Opened it and read it…
No, Talk Talk, you utter sods. I’ve been frustratingly disconnected from your service (which I continue to pay for) for over three months now. Repeated phonecalls trying to sort the issue have only wasted my time further.
So don’t email me to claim you’re bringing me “the brightest and best of the web”. Clownshoes.
I’ve two aims for the next week – avoid overeating and catch up on some of the stuff that’s lost out to my recent work/life imbalance.
Books For as long as I can remember I’ve been halfway through Homicide, Trickster Makes This World and Spies. Quite why I think I might get on to Viral Loop, Bringing Nothing to the Party and What Was Lost escapes me, but you’ve got to have ambitions.
Films The folks have got Sky with all the bounty that brings. However, in case there’s nothing watchable there, I’m going armed with Persepolis, Morvern Callar, Synecdoche, New York and Waltz With Bashir.
Games Thanks to a few tweets by Daniel Nye-Griffiths I’ll be playing Machinarium, Samorost 2, The Path, Fatale and The Graveyard, all of which are on offer at the moment (handy tweet 1 and handy tweet 2).
Of course, I’ve not a hope of making it through much of that little lot, but it should be worth a spirited attempt.
I stayed at the lighthouse at St Anthony Head. This one:
It was ace. The weather was very unDecemberish and we saw a seal playing in the water.
What do you reckon sells best:
I’m sure we’d all like to convince ourselves it’s the former. However, the idea that ‘the good will out’ puts me in mind of the routinely rubbished concept that ‘if you build it they will come’. As far as I’m concerned (and I base this on nothing much more than personal experience) the chances are slim.
At least I have an article on Edge Online (found via Tom Armitage) to back up my witterings. Essentially, a recent study of computer game sales revealed that a game’s quality (judged by reviews) had hardly any effect on sales as compared to marketing spend:
Using a simple correlation scale comparing marketing spend and sales against Metacritic rating and sales, Divnich found that marketing influenced game revenue “three times more than game scores”
Too many good people hide behind false modesty, a lack of confidence or Bill Hicks quotes, allowing themselves to be eclipsed. It’s hardly a new problem but it’s always dead irritating to see.
Happy times on Saturday when the first magazine from my new subscription dropped onto the doormat. I signed up for this a few weeks ago but didn’t know quite what I’d be getting – instead I’m letting the nice people at Stack decide.
The Ride is lovely – printed on nice think paper and stuffed with writings and photos by real enthusiasts. Most double-page spreads have an article/essay on one side and a lovely photo or illustration on the other. I’m pretty sure I’ll devour it over the next couple of weeks and keep it around for long after.
It’s great and I love it but I’m not enough of a cycling nut to want to read it every month. That’s kinda the point though – I’m happy to trust Stack to throw good things my way. If none of them stick that’s not a problem – I’m in it for the variety.
This meme was swiped from the blog of Russ L. Here are the instructions:
First off the shelf for me was Philip Ball’s ‘Critical Mass – How one thing leads to another’ – a fascinating and surprisingly accessible tome packed with interesting ideas, concepts and explanations. The sort that I manage to keep in my head for exactly as long as it takes to start the next paragraph. That’s my fault, by the way, not the author’s.
What it’s doing in my office, I have no idea. Maybe I think it makes me look intelligent.
The fifth sentence on page 56 is:
Played in reverse, the movie would not look at all odd: the reverse collision also obeys Newton’s Laws.
Yesterday, I went to an event at the ICE in Coventry – an introduction to an innovation labs thing called F2 Future Forum.
In the afternoon we were asked to think of challenges that we’d like to innovate around. We were then told that we would vote on the ones we wanted to discuss further. I said I’d like to discuss:
Using game dynamics to create community
Which genuinely interests me. As I said when introducing my idea, everyone operates within communities – audiences, local area, suppliers, peers, etc. Quite often you’d like those communities to do something – turn up to your events, donate money, buy something from you, etc. Can you motivate people to do so using the elements usually associated with games?
Personally (or rather, professionally) I’m interested in bringing online communities together and getting them to view my content and/or interact with each other.
My idea was one of the most popular and went on to be discussed later.
Why, Chris, why?
Was my idea more compelling than some of the others on the board? I wouldn’t say so, but I would say I presented it better than some others. That’s not being big-headed, I just stuck to some basic principles which meant that:
The board was a mess of bits of paper, drawings, text and clutter. This is what it looked like (sans the more popular ideas):
And here’s how I presented my idea:
See what I did there?
Compare that to the ideas that didn’t make the cut and you’ll see that, no matter their merits, it was actually difficult to vote for some them. On the other hand, some of the other successful ideas (unfortunately not pictured) were presented similarly to mine.
As far as I’m concerned you’re making your life harder if you don’t:
Complicating things is counter-productive. I’m not saying it’s easy (see Blaise Pascal who said ““I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short” but simplicity’s important.
Last night I went along to the launch of the new Academy. Editors played and were good. Thanks to ace photographer Steve Gerrard for the invite. His photos will be up on Birmingham Live soon-ish and will probably be better than the one above. (Update – The Editors on Birmingham Live. There’s some good ones in there).
I was impressed by the new Academy. It feels a bit more purpose-built than the last place – there’s tiered seating on the balcony, the sound is better and Academy 2 is a vast improvement on the last version. The downstairs feels smaller but I didn’t get to explore the place too much.
I’ve had a good week of music actually. As well as Moseley Folk last weekend I saw both Tori Amos and the CBSO with conductor Andris Nelson (on separate nights) at the Symphony Hall – both were awesome.
I like Delicious a lot. It’s like the Internet’s version of a gated community, but one that’s open to any content as long as it meets some fairly simple criteria – it must be good enough for someone to want to bother bookmarking it with Delicious.
It’s nicely flexible too, with many uses. I ‘follow’ a bunch of interesting people to see what they reckon is worth bookmarking. The only problem is, for one reason or another, I don’t tend to visit the site very much.
Twitter’s nicely flexible too, and also has many uses. Unlike Delicious I follow Twitter a lot (usually via Tweetie). So, what I’ve done, is plug an RSS feed from my Delicious network into a new Twitter account (using Hootsuite to do that). That way new links will plonk into the stream of updates I follow, or I can check the profile if I feel the need.
The profile’s called CUnetwork. Ta da.
I did try turning an RSS feed of these links into an email (using xFruits) but that wasn’t great. This is working better so far.
Speaking at TED is a big deal being, as it is, a conference that offers ‘knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers’.
Browsing the site just now, I was a hugely surprised to see my old neighbour, Willard Wigan, now numbers among TED’s speakers. Let’s be clear, I wasn’t surprised because he didn’t deserve the invitation – what Willard is able to do is utterly extraordinary. It’s just that I’m know him as the friendliest, best-dressed guy on my street whose model airplanes used to fall into my back garden.
He moved away a little while back, which is a shame, although I understand he’s still around Birmingham.
So here’s TED’s blurb about Willard:
Willard Wigan tells the story of how a difficult and lonely childhood drove him to discover his unique ability — to create art so tiny that it can’t be seen with the naked eye. His slideshow of figures, as seen through a microscope, can only be described as mind-boggling.
Now please spare 20mins to watch Willard Wigan’s talk – Hold your breath for micro-sculpture:
Oh, and here’s a pic of me looking suitably dumbstruck last time I caught one of Willard’s exhibitions (pic by Pete Ashton):
