Tuesday, March 23, 2010

For the future

Two posts to come some point in the future - early vs late (and the work/life/time implications of this) and moral lessons for my child part two.

Notebook

With age, comes great forgetfulness.

I would very much like to carry a notebook, ideally one that read my thoughts without any transcription effort. I've had 10 good ideas this week and only had the opportunity to capture two on paper.

Monday, March 15, 2010

The fucking music industry

This rant is for you, Mrs Pepper. 

All you music industry leeches, just fuck off and die. Seriously.


Music costs fucking NOTHING to make and NOTHING to distribute. I know, I've done it. I have a CD out there from my younger days that 5 FUCKING MILLION people bought. All told, I paid a couple of hundred quid for the hardware and it took me a few weeks to write and record.

Do you see me moaning and bitching that people could possibly listen to those tracks? NO! I got a real fucking job and earn my ongoing wage through continued hard work and effort.

People whistle a tune, do you want to fucking CHARGE them for it? People like a tune you've made, does that mean you get a free ride forever?

Not any more, you fucking leeches. Too late, you missed the boat to change your business model. Keep your manufactured Pop Idol dross, keep your new signings that no-one wanted to listen to in the first place, keep your payola radio slots, keep your fucking tedious repetitive heard-it-all-before stable of five thousand artists who all sound the fucking same.


Apparently Panorama tonight was about the music industry. I haven't seen it, but I bet Simon Cowell or Louis fucking Walsh was on there moaning about how they are not rich enough. Fuck off.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Bounce bounce bounce

Bounce bounce bounce!
Bounce bounce bounce!
Bounce bounce bounce!
Bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce.

this is Gabe's favourite song this afternoon, sung in time to the bouncy chair going up and down.

If you wish to sing along : C E G, C E G, C E G, hi-C A G F E D C.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

I don't owe you anything, internet guy

I visit a variety of web-developer type blogs and news sites over the course of my average week, and there's a repeated theme (which ties into all this ACTA and digital economy furore over the last couple of months) which goes like this:

"Ad-blocking is bad. I make my living off you seeing my ads."

Pardon me, internet guy, but I don't owe you anything. Not one red cent. If I want to improve my browsing experience by refusing to download your adverts, that's my business and my business alone.

If you don't want me to see your content, don't publish it on the internet.

If you don't want me visiting your site because the traffic costs are too expensive for you, then put in a paywall. You will immediately benefit in the reduction of traffic costs because chances are very high I'll not be back.

If you want to publish content, and attempt to make a living off that (and it's possible, I've seen many people who do) then great - go for your life. Don't think that gives you a right to dictate how I use the internet. If you can't make a living because people are not clicking on your adverts, that is your problem not mine. If putting your content out there is too expensive for you or is not making you the money you want ... change your business model.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The affordability of being

If you live in the UK, then elections are (finally) looming. I say finally, because we've been in the power of an unelected leader for the last couple of years, which stinks of every bad kind of politics there is. Much as I loathe Gordon Brown and everything he's done to set this country down the path to destruction over the last decade, at least we'll have the chance to rectify it.

Of course, that relies on everyone making the effort - making a statement, and (I guess, if one is to subscribe to our outdated and notably ineffectual and feeble electoral system) making a vote.

I'm strong in my political beliefs, and I think fairly well informed. I'll certainly not be voting for Labour or Conservative. This will probably render my voice mute, but short of wholesale destruction casting a vote is the only way to be counted.

Are you informed? Do you know where our money goes? do you know who your local MP is? Do you know what they stand for, and whether they come close to representing your views when you vote for them?

If you don't, here are some links that you will hopefully find enlightening. Use at your discretion.

Look here for budget info (www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org)
Look here to find out about your MP, including their voting record (www.theyworkforyou.com)

I'm not going to attempt to sway your vote, but in the name of the noodly one, please be informed about your choice. Make it count for the right reasons.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Body of evidence

When I was younger, I'm pretty sure my mother and father took a multitude of photographs, and most likely some video, of myself and my older brother. As far as I can ascertain, very little evidence of these media exist. I do have memories of my father running slide shows, and I know that my stepfather was interested in photography at various points in our youth. Where did these vanish to? Are they stuck somewhere in albums, boxed in a loft? Have they been jettisoned as irrelevant artifacts of our younger lives?

I'd like to think that those images would have value to myself and my family as time goes on. The older I become, the more value I place on my place in the world and my story within it. Scattered moments of staring at family albums when I was 12, feeling persecuted and terribly embarrassed, would probably hold huge emotional relevance to me today.

Gabriel will, for better or worse, most likely not face that fate - unless the interwebs and society as know it change fairly radically, or Flickr / Picasa / Facebook suddenly decide that the cents worth of disk space I hold from them in exchange for targetting their adverts is actually considerably less valuable than now. Most likely he'll come of age in a time where all the photographs, video, audio and other media that we've captured of him will persist in some form that will literally be embarassingly easy to find. Creating that media is as trivial as it has ever been, indexing it slightly less trivial but still not a terribly onerous task.

To parallel the effort I'd have to put in to discover my former selves captured in chemicals, I'm going to forgo providing any links. Gabriel, if you're reading this - it's all on the internet somewhere ;)

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Prune juice

I think an explosion is imminent.