Matt's Musings

Free books!

2012-01-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

I love free stuff. Who doesn't?

And I really love free books. For the last couple of months, I've downloaded on average two free novels and two short stories a day. I'm not talking about a load of old public domain stuff from Gutenberg, or classic literature from Amazon. I'm talking about modern books by contemporary authors.

It's not like I'm downloading any old rubbish. Every single day, I get carefully selected recommendations for between twenty and thirty free novels, covering a huge variety of genres. I've downloaded loads of books from the backlists of well-known print publishers. I read tweets and Facebook posts from dozens of authors and digital publishers talking about their new work. There's no shortage of free e-books, and the rate is rocketing. Nobody's quite sure how many e-books are published every month, but a figure of 50,000 seems conservative. However you look at it, that means there are hundreds, if not thousands of free e-books coming out every single day.

Sure, some of them have been mediocre. A few have been unreadable. But most of them have been pretty good. In other words, they've been just as good as the books I've paid for, either in print or digital.

Of course, I'm not actually reading two books a day. I'm accumulating reading material faster than I can possibly absorb it, and it's not costing me a penny. As a reader, I love this. All my reading needs are being taken care of, totally gratis, and completely legit. There are enough authors out there who want to give their work away that I don't need to buy a single book.

As an author and publisher, however, it concerns me massively. With this much good quality free material around, who's going to buy books?

A lot of writing blogs will tell you that the secret to making sales is to give your book away, build up a following, and then start charging when you've started to become popular. Sadly, it usually doesn't work. I recently published some of my fiction works. When they were free, I was getting 1000-1500 downloads a month. Once I put the price up to 99c, that dropped to just 1 or 2 a month - which is typical of most people's experience, from what I can tell. They'd been getting 5 star reviews, but even so, people weren't prepared to pay even a dollar. Why should they, when there are thousands of perfectly acceptable free alternatives?

A year ago, I wrote about the problems of the "freemium" software model. It's a nice idea in theory: you make a free product, get a following, and then charge your most dedicated users for a pro version. What usually happens, though, is that just as you start to charge, someone else comes along with a free version of whatever you're now charging for, and your customers go elsewhere. As long as there are people giving away free stuff to build their market share, it's almost impossible for anyone else to charge.

Obviously, this doesn't apply to the market leaders. As Seth Godin pointed out, if you want to read the latest Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett, you have no alternative. They're unique, they're the writing elite, and people will always buy their work. In fact, they'll buy it again and again even if they already have it. In some ways, it's less about the actual reading, and more like collecting. But for the majority of authors, there's no compelling reason why I need to buy their books unless they're part of a series which I've already invested time in.

The problem isn't the price. I got exactly the same number of sales at $0.99, $1.99 and $2.99. Single digits. If someone's decided they're prepared to pay for a book, then they're not going to hum and ha over a dollar or two. The fact is, there's a huge hurdle between free and paid, even more than between cheap and mid-price.

The problem is simply that the majority of people are not prepared to pay for e-books, because they know they can get plenty of good books for free elsewhere. Many readers have become conditioned to believe that digital books should be free. I've lost count of the number of people who've told me that publishers should make all their backlist available free "because it doesn't cost anything for an e-book". That's simply not true - even if you start from a digital copy, it takes time to make the digital book files, upload them, and so on. If all you've got is print, it needs to be scanned, which is time-consuming. And that's before you even get into the legal side of it, since the chances are that the original publishing contract didn't include digital publication.

As more authors give their work away, the more this view is becoming entrenched. With everyone scrambling to attract readers by giving away freebies, we're basically telling readers that there's an unlimited supply of good material and there's no need to pay. In fact, there's no real incentive even to read them. Grab them, stick them on your Kindle, and who cares if you forget about them? It's not like they actually cost anything. It's not like they're actually worth anything...

In the coming year, I don't think the big debate in e-publishing will be about what the "right" price will be. I fear it'll be about whether indie authors, small publishers, and self-publishers will be able to charge at all, or whether we'll be overwhelmed with the flood of free content.

Side note: during the writing of this blog post, I received 7 messages offering me a total of 41 free books, and downloaded 3 novels and 4 short stories.

Novellas and short novels

2011-12-04T18:10:00.001-08:00

One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of the novel submissions I get sent for Hukilau feel like they're too long, as if they've been padded out to hit the publishers' sweet spot of 80,000 words, when in reality they'd be better as short novels, or even novellas.

Print publishers don't like short books. They take about as much work to create and market, but they don't generate as much money. And readers like to buy big books so they feel they've got their money's worth. When I was first reading, I was used to novels of 150 pages. Now most publishers won't even touch anything under 300 pages, and some genres seem to demand even more.

E-books, on the other hand, don't have that sort of prejudice. I'm wondering whether e-books are going to spark a revival in shorter forms. Any thoughts?

If you don't know me by now...

2011-11-28T17:22:00.000-08:00

Over recent weeks, I seem to have been acquiring new followers, largely as a result of joining new writers' groups. Most of you are people I've never met, and who don't know me from Adam. (Here's a clue. I'm the bald one with the hat, he's the one with the hair and the figleaf. No, that doesn't really help, does it?)

Left: Adam. Right, me. I have better taste in clothes than he does. And more facial hair.

(Painting, Albrecht Durer. Photo, Orlando Sentinel)

A sampling of my Facebook postings and blogs would give you a random assortment of seemingly unrelated things, few of which have anything to do with why you probably befriended me in the first place. I could segregate my online life and compartmentalize all the bits of me, then you'd only see the facet of me you first met, but I'm just not that organized. And anyway, I find it interesting to see the other sides of people. For example, there's Jim, who I first encountered as an artist in the 70s, and whose work adorned my bedroom walls as a teenager. Now we occasionally converse about classical and electronic music, spaceflight, and crazed aeronautical designs that never happened. I like that.

So by way of introduction to my new friends, here's me.

Photo: Anna Young Kelland

My professional life takes me in a lot of interesting and varied directions. I'm involved with filmmaking, books, comics, art, photography and dance, and before that I worked in games and software. Mostly I write - anything from books to blogs - but I also make animated films, create graphics, produce live events, publish e-books, and do bits and pieces of promotion. On any given day, I can be doing several of those things, and am quite likely to post about any or all of them.

Here's a sample of the projects I'm working on this week:

Making Better Movies: a four-volume series of self-published books about filmmaking, of which three have been released so far. The fourth will be out by Christmas.
Moviestorm News: handling the day to day social media marketing for Moviestorm, an animation software company I co-founded some years ago.
Pinups and Pasties: a monthly burlesque show and art event my wife Anna and I put on at a local nightclub. I stage manage them, and am responsible for sorting out the music. Our next show is this Wednesday.

Photo: Jack Toepke
Dancer: Ivy Les Vixens

A Comic Shop: creating advertising materials for the comic shop where Anna works.
Jack and Holly: US promotion for a British childrens' DVD series.
Book reviews: I've just written reviews for two short stories and a screenplay by an Australian writer, Stefano Boscutti, and I have a couple more stacked up.
E-book conversions: creating Kindle and ePub books for self-published authors and small publishers.
E-book publishing: we recently published a couple of mystery novels through the Hukilau imprint, and I'm reading a couple of new submissions to see if we want to take them on.
Fiction: In my few spare hours, I'm trying to finish off one pseudonymous adult short story and revise a young adult fantasy novel I wrote over 20 years ago.

Then there are my somewhat eclectic hobbies and interests. I love to read books and comics, watch a lot of movies, listen to a wide variety of music, and cook food from around the world. I'm fascinated by science and technology, particularly how inventions affect the world. (Think of me as the sort of person who reads all the articles in New Scientist that don't require a specialist degree.) I love ancient history and archaeology, especially anything which involves finding vanished civilizations, or which shows that they weren't as primitive as we thought. I absolutely adore old-time views of the future, whether it be Victorian science (and its modern offspring, steampunk), 1920s and 1930s utopian propaganda, or 1950s sci-fi.

Photo: Jim Carchidi

And lastly, I like to stay informed of current news and events, and I like talking about them with other well-informed people.

As a Brit now resident in the USA, and a trained social anthropologist, I spend a lot of time being acutely aware of what's different between the two countries. (Not better, just different.) As a business owner, taxpayer, home-owner and parent, I'm very concerned with the political situation and the economy and how things are going to go.

So, whether you've befriended me through a shared interest in machinima, writing, or belly dance, welcome. Maybe we'll also find a shared interest in curry and mezze, flying cars and crazy custom bikes, Scandinavian folk-metal, local blues bands and movie soundtracks, prehistoric stone circles and lost cities, obscure comics from today and yesteryear, why 3D printing is amazing and 3D movies suck, the odd things I found by trawling the depths of Netflix, Project Gutenberg and Pandora, and the killer headache I had over the weekend.

If so, then this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.*

Photo: Jack Toepke

*And yes, I know it's a misquote.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T21:02:00.001-08:00

Dear America,

Thanks for having me. I really do appreciate it.

Thanks for all the people who've made me feel welcome. Not just my tribe, but the regular people I meet every day, and the ones I've met online. I've felt more at home here than anywhere else I've ever been.

Thanks for the sunshine. It really, really cheers me up. (The young ladies in insufficient clothing bring a smile to my face too.)

Thanks for the Jungle House, the porch, and the hot tub.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to see space shuttles, up close, and from my own back yard. That's been awesome.

Thanks for all the cheeseburgers. And the Cuban sandwiches. And the chorizo chimichangas at Pancho's. And all the culinary delights I can't get in England.

And thanks most of all for Anna. Because she's made me happier than I've ever been.

My worst birthday ever

2011-11-15T07:12:00.000-08:00

I don't remember exactly when this was. Five or six years ago, I guess. It might even have been my 40th birthday. I've done my best to forget.

My birthday started in a horrible, uncomfortable Central London hotel after a lousy night's sleep. The tiny, overpriced room was stupidly hot, the bed was lumpy, and the walls were so thin I could hear my neighbours' televisions as if they were in my own room. The guy next to me on one side was watching cable porn at 5am, and on the other side, they'd decided they needed to watch a war movie before breakfast. And for this luxury, I was paying well over £100. Not a great start to the day, but never mind. I was determined to have a good time.

The plan was that I would be speaking at a conference in the morning, then heading 150 miles home by train to have a birthday dinner with my family after being away for two weeks, and then we'd all go to the local carnival. Carnival's always a fun night out. Didn't quite work out that way.

I got to the conference in good time for my technical rehearsal at 8am, only to discover that they'd moved my slot to mid-afternoon, and there was no need for me to have stayed in the damn hotel anyway. Still, I figured I could do my bit, get a later train, and just about make it in time for dinner. Well, if they'd been on time, it might have worked. The entire conference was chaos, and they were running late right from the get-go. I don't even remember my panel, though I think it went well. When I got to Paddington station, I literally ran from the Tube for my train, and missed it by about 30 seconds. There was no way I was going to make it home for dinner now.

At least I'd make it to the carnival, though. Stay positive, Matt.

Since I had an hour to kill, I figured I might as well get something to eat. That's when I discovered there was a "problem" with my credit card, and they wouldn't accept it. Turned out the bank's automated systems had decided that the hotel bill was an "unexpected expense" and had blocked my card for my own protection. And since it was after 5pm, there were no humans available, and they couldn't deal with it until the next day. Thanks, Lloyds. So, no money. No food. The day gets better.

Finally, I got on a crowded train at 6.30. I should have been home three hours earlier. Twenty minutes into the journey, the heating broke down. This was November in England, remember, and nights are cold. That was okay when the train was full, but once it started to empty out, it began to get really chilly.

Never mind, I could endure it. Just a short while longer, and I could enjoy my long-awaited evening with my family.

And then, ten miles from home, the train broke down. No power. We sat in the cold, dark carriage, with no idea what was going on, until a repair train came and towed us back to the previous station. We got onto a replacement train, and I finally reached my station at about 10pm.

Even though this is starting to sound like a rejected script for a John Candy movie, the day wasn't finished with me yet. You see, when the carnival's in town, our tiny little town would get thousands of visitors. Everywhere you can possibly squeeze a vehicle is taken. Half the roads into and around town are blocked off, and the rest are full of traffic. My usual ten-minute drive home turned into well over half an hour, and I ended up having to park nearly a mile from my house. Of course, I wasn't dressed for a cold English night, and I recall the walk as an endless, freezing trek, losing the feeling in my fingers and face.

I eventually arrived back, tired, cold, hungry and dispirited, to a cold, dark, empty house, and a note that said, "Sorry, didn't get you any cards or presents, and there's no food in the house because we didn't get round to shopping. You'll have to go out and get yourself something."

And that, as they say, was that. My worst birthday ever.

* * *

This year, I spent most of my birthday lying on the sofa, suffering from a stomach bug. It wasn't a great day, but it's far from the worst birthday I've ever had. I had loads of Facebook & Skype wishes, I talked to friends and relatives from round the world, and I was surrounded by a family who love me. That's what matters.

Grab Vol 1 of my new book - free!

2011-10-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly a week since I released my new book, and for some inexplicable reason, I haven't yet mentioned it on my blog. Oh, that's right, I've been hard at work on Volume 2, which will be out in a few weeks.

I'm writing a book about how to use Moviestorm as a film training tool: as Phil South puts it in the introduction, it's like a pilot learning to fly a plane. Using a real plane all the time is way too expensive (and dangerous), so you train in a simulator. That enables you to log plenty of hours, practice the difficult maneuvers in safety, and become familiar with all the basics. It's the same with filmmaking: it's complicated, time-consuming and expensive, so why not use a simple, easy animation tool to practice with?

Each book in the series consists of a set of 15-20 simple exercises that you work through. You have to film the same thing in several ways, focusing on how to use a specific technique. It's all self-guided, so after each version, you review your work, see what was good and bad about it, and do it again. Of course, I recommend using Moviestorm to do this, because it's quick and easy, and you can do it without needing anyone else's help, but you could equally well do it using any other animation tool or even in live action if you have the time and enough willing friends. Most importantly, the skills you practice are relevant to any film medium, not just to machinima or animation.

So far, reviews and comments have been extremely positive, which is immensely satisfying.

“Spot on. The exercises are set up in a very logical, progressive way.”

James Martin, University of North Texas

“Excellent - great for schools and colleges alike. The tone of the writing is perfect - neither patronising or too authoritative.”

Jezz Wright, Blockhouse TV

“I really liked how you tell the reader to try a shot with and without each technique to be able to actually see the difference they make.”

Dan Horne, film student, Full Sail University

Volume 1 covers camerawork; the upcoming volumes cover staging, editing, lighting, sound, and so on, and will be released monthly. They're initially available free in PDF form via Moviestorm. When all five volumes are complete, I'll compile them into a single full-length book with some additional material and release that commercially for Kindle, Nook, and other e-readers.

I'm doing it this way for four reasons. First, after discussing this with Moviestorm, we figured it would be good to release something early to gauge the reaction, so we decided not to wait until it was complete. The book naturally divides into several sections, so this was an easy way to do it. I'm having a lot of meetings with film teachers and film students at the moment, and it's useful to have the book on hand and available for them to download.

Secondly, I'm taking a leaf out of Roz Morris's book. She recently released her novel My Memories of a Future Life in four weekly parts before the whole thing was available. While this was irritating in some ways - mostly because I wanted to read the whole story - it did enable her to get a lot of publicity, effectively doing five launches instead of one, and keeping the momentum going throughout. I'm hoping the same will work here, but without the "I want to know what happens next" factor.

Then there's the argument about proving the point. If I can generate a lot of interest in the free version, it makes it easier to pitch to a print publisher. Several film schools have said that they see this as potentially a useful textbook, and that's a market I'd love to get into. A few thousand downloads and some useful feedback would be a great way to prove to a specialist publisher that the book would be worth taking on.

And lastly, Moviestorm were happy to pay for the rights to distribute the PDF free as a marketing tool. Sure, it's likely to impact my sales when the completed thing becomes available, but it's money in the bank right now, and I'll have made more from it than many self-published authors, and I can't argue with that. What's more, the version I'll be selling will be expanded, revised, and formatted for a range of devices, so there's still a reason for people to buy it.

Please do go and grab a copy, pass it on to your friends, and let me know what you think.

Download Making Better Movies with Moviestorm, Vol 1

Fiverr - what would you do for $5?

2011-09-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

As an experiment recently, I've been using fiverr to test out the lower end of the e-book market. It's a really neat idea: you offer to do small jobs (called gigs) for $5. The site takes a buck, leaving you with $4.

Now, let's get some perspective. $5 isn't exactly a lot of money. It's what you pay someone to park your car for you - not the parking fee, just the tip. It's the price of a latte or a glass of cheap wine. It's less than an hour at minimum wage. (Florida's minimum wage is $7.21.) In other words, these are the sort of jobs you expect to spend a short time on.

When it works, fiverr works well. I've done a bunch of short e-book conversions for people - the kind of thing that take me 15 minutes with the tools I have. I do a 15-minute training course where I show them how to upload books to the Amazon Kindle store. I do another one where I take them through the options on how to convert e-books. They're easy little jobs I can do on the side, and they're really useful to people who can't get going without a bit of help. It's also helped me get a good understanding of a different segment of the e-book market.

Where fiverr doesn't work is that too many of the buyers expect far too much from it. Some of the jobs I've been asked to do would take me, quite literally, days, and often they seem to want to enter into contractual negotiations that would be more appropriate for a six-figure contract.

For example, I make it clear that the conversion services I offer cover short, simple books only (max 20 pages, text only, I require Word format, I do not upload the book, and you get either Kindle or ePub format). Here's a typical request:

"My book is just over 450 pages, fully illustrated, in PDF format. I require Kindle and Nook versions, and I need you to upload it to Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, priced $19.99. I will also require a notarized warranty from you that in the event of any defects you will fully reimburse anyone who has purchased the book from me. If I do a second edition, will this be included in the original price?"

Seriously?

For five freakin' bucks?

And you expect me to pay a lawyer out of that as well?

Did you even read the terms?

One that really made me laugh was a guy who sent me a 10-page questionnaire to "assess my suitability for the gig". Just filling in the damn thing would have taken me two or three hours. I can't help wondering how long he spent coming up with all the questions to make sure he was going to get best value for his $5.

Sadly, I guess about 50% of the requests I get are equally ridiculous. A glance down the "gigs wanted" section shows a similar level of expectation permeating fiverr. "Design and build my corporate website and set up the customer database." "Create me a 15-minute animated video using 3DS Max." "Record my novel as an audiobook." "Conduct a telephone poll of 1000 people." "Create a series of 25 5-minute training videos."

I know the economy's in a bad way, but honestly, people need to keep some sense of proportion! We're helping out for tips here, not providing full professional services. Frankly, it's insulting. I'd rather be asked to do it pro bono than be offered five bucks. I'd still decline, but at least that way we wouldn't be pretending that this was a serious commercial transaction.

On balance fiverr's a good service, as long as you can avoid the time-wasters. I've had some nice clients, and it's actually been a pleasure helping them out, particularly for the tiny gigs that aren't worth doing "professionally". It's not really a business, but it's not charity either - it's more as if the clients are just giving you five bucks to say thank you.

Memories of a Future Life (the end)

2011-09-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I wrote about Roz's new book, My Memories of a Future Life. Well, more accurately, I wrote about Episode 1. Not Volume 1, note, Episode 1. Roz took the unusual step of releasing her novel in four instalments for Kindle, and it's only now become available as a single book.

Before I return to the format, I guess I should say something about the book. I almost feel like I should be doing a proper literary criticism, of the sort I haven't done since school: Synopsis, Themes, Characters, Style, Symbolism, Summary. That's because this feels like a proper bit of "literature". That's a word I use with some trepidation: usually "literature" means "stuff I feel like I ought to have read but probably won't actually enjoy" - whether it's modern lit or classic lit. And don't get me started on "chick lit". This isn't one of those bits of "literature", though. It's intelligent, thoughtful, and heavily character-based, yes, but it's also very easy to read and it's got a damn good story. That's because most of Roz's books are very different. She's written under a number of well-known names, including [REDACTED] and [CAN'T TELL YOU OR I'D HAVE TO KILL YOU], and she knows how to tell a rattling good yarn. She's not your usual literary novelist.

One of her other readers summed it up best - Memories is like John Fowles's The Magus. I loved that book when I was a teenager, and I'm now getting a hankering to read it again. It's the sort of literature I enjoy reading, combining a slightly unsettling plot with hints of more beyond. It's not the depressing realism of your typical Booker novelist or the light fluffiness of a slice of middle class city life.

Memories is about a pianist who can't play any more who goes to a hypnotist and starts channelling, not a past life, but a future life. Anything more would be a spoiler, so I'll stop right there. Roz's writing is some of the sharpest I've read in a while. She uses short, punchy sentences, punctuated by powerful metaphors and vivid descriptions. The result is some of the most readable prose I've come across in a while.

I will admit that after the first episode, I was slightly dubious about where it was going. I was enjoying it, but once she introduced characters who were regressing to past lives involving Jack the Ripper, there was a small part of me inwardly groaning and hoping it wasn't going to turn into some cheesy From Hell scenario. By the end of the second episode, I still wasn't much reassured. But I'm glad I stuck with it, because the end is an absolute rip-roarer. (Her husband Dave popped up on Twitter when I mentioned my concerns, and assured me I wouldn't anticipate the end. He was right. I should have known Roz wouldn't resort to cliche without good reason. She's better than that.)

Here's my one grouse. The release in instalments didn't work for me. I wanted to read the whole thing in one go. I didn't like waiting for the next episode to come out. In fact, after Episode 2, I decided to skip Episode 3 the following week and waited until the whole thing was published.

As a marketing technique, I hope it worked for Roz - self-publishing is a challenge at the best of times, and you have to do whatever you can to get attention. I certainly tweeted and facebooked about it much more than I would have done if I'd just bought the one book. But as a reading experience goes, I wish I'd waited and read it straight through. To be fair, I find the same with comics and television series - I enjoyed the anticipation of waiting for next week's Doctor Who or 2000 AD when I was a kid, but now I'd prefer to settle down for a long session whenever it's convenient for me.

However, none of this is a problem for anyone out there. It's all out now, and you can buy the complete novel for $9.99 on Kindle or $14.95 on paper. (You can still get all four episodes separately for $0.99, but not for much longer.)

So yes, I enjoyed this immensely. I'm torn between 4 and 5 stars, but that's only because I'm really, really picky when it comes to giving out 5-star ratings, and I'd have enjoyed it more without the enforced breaks in the middle. However, it's an easy four and a half. Memories is sharp, well-written, and a damn good read, and I'm looking forward to whatever Roz does next.

My Memories of a Future Life - Episode 1 of 4: The Red Season

2011-08-31T08:27:00.001-07:00

Last night, I grabbed this from Amazon for a whole 99c. It's the first fiction book Roz Morris has published under her own name. She's written a lot of stuff before, but it's all been ghost-writing for people like [SSSHHHH! trade secret!]. I was intrigued to see what she would do when writing with her own voice.

Carol is a gifted musician who needs nothing more than her piano and certainly doesn’t believe she’s lived before. But forced by injury to stop playing, she fears her life may be over. Enter her soulmate Andreq: healer, liar, fraud and loyal friend. Is he her future incarnation or a psychological figment? And can his story help her discover how to live now?

A novel in the vein of The Time Traveller’s Wife, Vertigo and The Gargoyle, My Memories of a Future Life is much more than a twist on the traditional reincarnation tale. It is a multi-layered story of souls on conjoined journeys – in real time and across the centuries.

I have to confess that after the first episode, I'm still slightly confused as to what's going on. That's not a bad thing - it's because this is not a complete story. It's the opening part of a 4-parter. I'm very much looking forward to the next part (due out next week) - a feeling I haven't had before with prose. We're used to episodic content in comics or TV, but it's a form that's more or less disappeared from literary fiction since the glory days of pulp SF magazines.

Roz's writing is beautiful, simple, and evocative. She makes you empathize with the characters almost instinctively, despite - or more likely because of - their flaws and weaknesses. They, more than the plot, are what kept me reading until I'd finished the book in one sitting. I cared what happened to them more than I cared what happened next.

In my review on Amazon, I've given this four stars rather than five only because I'm still unsure where this is going. The story could develop in several different ways, some of which appeal to me more than others. The elements of hypnosis, sci-fi and time travel are intriguing, but I'm hoping the Ripper sub-plot doesn't turn out to be too much of a cliche.

Roll on September 5 and Episode #2! I'll happily throw Roz another dollar.

(If you don't like the idea of waiting for each part, hang on until September 19th and buy all four episodes.)

The Yellow Flowers

2011-08-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

That, as you probably can't see, is the title page of the manuscript of my novel-that's-been-languishing-in-a-trunk-for-twenty-years. Twenty-one and three quarters, if you want to be precise.

I wrote it one December while recuperating from a motorcycle accident. I was ruthless with myself. Every morning, I wrote a chapter, tapping away on my Amstrad word processor with one hand, and didn't allow myself lunch till it was done. Then after lunch, I rewrote yesterday's chapter. Then on Saturdays, I re-read everything I'd done in the week, and on Sunday rewrote it all. The book was finished in three weeks - about the same time it took for my shattered hand to become usable again. (Sadly the bike wasn't so lucky. That was scrapped.) It's unashamedly inspired by Stephen King's The Eyes of the Dragon - not so much the plot, but the tone.

No-one told him the yellow flowers were for the princess, but then, no-one ever tells you anything when you're ten. Gareth was sitting in the loft of the barn, swinging his legs over the edge and thinking gloomy thoughts. To make matters worse, his mother had spanked him in front of the whole Court, and everybody, except of course the King, had laughed at him.

I nearly got it published too, but I turned it down.

Why? Looking back on it, total and utter stupidity.

It was a young teenage fantasy romance, exactly the kind of thing that was huge in the very late 1980s. I submitted it to just one publisher, who loved it, but said that they wanted to do it as a trilogy, because fantasy trilogies were what you did back then. I thought about it for a couple of days, and decided that I didn't really see how the story could continue from there, so I suggested to them that maybe I should write two other unrelated books instead. They said no, and that was the end of that.

Wait, I did what?

A leading publisher offered me - an unknown author - real actual money for two further books as a start of a series, and I said no because I wasn't inspired? These days I'd take that deal instantly, and then figure out what goes into the next two books. Hell, I'd send them a proposal for a trilogy of trilogies. And merchandise. And spin-offs. And versions for every medium ever invented and a few new ones. That's the kind of deal that most aspiring authors would kill for.

As I said, total and utter stupidity.

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading through some fiction submissions, and thinking we should do more novels. (Did I mention I'm part owner of a digital publishing house?) And then I remembered The Yellow Flowers. You know that moment where it dawns on you that you've been even stupider than you realised? It was one of those. I've got a novel of my own sitting right here ready to go. After all, it can't be that bad if someone was prepared to offer me an advance for it and demand more of my work.

So here it is, no longer in a trunk. It'll doubtless get some re-editing in the process of getting re-typed, and then I'm damn well going to publish it. And this time, it'll be The Yellow Flowers, Volume 1.

The myth that's killing America

2011-08-20T09:12:00.001-07:00

A lot has been written in the last few weeks about the American economy, the growing wealth divide, and how best to address debt. The most controversial aspect is, of course, taxation of the very wealthiest.

One argument that's repeatedly trotted out is that taxing the wealthy means fewer jobs. After all, it's the wealthy who create jobs, and if the government takes their money away, they won't be able to help people get back to work. And, by extension, poor people don't create jobs.

That's a myth, and I call bullshit.

Wealthy corporations have just one aim: to make profit for their stockholders. Yes, they create jobs, but they create the cheapest possible jobs. That means laying off expensive American workers and offshoring as much as possible to the developing world.

By contrast, the poor and the middle classes do create jobs. Not in huge numbers at a time, but there are millions of small entrepreneurs who are creating jobs for themselves, bringing on help, and starting small businesses. Every little shop, every small service industry, every roadside stall, every family diner, every business who employs a cleaner - they're all creating jobs, one and two at a time.

Take the guy who fixes our air conditioning. He's just taken on an assistant, and is teaching him a trade. There's the lawn guy who used to be a one-man outfit two years ago and now has a crew of three working for him. There's the pest control guy who set himself up in business last year. The auto repair guy we got our car from has recently taken on a part-time helper. Our friends who run a boutique employ part-time shop assistants. Our friends who started their own spa employ therapists, nail techs, and reception staff. There's the lady who runs her own dance studio and employs teachers. There are the tattoo artists, the comic shop guys, and the web designers. Our own promotion business helps local artists sell their work.

In fact, very few of the people I know in Orlando work for companies started or owned by wealthy people. Nearly all of them work for themselves or for small businesses, often started by friends or family.

It's not even just the middle classes who start businesses and employ people. Every food truck, every repairman, every cleaner - they're all creating jobs, usually from absolutely nothing. Millions upon millions of jobs, right here, on our doorstep.

It's a dangerous myth, and it's killing the economy.

While the rich get bailouts and handouts and exemptions, the middle classes and working classes are getting squeezed even further. As a result, we're seeing small shops closing, small businesses failing, and entrepreneurs giving up before they even start.

Of course, the wealthy are only too happy to see this happen. It gets rid of the competition. When the small businesses are gone, the consumers have no choice but to go to the massive national chains and franchises. We're paying our tax money to concentrate wealth even more in the hands of the wealthy than it is already.

Even the poor have been brainwashed into believing this is a good thing. They want the rich to get richer. The only future they can see for themselves is big companies opening up new plants or offices and giving them work. But it's not happening that way, is it?

This myth needs busting, and it needs busting now.

The truth is simple.

It is high taxes on the wealthy that create jobs, not low taxes. Raising taxes sends a clear message to the rich: use it or lose it.

Don't take my word for it. Look at the facts, as presented by none other than billionaire investor Warren Buffett. "I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation."

Let's face it, Buffett knows more about capitalism, investment and job creation than you or I ever will. He knows these people personally. He knows this is a myth, and he knows how damaging it will be - for him as well as everyone else - if the economy continues to skew further and further in favor of the elite.

It is small business that creates the overwhelming majority of local jobs, and it's small entrepreneurs who should be stimulated and rewarded, not millionaire investors who pump money into offshore schemes that actually destroy local jobs.

Why?

2011-08-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

This morning, my friend Hugh Hancock made a comment on Facebook.

Rioting is, obviously, Not Good. However, working on the assumption that the sole reason it's happening is because the people involved are idiots / "animals" / chavs / etc may not be the most viable long-term strategy. We've had idiots for a while now, and they ain't always a-rioting.

This led me to a rather long reply, which several people have asked if they could repost. So I figured I'd repost it myself somewhere more prominent than half-way down a thread on Hugh's FB feed.

What we're seeing is anger leavened with a large dollop of dontgiveafuck.

If you have a kid, and spend their entire life telling them that they're worthless and lazy, telling them to shut up, not giving them pocket money but expecting them to help out around the house, promising them stuff but not delivering it, dangling your shiny toys in front of them, and meanwhile constantly ramming down their throat that the only measure of success is wealth, expect them to be resentful and surly instead of grateful and happy.

One day, if they don't top themselves in a fit of depression, they will snap. They'll lose their heads and go crazy. It will be over some trivial, pointless thing, like the colour of your tie. If you try to figure out what was wrong with your tie, you're totally missing the point. It ain't about the fucking tie. It's not even a protest. It's not rational. It's just an explosion of pent-up emotion and aggression.

So what do you do? Yell at them? Lock them in their room while you carry on partying? Take away the little they do have in order to pay for your smashed porcelain that's worth more than they can ever hope to repay? Beat them for being uppity?

Or maybe you should try talking to them and figure out what's actually wrong. In fact, if you go to a neutral person, they'll probably tell you to start treating the kid differently. The kid doesn't have control over his circumstances. You do. So it's up to you to make the changes.

I'm not in any way condoning the riots. But if we want to stop them happening again and again, we need to understand why they're happening, and address the circumstances that lead to people feeling this way. Yes, some of them, maybe most, are idiots along for the ride, but the mood in the country is so discontented that it's not surprising that they've turned to looting shops en masse instead of scratching cars in parking lots and spraying graffiti on the walls.

Give people decent jobs with a living wage. Give them hope for a better life. Help them get out of debt instead of bailing out the bankers. Reduce the gap between rich and poor. Lock up corrupt politicians and businessmen instead of people who just want to smoke a bit of weed. Educate people instead of closing schools.

Then the idiots will be the crazy outcasts once again, not role models for thousands of pissed off people who've had enough of feeling that they might as well kick the shit out of something.

By way of explanation for those who don't know me, I'm a social anthropologist by training. Understanding social phenomena does not imply approval of the behaviour involved. Understanding is, however, necessary to engaging with members of that society in a meaningful way, especially if you wish to change that behaviour.

Please feel free to repost.

My 100 best photographs

2011-07-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming increasingly pleased with my photography. I'm by no means a professional, and I use pretty low-end kit - phone cameras and cheap digital cameras - but when I look back at the pictures I've taken over the last few years, I'm pretty happy with the composition and the use of light, and very occasionally I even get a good shot of a person. I've really enjoyed learning to make the most of what I've got, and I'm particularly happy with some of the phone camera shots.

As I was looking through ten years' worth of photos, I could see some very clear themes emerging: silhouettes, sunsets, trees, shorelines, shots through trees, forced perspectives, dilapidated buildings, and roofs.

I've tried to pick the best 100 of my photos and I've assembled them into a Flickr gallery. Sadly, many of the pictures from amazing places like Bombay weren't particularly good, so they're not represented. Most of them are from the last few years, so there's a heavy bias towards pictures of Florida. I had a hard time with the family pictures: some of the pictures I think are great probably only had meaning to me, so I cut most of them as well. Same with the events: the pictures had to work even if you weren't there, and most of them didn't. As a result, most of what I'm left with is landscapes, nature shots and buildings.

Anyway, do stop by and take a look. If there's anything you like, please leave a comment or like it. It would be good to find out what other people think.

One last note: none of these images - with one exception, which I noted in the caption - were Photoshopped, Hipstamatic'd, or even cropped. This is exactly how they came out of the camera. I thought of messing with them, but I decided to leave them exactly how they are.

Thank you for not smoking

2011-06-26T07:17:00.000-07:00

If you've been following me on Facebook, you've probably seen me battling against smoking for the last few years. Every so often, I get fed up and quit for several months. I don't find it at all hard to stop; once the desire goes, I just don't smoke, because I don't like it. But then something happens, I say to hell with it, and have a cigarette, usually followed by another one, and another one, and before I know it, I'm smoking again.

The challenge for me is to break the cycle that comes around after a few months, when I want a cigarette and think to myself, "what's the worst that can happen?" (Apart from dying of cancer, of course, but when I'm depressed or pissed off, I couldn't really care about that.) I don't need to give myself a daily or weekly reward to wean myself off, and I don't smoke enough for the trick of putting the tobacco money in a jar to be effective. What I need is to promise myself something fun for making it through the "what the hell" stage, so I'll feel like there's something I'd be losing out on if I weaken.

What I decided was to set myself clear milestones for a whole year, building up to a big reward if I make it all the way through. Every couple of months seemed right, since that's a long enough period to be an achievement, but not so long that it seemed impossible. Being a bit of a pagan hippie tree-hugger, I decided to hook my rewards into the main pagan seasonal festivals (roughly the quarter days and cross-quarter days, if you want to get fancy). I decided to make my official start date the summer solstice. I actually stopped a few days earlier, but who's counting?

I didn't want to bribe myself with little trinkets. There's very little I actually want in the way of possessions. Instead, I wanted to choose things that would make me happy. In many cases, they're not even particularly big things, just stuff we haven't got around to, and this is an excuse to kill two birds with one stone.

Anyway, here's what I promised myself:

Lughnasadh (1 Aug): Anna will cook us a candlelit dinner at home

Autumn equinox (23 Sept): we repaint our bedroom

Samhain (1 Nov): I repaint my office
Winter solstice (Dec 22): I get my first tattoo

Imbolc (1 Feb): New cowboy hat
Spring equinox (20 Mar): Anna makes me a sculpture of my choice
Beltane (1 May): Anna's choice

Summer solstice (20 June): Road trip across America

That's the big incentive. I've wanted to take an epic road trip ever since encountering Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson and Easy Rider as a teenager. I've now got a year to plan it, save up and earn it. Maybe I'll go up to Maine, maybe across California, or maybe follow the Lewis and Clark route to the Pacific North-West. Maybe I'll drive, maybe I'll get a motorcycle, maybe I'll go by train. Maybe I'll get some sort of mobile wifi and keep working as I go, maybe I'll take a few weeks off. Maybe I'll camp, maybe I'll stay in motels, maybe I'll couch-surf my way. I don't know. But it'll be a lot of fun planning it.

Wish me luck!

At the appointed time

2011-06-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

I've been finding myself reading a bunch of fantasy novels recently, and mostly enjoying them after not having anything to do with the genre for several years. However, I'm really finding that some of the tropes annoy me. They make for good storytelling, and I understand them from a dramatic or authorial point of view, but they frequently make me want to bludgeon the offending characters to death with a shillelagh after applying electrodes to their sensitive parts.

The worst of all is the mysterious helper who clearly knows what's going on, but won't say, because the time is not yet right. Sorry. The Time Is Not Yet Right. You have to say it in a portentous, pompous, know-it-all voice, with capital letters.

Imagine you're the hero. You find yourself attacked by weird beasties, and then you're told you have to go to somewhere, retrieve a MacGuffin, and then save the world, but first you will have to face some major opponent, and the fate of the world rests upon you. So of course, you want to know as much as possible before you set off. What the hell are these things? What can they do? How can they be defeated? What's the big bad nasty? Does it have a weak spot? And is there anything else you can tell me to give me an edge? Because, you know, the fate of the world is at stake. It would be kind of useful.

Then this wise guy turns round and basically says, "well, I know, but I'm not telling."

Really?

Thanks for nothing, buddy.

And then - even worse - he probably gets killed a few chapters later without divulging the precious secret. It's not like you didn't have enough on your plate what with saving the world, now you have to figure it all out on your own, because this guy who was supposed to be on your side reckoned it would be more cool to be mysterious and withhold vital information from you. That makes him kind of an asshole, don't you think?

100 miles of US-17

2011-06-24T17:10:00.001-07:00

Driving home from South Florida today, we cut across country from Fort Myers to Orlando on US-17. It goes through rural Florida, nowhere near the coastal towns or theme parks, through small towns like Arcadia, Fort Meade, and Winter Haven.

Arcadia, FL

If you Google for any of these small towns, they appear to be charming, quaint little places with gorgeous historic districts and thriving communities. Much like, it must be said, the sort of rural towns in England where I spent most of the last forty-odd years.

Shepton Mallet, Somerset, England

They're not. They're mostly dilapidated, ramshackle places where the majority of people seem to be barely scratching a living from whatever local industry is around and the harsh climate of Florida. In one place, there's a citrus processing plant. In another, there's a giant Wal-Mart warehouse. The so-called historic districts are sometimes just a few buildings, and they're clearly just clinging desperately to some semblance of dignity. In Arcadia, over 25% of the population is below the poverty line, and a typical family earns under $20,000, compared to around $40,000 in Orlando, over $45,000 here in Casselberry, and nearly $75,000 in Winter Park.

As you drive through these towns, you can't help but notice the shuttered up shops and the empty businesses. What little remains is mostly Mexican supermarkets, Mexican diners, and occasional auto repair shops that usually consist of some guy's garage with a load of rusted vehicles outside and hand-painted signs that feel more like a plea than an advertisement for services: Cars Fixed Very Chep + Used Tires. There's no Starbucks here. Even McDonald's don't see a market in these places. Just churches, churches, and more churches. All these people have got going for them is a promise it'll be better when they're dead.

Baptist Church, Bartow. Most of the churches on US-17 aren't this impressive. They're one-room affairs with a crucifix nailed to the roof and little more.

There aren't even many actual houses in evidence, and most of those are covered in peeling paintwork, their porches hanging off, and their windows taped up. Most of what you see are mobile homes and trailers, generally surrounded by the decaying detritus of the truly poor: a broken refrigerator, half of several bicycles, bits of engines, and undriveable cars up on blocks. Unusually, there aren't even many American flags to be seen, and you begin to wonder whether that's because they've been stolen, or whether the majority of these people are immigrants. It's hard to believe they don't have pride in their country: this is usually where you find the staunchest, most patriotic Americans.

Fort Meade, FL

I've driven along this road before, but this was the first time it really struck me how different it was to the parts of America I usually see. Superficially, I think I was expecting it to be much like the sort of rural towns in England where I spent most of the last forty-odd years. Poorer than the cities, and lacking the bright lights, not as quaint and pretty as the postcards make out, but still mostly civilised.

It's not.

It's like this part of America was just forgotten and left to die.

Literally.

Oak Ridge Cemetery: photo by Ebyabe

Life expectancy in these towns is twelve years less than in the rest of Florida. The richer parts of Florida have the highest life expectancy in the world after Japan. But if you live in one of these towns, you can expect a shorter lifespan than your typical inhabitant of Libya, Tunisia, the whole of South America, and the whole of Asia except Afghanistan and Burma. As long as they keep shipping the oranges to the rest of the country, that's just fine by everyone else.

Today wasn't the day for it, but some day soon I really want to drive back down US-17 and photograph what I see. Not the gussied up civic buildings you see in this post, but the endless, depressing existence of the America which the tourists never see, the politicians prefer to ignore, and the affluent don't want to think about.

In Praise Of Boobs

2011-06-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is an extraordinary film. If you're an artist or an archaeology nut, go and see it on the biggest screen you can manage, in 3D. Ignore the fact that it's repetitive, and ignore most of the bits when people are talking. It's worth it just for the incredible footage of prehistoric art from 30,000 years ago.

The artistic style of these ancient painters was unexpected. Egyptian and Babylonian art, some 25,000 years later, is highly stylized, with simple outlines and profile views. These images of horses, lions, and other animals are often fully shaded, with 3/4 views.

The 3D gives you a real sense of the shape of the rocks and how the paintings flow over them, and the camera gets in so close you can see every line, from the subtle shading on a horse's mouth to the fur on a bison's shaggy mane. It's more than you'd ever see if you went there, and you'll never be allowed inside the cave anyway because the environment is so fragile. It is a quite breathtaking cinematic experience.

So why the title of this piece?

I was already familiar with the cave paintings and the prehistory, and was mostly just absorbed in the imagery rather than listening to the narration. The one thing that really struck me was this little lady, who got a mention in passing.

She's the Venus of Hohle Fels, and at around 35,000 BC, she's the oldest piece of figurative art in the world. She's less than three inches high, she was found in 2008, and she's one of the most important milestones in human history.

She was carved from a mammoth tusk at about the time Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis were jockeying for supremacy. Neanderthals, contrary to what we all believed when I grew up, were stronger and smarter than sapiens. They had bigger brains, and as far as we can tell, they had similar social organisation, similar weapons, and comparable technology. Yet the inferior sapiens - that's us - won.

So what was the difference? Well, the only thing archaeologists can point to is that Homo sapiens created art. He learned to make symbolic representations of his world. Which, apparently, paves the way for religion, stories, and a whole bunch of new forms of thinking. And just look at what the very first sculptors made - carvings of women with oversized breasts. An ancient fertility icon, or the prehistoric equivalent of Playboy? We don't know. We'll never know. But we do know that it's what made the difference between the winners and the losers in the struggle between two species for global supremacy.

So, archaeologically speaking at least, that's what makes us human. An appreciation of boobs.

Because otherwise, we'd all be Neanderthals.

Pseudo-archaeologists

2011-05-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

I love theories about ancient aliens and lost civilizations. I'd love to believe them. The world would be so cool if the ancient skies were filled with spaceships, and the Pyramids really were some kind of power plant or spaceport.

However, I just keep wanting to throw things at the pseudo-archaeologists whose overblown claims make it impossible to take them seriously. For example, I just watched someone talking about Pumapunku in Bolivia. It's an amazing site, including one stone weighing well over 100 tons. That's a big puzzle for archaeologists. But then the guy went on to make the following statements:

The edges of the blocks are so perfectly straight they look like they were cut with lasers, and they're accurate to within a couple of microns, more accurate than we could do today.
The designs on the blocks are cut absolutely identically, as if they had been moulded.
The edges are so sharp that if you touch them, you will cut your finger.
The blocks fit together so tightly you can't get a razor blade between them.
There is no sign of weathering or damage on any of the blocks, they're as pristine as the day they were cut.

So take a look at this photograph of a few blocks from Pumapunku. (Click on it and see it really big to get all the detail.)

It's immediately obvious that every one of the above statements is total and utter crap.

It's incredible work, and very precise, no doubt about it. And it's a mystery how 5th century South Americans created them. But they're simply not micron-perfect. You could touch those edges quite safely. And they're sure as hell not pristine.

If I can prove he's talking bollocks after spending fifteen seconds on Google, then no serious archaeologist is going to take any notice of him whatsoever. There are certainly anomalies to be explained, and maybe aliens did visit Earth, but I'd rather hear from people who don't make their facts up.

No shit, Sherlock!

2011-05-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

I recently watched Sherlock, the recent BBC modern era take on the Great Detective. It was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to the next series. One thing that bugged me, though, was that Holmes's apparently incredible deductions are so often completely fallacious. (Mind you, the same was true when Conan Doyle wrote Holmes, so nothing new there.)

Here's an example. Holmes deduces that a dead man cannot have shot himself. He has a bullet wound in his right temple. However, everything in his home suggests that he is left-handed: he places his coffee on the left of his chair, he slices his bread from the left, his pen is on the left of his notepad, and so on. Consequently, if he had shot himself, he'd have used his left hand, and the wound would be on the left of his head, ergo someone else shot him. Genius!

Well, sorry, I call bullshit.

I'm left-handed. I slice my bread to the left. I place my pen on the left. I generally drink coffee with my left hand - but frankly, I'll put my coffee whichever side of the chair is more convenient. But, Mr Smarty-Pants Holmes, I fire a gun with my right hand, as shown below. As, indeed, do many left-handers. I also play guitar and violin right-handed, shoot a bow right-handed, and use a computer mouse right-handed.

Yes, Holmes turned out to be right, but for the wrong reasons, and in spite of his faulty logic.

I so often find that Holmes writers must be like people who design IQ tests. Holmes puts forward a logical theory based on what he observes, but that doesn't mean it's the correct one. For example, he deduces that Watson has returned from Afghanistan or Iraq, based on his posture and the fact that he has a suntan on his hands, and therefore he must be a soldier who has just served in a hot climate and got wounded. Again, Holmes turns out to be right.

But Watson could equally well have been serving in Belize, or an embassy in the Far East. Or have left the service some time ago and been working in a office abroad for a few months. And he could have been injured in an accident, not necessarily a combat wound. But we don't think of those possibilities when we're watching the show, we're too busy being dazzled by Holmes's cleverness.

Yes, I know they're just stories and I should just sit back and enjoy it, but that's not the way my brain works. I keep looking for other explanations of the data and alternative hypotheses. That's why I have so many problems with the aforementioned IQ tests - I can usually think of half a dozen equally logical different answers to the same question, and it turns into a guessing game as to which one the questioner had in mind.

Q: London, Munich, Moscow, Miami. Which is the odd one out?

Well, obviously London, as it's the only one that doesn't start with M. Or Miami, as it's the only one with only five letters. Or maybe Munich, as it's the only one without a repeated vowel. No, of course, it's Miami after all, as it's the only one not in Europe. Hang on, it's got to be Moscow - that's the only one that's both a city and a river. No, dammit, it is Miami. It's the only city that was founded by a woman. And it's the only one that's also a county. And the only one that's also a tribe, and a language. And the only one with a beach.

See what I mean? Just pick one: you've got a one in four chance of being right.

That's how Holmes feels to me. He's brilliant at unerringly picking the right answer out of all the possible ones, and annoyingly, he's right even when he's totally wrong. Just like these guys figuring out where the Riddler is going to strike next.

A Game of Tropes

2011-05-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Last week I read Game of Thrones, seeing as people are talking about it, and I have no idea when the HBO series will be coming to Netflix. A few hundred pages in, it struck me just what an unpleasant world he was describing. And it’s not just George R. R. Martin – a world based on medieval feudalism is common to the vast majority of fantasy literature. The chivalric values these worlds espouse are usually held up to be heroic, noble, and something we should aspire to. But they’re not. They’re inherently fascist, racist, and backward-looking.

Let’s just look at six common themes in fantasy literature. Sure, there are plenty of counter-examples of fantasy literature that don’t use these tropes, but there are a lot that do. I’m sure you’ll recognize them.

By the way, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not bashing Game of Thrones. It’s a good book, and I really like a lot of George R. R. Martin’s work. The Armageddon Rag is one of my favourite novels. My concern is with the underlying ideas that appear in a lot of books of this kind, and which we somehow automatically accept as “good” without necessarily thinking them through. I blame the troubadours and the pre-Raphaelites who created this perception of the world of knights in shining armour that still persists into the 21st century.

The rightful heir

Our hero seeks to regain the throne that is his by right. His family was deposed, perhaps many generations ago, so he intends to kill the usurpers and restore the true monarchy.

There is an implicit assumption here that inherited power is fundamentally right. Because our hero’s great-great-grandfather used to run the country, this gives him the right, and indeed the duty, to take charge. Don’t ask whether he’s competent. Don’t ask whether he’s the best person for the job. Just look at the genealogical tables, and that determines who should have the power.

And, furthermore, don’t ask how his family got into power in the first place. So a few generations further back still, our hero’s family conquered the kingdom and seized power? Well, that’s okay. They’re not usurpers. That was legitimate because, well, he’s the hero, right? And if anyone from those days should try and regain power for their family, they’re obviously evil rebels and should be put down, harshly.

Here’s a modern comparison. A descendent of the Duke of Thuringia, who was deposed by Napoleon in the 1780s, decides he’s the rightful heir to the throne of Germany. So he gets a group of loyal Thuringian supporters together, and plots to assassinate the President of Germany and blow up the Parliament, then set himself up as a divinely appointed dictator. By most standards, that would make him a great villain, but in a fantasy world – he’s our hero.

The family

That example leads in perfectly to the next trope, the Noble House. Everything is done out of loyalty to the House. The House is everything. The only people you can trust are members of your own House. The reason for wanting power isn’t for your own selfish ends – that wouldn’t be heroic – it’s to bring glory and honor to your House. And woe betide anyone who insults your House – they clearly have to die. Anything you do in defense of your House is justified. After all, it’s for a noble cause, right?

We have that trope in modern literature too. It’s called The Godfather. The Noble Houses of fantasy worlds are no different to Mafia families jockeying for supremacy, and dealing out death for the slightest imagined slur on their honor.

And relying on your family to do everything, and putting them in positions of power? That’s called nepotism, and it’s one of the most widespread forms of corruption. Here’s an example from Game of Thrones: one of the country’s leading generals dies, and the king replaces him with a highly experienced warrior. The dead guy’s family is insulted, because his son should have followed in his father’s footsteps (see the rightful heir trope above). But the son in question is six years old, sickly, and largely insane. Anyone with half a grain of sense could see that he’s not exactly the ideal candidate for the job, but in a fantasy world, family honor trumps common sense every time.

The pure bloodline

The bloodline is a recurring trope throughout fantasy literature. Everything about a person can be determined by their genetic background. Everyone from this country is shifty and untrustworthy. Everyone from that country is a skilled trader. Everyone from that nomad race is a cruel savage. And in order to preserve that distinction, the cultural norms of every tribe, nation and family dictate that crossing those genetic backgrounds produces half-breeds who are to be treated as outcasts.

In many places in fantasy worlds, people who aren’t of the True Blood, or foreigners, are treated like scum. They’re only fit for lower class jobs, and the city guard can mistreat them with impunity.

It makes me think of slave-owning states in the 18^th and 19^th century, where white people carefully graded everyone by their degree of blackness: mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, and so on, and that determined their civil rights. It’s reminiscent of eugenics programs, apartheid, or the segregation of the Jews in ghettoes. But in a fantasy world, that’s okay.

The highborn

Here’s another common trope. Our hero is the son of a blacksmith, but he’s always felt different and special. That’s because he’s really a noble. And so he regains what is rightfully his. (Because he’s the rightful heir, he’s restoring his family and the bloodline is what counts, remember.)

In most fantasy worlds, apparently, nobles really are different to ordinary people. They’re more skilled. They have better morals. They’re more intelligent. And they have a Destiny (say it in your most sonorous Christopher Lee voice, with an echo). They’re highborn, and so they deserve to have the best of everything. And if they have to kill a few people to get it, then fair enough. They’re nobles, after all.

And, by contrast, peasants are peasants, merchants are merely money-grubbers, and slaves are just slaves. And, of course, they should keep to their station in life. If they have to die in the service of the nobility, then don’t worry. They’re only commoners. In fact, if you have to start a major war to settle a dispute between nobles, then that’s fine too. The joyful populace will cheerfully line up to be slaughtered, just as long as House Hero avenges the insult from House Arrogant.

Let’s just recap one little thing in that last paragraph in case you missed it. Slavery is legal in most fantasy worlds. It’s okay for our hero to own people. Because he’s a noble, right?

The measure of a man (or woman)

Our hero has to acquire many skills, but there’s one that matters above all else. He becomes a real man when he learns to use a sword and kill people. Even women aren’t exempt from this – if she’s not a Xena-esque warrior woman, she learns how to use a weapon in secret. Again from Game of Thrones, we’re supposed to like Arya, the girl who studies swordsmanship, rather than her girly big sister Sansa, who just wants to marry a handsome prince.

Combat is everything – either in the form of vengeance or tournaments, or simply to demonstrate prowess. Rulers who aren’t warriors are usually to be despised, and it’s a matter of personal honor that our hero should regain his throne by killing the evil king himself, thus proving his fitness to rule.

In a fantasy world, violence settles everything. Tombstone and the Wild West were a model of law and order compared to most fantasy worlds. Think Somalia and you’d be about right. Everyone’s armed, and death in a bar brawl is nothing unusual. Power goes to the strongest and most ruthless, and they keep it by inflicting death on anyone who might be a threat to them. In the modern world, that’s a country in chaos. In a fantasy world, that’s how things should be.

A return to the old ways

After our hero regains the throne (at the point of a sword, naturally), he’s going to restore the Old Ways. Once again, everything will be like it was in his father’s day, or a century ago, or a few millennia ago. All you have to do is invoke that trope, and the reader knows implicitly that our hero is doing everything for the best of reasons.

In a fantasy world, there’s no such thing as progress. It was always better back in the old days. The Old Religion was right, and the country will be improved if we get rid of the false priests and put the old ones back.

When that happens in the real world, it’s scary. Margaret Thatcher once proclaimed that she stood for a return to “Victorian values” in Britain. What the Victorians stood for was actually pretty horrific: the belief that white people had the right to conquer everyone else and destroy their culture; the belief that Christians were morally superior to everyone else, and therefore had the right to treat them as they pleased; no votes for women, black people, or peasants; the entire economy and judiciary in the hands of a small hereditary elite; the workhouse for poor people; death for the most trivial offenses; sexual repression (except if you were an aristocrat, in which case you could do as you liked) and so on. Dickens wrote about social injustice for a reason – Victorian society was a far from pleasant place for the majority of people.

Further back in history, look at what happened when the Catholics and Protestants took turns bringing back the Old Ways throughout Europe. Decades of death and terror, and people burned at the stake for following the previous Old Ways. One minute you’re a loyal subject, the next you’re a dangerous heretic in fear of your life.

In the West, there are very few people who think it’s a good thing that Ayatollah Khomeini re-established the Old Ways in Iran. Though we liked it much better when the British, the French and the oil companies got rid of democracy in Iran, and brought back the Other Old Ways in the form of the Shah. And look how well that worked out for the Iranian people.

But in a fantasy world, it’s somehow different. If you bring back the Old Ways, everyone will be happy.

So that’s the world of chivalry in a typical fantasy novel. It’s a violent world ruled by warring mafia families, where your station in life is determined entirely by who your parents are, where commoners exist only for the benefit of the wealthy, and where any attempt at modernization is regarded as treason.

When technology isn't the answer

2011-05-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

Whenever I get frustrated with technology that doesn't work as well as it should, I'm always reminded of a documentary I saw about ten or fifteen years ago about the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the most advanced piece of military technology in the world at the time.

They had a sophisticated computer system running everything, a real novelty in the day. It handled the weapons systems, the stores, even the daily menus. It was a pretty impressive piece of software.

Except...

Downstairs in the aircraft hangar, they had a huge magnetic metal table. On it there was a painted plan of the hangar deck, complete with all the bays. They had a box of colored nuts, some red and some blue, with the serial numbers of each aircraft on it, and they simply put them in place on the table to give them an instant view of which planes were where, and which were unserviceable (red) or ready for action (blue).

At flight deck level, in aircaft dispatch, the dispatcher used a chinagraph pencil to write the number of each aircraft on the inside of the plexiglass dome as it took off, and erased it with his thumb as it landed, giving him an instant view which aircraft were in flight.

Despite all the technology, the guys who had to run the place relied on simple, manual systems, because they were easier to maintain, more reliable, and actually gave the people who needed it the information they wanted faster than computer readouts. And - though they never had to test it - more likely to continue working if the ship ever took damage.

Vanity publishing

2011-04-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Digital publishing is changing the industry in more ways than you might realise at first. It's not just about the economics of publishing, it's about the whole nature of what publishing is.

The other day I was reading Roz Morris's blog, Nail Your Novel. (If you're a writer, or an aspiring writer, then you really should have this on your feed. It's full of good stuff.) She was talking about self-publishing, and made this comment:

Vanity publishing is not the same as self-publishing. With vanity publishing you pay – usually a lot of money – for someone to print thousands of shoddy copies of your book and then you discover they’re not going to sell or distribute them for you. It’s usually verging on a scam. With self-publishing no money changes hands until a copy is sold (of course you may spend money on covers, editing etc, but that doesn’t usually have anything to do with the self-publishing company).

A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) recently sold a novel to a Very Big Publisher (who shall also remain nameless). I was a little puzzled why he was so happy about it. I pointed out that he actually owns a digital publishing company, so he could have self-published. And, by his own admission, he'd probably make more money from self-publishing. That's not blind optimism, by the way. He's got several successful self-published books to his credit already, and can make a pretty fair assumption how much he'd sell if he did another.

His response was a little surprising. "It's vanity publishing, I suppose," he said. "I've got plenty of my own books on my shelf already, but it'll be nice to have one with that logo on the spine."

How's that for a total reversal? Self-publishing is where he makes money, and going to one of the biggest names in the book publishing industry is just a vanity project.

A request

2011-04-24T16:36:00.000-07:00

Dear people of the world,

I have a small request to make of you all.

If we have an appointment, and you can't make it or you're going to be late, please let me know, preferably ahead of time. If this appointment involves me going somewhere to meet you, ideally, let me know early enough that I'm not going to make a journey for no reason.

On a similar note, if you've promised to do something for me by a certain time and you're not going to be able to do it, I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me, rather than just leave me wondering what's going on. It'd make my life so much easier.

Thanks,

Love, me.

xxx

Lovebooks

2011-04-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

I've been musing for a while about the cost of digital books. Typically, they're about 25% cheaper than paper. Although it's nice to see a cheaper alternative, that's a pretty outrageous price when you analyse it. In some cases, the Kindle versions are actually more expensive (the Kindle version of Game of Thrones costs $8.99, but the paperback is only $7.59, or $5.03 if you want the mass market paperback) and there's no justification for that pricing at all.

As a general rule, 35% of the cost of the book is for printing and paper. Then there's 5% to cover distribution (to the retailer, not the customer). The retailer takes about 30%, which pays for his staff and shelf space. None of those costs apply for a digital book, apart from a minuscule amount for listing it on a web site. So you could cut the cost of a book by 70% and make the same profit.

I've seen it argued in several places that you could reduce the cost of a digital book to a flat fee of $1.99 and you'd still have a viable business. Probably, from the publisher's (and author's) point of view, a more viable business, as people would buy more books at that price. What's more, since you don't have to worry about print runs, overstocks and remainders, you can publish more niche books and expand your inventory. You can't do that right now, because of the fees Amazon and the like charge, but let's assume for the next few minutes that it could be done.

Then what I'd like to see is this.

I pay $20 a month, and can download as many books as I want. Absolutely unlimited. But here's the catch. If I stop paying my membership, those books are no longer available to me. It works just like Netflix or Lovefilm. I can get whatever I want, whenever I want it, as long as I'm a member.

Practically, I can only read a book a day, and that's pushing it. More realistically, I might get through 15-20 books a month. So even if I download hundreds or thousands of books in one month (equivalent to loading my Netflix queue with hundreds of movies), I won't be able to read them all for $20. It'll take me all year. So I'm not paying for the actual downloads, I'm paying to read.

Sure, this isn't the same as owning them. If I stop paying my monthly sub, I "lose" all those books I've "bought". That's true, but frankly, I don't want to re-read 99% of the books I read. So maybe the system could allow me to keep any book I like for an extra $1. It's just like using a library (which I do, much more than buying books anyway), except that I can take out as much as I like, I don't have to go there, there are no late fees or due dates, I don't have to worry about whether they've got the book in stock or how many copies they have, and I pay for it directly instead of through my taxes.

In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest that one day, I'll be able to get a single media subscription covering books, movies, games and music. Pay a flat monthly fee, and read, watch, play or listen to anything I like, when I like, where I like. I'd sign up for that in an instant. Wouldn't you?

Infosnacks

2011-04-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

Last week I tried an experiment. Instead of posting bits and pieces on Facebook as I encountered them, I compiled everything into a single daily blog post which appeared first on the Web, and then on Facebook as a note. It was a deliberate attempt to reduce the number of FB posts I make: I know I post a lot, but that’s because I keep stumbling over all sorts of interesting things. The journalist inside me wants to share them with you, but I’m wary of bombarding people with stuff they don’t want to read. I also wanted to try writing slightly longer pieces, but not as long as the short essays I usually put on my blog.

The blog experiment revealed several interesting things.

· The number of comments and likes dropped off almost to nothing. Most of my posts get some reaction. The blog posts, which typically contained 10-15 items, got almost no response. I suspect this is due to the following reasons:

Most people simply don’t read the longer posts. They’re not good to read on a phone, for example and they demand a lot more commitment than short 240-character posts. It’s also really easy to skim through your Facebook feed and see what looks interesting, whereas this is much harder with a blog. No readers = no reaction. Simple.
The layout Facebook gives to links is actually very effective: a short summary, an obvious thing to click on to see the item (and you can view videos right in the post without leaving the page, and an easy mechanism to make a comment or like a post, again, without leaving the page. In a blog, it's much less obvious whether you're going to like what you get, and you actually have to look for the link, so people don't click through as much.
It’s much easier to react to a single post than to a long post. It’s clear what you’re reacting to, rather than having to explain in your comments which bit you mean. If I post about three films I've seen, it's so easy to click "Like" on the one where you agree with my comment, rather than write a comment saying "Yeah, I didn't think much of BLAH movie either."

· Blogging is hard work. It would typically take me an hour at the end of the day to write up one of those posts with all the URLs I’d saved, add in all the links, find images, and so on. Clicking “share this” is so much easier. Click the button, add a quick comment, and get back to what I was doing. It takes less than a minute.

So, in other words, compared to Facebooking, blogging is more work for me, and is less effective at communicating this kind of information to you. Sure, blogs are great for longer pieces like this, where you need to hold someone’s attention for a few minutes, but that’s not what Facebook’s for.

What we seem to have created is a smorgasbord of what I've taken to calling "infosnacks": tiny morsels of assorted information that we can help ourselves to all day long every time we fancy a little nibble. There’s an endless supply of it out there, and we can survive on it quite happily.

You could argue that a non-stop diet of infosnacks is bad for us, and initially, that was how I felt. Surely spending time reading proper, well-written articles has to be somehow “better” than lots of stupid little postings.

On reflection, though, I’d have to disagree. Infosnacks are a fine metaphor, but it’s not the same as subsisting on a diet of chips and chocolate. There's no requirement that our daily information intake has to be limited, or contain certain vitamins. And infosnacks aren't all we consume anyway. We can, on occasion, easily find ourselves drawn to sampling more weighty, nutritious fare: someone posts a small taster, we follow it up, and next thing we know we’re reading an informative article about something quite in depth.

It all depends who your friends are. It’s more like a conversation, where people are quite happy to contribute a few sentences here and there, rather than a debating society where everyone takes turns to hold the floor for half an hour and make a speech. And because it’s so easy to post, you may find that your friends post some quite surprising and interesting things, which actually makes for a pretty damn good conversation.

So, it’s back to Facebook posts for the little things, and blogs for longer, more complex thoughts that won’t fit into 240 characters.

Stuff'n'nonsense #7

2011-04-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

No blog yesterday. Did you miss me?

OK, movies. Watched two documentaries, Food, Inc and Urban Explorers. Food, Inc didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know, but seeing it on screen really turned me off eating a lot of what's in the supermarkets. Urban Explorers was interesting, but could have done with being half an hour shorter. Still, well worth watching just for the pretty images of abandoned places. I just wanted to know who the hell simply walks away from a fully furnished castle and leaves it to rot?
Here's one I may or may not see when it reaches Netflix. Atlas Shrugged could be fascinating, or could have me throwing things at the screen. This review intrigues me: A Movie This Demented Should Be Against The Law. I have to admit, I've tried to read it and failed. And Ayn Rand's philosophy pisses me off. But I'm prepared to give the movie a shot.
Game footage is getting more and more like movies. Check out this latest Unreal demo. And remember, this is real-time in-game footage. This is not a cut-scene. This is not pre-rendered. This is gameplay.
And while your jaw hits the floor, I'll just tell you that this is taking not one, not two, but three top of the range custom nVidia graphics cards to run it. So don't expect it to work on your laptop. Don't even expect it to work on your current generation super-duper video production PC. Figure on getting a whole new machine when this comes out in two years.

I spent much of yesterday browsing Wonderland, a hugely entertaining blog that talks about games of all sorts. What initially caught my eye was this glorious Lego steampunk TIE Fighter. Neat, huh?

Also from Wonderland, an excellent post on social mechanisms in games, based on a superb talk by Raph Koster, who I should follow more closely than I do. He "explained how societies work, how humans work, and how we interact as beings with each other, described as social mechanics and how they could be applied (and are sometimes applied) in social games. [Here's] his list of the 40 essential social mechanics that have ever existed, in order that game designers need never have to reinvent them again." Bloody brilliant stuff.
It's a damn shame I missed the Muppet Art Show last night. Woulda liked to see that, and it looked like people had a lot of fun.
Damn shame I missed the hillbilly burlesque last night too. Looking forward to the next Kitschy Kittens show.

I'm still wondering whether to continue with this long blog format. It doesn't generate anything like the responses I used to get with FB posts, and it doesn't feel like many people are actually reading these. I'm seriously considering whether to revert to just sharing things on FB or take a vow of social media silence and focus on writing proper stuff.

Last week I had to do some research into Twitter, and came up with some depressing facts.

The average person on Twitter gets 2700 messages a day. A year ago, it was 400, and I thought that was a lot. Math: if it takes 5 seconds to read a tweet, it would take 3 hrs 45 minutes a day to read your Twitter feed.
Most people log in once a day, and only read their direct messages, @messages, and whatever's been posted in the last 10-15 minutes. Math: most people only read 1% of their feed. In other words, if you post something on Twitter, there's a 99% chance that a given one of your followers won't see it.
Click-through rates on Twitter links have dropped from 38% a year ago to 14% now. So given that hardly anyone is going to read your tweet, the number of people who will actually click on a link is near enough non-existent (o.14%). Math: if you have 500 followers, then maybe ONE of them will actually click through.
Retweet rates have dropped from 25% in 2009 to 17% in 2010 and 11% now. Math: if you have 500 followers, maybe ONE will RT your post. And if he has 500 followers, maybe one will click through and/or RT it.

In other words, it's Babel out there. Everyone's talking, nobody's listening. It's not a conversation any more. It's no longer a viral way of spreading information as transmission rates are so poor. It's just noise, pretty much drowning out all the signal, and the only response people have is to turn up the noise. In December, I wondered what Twitter was for. Now, I'm none the wiser.

Well, that's not quite true. I am. In December, I had a hunch that Twitter was becoming useless. Now, I have the stats to prove my hunch.

Stuff'n'nonsense #6

2011-04-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this one while watching First Orbit - the movie. It's a real time recreation of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering first orbit, shot entirely in space from on board the International Space Station. The film combines this new footage with Gagarin's original mission audio and a new musical score by composer Philip Sheppard. It's over 90 minutes long, and it's as close as you'll ever get to seeing that incredible historic moment when mankind first left this planet. Sit back, fire it up full screen on the biggest device you've got, and enjoy the incredible feeling of an entire space mission. Just imagine what it must have been like for Gagarin, up there for the first time, seeing things no human being had ever seen before.

They've disabled embedding, so you'll have to just click through. Oh hang on, wait, read the rest of my blog first!

Today is a moment I've been waiting for for about six years. My friend Damien Valentine, announced that his new feature film, Chronicles of Humanity, will be released on April 26, and will have its theatrical debut at the Little Theatre Cinema in Bath. It's a sci-fi epic featuring several of my friends, and also Felicia Day, who you may recognise from The Guild, Dollhouse, Dr Horrible, and so on. That's pretty damn cool. What's even cooler is that he funded and made the whole film himself.
And coolest of all, from my point of view, he did it with Moviestorm. When we started creating it, we said that one day, we wanted to see a Moviestorm movie in the cinema, and now it's finally happening. Damien - thanks, and congratulations!
If you can't make it to the cinema, don't worry, you can watch Chronicles of Humanity online as a Web series.
One of the films I'm most looking forward to is Luc Besson's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Described as Indiana Jones crossed with The Mummy and Amelie, this looks right up my street. I love the close of this review: "I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending this film, I’m just not sure who to." Me, that's who! Looks like a perfect date movie for us.

I stumbled across this book today after seeing a tweet about it. Oh My God What Happened And What Should I Do? It's a neat book about digital marketing, well-written, concise, and informative - well worth picking up. What's really clever is that you can buy it for money from Amazon, or buy it for free if you tweet about it. Err, no-brainer. I'll have it for nothing, thanks. And because I'm lazy, I'll leave their default tweet "This Book helps you to move into the Digital era of awesomeness. Download it for free: http://bit.ly/4R9rth" instead of writing "I haven't actually read this book yet but it looks cool and it's free if I write this tweet." Cunning, huh? And they've shifted 150,000 copies that way. Made no money, true, but they've built an audience very, very fast.
Now this is something I like. Your Taxpayer Receipt, courtesy of the White House. Punch in some data on how much tax you paid, and it'll tell you where all the money is going; how much on defence, hospitals, schools, etc. More governments should do that.
Did you know Newfoundland has its own time zone? They're an hour and a half ahead of Florida.
Got writer's block? Deal with it.

I appear to have done something bad to my foot, which got slightly squished during the kitten-trapped-under-garage-door incident a few weeks ago. It feels much like it did when I fell off a motorcycle many years ago - not broken, but possibly a cracked bone, which hurts like hell and isn't going away. I've now got it bandaged up, and am trying to walk or stand on it as little as possible.

At least we have a mostly quiet weekend ahead of us: the main event is Ginger and Joe's Florida wedding reception on Saturday. They got married last weekend up north, and are having a second do down here this weekend.

We're also meeting with a bunch of people to kick around ideas for future art shows in Orlando. There's been a sudden resurgence of enthusiasm, mostly thanks to Ben Sawinski, and a whole load of new opportunities have started popping up.

Apart from that, I'm thinking I'll spend the weekend with my foot propped up, either catching up on movies, reading, or maybe even writing something at long last... Well, when I say writing, I mean other than my blog (6 articles this week), corporate stuff (28 articles) and emails (178 since Tuesday). I mean like maybe a story, or a script, or some lyrics.

Oh, and if you were wondering, we never made it to the Colombian restaurant. There's still a pile of paperwork on the office floor, so we haven't earned it yet. Damn.

Now you can go and watch Gagarin orbit the earth.

Stuff'n'nonsense #5

2011-04-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

I've got quite a flood of links for you today, so I'll try to keep the commentary to a minimum.

Studio Ghibli theme songs get extreme heavy metal covers. Don't believe me? Then click through to see the Totoro theme tune like never before.

Ummm, I'm not sure anything can really follow that. But I'll try.

How about this? 17 Images That Will Ruin Your Childhood. Yes, they will. I'll just say "Greedo in high heels," and leave it at that.
Or there's this: IF FOX NEWS EXISTED THROUGHOUT HISTORY. Terrorists strike Boston Harbour. (Dear Blogger, that is not a typo. There is a "u" in harbour.)
And try this from Vintage Sleaze: highly questionable gags from the 50s, which apparently come from vending machines installed in mens' rooms (before condom machines, I assume). This is about the cleanest of them. The rest are NSFW if you live in the 1950s.

Staying on the subject of gags, here's a piece about the Muzzles, annual awards by the Thomas Jefferson Center for those who restrict free speech. (Did you see what I did there?) I do appreciate living in a country where freedom of speech is taken so seriously, even if it does allow nutters to have a platform. (Insert Voltaire quote here for extra credit if you're a high school student.)
The headline on this BBC news piece amused me. FBI closes in on zombie PC gang. Oh come on, tell me you didn't have the same mental image as me...
I reckon we need some good news for a change. Two new Bond films! With the catchy titles of Bond 23 and Bond 24. Let's hope they're more Casino Royale than Quantum of Solace.
I like a lot of what Seth Godin has to say. Today's blog entry is a positive spin on self-criticism and how to deal with what went wrong. What did you learn from your experience? Nothing new, just well put.
Local filmmakers, check this out. 48 hour film project is coming to Orlando in November.
And finally (well, as regards links), check out this concept art from Gates, the new Webcomic from Heavy Metal. Just remember, this is the stuff that wasn't cool enough to make it into the final thing. So what does that say about the stuff that did make it in?

Miscellaneous musings:

Why isn't there a link from IMDB to Netflix to say "add this to my queue"?
Sheesh, there's a lot of wordage when you're reading stuff from educationalists. It's like someone took an academic and crossed them with a politician and corporate jargoneer. I have a theory:
Those that can, do.
Those that understand, teach.
Those that can't, get big government grants to pontificate incomprehensibly to the others.
Best quote of last night. "The thing is, when I Google for "slave girls in cages" I can tell people it's work, and it's true!" NSFW really doesn't apply here, does it? I guess that's what you expect when our Ferox shows end up being described in the local newspaper as "semi-scandalous playful perversion". I'm still ridiculously proud of that.
So... how come Anna hadn't even heard of the Gor books until yesterday, let alone read one?
Emmanuelle is now on Netflix streaming, so we watched it. Well, Anna hadn't seen it. There are some quite surprising gaps in her education. It was even more terrible than I remember, full of pretentious pseudo-philosophical blathering. We fast forwarded through most of it. Gwendoline, also be Just Jaeckin, is much more fun.
Last night's tapas cooking worked well. I finally managed to cook an aubergine (eggplant) dish that I was satisfied with.
And lastly, really lastly now, we went to an art show at Sip tonight by some dude I've never heard of but who seems to be a bit of a local celebrity in some circles. Walls full of these things. Kinda cool, doncha think?

Stuff'n'nonsense #4

2011-04-13T16:04:00.001-07:00

I'm going to kick today's S&N off with a real blast from my past. I thought this had disappeared from the Internet for ever, but I should know better. Nothing vanishes from the Internet. This is a movie I made 11 years ago with Robert Llewellyn (Kryten from Red Dwarf). Okay, so that's the hype. The reality is that it was a short promo movie for a mobile phone game I designed at nGame. It was written and created by Charlie Dancey and Pavel Douglas (whose main claim to fame, in my eyes at least, is that he was in a Bond movie), and I had a small bit part, doing an off-screen voice. Music was by Manny Elias from Tears for Fears.

Anyway, without further ado, I present to you... Alien Fish Exchange: The Movie.

I'm actually really proud of that game. People loved it, even though it was a silly little WAP game which eventually made it onto interactive TV in several countries. In fact, one person loved it so much that he recreated the entire game, and you can go right ahead and download it. (Disclaimer:I haven't played it, so I have no idea whether it's at all faithful to the original or whether it'll turn your computer into a pile of steaming slime.)

Right, that's enough of the shameless self-promotion. On with the random bits and pieces.

Film news: it looks like there's finally going to be a film version of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but mostly I'm thinking that's good, because I wanted to like the books, but found them totally unreadable. My dad loved them, and tried to get me to read them, but I just couldn't get through them.
Mind you, he also had a complete collection of Gor books. I did read those. Several times. I preferred them to Anne McCaffrey.
Errr, moving swiftly on...
Ah, Dita von Teese in a Wonderbra. Much better.
Now click on through to watch the new Wonderbra TV advert for their strapless bras. It's a great advert. And, as one commenter said, if this really works on my DDs, then I want two in every colour they do. So, whether you're a lady or a gentleman, click on through and enjoy.
So you want to make a movie. How hard can it be? Check out this wonderful flowchart from Canal+. It's pretty much spot on, and very funny. And click around to find a bunch of similar ones from the same designer.
And more silly infographics (who the hell invented that word anyway?). How men and women perceive colour. Guilty as charged, m'lud.
Tonight's cooking has turned into something of an extravaganza. Singaporean fish curry for tonight, then I'm starting a tapas frenzy ready for lunch tomorrow. Chorizo & chickpea salad, red peppers with capers, chorizo in red wine, aubergine dip, mixed bean dip, and tuna, egg & potato salad. At least I won't have to cook for the next two days, apart from the bread. Well, that's the theory, anyway.

OK, that's it. Back to the kitchen. But let me leave you with a Gorean slave girl, in memory of my adolescence.

Stuff'n'nonsense #3

2011-04-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

I don't really feel much like blogging today. Today can be pretty much summed up with the acronym wombat: waste of money, brains and time. But still, I'll share with you the goodness I've found around the Net today.

But first, some news. We confirmed yesterday that there will be no more Ferox shows at Taste for the foreseeable future. We're going ahead with the April 29 show as planned, but after that, we'll be looking for other venues. Taste gave us a great start last April, but it's time to find somewhere else. We'll let you know as soon as we have anything definite.

50 years of space today. The Russians still regard it as a priority, unlike the West. And check out how they boasted about it back then. Meanwhile, our space program is more concerned with prog rock - Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson will be doing a live duet with an astronaut. That's cool, and all, but hardly earth-shattering.
So why aren't we doing anything in space? Because we're spending abso-bloody-lutely everything we've got on the military. Check out this little chart. Don't need schools, hospitals, roads, scientific research, or any of that Commie crap - we need MORE WEAPONS!
The military accounts for 20% of the American budget, and it's going up year on year. That's about 1.4 trillion dollars. (I can't even say that out loud without doing a Dr Evil face, it's such an absurd number.) Coincidentally, the US budget deficit increased by 1.4 trillion dollars last year...
To put that in perspective, the US accounts for over 40% of the entire world's military spending. That's six times more than China. Eleven times more than the UK. Twelve times more than Russia. Over one thousand times more than Libya.
I honestly can't conceive of a situation where anyone would need that much military power, unless they seriously expected to take on the whole of the rest of the world in a slam-bang knock-down fight to the finish. And if that happened, it would go nuclear anyway, and it wouldn't matter who won.
If you want to reduce government spending, then the tea partiers should start here. And here's The Economist agreeing with me.
(P.S. Note to the UK. Why the hell do we need to be spending that much on our military? We are the third biggest spender. Do we really need to be outspending Russia, for crying out loud? Get rid of the war toys, and fix the damn country's real problems. We're not the Empire any more.)
Okay, enough of that. Let's get weird. You're probably aware of angler fish, possibly the ugliest creatures on the planet. But did you have any idea how totally weird the male angler fish is? He kisses the female, his lips turn to glue, his face melts, and... no, I'm not going to spoil the surprise with what happens next. You'll have to click through, but believe me, it is possibly the grossest thing in the entire animal kingdom.
Writers - you'll love this. The Periodic Table of Storytelling. All the cliches, beautifully categorised. Print it out, and put it by your desk.
Book time. Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe. If you click that, you can get it for free. Whee! Best bit of the book for me was this:
"It's all about being an advocate for the user. I observe what users do, and how they do it, figure out what they're trying to to, and then boss the engineers around, trying to get them to remove the barriers they've erected because engineers are all high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff."
That's what I used to do, before some bastard turned me into a sales and marketing guy. (That means you still observe the users, but the engineers tell you to fuck off, because it's only marketing, and nobody likes marketing.)
And how's about this for a book? If it's the way comics are going, I like it. Nemesis, the Motion Comic.
And lastly, wtf has happened to Facebook? You now can't like, share or comment anything which didn't originate from Facebook itself. Check out the screenshot - there's no way to interact with that post!
So if you're posting from Twitter or su.pr or some other feed system, or using a "share on Facebook" link on a site, nobody can respond to what you write. I'm really hoping that's a glitch, because that seriously reduces the number of potential conversations, which seems to be totally against the spirit of social media.

I'll end with this little snippet from Freda. My tribe. I love you all.

However your life develops after you come together with your tribe, you can be assured that its members will stand at your side. On the surface, your tribe may seem to be nothing more than a loose-knit group of friends and acquaintances to whom you ally yourself. Yet when you look deeper, you will discover that your tribe grounds you and provides you with a sense of community that ultimately fulfills many of your most basic human needs.

Stuff'n'nonsense #2

2011-04-11T13:17:00.000-07:00

As Vaughn said earlier today, Facebook status detox is no joke. Well, I've resisted all day, and here's what I would have posted if I'd just kept clicking the SHARE button, plus some odds and ends thrown in. There's, uh, quite a lot of it.

Tomorrow (or maybe today by the time you read this) is the 50th anniversary of Gagarin going into space. Here's a few things you may not have known about Gagarin's flight.
Returning to a theme from yesterday, it's actually quite depressing in some ways. Half a century in space, and we're still amazed by space shuttle launches. It was designed about 40 years ago. I think we've lost the plot somewhere. Weren't we supposed to have space stations, space hotels, space elevators, and be mining the asteroid belts on our way to our first colonies by now?
And why isn't the day being marked with some huge fanfare? It's one of the biggest milestones in human achievement. Yes, I know he was a Russian. So what? This is bigger than politics. The man was a true hero of the world, not just of the Soviet Union.
Got a problem with wind power? Don't like those ugly windmills? Well, here's what the Union of Concerned Scientists has to say to you. And so do I. I would have loved for someone to put a windmill on the ridge behind my house when I lived in Somerset. And here, too, if they could make them hurricane-resistant.

Frankly, I think windmills look a lot prettier than power stations, they don't fill the air with smoke, and they don't explode or dump vast amounts of radiation into the environment when things go wrong. If I were running the show, I'd have windmills and solar panels in everyone's back yard. Seriously. On every roof and every hillside.

Some days, you realize life really is a joke. Here's a great selection from Cracked - one of my favorite sites these days - of absurd jokes that came true. Stupid things like, err, Ronald Reagan becoming President. Like that would ever happen!
Speaking of absurdity, check out these fashions from the NY fashion week. Really? People get paid to design, make and wear this crap? Click through and be aghast.
On a more serious note, this should give pro-democracy activists cause for concern. The Egyptians recently got rid of their corrupt dictator who wouldn't tolerate dissent, and replaced him with an interim ruling council made up of the Armed Forces. A 26-year old pacifist blogger dared to criticize them, and their immediate response was to jail him for three years. So, that's an improvement then, is it?
And staying on the subject of Egypt's corrupt dictator, I was amused, in a not very amused way, to read that Mubarak has threatened to sue anyone who accuses him of corruption. He'd like it known that all his money - all $30 billion of it - was legitimately earned during his time in office, and he did not use his political office to aid him. You have to admire a man who can make $30bn in 30 years as a hobby, don't you?
Last night, I read an L. Ron Hubbard book. No, don't laugh. I'm not turning into a Scientologist. Fear is a horror novel from his early writing career, and it's actually quite good, in a sort of Ray Bradbury / Robert Bloch way. I'm tempted to find some more of his earlier works.
On the playlist today, Bob Dylan's Desire popped up. I've never liked Dylan, apart from that one album, but I haven't heard it since my school days. I was pleased to find that I still enjoyed it, and ended up singing - well, humming, since I couldn't remember the words - along to One More Cup of Coffee. I couldn't get into any of his other stuff, though. I then spent the rest of the morning listening to the Rolling Stones, who, believe it or not I barely know other than the classics.
I'm really pleased that finally my series of blog posts on using Moviestorm in schools has started. It was a lot of fun to write, and I enjoyed thinking up ways to use Moviestorm. I've got the first few in the queue, and there's about another 30 half-written. I'm now hoping to get round to the other series I'm working on, which is a series of exercises aimed at film students who want to practice their techniques. The first few of those are part written, just waiting for me to shoot the videos that accompany them.
Okay, here comes the food section. For dinner last night we ended up at Smokey Bones. They've redone the menu: a few new items, and a lot of things no longer available, but the food's still good. However, we discovered that in the same plaza there's a Colombian and a Peruvian restaurant. I know next to nothing about South American food, so I'm quite intrigued by both of these places. (And no, they don't have guinea pig on the menu. Damn.)
We've allotted the whole of tomorrow to Draco Felis paperwork, and we've promised ourselves that as a reward for getting everything filed, we'll treat ourselves to dinner at the Colombian place, Los Portales. Just the two of us. We need it.
Tonight, we ate at a Polish place, Polonia, on 17/92 up near us. Well recommended - tasty food, good portions, classic Polish dishes. The kiszka (blood pudding) was surprisingly good, and the wazanki (noodles, bacon, kielbasa & cabbage) was absolutely delicious. Good selection of Polish beer too.
And still on the subject of food, here's a great article about expiration dates. You know when it says Best Before or Use By? That does not mean the food is bad after that date. Food producers and retailers are making you throw away perfectly good food by making you think it's no longer edible. And different states and countries have different regulations, which confuses things still further. Obviously, don't eat food that has spoiled, but don't just go by the date on the packet.

And I'm going to end with a rant. Kids having mobile phones - it's a great idea. It's reassuring to know they can call you, or you can call them (assuming they remember to charge the bloody thing). But what's not a good idea is allowing kids to make arrangements with each other, instead of adults talking to each other. If Child wants to visit Friend, then telling Child to call Friend and sort it out is an absolute, guaranteed recipe for disaster. Here's what will happen:

Friend won't speak to Parent about this proposed visit. Child will arrive unexpectedly, and Parent will wonder what the hell is going on. The situation will be exacerbated when it transpires that Friend invited Child to stay for a meal, sleep over or join them on a family outing, without Parent's knowledge. Parent will freak out, and Self (or Spouse) will have to go and fetch Child, probably at most inconvenient time, leading to tears all round.
Child will not relay vital information back to Self. Either child will arrive without necessary item for family outing (cash for ticket, bathing suit, etc), or Self will fail to arrive at the agreed collection time, due to not knowing about it.
Child and Friend will agree a time and place to meet up that doesn't work for Self or Parent. One family will end up hanging around waiting for the other, get irritated, and day will be ruined. Alternatively, Child and Friend will make arrangements without consulting Self or Parent, and then get hugely disappointed when told it's not possible.

The answer's simple. Any arrangement made between Child and Friend is deemed to be meaningless. It only counts if it's agreed between Self (or Spouse) and Parent. So don't cop out by getting the kids to sort stuff out. Deal with it. It will save hassle in the long run.

OK, that's me done for the day. More stuff'n'nonsense tomorrow, probably involving food, spaceships, books, and everyday life.

Stuff'n'nonsense

2011-04-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

In an effort to cut down on the number of things I'm posting to Facebook, I'm going to try compiling a lot of my daily blatherings into a single blog post, which will make its way over to FB eventually. Of course, since I'm now not limited by FB's post length, these can be a little more wordy, rather than the typical semi-cryptic pronouncements.

Birthday weekend is mostly over. Teenage parties - well, we survived, and let's leave it at that. Most of the kids have gone home now, and we're looking forward to some peace later. But first, we have a family dinner somewhere, not sure where, either Smokey Bones or Colorado Steak House. Frankly, after Cheesecake Factory on Thursday, and pizza & wings yesterday, I have no desire to eat anything at all today except fruit.
Speaking of food (as I often do), I made a dozen deviled eggs yesterday. I did three lots: some fairly standard, some "Cajun" style with BBQ sauce, and some with feta and green onion. Yum.
I've just come back from taking Darien out driving for what seems like the first time in months. He's now old enough to take his test and start driving on his own, which is strange, and a little bit scary. (And, in a few months, Rhys will be old enough to do the same. It's things like that which make me feel old.) I decided it was time to get away from the residential backstreets, and so we headed off up 17/92, and onto some of the busier roads. He did just fine after a shaky start. Now we need to work driving practice into our regular routine, and then he can get himself out and about, and start thinking about getting a job.
We watched The Lightning Thief last night. I enjoyed it, but I have to agree with Darien that it was nowhere near as good as the book. I'd really recommend the first book, though I got bored with the later ones. The movie was okay, but suffered from all the usual problems of movie adaptations; it captured the essence of the story, looked great, but some bits were missed out, some things were changed, and it didn't really match what was in my imagination most of the time. Worth watching, but be prepared for disappointment if it doesn't match up to expectations.
This afternoon, I'm enjoying The Right Stuff. Amazingly, I've never seen it before, although I've read the book. (This, you may note, is a common theme with my film reviews.) It's really hitting home, after living near Canaveral, visiting Kennedy Space Center and watching the last few shuttle launches. As I'm watching it, I keep thinking, "I saw that craft, I saw those spacesuits, I saw that photograph they just posed for," and so on. I've sat in replicas of some of those capsules, and they're unbelievably tiny and claustrophobic.
What's really poignant is Gus Grissom's constant comment, "You know what makes this bird fly? Funding. No bucks, no Buck Rogers." And now NASA's bucks are all gone. No more Buck Rogers.
That was an era where America had real pride in being able to do something amazing. The rest of the world looked on in respect and awe, as America went faster, higher, further, and where no man had gone before. (Well, apart from that little hiccup with Gagarin, of course.) America's primacy wasn't just about being able to drop cruise missiles on anyone they disliked, and dominate the world by military power. It's a real shame those days are gone. Hamstringing NASA is taking away more from America than most people realize. I'm just glad I'm here to see the end of the glory days.
Have you ever noticed the increasing use of the ellipsis these days? (That's a ... for those of you who aren't punctuation fiends.) I reckon it's because we're constrained to 140 or 240 characters when posting to Twitter or Facebook. The ellipsis has come to stand for "Well, you get the idea, but I've run out of space to complete this thought, so you'll have to fill it in yourself..."
The MaMachinima International Festival, to be held in Amsterdam and Second Life in June, is now accepting submissions. There's a FB event for it. Any engine/tool/platform is acceptable.
I still love my Kindle, but I'm actually reading more books on paper than electronically. The Kindle's great for short books that would never get a printed version, and for obscure things that libraries don't have but I don't want to own. I just finished Rider Haggard's Heart of the World, which is about an Englishman who falls in love with an exotic foreign lady called Maya.
Also, I finally read Anna Mercury, Vol 1. Warren Ellis writes about a buxom, leather-clad redhead who saves the world. It was fun. Comics really don't work on Kindle.
We'll be away for Anna's birthday (and our wedding anniversary), but we're going to have a Jungle House birthday party for her some time around Labor Day weekend for anyone not going to DragonCon. It'll be a costume party, probably no specific theme, just come up with something cool. (Any of you who see a connection between these last two posts - no comment!) And yes, there will be a Jungle House July 4th party this year. We'll make FB events and send out invites at some point soonish.

And a few short snippets to round things off:

Here's wishing Niki a good trip south. Look forward to seeing you, buddy!
I really want to go shooting with Vaughn soon.
Currently trying to decide whether to switch to Virgin Mobile instead of AT&T. Anyone round here tried Virgin?
I think I'm finally bored of Civilization.
I miss my kids. Every day.

And that'll do. That's quite a lot for 24 hours. For those of you on FB, let me know what you think of having one long post instead of a barrage of little status updates. You may find it works better if you click through to the original post.

Why I am not a Buddhist

2011-03-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I seriously asked myself whether 2011 would be the year I came out and admitted to myself that I am, actually, a Buddhist. My religious/spiritual beliefs are somewhat confusing, even to me. I’ve always felt somewhat religious, even though I know that it’s all a crock, and I’m pretty much a hardcore rationalist. However, no religion I’ve ever found actually seems to suit me.

I’m a bit pagan, in that I do tend to observe the Celtic seasonal festivals, but that’s more to do with marking the passage of time than anything mystical. I’ve messed around with various occult systems, and have found them to be, on occasion, a good way to deal with psychological issues and personal development. (I don’t, for example, believe that casting spells can have any effect; on the other hand, making talismans in a ritual fashion can concentrate the mind wonderfully and help you to focus on the problem you’re trying to address.) I’m definitely not a believer in “big church” religion, and I’m totally opposed to following religious laws that can’t be justified in a modern context, no matter how sensible they were when first conceived.

Since I was about 13, though, I’ve had a fascination with Buddhism, particularly Zen. What I liked most about it was that it was much more about understanding your own mind and learning to live in the world than anything I normally think of as a religion. The Dalai Lama couldn’t be much more different to the Pope – he’s always talking about compassion, kindness, and understanding, not calling down damnation on those who doesn’t follow some archaic teachings, or who follow them in a slightly different way.

Earlier this year, I went to an Open Day at one of our local Buddhist temples. (The Chinese one, not the Thai one in the picture above.). As always, I was struck by the peace and tranquility, and by the friendliness of everyone, priests and visitors alike. After wandering around for a while, I figured that maybe after thirty years, I should just stop wavering and try being a practicing Buddhist. So of course, I wavered. I loaded myself up with all the free literature I could find, and decided to read a bit more before committing myself. After all, I know plenty about Buddhism, but very little about what it means to be a Buddhist.

Two months later, I’ve decided it’s not for me after all. Of all the religions I’ve flirted with, Buddhism’s still the one I feel most comfortable with, but I wouldn’t be honest with myself if I said it was something I can actually accept. Here’s why.

Belief in authority: many Buddhist teachings rely on the words of past masters. It feels like some old-time school where all you’re required to do is to learn selected quotes from Aristotle or Aquinas and parrot them back unquestioningly. That’s not enough for me. Just because Lama so-and-so said something doesn’t, to my mind, make it true. However, that’s often all you get.
Too many myths: traditional Buddhism is full of mythology. There’s a firm belief in ghosts and other supernatural elements. While I love myths and stories, I can’t make myself believe in them. (Strangely, I have very little problem accepting the idea of karma, but deities as literal beings? Not for me.)
Belief in parables: a typical Buddhist teaching method is the parable. Someone does something bad and misfortune befalls him; someone else does something good and he is rewarded. Those kind of stories are fine as kids’ fairy tales, but that’s not something I can accept as part of a serious belief system. It’s one thing when they’re presented as allegory (which Christian parables generally are), but not when they’re presented as literal truth.
Reliance on lists: the final straw for me was the extensive lists enumerating all sorts of things. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but those annoyed me. For example, one book I had listed the 80 characteristics of a Bodhisattva. They just seemed to me like lists of adjectives, especially when they started repeating themselves (e.g. neat hair, tidy hair, clean hair, well-trimmed hair). That seems to me like one thing: Bodhisattvas look after their hair. What’s the point in making me learn four ways to say the same thing? It just felt, well, childish. And then they started listing clean nails, well-trimmed nails, clean face, clean skin, clean feet, and so on. Okay, okay, I get it! Bodhisattvas have personal hygiene!
It was the same with various other lists; they didn’t seem to tell me anything, just weird metaphysical categorization of things for no apparent reason. Like lists of postures you can adopt while meditating (sitting, lying, standing, kneeling, walking, etc) or times of day you can meditate (before dawn, at dawn, after dawn, mid-morning, etc), which basically boil down to “you can do this any way you like, any time you like”. It feels like false wisdom – lots of words, signifying nothing.

Now, I’m absolutely not knocking Buddhism. If the world had more practicing Buddhists in it, it would be a much nicer place. I still believe that the Buddhist principles of compassion, duty, and awareness are the way I want to live my life. I just can’t truthfully say that I believe in the religious trappings with which those principles are presented.

I’ll still have my smiling Buddhas by my desk and by my bed, though. Right next to the Ganesha, the mandalas, the Tree of Life, and the Celtic talismans. There’s something in all religions. Just not the religious bit. Not for me, anyway.

The Maiya effect

2011-03-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

My wife is awesome. Now, if you’ve read much of my stuff, you’ll know I don’t use that word lightly. When I say "awesome", I don’t mean it like “woah, that was an awesome pizza, dude,” or, “remember Thundercats? That was an awesome show!” No, in my lexicon, awesome is reserved for those things that totally take your breath away and leave you absolutely stunned that you’ve been privileged to witness such a thing. Like the images I sometimes see of space (such as this incredible shot from Cassini of Saturn eclipsing the Sun). Like watching a spaceship hurtle into the sky on a column of flame. Things that make me feel small and humble, and at the same time proud to be here to see them.

So, returning to the start of the previous paragraph, my wife is, indeed awesome. I’m not talking about her magnificent cleavage, though that does, indeed take my breath away on a regular basis. And, it seems, that of many other people. Hell, her boobs even have their own Facebook fan club. (Not kidding!) I’m not talking about her artwork, and her fantastic creative vision, though that was what drew us together in the first place.

No, what makes my wife awesome is the effect she has on people, me included. Ever since I’ve known her, I’ve watched her as she inspires people to do amazing things, go beyond their limits and even completely change their lives. And, which is more awesome, she doesn’t even do it deliberately. She doesn’t actually do anything. She just has to be there, and this incredible effect just seems to rub off on people.

Over the last few months, several people have written to her thanking her for what she’s done for them. Some have become artists after meeting her. Some have dealt with depression. In most cases, all Anna’s actually done is to put on an art show and be there, as a friendly, genial host with an incredible smile and a welcoming manner. Sometimes she’s simply looked at someone’s work, costume, or make-up and said something complimentary.

In my case, she just smiled at me the first time we met, and I was a goner from that moment. Then we had a long transatlantic Skype conversation one night, and I decided to get off my increasingly morose ass, deal with my personal problems and shyness, and impress the hell out of this woman. And I’m a much better and happier person for it. Just one meeting with Anna is all it takes.

In fact, the "Maiya effect" is even more powerful than that. She doesn’t even have to be there in person. It apparently works remotely too, even on complete strangers. When I first encountered, she had several thousand friends on MySpace, and hundreds more clamoring to join the throng. Quite literally, barely a week went by without someone messaging to her and telling her how they’d been inspired by her to do something. Usually it was something creative, but sometimes they’d tell her how they’d suddenly felt compelled to do something totally crazy, like go travelling, change their job, change their relationship. The only contact she had ever had with them was usually adding them to her friends list, but somehow just that ephemeral etheric contact was enough.

I don’t know how she does it. You can call it charisma, call it magic, call it what you will. All I know is that whatever Anna does, it’s amazing, and I’m proud and happy that when she changed my life, she brought me into hers.

Photo by Jim Carchidi

A quiet week

2011-02-27T07:48:00.000-08:00

So, this was supposed to be a quiet week of relaxation. The two weeks after my Mum went home were completely manic, catching up on work, and organising a video shoot for a Moviestorm demo. This week, I only had one day's work booked, so I figured I'd just chill, read a couple of books, and listen to some music. The most strenuous thing on my to-do list was organising the playlists on my iTunes and figure out exactly what's in that 200+Gb of mp3s we possess between us.

Didn't quite turn out like that.

I spent Monday designing characters for a Spanish video game, then in the evening went out to Kissimmee to see my old friend and colleague from the UK Online days, Simon Bisson, who was in town for a conference. By the time I'd got lost on the way to find the Five Guys at Dr Phillips, it ended up as a 100-mile round trip.

Tuesday I got stuck into editing and doing an e-book conversion for a book by friend and former Moviestorm colleague Julian Gold, as well as proofreading the final version of the e-book of Ong's Hat, by friend and Hukilau colleague Joseph Matheny.

On Wednesday, I was completely destroyed by a migraine. Even so, I managed to check through the first cut of the Moviestorm video and get feedback to the editor, and do another sizeable chunk of Julian's book.

Thursday didn't go to plan at all, and I got practically no work done at all. I went out to Titusville first thing in the morning with Jim Carchidi, and spent the day wandering round with him as he took photos of the shuttle launch for the local press. After an amazingly quick drive back (a mere 60 minutes), I made curry and we had a relaxing evening drinking beer in the hot tub. I passed on going to the late night Flirtini Foxxes burlesque show (largely because I can't handle the smoke in the Peacock), and settled down with Anna to watch a movie. Ten minutes in, we got a call from a friend who wanted us to check out his new venue as a potential place to host some Ferox events, so we ended up wandering round an almost deserted club at midnight.

Picture by Jim Carchidi

On Friday, I finally finished converting Julian's book, and Simon came over for lunch before flying back to England. In the evening we went out to Frankie's Apartment E show at Taste, and then on to see the Hindu Cowboys at Drake's Bar. Fantastic music, and an excellent venue - I had a really enjoyable time.

Yesterday, we went kayaking on Lake Maitland. We had plans for the evening, but kayaking took longer than expected, so we ended up going out to a steakhouse and then, finally, watching a movie! (Observation: 9½ Weeks is horribly dated and epitomizes everything I hated about the 80s.)

Photo by Anna

And today, I've just proof-read and done the ebook conversion on a book by Jim Carchidi. And that's not all - this evening, we've got places to be, people to see...

In the middle of all that, I still managed to sort out my iTunes playlists (55 playlists, 32786 songs, 100.2 days), go to the gym three times, read five books (loved People of the Longhouse and Arrowsmith, the others were meh), listen to more music than I've done in ages, finish a piece of art I've been messing with for weeks (still not happy with it, though), write two FML scripts, and work on the business plan for Fas Ferox, which may, entirely possibly, get going in earnest very soon.

And that was my "quiet week".

Still, maybe next week will be a quiet week. Apart from work, I've got nothing much planned, except going to Bike Week in Daytona with Jim, two art shows, going to a movie with the Stephensons, re-writing the outline of a 72-issue story, reading some other books in the North Americans series, researching more bits of mythology, doing the maintenance on the air conditioning, and taking Darien out driving... did I forget anything?

No? Good. Then maybe I'll have time to play Assassin's Creed.

I'm going to eat everything

2011-02-22T10:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am. I'm going to eat everything in the house - or as near to it as I can manage. Once I'm left with a packet of tapioca, half a jar of black olives, a can of green beans, a jar of raspberry jam, and six shelves of herbs and spices, I think that might tax my ingenuity, and my digestive system, just that little bit more than I can manage.

There's a reason for it. Both of us are planning on changing our diets quite significantly over the next few months. We're aiming to eat much lighter food, more fruits and vegetables, more fish, and much less red meat, fat, dairy, sugar, salt and so on. I've been going through recipe books, old and new, and looking for the sort of recipes I normally skim over, planning out a whole new menu for us both that is healthy, tasty, nutritious, affordable, and fun to cook. I know I need to do something about my food intake, but I'm not going to stop liking the stuff.

It's actually really enjoyable: I'm finding new things to cook, new flavor combinations, new ingredients, and new styles of cuisine. What I'd like to do is actually use this as a way to change our entire lifestyle. I'm thinking about focusing my main meal of the day at lunchtime, rather than evening, and going for something like a mezze or a Mediterranean-style spread, with a variety of dips and small dishes. Then I can take a break in the afternoon and go back to work in the evening. Anna usually works in the evenings anyway, since that's when artists are available, so it makes sense for us to work at the same time if we can, rather than me finishing just as she's getting started.

Anyway, as part of this process, I'm planning to use up everything in our cupboards, and then restock from scratch with new food when I've figured out the new menu. I reckon we've got enough to feed ourselves for maybe a month, perhaps a little more. We've got loads of things that we bought ages ago, and haven't used. Some of it's probably in danger of going out of date, so I might as well use it now instead of throwing it away in a few months.

It'll be interesting to see what I come up with. And I've got a lot of ramen noodles to look forward to.

Holy Land Experience

2011-02-20T19:34:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, we went to the Holy Land Experience, just to see what's actually behind those fake Roman walls.

Well, it was an experience, there’s no denying that. It’s one of Orlando’s lesser known theme parks. (Well, legally, HLE is a church, which means it doesn’t have to pay taxes, even though it rakes in an absolute fortune. Nice deal if you can get it.)

It was pretty much what you’d expect from a theme park. Plastic religious stuff, presentations about as sophisticated as an elementary school play, overpriced refreshments, and people dressed up in silly costumes. That, however, isn’t what interested me.

What I was mainly there for was the people-watching and to understand the way Christianity is presented in America. There was one huge church group there, and it was refreshing to see that many of the teenagers were giggling as much as we were when faced with giant plastic whales, cardboard cut-out Jesus, and a gift shop full of cheesy souvenirs.

On the other hand, there were people simply in awe at the re-enactment of the Tabernacle in the wilderness when the Ark of the Covenant was revealed (was I really the only person in the room having an Indiana Jones moment?) and they actually broke into applause when paintings of various prophets were unveiled at the end of a tour chronicling the development of the Bible. And when it came to the Passion, many of them turned away in genuine tears at the crucifixion, and there were shouts of Hallelujah when Jesus came back like a disco star at the end complete with shiny robes and finger pointed to heaven like John Travolta.

I’ve never witnessed that level of religious fervor before, and it was truly bizarre to see it in a place that was obviously so commercialized and fake. I can understand it at somewhere like the Wailing Wall, Lourdes, Mecca or somewhere with actual religious significance, but at a cheesy 15-minute performance at a theme park in Florida?

Wow.

Now, I’m pretty well read when it comes to religion, even though I’m not a Christian. My mum, who was there with me, did divinity and theology at university, and is even more familiar with the source materials. The Christianity presented at HLE is a complete distortion of and is riddled with lies, myths, and completely fallacious logic.

For example, at the exhibition of the history of the Bible, they showed us some Mesopotamian cuneiform writings, and explained how these proved the literal truth of the Bible. There was one tablet which chronicled Sennacherib’s destruction of a Hebrew army. This corresponds exactly with the Biblical account of the same battle, which proves that the Bible is historically accurate, and therefore accurate in all other respects. There’s just one small difference between the Assyrian and Jewish accounts; the Assyrians say they won the battle, the Jews say the Angel of the Lord slaughtered the Assyrians. This, apparently, not only attests to the truth of the Bible, but proves the superiority of God. To which the audience all nodded and praised the Lord.

Let’s just review that for a second. What they actually said was, “We can prove the Bible is true because it completely disagrees with all other historical sources?” Yet nobody questioned the logic. Not to mention the fact that even if the Bible did agree with the historical sources in this one respect, that does not mean that the rest of the book is automatically true.

Or how about the statement that the Bible was copied by hand many times, but there was never a single error or change? That’s just provably false, as any Biblical scholar will tell you. But this “fact” was put forward as proof that the Bible is truly miraculous, and again, the audience applauded and praised the Lord some more. And they didn’t even notice when two minutes later they were told about the different versions of the Gospels...

And their version of Christianity doesn’t even follow the damn Bible anyway. Where were the two thieves at the crucifixion? What happened to the bit of the story where Pilate offered to let Jesus go, but the people chose to release someone else? Conveniently snipped in the interests of drama. And those plastic animals going into the Ark two by two? That’s not actually what it says in the book.

The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female. (Genesis 7, 1-3)

And of course, all those paintings of Jewish prophets and apostles? Not a trace of a Semitic gene among them. They were all blond, with blow-dried hair, pale-skinned, and looking like Charlton Heston. It’s completely pandering to Western stereotypes.

Basically this is Christianity taken from a Victorian children’s Bible and turned into easily digestible family entertainment, based on misreadings of the texts and fallacious extrapolations dressed up to sound like learned teachings. It was exactly what I expected, but it still bemuses me that over half the people in this country believe that it’s the literal truth, it’s the word of God, and it’s the cornerstone of their faith.

That’s the true horror of the Holy Land Experience.

A cautionary tale: continued

2011-02-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I wrote about how Anna lost a painting following a local art show. Since then, we've heard from several people telling us of similar experiences at the same venue. One person who had worked at Tatame for a while told us that it was common practice amongst staff there to take a piece they liked and tell the artists it had been stolen by patrons. On other occasions, if art wasn't collected immediately it was removed from the walls, the staff assumed it was abandoned and helped themselves to it. Of course, the artists never got compensated for their stolen work.

I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but certainly we'd have taken a different attitude towards both the venue and the owners had we known of its reputation.

So this leads me to add a third piece of common sense advice to artists to what I suggested yesterday (get insurance & take a proper inventory):

Always check out the venue beforehand, and find out if other artists have had problems there. And if you don't completely trust them, don't give them your artwork.

A cautionary tale for artists

2011-02-18T14:10:00.000-08:00

In January, Anna had a show in Tatame in Winter Park, including about 40 pieces of her work from the last 15 years. It was due to stay up until early February. However, a few days before the end of January, she got a call one evening informing us that Tatame had been sold, and she needed to come and collect her artwork immediately, because remodeling was starting in the morning. At the time, we were out having dinner with my mother, who was visiting from England, and we said we couldn’t do it. They told us instead to be there first thing in the morning to collect everything, so we rearranged our plans for the next day and said we’d be there at 10am after dropping Anna’s daughter at school.

When we arrived at Tatame the next morning, work was already underway. Several pieces were already off the walls and put on one side, and the DJ booth was partially dismantled. The old and new owners were deep in paperwork, and basically told us to hurry up because everyone was waiting on us to clear the art out of the way. We loaded up everything we could see as quickly as we could, double-checked the walls, and left within 15 minutes. We knew we didn’t have everything that we’d brought, as some pieces had been sold.

Earlier this week, Anna realized one of her paintings was missing and wasn’t one that had been sold. It had been hanging on the side of the DJ booth, not on the walls, and must have been removed by the workmen before we got there. In the chaos, nobody told us where they’d put the pieces they had taken down, and we didn’t have time to do a proper inventory before leaving. Anna contacted them, but all that either the old or new owners could tell us was that there was no art on the walls after we left, and there’s no sign of it anywhere now.

And that’s it. The painting’s gone. No apology from anyone at Tatame. Nothing. (We were originally scheduled to be in St Augustine for a few days at that time, so I hate to think what would have happened if we’d actually been out of town and hadn’t been able to get there until the following day.)

I'm still kicking myself for not being my usual stubborn self and insisting on a full inventory check before we left. But I'm also annoyed at Tatame for putting us in that position in the first place.

That’s not the only problem we’ve had this year either. In January, Anna had some sculptures in a show at Red Light Red Light. When she came to collect them, in a dark parking lot one night, Anna noticed that one had a missing hand. The guy running the show looked in his car and found the broken-off hand on the seat, so clearly it had happened after he’d taken the pieces off the wall. When we got back home and looked at it again in the light, Anna noticed that the fingers on the other hand were missing too, but it was too late.

And once again, there was no apology or admission of responsibility, just a mumbled, “there you are, hope you can fix it.” Well, it’s been partially repaired, but the piece is now damaged and we’re not sure if we’re going to be able to sell it without a lot of additional work.

Sadly, there seems to be nothing we can do about it in either case. The venues disclaim any responsibility for loss or damage, so it’s entirely our problem. To be fair, this is quite standard shows of this nature, and we do exactly the same at our Friday Ferox shows. Unless we’re charging a much higher commission, we can’t afford the insurance, and neither can the venue. We’ve had work disappear from a show, and while we were prepared to make good some of the loss personally, we couldn’t do it for a high value piece. We can't really expect Tatame or RL RL to be any different.

So, artists, there’s two lessons here.

First, consider insurance for pieces you’re putting in a show. Accidents, vandalism and thefts do happen, and nobody’s going to compensate you for anything that happens to your work while it’s on display, no matter whose fault it is. If you're showing your work in a pub or restaurant, remember that they're not really looking after your precious artwork. They're far too busy selling food and drink to people - which means alcohol, spillages, and all sorts of risks.

And secondly, when you collect your work, make sure everything is accounted for, and don’t leave the building until you’re sure you’ve got everything.

Netflix PS3 upgrade is a big step backwards

2011-02-05T13:23:00.000-08:00

Netflix is getting worse and worse. Apart from the fact that the service quality is degrading (frequent stops and poor image quality, and the new imposition of the limited number of devices that nobody had ever heard of before), they've just released a pointless user interface "upgrade" for the PS3 version that makes it considerably harder to use.

This screenshot shows four different Netflix layouts. We used to have the top right one. Now we have the bottom right one.

In detail:

Instead of showing 25 films per page, they now show 8. You can only scroll through them 3 at a time instead of 5, so scrolling through lists is 50% slower. Since we have about 200 movies bookmarked, and each scroll takes about 3 seconds to perform, it takes several minutes to get through our list.
They also removed the side menu allowing you to access different genres, and now you have to scroll through 15 pages of recommendations before you even get to the categories.
Even worse, the categories are unordered and they removed the sub-genres, so you now have to scroll through *all* foreign movies (3 at a time) rather than being able to go for, say, French comedies. That means scrolling through 1500 movies instead of 50, which is simply unbearable.

In other words, it's now incredibly slow and inefficient to use, and I cannot see any benefit to the user in doing it this way. It's a typical case of an upgrade for the sake of it.

Looks like I'm not the only person who's fed up either. Here are some extracts from the PS3 forums.

I also hate the change. What I do now is use my PC to search Netflix, and then add anything that I'm interested in to my instant queue.

The new menu stinks! I've only had netflix for a week.The old menu that allowed you to browse thousands of titles in an endless amount of sub categories was awesome. It allowed me to see programming that I could never find with the stupid, useless,regressed, going backwards setup that is in place now.It is completely rediculous to have to browse titles on your pc then search them on your ps3.

OMG this new menu is on purpose! I signed up with Netflix a few days ago and i had a menu that i could drill down through genres and find exactly what i wanted, then at some point this afternoon it changed to this crap. I just got off the phone with customer service from netflix and the guy told me this was a change they made based on customers who preferred it. I told him it's terrible and that having to search on the laptop and then back to the PS3 is redundant and a waste of time.

I also find the menu change to be annoying, they took an awesome service and made it intolerable. I also must use my PC and set it in my instant queue, they need to fix it back.

I used to love Netflix. Now I'm finding myself questioning every day whether it's worth the hassle. I'm off to post a couple of formal complaints on their FB page:

New PS3 Layout

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6275848869&topic=16559

PS3 UI

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6275848869&topic=16301

(Crowdsourcing + Long Tail) x Freemium = 0

2011-01-18T14:46:00.000-08:00

Every so often, I read a book that claims to have discovered a whole new way of doing business. The theory's always the same. Using the power of the Internet to interact directly with zillions of people, the old capitalist model of business has become obsolete and a new type of business will take its place. And you can prove it with this small list of examples.

They're always fascinating reading, right up to the point where you realise that it's idealistic bullshit, that it won't work for the majority of businesses, that it's not sustainable, and that showing a few successful examples is a fallacious way to prove a theory. That's usually when I flip to the back cover or dust jacket and start looking for the words "contributor to Wired" in the author's bio.

Let's take the three examples from the title of this post.

Crowdsourcing

This basically says that instead of paying your workforce, you get them to work for free. In order to motivate them, you may give some of them a small amount of compensation, or you can run it like a competition where the best performing workers get a prize. Either way, you slash your running costs and reap the rewards.

Here's three real examples of how this works.

The local newspaper that sacked all its professional journalists and editors and replaced them with ten amateurs, paying them $250 a month to submit stories and post them online. They made $175,000 a month in ad revenue.
The company that got rid of its $20m a year R&D department and instead offered a prize of $25k to anyone who could solve a particular problem.
The company that gets people to submit photos for free and then sells them at a fraction of the price of its competitors, and turns over $100m+ a year.

All sounds great, but that's basically exploitation. A whole load of people found themselves unemployed and replaced with free labour. Yes, one guy got $25k for something he did in his spare time, but several thousand others got absolutely nothing for their efforts. And, most importantly, all these people who are working for nothing still need a day job to pay the bills.

You see, it works on one fundamental, flawed principle. Somebody else pays for what I use. Someone else has to employ these people in a regular way so that they can pay their bills and give me their time as a leisure activity. It doesn't scale up. It's only good for skimming some surplus labour off the top. It's not the future of business.

Long Tail

This theory sounds like a dream come true for small producers. It says that while regular shops can only stock a relatively small number of items and therefore focus on what they can sell most easily, online shops can carry an infinite catalogue and therefore can continue to make very low volume sales of obscure items for a long time. So, no more deleted records or out of print books. Just keep digital copies online forever, and someone, somewhere, will occasionally buy them. Consumers happy, retailers happy, authors and bands happy, right?

Well, no. It's great for retailers, sure. If they make a buck a time from sales of a thousand small items, that adds up to a healthy bit of revenue. But when you dig down, it's not so good for the suppliers, though. Your one item only counts for one of those bucks. By the time the retailer's taken their cut, you're going to see 50c or less from each sale. In fact, you're probably not going to see any of it until your total has reached $50, so you could be waiting a while. You're certainly not going to make a living out of it.

Again, it doesn't scale up. As with crowdsourcing, suppliers depend on their day jobs to pay their bills. What's more, there's only room for a few retailers when anyone can stock everything. It's not the future of business.

Freemium

This one's the consumer's dream. Don't pay for anything. It's all free. Well, there's a Pro version that costs money, but you don't need that.

It's another example of a model that relies on the principle of someone else pays. The guys who need the Pro version will subsidise the free users. The investors trying to build market share will subsidise the free users. The guy who donates via PayPal will subsidise them.

In practice, it rarely works. Not enough paying users come along to cover the cost of supporting the moochers, and when the money runs out, the company folds and the moochers move on to the next free lunch. It's not the future of business.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

Put them together, and what do you get? In a business environment based on crowdsourcing, long tail and freemium, what you get is the following.

People donate their labour with little or no expectation of reward.
People get what they want for free.

This works fine as long as we universally abolish money and ensure that everybody in society contributes.

If I want a new garage, I'll crowdsource a bunch of handymen who will come over and build it for free, and the hardware store will give me free building materials (because you only pay for the top of the range stuff). The grocery store will of course give me free food, as long as they can crowdsource people who don't mind stacking the shelves for free, and the farmers are happy to donate their produce. I'm sure they can crowdsource people who will work the fields for nothing.

In other words, let's all become Amish.

Maybe that's the future of business?

Wait. I'm making myself prettier for you.

2011-01-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

Long, long ago, before the Internet was born, if you wanted a new version of your favourite software, you had to... uh, how did we do it, exactly?

Then someone realised you could put new versions of software up on a bulletin board and people could just download them when they wanted. Which was pretty damn cool if you were a geek, even if it did mean waiting an hour while your 9.6k modem spluttered its way through a whole floppy disk's worth of stuff. When the Web came along and got all popular, that became the de facto way to distribute updates.

Of course, the problem with that was that developers had to figure out a way to tell people to go and get the updates. So they came up with the wonderful idea that the software itself would go online and check whether there was a new patch, and if so, it would just sort itself out automatically, so you'd always have the latest, greatest, wonderfullest version.

Fabulous!

Except that it's become a total pain in the ass.

There are three forms of automatic updates, all of which are bad.

When I start my computer. For various reasons, I've had to reboot my computer a lot recently, and it pisses me off that I can't do what I want to do because I have to wait for a bunch of applications to go online and check for updates. When I start my computer, I want to get to the apps I want to use. I couldn't give a damn about having the latest version of some app I use once in a blue moon.
What pisses me off most is when these apps demand to get to the front of the task queue. The developers seem to assume that not only is the latest version of their software something I can't live without, it's THE most important thing I could possibly want. That's really, really stupid when, for example, I'm in the middle of installing a new network adapter and there's no goddamn Internet set up yet. I'm trying to get online, but I can't, because I'm dealing with a flood of error messages that tell me an app I've used once in the last six months can't reach its Web server. Well, duh.
It's even more annoying when I just rebooted five minutes ago. I've just checked for an update, so why do I need to check again?
Just back off and let me get on with it, willya?
When I start the app. When I use an app, I want to use it right away. It was good enough last time I used it, so the chances are it'll be good enough for my purposes this time. I usually want to just fire it up, do what I need to do, and move on. I don't want to wait while it grabs a new version, installs it, makes me restart the app (or, worse, reboot my computer - see above), and then I have to figure out what's changed.
The absolute worst example of this is when an update means that previous work is incompatible or introduces a new bug. I don't care if a fix comes out a few days later. I want to do what I want to do now, and the developer just screwed that up.
In the background. Why's my computer going slow? Why did I just run out of space on drive C? Why's this app different to last time I used it? It's my computer, and I don't want anyone making changes to it without me knowing.

Obviously there are times when you need people to be using the latest version, such as when it's an online service which requires the client to maintain compatibility with the servers or with other users, or if the old version has a horrendous problem that could actually cause my computer to crash, but most of the time there's absolutely no reason why I can't stick with what I've already got.

I have absolutely no problems when an app goes online on startup, tells me there's a new version, and gives me the option to upgrade. That's fine. I really like having the option to download the update and then install it at my leisure. That's genuinely useful, especially if the upgrade gives me a clear benefit.

But please, please, software developers. Stop forcing me to upgrade when I don't want to and don't need to.

French cinema 2010: a playlist from Lucy

2011-01-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

I may have given the impression a few weeks ago that I'm an uncritical fan of foreign movies. For example, last week we went to see Inspector Bellamy, starring Gerard Depardieu and directed by Claude Chabrol. It was billed as a "witty homage to the mysteries of Simenon by France's master of the suspense thriller", and had received excellent reviews from critics and fans.

Frankly, I think a better description would be "a tedious and poorly filmed character study of a cop and his family based around a non-mystery with no twist at the end." I really can't understand why it was so successful. It felt like the sort of film buff's movie I was supposed to appreciate, based purely on the pedigree of the director and star, but I didn't find anything in it to enjoy.

After I posted this on Facebook, my friend Lucy Georges sent me this, which she's allowed me to reprint. She's English, but has been living in France for many years.

Your blog post prompted me to write some thoughts on French films from 2010, just in case you're looking for ideas on what to watch over the next few months...

Comme les cinq doigts de la main: A good action film about a Jewish family and their run in with organised crime.

Des Hommes et des Dieux: The only one I hated. This is an overhyped true story of the monks that were assassinated in Algeria, and was a raging success in secular France where people have a strange love-hate relationship with religion. Unfortunately, while both the subject and location should have provided ample opportunity for beautiful photography, this was sadly lacking. The scenario was dreadful, and full of clichés. Only the acting saved the film in my view. It was however a roaring success, but if the average age of the spectators is anything to go by, you need to be at least 55 years old to appreciate the movie.

Elle s'appeleait Sarah: Kristin Scott Thomas, another expat, in one of the year's two films about the 1942 event at the Vélodrome d'Hiver. Interesting narrative technique.

Imogen McCarthery: Based on Exbrayat's short novel, this is an amusing story of a Scottish girl who unwittingly becomes a spy. Worth seeing for the very French view of the British Isles!

La rafle: The other Vel d'hiv film, featuring Jean Reno. You need hankies ready for this one.

Les émotifs anonymes: I haven't seen it yet, but as soon as the snow melts, I'm on it. With Belgian Benoit Poelevoorde, it looks to be a box office hit.

L'arnacoeur: Handsome Romain Duris stars in this romantic comedy about a team of swindlers who break up couples.

L'illusioniste: The one I missed, and will be buying as soon as I find it on DVD. Jacques Tati did the scenario, and the animation is by the maker of Les Triplettes de Belleville.

L'immortel: More Jean Reno as a Marseilles gangster type trying to get out of his past life. A good action film.

Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc Sec: A superb adaptation of the Tardi comic books by Luc Besson. Great fun.

Pièce Montée: Rom com about a disastrous wedding. Some very funny scenes.

Potiche: Catherine Deneuve is back on form in this humourous tale about life in the seventies for a bourgeois wife. Also features Depardieu and Luchini.

Serge Gainsbourg Vie Héroique: An innovative take on the biopic with a dreamlike element which brings out another facet of Gainsbourg besides the provocative aspect he's famous for.

Simon Werner a disparu: A first film worth seeing for the experimental narrative technique. It wasn't an enormous success, but I think we might see more from Fabrice Gobert in the future.

Thelma, Louise et Chantal: One for women over forty. A comedy road movie.

Tout ce qui Brille: Another first film about life in the 'banlieue' and two friends trying to escape.

Une exécution ordinaire: Based on a novel, this tells the story of a female doctor forced to leave her life to become Stalin's personal medic.

Une petite zone de turbulences: This is based on the British novel, A Spot of Bother, and features Michel Blanc in the main role. Funny.

There's definitely a lot there I want to see. I'm particularly looking forward to the Besson film, and if it turns up in any of the local cinemas, I'm right there. I'll also be on the lookout for the Jean Reno films, and the one about the doctor looks interesting.

I'm off to check out how many of those are on Netflix, while I watch a Thai pirate movie, Legend of the Tsunami Warrior.

Not so helpful advice

2011-01-14T19:33:00.001-08:00

Why is it that when you tell people about a software, hardware or online problem, you inevitably get one (or more) of four responses, none of which is helpful:

It works for me.
I've never had that problem.
It shouldn't do that. Are you sure that's happening?
Have you tried [obvious basic operation]?

That's basically the equivalent of telling people my car won't start, and getting the responses:

My car starts. (Yeah. My car's broken. Not yours.)
My car's always started. (Guess what? Mine always started too, until it went wrong.)
Your car should start. Are you sure it's not starting? (Yes, I'm pretty damn sure.)
Have you tried turning the ignition key? (Uh, yes. How do you think I normally start my car?)

All obviously useless responses. So why do we treat computer-based issues so differently?

FML Film Club - Films Zero and One

2011-01-14T14:30:00.000-08:00

At the start of this year, I joined a local film club. I wrote a bit about it over on the Moviestorm blog. In short, the idea is that every member has to make a short film every month, based on stories from fmylife.com. It's to get us all making movies instead of just talking about making movies, which is what I've done for the last three years.

The first meeting was on January 4th. The morning of the meeting, I decided to make a movie and take it with me. It's still rough in places. I thought about tidying it up before posting it here, but decided to show it exactly as it stands. Here it is. The Table (based on an allegedly true story). Enjoy.

So there we have it. My first actual movie in I don't know how long. Not a tech demo, not a tutorial, just a little story for the hell of it. It's not great, but at least I made it. Showing it to people was scary, but they seemed to like it.

Anyway, a few hours later, I found myself part of a movie crew by the simple expedient of sitting at a table with a bunch of random people. We had Zak (director), Paul (audio & lights), Dan (editing) and Steve (cameras), which pretty much covers all the necessary bases. Since I have absolutely no experience with live action film, I volunteered to write the script.

We volunteered Paul as producer, and fairly soon worked out that because of our schedules, we needed to shoot the movie on the weekend of 15/16 Jan, which would give Dan a week for editing & post-production to have it ready for the start of February. That meant I needed to get the script out by Jan 9 in order to give everyone else a week for pre-production. Since we had a Friday Ferox show on Jan 7, the pressure was on from day one.

We thought about filming my movie as live action, but decided against it, partly because we weren't sure we could find enough actors in time, and partly because I got all shy and suggested we chose another story. Everyone except me got their iPhones out. Within about 10 minutes we'd found our plot, about a guy proposing to his girlfriend.

(On a side note, there was one story I really liked, but the rest of the team vetoed it. The denouement called for a bus, and that added a whole level of complication that we weren't ready for. Ah, the world of live action filming. So different to animation.)

As luck would have it, that weekend we lost our Internet, so I ended up sitting at my brother-in-law's house writing the script on Celtx and frantically trying to get it out to the team before the Sunday evening production meeting on Skype. However, in the end, everything went off pretty smoothly, and we assigned people to find cast, props, and equipment, and planned for the shoot at my house on the afternoon of Sunday 16th.

As always, it's gone down to the wire. By mid-afternoon today, we still didn't have our cast, but with a bit of last-minute scrambling around, we finally found a couple of people willing to step forward. So it looks like we're good to go. Let's just hope the weather holds.

I'm really looking forward to this. I haven't been on a film set since I went to one of Phil South's shoots at the Bristol Old Vic. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing, but hey - someone's got to handle the catering. I can do that.

In closing, there's one thing that makes me smile. We haven't even started production yet, and already The Proposal has taken considerably more time than The Table. Next month, hopefully things won't be so rushed, and I'll have time to do an animatic. It'll be interesting to see what difference that makes to the way we work.

I will...

2011-01-01T19:21:00.000-08:00

I forgot, there's one other major goal for this year. This is an easy one, but it's something that really needs to be done, and something that could turn out to be very important.

Make a will.

Here's a blog post by the good Mr Gaiman about why you should do it, including a sample will. I hope this doesn't turn out to be necessary, but I'll sleep sounder knowing I've taken care of it.

P.S. I've edited yesterday's post.

And... breathe.

2010-12-31T11:03:00.000-08:00

A year ago, I set myself a bunch of goals for 2010. Overall, I think I exceeded them by quite some margin. I didn't get to Hawaii or buy a motorcycle, but in the circumstances, I can live with that. After all, we bought the jungle house, and that changed everything. I also managed to (deep breath) start two companies, see spaceships and pirate ships, watch an eclipse at solstice, have the best damn birthday party since I was five, see a mermaid show, watch some unforgettable classic movies in the cinema, go to an Indian reservation, take my daughter to Disney World, blow shit up on the Fourth of July, go to a demolition derby and a roller derby, attend nearly 100 art exhibitions, see some great live bands, swim in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico (pre-spill), eat some great meals, go to a bunch of burlesque shows, see white alligators, acquire two manic kittens and still have time to help Anna put on a bunch of outrageous events... (whew!)

And, most important of all, I met some wonderful new people. I've never felt such a sense of belonging as I do now. Thanks to all of you, for being the best bunch of friends ever. You made 2010 the best year of my life.

Anyway, here's my goals for 2011. They're not as extensive as last year. 2010 was all about settling in here. Next year will be about consolidating everything we've achieved, and just weathering it through to the end of this recession.

Get Carrie over here. She wants to live with us, so we're going to do whatever it takes to make that happen for her. More lawyers. Sigh.
See my other kids. It's been nearly 18 months since I saw Rhys or Yo. That needs sorting out. I'm looking forward to seeing my mum too; she's visiting in a few weeks.
Sort out the finances. 2010 was an unexpectedly expensive year, what with the new house and Carrie's visit, and the household income also took a noticeable drop. I'd like to see it start to creep up again, and then we can start clearing some of the debts. The publishing business should start to pay off by mid-year, and we're aiming for Draco Felis to bring in a little more.
Make a will. It's easy, and it needs doing. Simple.
Sort out my diet. My digestive system is getting middle-aged, and I just can't eat what i used to. I still love food, and now that I go to the gym I'm not as fat and unfit as I was, but I'm going to have to figure out what I can and can't eat. It looks like I'm going to have to cut out most dairy foods, eat less fat, and generally avoid too much of the rich stuff. Still, it's a great excuse to get creative and experimental in the kitchen.
Get my first tattoo. Well, why not? I've got to have something in here that's just for me!
Spend more time with Anna. We probably go out about four times a week, but it's almost always something to do with work, or it's a big event for the tribe. It's fun, but it's not the same as just spending time together. What I really want is just once a month for the two of us to go somewhere together. As it said in the fortune cookie I got on Christmas Eve: "Put aside your business and attend to your love life." Sound advice. I'll take it.

And on that note, I'm now going to put the laptop aside, and spend what remains of 2010 with my family. Happy New Year, everyone!

[Edited 1.1.11 to add in the bit about the will.]

Twitter - what's it for?

2010-12-29T17:52:00.000-08:00

What role does Twitter play these days? A year or so ago, I twittered a lot. These days, I check the Moviestorm Twitter feed more often than I check my own, and most days I don't tweet at all. Facebook, for all its faults, seems to have completely supplanted Twitter in almost every respect.

There are two clear signs that Twitter is losing ground, not just in numbers, but in the way it's being used. Most obviously, it's no longer a place for conversations. In 2009, you could tweet a comment, and people would tweet back. To be sure, they were awkward, stilted conversations, but they happened. Nowadays, very few tweets elicit any reply at all. By contrast, almost every post I make on Facebook gets a response, and often several. It's not just what's being said, it's that Twitter simply isn't a good medium for conversation. If you look at those people who link their FB and Twitter feeds, you can quickly see the different reactions they get to the same posts on each. Twitter's not threaded, so you have to keep track of the conversations the old way. And there's no simple mechanism for replying to everyone who's interested in that thread; all your tweets are either completely public or directed at specific individuals. What's more, Twitter has no equivalent of the much derided "like" button. This simple interaction is a remarkably useful piece of social structure. It's the equivalent of a smile; a non-verbal way to show that you appreciate what's being said. It doesn't necessarily advance the conversation, but it does give people social standing and allow people to be involved in a passive, but overt way.

The second, less obvious symptom is the huge downturn in retweets and sharing on Twitter. I recently read a piece by Seth Godin in which he noted that only about 1 in 6 tweets gets retweeted. That was written in early 2010. Looking at my feed now, I'd say it was more like 1 in 30. Most of what gets put on Twitter goes no further. Most of what I see retweeted is from celebrities like Stephen Fry or Warren Ellis, which is strange when you think about it for a moment - they have millions of followers, and everyone who's interested in them follows them anyway, so who are these retweets aimed at?

A Twitter link: it's almost like reading code, and I have to open a browser to see what's at the other end.

Compare that with Facebook, where sharing is common. Again, it's not the content, it's the medium. Part of it is that Facebook is a much richer experience. If I want to link to a video, you can see a thumbnail, read a description, and then watch that video right in your browser. The same link in Twitter consists of a shortened URL (which tells you nothing) and a few words, then you have to go somewhere else to see what I'm showing you. Then, if you like it, go back to Twitter, find the post, and retweet, probably trimming 16 more characters off the description to allow room for RT @MattKelland: at the beginning. Tweets are almost like little ciphers, filled with strange hashes, disemvowelled words, bizarre characters, and geeky things that look like code. Facebook, by contrast, is more like the language we speak.

A Facebook link: useful information, immediate feeling of community from the likes and comments, easy ways to interact and share, and I can watch it right there.

It feels as if Twitter has outlived its usefulness. It went from the preserve of a few tech addicts to a vehicle for celebrities and brands to push out robotic marketing messages. Tweet about visiting a friend in Chandler's Ford, and you'll find yourself followed by Ford dealerships wanting to tell you about their special offers. Say you're moving your Web site to a new server, and you'll get bombarded by removal companies, software companies, and Web designers. Sure, it's a great way for the Governator to tell millions of people what he's doing, but everyone else is lost in the noise. And there's a lot of noise. Twitter never did have a very good signal to noise ratio, but it's gone from the gossip of a coffee shop to the hubbub of a giant mall.

There's a lot wrong with Facebook, but it seems to provide a far better communication medium than Twitter. And, of course, they have a proven, successful business model, which Twitter doesn't. I'll be interested to see whether Twitter turns into the MySpace of 2011.

Subtitles - on!

2010-12-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

Over the last few months, I've found myself watching fewer and fewer British and American movies. Or, more accurately, I'm enjoying fewer and fewer of them. With a few exceptions (Inception, for example), I keep finding them formulaic, predictable, and unsatisfying. Instead, I've been watching more and more foreign films, including a few from some unexpected places. Looking back through my Netflix queue, in the last six weeks alone I've seen films from:

Bhutan
Peru
Iran
Mongolia
Turkey
France
Germany
Korea
Japan
India
China
Sweden
Denmark
Mexico

What's really interesting is that most of them - though not all, I will admit - are getting 3 and 4 star ratings from us. It's actually quite refreshing to settle into a film and not know anything about the director or the stars, and just watch the stories. Along the way, I've discovered a real love for the films of Catherine Breillat, and I've found that most of the "great" Italian films of the 60s are overrated nonsense.

By contrast, the British and American films are mostly getting 2s and 3s, with the occasional 1 star in there. I'm not entirely sure why this is. We're watching a wide variety of movies, but the only domestic ones that seem to be grabbing us are the classics. It could just be Netflix's selection, but here's another data point. I saw just one current American movie in the cinema in 2010 (Tim Burton's Alice). I might go and see True Grit, Tron and Black Swan before New Year, but I'm not counting on it. Everything else I saw was an old movie, such as Metropolis, Creature from the Black Lagoon, or a foreign film like Jean Genet's wonderful Mic Macs. I read the Hollywood and indie movie news religiously, but I just don't get excited about any of it. I'm more excited by movies like Iron Sky or whatever Iain Friar's going to make next.

Another possibility is that when I'm watvhing a foreign film, I have to devote my full attention to it. I can't get distracted by the laptop, the phone, the cats, the kitchen, or whatever. It's easy not to engage with something that can slip easily into the background. When I watch a foreign film, I'm making a conscious decision to stop everything else and focus on the film for the next couple of hours. That fundamentally changes my relationship with it.

Even more interesting, though, I've found myself watching and enjoying more British and American TV shows. I haven't watched television in about 3 years, largely because I couldn't find anything I enjoyed, but there seems to be plenty on Netflix to keep me entertained. I'm watching series I never saw on TV. Some never made it to the UK (at least not on any channel I had). Some I came in part-way through and wanted to start at the beginning. Some I'm introducing Anna to and enjoying them second time around. Many I've never heard of. Netflix means I can start at Series One, and watch at my own pace - perhaps an episode here or there, perhaps a marathon session of an evening.

It's clear that there's no shortage of creativity and quality content in Britain and America, but it seems to have gravitated towards television rather than films. In other countries, film still seems to attract the best talent. I suspect it's because Hollywood has such an emphasis on the blockbuster, which relies on special effects, star power, formula stories and expensive marketing to make maximum box office return at the expense of originality, while the independent film-makers in Britain and America have found a niche for low-budget drama and comedy that also comes with its own set of crowd-pleasing rules.

It's good to look outside what Britain and America are producing. There's a whole world of movies out there, and I'm looking forward to exploring much more of it from the comfort of my sofa next year.

Radio Freefall

2010-12-26T12:10:00.000-08:00

My Christmas read (on paper, not a Kindle, amazingly) was Matthew Jarpe's debut novel Radio Freefall from 2007. It's labelled cyberpunk, but it's really more cyberprogrock. The lead character, after all, is named after a Jethro Tull song, Aqualung, and it's filled with references to all sorts of music.

Locus described it as "rollicking", and that's pretty dead on. It involves everything you want from this kind of novel; rich corporations trying to take over the world, sentient computer viruses, long-dead rock stars, hackers, mobsters and lunar colonies seeking independence. Jarpe also throws in some political comment with remarkable relevance to recent headlines. At one point, a bunch of kids are protesting. Our protagonist grabs a camera and microphone and talks to them, pointing out that "people don't throw bottles of gasoline if you let them speak, but just one person in power telling them that their voices don't matter is enough to turn them ugly."

My favourite ingredient in the mix is what they call The Machine. It's a device designed to manipulate an audience's emotions, and they use it as the best warm-up band ever. Personally, I think of it as "what would have happened if Hawkwind had been able to get their hands on alpha wave generators and the Internet". A truly scary, but entertaining prospect. Lemmy and Dave Brock with that kind of technology?

I ripped through it in two sittings, and only put it down because it was Christmas Day and the family demanded my presence. Well worth reading. Here's the first chapter for you, free.

Business head vs business heart

2010-12-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

The hardest part of making any business plan is always when you know you've got a cool idea, you know how to make it work, but you can't make the numbers come out right for it to be a viable business. You're left with three options.

Walk away. This is obviously the logical thing to do. After all, it's why you do a business plan, so you can find out before you start whether it's going to be worth while. The down side is that you'll never get to do your cool idea. And if it was that cool, you're going to be really pissed off when someone else does it, and even more pissed off when they make money at it. I've lost count of the number of ideas I've walked away from, only to see someone else be successful at them years later. So, the answer is clearly to...
Do it anyway and hope the rewards come later. Perhaps you screwed up your planning, perhaps it'll pay better than you think, or maybe circumstances will change. Or maybe it will lead on to something else that pays off. Think of it as an investment. Except that of course not all investments pay off. You might think your idea is cool, but nobody else does, and you're just pouring money down the drain. But that's okay, because you can...
Do it anyway and just accept the losses. If it's fun, and you can afford it, treat it as a hobby. If it makes some money back, so much the better. Of course, if you end up spending more than you can afford, and it turns out not to be as much fun as you thought, that's a real downer, so obviously it's more sensible just to walk away. But then... yeah, we're right back where we started.

The thing is, loss-making businesses are not necessarily bad. Some of the world's most successful businesses spent years losing money before becoming profitable, and the big win didn't always come from where they expected it. They just had to stick around and keep the faith long enough to reap the rewards.

And sometimes, it's perfectly OK for a business never to make a profit. Look at people creating little niche products: specialist magazines, custom artwork, small bands, amateur theatre groups, and so on. It costs them money to make that stuff, and they rarely get back as much as they spend. But they enjoy doing what they do, and by getting something back, they can afford to keep doing it and making people happy.

Yes, business is first and foremost about making money, but the bottom line needn't be the bottom line.

Marvelous Mayhem

2010-12-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

People know me through all sorts of different routes. Many of you know me as a machinima guy. Others know me as a foodie. Some of you are people I've known for a while.

Something you may not know about me, however, is that Anna and I run sort-of-monthly shows in a local restaurant. Here's what the Orlando Weekly had to say about the last one (scroll down about half-way to the bit about Draco Felis). Here's a summary for those who can't be bothered to click the link:

On the first Friday of each month, Draco Felis Inc., a local media and online marketing outfit, presents Friday Ferox, a potpourri of semi-scandalous art, performance and live music. December’s Marvelous Mayhem show, sponsored by A Comic Shop, sported a superheroes and villains theme that drew a full house of fellow freaks and fanboys... The art inside, if you could fight through the crowd to see it, ranged from comic-inspired Day of the Dead masks to fetishistic femme fatale centerfolds and everything in between... The audience’s rowdy reception proves Orlando still has plenty of patrons eager for a little playful perversion – especially when super-powered spandex is involved.

In case you hadn't noticed, that Joker costume isn't a costume. It's paint, by the awesome Evil Twin FX. Throw in a couple of burlesque troupes, and you get the idea. "Semi-scandalous playful perversion" sums it up pretty well.

Photo by Jim Carchidi: more of this album on Facebook

We have a lot of fun doing these events. The next one's right after New Year, so we're already working on it now. It's called Flesh: The Body Altar, and it's themed around body art. We're aiming to stream it live online (the last show seemed to work OK from a technical point of view, so we're going to ramp it up another notch now), so even if you can't get to Orlando, you can still enjoy the show.

Assorted food-related observations

2010-12-11T12:39:00.001-08:00

I love making my own stock with chicken carcasses, ham bones, and so on. It seems pointless, given how cheap and easy it is to buy the stuff, but I find it satisfying to use as much as I can from the animal. I also enjoy the bit where I pick the bones as clean as they can get.
On a similar note, I get immense satisfaction from cooking with left-overs, odds and ends, and whatever I can find in the back of the kitchen cupboards. It feels like I'm getting something for nothing.
I can taste a spicy dish and tell you exactly what spices are in it, but I cannot, for the life of me, identify the grape variety in a glass of wine.
Of all coffees, I enjoy African coffees the most. And I think Hawaiian Kona is overrated.
I really like going to the Mexican market and loading up on tomatilloes and assorted chile peppers. I think I have ten different varieties of chiles in my kitchen right now, none of which is habanero or jalapeno.
My favourite meat is venison, preferably slow cooked in either port or brandy. Or both.
My slow cooker is my favourite kitchen utensil. It feels good to cook while I make breakfast and then know I'll have a delicious meal on demand later that night.
I cannot cook omelettes. I can't make scrambled eggs in a frying pan either.
I'm lousy at cooking steak.
I rarely eat deep fried food.
I pride myself on being able to cook food from around the world, but my knowledge of French cuisine is practically nil. I can probably cook more Iraqi, Nigerian, or Polish dishes than French dishes.
My favourite pizza topping is pepperoni, mushrooms, anchovies and jalapeno, with extra mozzarella. These days I prefer thin crispy pizzas to deep thick ones, and I like to eat the crusts, as long as they're properly crunchy.
I prefer tawny to ruby port. And I'm partial to a good sherry. On the other hand, I never drink Scotch whisky.
My favourite fruit is mango.
I loathe raw tomatoes, except in salsa with plenty of lime and chilli.
I almost never cook desserts or cakes, but I make a totally kick-ass baklava.
The combination of meat and fruit is something I love experimenting with.
I often make vegetarian meals, even though I'm not a veggie. I just like the variety and don't feel the need to include meat.
I find cooking aubergines (eggplants) really tricky, especially the big Greek ones.
I cannot eat seafood (but fish is OK) or tofu.
I had a very satisfying moment a few years ago in a restaurant, when I realised that I was no longer choosing food because I hadn't tried it before; instead, I was choosing dishes which I couldn't make at home because I can't get the ingredients or I don't have the utensils. Now, I tend to choose food based on the restaurant's recommendation.

Buzz!

2010-12-07T16:58:00.000-08:00

One of those commonplaces of modern marketing is that overnight successes take a hell of a long time to manufacture. It's only the punters who think they're spontaneous. Seth Godin, however, takes a slightly different view, and puts his finger on what makes an idea viral.

No-one sends an idea unless:
they get it (see below)
they want it to spread
they believe that spreading it will enhance their status
the effort necessary to spread the idea is less than the benefits.
No-one "gets" an idea unless:
the first impression demands further investigation
they understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
they trust the sender
That's why viral marketing and internet memes are so shallow. And, most importantly, ideas never spread because they're important to the originator.

From Small is the New Big, by Seth Godin.

If you don't want to read the whole book, just read this one blog post. Really, do. It'll take you three minutes.

What Every Good Marketer Knows

Here's a few of my favourites from that post.

People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
Good marketers tell a story.
Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.

Hulu Plus

2010-11-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

We recently got a free trial of Hulu Plus. We love Netflix, and don't have regular TV, so we thought we'd give it a go.

The short version: it's got a long, long way to go before it's worth the money.

The long version: the selection of content is pretty lousy. They have a total of 543 movies. That's about 10% of the DVD collection I left behind me, and about half of what Netflix have in just their foreign romantic comedies section. Of those 543 movies, you get a small selection of uninspiring documentaries, a pile of crappy sci-fi B-Movies from the 1950s (Atom Age Vampires, for example), a load of early John Wayne movies, a bunch of straight to video kung fu flicks, and not much more. Out of 543 movies, I found maybe five I wanted to watch, and even those were in the "if there's nothing better to do" category. But guess what, there's something better to do.

The TV selection isn't any more interesting. I'm watching Jack of All Trades, which is fun and which I haven't seen anywhere else. Spartacus: The Motion Comic looks like it'll be worth an hour of my time. And, errr, that's it.

The PS3 user interface is dreadful. They don't, for example, tell you who's in a movie, or who directed it, or when it was made, or give you a rating. They do, however, give you screen space to tell you what network it was provided by. They also give you the ability to sort your movies by network. Guess what, I don't give a damn about the network, I want to know about the actual movies! Navigating around is weird: you can't just click on a movie to find out about it. If you click, you play the movie: instead, you have to press DOWN to access the movie info screen, then click again to see the actual details, then back and click something else to put it in your queue. Even starting and stopping movies is a pain.

I reckon it'll be worth taking another look at Hulu Plus in six months to see if they've improved their user interface and got anything actually worth watching. Until then, we'll stick with Netflix. We've already paid for the first month (we thought it was a month's free trial, but it was actually only a week), which gives me time to finish Jack, but otherwise, we're done with Hulu Plus now. A huge, huge disappointment.

Dear America, thanks for everything

2010-11-25T09:43:00.001-08:00

Dear America,

Thanks for having me. I'm having a great time, and your hospitality is sincerely appreciated.

Thanks for all the cheeseburgers. No, I really mean that, and not in a lame-ass LOLcat way. Your cheeseburgers really are the best, especially the ones at Margaritaville. And for the pho, the pulled pork, the cuban sandwiches, the awesome breakfasts that would feed ten people, the pies, the tapas bars, the beer (yes, the beer!), the gumbo, the chili, the gator, the burritos... you get the idea. OK, you still have a lot to learn about cheese. And please, stop trying to do fish and chips. But otherwise, you lay on a darn good spread.

Thanks for the sunshine too. You have no idea how happy that makes me. And the palm trees, the dragonflies, the lakes, the wide open spaces, the beaches, the eagles, and the cranes. Frankly, I'd prefer it if you toned down the poisonous spiders and the roaches, but hey, I can live with that. The sunshine makes it all worthwhile.

Oh, and thanks for letting me wear loud Hawaiian shirts without feeling out of place. It may not mean much to you, but it makes me smile.

Thanks for the opportunities you've thrown my way. 2009 was a year of change. 2010 has been all about settling in and working out where to go. 2011 promises to bring all sorts of new things. I finally feel like I've got the chance to really stretch myself and do some of the things I really want to do.

Thanks for all the incredible people. In forty-four years in England, I made maybe six really good friends. I've done the same thing in about one year over here. Not only that, but I seem to have accumulated a huge tribe of talented, creative, supportive, caring people. I am constantly amazed by their generosity, their warm-heartedness, and their openness. The Jungle House is more than just a place. It's a family, and it's a state of mind.

And looking further afield, there are all the people I bump into on a daily basis who are kind, friendly, helpful, and, well, the way people ought to be. People in shops and restaurants, the casual acquaintances I see at art shows, the passers-by in parks, the neighbours who are always ready to help out, and so on. I don't know them, but it's good to be surrounded by them.

And thanks, most of all, for my beautiful Anna. Since finding her, I've been happier than I could ever have imagined. I know it's a cliche, but she makes every day precious, and she makes me feel like I'm finally in the right place. I'm not sure I have the words for this, so let's just settle for one of those man-to-man deep nods, a firm handshake, and one of those silent looks that acknowledges I owe you big time.

So, yeah, thanks for everything, America. You've been more good to me than I could ever have imagined.

Matt

xxx

Kindling

2010-11-22T09:10:00.001-08:00

As you probably know, I'm a bit of a book lover. I've had a book in my hand since I was two years old, and can't imagine life without reading. Last month, however, I finally succumbed to the lure of the e-book, and got myself a Kindle 3G with wi-fi. I'll admit, I've been hugely prejudiced against them, and only got one because I needed it for work. After all, what can compare with the touch, smell, visual appeal, and convenience of a proper paper book? I hate reading books on computer screens, and can't imagine myself ever preferring an e-book over the real thing.

After several weeks of learning to live with my Kindle, there are still things about it that I dislike. Let's get those out of the way first.

I can't (safely) read it in the bath. On the other hand, there's a lot of books I don't read in the bath either. Big, heavy books are generally out of the question, as are most hardbacks. Bathtime reading is only for cheap paperbacks I can afford to have accidents with. And anyway, I don't have many baths these days. I have a shower, and I have a hot tub, and hot tubs aren't really for reading. So, not so much of a problem, then.

I can't put it in my pocket. Well, it fits in the side pocket of my shorts, quite neatly, as it happens. But it doesn't go in my jeans, and what with living in Florida, I don't have an inside jacket pocket, so I have to carry it. However, most books don't fit in my pocket either, and the Kindle is much, much lighter than a real book. So actually, the Kindle wins, especially as I can now put thousands of books in my pocket, or at least, carry them around with me.

It's hard to organise books on it. When you have 900+ books loaded up, it's not easy to find the one you want. Fortunately, there's a feature called Collections, so you can have a load of sci-fi, a load of reference books, all the books by a specific author and so on. Unfortunately, the user interface for putting books in collections is horrible. It took me all evening to sort out all those books. Which is about as long as it would have taken me to sort through 900 books if you'd dumped a load of boxes on my living room floor, but I could do it all while sitting down drinking a glass of wine. So, could be much, much better, but still an improvement on paper.

E-books cost too much. Many years ago, I was involved with publishing. About 50% of the cover price of a book is the cost of the paper. It can be more if you're doing a fancy cover. Another 10% is the cost of getting it to the store. E-books have no printing or distribution costs, so you'd expect the price to be proportionately lower. Sadly, that's not the case. A book that costs $15 typically costs $14 as a digital edition. It's hard to justify that pricing, and it's going to make me reluctant to buy e-books, especially because...

... you can't lend or resell e-books. With a real book, I can pass it around my friends. Most of my books were inherited, gifts, or second-hand. That's not allowed with digital books. Every person who wants to read the book has to pay the full (inflated) price. You're not building up a collection of anything you can pass on. You're paying for an admission ticket to a reading experience, and there's not even a family discount if you bring your kids.

Many of the things I expected to dislike about it turned out to be completely groundless. One of the constant objections I hear from book lovers is "I like to annotate my books". It's actually way easier to annotate a Kindle than a real book. Just click and start typing. Better still, all your annotations and bookmarks are indexed so they're easy to find. Can't do that with a real book.

Battery life is quite impressive. This weekend I charged it for the first time since buying it. Four hours on charge, and it'll be good for another month. If only my phone lasted that long.

The Kindle has actually proved to be remarkably easy to read. It uses E-Ink, so it's not backlit, and it doesn't strain my eyes like a computer screen. The experience is nothing like trying to read on a Palm or a laptop. It's much like reading a book, in fact. Flipping pages back and forth is just a thumb press, and you can rescale the print to whatever size you like. You can get around a book really fast with hyperlinked contents and footnotes, and judicious use of bookmarks.

The experience of buying a book on a Kindle is quite incredible. I can go to the Amazon Web site, find something, click buy, and within seconds, it's mine. That's less time than it would take me to get up from my chair, answer the door to the postman, and open the box, let alone order something on the Web and wait for next-day delivery or even actually go to a shop. Not only that, but with 3G, I can buy a book any time, any place. See... want... have. It's that simple.

The thing I've noticed most is that a lot depends on the e-book, rather than the reader. As I mentioned, I now have some 900+ books on there, and I've certainly noticed there's a huge difference between a good e-book and a bad one, just as there is between a good edition of a book and a bad one. When they get the formatting right, do proper tables of contents, and restructure the books so it works, it's really pleasant to read them. When you get mixed up fonts, bad OCR so you have typos, and they've just tried to copy the print layout, it's often too horrible to read. Still, you get what you pay for. Good ones cost, free ones may well suck.

Something that's also quite cool is the built-in dictionary. Unsure what a catafalque actually is? Just put the cursor over the word, and it'll tell you. That's something else ordinary books can't do.

The experimental features are pretty unimpressive. The audio player has no controls, so it's practically useless, and the Web browser is possibly the worst I've ever seen. Certainly the worst I've seen in the 21st century. However, this is a book reader, not a tablet, so I'll just ignore those problems and move on. Maybe they'll update them in time, maybe they won't. I'm not bothered either way. The pdf reader seems like a good idea, but it has a fatal flaw: most pdfs are so closely typeset that they're illegible on that screen. Imagine a magazine page shrunk down to 25% of normal size, and you get the idea.

All in all, though, I've learned to love my Kindle. I've sprawled on the sofa with a Dreamweaver manual. I've sat in airports reading thrillers. I've had lazy mornings in bed reading classics. I've taken it everywhere, and found myself reading at times I didn't expect. I can carry a whole library with me, and that's as liberating as when I discovered I could carry my entire music collection in my pocket. My only real objections are the pricing and the DRM. However, there are loads of free books, there are libraries, and there are torrents, so I suspect the book business is soon going to find itself facing a piracy issue just like the music and film industries are facing right now. Set fair prices and allow fair use, and people will pay. If not, they'll find ways to get what they want anyway.

Will it replace books? Probably, and surprisingly, to a large extent, yes it will. Digital books are more convenient for many reasons, just like mp3s are more convenient than vinyl, and Netflix is more convenient than a houseful of DVDs. I still cherish books as objects, just as I cherish some of my favourite album covers (even though I have nothing to play them on) and the deluxe box sets of some of my favourite movies. But for everyday reading, the Kindle is marvellous. And, dare I say it, better than paper.

I never thought I'd say that.

Seductive marketing

2010-11-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

I recently read David Meerman Scott's New Rules of Marketing and PR. It's one of the better books on the subject that I've encountered. In some ways, it has nothing in it I don't already know, but he does a great job of summarising the issues and presenting them in a clear, informative way.

His main thesis is that old-style marketing is about interrupting people and trying to distract them so you can sell them your stuff. Modern marketing is about chatting to them, getting to know them, and letting them buy from you when they're ready. Effectively, it's about giving the control of the business relationship to the consumer.

The analogy he uses is that the Web is like a giant party. If you walk around the party talking about nothing but your job, trying to make a sale, and refusing to talk to anyone unless they give you a business card first, you'll pretty soon find that nobody wants to talk to you, because, not to put too fine a point on it, you're boring. You need to mingle, to socialise, to get to know people, and then, if it's appropriate, offer to help them out. You don't just talk about work. Laurens van der Post used to say that he knew he'd met an interesting person when he could talk to them all night and never find out what they did for a living.

I'd like to use a somewhat cruder analogy. (If you're offended by f-bombs, step away now.) Of course, this is all written from a man's perspective. I know you ladies have your own bag of tricks that work for you, but I won't pretend to understand them.

The direct approach

Old-style marketing is like walking up to a girl in the street, regardless of what she's doing or who she's with, and saying, "hey, baby, wanna fuck?" You might get lucky, but the chances are she slaps you in the face and you walk away. (Or, more likely, turn to the girl she's chatting to and ask her instead.) You ignore the slaps, and you just count how many times you get laid. And once you've got what you want from her, you move on to the next girl. Some people are, apparently, quite successful with this technique. But really, it's pretty offensive and pretty ineffective. That's the way a lot of marketing is done, though. You just persevere and eventually, someone will put out.

Modern marketing is about establishing a somewhat more mature relationship. Yes, you're still hoping for the same outcome, but you go about it in a different way. You start out by getting to know her, seeing what you have in common, and then, gradually, seducing her. It may blossom into a long-term relationship, or it may just be a short fling, but either way, you go about it with a little bit more charm and elegance than Mr Sleazy Seventies Lounge Lizard.

Stage One: getting to know her

First, impress her with your wit, knowledge, and sophistication. Have something relevant and intelligent to say on the topics that interest her. Don't do anything more than have entertaining conversations, and make sure you're not talking about yourself all the time until she asks. Start by listening to what she has to say. Take an interest in her as a person. Find out what she really likes, and whether you're compatible. You'll soon find out if this relationship isn't going to go anywhere, but you can at least part on friendly terms. And be sincere. She'll tell if you're faking it. It's not just about what you say, but how you say it.

In marketing parlance, this is called being the "thought leader". Show your potential customers that you really know what you're talking about. You don't just know your own product, you know everything that goes around your product. You understand your customers because you share their passions. You're the go-to guy when they have a question. You know everyone, and everyone wants to know you.

If you're in the business of selling rugby boots, you don't want to be into rugby boots. Sorry, but that's boring. You're into rugby. You watch rugby, you love rugby, you love spending your weekends talking to rugby players. You'll chat to people about who's going to win the Hong Kong Sevens this year, whether the new rules changes are a good thing or a bad thing, and who should be in what team. But you're not just a single-minded rugby fanatic: you know your beer, where to get good fish and chips anywhere in Northern England, how to fix the clutch on a Massey-Ferguson, and you have an opinion on whether Bruce Willis should make any more Die Hard movies. In other words, you fit in, not because you have a great range of boots at the right price, but because you're one of the crowd, you're an interesting person and you've earned respect.

So twitter about rugby, make posts on Facebook, hang out in the online rugby communities. Post pictures of yourself at the local rugby game. Pass comments about the appalling decisions or the great kicks. Make sure your site appeals to rugby fans - not just to people who want to buy a pair of rugby boots.

Stage two: get romantic

Once you've impressed her, the next step in this carefully planned seduction is to romance her. Give her little gifts now and again. Nothing expensive or gaudy, just something to show that you're thinking about her. Don't spoil it all by talking dirty to her or pushing things too fast. Be romantic. Give her visions of the wonderful future you could have together. It may be a weekend on the Mediterranean, it may be a lifetime of domestic bliss - you have to play that one by ear. You can't use the same script all the time. All you need to do is dangle a few ideas out there, and with luck she'll be coming up with suggestions of her own, and she'll love it when you murmur your agreement.

Incidentally, if things are going well, she'll now be telling all her friends how wonderful, kind, gentle and generous you are, and what a great time she's having with you. That's fine. You can see them too. In fact, she'll probably invite them to join in. Who knew marketing could be so much fun? And, to make it even better, the more they tell her what a good time they're having with you, the more determined she'll be not to miss out.

Back in the mundane world of marketing, this is where you start giving away freebies. Free trials, free resources, free research, free just about anything you can think of. Reward your potential customers for bringing you more potential customers - with luck, they're talking about what a useful and likeable bunch of people you are. Get them to like you on Facebook, retweet your tweets, blog about you, and tell others about the free thing(s) you've got.

At this stage, you're still not asking them for money. Don't go with the "buy this and get this free" approach. Using the "buy" word reminds them you're just a salesman after all, and will scare them off. At this point, you can be quite open about what you do for a living, but you're not pressuring your new friends into giving you money. That would be rude. You're going to help them out. For free. Don't give away the stuff you're selling if you can avoid it, though. Give away something else.

So what do you give the rugby fans? Well, how about an iPhone app that has all the results of every Six Nations game ever, plus pictures. That's cool, and it's a neat place to stick some branding. Give them links to sports medicine sites that show how boots can affect ankle injuries, and ways to deal with the kind of injuries you get. Maybe a personal training program, optimised for whether they're forwards or backs, and perhaps a deal with some gym supplier for 10% off weights. You're not giving away boots, but you are giving them useful stuff that shows you understand the needs of rugby players.

Stage three: play hard to get

By now, she should be entranced with you. But, as every Hollywood scriptwriter knows, you need a bit of a reverse. Don't assume that what happens next is a given. Now that you've built yourself up, it's time to be modest. Tell her you don't want to pressure her into anything she doesn't want to do. Maybe go so far as to suggest she sees other guys. Point out your own shortcomings, but in such a way that it doesn't make you look like a loser.

Now she'll really trust you. She won't think you're just after having your wicked way with her. She'll appreciate your honesty and forthrightness, and she'll probably end up telling you how wonderful you are. Be prepared, though - she may take you up on your suggestion, and she may stay with the other guy. In that case, then you two weren't meant to be, so get over it. More importantly, though, she'll probably still look on you as a friend, and will tell her other friends how great you are, and how understanding you are.

This is something that fills most marketeers with terror. Recommend your competitors. Yes, really. It proves to your customers that, first of all, you really understand your market. Secondly, you are interested, first and foremost, in meeting their needs and helping them, not just trying to make a sale. It makes it much harder for them to criticise you if you've been honest about your competitors' advantages right from the beginning. It's OK to be critical of them too, but only in a scrupulously fair way.

Back to those boots. When your customer starts making enquiries about getting some boots from you, ask what he really wants. You can say things like "Butz boots are really comfortable, although a bit pricey," or "Tuff boots will last you for ever, but they do take some time before they mould themselves to your feet," or "Plastiboots are great if you're on a budget and just starting out." When it comes to your own, you can be straightforward about saying, "I wouldn't necessarily recommend Rug-Bees for serious professional use, but for your typical weekend club player, they're fine and they'll last a couple of seasons." People respect that. You're making it clear that you won't make a sale to them unless it's to their benefit. Even if they do go somewhere else, they'll recommend you when their friends are looking for boots.

There's one issue you have to face, though. If everyone picks Butz, Tuff or Plastiboots instead of your Rug-Bees, then there's something wrong with your product. You haven't given anyone a reason to pick you. That's actually valuable market intelligence, and means you should rethink your product or your pricing. Or, perhaps, get out of the business.

Stage four: tonight's the night

Eventually, you're want to get around to popping the question. Ideally, of course, she'll do this first, so it's all her idea. She's looked around and, frankly, you're the best there is, for oh so many reasons. Result!

Failing that, however, you may have to arrange a little something special to give her a nudge. Send her a little note telling her how much you care, and invite her to an evening she'll never forget. It may be an intimate tete-a-tete with wine, roses, and moonlight or she may be your date to a huge party with a thousand of your closest friends. Either way, you're letting it be known how you'd like the night to end up. But you do it with grace so that she can back out if she's not ready for it. Or, if, you know, it's not the right time. She'll let you know if it's OK to ask her again later.

What you don't do is to get bored of waiting and ask her straight out, "Are we going to fuck or not? Because if not, piss off." She really won't appreciate that, and she'll start yelling that all those nice things you told her were a lie just to get into her pants and you never really cared about her. (Which wasn't true, was it?) Accept that you may end up as just friends. That's good. It's good to have friends. And if you drift apart, so be it.

Be patient. Wait for the sale to come to you. It may take customers months, or even years to decide to buy your product. They can have all sorts of reasons to delay: they may not have the money right now. They may be waiting for something else to come to an end first. They may be getting your product as part of a suite of other things. Don't push too hard.

Discreet, enticing invitations work well, as long as they're sensitively handled. Tell your customers when you've got special offers, or when you've got new product lines in, but make sure that doesn't dominate your relationship with them. Nothing pisses a prospective customer off faster than a clumsy sales drive. A chatty email, a brief tweet, a mention on FB, a forum post or blog - and maybe a coupon - that's all it takes. If they're ready to buy, they'll love you.

Boots again. "In case you hadn't noticed, rugby season starts in a few weeks. We're going to be really busy, so we may not be on the forums as much. If you're getting kitted out, drop me an email or check out the store and we'll see if we can fix you up with a good deal. Just tell us you came from the ScrumDown forum and we'll give you a discount. We'll be back in a few weeks - in time to give you our prediction for the All Blacks game. Cheers, Matt."

Stage five: riding off into the sunset

So there you are, basking together in the afterglow. Perhaps it turns out to have been a wonderful moment. Perhaps it's the start of a lifelong relationship. But either way, wasn't that more fun than a quick shag in your sleazy bachelor pad? And it doesn't do your reputation any harm either if she tells people what a wonderful guy you are. She loves the fact that you didn't just want her for her body. She loves that you spent time with her. She's going to tell her friends to stop messing around with sleazebags and find themselves some real romance.

Even if you never get intimate with her again, she may well stick around, listening to your stories, telling you what she's been up to, laughing and joking with you. And the more of those ladies you have around you, the more desirable you become to others. And, you never know, maybe for old times' sake...

That first sale isn't the end of the story. Keep being nice to that customer, keep being their friend, and you'll continue to get more out of them. Even if they don't buy anything else, they'll spread the word. The larger your community, the more attractive it is. Having satisfied ex-customers around can actually be a real benefit to you.

Okay, for the last time, boots. If you've done your job right, they'll come back to you when they need their next pair of boots. They may not: they may stop playing, or they may perhaps be picked for the national squad and get themselves those Butz boots after all. But maybe you can get an interview with them, and perhaps even an endorsement. Either way, being able to say, "I knew that guy when he was just playing in the county league" makes you look good.

Casanova used to say, when asked how he slept with so many women, that he just talked to them and listened to them. He made them feel good about themselves, and he made them feel that, just for a short time, they were the most important woman in his world. Once he had achieved a certain level of notoriety, it became easier, but he never forgot that his success was due to offering more than just a quick bit of rumpy-pumpy.

That's what modern marketing is about. Listen, talk, converse, share, participate, help, support, and relax. Let people know that you're there for them, and they'll come to you when they need you, willingly, and eager to do business with you. It's not about sales messages or brand loyalty or pushing your product. It's about earning respect, earning trust, and making yourself and your company the people that other people want to do business with.

Just for the record, the book doesn't use this analogy at all. That's all mine. And I don't advocate spending your life trying to seduce as many women as possible. I just figured after all the books on what businessmen could learn from Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Genghis Khan and other military leaders, it was time to redress the balance by drawing on the works of the world's greatest lover. I do, however, draw the line at doing a sequel based on Peter Stringfellow. Though, you must admit, he must be doing something right!

ThisIsWhyYou'reFat

2010-10-30T12:17:00.000-07:00

I'm doing my best to lose a load of the weight I've put on since being here. What with not walking or cycling, indulging myself in yummy Southern food, and eating huge American portions, I've put on a few pounds. I've finally got around to making good on my New Year goal to do something about it. I'm even going to the gym most days, and if you know me, you'll know how much of an achievement that is.

Of course, it's easy to point at the ridiculous food you see on Web sites like This Is Why You're Fat, or the absurd (but wonderful) treats like fried cheesecake or the Monte Cristo sandwich. But really, that's not the problem. The fact is that the basic serving size is enormous, and verging on the obscene.

On Wednesday, we went to a restaurant for a birthday dinner. I went with the dieter's meal. For $12.99, they gave me a small Caesar salad, a half-size portion of what was basically a burger, mashed potatoes and broccoli with some cole slaw, and a half-size dessert. In other words, half a regular meal.

I couldn't finish it. I managed the salad, half the main course, and none of the dessert, and went home feeling full. On Thursday, I ate most of the rest of the main course and half of the dessert for my lunch, and still felt full at dinner time. Then yesterday, I finished the main course and the cole slaw for lunch, had a small dinner in the evening, and the rest of my dessert.

In other words, a half size meal fed me for nearly three days. A whole normal meal works out as practically a week's worth of food for an average middle-aged man. In some places, a frickin' salad contains more calories than I need for the day! So even when you try to stick with the healthy options, they're still way in excess of what's necessary, or even sensible.

Compare recipe books from the 1930s with modern recipe books, and what used to be 8-12 servings is now considered 4 servings, even though we're all much less active these days. The smallest latte in Starbucks is three times the size of what you'd get in a French cafe, and contains about a third of my daily caloric needs. I could go on, but there's no need.

And that, my friends, is why I' m fat. And why most Americans are fat, and why there's an epidemic of diabetes.

Let me just reiterate. A half size restaurant meal fed me for nearly three days.

The answer's simple. Put less food on the plate.

On Leadership

2010-10-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

One of the books Ralph Nader constantly referred to in his satirical book Only the super rich can save us (which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago) is John W. Gardner's On Leadership (1990). It's a masterpiece.

How often have we all said that we don't have any true political leaders any more? In Britain, the last real leader we had was Maggie, and she was a mixed blessing at best (or an evil bitch, if you prefer). In America, there hasn't really been anyone since JFK. Barack Obama may yet turn out to be a great leader, but it's too early to tell. It depends whether he survives the next two years (politically and physically), and that's highly questionable.

Gardner's book asks two important questions. What is a leader, and how do we create them? He takes care to distinguish between leaders and managers, and between leadership and power. That actually sums up what's wrong with governments today. They're run by managers who wield power, and people hate that. So-called "UK plc"* is a vile idea, that reduces people to nothing more than shareholders and workers, and makes it clear that those at the top are there to boss people around and extract profit from them.

He also points out that leaders occur at all levels. It's not just about Presidents and Prime Ministers. It's about union leaders, youth club leaders, and others who can initiate widespread change. Arguably - though these examples post-date this book - the most inspirational and effective leaders we've seen in Britain in the last 20 years have been Bob Geldof, Bono, and Jamie Oliver. (And before you tell me not to be so stupid, think about it. They've done more to motivate people than any political or religious leader of recent years. Geldof and Bono have both been nominated for a Nobel peace prize, which is something none of our prime minsters are likely to achieve, and Oliver's been awarded a TED prize, putting him on a par with Bill Clinton and, err, Bono. And yes, it says a lot about Britain that two Irish pop stars and a TV chef show more leadership than anyone in the government.)

For most of the book, Gardner discusses the qualities required of a leader. He worked at many levels of the American government, and with many Presidents, and so he had the opportunity to see leaders of many types at first hand.

Vision: a leader looks beyond the immediate situation and gives people something to aim at. Not just a wishy-washy "things will be better," but a definite, achievable set of goals. Like putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade, or achieving a society in which black and white people are treated equally.
Affirming values: a leader stands for something that people want to believe in. He is a living example of what people should be. What he's trying to do reflects what's important to that society.
Inspiring trust: people follow a leader because they believe in him. They are prepared to let him take the tough decisions, and they will back him, because they trust him to do the right thing.
Accountability: as part and parcel of being trusted, the leader accepts that he is accountable to his followers. The buck stops with him. If he screws up, he will admit it and let people judge him on his record.
Motivation: a leader makes people want to achieve. When he speaks, people act. They don't just go back to their normal lives, or grumble to their friends. They do something.
Managing: a good leader doesn't act alone. He has to get others to do what needs to be done. He has to deal with crises, manage budgets, and delegate work. A good manager isn't always a good leader, but a good leader has to be a good manager.
Achieving unity: leadership is often about building consensus and achieving compromise. You can't lead half a country. Well, you can, but then you get either civil war or the political stalemate we've had in Britain and America for the last few decades.
Knowing the system: you can't manage or achieve unless you know the ways of politics. (Just watch Yes, Prime Minister.)
Decisiveness: leaders don't um and aah. They don't have time. They cut through the crap and get on with the job.
Explaining: people need to understand what's happening, especially if their leader is going to take them through a difficult time. A leader needs to be able to explain what he's doing, and why. It's not the same if it comes from a subordinate.
Being a symbol: the leader is the person people look up to. Once he takes that office, he's not just himself. He's something more.
Representing the group: the leader is an ambassador, and other people's perception of the whole society is coloured by that. Look at how Europeans treated Americans under George W. Bush, and how they now treat Americans under Obama. Same people, different leader.
Supporting their followers: one of the key qualities of a leader is to make his followers believe that he is doing his best for them. He is working on their behalf. He is enabling them to do what they want. Even if it's a tough path, he has to convince people that he is acting for their benefit, not his own.

There's obviously much more to it than this, but it's a great checklist. Does David Cameron have these qualities? Does Ed Miliband? I don't think so. Brown and Blair sure as hell didn't make the grade. It looked like Blair was going to cut it for the first few few months after ousting John Major (another non-leader), but then he made it pretty clear he was just another corporate shill. Where's the vision? Where's the trust? Where's the accountability?

I have no idea where the next generation of leaders is going to come from, but I am sure of one thing. Until we have leaders we can respect, admire and trust - even if we disagree with them - we won't have governments worth a damn, and basically, we're all screwed.

Read pages 1-50 free on Google Books.

*For the benefit of my non-UK readers, a plc is a Public Limited Company. UK plc is the idea that you can treat and run the country like a giant corporation.

In at the deep end

2010-10-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Learning's a weird thing. We all do it in different ways. Some by watching, some by experimentation, some by theory, some by reading. I used to be a reader, but for some reason, that's changing. It may be middle age, it may be the nature of the things I'm learning, or it may just be that I'm learning new learning techniques.

Once upon a time, I'd learn things by reading manuals. Cover to cover, grasp everything, and if there were exercises, I'd do them in my head. Then I'd get going.

Then I started to learn by playing. I'd mess around with a piece of software, try things, and gradually absorb what it could do and how I could do it. That's how I learned to use Photoshop, in my own, idiosyncratic way. I've tried reading books or watching tutorials, but somehow, it never stuck. The only time I've learned new tricks is when someone looks over my shoulder and says - the right way - oh, did you know you could do this instead, and it's easier / better / faster ? And then I can take that little tip, relate it to what I'm doing, and use it.

Nowadays, though, I only seem to be able to learn software when I have a specific goal and some serious time pressure. If I know what I'm trying to achieve, then I have a structure to work with. I don't get distracted by obscure features or unnecessary tasks, I just focus on learning everything I need to know to get the job done. And, because it's a real project, not a test project, I learn it and remember it.

Right now, I'm learning how to make eBooks. I've spent a day or so looking at how it's done, researching the market and the different devices and formats, and doing the basic research. I've got the tools, and now I need to learn how to use them. I've opened them up and played with them a bit, but I'm none the wiser. The solution is simple. Start on the first book right away. Screw it up, get it rejected, do it again, repeat until satisfactory.

I know the job can be done in a day. Two days is normal. So I'm allowing myself a week for the first one. Then, as I get better, I'll get quicker, and within a few iterations, I'll know all I need to know to hit that one-to-two day target. Then, once I have the process down, I'll start picking up tricks to do more. It works out quite efficiently, and it means I'm getting real results very early on.

I think it's mainly due to the fact that most software is way more feature-rich than I need. I probably only use maybe 10% of the functionality of most of the apps I have. The rest are unnecessary. If I started learning by playing, I'd be lost in irrelevance, and getting frustrated that I wasn't doing the thing I was after. Yes, it might be nice to figure out how I can make a book title that wings its way onto the opening page like a flight of swans, forms beautiful letters while rippling through all the colours of the rainbow, and then bursts into flame, leaving nothing behind but the words scorched onto the electronic paper, but really, that's not as important as figuring out how to put the damn text onto the reader, is it? Task-based learning forces you to focus on what's critical. In the process, I'll notice the option to create animated titles, and I can come back to that when I have time, or if I have a project that would genuinely benefit from it.

It's the same with pretty much all apps. They do way more than I need. So does my phone. So does my bloody dishwasher. (What exactly are those other four programs for? Isn't the WASH program enough?) I can't be bothered to figure everything out, just enough to deal with what I need right now.

This isn't just a technology thing or a complaint about unnecessary features and over-engineered software. This "just in time knowledge" is actually how we learn most things. I'm not going to learn all about plumbing to deal with any potential household crises. I'll find out just what I need to know to fix my leaking shower, and deal with that. (Or, in reality, get someone to come over and fix my shower while I watch, so I'll know for next time. Thanks, Jon!)

Learning by throwing myself in at the deep end seems to work for me. It keeps me focused on results, and seems to improve my retention. I'd be interested to hear how others learn new skills.

Treehackers

2010-10-25T12:14:00.000-07:00

This arrived in my inbox today. Since my friend Eddy explicitly says he's putting it in the public domain, here you go. Feel free to make this happen, share, repost, or whatever!

Lunch-time conversation with colleagues turned to the idiosyncracies of the Mac App-store's guidelines on acceptable content - and how to work round them.  Apparently depictions of violence against animals or people are out; but no mention of plants.  Nor are your enemies allowed to be any identifiable real-world cultural group; but apparently nothing prevents *your* side from being one.  So we concluded that you might be allowed a hyper-violent video game in which the enemy is a force of triffids and ents defending the forests from evil loggers who've hired you as a mercenary to fend off the mobile plants while the loggers go to work raping the rain-forests.  Since it's common "knowledge" that the nazis all ran away to hide out in South America, *our* side can safely be jack-booted thugs with hakkenkreutz insignia.  We just have to be careful not to have any of them being killed horribly; so the ents and triffids must be killing humanely, thereby further driving home the "you are on the side of evil" message.  Make it sufficiently over the top, I suspect it could actually be very popular, just for subverting all the silly censoriousness (not just Apple's) about violent video games.   Remembering that some on this list have contacts in the gaming industry, I hereby dedicate this silliness to the public domain.  As to this mail's subject: despite its similarity to the word "tree-hugger", especially when pronounced, it'd be more faithfully translated as lumberjack - or "tree-hacker".   Eddy.

Chief Culture Officer

2010-10-19T17:40:00.000-07:00

Chief Culture Officer, by Grant McCracken, pulls together the two diverse and yet interlinked strands of my life: anthropology and business. I studied social anthropology at Cambridge in the mid-80s, and ever since, I've wondered whether what I learned was pure self-indulgence (paid for by British tax-payers, because that was how we did things back then, and for which I've always been grateful) or the most totally useful thing in the world. I've always liked to believe that my knowledge of anthropology has underpinned everything else. It's not just that anthropology is the study of people and societies, but also that it teaches you how to study people, how to analyse them, and how to respond to them.

Over the last few years, I've finally noticed people claiming a role for anthropologists outside academia and National Geographic. In 2007, at a conference in Atlanta about virtual worlds and MMORPGs, I first heard people talking about how they needed anthropologists to understand the way online societies were evolving. WoW, Second Life and the like were no longer defined by their technology, but by the way the people interacted and the social mechanisms that the worlds facilitated - deliberately or accidentally. In 2008, at a reunion dinner in Cambridge, we had an extensive discussion in the anthropology department about the way technologies like Facebook, Skype, and mobiles phones are changing society and fundamental social mechanisms. Now, there's even someone who's doing a study of entrepreneurs and investors from an anthropological, rather than an economic perspective.

Chief Culture Officer puts the official seal on this trend by calling for companies to have an anthropologist at the very top level if they want to connect with their market. In effect, he's saying that without the understanding that anthropologists bring, companies can't create the products people want, or communicate in a language they understand. Written by an anthropologist from Chicago who studied under the great Marshall Sahlins (my personal hero in the anthropology world), and who has consulted extensively for mega-brands such as Coca-Cola, IKEA and Kraft, this book comes with some serious authority.

McCracken argues that companies need to understand culture in its wider sense. It's not just about what's "cool". Cool is destined to become passé overnight, and you can't rely on riding that wave forever. It's not about "high culture" like opera or art galleries. It's about a complex web of what people value, which affects not just their choice of music, clothing or beverages, but also sofas, curtains, washing machines, bread or Christmas presents for their mother in law. It's about understanding the shift towards reusable and recyclable goods in some communities, or when people want beige instead of this summer's fashion. It's about knowing when shopping is a necessity, and when it's a pleasure, and when it's entertainment, and how that affects what people want out of it. It's about knowing how people will react to a gimmick like making Coke vending machines charge an extra 10c in hot weather (they actually considered doing this, but rejected it on McCracken's advice) or changing a logo.

I have to say, I rather like this idea. It validates everything I've been saying for over 20 years. Big companies should be employing people like me, and giving us jobs at the highest level - with appropriately huge salaries, of course.

But then I got to thinking. It's all a utopian fantasy.

McCracken suggests that it's the CCO's job to know everything, from trends in music to food to clothes to tv to hobbies to hair dye products to anything else you can think of. Across the whole world, all demographics, all ages. He actually says it's the CCO's job to "know everything about everything." I call bullshit. You can't possibly know it all. I don't care how many magazines you read, how many Web sites you visit, how many people you follow on Twitter, or how many hours of TV you watch. The world's way too damn big. No matter how much I learn every day sitting at my computer, I'm never going to understand the LA Hispanic community, rural mid-West America, Chinese in New York, Thai communities in Florida, school kids in deprived black areas, to name but a few. And that's just in the USA. I haven't even started on Canada, South America, Europe, and so on.

And anyway, that's not how proper anthropology is done. Anthropologists work by focusing on one community, immersing themselves in it, understanding it, then focusing on another community, and contrasting them. They don't do a drive-by and then claim in-depth knowledge.

His anecdotes to show how the CCO achieves this omniscience are fallacious. For example, he talks about the trend towards artisan breads, and how they're taking a bite out of supermarket bakeries. He says that most people took a while to notice this, but a CCO would have spotted this trend starting in 1990. A classy bakery started in San Francisco (which he calls the first artisan bakery in the US, which I seriously doubt - weren't they doing it 100 years ago?), and by the end of the year, it was doing well. And on this basis, the CCO can predict a trend.

Again, I call bullshit with 20/20 hindsight. All you can tell is that this shop was doing well - you can't predict from a sample of one that this would spread to other bakeries, other cities, other communities. And even if you could, what's the likelihood that your CCO will know about that one shop, especially if he's based in Chicago or Seattle?

I liked some of his insights about culture, and I could certainly appreciate how this could help some companies, mostly the ones with huge amounts invested in their multi-billion dollar global brands. But in the end, it was like a typical academic paper - an appeal for funding. It came down to "I know stuff about people, and you need me, so let me define my own job title."

Frankly, companies really don't need yet another C-level guy swaggering around pontificating and pretending he knows everything about people and what the company strategy should be, from product design to pricing to advertising to hiring staff. Companies already have marketing departments, and it's their job to know their market. Sure, they can probably learn something from the way anthropologists work, but all that means is that an anthropology degree could be a solid foundation for a good career in marketing. Actually, many anthropologists could learn a lot from good market researchers.

And that, I suppose, explains why I enjoy the market research side of my job and loathe sales.

Only the super-rich can save us!

2010-10-18T11:35:00.000-07:00

The world's pretty messed up right now. Everything's controlled by a few huge corporation who are to all intents and purposes above the law. Governments answer to the interests of big business. And big business answers to the interests of a few billionaires. The rest of us really don't matter a damn, and neither does the planet. Everything is sacrificed in the interests of profit.

So what can we do about it? Realistically, probably not a damn thing. We can elect different politicians, and within months, they'll be completely in thrall to the same old corporations. We can launch consumer protests and boycotts, but they have such a hold on every aspect of our way of life that it'll only work if we all go back to being self-sufficient pioneers, and that just ain't gonna happen.

In this book, Ralph Nader plays with an interesting idea. What if a bunch of super-rich people got together and decided to change things? Using the skills they've learned for manipulating governments, media, and economies, and their vast personal fortunes, they effectively launch a commercial revolution. They champion alternative energies, they challenge Wal-Mart's stranglehold over retail, they tackle healthcare billing fraud and insurance companies, and they fight the way that corporations buy politicians. As a Brit, I missed some of the political and commercial references, but enough came through to keep me hooked throughout. I also learned a lot from his use of real legal cases and legislation.

Nader's protagonists are all real billionaires or multi-millionaires; Warren Buffett, George Soros, Ross Perot, Ted Turner, Bill Cosby, Bill Gates Sr, Paul Newman, and Yoko Ono, for example. By contrast, most of their "opponents" are fictional: CEO Cumbersome, Edward Edifice, and so on. This gives the book a strange feeling. It keeps reminding you that Nader's talking about the real world, not some imaginary thriller conspiracy world, but at the same time, it's only fiction.

Now obviously, this is a satirical fantasy, and it's wildly utopian. Somehow, I don't think these guys are going to pledge their personal fortunes to save the world. However, it's an enjoyable book, and an easy read even though it's nearly 800 pages long. Nader's analysis of what's wrong with American society is insightful, and needs to be read.

For me, the best part was when he showed how overturning the corporations was not just within the spirit of the Constitution, but was also completely compatible with capitalism. Nader argues that what we have in the US isn't actually capitalism, it's state capitalism. The big corporations are backed by the state and supported by the state. The laws are written for their benefit. They pay lower taxes than smaller businesses or individual. They get huge handouts. They control the courts and the media. They get preferential treatment in every way. That's not free market competition. That's not capitalism. That's basically an economy based on state-sponsored monopolies - a classic hallmark of communist regimes.

Although I don't get to vote in this country*, I'm trying to get to grips with American politics. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the whole Republican/Democrat thing doesn't matter. They may chant different slogans, but in the end, they don't run the country. The corporations do. Whoever gets to Washington, it's the corporate lobbyists and their vast budgets who decide how Congress votes. They're happy as things are and can effectively block any changes that don't benefit them. And you don't get to vote for them. Worse, they have huge support because of their total control over big media. "What's good for business is good for America," they say. "If you damage our business, it'll cost jobs," they threaten. "We bring you cheap goods - what's the problem?" they ask. And so people nod and turn a blind eye to all the corruption, profiteering, and monopolistic abuse of power.

If you want to see real change in America, what's needed is to get rid of the unelected cartel that controls the government, and Nader makes this point eloquently, passionately, and with conviction.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Thomas Jefferson

*I can't vote because I'm a resident alien, not a US citizen. I could opt to become a US citizen in a couple of years, but I haven't decided whether that's something I want to do.

Rework

2010-10-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Are you an entrepreneur? Managing a small software company? Thinking about getting into a start-up? Frustrated by the way your work/life balance is shot to hell?

Then get a copy of Rework, put it in your bathroom, and read a few pages every time you have a few moments. It's full of short, insightful essays, typically a page long, that add up to a different vision of how you can do business, and what a successful company can look like.

Some of it's pretty obvious advice. Meetings are toxic. Don't hire too many people too early. Love what you're doing or it'll show.

Some of it's slightly utopian, and only suitable for certain sorts of companies. Hire people who don't need managers and will just get on with whatever needs doing. It's OK for everyone to work from home, scattered round the world as long as they communicate online every day. Make sure you can do every job in the company yourself. Keep your product really simple.

Well, that's all fine if you're building a small software product, and you only need a few talented programmers to create it and refine it step by step. That doesn't always work so well if you're building a complex product that requires a lot of people working together. Or, come to that, opening a restaurant. Sometimes, you need a roomful of grunts and a manager just to get through the sheer volume of labour and ensure everyone's working effectively. And if they're highly specialised grunts, you can't really expect anyone else to be able to do their job. That, after all, is why you hired them.

However, there are some pieces in Rework that challenge orthodox business thinking, particularly in the modern tech start-up. These are the bits you need to read and think about. The five that stuck in my mind this time were:

Planning is guessing. No plan I have ever made for a business has come to reality. And, probably, neither have any of yours. All those optimistic budget forecasts, sales forecasts, hiring plans, release schedules, marketing plans - all bollocks. They looked impressive, and people signed up to them, but the truth is they were my best guess, nothing more, and they all turned out to be wrong. Hell, I can rarely even plan for what I'm going to do next week. Things change too fast in modern business. So, they advise, stop wasting your time making pointless plans, set some goals, and just do the damn job. Or, if you do have to make a plan, make sure you and everyone else knows they're only a guess.

Don't write down the procedures. Forget sheets of diagrams and documents explaining you do everything in the company. You won't stick to them anyway. A release checklist or similar, fine. But don't waste your time writing down stuff that either everyone knows, or which will be ignored in the heat of the moment.

Don't plan for an exit. This one's anathema to investors. After all, you only build a company so you can sell it, right? Well, that's one view of business. Alternatively, you could build a company that you can stick with for ever, and do it because you love it.

No to-do lists. Actually, I don't agree with this one. I'm a to-do list person. But I do like their suggestion not to waste time going through and prioritising everything 1, 2 or 3, and giving everything a target date, importance, and so on. Instead, just pick the most important thing, put it at the top of the list, and do that. Then, when you've gone as far as you can with that, pick the next most important thing, and do that.

Don't be a hero. If you're the guy working until 11pm every night, you're not doing anyone any favours. You're going to be tired and unproductive, and guilt-tripping your colleagues into working longer hours isn't going to endear you to anyone. More to the point, if what you're working on is really taking that much effort, then you should seriously consider whether you're going about it the right way.

The main themes of Rework are that in most companies we waste too much time on unnecessary management, and we'd all get a lot more done if we just got on with what was most important to delivering a great product to our customers. As I said, not all of this applies to everyone, but it should certainly get you thinking about how you and your company could work more efficiently, get more done, and spend less time doing it.

National Coming Out Day

2010-10-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

Today's National Coming Out Day. I hadn't heard of this until I noticed many of my friends posting about it in their FB statuses. I was going to just cut'n'paste their standard phrases into my status, but figured I needed more than a couple of sentences.

First off, I really don't give a damn about other people's sexual orientation. Straight, gay, bi, bi-curious, celibate, transgender - it makes no difference to me whatsoever. I care about the people I like because of their personalities, and I'm more interested in talking to them and enjoying their company than what sort of genitalia they like their sexual partners to have.

Second, I don't see why same-sex couples shouldn't be allowed to marry. It's surely better than being trapped in a fake marriage and having affairs to satisfy your sexual inclination. At one point, shortly after it was legalised in England, I think I knew more gay married couples than straight married couples. They seem to be perfectly happy, and as much in love with each other as any straight couple. If anything, more so, because they have to endure much more to publicise their emotional commitment to each other. Okay, so most of them don't have kids, but then again, many of the straight couples I know don't have kids either.

Thirdly, to the religious among you, I have only this to say. Love is as close to a divine gift as any of us can expect to experience. If a person is truly in love with someone of the same sex, then obviously your God wants it that way, so you should give them your support. Whether they marry or not, you should let people be with the person they want to be with. It makes the world a better place.

Fourth, to anyone who believes that homosexuals or bisexuals shouldn't be allowed in the military, tell that to the Spartans. They're just as courageous, patriotic, and reliable as heterosexuals. Just because the guy you're sharing a barracks with is gay, it doesn't mean he fancies you. He's a soldier, doing the same job as you, and that's all that matters. "Don't ask, don't tell," is a pathetic policy. It's what we called in England the "Blackmailer's Charter", which basically meant that gay people were permanently under the power of anyone who knew their secret.

And lastly, to anyone who thinks it's acceptable to bully someone for being gay, or for being confused about their sexuality, particularly in their teenage years, it isn't. That makes you an intolerant bigot, and there's no place for you in my world.

It's crap, but is it art?

2010-10-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

A lot of my friends have been to see Exit Through the Gift Shop this week. I didn't go, largely because I'm not a fan of Banksy, or street art in general, but also because I decided to go to a different art show that evening, which I thoroughly enjoyed. After hearing their reports of the film, I'm really glad I didn't go. I think I'd have hated it.

This is nothing to do with the quality of the film. I haven't seen it, so I can't, and won't, comment. It's about the subject matter. It would have made me very angry, and I'd have left the cinema seething. I'm not sure if that was the emotional response they were after.

From what I can tell, the movie goes like this. A guy, Thierry Guetta, decides to make a movie about street art. Guetta shows his footage to Banksy, who tells him it's absolutely terrible, and suggests that he should try his hand at painting instead, while he (Banksy), despite having no film experience, will edit the footage into something watchable and finish the movie. So Guetta goes off and makes a load of equally terrible art, hires a warehouse in LA, and tells everyone that Banksy told him to be an artist. He hypes it like crazy, and suddenly his stuff is cool and he's an instant millionaire and the darling of the LA art set. The film ends with an embarrassed Banksy saying "I used to think anyone could do art. Now, I don't think like that."

Now, it's very likely that this wasn't a genuine documentary. I'd guess that Banksy set the whole thing up, just to take the piss out of the art world. Either way, though, the message of the film is the same.

Being a successful artist has nothing at all to do with talent. You can be absolutely terrible, but if you have the support of someone famous, you too can get rich and famous. People will buy your art, not because they like it, or even because they think it's cool, but because they think that other people will think they're cool for having it.

Even if it's another spectacular hoax, it's an insult to every talented, hard-working artist I know who's trying to get noticed. Don't bother going to art school, kids. Don't bother perfecting your craft. Don't even try to be original. Just do any old shit and get someone cool to back you, and you'll have people fighting over your work. It's Malcolm MacLaren and the Sex Pistols all over again.

No, that's nothing new, I know that. It's always been that way, and I'm not in the least surprised. But I wouldn't have enjoyed sitting in a cinema for an hour and a half having it rubbed in my face that talent is completely worthless, and the only thing that counts is having a Banksy on your side.

Don't let me stop you watching it. All my friends loved it. It was certainly thought-provoking, even without having seen it. But given that I spend much of my life trying to promote talented artists, the film's message is not one I personally want to hear.