If you recognise yourself in this video, change your life! (oh and look out for banana skins)
“Never regret… if it’s good, it’s wonderful, if it’s bad, it’s experience” - Victoria Holt
“A man is not old until regrets take place of his dreams” - John Barrymore
Here’s to the Crazy One.
The misfit. The rebel. The troublemaker. The round peg in the square hole.
The One Who Saw Things Differently.
He wasn’t fond of rules. And he had no respect for the status quo.
You can quote him, disagree with him, glorify or vilify him. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore him. Because he changed things.
He pushed the human race forward. And while some may have seen him as the crazy one, we saw genius.
Because the man who was crazy enough to think he could change the world, was the one who did.
I was having a conversation just now and it reminded me of a sketch from the BBC Three animated series entitled Monkey Dust
In this sketch the Advertising Agency Labia, are pitching “New Truth” to a Government Ministry that has to deliver some bad news!
“By reclassifying things that aren’t entirely bad as things that are very nearly very good, you can achieve a significant re-emphasis of the good / bad ratio. We call it New Truth … it’s up to ten times better than old truth.”
According to a new survey by Harris Interactive 1 in 6 Americans now use an eReader with 1 in 6 likely to purchase one within the next 6 months. That’s 15%, which is almost double what it was this time last year, 8%. Also eBook readers purchase more books and read on average more than paper book readers!
I should know, since I purchased my first Sony eReader I started reading more, and now with the books from my Kindle available on my Mac, iPhone, iPad I purchase and read more than ever!
A case in point, Seth Godin released a new book today entitled, We Are All Weird, but rather than purchase the hard back and wait for it to be delivered (which I’ve not done in many many years!), I clicked the link to the Amazon Kindle store, clicked the “Buy now with one click” and had it on my Kindle before my kettle boiled this morning! Two Clicks and I had the book, why would anyone purchase a book in any other way, and why would an author sell their book any other way?
I’ve been saying this for years, it’s part of my no paper mantra, but it would appear Seth believes the same:
My new book, We Are All Weird goes on sale today. We only have 11,000 hardcover copies on sale at Amazon, with no plans to print more. I wanted you to have first dibs. (PS, Outside the USA? click here). Why limit the number printed?
Conventional publishing wisdom says that the first 10,000 copies are the hardest. In fact, you don’t make money until after that. The goal is to prime the pump and then, if you get lucky, sell millions and millions of hardcovers, day after day, year after year. That’s what pays the bills at all the large publishing houses. The thing is, digital is better at infinity than paper ever will be. Digital is easy to keep in stock, easy to replenish, easy to connect with. Paper, on the other hand, benefits from scarcity.
I’ve posted info on iPhone mounts and lenses previously (Glif, Owle, Olloclip, SLR adapter) but this is a first, an iPad 2 mount!
This has been really well thought through, and at $70 / €50 it’s not a bad price either.
More info at Makayama
What were the chances of that happening!! Some would say it’s a sign, “Double Rainbow, what does it all mean?” Others will tell me to do the lottery today, some won’t even notice and will have to have another look at the image above… as for me, oh it’s just coincidence, but freaky nonetheless! (although doing the lottery today won’t hurt will it, maybe I can turn that coincidence into serendipity!)
As the saying goes “sh!t happens!”
The recent spate of rioting, looting and arson in the UK will cost the taxpayer millions, plus business and household insurance premiums will rise as insurance companies cover their loses. The large businesses will bounce back and continue to operate, but smaller businesses will have a much harder time of it, it’s likely a lot of them will never recover. A friend of a colleague lost everything, as her flat was gutted by fire, all she managed to save was a small backpack as she ran from the flaming building, as to her and other similar homeowners who have lost everything due to arson, I cannot imagine what they’re going through.
Whether a business owner or an individual, when disaster strikes suddenly like this, the first reaction is understandably shock & disbelief, followed by anger, but soon you have to start thinking about the future, what next? How do I get going again? Who do I contact to get some sort of compensation? I better contact my insurance company, but do you know who you’re insured with, do you know your insurance policy number, or what you are covered for? You need to contact your clients, your suppliers, your bank, your staff etc But how, if all that information was stored in files in the office, it has all been destroyed by fire or water damage!
This is where digitised versions of all of your paper work is crucial for business continuity, but scanning your documents and keeping them on a shared office server isn’t enough, you require off site copies, be it in the cloud, or at a different office location, an effective paperless office is no longer a pipe dream, it’s a reality, and one your business cannot survive disaster without!
At no paper™ our goal is to remove the need for paper from your daily life, by perfecting the paperless office for businesses, and developing convenient solutions for individuals leveraging their everyday digital devices. We believe this future is possible… join us in our mission… imagine a world with no paper™
While London was ablaze last night so was Twitter with #londonriots, not that any of it was worth reading, mostly knee jerk reactions saying, we need the army on the streets, oh I’m ashamed to be from the UK, if the police can’t handle this what about the Olympics, bring out the water cannons, use rubber bullets as it worked in Northern Ireland, where are the police, they’re not doing anything, they’re letting this happen etc
In situations like this there’s not much the Police can do except try to contain the rioters, or monitor them the best they can, gather evidence and act when this has all subsided. This is about damage limitation, but their role first and foremost is to protect the public, engaging with the looters would be a Pyrrhic Victory, it would escalate the situation,becoming violent, there would be increased casualties on both sides, and injury to innocent bystanders and homeowners would increase… looting and property damage is an acceptable cost. Thankfully no one has died yet, there’s been casualties, an elderly man is in critical condition due to head injuries, but that appears to have been the worst of it so far. The Police are in a difficult situation, damned if they do, damned if they don’t… the public and the media are all over them for not doing enough, but once they act, they are scrutinised for their every action they take… I know they’re not exactly squeaky clean themselves, but it won’t be long before we hear reports of people saying they were wrongly accosted by the Police, or roughly handled… well it’s quite simple, go home, if you’re not in the middle of it, then you can’t be there to be wrongly accused!
This isn’t a political gathering or demonstration, these are opportunists, knowing they can get away with theft as the Police are stretched too thinly across London (according to eye witnesses, there were only 4-5 Police Officers in Riot gear in Ealing to start with, the same for Clapham, the rest were simply in ordinary uniforms). The outbreaks in other major cities around the country support this. This isn’t racially motivated, nor is it just a disillusioned young society, or limited to disadvantaged or poorer areas of London (as there were riots in my part of London last night, Ealing).
There are growing reports from eye witnesses that the mobs are very well organised, all communicating via mobiles, but that they’re not as young as initial reports make out, amongst the thick of it there appear to be a good mix of older generation, whom appear to be orchestrating sways of the mob… this is organised crime by opportunists.
How much longer will this continue? Probably a couple more days, why? due to incredible Police strategies? nope… because it will rain tomorrow night, and not even mindless looters want to get their newly acquired 42″ Plasma screen wet!
Below is a video of a woman, whom is obviously fed up and ashamed of the looters, (thankfully there is a transcript). But I doubt it would have made any difference, these are mindless thugs, looking for trouble, the type that are in it for themselves and will grab whatever they can. Whether the graffiti on the wall behind her was written by them, or was there prior to the riot, either way it shows the writers level of literacy (or lack of)… or is there a campaign against people from the Cameroon that I’m unaware of?
“This is a fucking realtiy. Allow out burning peoples property. Allow out burning peoples shops that they work so hard to start thier business. Do you understand? That lady is trying to make her busines work and you lot wana go and burn it up? For what? To say your war-ing and your bad man? This is about a man who got shot in Tottenham. This anit about having fun on the road and burning up the place. Get it real black people. Get real. Do it for a cause. If your fighting for a cause then fight for a fucking cause. You lot piss me the fuck off! I’m shamed to be a Hackney person. Because we are not all gathering together and fighting for a cause. We are running out of Footlocker and theifin shoes. Dirty thiefs ya know. Tut ”
Thanks to Alice for posting this video on her Facebook page
Your should follow me on Twitter
UPDATE: Some videos of Ealing Riot
By Kris Thompson Kris has added a very informative Tumblr post in response to his video
This is worth a read 5 points About the London Riots by Kenan Malik
Yesterday @brandshandy nicked my post about the Gulp Stop Motion Animation (their words not mine!) “Gulp stop-animation shot with a Nokia N8: http://t.co/8Yolrau original article via @brendanmitchell (but we nicked it for BS)”
Of course they didn’t actually nick anything, they stumbled across my tweet, clicked the link, thought, “Oow that’s nice, worthy of our own blog”, and simply quoted me as a source, to which I say Thank You Very Much (in my best Elvis Presley impersonation)
I’m all for being as open as possible, I’ve written about it numerous times, (Dirty Laundry, The 3 T’s Rule) plus of course there’s Bernd’s Inspired by icon An Inspired Idea … but I must admit that in this instant I failed myself, as I forgot to mention my source! which was Engadget… tut tut I know.
Anyway my point is this, if you say where you copied something from, or reference who inspired you, then you can’t exactly call that stealing can you!
As I’ve said before… ”Copy whatever you want, I didn’t invent the words, I just arranged them that way”
In any case… Copying from a single source is called plagiarism, copying from multiple sources is called research!
I got a lovely surprise in the post today!
So I thought I’d tell you about it while I supped my tea.
I received a mug… but not just any old mug, this one has writing on it, it reads “The person who reads my blog sent me this mug”
I’d forgotten I’d had that conversation… a while back, a friend said she read my blog, I replied, “Oh it’s you… I knew there was one other person reading it, but I didn’t know who it was!” Now I have proof ! Well it’s only taken me 3 years to double my readership
Thanks Elizabeth
I admit that I’m not one to shy away from hitting the install button and crossing my fingers (although I do always make a thorough back up… I’ve been using computers long enough to know that!)
So I took the plunge, I paid my £20 to Apple for OS X 10.7, or in Marketing Speak, Lion, or what Apple like to call “The World’s Most Advanced Operating System”, modest to a T as always the guys from Cupertino!
so was I brave, nuts, wise or foolish?
The installation was simplicity itself, after doing one last time capsule back up, I clicked the App Store icon, hit the Lion purchase icon and it jumped down to my tool bar and started downloading… 3.7Gb, yes that is a G not an M… but after 20 mins it was all down, the install dialogue window appeared asking if I’d like to install Lion. But before I proceeded, I copied the downloaded file onto an external hard drive for safe keeping… as the installer automatically deletes itself after installing and I’ve other Macs I want to upgrade, and I don’t wish to download it all again, plus I can now make my own installer DVD or memory stick (details below).
The installation took about 40 mins to complete. I won’t go into all the new stuff in Lion, there’s plenty of that on the web already, it’s a nice update, but it’s just that, it’s an update, the same as Snow Leopard before it was, but the few elements it’s copied over from iOS are nicely done, although don’t exactly have the same obvious UX as you get using an iOS device, after all regardless of what Steve Jobs says, we’re not completely in a post PC world yet, for real creation and effective work, we’ll going to require real computers, and proper operating systems for some time yet!
Any problems? yep, I’ve installed Lion on my MacBook Pro, for some strange reason my headphone socket isn’t working, plug in a pair of headphones and the audio just continues to come out of the speakers? this isn’t a major problem, as I mostly use my AirTunes to play my iTunes over Wifi, plus I’m sure a fix that addresses this bug will come out soon. More importantly, will my Adobe CS4 still work? The answer is yes, So far Illustrator and photoshop are working flawlessly, I rarely use all the other CS4 apps, such as In Design, After Effects, but I opened them all to see if they work and all opened fine. I have the Adobe CS4 Master Suite if that helps anyone else with this question before upgrading. The odd app lost it’s registration when I opened them, but inputting the registration codes again, sorted them all.
I have had a strange font issue, my Helvetica Neu Bold ignores spaces, in Illustrator all my text is coming out like this “HelloI’maMacandI’maPC”, but changing font and it works fine? So I went to look for the corrupt file, but after 2hrs looking I’ve given up, I had several copies of helvetica installed, all of which I have removed, yet some how or other, Helvetica is still installed!!!!
Oh which brings me onto this little nugget, Lion makes your Library folder invisible, which is a real pain in the arse, but there’s a fix, go to http://www.macgurulounge.com/library-folder-mac-os-lion/ for more info, but all you have to do is open Terminal type chflags nohidden ~/Library and it re-appears
Getting back to making your own Installer disk… locate the downloaded installer file, it’s in your applications folder, locate an application named “Install Mac OS X Lion.app” Yes it’s an application not a disk image! copy this to an external hard drive, or if you want to make a bootable installer disk do the following.
OS X applications are actually folders, so if you right mouse click on the app icon and select “Show Package Contents” you are now presented with the folder contents. Locate the file InstallESD.dmg, it’s in the SharedSupport sub folder. Select this image then make a DVD of it like you normally do. That’s it, you now have a bootable OS X Lion Installer disk
all I know is that I’ve lost almost a week of work… or about 100hrs of effort! (yes I work long days)
It’s what I was greeted with this afternoon, when I rebooted my Mac and opened an Illustrator file I’ve been working on since 23rd May (Yes almost two months!). Thankfully I’m religious about backing up, but even still I got caught out, as the file became corrupted days ago, but because I’ve had it open all this time, every time I saved, it was adding those changes to a corrupted file, so I had to go back 5 days to find a file that would open!
This is a major pain in the arse, as I was so close to finalising the project, the past couple of days have been tweaking and tidying up the document (it’s the interface master file for the new no paper iPhone app).
Thankfully I’d exported some of the screens so I could test how they worked on the iPhone, which is just as well, as they’re my only reference now!
Oh well no time to moan, I’ve a deadline to catch up on!
Ever since I created the blog icon I’ve been pleasantly surprised by where I’ve discovered it’s been used and encouraged by the responses I’ve received from those that have downloaded it and are using it.
In April this year web designer Mark Hesketh wrote a blog post about the blog icon… a couple of weeks ago Events Northern wrote an amazing blog post about their search for a blog icon and how they’d ended up using mine… a couple of days ago Carol Katona from AssurX informed me that Constant Contact are using it in their customer facing systems, as you can see from the video below (starts at 30 secs)… and today I received this message on the Facebook wall from Jessica LaShawn Payton “Thanks! I’m going to use the blog icon in my social media presentation. I didn’t want to use the orange B since we’re not using blogger and the tumblr badge looks too much like the twitter badge and would be too confusing to a novice social media user. This works just great!!”
I’ve also been surprised by how popular it’s become and the number of people using. I get around 120-130 people a day visiting my personal blog after searches for “Blog Icon” (that’s about 45,000 people a year!) below are yesterdays statistics. Compared to this time two years ago when I was surprised to get around 20 people a day
so if you’re looking for a blog icon that’s completely free to use, you can stop looking
Please like the Facebook page and follow on twitter @theblogicon
I just stumbled across a video of the Have a Camper Day iPad / iPhone app.
It’s gorgeous here today in London (far too nice for me to be stuck in doors working, but needs must!)… anyway this app would brighten up the gloomiest of days, and by the look of the forecast I might need it tomorrow!
If you don’t have an iPad or iPhone, not to worry, you can still use it in all it’s glory on their Have a Camper Day website
You should follow me on twitter
When applying for a creative position, presenting a well designed résumé is a given, but it’s not enough, you need to be creative, you need to make an impression, be unforgettable… That’s what Victor Petit set out to do… and yes he got the job!
You should follow me on twitter
WTF is this all about… I thought Usavich was strange, but this is beyond words!
Joliena Jol-enX
Usavich
you should follow me on twitter here
