Archive for July, 2007

Passport

Published
by
Mike
on July 31, 2007
in Tooled Up
. 0 Comments

Because I’m an idiot I packed for Istanbul about ten minutes before getting into the car for the airport. I’m pretty good at this by now and as long as I have a laptop and an Internet connection when I travel I’m usually set. Seeing as the fuckwits at AirFrance managed to lose my luggage I’m glad I travel light, but this trip I forgot to load up the laptop properly . This meant that I only had a couple of movies with me and just enough music to get me through a long weekend. What if the terrorists strapped bombs to the UK and pushed it into the side of America while I was away?

My rule normally when travelling is to take enough digital media with me so that I can survive away from home indefinitely. It all worked out in the end. Despite parts of the country flooding while I was away, London survived and I picked up another copy of A Bittersweet Life while I was out there. Some people buy carpets in Istanbul - I buy cool-as-ice Korean revenge movies. This was a nice movie to fly back on as it counterbalanced watching Alain Delon in Un flic on the way out.

All of this is a long winded build up to the fact that this week I bought a new hard drive. This one.

My new baby

It’s small, sexy and (now) filled with evil. Never again will I travel without a copy of William Shatner’s Kingdom of the Spiders or Special Agent Dale Cooper’s Twin Peaks Tapes or indeed my beloved Telly Savalas album (the ‘music’ that must never be played).

I sleep easier with this knowledge.

and we write and write and write…

Published
by
Mike
on July 29, 2007
in Friends
. 0 Comments

Check out Neal’s interview with Cecil Castellucci over on the rabbit + crow blog:

I could never understand why someone who didn’t know me, the IRA, would want to harm me. And I couldn’t understand why someone would do something so ugly. And I struggle to find beauty in everyone and everywhere because of it. 

The Plain Janes

What just happened?

Published
by
Mike
on July 29, 2007
in website
. 4 Comments

After giving it a lot of thought I decided to bring my other blog under this roof.

Running two blogs (alongside all the other stuff I’m doing) meant that both were suffering. Plus it’s been made clear to me that I can’t keep ‘work’ separate from all the other crap I get up to because a lot of the time it’s the ‘other crap’ that finds me work. I’m lucky that way.

So if you’re already here stay put. Or better still add this RSS feed to your reader as the content is about to increase rapidly. I’m rolling the shutters down on VMII, but I’m hoping this will be my last move for a while.

HOTT

Published
by
Mike
on July 19, 2007
in Friends
. 1 Comment

Look what my friend Irina has done now:

Dontcha Wish Your Cell Phone Was Hot Like Me?

Now I’m going to be late for my flight :)

Istanbul

Published
by
Mike
on July 19, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Gotta go catch a plane.

Istanbul - Google Maps

Back in a few days.

ps Have fun at the Moo Party!

Earn a living from your blog and get laid too!

Published
by
Mike
on July 16, 2007
in RSS this
. 0 Comments

Do you subscribe to a lot of blogs that aim to make you a better blogger? A lot of them give up such blog industry secrets as use a bold font to make a word stand out. Or reveal insider blog knowledge such as a catchy headline is better than a non-catchy headline. If you know the kind of blog I’m talking about then please head over to Rob’s:

Blogs as self-perpetuating shit farms?

Personally I’d have left the question mark off.

Screw the bigger boat

Published
by
Mike
on July 15, 2007
in Quotable
. 0 Comments

I’m certainly still paddling in the bloody red ocean:

Satoru Iwata gleefully tells The Times that he is swimming in a clear sea teeming with women, pensioners and repentant couch potatoes… he is explaining his belief in the “Blue Ocean” theory of business, which says that to succeed you must reach markets (blue oceans) that are free from competitors. Venturing into “bloody red oceans”, where packs of rivals fight tooth and nail, can only lead to failure. The central premise – that it is best to zig when others zag – sums Mr Iwata up perfectly.

via

Grasshoppers

Published
by
Mike
on July 15, 2007
in Tooled Up
. 2 Comments

I’m still stumbling my way around Facebook and learning mainly by taste. Being added as a vampire, zombie or STD is plain annoying so there’ll be less of that. Watching how smart people use Facebook seems to be the way to go. Take Chris Brogan’s Grasshopper group, for example:

Facebook isn’t just a school toy or “yet another social network.” From what I’m learning, it’s a pretty useful system that can be used very effectively to build a very vibrant network, provide excellent tools (especially with lots of good 3rd party apps), and then provide you the chance to use it to DO SOMETHING.

I believe that Grasshoppers is a great way to prove this. Join the group. Determine what we’re doing and how you can apply yourself to it. And then dig in.

Turn social networking into action.

Thats a jawdropping idea. Especially seeing as so many people seem to use it for nothing more powerful than sharing photos of old school friends ie. a dusty box best left under your fucking bed.

PS

Kung Fu Wanted Poster

Hearting Skitch

Published
by
Mike
on July 11, 2007
in Tooled Up
. 3 Comments

The best thing about moving over to a Mac so far has been Skitch. It’s not just a pleasure to use it’s fun. Here it is in action on my desktop:

Skitching

Check out their great little video here. The UI takes a little bit of practice, but it’s so refreshing after using Photoshop and PSP for so long. If you need a very cool way to play around with images then this is the app for you. Still in invite-only beta, but with so much happy buzz around the product that I’m hoping that Plasq open it up soon.

I have a couple or three invites left if anyone wants to try it out. Mac only don’t forget…

PS The video gets as much attention as the app. Check out Keith Lang’s blog post of how he put it together here.

Do anything to him

Published
by
Mike
on July 11, 2007
in Tooled Up
. 0 Comments

This has highly amused just about everyone who knows me for the last few days:

Shut it

Sigh. I got a Facebook account. It is here. Poke away.

Initially I got very defensive and insisted that a Facebook refusnik like myself had only finally caved in because it was getting impossible to keep up with certain work related tasks without one - this helped sweeten the poison as I could retort that I was getting paid to use Facebook.

Now I’ve got my head around it my thinking has changed. Slightly.

I completely understand why so many people use it and indeed enjoy it. Tellingly I completely understand why so many of my non techy friends are on there. It’s easier than running a blog, you ‘get it’ instantly unlike say Twitter and because it doesn’t do much you’re not going to go scratch your head over it a lot. It picks up the Friend’s Reunited users in one fell swoop and doesn’t charge them a penny.

I still don’t like it. But it has it’s uses.

I’m also trying to learn to love Pownce. I keep comparing it to Twitter and it loses so bad I feel sorry for it. Like a three legged dog. If I try and see it as a way to share stuff with people it shines a little more, though I’m far from making friends with it. But I’m trying…

I have a bunch of Pownce invites by the way. Lemme know if you need one.