Beyond the fact that it's cheap (unlike Surface) and incredibly utilitarian here are four quick reasons why I think it matters:

1. Interactivity. The world isn't just about text and data - the idea that computing could move into a geo-spatial plane means that sculpture, music, cooking, dancing... just about anything that makes sense in three dimensions and less in two - can become digital. Projected onto surface or shape and interacted with. They called their talk the "sixth sense" which threw me for a second because of Bruce Willis and that kid - but I totally understand "the third dimension" - that changes the future for how we think about what could exist on our current screens.

2. Dexterity. We're meant to be losing a generation of kids (another?!) because they are trained to think in two dimensions and their muscle memory is focused on a keyboard, a console and a mouse. Yes that would be difficult. But the old can just feel old and the very young will be awesome at it.

3. Gaming. When you're projecting and interacting within that experience gaming gets a whole new box of toys. Proper interaction based gaming will make the wii feel like a wind up toy.

4. Mobility. Remember when monitors were nose cones? Now they're phone sized, which is just as annoying. Soon they'll be non-existent. You'll carry a fold-up paper, or just project onto your hand, or a wall or each other.

Anyway, I hope you have time to enjoy this - I think it will change the world - just like digital paper - eventually.

Recent YouTube projects: Vatican Channel & Symphony Orchestra

2009-03-06T09:18:00.013Z

Not sure on the etiquette on this. Probably shouldn't get into the habit of posting "things I've done" like an CV-extension; nevertheless I wanted to put a couple up because I'm proud.

First up is the Vatican YouTube site which we built and designed working with the Vatican (they are quite tuned in), and launched in January. In answer to your immediate question: No, it's not for videos of the Pope skateboarding, or cardinals miming Rick Astley; No, I don't think YouTube jumped the shark; Yes, there is already Vatican TV so stacks of inventory; No, I didn't get to kiss the ring; Yes, it was very surreal.

Second up is the winners gadget from the Youtube Symphony Orchestra which was a great Flash gadget that the team pulled together. Initially AS3 it ended up AS2 to work with the xml. (YT competitions backend is hilarious). But end result - brilliant. Bit buggy, nightmare deadline, learnt that I don't like not being able to get hands on and 'fix it myself' but generally brilliant. Very happy. Roll on Carnegie! Team credits: Jason Cartwright / Tom Dunn / Rich Mills (who needs to build himself a website!)

this is the gadget:

Story from North America

2009-02-06T01:07:00.002Z

Love this wonderful weird animation....

I had a moment.

Story from North America from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

Trial by SongSmith - it's not a classic until it's a SongSmith cover version....

2009-01-27T09:33:00.002Z

Every tool has it's job to do... and we just found out what SongSmith is for.
THese are, frankly awesome... I can't do justice to the evil genii from Microsoft - or the more benign and thoroughly appreciated genius of http://blog.entertainmentweakly.com/

Here's my absolute favourite:

Classic Hits by Microsoft Songsmith: "Creep" by Radiohead

and also... couldn't resist:

Classic Hits by Microsoft Songsmith: "Roxanne" by The Police

Do you read a newspaper?

2009-01-11T20:01:00.006Z

I'm enjoying FriendFeed and the 'shared items' on Google Reader. To be honest I don't have many FF friends. But I value the input of those that I do. Facebook suddenly seems genuinely inane and self-obsessed where previously I only thought it was (just shouldn't-be-seen photos, dumb games, and amusing status updates)... now I see it clearly. As if through a dark glass (? never understood that bit)... basically

Anyway - my point is that FriendFeed & Reader is very much like an online version of sitting around a table with some good friends who are more intelligent than you, with coffee, danish pastries, a light breeze and some quality newspapers. Every now and then someone will look up and say, "Did you know.." before reading out an article or offering some elegant piece of analysis, and you will either lap it up or quite ignore them and carry on reading. Enriched by their input.

No my life is never like that either - but that's how I see FF. It's F'ing fab. I feel enriched.

Is SongSmith the worst launch video for a product ever?

2009-01-11T14:09:00.002Z

So I've spent 24 hours desperately trying not to post this video for Microsoft's GarageBand-killing app 'SongSmith'....

...but in the end I heard it one too many times and realised it was inhumane of me not to spread the joy and laughter that comes with watching this 'so-undeniably-bad-it's-...-wait-no,-it's-just-really-incredibly-horribly-hilariously-bad' video to accompany the CES launch of the app.

You kinda assume they were going for the corny, tacky, cute angle - although why you would do that unless you genuinely assume that your core users are going to be musically illiterate, tone-deaf and pop-tasteless is beyond me. The app itself (going solely on the video demo) seems pointless, counter-productive and guilty of crimes against humanity. I mean - do we really need a lot of people who can't play an instrument, and can't sing to unleash a torrent of canned and digitally compiled pain on our ears? I for one think probably not.

But far more interesting is the video itself. It's just terrible. Terribly funny, true. Terribly long, also true. Terribly unconvincing except in demonstrating quite how little need there is in the world for such an awful idea. It's remarkable. I remain, a day later, astounded by it - and so, dear freinds, I felt obliged to follow far superior blogs and stick it up....

Just finally - keep an eye out for the super-best-top line: "Microsoft huh, so it's pretty easy to use?" To which the response appears to be - "Of course! Actually it's just an over-engineered toy for 7-year olds, but you can use it to write Grammy-winning Death Metal tunes. Go for it dude."
Seriously. I love it!

History of the Internet from Picol

2009-01-09T19:47:00.005Z

A sweet and informative and totally geeky whilst simultaneously rather cool little animation about History of the Internet from PICOL

"History of the Internet" is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.

It's a great piece - the pacing is good, and the theoretically boring boring content is given real significance. Steve Taylor's voice over is excellent.

Android Appiness Rating Day

2009-01-08T20:16:00.007Z

Android Apps so far out of ten.
[ten being really quite impressive to a non-Android-developer ]

pic from:
http://richd.com/2007/11/android-logo.html

Alarm Clock [6/10] - meh
Amazed - rollaroundtype game [7/10]
Barcode Scanner [10/10] - way cool. (If you work in Tescos.)
Browser [8/10] - better than iPhone (ouch) but could be better
Bubble [8/10] - a spirit level! in my phone! Cool! (& yes - the iPhone one is much, much cooler)
Calculator [5/10] - so 1980's
Camera [4/10] - working on the universally safe assumption that it's a phone so the camera sucks.
Cardio Training [7/10] - marks for effort (theirs not mine - I haven't tried it)
Chess [6/10]
Chess-lite [7/10] - mild improvement
Compass [9/10] a compass!
Contacts [6/10] - it's so impossible not to compare with Apple... this can be better
Dialer [6/10] - it's so impossible not to compare with Apple... this can be better
Email [7/10] - it's so impossible not to compare with Blackberry... this can be better
FatCalc [0/10] - useless and annoying. Apparently I am fat.
Facebook [8/10] - better than Blackberry
FlashLight [8/10] - tin says flashlight
Free Dictionary [7/10] is a dictionary that's free (not pretty)
GoogleMail [ 8/10] - understandably good - but several niggles
IM [5/10] - this is just evil-a-phone
Mah Jongg [8/10]
Maps [8/10] - damn fast way to spend muchos muchos roaming dollar
MarketPlace [7/10] - adequate, long-winded way to get Apps
Messaging [5/10] - at the moment I prefered my old Nokia for this
Music [7/10] - not an iPhone (again)
PapJump [8/10] - pap clearly, but annoyingly compelling
Pictures [5/10] - meh+slow
Power Manager [9/10] - why isn't this part of the original build?
Quickpedia [5/10] - aka url redirect
RingDroid [6/10] - is it good that I have no idea?
SaveMMS [7/10] - assuming it saves my MMS
Settings [8/10] - quite happy about the way you manage your settings; easily beats Nokia or Motorola
Shazam [10/10] - damn cool 'name that tune' app. Show off
SkyMaps [8/10] - because you need to show people something dumb but cool
StopWatch [3/10] - quite close to the minimalism of the 1930's original except without style.
The Weather Channel [10/10] - this is rocking. TV weather reports to your phone. V.cool
Thesaurus [7/10]
Twidroid [8/10] - more than enough for me
YouTube [9/10] - fantastic quality. Well, resolution quality, jury's out on the content...

Krispy Kreme bacon cheddar cheeseburgers

2009-01-07T11:53:00.003Z

Krispy Kreme bacon cheddar cheeseburgers
Originally uploaded by ccaviness

According to Clay:

This was lunch at Google NYC's cafeteria to celebrate the birthday of the head of the cafe staff...

I had one.

It was excellent.

---
Tragically I wasn't here to witness this... but I feel fat enough just looking. Why don't we get this quality of cuisine in London?

Hello FriendFeed! Hello FriendConnect!

2009-01-03T19:50:00.007Z

I just added FriendFeed and Google's Friend Connect to my site. It was really simple. Even for me.

FriendFeed is a brilliant site for those who don't know it - it allows you to package together all your feeds in one place. A 'feed' is anything that we would normally call an update. (e.g. your Facebook status, or new photos on Picasa/Flickr, a new bookmark on del.icio.us, or even additions to your Amazon wishlist). So it shows a list of everything that you might want to share - in one place...

At the FriendFeed site you can see all the updates from your 'friends' articles they've 'shared' from Google Reader, or the latest Twitters, or blog entries. In fact there are a number of 'feeds' that one can be quite unaware of. I guess that number will rise rather than fall.
It points to a time after email-forwards, where you can surf the social wave of viral videos, baby pics, inane twitterings and 'saw-this-and-thought-of-you' articles - and be at one with your multi-national, scattered friends interests, pursuits, and obssessions without lengthy calls or frantic IM pings. It points to a place where everyone can be both connected and in control. I'm quite keen so I stuck my personal feed at tomu.co.uk

Friend Connect from Google is a different tool, which I think will grow as it is adopted by sites who want to allow communities specific to those sites to grow without having to build their own. Put simply, imagine if your Bebo id, or Google account, or MySpace, or OpenID meant that you could just 'sign in' to a community on your favorite recipe site, or arts, or movie, or birdwatching site and that you could then update your status or comment across sites without having to stick in all those details again? Sound helpful? Well it will be.
Join my community if you like. Another interesting watch will be to see if Facebook (who have their own version of this called 'Facebook Connect') will join in or if they'll just try to brave it out with a proprietary version.

We shall see. I'm all geared up and ready for a year of a bit more sharing, and a little less mute consumption. We shall see how that goes too...

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra

2008-12-02T01:42:00.002Z

A YouTube-based orchestral audition and mash-up site for classical musicians around the world - featuring most of the world's top orchestras... LSO, Michael Tilson Thomas, Tan Dun, Lang Lang, Johannes Moser and symphony orchestras around the world... Personally I think it is very exciting as it opens up the potential of online collaborations for the most conservative parts of the musical world, as well as presenting possibilities for other creative conspiracies beyond film... theatres, choirs, dance, even ballet??

Probably more technically intriguing is what can be done with all the submissions above and beyond the classical-musicians'-got-talent american-idol type project. For example it's not hard to imagine a tool that lets you mash up the submissions into an international online orchestra composed solely of piccolos from portugal, brazilian bass, venezuelan violins, croat clarinets, french flautists, and tone-deaf trombonists... Imagine what happens when left-handed latvian lute-players is the only filter...
[Full disclosure - I've been working on this for the last 18 months so i tend to get a bit over excited about the possibilities.]

YouTube makes people listen to themselves

2008-10-10T08:34:00.003Z

Who knew? YouTube just released exactly this feature shortly after this cartoon came out.
It works for any video and re-reads your comment back to you - just in case you wanna know how dumb you sound... (optional, of course).

The art of non-verbal communication

2008-09-22T16:54:00.005Z

We have to do way more of this sort of ambient communication - even if the translation tools don't work yet (with a decent reader you should be able to translate the QR code into a message, an image, a link...) How sweet will that get when a multi-storey carpark can be turned into an illuminated billboard and it still just looks cool and non-intrusive.

Full article:
http://www.psfk.com/2008/07/qr-code-fences-in-soho.html

Isn't the science so beautiful!

2008-08-07T09:54:00.003Z

It seems to me that it is intrinsic to human nature to find things, pick them up and then bang them together to see what happens. Rattles, dolls, cars, fists, protons...

I am in awe of how stunning these 'science' photos are; really, you could contrast this with a wide spectrum of contemporary 'art' shows and an exhibit of these images would be stronger, more relevant, more interesting, more educational, more beautiful, more moving, more profound, more metaphysical, more physical, more more, deeper, harder, stronger, faster....
And the best bit is I have no idea what they're talking about, even as a geek...

From The Big Picture:
" The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer (17 mile) long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September - and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C (-456.25 F). Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over seven stories tall), over the past several years. (27 photos total)"

I love death

2008-07-30T08:11:00.002Z

Neat animation. Cool song. Great combo. Real elegantly paced (imho) - and dark (with a D), which matches my mood rather well today...

by the way

2008-07-20T21:07:00.002Z

A year out from blogging due to my graphic novel and the pressures of Google... wierd how when you're in the middle you forget to take notes any more... must find time to document.
tx

Making of Radiohead - House of Cards - Video

2008-07-20T21:05:00.001Z

I love this video more than the actual video. Cool track but the data side of it is insane.

Multi-touch - the future is so, mmm, touchy.

2007-06-20T14:59:00.000Z

I'm slightly surprised that Microsoft Surface - their amazing multi-touch vision of the future hasn't made a bigger impact. Is it just me? Surely a world where sticky fingers smeared on your pristine wide-screen was a good thing has to be welcomed... A world without ergonomic keyboards and RSI-inducing mice - it sounds fantastic! Even if it is microsoft. As an artist the idea of being able to draw straight onto the screen is really, really exciting, and the whole Minority Report style photo flicking thing is just so future-fantastic.
Maybe that's it - maybe it's all a bit Sci-fi. Maybe people just aren't ready.
Oh, OK, so I've been excited about this for ages - ever since I saw this fantastic Jeff Han demo of touch screen technology last-year (movie courtesy of TED). I'm ready - I love it. Bring it on. (OK, bring it on in a beautifully designed, twice-the-price, Apple version... but I'm still ready, waiting, credit card in hand.)

Street view is awesome

2007-05-31T16:16:00.000Z

Maps have reached street level. 360 degree turns.
Just awesome.
I know some other sites have them too - but the Google one rocks.
Of course it will now take years to get London imagery and there is a whole bundle of privacy issues regarding image release! But in the mean-time let's just go wow for the tech. Wow.
Here's a link to Brooklyn Bridge, scroll around for the panoramic - or click the arrows to walk across it! Where does this end? (and I don't just mean the 360 coverage)
New York 360 demo

Andrew Marr gets comfy with an e-book

2007-05-14T12:29:00.001Z

It has long been predicted that traditional books are about to be replaced by little machines on which you can download any novel you fancy. But the technology has never really been up to the job - until now. Here Andrew Marr, who treasures his smelly, beautiful library of real books, spends a month with one of the new gadgets

This is a rather honest appraisal of why e-books and e-paper won't upset bibliophiles but may well change the world from Andrew Marr, a highly-respected political commentator for the BBC (and self confessed 'bibliomaniac').

It's quality is in its understanding; the potential of technology like the Rex Iliad clearly drives the prospect of having entire bookcases in your hand, and he is very balanced in driving home his (and my) absolute love of books, both as fantastically efficient technology in themselves and also as the finest mass-produced luxury object. How many other knick-knacks could possibly contain entire worlds and dreams, histories of empires and of peasants and do so in such a beautifully corporeal way. Marr even advises the manufacturers
on this:

'my advice to the makers is to refine the page-turning just a little more, offer a battered blue cloth-bound wallet and, above all, make it smell - just a little musty, please. Or dank. You could offer a choice. '

Ultimately he is 'reluctantly impressed' - knowing that the next time he heaves a box full of holiday reading out to the car he could fit it all in his back pocket. Also the certain knowledge that it will impact enormously on more transient literature and general ephemera is quite noticeable. Eventually you'll never search for the manual that you think you left in the drawer under the sink - it will just be saved on the e-book, along with that pamphlet that you downloaded on gardening in Nova Scotia, the insurance dockets, the latest copy of the TLS, every crossword Araucaria ever penned, and all your notes for the novel you intend to write...

The Power of Pariah Politics

2007-05-04T10:32:00.000Z

So Greenpeace are taking a bite out of Apple:
Yesterday:
"Jobs looks for a greener Apple" (FT, 3 May): "Electronic waste has emerged as a hot-button issue in recent months as environmental groups take aim at the toxins contained in computer equipment, such as the lead in cathode ray tubes and the arsenic contained in specialty glass." http://www.ft.com

Today Greenpeace say "jolly good but we're still watching..."
"Call for Apple to go even greener" (BBC News online, 3 May): "Greenpeace has given a cautious welcome to Apple's ambitions to be more environmentally friendly." http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Well isn't that good? Nice to see good news coming out of a campaign. And it is yet another testament to the power of pariah politics. I get annoyed with friends who try and justify their inaction and apathy by arguing that you can't single out companies (or politicians); that they're all as bad as each other etc. Yes you can. You pull one out - like Klein did to Nike in No Logo - and put them in the corner in the SHAME hat.
It's like kindergarten, you don't take one child out to tick them off, you single them out to give all the others a warning. ...and shame is more powerful than legislation. Companies can put aside millions as risk-assessed slush funds for when they break the law - but no brand can ever quite overcome the ignominy of, say, McLibel or Gap sweatshops, or (hopefully) Yahoo's disgraceful Chinese dalliance. It hurts their profits, and a kick in the profits is one of the few guaranteed ways to 'stimulate change'.

So if you want to change things - don't fine them - damage them, place a stigma on that brand. Let it stand as a warning that brands aren't above the conscience of consumers, even if they can pay their way out of every other crime they commit.

Shantaram! A book that could be edited with an axe

2007-04-28T11:05:00.001Z

Just finishing Shantaram - fantastic romp. Bravo.

A few teeny criticisms:
1. Firstly - surely any legitimate editor would have taken a chainsaw to this book (which weighs in at 950 pages). I mean nine hundred pages... for a debut novel/ memoir? Yes, a lot happens - but please God and Allah couldn't it have happened in 450?

Axe mark one - hack out 90% of the cod philosophy - the prose verges on fluro-purple at points and bores you senseless with spurious and bombastic pseudo-indo-hippy nonsense.
Axe mark two - machete to the neck of 50% of unnecessary, obfuscatory, florid, bamboozling, inappropriate yet strangely entrancing adjectives.
Axe mark three - every time fear crawls out of the woodwork and grinds his blood into a whirling whirlpool of despair. CUT!
Axe mark four - each paragraph that says exactly what the preceding paragraph says only this time with a hint of menace!
Axe mark five - every "if only I'd known then what I know now". Greg - if life was like that we'd all be considerably happier and fewer people would die in car crashes - it's a weak device.
Axe mark six - every time someone smiles in an enigmatic or un-enigmatic way or smiles in a way that tells him that was the first time he knew that they loved him (150 pages at least)
Axe mark seven - each reminder that the Australian prison service is comprised of torturers and Nazi's ....
I could continue, but on to point two.

2. It's the biggest pile of self-mythologising, self-obsessed, unabashedly self-congratulatory and ego-centric tosh I've ever read.

He's a fantasist - lots might have happened to the guy - and it's amazing (almost unbelievable) to think that he went through all this. But his story is so heavily saturated in the rose-hued, honey-dripped love-fest of Indian honour and smiley happy people who just happen to be mass murderers, con-artists and gun-runners that only a moron (or Johnny Depp) wouldn't find it a trifle disconcerting.

It's like the longest PR puff piece in the world - first of all our hero (heroin addict and violent criminal) turns out to be a cross between Robin Hood and Mother Theresa, then Bombay becomes the city of love, Leopold's restaurant I assume threw him a few bob, the Indian mafia come out a bit rough around the edges - but y'know, 'earts of gold, everyone of 'em, bless em. Even the Mujahadin come out of their cave complexes smelling of roses and misunderstood.

I'm sure he's a nice guy who learnt valuable lessons from his extraordinary adventures - but people aren't this 'good'. The characters are so cardboard in their tortured complexity you think they'd been cut out of a cereal packet. There are about three genuinely unpleasant people in the book and, conveniently, they fit beautifully into a traditional narrative structure (and let's not get started on that!).

3. So why does this book incite such a rant? Well, firstly because it's held up as auto-biography - which implies some basis in fact; secondly I think it's because so many people seem to think that this is profound, significant and (scarily) that it's well-written.

Reviewers who should be embarrassed:
Daily Telegraph - 'A literary masterpiece'
Sunday Telegraph - 'Powerful and original'

Lets be honest, it's a gripping page-turner, an over-long schoolboy adventure, a racy romp in the classical tradition with guns, chases, treachery, despair, hope, comic relief, a spurned love interest, redemption, re-redemption, a war and a bucket-load of east-meets-west 'philosophising'. What it lacks in depth, subtlety or poetry it makes up for in 'poetry', pace and vivid descriptions of Bombay life.
It is good fun, if only epic in page length.

So - Yay for Shantaram which enters a glorious #3 in the "Internationally Best-selling Novels I Would Happily Burn" chart!
(Number two is that post-modern classic that redefines the concept of quality: Da Vinci Code)
(Number one is the worst book ever written by anyone ever, and I mean ever: The Celestine Prophecy)

Review in a line: If you loved The da Vinci Code you'll really love Shantaram.

Oops! Suddenly the future's yucky : Apple in "non-green" shocker.

2007-04-12T08:14:00.000Z

Fresh from the sweet, crisp, golden delicious that is the iPhone: a recent Greenpeace scorecard, ranks Apple lower than HP, Dell, Nokia, and Sony in their survey of how green electronics firms are. i.e. running 'proper' & global recycling programs and reducing toxic chemicals and plastics in manufacture.

Apple is rotten to the core it seems - but Steve Jobs calls their claims 'bullshit'. So that's OK.

Well now; tricky one. I love Apple, I love Greenpeace. I want to believe both. But Apple's energy efficiency pages only matches what Greenpeace already confirm. I feel personally annoyed because I've used these pages to defend Apple in the past - guess I should have researched further :

"Many of the changes Apple takes environmental credit for (Flat screens replacing CRT monitors, wireless reducing cables, banning certain chemicals) are just side-effects of changes made for design considerations or required by new laws." - Greenpeace

It seems so bad Greenpeace even have a campaign dedicated to getting Apple to change their ways. You can see more here: www.greenmyapple.org/
or just take a bite at the bad apple here and write straight to Steve: http://www.greenmyapple.org/mact-write.html

I've always defended and loved my mac; this sort of stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not happy.

iPhone: the future's bright, the future's apple

2007-04-11T00:33:00.002Z

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in Apple's MacExpo keynote in January my office went mental; a spontaneous centithread moment. But I kind of forgot to look properly - so I was interested to note when I went back and looked at the speech again - that this still looks like an epoch-changing product.
It's going to get hacked apart obviously! Yes the battery life will suck; yes it will scratch, snap, smell funny, burst into flames in peoples hands; GPS?; expandable memory?; and yes - it is just an amalgam of various existing touch screen technology. But what an amalgam, and what marketing, and what design... Basically this little thing is going to change the way we think about phones because if you put it next to anything in Carphone Warehouse it looks like putting the latest Nike's next to a pair of clogs.
I also really like this CBS preview because by the end of it the guys sounds like a 12yr old, he's practically speechless and drooling... "do it again! do it again! make it do the sideways thingy!"
It's going to be interesting to see what happens - because if this works, (i.e. early adopters love it) and Nokia, Blackberry et al don't respond fast... we could have an iPod market happen all over again in telecoms. Sorry Orange: the future's bright, the future's Apple.

PS: re: no exchange functionality for corporate users : Google Apps anyone?

On humans

2007-03-31T16:36:00.001Z

Humans -- who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals --
have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel
pain. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we
are to bend them to our will, wear them, eat them -- without any
disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. -Carl Sagan, astronomer and author
(1934-1996) & Ann Druyan, author (1949- ) [Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors,
1993]

Drawing faces; why I don't

2007-01-27T13:16:00.000Z

I've had a few queries recently regarding 'seeing' faces and drawing them:

I really do 'see' as I imagine everyone else does. Cecilia Burman's wonderful, straightforward site (prosopagnosia.com) describes the level of similarity of faces as being equivalent to telling rocks apart - unfortunately this seems to have been misinterpreted as the direct visual experience. It's not. It's just the identity that gets lost - if you've got a big nose, rosy cheeks and a mean glint in the eye I can tell that fine - I just might not know who you are.
It is just my inability to process those features as anything more than they are. They just don't register as being someone. So again - I can draw noses, ears and eyes. However unlike my mental picture of a room - where the residual image would be very intricate and I could peer into corners and see decorative details - with faces I can't remember anything about them. It's like looking at a very blurry gif in my mind. Just a grey blob. So obviously I just draw very crude approximations. Which is frustrating - and if I ever draw faces from memory: they just look like cartoons.

Weirdly even when someone is sitting infront of me I find it very hard to generate a likeness because my brain can't seem to retain the relational space between features. I might be drawing the eyebrows perfectly because I am looking directly at them but then I pull back and look at the drawing as a whole and they will be out of proportion or relation to the rest of the face. So the face becomes a distorted mess even though i can draw what I am seeing. Still annoying - but so much nicer now I know why...

Any way this is why I tend not to draw faces and to focus on details that I can happily manage like hands, or hair, or clothing. Course I could just be rubbish.

Rather excellent firefox discovery regarding reopening closed tabs

2007-01-15T18:53:00.000Z

I feel I should mention that I am learning PHP.
So it appears is the rest of the country - from grannies on estates outside Manchester to surfers in Cornwall. Everyone is having a go. So there you go. Expect complex data-driven homepage by end of year.

All of which is entirely irrelevant to my discovery of CTRL+SHIFT+T. Which is a brilliant - if hidden - shortcut that immediately reopens the tab (and url) of the page that you last closed (almost always accidentally and without making a note of where on earth you were). Frankly it will save me many minutes and generally contributes to the good of humanity.
I am for it!

Coincidental fame maintained!

2007-01-15T18:43:00.000Z

For those of you who didn't see me on the BBC last night discussing the pros and cons of the new UK government database scheme. I applaud you. Plenty of people did though leading to an entertaining level of " I saw you on't telly last night" type quippage.
Most entertaingly no-one has any idea what I said - mainly because they were too busy spluttering "I know that bloke" to stop and truly ponder the significance of my import into this weighty meme.
For that matter I managed to avoid the broadcast myself - so if anyone does know I'd be mildly amused. As for the particulars - we was shanghai'd by a roving reporting crew in the park by the Victoria and Albert museum where we were having a jolly nice time with my new stomp rockets. A toy of much excellence. STOMP. THank you N&D.
It really had nothing to do with me and I did make sure that my opinion was very balanced by changing my mind half way through my answer - but I suspect they cut that out.

Prosopagnosia - Wired update

2006-11-19T14:31:00.000Z

I've had a few emails about this story that appeared in Wired, so I think I should moderate my own post(!) by explaining that I was a bit taken aback when I read it at first and posted it...

I got on really well with Josh who wrote the article and I think (on re-reading) that it is a fine article that really interests the reader in the condition. That in itself is terrific - and if it lets more people know about Brad's work then bravo!

However, it's an odd condition and not one perhaps that can easily be encapsulated in such a way. My personal situation is not so severe as the others mentioned and I'm not sure how clearly that comes across. I think it is really crucial that it is seen as a spectrum problem - not a binary one. The other problem is that, ironically, everyone seems to perceive it differently - if you imagine that you spend your life developing coping mechanisms for a problem you don't realise you have - then just recognising your mental habits is really wierd.

Working with Brad however has fundamentally shifted my perspective and helped my self-esteem beyond measure - something you read about frequently when people are diagnosed.

The bit that amused me the most is that Josh completely misremembered the bar scene. When I didn't recognise my ex (not a unique incident) I didn't really chat her up. I just caught her eye and thought she looked really attractive, so i kept up the glances. Then after an hour or two she came over and asked why I wasn't talking to her. When she spoke, and I heard her voice her face kinda melted and I knew immediately who she was (voices are like hair, highly distinctive) - and everyone fell about laughing. Clearly she had just been looking over wondering if I was annoyed with her or something. She took it extremely well, probably because it all happened because she looked cute. (so doh! still a dumb story - but rather different from josh's version).

As I said to the fact checker from Wired, I guess these kinds of stories are always more 'impressionist' than 'photo-real' .

Anyway - for those who asked about the picture. Well:

And for anyone interested further can i suggest these links:

http://del.icio.us/tomucs/prosopagnosia

also a piece I did with MSN health:

When every face looks the same

there you go...

maybe more later.

Private practices

2006-11-13T23:14:00.000Z

It annoys me.
I keep hearing, straight out of the mouths of the online ruling classes. About how they would never post personal thoughts on the web. From these too, too many people who are busy making money out of people's wild-abandonment online with their more intimate secrets, a perversion of the very concept of privacy. A culture that seems to believe that by putting everything out there everyone is just as protected. Like on a tube carriage at rush-hour; beautiful solitude.
And they say it so smugly, like they know something we don't. Like the newest generation, the next generation, the children of myspace are somehow just dumb. Plain stupid. Crazee people goin' puttin' it all up in dat breeze. They are scared of exactly what they sell. It's no better than selling drugs if that's what they believe.
These are the souls making the money out of it, and they don't get it. Or worse, they disdain it. Distrust it.
It sucks. They shouldn't be allowed if they can't be "Googled".

Fame at last; but nonsense fame

2006-10-29T19:39:00.000Z

Important notice:

Wired article about prosopagnosia has now been printed.
It is well worth checking out for lots of reasons:
1: It's hilarious.
2: It's pretty interesting...
3: ... until you get to the bit about me when you realise that if they misrepresented me to such an extreme what can that possibly say about the rest of it?
4: There's a rather fine pic of me (and N) looking somewhat serious.

Interesting facts:
1. that's not really what happened
2. I really don't struggle to recall most people most of the time except when out of context and even then it's normally fleeting. I promise.
3. I did keep trying to tell them.
4. Having said all that, I did fail to recognise Brad, the neuroscientist, from his picture in the article
5. I think the whole thing is fabulously funny, probably good for PPG, and generally a bit of a hoot and I hope you do too.

Ah, the media eh! Don't trust 'em.

Making gmail better in firefox

2006-10-29T15:43:00.000Z

Making gmail and firefox sing: if you're still grappling with gmail the hard way (aka trial and error) I thought I'd chuck out this stuff I found about colouring and automating your labelling and creating quicktext for gmail.

OK so it's a bit geeky to read - so if you can't be bothered I guess it'll tunr up as functionality in due course.
It is also pretty much taken for granted that you are 'labelling' (gmail for filing)

First you need to install Greasemonkey: which allows some extra fun stuff to work in firefox.
Greasemonkey 0.6.4
(and restart firefox etc)

Then these greasemonkey scripts:
Gmail Label Colors . (and here on how to use it)
Gmail Conversation Preview (and here on how to use it)
additional keyboard shortcuts (including super-fast labelling) (and here on how to use it)

The stuff about auto-text is here - but I haven't started using it yet.

Another useful extension is gspace which allows firefox to use your 2gb of gmail as a remote server to back up files when you're on the road (or even at home) Gmail Space

Who's in charge here? It's all screwed up.

2006-10-19T08:49:00.000Z

Doonesbury has been running a fab story this week, about a press conference held by "Fear itself".
Who else could tell you that since 9/11 (3,000 dead) the US has seen 150,000 citizens killed in gun-related fatalities, and 200,000 on the road at the same time as asking why the US hasn't spent $3 trillion in a War On Guns & Cars, (and simultaneously make it funny)?
Plus we've had a wierd UK non-news story about the BNP members caught with a shed-load of chemical explosives that didn't make it on to the front page of ANYWHERE. OK except The Burnley Citizen report and in Pendle Today (a case of 'is it becaue I ain't muslim?')
Strange, but seen before? In the US in 2003: http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd04reynolds
and 2002:http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/13/160941.shtml

So is this indicative of a society whose priorities are really screwed, or one where we're actually all muslim haters, or just that the media should be ashamed of themselves. It is disgusting enough watching 'free' government acting in the interest of corporations and 'benefactors' but when all you have left is the 'free' media and even they won't run it because it won't sell...
Frankly I'm a little discouraged.

There's a very mild & understanding piece here in Asians in Media about how the story got buried.

Dove Evolution - the nature of unnatural beauty

2006-10-18T09:25:00.000Z


For reasons best known to G, I have kept an eye on Dove's laudable ad campaign for real beauty. This ad is indeed a real beauty. Ladies of the world take note once more: beauty is in the mouse of the professional.

Fwd: corruption and cronyism: Rife in UK horror!

2006-10-08T11:07:00.000Z

Fun topic for the week has been pointing out how corrupt we are and quite how loudly we would tut-tut if we heard about it happening in Kenya (or the developing world in general - sorry Annie - "global south")

Favourite of the week is scenario swapping : posh contemporary art dealer flies prospective clients to Denmark in private jet, wines dines and gives them presents: no obligation (Not Corrupt) versus African arms dealer flies white, male, prospective clients to Nigeria in private jet, wines dines and gives them presents etc, maybe a card at Christmas?
What's the difference here - as long as both are legitimate businesses? Maybe it's just a moral issue - but then surely corruption and cronyism are all about drawing moral lines.
There are lots of things that aren't illegal but that most people would find repellant or "wrong". Ask any city banker.

For example referrals at work: 'networking' or cronyism? At what point did it become reasonable to expect a bonus for head-hunting your mates?
McKinsey and Co Alumni: Dynamic Professional Network. Rampant and inexcusable corruption on a micro-level. http://www.mckinsey.com/aboutus/alumni/
Cash-in-hand for cleaners or plumbers: supporting black market and illegal labour.
Being taken out for lunch by suppliers: nice or naughty?
Client perks generally: if you're buying then they're paying. Kids take note, - if you want a nice life - orientate your career towards spending the budget, not making it.

This rolls out across the arts in even more prolific forms. No-one in the art-world gets anywhere without knowing someone or being supported by someone else. Patronage they used to call it in the old days. Most authors network their way into the hands of an agent. Musicians need luck, money and contacts - before they even buy an amp. Talent is not plucked fresh and stinging from the street, except for 14 year old models and may God have mercy on their souls.
I think I need to put the name Marcel Mauss, here mainly to make the post look post-modern and intellectual in searches. The ethic of reciprocity an' all that... Frankly I have very little idea who he is though, sorry, but apparently he's the whole point...

Whether it's family or friends we all use those around us to help us get on in life, get a bit further. So when someone gives us something we are bound to give something back, and we expect when we give... whether that's professionally or with friendship. A useful realisation in life is that much success, prestige, acclamation, fame - comes on the backs of contacts and cash. Talent is a big, fat, enjoyable myth (only good for sustaining success, like a life-jacket). So where do we draw the line, how can we see it?

Thought for the day

2006-10-03T08:04:00.000Z

Here's my thought for today:

Religion, yeah? Is like light.

Mmmmmm. Nice eh? It gets better...
[You know if you don't write this stuff down it's just a waste of all the pot]

So - who believes in black and white? I do.
And who believes in the spectrum? Good - still with me?
If light is equivalent to faith then black - which is the absence of light and so effectively a byproduct of light - can be atheism.
Meanwhile having gone through our little prism into the minds of the multitudes the light/faith is defracted: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism etc etc. And inside every major hue there are many shades and delicate differences... denominations even.

It even has space for new religion in the infra-red or ultra-violet! An understanding that a spectrum is limited by our ability to percieve.
So basically every colour is it's own colour but all stems from the same source, even in it's absence. We're all one in the light of love man.
Just bear it in mind.

(Radio 4? You can reach me via my website...)

Art as sport

2006-10-01T22:09:00.000Z

As I was trying to fathom out the utterly unintelligible utterances of Alain "I am French; I am a Philosopher" Badieu the other night at the ICA I had a minor sense of humour breakdown. This could have been due simply through having to spend 2 precious hours listening to the mumbling genius above but I think it was also slightly more mundane. Listening to someone who is speaking English, words whose meanings were previously clear and yet now, to the rest of the audience, patently meant something completely different, is incredibly frustrating. Nodding girl two rows in front of me was lucky not to get ring-bindered from behind in my frustration. When chappie up the back suggested Badieu had been talking about Iraq and could he expound some more I was apoplectic with confusion. When!? When had he been talking about Iraq!? What did he say? I swear he never used the word Iraq (although I did dose off for a few minutes in the middle).
I left in a foul mood simply because I did not understand the framework or the meaning of the words. Admittedly the whole thing was N's idea but it was my frustration. It is horrible not to understand - I hope it doesn't happen to often, I don't react well.

N meanwhile was sequestered off to go and watch Zidane - 92 minutes of the worst kind of self-indulgent over-hyped nonsensical 'art'. So there clearly is a god, even if Mr Badieu disagrees (not that I'd understand if he did).

However, I did develop a lovely strand of home-spun, old-fashioned tom-tosh on the cycle home. Basically I decided that drawing is good because i'm good at it. And photography is cheap because it's mechanical (nothing new so far), and that art isn't actually either of these things but that art needs to be thought of as not being anything. Drawing and sculture and relational-perfomo-socio-architecturaudio-sensory-installation pieces are all like different sports. And comparing them is like trying to say whether this rugby player is more significant than that javelin thrower, with a Go addict claiming that his basket weaving is art too. It's silly.

Modern art is silly but it's important because people pay HUGE sums of money to own it and how can it be unimportant if it's worth that much? And drawings often aren't worth that much (unless the artist is already worth a lot, in which case their scribbles are important too) which proves it.
So I guess, what I'm trying to say, in a manner of speaking, is; buy what you like, value what you love.

(I got that last bit off a website)

Is design about enabling or just rules

2006-09-27T22:09:00.001Z

I was talking and walking on the mobile today ranting and raving about design-repression.
This is the bit of design where either the style guidelines are set down so tight you can't kern a character without turning heads or the studio is just populated by people who have forgotten the perks of working in the 'creative' industries.
This is the time when basically the design equivalent of etiquette, (even morality!) gets ugly. A hierarchy is established on an understanding of 'the rules'. i.e, mm precision on underlines and runarounds; military-style grids; unbreakable canons of image use; people who demand kerned back caps despite the fact that the result is physically unoticeable. It is pure, disciplined design.
The only problem is that (99% of the time) it's a complete waste of time. 99% of design is about enabling communication - someone else's communication. 99% of design isn't noticed (this is a good thing). 99% of design is thrown away within a week of production. (Yeah OK so all these 99's are made up - but it is an illustration not a literal truth).
SO. Given that all this design is actually for normal people, who shouldn't notice it, and will dispose of it almost instantaneously - why is design facism so prevalent? Why do we go beyond the reasonable desire that corporate graphic design should work as a collection, have high production values and follow house style? Why ruin your life with 'unbreakable' rules?
My own personal opinion is that it is our own form of office politics - how do you decide what's right and what's wrong in a relatively subjective field, how do you demonstrate hierarchical superiority, how do you keep junior designers in their place if there actually perfectly good? By enforcing a rule-system of absolutes that become so specific that you need to study to understand when they are broken. Rules that make NO difference to the product or it's effectiveness in the market. "High production values" easily becomes a rod with which to bludgeon or repress.

I'm not advocating bad design here; it's not an apologia for sloppiness. I'm just saying that designers should watch for when the feedback means something to the product, and when the feedback means something to reviewer.

I have had clients who live by the book and others who seem not to give two hoots about design. But the latter is learning design value; it's value is in bringing quality to their communications, not killing the fun in the name of consistency.

The trouble with... Rich content

2006-09-11T21:17:00.000Z

The trouble with rich content is that most of it's piss poor.

OMG OMG at last www.last.fm & yahoo answers

2006-09-07T08:48:00.000Z

Don'tja just love life changing moments?
Like drunken conversations and scrawled notes on amrms and then going into work and going, " I think she said last.fm...."

And then discovering a wonderful concept for listening to music. A radio killer.
I live in the permenant belief that I'm actually way behind the times - but if you don't know this then imagine everyone in the world tagging their songs and linking them to a database. THen you can search by tags or artists or station and it doesn't just play the artist, it plays them AND similarly tagged stuff! So with the others comes the rakes, the paddingtons, thecribs etc , ban tunes, skip them, love them tag them... it builds a playlist based on your preferences. It's a radio station that really plays what you want to hear and still knows to throw in things you don't want to hear. Love it love it love it - thank you fee. OK proselytising done. But I'm excited!

Other site for the day is yahoo answers: which kicks arse in a sort of nice way. A kind of normal way.
It's genuine comedy - whereas all the sites I frequent are full of nerdy tech-savvy people asking highly intelligent questions and for whom foo is nothing, or at least nothing unusual - yahoo answers is the trailer trash version. With trailer trash answers. And boy is it funny.
From the last sixty seconds:

Should I be worried flying to New York on Sunday?
Asked by sharper - New York City - 4 seconds ago

Colonic specialist in Edwardsville, IL?
Asked by tiffany w - Other - Health - 5 seconds ago

how to make a nice cup of tea?
Asked by ankurkumar_01 - Other - Food & Drink - 8 seconds ago

Girls! Do you prefer to sleep with a man with Beard or with Moustache or without beard and moustache.?
Asked by Mateen - Other - Society & Culture - 9 seconds ago

Spillage on processor?
Asked by Lisa L - Other - Hardware - 40 seconds ago

How common is it for guys to pluck their eyebrows?
Asked by color me bored - Other - Entertainment - 48 seconds ago

does anyone know the value of a wayne gretzky rookie card?
Asked by doris k - Hockey - 52 seconds ago

What kind of dog is this?
Asked by AMac - Dogs - 1 minute ago

Are chequered shirts in fashion or is it just a coincidence?
Asked by zoeksalamander - Fashion & Accessories - 1 minute ago

Rupert, Rupert the bear......c'mon you know the words?
Asked by mica - Music - 1 minute ago

This is 'normal' life and I love it - I'm going to make it my home page.

The parody paradox

2006-09-06T10:43:00.000Z

When do we get proper content online? How does youtube and its many millions of imitators get past the fact that most of their content is bad parody, occasionally good parody and often dull parody or just people setting themselves on fire?

[By millions I mean Google Video, MetaCafe, IFILM, Dailymotion, Angry Alien, ArtistDirect, Blastro, Blennus, Blip.tv, Bofunk, Bolt, Break.com, Castpost, DevilDucky, FindVideos, Free Video Blog, Grinvi, Grouper, LuluTV, Midis.biz, Music.com, MusicVideoCodes.info, MySpace Video Code, PcPlanets, Pixparty, Putfile, REVVER, Sharkle, StreetFire, That Video Site, The One Network, VideoCodes4U, VideoCodesWorld, VideoCodeZone, vidiLife, VIDNET.com, Vimeo, vSocial, Web62.com and ZippyVideos. ]

It seems that we can't get past the paradox of having all the content we want as long as it's a copy of content we've already seen?

Maybe I'm just not browsing enough 320px wide, over-compressed, unwatchable garbage. But one of the most original (if ball-breakingly dull) thing I've seen is the most astonishingly dull sight of some yankee home equity sales suit cashing in on the fact that Norwich Union weren't smart enough to follow "Quote me Happy" through with any online content
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=quote+me+happy - DO NOT WATCH this - it is death.

Water crimes

2006-08-22T15:43:00.000Z

1 in 5 people in the world doesn't have access to clean water; the UK spends 2billion USD a year on bottled water.

Our local water supplier (Thames) has multi-million pound campaign which shows boats floating about in local landmarks like the Tower of London and explaining how much they will be saving this much when all the pipes are fixed. In other words it's boasting about how much water they are wasting today by claiming credit for fixing the pipes tomorrow.

So it's pouring with rain outside (being August) which is good simply because there is a hosepipe ban and it means I don't have to spend half an hour piddling about with an old leaking tin watering can.

And apparently we spend $2billion USD a year on bottled water in the UK. Over $100 billion globally.
Think on that for a sec. 2 BILLION on stuff that is free and 99.9% safe in this country.
Bottled water has NO added benefits over tap water in this country.
Bottled water does however have to be transported by plane and lorry.
The plastic does have to be buried in land-fill.
It is 2 BILLION dollars!

Carbonated water - fine. Emergency dehydration - fine. But the rest?
People should stop preaching about the harm the coke trade does and start on the unbelievable environmental evil that is evian.

And don't tell me I'm a hypocrite - I know that. But I try.
A story on it...

Peacynic speaking.

2006-08-14T09:39:00.000Z

I'm having a battle today (and everyday) with what constitutes a productive response to Lebanon and Iraq for a white, well-off, liberal, uk-based designer.

I marched all through my twenties against wars and injustice all over the place. I marched on the early Afghanistan marches in 2001 with a good understanding of the Taliban - I just weighed it against the futility of remote wars and whole-heartedly belived it was the worst course of action.
Our feeble 20k, and the later 100k were ignored.
When Iraq came around the marches started at 200k and by 1 million people (just before the shock and awe kicked off) we were confident that we, combined with the absolute authority of international law, would not be ignored.
But we were ignored, so much so that the march is only known as a record breaker. It did nothing. Compare that to the direct action of Father's for Justice, or the Countryside Alliance. Democratic governments welcome and encourage peaceful protest because it enables potential activists to exorcise their antipathy and feel righteous and then go home and then forget about it, just as they are forgotten about.

So I've stopped marching. When 15 thousand Londoners want to march through the streets alongside lunatics screaming death to Israel, "We are all Hezbollah now", I say "No thanks, (are you insane?)"
When international petitions come through calling for ceasefires based only on my email address: http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org - I think, mmmm, data harvesting.
When people say "This has to stop!" I ask, why are you telling me?
So now when the UK government goes on holiday I think fine. Why didn't they go on holiday in the first place? Why didn't they pump billions of pounds into the Afghan economy, billions into Iraqi infrastructure, billions into establishing TV networks and giving out free laptops and Fox News and wireless connections?
Why don't they pump billions into creating sustainable irrgation solutions in Sudan, Ethiopia and the horn of Africa? Why aren't they actually interested in solving these situations, merely sustaining them?

That's where I stop caring. I can care for lives and cry for pain and suffering. But I'm not going to stand up and claim this is a democracy and "my view counts" when it clearly doesn't. Not one iota. Not a jot.
Maybe that's not even a bad thing - but I'm not lying about it.

I'm a peacynic and I need a better way.

2006-08-09T15:13:00.000Z

All about the box...

I am loving this video madly.

2006-08-02T15:00:00.000Z

Up against the wall (pt1)

The first people up against the wall in my revolution will be the 'talented' progeny of famous parents.

Imagine what our cultural landscape would look like if it wasn't so heavily populated by people who were born into it? It may have escaped your notice but if your Dad was a rockstar, or a film director, or actually did something that meant something, well, the world is yours my child. Maybe an actress? or a DJ? or a photographer, fashion designer and health-food guru? Maybe just a guru? Maybe just an over-exposed under-talented club-hopping bimbette? That'll keep you going for a few years at least.

How can anyone start a review of anything by these people without commenting on the shameless, plutocratic nepotism that dominates our cultural output? It is stagnating and lazy.

But how do we change it until we address the magazines that genuinely seem to think that Peaches Geldoff is worthy of adulation because she's got Miss Kitten on vinyl? ...up against the wall pt 2 then.

I was going to put a list here of people who really owe their folks a thanks come awards night - but it would be too long. Guess that's what comments are for.

2006-07-21T09:52:00.000Z

Cyc-lid or not to lid: Pro's and cons of cycle helmets
Cycling in London has doubled over the last few years and this years annual crop of ignorant and dangerous 'summer cyclists' has hit the roads in a bumper crop. It is like watching an insect life-'cycle'. In early spring they tentatively emerge looking shaky and unconfident, rusty gears, broken lights, lots of helmets; then when it gets hot there is a sudden flood: blokes wearing nothing but shorts riding death-traps down the pavements, big-bottomed girls wearing blowsy skirts and flip-flops flumping around parliament square.
THe scariest ones for me are the headphone wearers - admittedly in winter you get head-phoned hoodie wearers - even scarier, but not in such numbers! It's insane. It's like cycling in blinkers.
And lets not even get started on red-lights. It's such a tricky subject. My view is that if you're careful and considerate, and let pedestrians go first, well - what's the problem really?
People who cycle on the pavement are arseholes.
But LIDS - that what I meant to write about.
I wanted to jsut lay up a few of the things I've come to understand in a very short overview of the dangers of cycle helmets and vic versa.
1: You are better off without a cycle helmet. THis is the crux. And the simple answer is that 'you' as a person certainly aren't. If you fall off your bike without a lid you'll hurt your head more than if you are wearing one. About 70% more. stats
However - if a truck hits you doing 40, then you're jam, helmet or none. No difference.
But basically you are less likely to hurt your head with one on. BUT
2: Helmets stop people cycling. THis is clearly true. See Australia and SA for real-time examples. Apparently this is because people think they look stupid and would rather hurt their head than look uncool. Naturally.
Anyway this is when helmets (or the lack of) gets dangerous. Firstly a reduction in cyclists means you are more likely to be in a serious accident because drivers are less cycle aware.
Secondly helmet wearers allegedly feel safer and make more erratic maneuvres. (Actually having cycled for decades with and without I think this is nonsense - but scientists have stats)
Finally people not cycling because they don't want to look uncool get fatter and die earlier than they would if they'd been allowed to cycle without one: ergo lids are bad for your health.
Does that all make sense? No - it's a nonsense isn't it - just wear a lid and behave on the road and watch out for lorries turning left without indicating.
[links to be added]

2006-07-18T14:58:00.001Z

Strata of web-ness
It occurs to me that we are diverging in technical ability.
It's now 20 years since kids started flunking IT classes and for every year of that twenty someone has been saying : "Awww kids today - they live on these machines - they'll be amazing when they grow up". Now to some extent it's true - but to a massive extent it isn't. Yes techies and engineers are more prevalent today than yesterday. Yes all my schoolmates now work in IT related professions. Yes html is probably more widely comprehended than many non-meta languages, and far easier than French.
But there is still a yawning gap between the knows and the nearly knows not to mention the don't know, don't cares.
The dogmatic insistence of CSS & DHTML is undemocratic. It's HARD. Never mind the increasing reliance on push-technologies like ajax. (incomprehensible to most of us even as a concept, let alone once the acronym is actually explained).
It is all well and good that halfway tools exist - like GooglePages - but there is a chasm in understanding between the technically minded and the average user. And the average user seems to be getting more reliant and less technical because, well, what's the point? It's like trying to take an engine apart and put it back together again. Simpler just to get someone to make it work.