Category: Random

I’ll be buggered if I can figure out how to get photo-messaging or e-mail or the interweb working on my little T610, which they don’t tell you but doesn’t actually make images of a decent useful size (not 640×480, but 288×352 of all sizes). I’ve fiddled with the settings incessantly. Maybe I need to talk to the company themselves. Anyway – I’ll be buggered if I can send ’em, but I can sure as hell take ’em. Presenting a collage of the first few days with my new phone…

So the first members of the weblogging extended family have been exposed to AOL’s proposed new weblogging tools. The general consensus seems to be that they are of surprisingly good quality and that they are approaching the service more like LiveJournal than Blogger, Typepad or MT. I’m going to need to ponder this stuff a little more before I’m going to be comfortable presenting an opinion. In the meantime – here are the links:

• BuzzMachine
• Radio Free Blogistan
• Ultranormal

It’s been a slow-posting week on plasticbag.org and that’s directly related to fast-moving, sleepless, hectic first week of new job acclimatisation. It’s still far too early to get a sense of what our every-day work is going to be like, but if it’s anything like what we’ve been doing so far then it’s going to be extraordinarily good fun.

Sometimes at UpMyStreet I’d lament the fact that working life was so infrequently like The West Wing. I’d developed a bit of a taste for thrusting, self-determining creative work while working for the BBC’s Making it Happen project, but UpMyStreet – for all the good work we did and all the cool people I met when I worked there – was not that kind of place. It didn’t have that kind of atmosphere at all.

This job has West Wing potential. Serious West Wing potential in fact… (Guess who was in the building on Friday). I can already see myself striding through corridors telling people about wheat yields in Arkansas, colliding with other walking-conversations about speech-writing and Congress. Will I fall over the camera? Will I remember my lines?

Ok. So this brief post is so entirely not about social software or weblogs or technology or futurism or ‘the industry’. This post is – well – it’s quite a lot more shallow than that. This post (which is nearly over) is quite simply about really really hot people. In particular one really really hot person. In particular this really really hot person – currently showing in a cinema near you… Dear God… Dear beautiful beautiful God…

The web splinters that have been working their way under my typing fingernails today include:

• Dan Hon’s running Google Ads
• Reboot Talk Videos
• Panther’s Finder in-depth
• Bart & JP are so cute
• 3-day weeks and powercuts? [via 2lmc]

I’ll tell you something for nothing. I’m beginning not to care who’s right about this whole bloody RSS thing. Is it Dave? Is it Mark? Is it the Penry the mild-mannered janitor? I know it’s an important debate, and I know that the world’s not complete unless we have a fourth, fifth and sixth syndication format, and I know that I’m being dismissive of a legitimate and complex debate, but you know on the other hand…

When we went to Apple in Cupertino I got little Oskar a present that I thought he could grow into in a few months. And now he’s wearing it! Aw!

Lili was flustered. “But if you can do a complete revision in eight weeks, why not just finish it, then plan another revision, do that one in eight weeks, and so on? Why take five years before anyone can ride the thing?”

Why indeed?

The perpetually unfinished experimental message-board that Cal and I made is coming up with some particularly interesting debates at the moment. Here are a few of my favourite ongoing discussions:

• No Such Thing As Talent
  “So for my degree I had to study ‘Art, Creativity and Excellence’ from a cognitive psychology perspective. After a few months of scepticism I reluctantly admitted my professor was right and that there is no such thing as talent- skills are acquired only through practice.”
• Wealth, Power and Race – is it just that the white guys want some things more?
  “Unless of course the levels of greed and family-destroying workaholism that lead to such high positions are, culturally speaking, predominantly a white male thing…..?”
• Is there any utility derived from anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist, anti-g8 rallies and demonstrations?
  “Speaking of violent anarchist action specifically, does this counterproductively alienate the common person from their cause, rather than promote it?”
• Gay Pop Music
  “Apparently, it’s Gay and Lesbian Awareness Month, at least on the public radio, and so they did this profile thing with three pop albums that document the history of gay civil rights.”
• Girls Rule, Boys Drool: The New Gender Gap
  “I am not sure if the switchboard is the right place for this, but let’s start here and move the topic if necessary. According to this article in Business Week, girls are snapping up all the top spots in schools, while boys lag behind. And it’s a major cause of worry for the future.”

Finally we know what it stands for…