Keen on Keen

I’m a big fan of Keen footwear – there amongst the most comfortable shoes I’ve had. Also, the fact that they’re hard to find in Scotland means not many people have a) heard of them or b) own them.

The downside is that they’re hard to find in Scotland, and even when you do find them, the available range isn’t that broad.

So last week, I bemoaned the situation as a reminder to myself that I should email some shops and Keen themselves to try to rectify the situation. I couldn’t find Keen on Twitter. Then I promptly neglected to do so.

Lo & behold, last night Keen responded to my bemoaning! Whoever is behind the tweet pointed out a site called Shop Any American Store which sounds awesome to the max, as I believe the kids still say.

Basically, you take a note of what you want to order at say, KEEN’s store. Then you fill in the order on the SAAS site. SAAS place the order and receive the goods, then ship them out to you. It’s kind of a roundabout way of doing things, but it could be oh-so-handy.

Anyway, thanks Keen – I’m looking forward to wearing more of your shoes!

Edivacation

The title is a new word I invented:

n. a period of suspension of work, used specifically to partake in intellectual, moral or spiritual improvement.

I spent the last week in Agios Georgios, in the south-west of Corfu, on just such an edivacation. Basically, I just went away to read books, think and generally re-charge. Bill Gates does something similar, but he calls it a think week. Apart from a multitude of mosquito bites, it was great, and was exactly what I needed.

Here’s a selection of my reading topics (I’ll restart book reviews soon):

• Architecture
• Prosody
• Managing Creativity (now requires a subscription)
• Organising Without Organisations
• Urban Planning
• Sociobiology
• Unity of Knowledge

I also read the classic novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg, and Nocturne, a play by Adam Rapp.

I thought a lot about the past, the future and all the bits in-between, and you’ll hopefully start seeing some of the results of that in the coming weeks, months and years. I also learned some things I hadn’t really anticipated:

• Coke and chocolate peanuts make the perfect late night snack for insomniacs;
• I’ve been in Scotland so long that my skin tone effectively just becomes slightly less white;
• 90% of tourists wear Crocs;
• Cats can simulate a cockerel crowing. They especially like to practice for hours and hours during the night, right outside my window;
• Greek daytime TV is even odder than here in the UK —I have no idea what that woman was supposed to be doing with that octopus, but I felt sorry for it even though especially because it was already dead.

Anyway, as I said – lots more to come soon.

Puma Has A Sense Of Huma

Been meaning to post this for a while, but I was amused by what I found on a Puma shoe box:

Well, I found it funny at least.

More Reading Material

Detailing Diablo III: Interview with Jay Wilson, game director of Diablo III:

… I think the key is identifying what the core philosophies are that made the game popular in the first place … to a certain degree, you’re going to have to challenge conventions, and you just have to have the guts to do that. But the best way to do that is to learn what core things are important to the game.

(via)

Nick Hornby interviews David Simon, creator of The Wire:

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

(via)

Q&A: Joss Whedon:

None of us is going to become a billionaire from doing this but yes, I think it’s very tricky and most people will tell you it can’t be done. I had one person who might actually be a billionaire, and he said, “Yeah, you’ll make $2,000.” And he wasn’t being mean. ... I’m happy to say, we’ve topped $2,000.

Hal Varian: 14 Free business models:

Most information is born digital and that digital information is typically very easy to copy and distribute, it is conceivable that copyright laws may become almost impossible to enforce. Are there ways for sellers to support themselves in such an environment?

Saul Williams is hecka smart:

Although I cannot boast a lifetime of keeping my views to myself, I have seldom taken on the responsibility of trying to change someone (alright, maybe a few girlfriends, but you’ll never hold me to that). However, this year for me has been one of aggressively shifting from a reluctant pursuit of change and growth to taking a proactive stance on what I believe in times that I see as clearly representative of a societal paradigm shift both necessary and urgent for our country and world.

(via)

Note to self: less with the reading, more with the making.

A Bijou Update

I’ve been a little bit quiet here recently – job hunting, a weekend in Krakow, and then my gran passed away. I now have a new job lined up, but more on that in the future.

I’ve spent this afternoon doing a bit of a redesign on the site (which you won’t be able to see if you’re reading the feed version of this) – it had been bugging me for a while. I find it a lot more readable, and hopefully you will too.

Proper semi-regular posting will now resume, but here are a few links I’ve been reading recently:

• Who Moved My Brain?: More from Merlin Mann on time & attention.
• Complexity Without Commitment: Denis McGrath provides a link to an article about JJ Abrams balancing serial and standalone episodes in his shows. There’s also a follow-up post, I Was Lost But Now I’m Found.
• Spanking Death: Interview with game designer Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island).

As for my writing, I’m very behind. I keep having new ideas, which I suppose is good, but really, the big thing for me is to get a draft of my entry for the Red Planet Prize together. That’s my goal for this week.

Oh, and I love this Paddy Chayefsky quote on Denis McGrath’s blog:

Artists don’t talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it’s stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

Weekly Reading

Some recent reading material and quick hits:

• 4Talent Talent Arcade: On Monday (Aug 11^th), I’m chairing a panel session at this, titled ”Publish or Be Damned”. I think there are still tickets available on the day, but all the pre-registered tickets are taken.
• I’ll Take That TV Deal, Please!: Daisy Whitney writes about the “sell-out mentality” of web-video creators (or actually, the accusations of being sell-outs if a web property moves to TeeVee). Too often people get stuck in “tyranny of the or” thinking, is my opinion. I wonder when the core concept of a web series will be developed and scaled up to a TV series, just as Firefly scaled up to become Serenity? Has that happened yet?
• Old Masters and Young Geniuses: ”The main idea is this. Instead of people being super creative when they’re young and getting less so with age (i.e. the conventional wisdom), Galenson says that artists fall into two general categories”.
• Why we insulate: Scott Kurtz of webcomic PvP on the “sense of entitlement” some fans have towards the work of the creator. I don’t recall where I found the following, and I don’t have a note of who said it, but it seems appropriate:

Don’t mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it; if unfair, keep from irritation; if it is ignorant, smile; if it is justified, it is not criticism—learn from it.

What Great News!

Or so I thought

The former head of BBC Films, David Thompson, has named his new independent TV and movie production company Origin Pictures and landed a three-year first-look development deal with the corporation.

Then I remembered that’s not me.

Old Bailey Online

Now this could be useful: 400 years worth of criminal proceedings from the Old Bailey.

A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.

(via Alex Epstein)

R.I.P. Humph

Writers Guild Strike

As you may know, screenwriters in the US are currently on strike. It basically all centres around residuals: the money that people who work on TV shows and movies are paid whenever a show is re-run, or a movie is broadcast, or a DVD is bought. Assuming it was made after 1960, that is. Anyway, here’s a couple of videos I thought I’d share that give more information on exactly why the writers are striking.

(Videos Via Kira)

TextMate on Halloween

TED Videos

TED, the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference held each year has been posting a series of talks recorded at the various events over the years to their blog. They’re all worth checking out, but the following are my favourites:

• Majora Carter
• Malcolm Gladwell
• Daniel Gilbert
• Larry Brilliant
• Ze Frank
• Joshua Prince-Ramus
• Richard Dawkins

Ricky Gervais Interview

Noticed this interview with Ricky Gervais on the BBC site this evening. Definitely worth a watch (it’s just over 11 minutes long, I think).

Silicon Valley Is What Now?

Forgot to post about this article from the “esteemed” Scotland on Sunday. Aside from the fact that the picture is captioned incorrectly, and I’d say that the story itself is at least two years out of date, since when was Silicon Valley defined as "...an area stretching from Seattle in the north to close to the Mexican border in the south"?

Upgrade Time

OK, I’m about to try upgrading to MovableType 3.3. Hopefully, nothing will break…

Update: OK, so something did break, but then I fixed it (not all the files had uploaded correctly). Once I had all the files in place, it all went smoothly though.

Peter Morville Talk

In case you were interested, Peter Morville, the author of Ambient Findability, has a talk on the same subject available at IT Conversations.

Tags: books, findability

Ze Frank on September 11, 2001

Just wanted to share today’s edition of The Show with everyone.

Comments

I’ve turned comments off for now, since the level of comment spam was just getting unbearable for me. Trackbacks are still available. I really need to get off my butt and move to WordPress!

Not Receiving The Phone Book

So it seems there is a way to opt-out of receiving The Phone Book: send an email with your landline number and full address to directory.products at bt.com. Too late this time around, of course.

Cocktail Party Physics

Following from my review of Black Bodies and Quantum Cats, I thought I’d point out that Jennifer Ouellette now has a blog: Cocktail Party Physics.

Only a handful of posts so far (she started in February), but it looks pretty interesting: a discussion about the success of TV show Numb3rs in bringing mathematics to the masses, and I learned that the Chinese used to refer to ambergris as “dragon’s spittle perfume”.

Long Bets

Following from The Clock of the Long Now book review, I thought I’d mention one of the spin-off projects: Long Bets.

Long Bets is a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake.

Essentially, people make long term bets against each other, with the winnings going to the bettors charity of choice. The featured bet at the moment is that commercial flight will routinely be in pilotless planes by 2030, and is for $2,000. The predictor in this case is Craig Mundie (CTO of Microsoft) and Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google). Small change for them, I’m sure, but given that the stakes are invested in a special purpose fund, it could turn out quite well for the charity of the winner.

Tags: longnow, longbets

It's Not A Windfall, It's A Reward

A story in the business section of today’s Scotsman about a company flotation adviser taking itself public. The company (Ingenious) specialises in the TV sector, and earlier this year helped to take Shed (a Scottish TV production company) public. Good for them.

The last sentence, however, contains something that really winds me up:

[Shed] Founder Elieen Gallagher made a personal windfall of £5m from the deal.

Aside from the complete irrelevance of that fact to the story, here’s a definition of that word “windfall”:

A sudden, unexpected piece of good fortune or personal gain.

The fact that Ms Gallagher has undoubtedly worked hard to build her company up to the point where it is viable enough to take public means that her gain wasn’t unexpected; it’s what she was working towards all along. It obviously wasn’t just good fortune, although I’m sure some of that was involved along the way (although many people have said that you make your own luck). Even the fact that it was “sudden” is debatable; the value was always there, the only difference is that now the value is visible because it’s on the open market.

The use of the word windfall to describe an entrepreneur’s successful sale or IPO of their business is commonplace, but it’s also completely wrong, and it bugs me (as you may have guessed).

Wikipedia

I’ve read a few bits and pieces recently about some childish Wikipedia Wars, and as usual, the Penny Arcade guys hit the nail on the head.

Firebox Respect

I’d just like to commend Firebox.com on their prompt service. I ordered on Saturday evening, and received a “goods dispatched” email at 9.34am on Monday morning. Sure enough, everything arrived today at about 11am. The downside was that I had to lug a big cardboard box around with me – I think someone should invent stick-on handles for these things, or possibly Firebox should get boxes which have pop-out carrying handles instead.

I’ll let them off with this however, since on opening the box, there was a packet of fizzy cola bottles inside! Yum!

Technorati Tags: firebox

Live! From JuiceMonkey! The Exclusive Truth Behind the War in Iraq!

Sitting in Juice Monkeys, partaking of their free wifi and unfree-yet-delicious smoothies and cakes, and then I noticed today’s Independent (sadly, there doesn’t appear to be a link on their site).

ceedwlt: I just saw the headline on the Independent: “Bush: God told me to invade Iraq”
nwstewart: Yeah. I was there. God actually told him to invite Iraq. To a luncheon.
nwstewart: But when a guy pronounces nuclear as nu-cew-loor, you have to expect misinterpretations.

Sidenote: evidently, people don’t appreciate other people laughing at their computers in public. I expect that’s because they’re jealous. What they might be jealous of, I’m unsure.

Is This Thing On?

I’ve been spending a lot of time doing nothing in particular (at least, it feels that way – I’ve been busy working for Slam on a variety of projects, none of which I can talk about yet).

I’ve also been a little scared to touch the site, since I’ve been making a decent amount of cash via AdSense, and I didn’t want to upset anything! I won’t get rich from it, but I’ve certainly more than covered my hosting costs.

We’ll shortly be relaunching the Slam site, and that’s where I’ll be writing about games and possibly some of the projects I’m working on there. You may also want to know that I’m writing this on MarsEdit on my shiny new iBook. I’ll be testing Ecto for the next post, which may appear sometime soon. Sooner than this one, at any rate!

Architecture and Entrepreneurship

Couple of good links from 37signals today:

• The New Freedom Tower

The new design for the 77-story Freedom Tower features a pinstripe facade, centered antenna, and a huge, largely windowless pedestal which was added after the New York Police Department insisted the building be more resistant to car and truck bombs. Whatís left from Daniel Libeskindís original design? Well, the buildingís total height is still 1,776 feet.

The repressed architect in me is thoroughly disappointed at how the original vision has been twisted and misshapen to create what is proposed now. If you get the chance, do read the NY Times piece—well worth it, and it’s not too long.

• Entrepreneurs, angels, and the cost of launch

Joe Kraus from JotSpot has a great piece on how the last ten years has reduced the price of doing a startup from three million to a hundred thousand dollars for him.

However, David HH adds his own spin to this which is more in line with my own thinking at the moment:

Constraints drive innovation and getting your idea out in the wild in two months instead of six will likely do you a world of good. A month or two out the gates, youíll have a pretty good idea of whether you ìgot somethingî or not.

If you do, youíll be self-sustainable shortly, and wonít need the external cash (neither the $100K to launch nor the $5.2 million to run). If you donít, you better turn down the life support cash and come up with another idea thatíll put you in the first game.

Even for those businesses which require a certain level of inventory just to help kickstart things, I don’t really see a number much larger than $20k or so being required to help prove the concept.

Too hot for football?

Too hot for football?,
originally uploaded by dwlt.

Martha and Jamie

Just watched Martha and Me (Danger! Link may expire in the next 60 minutes), where film maker Jamie Campbell rented a caravan in a trailer-park opposite Martha’s jail, and tried to live his life according to the ideals of America’s domestic diva. It turned out to be reasonably entertaining, after a bit of a slow start.

There was a slightly bizarre line near the start, where Campbell claimed that it was “unbelievable” that the American public swallowed Stewart’s ideal home philosophy. Whereas the British public buying white eggs in droves after Delia Smith told them to is rational, presumably.

However, my favourite quote comes from a conversation between Campbell and Michael, his “live-in Martha lover” who helped him decorate his caravan:

Jamie: So why do you think Martha is so perfect?

Michael: Oh, I don’t think she’s perfect. She strives for perfection, but she’s not perfect. She’s a perfectionist. Only one perfect being has ever walked this earth.

Jamie: Oprah?

This So Called Ticketlessness

As previously intimated, I’m going to see Professor Lessig tomorrow at the Science Festival.

I was going to order the tickets via their website, except that it charged a £1 booking fee. Obviously, me being Scottish, this was a fee I’d rather not pay, especially since the ticket office was only a 5 minute walk away. So off I went.

So, there I am, watching the guy process my purchase using the same website as I had been using, only with the booking fee removed. I used the same card I would have used via the website as well, so to all intents and purposes, the transaction was the same (except now I was taking up someone’s time). Then came the kicker:

“The festival is ticketless this year.”

So what was the booking fee for? It sure wasn’t for posting me out tickets. Although it looked like they were going to post out the confirmation code that appeared on the browser to the people who had called in for tickets, so this would be the worst ticketless system ever.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it in the end. I’ll take some pics and write it up when I get back.

Damn Those Squirrels...

... and their egregious misappropriating: Amazon.co.uk: Books: Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels

Congrats!

Well done to Mr Baglow, who has managed to launch a website for his marketing machine. He has a pretty interesting article on marketing mobile games there (no permalink, but you can find it under ‘features’).

And yes, I’ve already chastised him for using flash and not listening to me repeated evangelising of blogs and RSS and so on and so forth. He does have a blog over here though, so that’s a start I suppose.

Also congrats to my younger brother who, thanks to his new unstoppable fighting technique, just attained his red belt in his chosen martial art, TaeKwon-Do. Start a blog, already!

Just so you know, I already have an unstoppable typing technique, and am working on a new unstoppable filing technique.

Outage

Due to some sort of weird quirk at 34sp, whereby I had one login for my hosting and another login for my domain name, resulted in the site being unavailable for a few days. Apologies to everyone who missed their daily comic fix.

Also apologies to everyone who tried to send me email. You’ve no doubt noticed that you got a lovely bounceback message. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to resend the message again. If you actually want me to read it, that is.

Business 2.0 - I Want To Give You Money!

business2blog: The Dumbest List (for free):

We get rapped every so often for not giving away the content on the Business2.0 Website for free. (We think valueable[sic] content is worth paying for yadayadayada and it’s only $5 for a subscription.)

I’ve said it before, and no doubt I’ll have to keep saying it, but why oh why don’t they offer their ‘valueable’ content for ‘only $5’ to anyone outside the US and Canada?

Business 2.0 please take note: lots of people throughout the world are interested in what you’re writing, but you won’t let us read it, despite the fact that we’re willing to pay you money.

Rant ends.

I Know The Feeling

Sadly, I know what Diego is going through:

For the last couple of months (and according to our plan) we have been looking for funding. Sadly, we haven’t been able to get it. This hasn’t just been a matter of what we were doing or how (although that must be partly a problem) but also a combination of factors: the funding “market” in Europe and more specifically in Ireland (what people put money into, etc), our target market (consumer) and other things. Suffice it to say that we really tried, and, well, clearly it was a possibility that we wouldn’t be able to find it.

Consumer focused companies are always difficult to get funding for in Europe. Unfortunately, it creates a sort of imbalance in the market here, compared to the US where consumer focused businesses can actually get funded by a VC. A strong economy needs to have both types of business in it, but generally speaking funders here don’t seem to understand that.

Misuse of Copyright Legislation

Telepocalypse has a good post about how to achieve greater balance in copyright abuse complaints. Here’s the gist of it:

In asserting copyright abuse, the complainant would have to put their balls in the guillotine for a while. The rights to the work against which the abuse is being alleged would have to be put at risk. The complainant would have to lodge in their complaint not only the exact details of the work being infringed, but also the market value of the rights to that work.

If they win their takedown notice, end of story.

If they don't, things get interesting.

Great Stories

Cory is telling some great stories about, particularly the EFF’s campaigns vs. the NSA about crypto exports. The audience is mostly law students.

Cory gets 12,000 spam emails a day! Digging at the people (“secret police”) trying to intervene with internet’s network effectss.

Moving on to p2p. The p2p wars challlenge the internet’s ability to be free and open, as it was designed to be.

- Anti-circumvention: WIPO’s copyright updates treaty. Treated internet’s openness as a flaw. DVD region coding is an example. Geography isn’t on the copyright law! The law maker’s left it out on purpose.

- DMCA was passed by congress by using a lie. No time for review. Based on junk science. Illegal to look inside your computer to record an unencrypted dvd for example.

- DRM is broken, and means you pass control of your record player while you listen to your record. And is usually broken in days at most.

- Computers telling selective and beneficial lies is a tradition. Ecosystem relies on this.

- Skipping ads is “theft”!

- Some maths in the US is illegal!

- SDMI broken in hours. Blocked the presentation, sued presenting team and the conference.

Look at the difference between CDs and DVDs. CDs are open and you can invent new features. Happens all the time. DVD hasn’t changed 10 years.

Broadcast Flag: relies on switch to digital only tv networks. Pushed by Hollywood, despite them being a poor judge of what is good for their business model. Need to address possible copying problems that may appear tomorrow, today. “The plane’s about to crash, I’ll eat my seatmate now!”

Tech industry sold us out: Intel and Sony lobbied for broadcast flag. “Unforgivably reprehensible.”

Talking about software defined radio now (gnu radio). Eric Blossom has built an FM receiver to receive all fm broadcasts at once – that’s cool. He thinks the best bit is using the spare spectrum for communication, but that will be illegal when broadcast flag comes into effect.

Europe is working to bring the worst elements of US regulation such as broadcast flag, cable plug and play, and live feature removal from STBs! How wonderful.

They want to get rid of VGA displays

Broadcasting Treaty: if you receive my signal, even if the creative isn’t mine or is public domain, I can tell you what to do with the signal for 50 years! And they want to apply this to webcasting as well.

Database Treaty: unless you are the incumbent, there is no value to database copyright.

EFF is undertaking to break all this, but what if it can’t?

Cory is imploring us to take action, as no companies are stepping up to fight for us like Sony did for the VCR. Use Creative Commons licences, open science journals, turn up at WIPO, join the Campaign for Digital Rights and support BBC Creative Archive by asking for the required changes to be included in the charter renewal.

The End.

Cory Doctorow Live in Edinburgh!

Talking about EFF and Creative Commons. No powerpoint! Joy! Detailing EFF success with Patriot Act. Successful lawsuit vs. Diebold’s lack of audit trails in voting machines. They could make vote counts up!

Must... Update... Site

Since I started this blogging thing, the design of the site hasn’t changed at all and I’m a little bit bored of it now…. I think I need to update the design as well as work on some other aspects of the site. Especially Tapestry.

Yes, it needs a lot of work...

What Steve Wozniak Learned From Failure

HBS Working Knowledge: Innovation: What Steve Wozniak Learned From Failure:

One of the most misleading lessons imparted by those who have reached their goal is that the ones who win are the ones who persevere. Not always. If you keep trying without learning why you failed, you’ll probably fail again and again. Perseverance must be accompanied by the embrace of failure. Failure is what moves you forward. Listen to failure.

(Via)

Link Harvest

• The 10 greatest Scots of all time: according to the Adam Smith Institute;
• A feature, not a bug: Telepocalypse point out smsBug, with linklove for my recent mobile search article;
• Ex-Symbian Chief Predicts the Future of Mobile Software: Services are in line with my thinking as well;
• A proposal for Wifi-hubs to be built into landlines…: Interesting idea from Tom Coates;
• The New Musical Functionality…: Some very interesting reading. I’ll be following this series…

Round Up

Just a few things which have caught my attention today:

• Searching For Mobile Search: Mike Masnick over at TheFeature gives linklove for my recent piece on mobile search, arguing the case more eloquently than I;
• DreamWorks Animation Files for $650 Million IPO: They apparently need to start paying back Paul Allen’s investment from next year, but this might also give them the cash to woo Pixar;
• Apple, European independent music labels set deal: Now we can buy tunes from little-known acts such as The Pixies and The White Stripes. Rejoice!
• PC Games need to deliver the goods to compete!: Great article by Brad Wardell of Stardock regarding the problems that PC gamers face, and a new service called TotalGaming.net (via)
• Amazon plans to open software centre in Edinburgh: Great news, and nice to see this happen after my rant against these centres going elsewhere. I’m sure my influence kick-started the whole process :-)

History Repeating

The new programme for the King’s Theatres came through the other day, and they are putting on one of my favourite plays this November: The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The blurb says:

The Crucible reflects an America where trust and innocence were sacrificed to mass hysteria, personal ambition and political agendas.

Enough said, I think.

Braindump

Well, I’ve been away for a bit, so this is just a bit of a catch-up post:

• Martin Thornell of Rocket Technologies dropped me an email about their Rocket RSS Reader, which is web based. It has the ability for users to custom create search feeds from within the application, which is quite cool. Time to update your reviews, Martin?
• David Zwarg wrote to let me know about Simulacrum, a slideshow viewer that extracts content from RSS feeds.
• My current read over on the right is way out of date. I can’t even remember what I’ve read since that, but am currently enjoying Eats, Shoots & Leaves
• I’ve had a couple of emails regarding Tapestry recently, but I don’t have the time to add new feeds at the moment, and frankly it’s costing me enough money to run at the minute. I need to figure out exactly how Tapestry could be moved forward, so Marc & Steve, I will get back to you very shortly, I promise.
• I picked up Destroy Rock & Roll the other day, and if you like Groove Armada or Royksopp, I recommend you go and get this CD forthwith! Mylo hails from the Isle of Skye, so this serves as further proof of how strong the Scottish music scene is right now. Great stuff.

Bad Sonos, No Biscuit

I was just trying to check out Sonos’ website, who do some new-fangled digital audio server type thing, but what do I get in my browser (Firefox 0.8) but this:

We know it’s crazy trying to keep up with all the latest versions-so we’ve made the process incredibly easy, painless and free! When you’re done downloading, you’ll be able to see our site-and every other site-in all of its glory.

The HTML behind this claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and appears to recognise every browser except Firefox. Haven’t they read Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards?

My New Favourite Word

aibohphobia (n.)

- The fear of palindromes

Bricklin's Software License

As he promised, Dan Bricklin has posted his first attempt at a software license that works for him. An interesting read.

How to Make a Living from Software

Dan Bricklin is thinking about how to make a living as an entrepreneur software developer:

While I think I fully understand and appreciate the benefits to society of GPL-style licenses, I’m looking to get at least some of those benefits in a way that can support an entrepreneur developer.

I look forward to seeing what he comes up with.

ruby tinted

I’ve only gone and got myself hooked on Ruby, haven’t I? So I’ve started a new blog, which I’ve called ruby tinted, so that you can follow my adventures with the language and its tools, and means that I can keep this blog focussed on… whatever.

Friends' Blog

Turns out two former colleagues from back in the day at Spektra now have blogs, largely focused on Java, web development, and XP (so it will probably all fly straight over my head). Subscribed anyway!

• Richard McMahon;
• Andy Swan

Digital Butt Sniffing

Via Jeremy Zawodny’s link blog, I was alerted to Dogster.

I emailed the wife, and she has added our very own dog, Amber to the Dogster network. She hasn’t made any friends yet, but hopefully some will be added soon.

Important facts: Amber is one of only 4 UK dogs on there at time of writing, and the only one from Edinburgh or Scotland (as far as I can tell): so I hereby declare her Officially the Most Wired Dog in Scotland! Go Amber!

Digital Madness

Remember my rant against Business 2.0 back in November, and the associated petition? No? Well, no matter, this is a kind of follow up.

Last week, the Wife needed an article from Harvard Business Review to help with her MBA dissertation. First of all, I just searched on the article name, which brought up an e-book page at Amazon.com. ‘Excellent,’ thinks I, and proceeded to buy it. Next thing, however, is that Amazon are telling me my money is no good to them for this item, on account of me being in the EU. ‘Try the e-books shop at Amazon.co.uk’ it helpfully suggests. I would, you know, but the article isn’t available there.

So then I thought I’d just pop over to the HBR site itself. Sure enough, they have a store, so I find the article and prepare to go through the purchasing process again. This time it works, and I get an email with the paper attached.

So are HBR breaking any laws by selling the material to me without charging VAT? Not as far as I know, since they are selling me printed material (albeit in digital form) which is zero-rated. So why won’t Amazon sell me it? I can’t think of any reason for that one.

Madness.

As a final point, why are e-books more expensive than hardbacks? If they were half the price, they’d sell a lot more than twice what they do now (at least to me, and I don’t buy any at the moment).

Finance for Geeks

Finance for Geeks is a nice little article by Eric Sink, in the same vein as his Marketing for Geeks series.

Wake Up, Business 2.0!

Way back in September, Martin wrote a piece about Business 2.0, and how their subscription system was screwed up for non-US citizens.

Well, they still haven’t done anything about it, so last night on IM we decided to set up a petition.

Business 2.0 has some great writing, and it’s one of the few magazines that I will pick up if I see it on a newsstand—and that’s usually only in major airports. I’ve rarely seen it here in Edinburgh. I think the last time I picked one up was in Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in May this year.

If the FT can do digital subscriptions, I’m pretty damn sure that Business 2.0 can. I know that they are part of the Time Warner conglomerate, but if any part of the magazine division should be experimenting, surely it’s Business 2.0.

So please sign the petition, and spread the word as well. Martin and I will be most grateful :-)

Scrabblog

Via Anil Dash: Scrabblog.

This is cool, and it isn’t a diary Hewligan!

UK Netflix

In case you haven’t seen this yet, Webflix is the UK equivalent of Netflix.

Sweet! Now if only I had some time to actually watch movies…

BBC Creative Archive

This is very cool: Dyke to open up BBC archive. Imagine the fun TiVo and other PVRs could have with this kind of service…

Weapon of Choice Flash Animation

Via Anil Dash’s Daily Links: Fatboy Slim – Weapon Of Choice

Some people just have way too much time, don’t you think? ;-)

Site Usage

This is pretty amazing: when I launched Tapestry at the start of June, my average hits per day was sitting around 200. In June, it trebled. In July, it quadrupled over June. And so far in August , the daily average is 2.5 times what it was in July, and the number of hits in August is already half of the total from the whole of July.

And I haven’t even pushed it that hard. I’m just amazed at how well this interweb thing is at distributing itself.

But if these trends keep up, you folks are going to need to start buying me books... ;-)

Archive Changes

I’ve altered the structure of my archive files to be more sensible. The original archive files are still there, in case they’re needed, but all new posts will only exist in the new format.

Technology Week

I’m still here; just very busy—but there will be a Tapestry update over the next couple of days… But the last few days and the next few are dominated by technology, it seems:

Last week, my WiFi kit arrived :) This week, I get cable modem installed (at last), so maybe posts will become a bit more frequent than they have been. Or perhaps not ;)

I’ve also been looking at digital cameras, and have narrowed it down to the Canon PowerShot A70 and the Pentax Optio S. Right now, the Pentax is in front on pure technolust grounds (it is very, very wee, and weighs just 115g—the Canon weighs three times that, but has the same featureset!). If you have any other suggestions or recommendations of one of these cameras over the other, please let me know.

Finally, the Wife and I have talked about building our own house in the past, but we we have now decided to start researching different technologies before we start the detailed planning process. Of course, finding a plot will be the hardest bit—but at the very least the research should be interesting!

Interesting

I’m currently the top result on Google for ‘how to use a washing machine’.

I’m pretty sure that post is not what you are looking for… Or maybe it is ;-)

Oh so quiet

Yes, I’ve been quiet recently, but there’s been a lot going on.

I’ve contributed some work to a Quick Reply extension for Mozilla’s Thunderbird stand-alone mail client, which should be launched soon.

I’ll be working on adding some more comics to Tapestry, and I’ve also had an idea for a small MovableType plugin.

Very Good

3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference

Button Maker

This has been linked from everywhere, but in case you haven’t seen it, Adam Kalsey has posted a nice user interface to Bill Zeller’s button maker. They match up with those available on Steal These Buttons

Generate your buttons here

Starbucks Go Crazy

Lawrence Lessig reports on some craziness over at Starbucks. What on earth is going on there? I wonder what they would do if you had a camera mobile phone like the Nokia 3650?

Dante's Inferno Test

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

Test post

A quick test post from Azure

Pierre Omidyar

Pierre Omidyar (eBay founder) has a blog: Pierre’s Web

Subscribed!

Well Said, That Man

Transcript of Tim Robbins Speech to the National Press Club: An excellent speech by one of the few Americans brave enough to consistenly speak his mind.

In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when an administration official releases an attack ad questioning the patriotism of a legless Vietnam veteran running for Congress, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce. And it doesn’t take much to shift the tide. My 11-year-old nephew, mentioned earlier, a shy kid who never talks in class, stood up to his history teacher who was questioning Susan’s patriotism. “That’s my aunt you’re talking about. Stop it.” And the stunned teacher backtracks and began stammering compliments in embarrassment.

Someone Invested!

This guy has shown faith and invested in me at BlogShares. Thanks!

So did Martin, of course, and we’re trying to get his valuation up so I can buy shares in his blog

*sigh*

Why do things keep moving around on my site when I haven’t touch anything? Witness the now wondrously misplaced BlogShares logo (or at least, it’s in the wrong place on my machine)...

Michael Moore Oscar Speech Update

My Oscar “Backlash”: “Stupid White Men” Back At #1, “Bowling” Breaks New Records

I think the header says it all, but here’s a few highlights:

• Stupid White Men returned to number one for the fourth time;
• Bowling for Columbine attendances rose and are still thriving;
• More people pre-ordered Bowling than Chicago via Amazon.com in the two days following the Oscars

The list goes on, but I’ll let his own words do the talking…

Bloginality

My Bloginality is INFP!!!

Oh my....

What a busy week. Had some trouble posting out from work this week, after an office move, but hopefully this will be resolved next week.

I’ve added some other blogs and comics which I read, and also claimed my blog as my own at BlogShares. I was surprised to find mine already in there, albeit as a nominal entry.

And I guess I will be adding some functionality via David Raynes’ MTBlogShares plugin. Sweet.

Quote of the Week

—Michael Moore’s Oscar acceptance speech

Oh yeah

I have finally added the remaining pages to the main portion of the site. Exciting news, I think you’ll agree…

Clinton on the 'War'

Nod to Eric for pointing this out: Bill Clinton’s thoughts on possibly the worst named military operation in history (‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’).

That Makes Me So Mad

I’ve been sitting on a couple of stories the last week or so, while I got this thing up and running.

The first one is related to Google buying Blogger/Pyra Labs – fair enough. But the last three paragraphs (ignore the “Long-distance calls” part) are just nonsense.

• “the internet does not make much money” – Nor would I expect it to. As a general rule of thumb, infrastructure of any sort does not make much money;
• “Many companies use their websites purely as market stalls” – Yes? What point is being made here? The author just pointed out that Amazon is one of the few ‘Internet’ companies making money – what is Amazon if not the world’s biggest market stall?
• The second last paragraph has something about irony – I can’t even bear to read it again.

Gah!

The second is more recent: Is Google too powerful? from the BBC. There are two things here which I’d like to complain about:

“Often blogs are as far from journalism as it is possible to get, with unsubstantiated rumour, prejudice and gossip masquerading as informed opinion” (this quote is boxed out on the article). In the article, this quote is followed by some examples of how blogging is not journalism:

• “Without editors…” – all the blogs I read have correct spelling and grammar. I can’t say the same about all the newspapers and magazines I’ve read.
• ”... unsubstantiated rumour…” – and then goes on to allege that The Sun doesn’t always report the truth. So what’s the difference then?

The second half of the article then talks about why Google bought Pyra. No problems here, until:

“And the paranoid fringe think that it is just another takeover from a secretive, hyper-competitive company with no respect for the personal privacy of its users.

I think this last group may actually have a point.”

Uh-oh.

I will let you read the rest of the scaremongering which follows, but at least one or two comment posters have some sense…

New pages