Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Ideas are easy
I struggle with motivation. Ideas are easy. I can drop them like Hansel and his sister can drop breadcrumbs. That’s why Alertbear went so well. All I had to do was keep coming up with the ideas and make sure somebody else was motivated enough to turn them into reality.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on usermesh, a different kind of social networking site that I conceived of a while ago. This isn’t the time to get into why I think it’s worthwhile producing ANOTHER one of these (in short, usermesh will actually give you something to DO), but what I’m finding is that the ideas are coming even thicker and faster now that I’m doing something productive again. I thought of a use for the allapple.com domain I’ve had kicking around for all these years, I’ve had thoughts of technology blogs, wedding websites and mechanical turks. Even the venerable Chatbear piqued my interest earlier today as I considered removing features from it rather than adding them.
What happens eventually is that somebody else has the same idea and stronger motivation. whatfilm is a site that I constantly wish was better than it was. I still keep up a list of all the films I see in the hope that I’ll sit down and write reviews of them, but it never seems to work out. The original concept of a site which recommended films based on your tastes and a few simple questions (hence the domain name) seems a million miles away. Somebody else will probably do it before long (they may already have and I just don’t know), the way Giant Bomb have finally done the Gamesplayer idea of mine from about 8 years ago.
None of this helps me of course. I may struggle with motivation, but I certainly don’t struggle for ways to heap scorn upon myself for not seeing ideas through.
Tap tap tap… is this thing on?
Yea, it’s been a while since I added something on here, four months in fact. I don’t think I’ve ever gone quite so long without dipping my toe in the waters of the blog world.
I still don’t have anything to say.
Embracing The Future
This is my response to a blog post by Stephen Poole, slightly edited to make it standalone. It’s also a subject that came up on this week’s Macbreak Weekly, so it’s already been on my mind this week.
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If you’re currently making a living from writing books, composing music, or making movies, then you may be forgiven for thinking the Internet has you under seige. Everywhere you look it seems that people want you to give away your content for free, as if everything you do no longer has any value and it’s a basic human right that everyone be able to do as they please with anything you produce. You are basically being told that if you wish to continue to be creative, you’re mad to think anybody is going to pay you to do it.
This really is not the case.
The argument is not that anyone who is creative should be denied payment for their efforts, but simply that those who are going to be the most successful going forward are those that embrace a new business model, rather than continue to cling on by their fingernails to the old one.
The record companies are a perfect example of what happens when you cling on too tightly. At first they tried to pretend the Internet didn’t exist, and then when Napster came along they sat there and just lashed out at anybody that tried to take away their comfort zone. Then they woke up a bit, and at least admitted they needed to do something. But they lock up their songs up with DRM, sue anybody who ever touches a file sharing network, and in one Sony case, install malicious software on your customers computer. This is simply not the way to conduct yourself. Not only is it hugely damaging to their brand, but it also devalues music even further, as those who truly do like the rebellion distance themselves even further from the money grabbing corporate whores the music executives appear to be. The harder the music companies push, the harder it is for them to win back the mindshare.
But some of them are beginning to get it. iTunes was the first real step in actually providing what people wanted, easy access to the songs people wanted. And unlike Napster, you had a 100% chance of actually getting the song you wanted to download, with proper tags, and not an MP3 rip of a song recorded from the radio with a DJ talking in Spanish over the end. Starting to allow DRM-free versions, even in their previously feared MP3 format at Amazon, shows that they have finally realised you should treat your customers as people first, and thieves later; not the other way around.
The lesson from this is that change should not be feared. Grab the internet generation with both hands and use them to your advantage, rather than locking your doors and cowering in the corner with your old business model pressed tightly to your chest, afraid that the mob is coming to steal it from you. For musicians this means giving away a few tracks from your new album for free and selling the rest, with a premium for the higher quality lossless versions. Or selling complete recordings of all your live shows. And using the momentum from this to sell more tickets to your next show (see TMBG and Barenaked Ladies). For writers, this means giving away your last book for free in order to create publicity for the one you’re about to release in hard copy. Or giving away the first couple of chapters for free as an incentive to buy the rest. Or selling your novel one chapter at a time, as you write it (see Stephen King). And if you’re a movie producer, let people download the first 30 minutes of your movie for free and then let them buy the DVD containing the rest of the film direct from your website.
And most importantly, take the feedback from your audience, interact with them, let their word of mouth be your marketing machine and never treat them like criminals. People will be more than happy to pay for your work if the price and terms are fair. At the end of the day these are your customers, and for the first time in human history creative people have the opportunity to truly communicate with those who appreciate their art en mass, and that should be something artists should be excited about, not fearful of.
Pimped Out
We came, we saw, we pimped.
UK ISPs Want BBC To Pay For Upgrades
ISP’s in the UK have decided that since the BBC’s iPlayer is being so successful that they should contribute to a network upgrade to properly handle the new traffic.
The job of an ISP is to allow access to the Internet for their customers. For that service, they charge the user on a monthly basis. Why should the BBC, just because they are providing a now popular destination for those customers, provide any sort of financial backing to the ISP? The ISP is charging for a service, if they are unable to provide that service at the cost they are passing onto the consumer, then their business model is flawed and they should be charging more than they are.
And why single out the BBC? Are the ISP’s going to make similar demands to anybody else who creates a site to which customers flock? Is YouTube on the line? Or Flickr? Are they going to come knocking on my door if I create something that really starts pumping out those bits?
The ISPs seem to have misunderstood their position in the Internet hierarchy. They are a gateway to content, not a gatekeeper (and they don’t want to be a gatekeeper, for that makes them liable for everything that passes through). Asking to be paid from both sides is not only greedy, but it starts a slippery slope for both consumers and web content providers.
God All Mighty
The truth is, stuff like this probably happens quite a lot, it’s just the Internet makes it so much easier for us to find out about it. The magnitude of these people’s stupidity really is quite staggering. Why does believing in a magical being also make some people lose any sense of judgement or intelligence?
Actually, perhaps the answer is in the question.
An Avalanche On Mars
Here is a picture of an avalanche on Mars.
That’s a picture of an avalanche ON ANOTHER PLANET. There is something infinitely more exciting about seeing rocks moving than just sitting still, it makes the place so much more real and alive. How long before these probes can return video?
New York Reflections
There’s just something about the way the lights are reflected off the road that makes me love this one so much.
Twins Who Unwittingly Married
This is the kind of thing that would really fuck you up in later life. Imagine you got married again and had to explain that one to your future spouse.
Most of all I want to see a picture of both of them. If only so I can make disparaging comments like “you didn’t realise that was your sister? she looks just like you!”
Cultivated
I could try and catch up with the last few months, post individual entries describing the things I did on the days that I did them (or at least a close approximation), but I would merely be kidding myself. The fact is readers (if there are indeed any of you left) the magic of blogging is just no longer in my heart. Before I continue on that theme however, here is a roundup of what has happened since I last posted.
Around the beginning of November, I went to London to see Andrea. I got stuck in traffic on the way down (I drove) because the motorway was closed, made the wrong decision about where to go because of it, got lost despite having sat-nav, and ended up not arriving until well after 1am in the morning, at least 2-3 hours later than expected. The next day I walked about 11 miles across London, and on Sunday I got home having covered 828 miles in the car since the Friday. A couple of days later, Andrea launched her own blog and I shouted hooray!
Also in November I finished the user signup for usermesh.com, bought and played Super Mario Galaxy (awesome, just far too much fun), my car exhaust broke, I watched the end of the disappointing Long Way Down on TV (a trip ruined by Ewan’s wife) and bought a couple of H2Glo’s.
In December I bought an EEE PC, for no other reason than I thought it was cool. I was disgusted to read that HTML5 may not be ratified for 10-15 years (by which time the internet will most likely be beamed into our brains wirelessly and it won’t be required anyway).
I also made my yearly pilgrimage to New York with Andrea, where we strolled through Times Square with Pizza, drank great cocktails, and I asked her to be my wife. Which she accepted. Which also made me go hooray! Ah, to be in love.
So now that’s cleared up, what is to become of my blogging career, which I have cultivated since March 2003? The answer to that, dear friends, I have no idea. It would be nice to have somewhere to post my thoughts, my film and videogame related musings, but the format here doesn’t seem quite right anymore. Nor does whatfilm, which has also suffered over the past year due to my lack of writing motivation. Perhaps some sort of combination of the two is in order, with a touch of The Links Effect thrown in as seasoning. Right now, I’m not really sure.
But for now, I tip my hat to you all. I’m sure we’ll speak again.
Benevolent
Our fish tank has been a bit green over the past few months, the algae has been getting worse ever since the move. I assumed it was just because the tank was closer to the window and was getting more light than it did before, but even with keeping the blinds around it closed and not putting on the tank light, it just didn’t seem to help. We did a water change at the weekend and cleaned it all out, but it just seems to have made things worse, the water never cleared and now it’s gone green.
I went to the pet shop tonight and bought a new filter, as well as some new stones to put at the bottom and make it look nicer, and did another water change while fitting it in. Thankfully this seems to have done the trick, and even now a few hours later it’s already starting to look a lot better. I was starting to get a little worried that they were going to die, so I feel quite proud of myself for managing to save them. I am like their God. And I am benevolent.
Potter
This was just funny, as a Star Wars and Harry Potter fan.
Splat
This is what happens when you buy a dinner from a supermarket that uses a cheap plastic for their containers, therefore rendering them floppy and useless when hot.
Boating
Andrea and I were out on my bosses boat, and I didn’t get sea sick at all.
Squiggles
So I have a shiny new house which for the most part, is all ship-shape. There are a few minor issues, a cupboard door hung too high, a cracked tile on the lower roof, a shower that occasionally trips the switch on the electrical box and switches off while you stand there, soap in your eyes.
When I had my pre-inspection, I noticed various lumps and bumps on some of the walls in different rooms. Some of these were where the plaster wasn’t very smooth when it was painted over, others were where the paint had dripped or splattered to leave some unnecessary blemishes. I pointed this out and it was added to my snagging list. When I had my final inspection, none of these issues seemed to have been resolved. This was explained as a confusion between the sales woman and the builders, as while we had naturally assumed the master bedroom to be bedroom 1 and the smaller one to be bedroom 2, it turns out that the builder counts the bedrooms starting from the bathroom and moving out, so they were in fact the other way around. So the builders had gone to look and couldn’t see anything, and had therefore just crossed it off the list, not being sensible enough to go check the other room just in case.
Anyway, to stop this happening again and remove any further chance of confusion, the sales woman drew on the walls over the bumps with her pen, putting big squiggly lines right over the top of them. It probably seemed like a reasonable idea, and certainly made it difficult to not see where the problems lay. The trouble is, the builders have never come back to check my list of problems, so the squiggles have been totally unnecessary. Instead I get comments every time somebody sees one, “what kids have been drawing on your walls?”. The lumps were so minor, they would probably have been forgotten about in time, minor issues seem less noticeable once you have furniture in and pictures on the walls. No chance of that here though, not with the scribbles of a four year old to remind me.
Shades
I finally got lamp shades for the hall and the back porch, ending a search which started back when I got the house. They’re not what I was looking for, settling instead for a few cheap ones first seen months ago, but it makes such a difference to have them up rather than bare light bulbs. With the clocks up, and some more pictures on the walls, it’s the finishing touches that really make the place seem more like home than it did before.
Motorway
The British motorway network is actually quite impressive. I drove back from London to Hamilton today, an almost 400 mile journey that took me around 7 hours. It would have been less, but I got stuck in roadworks on the M1 when leaving London that left me crawling along at a snails pace for quite a while. I did the whole thing in one go, only stopping to get fuel around the half way stage. The wonder of sat nav kept me pointing in the right direction (although granted, once I got onto the motorway it’s not particularly complex, pretty much just go straight north), and The Beatles, Queen and some 70’s Disco kept me entertained in the CD player.
It’s a lonely journey, I’m not sure I could be a truck driver constantly going up and down that route all my life, and not just inside the car but outside it as well. The further you get north, and especially when you get into Scotland, the traffic on the motorway really dwindles down to hardly anything, which is just great when there’s three lanes to play with. It seems that nobody wants to visit this end of the country.
I don’t mind driving long distances like that at all, and felt just fine when I got out of the car at the end. There is a small part of me that would want to drive from one end of the country to the other, just to say that I’ve done it.
