Well, here it is. From the stage of the Comic's Lounge in Melbourne going around the world to you. The first thing I should point out is that this is not a great video from a technical point of view - I set the camera up on a tripod and I *knew* where I had to stand to stay in shot but I got nervous because none of the other comedians stood still so I started pacing around and kept walking out of shot. Straight after the show my friend Adrian was giving me some notes and suggested the character would work better if I held my position.
D'oh!
The second thing worth pointing out is that I have my own theme song! Woot! This was done for me by a YouTube fan by the name of Nutyas - you can find out more about him on his site at http://www.nsg-music.com
The third thing worth mentioning is that some idiot brought two little kids to the show, about 7 or 8 years old. But in order to minimise any trauma inflicted on the kids they sat them RIGHT AT THE FRONT. In the middle. Right in front of the fucking microphone. That didn't put the performers off much. To get back at the parents I spend a bit of time talking to the kids.
Anyway, that's enough rambling for now, it's time for the video. In case anybody has any issues viewing the video through the blog, I'll also provide some links to the video on YouTube and Revver. I think Revver makes it fairly easy to download the video as either QuickTime or Flash, although I'm having a little trouble with their new interface.
The URL for this video on Revver is http://one.revver.com/watch/65346
The URL for this video on YouTube is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkPtCNAcIyA
I plan on doing quite a bit more live performing - hopefully both my performances and the videos will get better. I want to close of by being very un-angry for a moment and thanking a few people "without whom this wouldn't have been possible" (as they say at the Academy Awards).
First, the love of my life, without her support I doubt I'd be maintaining this blog let alone branching out into live peformance.
Second, Adrian Calear, who took the time to come along to the show and give me a significant support, advice and feedback. This guy is a professional and he took the time out to help me as a friend. Yes, this is the same friend who's having health issues. AND he's directing four shows in the Melbourne Fringe Festival. An incredibly generous guy. Besides helping me, he also took time out to talk to other performers there and give advice when he was asked. This was people he's never met before. He makes me feel guilty. As soon as I get the details of his shows I'll publicise them here, they are really good (I've already seen them) and well worth your time if you're in Melbourne for the Fringe.
Third, Nutyas, as I mentioned before he's the guy who did the theme music for me. Another incredibly creative and generous individual. He sent me a message on YouTube saying how much he liked my videos and inviting me to check his stuff out. He's a musician and as I'm completely unmusical, I was really impressed with his work. I jokingly suggested he could do a theme song for me and less than 24 hours later he'd done it! Anyone else out there want me to feature their original work on a video? I'm all for it :)
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Why Digg has already won
The biggest question on the minds of people who are interested in the Web 2.0 world (i.e. 0.01% of the population) is which of the new companies is the next Amazon and which is the next pets.com? Their are multiple contenders for both crowns in video hosting, photo sharing, social networking, blogging tools and "memediggers" such as Digg and Reddit. While each of these fields seems to have one front runner, several possible winners and a bunch of also-rans, there's clear evidence that Digg has already won the race among the memediggers.
When arguing which site is going to win in any field, the common metrics used to measure success are the number of users, the number of page views, the amount of time users spend on the sites and whether or not a site has a significant first mover advantage. All of these are useful for measuring what is happening *now* but events over the last ten years have shown repeatedly that none of these, or even all of these combined, is a sure indicator of success. This habit of focusing on the moment and pretending nothing else exists and nothing will ever change is the IT world's biggest problem and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Netscape had absolute market domination in the web browser market for years but Microsoft crushed them. Google came to market years after other search engines but wiped the floor with them.
Digg itself is a direct competitor to long-time geek favourite Slashdot. For years, people had talked about the "Slashdot effect" - namely, that if your site was featured there you could expect to be overwhelmed with visitors. Digg took a perceived weakness in Slashdot, that it was controlled by a group of editors and was "undemocratic", and created a site that provided essentially the same service (links to interesting stories) that had the difference of proclaiming to be totally democratic with no editorial interference. Whatever users voted for went to the front page no matter what the site owners thought of it.
The rapid rise and overwhelming dominance of Digg must have surprised even its founders. In short order, being "Dugg" made the Slashdot effect look like child's play. Digg's success emboldened others to try the same thing and many similar site rose up; some with distinct differences but many outright clones. And so the game was on - who would win? Once serious VC money gets involved people tend to take the game rather seriously and as "user controlled" memediggers were arguably a new type of site with a big future, there is a distinct possibility of becoming the next Google.
Those closely involved in the business of Web 2.0 (whether site users, commentators, entrepreneurs or investors) spend a lot of time focussing on the users of various sites and obsessing over who has the most users or even the "best" users. An understandable vanity that has absolutely no value in objective reality. The rest of the world does not care how many people use your site, even if it's in the millions (a million is a very small number in world population terms). The rest of the world cares what your site can do for them. And this is why Digg has already won this particular competition - the rest of the world has decided that Digg is more useful to them than competing sites.
The dotcom boom was a wild and crazy time where all of us geeks and nerds spent billions of dollars changing the world. Except the world didn't care. To non-IT folk, the dotcom era was a sideshow - the actual technology had almost no direct impact. The technology did in fact change everything but very few companies made explicit decisions that revolved around any specific technology in and of itself. IT people spend their lives obsessing over programming languages, operating systems, applications and infrastructure. Nobody else does. Its a common failing that techies think the technology is important. It isn't - the result is what's important. Users don't care how clunky the code is, how "ugly" (a dubious term open to interpretation, personal prejudice and changing fashion) the interface is or how outdated the infrastructure is.
And they don't care whether or not a site that promotes links uses editorial control or not. A lot of people got up in arms as it became obvious Digg was exerting some control over how stories were promoted to its front page. This is after all not democratic - a founding principle of Digg. It may not be totally democratic but it sure as hell makes sense. There are two big things that could kill Digg: one is if it became unusable because it was flooded in crap and two is if people stopped using it (either because of the flood of crap or if they became disenchanted). There was a lot of talk that introducing controls would lead to massive user exodus which would mean the end of Digg. I have two words for that:
Bol-locks.
Digg proved to be absurdly easy to game. About 30 user accounts acting in concert (not necessarily individual users) could pretty much guarantee prominent placement for stories which undermined Digg's objectivity in a way the owners could not control without making changes. So they made changes that reduced the ability of a small number of users to have a disproportionate effect on the front page. This led to several hissy fits and proclamations of doom. At least one of the "top Diggers" made a melodramatic statement that they were leaving because they had been "mistreated" and anyone who wanted to be treated the same way was welcome to take his place. Dork. If you want to add something to the list of the things that make me angry, you can add "be a whiny little self-important dork."
There were hundreds if not thousands of other users who couldn't wait to shovel the dirt on his grave and scrabble for some recognition of their own. Plus, the moves made by Digg were FAIR. A very small number of users had what they perceived as their power lessened to the vast benefit of everybody else. Individual users of web services need to understand that no matter how important you think you are to the success of a site you don't own, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU. Not other users (who probably see you as competition) and not the rest of the world (who neither know nor care that you exist).
A second reason Digg was wise to make this move and would be wise to move further down this road is that people generally trust an editorial voice (or at least they gravitate to an editorial voice they can trust). If pure democracy was the answer then none of the precursors to Digg that have editorial control (e.g. BoingBoing, Fark) would still be around. They're still around and they're still going strong. At a certain point, online communities simply become unmanageable unless there are controls in place. I've said it before, online democracy doesn't work except in the purest sense: if you don't like what's happening, go off and start an alternative.
In short, Digg has won their race not because they were some revolution in online democracy but because external parties have decided Digg provides a service they actually want. When mainstream media outlets in somewhere as out of touch with Silicon Valley as Australia are adding "Digg this" to their stories you've really achieved something.
When arguing which site is going to win in any field, the common metrics used to measure success are the number of users, the number of page views, the amount of time users spend on the sites and whether or not a site has a significant first mover advantage. All of these are useful for measuring what is happening *now* but events over the last ten years have shown repeatedly that none of these, or even all of these combined, is a sure indicator of success. This habit of focusing on the moment and pretending nothing else exists and nothing will ever change is the IT world's biggest problem and it doesn't seem to be getting any better. Netscape had absolute market domination in the web browser market for years but Microsoft crushed them. Google came to market years after other search engines but wiped the floor with them.
Digg itself is a direct competitor to long-time geek favourite Slashdot. For years, people had talked about the "Slashdot effect" - namely, that if your site was featured there you could expect to be overwhelmed with visitors. Digg took a perceived weakness in Slashdot, that it was controlled by a group of editors and was "undemocratic", and created a site that provided essentially the same service (links to interesting stories) that had the difference of proclaiming to be totally democratic with no editorial interference. Whatever users voted for went to the front page no matter what the site owners thought of it.
The rapid rise and overwhelming dominance of Digg must have surprised even its founders. In short order, being "Dugg" made the Slashdot effect look like child's play. Digg's success emboldened others to try the same thing and many similar site rose up; some with distinct differences but many outright clones. And so the game was on - who would win? Once serious VC money gets involved people tend to take the game rather seriously and as "user controlled" memediggers were arguably a new type of site with a big future, there is a distinct possibility of becoming the next Google.
Those closely involved in the business of Web 2.0 (whether site users, commentators, entrepreneurs or investors) spend a lot of time focussing on the users of various sites and obsessing over who has the most users or even the "best" users. An understandable vanity that has absolutely no value in objective reality. The rest of the world does not care how many people use your site, even if it's in the millions (a million is a very small number in world population terms). The rest of the world cares what your site can do for them. And this is why Digg has already won this particular competition - the rest of the world has decided that Digg is more useful to them than competing sites.
The dotcom boom was a wild and crazy time where all of us geeks and nerds spent billions of dollars changing the world. Except the world didn't care. To non-IT folk, the dotcom era was a sideshow - the actual technology had almost no direct impact. The technology did in fact change everything but very few companies made explicit decisions that revolved around any specific technology in and of itself. IT people spend their lives obsessing over programming languages, operating systems, applications and infrastructure. Nobody else does. Its a common failing that techies think the technology is important. It isn't - the result is what's important. Users don't care how clunky the code is, how "ugly" (a dubious term open to interpretation, personal prejudice and changing fashion) the interface is or how outdated the infrastructure is.
And they don't care whether or not a site that promotes links uses editorial control or not. A lot of people got up in arms as it became obvious Digg was exerting some control over how stories were promoted to its front page. This is after all not democratic - a founding principle of Digg. It may not be totally democratic but it sure as hell makes sense. There are two big things that could kill Digg: one is if it became unusable because it was flooded in crap and two is if people stopped using it (either because of the flood of crap or if they became disenchanted). There was a lot of talk that introducing controls would lead to massive user exodus which would mean the end of Digg. I have two words for that:
Bol-locks.
Digg proved to be absurdly easy to game. About 30 user accounts acting in concert (not necessarily individual users) could pretty much guarantee prominent placement for stories which undermined Digg's objectivity in a way the owners could not control without making changes. So they made changes that reduced the ability of a small number of users to have a disproportionate effect on the front page. This led to several hissy fits and proclamations of doom. At least one of the "top Diggers" made a melodramatic statement that they were leaving because they had been "mistreated" and anyone who wanted to be treated the same way was welcome to take his place. Dork. If you want to add something to the list of the things that make me angry, you can add "be a whiny little self-important dork."
There were hundreds if not thousands of other users who couldn't wait to shovel the dirt on his grave and scrabble for some recognition of their own. Plus, the moves made by Digg were FAIR. A very small number of users had what they perceived as their power lessened to the vast benefit of everybody else. Individual users of web services need to understand that no matter how important you think you are to the success of a site you don't own, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU. Not other users (who probably see you as competition) and not the rest of the world (who neither know nor care that you exist).
A second reason Digg was wise to make this move and would be wise to move further down this road is that people generally trust an editorial voice (or at least they gravitate to an editorial voice they can trust). If pure democracy was the answer then none of the precursors to Digg that have editorial control (e.g. BoingBoing, Fark) would still be around. They're still around and they're still going strong. At a certain point, online communities simply become unmanageable unless there are controls in place. I've said it before, online democracy doesn't work except in the purest sense: if you don't like what's happening, go off and start an alternative.
In short, Digg has won their race not because they were some revolution in online democracy but because external parties have decided Digg provides a service they actually want. When mainstream media outlets in somewhere as out of touch with Silicon Valley as Australia are adding "Digg this" to their stories you've really achieved something.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
How to have the number one post on Wordpress
This is another "answering a reader request" post. This blog has grown quite a bit in its first six months. To be honest, it has grown further already in terms of readers than I had any realistic hopes of reaching EVER when I started out. The "angry 365 days a year" tag is not accidental - I set myself the goal of posting at least once a day, every day for a year, no matter what and then review the situation. Things have changed so quickly that I have been reviewing my situation blog-wise quite regularly.
I have been listed as the number one post of the day by Wordpress about half a dozen times and been listed in the top ten maybe half a dozen times more, which led to being asked "how do you do that?" It's a question I can actually answer as it didn't happen by accident - I put quite a bit of effort into getting there. Having said that, this is a very shallow goal. Don't fool yourself on that. I accepted quite a while ago that I was being very shallow in pursuing some level of blog micro-celebrity and I decided I'm OK with being shallow. Without further ado, here are my tried and true top tips for getting the number one post on Wordpress.
1. Be Robert Scoble. I realise this suggestion is not terribly practical for most people but it remains true. No matter whether you personally love him, hate him or remain indifferent to him, Scoble is a bona fide blogging celebrity and there's little doubt he's Wordpress' number one blogger. He may occasionally cede the number one spot on a given day but over time his traffic is streets ahead of anyone else. In terms of numbers, he provided some insight into this back when the news broke he was leaving Microsoft. He showed an image of his Wordpress blog stats graph which revealed that an average day for him was over 10,000 hits and this news produced a spike of over 90,000 hits in a day.
Yikes! It's hard to compete with a heavyweight like that but what his success shows is this: if you are a recognised authority or personality in a given field, people will flock to your blog. Guy Kawasaki is another who springs to mind. I previously listed him as my unofficial mentor both because of his determination to climb to the top of the blogging pile and his cheerful admission of what a shallow goal this was. These guys are the exception - the vast majority of bloggers are like your humble correspondent; nobodies who have varying aspirations of possibly becoming a somebody through their blog. This is a hard road that will almost certainly end in not reaching any significant fame or financial reward. This is the reality that 99% of bloggers need to face, so I hope you're having fun on the journey (I know I am.)
2. Choose a topic people want to read about. Check the top 10 posts list for a while and you'll see the same themes popping up: technology, anime and celebrity gossip all seem very popular. My recommendation is that you pick a topic you're actually knowledgeable and/or passionate about as it will be easier to stick with. Maybe you're cynical enough to write about a topic you don't care about simply to get attention but I'm not.
3. Be aware of the theme or tone of your blog and maintain it. This is not an absolute must-do but it will sure make your life easier. This is more about encouraging readers to return that winning them in the first place. If people get a consistent experience from your blog (consistent tone does not mean the same thing day in, day out) then they have a better idea of whether or not it's worth returning.
If you're an idiot like me and pick something as abstract as "anger" as the theme for your blog, you're making your life harder than necessary. In retrospect, I have the singular genius to choose a theme that feels simultaneously vague and maddeningly narrow. If you make a choice like this, it's a little harder for people to get a handle on why they should read your writing and, trust me, sticking with it can be bloody hard. On the other hand, one of my core beliefs is stick with what you know and I know the angry.
4. You can't do it alone. There are two ways for us non-celebrity mortals to generate site traffic; the slow, organic way of reaching other bloggers one by one and the sudden surge in traffic driven by a referral from either a prominent website or a social bookmarking site (like Digg or Reddit). Trying to get featured on a prominent site is seductive, especially when hitting the front page of Digg can be worth tens of thousands of hits, but the important thing to remember is that this is fleeting - usually a two or three day wonder. You will be very lucky if 1% of a big surge become regular readers. Plus, don't underestimate the influence of the smaller sites. I have never had a hit on either Digg or Reddit but several of my posts have been popular on the sub-reddit for Joel on Software. I also seem to be getting a bit of traffic from a site called stumbleupon - I must look into that one.
Commenting on other blogs encourages people to check out your blog. I'm talking about real comments where you contribute some meaningful insight to the conversation (or at least a good question). Leaving some variant of "hey, check out my blog" pisses people off. This is a slow and steady approach but it really is the best way to build up a core audience for your blog. Then the intermittent surges you might get from prominent referrals become gravy rather than the only traffic you have.
5. Write a how-to guide. People seem to be mad for the how-to guides. It appears you don't have to be much of an expert for your guide - I've seen some really crap how-to's get massive traffic (how to use MS Word - yeah, that's some real fucking rocket science there). The thing is, if you write a how-to guide simply because it's a topic you're passionate about or willing to research, it can be a pleasant surprise when it generates huge interest.
When Range wrote his guide to High Dynamic Range (HDR) digital photography, he subtitled it "saturday morning relaxation". He didn't intend for it to be a major "hit", it was simply one of his areas of interest. A similar how-to could easily work for you if there's a particular topic on which you can share your knowledge. Coincidentally, he timed it with a weekend when Wordpress' stat counting went screwy - he's since told me the traffic was as high as he thought at first. It was still good but not astronomical (my stats temporarily showed a boost of 10,000 that weekend too).
And the magic number is... This is the other half of the question I was asked: how many hits does it take to be listed as the number one post? Well, the slightly vague answer is that this number is relative. If you pick up a huge number of hits on the same day that other people pick up a similarly huge number then you will have more competition. So be lucky. But all things being equal, from my experience you need to get more than 600 hits to reach the top ten and more than 1,000 hits to hit number one. Bearing in mind this is hits to a particular post, not people landing on your home page. This is why you need the help of an inbound link from a major site or a hell of a lot of people coming in via your RSS feed.
So pursue these tips if you like and see if they work for you. But I can't recommend strongly enough that your first step should be writing high quality content for your blog. I know when I look at some popular blogs I am completely dumbfounded; I find many of them boring or downright shitty. This is reality, get over it and stop worrying about what other people are getting away with. Set your own standards for quality and get to it. The more you write, the better your writing will get; trust me on this one.
And for god's sake, have some personal goals that are more important to you that blog traffic. I'm not joking, this is a really shallow aspiration and you don't want to base your life around such a shallow focus. Find new people online. Find like minds and different minds. Broaden your horizons and learn something new. I have found that blogging can create amazing new possibilities, so focus on the positives and don't dwell on what you might not be getting. Life's too short and a blog shouldn't be your life.
I have been listed as the number one post of the day by Wordpress about half a dozen times and been listed in the top ten maybe half a dozen times more, which led to being asked "how do you do that?" It's a question I can actually answer as it didn't happen by accident - I put quite a bit of effort into getting there. Having said that, this is a very shallow goal. Don't fool yourself on that. I accepted quite a while ago that I was being very shallow in pursuing some level of blog micro-celebrity and I decided I'm OK with being shallow. Without further ado, here are my tried and true top tips for getting the number one post on Wordpress.
1. Be Robert Scoble. I realise this suggestion is not terribly practical for most people but it remains true. No matter whether you personally love him, hate him or remain indifferent to him, Scoble is a bona fide blogging celebrity and there's little doubt he's Wordpress' number one blogger. He may occasionally cede the number one spot on a given day but over time his traffic is streets ahead of anyone else. In terms of numbers, he provided some insight into this back when the news broke he was leaving Microsoft. He showed an image of his Wordpress blog stats graph which revealed that an average day for him was over 10,000 hits and this news produced a spike of over 90,000 hits in a day.
Yikes! It's hard to compete with a heavyweight like that but what his success shows is this: if you are a recognised authority or personality in a given field, people will flock to your blog. Guy Kawasaki is another who springs to mind. I previously listed him as my unofficial mentor both because of his determination to climb to the top of the blogging pile and his cheerful admission of what a shallow goal this was. These guys are the exception - the vast majority of bloggers are like your humble correspondent; nobodies who have varying aspirations of possibly becoming a somebody through their blog. This is a hard road that will almost certainly end in not reaching any significant fame or financial reward. This is the reality that 99% of bloggers need to face, so I hope you're having fun on the journey (I know I am.)
2. Choose a topic people want to read about. Check the top 10 posts list for a while and you'll see the same themes popping up: technology, anime and celebrity gossip all seem very popular. My recommendation is that you pick a topic you're actually knowledgeable and/or passionate about as it will be easier to stick with. Maybe you're cynical enough to write about a topic you don't care about simply to get attention but I'm not.
3. Be aware of the theme or tone of your blog and maintain it. This is not an absolute must-do but it will sure make your life easier. This is more about encouraging readers to return that winning them in the first place. If people get a consistent experience from your blog (consistent tone does not mean the same thing day in, day out) then they have a better idea of whether or not it's worth returning.
If you're an idiot like me and pick something as abstract as "anger" as the theme for your blog, you're making your life harder than necessary. In retrospect, I have the singular genius to choose a theme that feels simultaneously vague and maddeningly narrow. If you make a choice like this, it's a little harder for people to get a handle on why they should read your writing and, trust me, sticking with it can be bloody hard. On the other hand, one of my core beliefs is stick with what you know and I know the angry.
4. You can't do it alone. There are two ways for us non-celebrity mortals to generate site traffic; the slow, organic way of reaching other bloggers one by one and the sudden surge in traffic driven by a referral from either a prominent website or a social bookmarking site (like Digg or Reddit). Trying to get featured on a prominent site is seductive, especially when hitting the front page of Digg can be worth tens of thousands of hits, but the important thing to remember is that this is fleeting - usually a two or three day wonder. You will be very lucky if 1% of a big surge become regular readers. Plus, don't underestimate the influence of the smaller sites. I have never had a hit on either Digg or Reddit but several of my posts have been popular on the sub-reddit for Joel on Software. I also seem to be getting a bit of traffic from a site called stumbleupon - I must look into that one.
Commenting on other blogs encourages people to check out your blog. I'm talking about real comments where you contribute some meaningful insight to the conversation (or at least a good question). Leaving some variant of "hey, check out my blog" pisses people off. This is a slow and steady approach but it really is the best way to build up a core audience for your blog. Then the intermittent surges you might get from prominent referrals become gravy rather than the only traffic you have.
5. Write a how-to guide. People seem to be mad for the how-to guides. It appears you don't have to be much of an expert for your guide - I've seen some really crap how-to's get massive traffic (how to use MS Word - yeah, that's some real fucking rocket science there). The thing is, if you write a how-to guide simply because it's a topic you're passionate about or willing to research, it can be a pleasant surprise when it generates huge interest.
When Range wrote his guide to High Dynamic Range (HDR) digital photography, he subtitled it "saturday morning relaxation". He didn't intend for it to be a major "hit", it was simply one of his areas of interest. A similar how-to could easily work for you if there's a particular topic on which you can share your knowledge. Coincidentally, he timed it with a weekend when Wordpress' stat counting went screwy - he's since told me the traffic was as high as he thought at first. It was still good but not astronomical (my stats temporarily showed a boost of 10,000 that weekend too).
And the magic number is... This is the other half of the question I was asked: how many hits does it take to be listed as the number one post? Well, the slightly vague answer is that this number is relative. If you pick up a huge number of hits on the same day that other people pick up a similarly huge number then you will have more competition. So be lucky. But all things being equal, from my experience you need to get more than 600 hits to reach the top ten and more than 1,000 hits to hit number one. Bearing in mind this is hits to a particular post, not people landing on your home page. This is why you need the help of an inbound link from a major site or a hell of a lot of people coming in via your RSS feed.
So pursue these tips if you like and see if they work for you. But I can't recommend strongly enough that your first step should be writing high quality content for your blog. I know when I look at some popular blogs I am completely dumbfounded; I find many of them boring or downright shitty. This is reality, get over it and stop worrying about what other people are getting away with. Set your own standards for quality and get to it. The more you write, the better your writing will get; trust me on this one.
And for god's sake, have some personal goals that are more important to you that blog traffic. I'm not joking, this is a really shallow aspiration and you don't want to base your life around such a shallow focus. Find new people online. Find like minds and different minds. Broaden your horizons and learn something new. I have found that blogging can create amazing new possibilities, so focus on the positives and don't dwell on what you might not be getting. Life's too short and a blog shouldn't be your life.
Do I look ready to you?
Well, wish me luck. Tonight I step onto a stage in front of a live audience. No idea what sort of audience it will be or how large - it depends on who's interested in seeing an open mic night I guess. I don't know if there are any professional comedians filling out the bill. Maybe I should have asked that.
Anyway, here's a video of me rehearsing last night.
I figured it was a safe bet to go with toilet humour. My friend Adrian reckons the venue in question attracts a toilet humour crowd so hopefully I'll do OK. I got approval to video my performance so barring any disasters, you should be seeing how I went sometime over the next couple of days.
Anyway, here's a video of me rehearsing last night.
I figured it was a safe bet to go with toilet humour. My friend Adrian reckons the venue in question attracts a toilet humour crowd so hopefully I'll do OK. I got approval to video my performance so barring any disasters, you should be seeing how I went sometime over the next couple of days.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Why all Muslims are responsible for the words and actions of any particular Muslim
So, relations between Islam and the rest of the world have taken another dip in the last week. If nothing else, this is quite an effective demonstration of one of Murphy's Laws "No matter how bad things get, it's always possible for them to get worse." I honestly feel for the intelligent and/or moderate Muslims who any rational person would acknowledge obviously make up the vast majority of the Muslim faith. They may make up the majority of the religion but they sure don't make up the public face.
A quick, logical explanation for anyone who thinks I've been fooled by the "religion of peace" propaganda. A couple of billion people who were all homicidal maniacs would have wiped out all opposition a long time ago. A small minority of homicidal maniacs can inflict quite a bit of pain and suffering. Political and religious leaders who seem to consistently spout intolerance can do the same. And lying, opportunistic, grandstanding politicians and media in non-Muslim nations can also do the same.
The point of this post is to explain why all Muslims have accept the burden of the words and actions of any particular Muslim. Some might argue that if the majority are peaceful, why aren't I judged by this peaceful majority? Ha! Nice try Achmed! Others might say why aren't all Christians judged by the violent actions or words of a minority of Christians? You wish, Abdul! Others still will argue that scripture is being twisted and perverted by extremists and you play into the hands of radicals by marginalising all Muslims. Not good enough... ummm... damn, I've run out of generic Arab sounding names. Wait, Osama! Yes, I should have used that one first. Not good enough, Osama!
So the Pope opened a speech by saying "I read in this one book that all Muslims shag their sisters" and now every single Muslim in the world is acting all crazy about it. The proof that all Muslims are crazy is that some Muslims in response attacked some Christian churches and a nun may have been murdered by Muslims. Case closed. Besides which the Pope never said he reckoned all Muslims were bad, he just repeated what he read in a book. Which is the same as saying he doesn't agree. True, he didn't actually say he didn't agree and repeating a negative assertion without explicitly disclaiming it could be seen as endorsing it, but you're forgetting one thing.
He's white.
The thing you have to realise is no matter how much you as a Muslim may protest your innocence, you can't get away from the fact that you aren't white. This makes you automatically suspect. Unless you are a white convert. That makes you a traitor. I know there's a danger in revealing this secret bit of white people's business, but the truth of the matter is that no matter how exemplary your life, no matter how accepted you feel, white folks are just waiting for you to reveal your true colours. A minor mis-step for a white person (say drunk driving, hitting a pedestrian and running from the cops) doesn't taint other whites but it is seen as proof of the failings of a non-white ethnicity in totality.
In Australia, the leading members of the federal government have made it clear that all Muslims need to denounce terrorism specifically and extremism generally. All the time. Saying "We already did that" isn't good enough. Look, Muslims can handle a call to prayer several times a day. They should be able to handle saying "I denounce terrorism and the killing of innocents, it is expressly forbidden by the Koran and its perpetrators are a disgrace to all true Muslims. By the way, mateship is totally ace.". Three times a day should be fine. After that, work on losing your accent. And those funny clothes aren't doing you any favours.
A brief note for the irony challenged (not to mention the intellectually challenged):
In my wacky world view I condemn all extremism. If you advocate the criminalising, sterilising, jailing or execution of any particular group you go into my broad category of Not Nice People. I understand that many people regard a range of things, words, people as "sacred" and get really pissed off if anyone disrespects that. I just care more about freedom of expression. My response to anyone who wants to restrict artistic freedom or expression in the name of ANY religios or political sensibility is "fuck you".
I know that "Piss Christ" is a pretty crap piece of art and it's far more about cheap sensationalism than artistic expression but if you want destroy it or threaten the life of the artist, I think you're a moron. And I really do think getting worked by some cartoons, no matter how deliberately inflammatory they were, is the height of stupidity. I deeply believe no amount of words or images, no matter how deeply hateful and hurtful, justify a violent response. EVER.
It doesn't matter to me what your level of melanin is. I don't care if you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Shintoist, I don't base my judgements on your religion. Unless you're a Buddhist. Fuck those smug bastards. Acting like you have more inner peace than me. Someone ought to roll right into those Buddhist's headquarters and kick them out on their meditating arses. But nobody's got the guts to take on the Buddhists.
A quick, logical explanation for anyone who thinks I've been fooled by the "religion of peace" propaganda. A couple of billion people who were all homicidal maniacs would have wiped out all opposition a long time ago. A small minority of homicidal maniacs can inflict quite a bit of pain and suffering. Political and religious leaders who seem to consistently spout intolerance can do the same. And lying, opportunistic, grandstanding politicians and media in non-Muslim nations can also do the same.
The point of this post is to explain why all Muslims have accept the burden of the words and actions of any particular Muslim. Some might argue that if the majority are peaceful, why aren't I judged by this peaceful majority? Ha! Nice try Achmed! Others might say why aren't all Christians judged by the violent actions or words of a minority of Christians? You wish, Abdul! Others still will argue that scripture is being twisted and perverted by extremists and you play into the hands of radicals by marginalising all Muslims. Not good enough... ummm... damn, I've run out of generic Arab sounding names. Wait, Osama! Yes, I should have used that one first. Not good enough, Osama!
So the Pope opened a speech by saying "I read in this one book that all Muslims shag their sisters" and now every single Muslim in the world is acting all crazy about it. The proof that all Muslims are crazy is that some Muslims in response attacked some Christian churches and a nun may have been murdered by Muslims. Case closed. Besides which the Pope never said he reckoned all Muslims were bad, he just repeated what he read in a book. Which is the same as saying he doesn't agree. True, he didn't actually say he didn't agree and repeating a negative assertion without explicitly disclaiming it could be seen as endorsing it, but you're forgetting one thing.
He's white.
The thing you have to realise is no matter how much you as a Muslim may protest your innocence, you can't get away from the fact that you aren't white. This makes you automatically suspect. Unless you are a white convert. That makes you a traitor. I know there's a danger in revealing this secret bit of white people's business, but the truth of the matter is that no matter how exemplary your life, no matter how accepted you feel, white folks are just waiting for you to reveal your true colours. A minor mis-step for a white person (say drunk driving, hitting a pedestrian and running from the cops) doesn't taint other whites but it is seen as proof of the failings of a non-white ethnicity in totality.
In Australia, the leading members of the federal government have made it clear that all Muslims need to denounce terrorism specifically and extremism generally. All the time. Saying "We already did that" isn't good enough. Look, Muslims can handle a call to prayer several times a day. They should be able to handle saying "I denounce terrorism and the killing of innocents, it is expressly forbidden by the Koran and its perpetrators are a disgrace to all true Muslims. By the way, mateship is totally ace.". Three times a day should be fine. After that, work on losing your accent. And those funny clothes aren't doing you any favours.
A brief note for the irony challenged (not to mention the intellectually challenged):
In my wacky world view I condemn all extremism. If you advocate the criminalising, sterilising, jailing or execution of any particular group you go into my broad category of Not Nice People. I understand that many people regard a range of things, words, people as "sacred" and get really pissed off if anyone disrespects that. I just care more about freedom of expression. My response to anyone who wants to restrict artistic freedom or expression in the name of ANY religios or political sensibility is "fuck you".
I know that "Piss Christ" is a pretty crap piece of art and it's far more about cheap sensationalism than artistic expression but if you want destroy it or threaten the life of the artist, I think you're a moron. And I really do think getting worked by some cartoons, no matter how deliberately inflammatory they were, is the height of stupidity. I deeply believe no amount of words or images, no matter how deeply hateful and hurtful, justify a violent response. EVER.
It doesn't matter to me what your level of melanin is. I don't care if you are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Shintoist, I don't base my judgements on your religion. Unless you're a Buddhist. Fuck those smug bastards. Acting like you have more inner peace than me. Someone ought to roll right into those Buddhist's headquarters and kick them out on their meditating arses. But nobody's got the guts to take on the Buddhists.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Small Talk
I never really get into office small talk, I don't have the knack for it. In my more misanthropic moods I'd say I didn't have enough missing brain cells to get into "water cooler talk". But really, I feel like I rarely have anything particularly interesting to contribute. I'm not in the habit of discussing my personal life and the most interesting non-personal part of my life in this blog and my videos. And I really don't want people I work with knowing about this.
But tomorrow morning, I'll actually have something interesting to respond with when people ask "what did you do on the weekend?" Last night, I got to see four world premiere performances. It isn't often I get to use that sentence. I previously mentioned my college friend Adrian Calear directs quite a bit these days, comedy in particular. I bumped into him at this year's Melbourne Comedy Festival where he was directing a show call "I Heart Racism". Now he's directing four shows at the impending Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Anybody who has done live performance will know that after rehearsing a show for while, you start to lose any objectivity and you have trouble seeing what "works" about the show and what doesn't. This was the stage the performers Adrian is directing had reached, so he organised a night for them to perform live to a small audience and I was lucky enough to score an invite. It was a full night - four shows each about an hour long. One was a two-person drama, one I would call a fairly traditional standup show and the other two were one-man comedy shows although not really standup.
I'm angry at myself for not picking up flyers for the shows so I could tell you a few more details about them and give them some promotion. That might be a moot point because although I enjoy quite a few readers these days, I have a funny feeling none of them are in Melbourne. The internets are a funny place.
Adrian has promised to come along to my performance at the open mic night on Tuesday so I'll get some flyers from him then. And for anyone actually in Melbourne while the Fringe Festival is happening, I'll have four very strong recommendations for you.
But tomorrow morning, I'll actually have something interesting to respond with when people ask "what did you do on the weekend?" Last night, I got to see four world premiere performances. It isn't often I get to use that sentence. I previously mentioned my college friend Adrian Calear directs quite a bit these days, comedy in particular. I bumped into him at this year's Melbourne Comedy Festival where he was directing a show call "I Heart Racism". Now he's directing four shows at the impending Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Anybody who has done live performance will know that after rehearsing a show for while, you start to lose any objectivity and you have trouble seeing what "works" about the show and what doesn't. This was the stage the performers Adrian is directing had reached, so he organised a night for them to perform live to a small audience and I was lucky enough to score an invite. It was a full night - four shows each about an hour long. One was a two-person drama, one I would call a fairly traditional standup show and the other two were one-man comedy shows although not really standup.
I'm angry at myself for not picking up flyers for the shows so I could tell you a few more details about them and give them some promotion. That might be a moot point because although I enjoy quite a few readers these days, I have a funny feeling none of them are in Melbourne. The internets are a funny place.
Adrian has promised to come along to my performance at the open mic night on Tuesday so I'll get some flyers from him then. And for anyone actually in Melbourne while the Fringe Festival is happening, I'll have four very strong recommendations for you.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Ways to make me angry
It might be hard to be sure when I'm serious about being angry and when I'm joking, but here are a few sure fire ways to make me truly angry.
Tell me what my opinion is. By all means, tell me what my words suggested to you and how you interpreted them but don't tell what I think. I'm one of those wacky people who form their own opinions rather than accepting what other people impose on me.
Spurt forth a series of incomprehensible, unconnected brain farts and declare that this gibberish proves you are right. I don't think this one needs any further explanation.
Declare that the particular form of oppression you want to inflict on the world should be allowed because otherwise you're being oppressed. This is the most morally and intellectually bankrupt argument imaginable and yet some morons seem to think it makes sense. "You preach tolerance but you want to get rid of nazis - how do you justify that?" Really fucking easily actually.
Can anyone tell I've been dealing with the nazis on YouTube again?
Link to first bunch of idiotic nazi comments
Link to second bunch of idiotic nazi comments
The above links are not suitable for those with an aversion to extreme profanity (usually on my part) nor for those who don't want to get depressed by how low humanity can actually sink.
Tell me what my opinion is. By all means, tell me what my words suggested to you and how you interpreted them but don't tell what I think. I'm one of those wacky people who form their own opinions rather than accepting what other people impose on me.
Spurt forth a series of incomprehensible, unconnected brain farts and declare that this gibberish proves you are right. I don't think this one needs any further explanation.
Declare that the particular form of oppression you want to inflict on the world should be allowed because otherwise you're being oppressed. This is the most morally and intellectually bankrupt argument imaginable and yet some morons seem to think it makes sense. "You preach tolerance but you want to get rid of nazis - how do you justify that?" Really fucking easily actually.
Can anyone tell I've been dealing with the nazis on YouTube again?
Link to first bunch of idiotic nazi comments
Link to second bunch of idiotic nazi comments
The above links are not suitable for those with an aversion to extreme profanity (usually on my part) nor for those who don't want to get depressed by how low humanity can actually sink.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Death by PowerPoint
One of the "fun" things about working in an IT office environment is how often you have to sit through some agonising over-long pointless presentation that sucks the very life-force out of you. It has been said that one should never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity but I am starting to suspect their is some sort of secret management cabal that meets in dark caves to plot ways to torture us poor workers. The Society for Cruel and Unusual Management perhaps? And its graduates are given the title of official Developer of Really Odious Presentations.
The weapon of choice for these SCUMDROPs is without doubt Microsoft's PowerPoint. If you've never experienced someone attempting to inflict Death by PowerPoint, count yourself lucky. I have heard people say that this isn't the fault of PowerPoint, it's the fault of the presenters. Yeah, right - guns don't kill people, people kill people. It's just that someone with lots of guns has a head start on killing lots of people and these SCUMDROPs wouldn't be half as dangerous without PowerPoint in their arsenal.
You get over 7 million hits on Google for Death by PowerPoint but my favourite online resource for showing the horrible potential of PowerPoint to destroy a presentation was done by Peter Norvig. He has constructed a PowerPoint version of one of the most famous speeches in modern history, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This devilspawn software effortlessly reduces one of the most powerful pieces of oratory ever into meaningless drivel with dot points and charts. Much like every business presentation I've ever seen. Apart from the fact the presentations in question were probably never going to be great oratory in the first place.
Recently I had the misfortune of being subjected to one of the worst excesses in Death by PowerPoint I can imagine. I was working for a company that was looking to acquire an ERP system to run the finances and logistics for their nation-wide business. This is a fairly big ticket purchase so there were a lot of vendors vying for the contract. Included in the contenders was one of the biggest international players in this field (I won't mention them by name but they're known by the acronym of their German name which rhymes, appropriately enough, with CRAP)
Like all of the vendors they were allocated one hour to make their initial pitch. They were told this ahead of time: "You have ONE HOUR to explain your product to us." Their presentation was obviously the company's standard one and it involved 85 PowerPoint slides. 85! What made it worse was nearly all of them were animated, often involving sound and ALL of them were too complicated to understand by simply looking at them. And they barrelled through them in less than 60 minutes. More than a slide a minute when it would have taken a minute just to read the words that were on each slide.
So the audience were barraged with an hour of whooshing noises, flying text and blinking lights that left us all exhausted and more confused than when we started. It absolutely boggles my mind that when several million dollars are at stake, a supposedly world-leading company would not take the time to put together a presentation that would actually be meaningful to a potential customer. Maybe I'm giving the presenters in question too much credit but they could not possibly have though any audience was going to enjoy being rushed through so many slides in an hour. The real problem is that there were too many slides for any length of time and they were far too complicated but their crimes was made exponentially worse by cramming it all into an hour.
Any rational person would say that this is only going to end badly for the company in question. The only conclusion I could draw (besides the possibility that the presenters were clinically insane) is that they thought they could overwhelm us with the sheer volume of their presentation. Then when we were too weak and dazed to struggle they could force us to sign a contract. Needless to say, they shot themselves in the head at this meeting and we never spoke to them again. I was going to say they shot themselves in the foot but seriously, these guys had the barrel in their mouth when they pulled the trigger.
If anyone can explain to me how travesties like this continue to happen in the corporate world I'd really like to hear your thoughts. Every available piece of literature says DON'T DO THIS and yet it continues to happen. I can almost forgive a clueless middle manager who is simply committing a sin of ignorance but this was from a supposedly world-leading IT company! I would be wishing for this company to collapse under its own weight but they're so bloated their collapse would form a black hole that would destroy us all.
There are a million guides out there to help you avoid committing truly horrible crimes against humanity with PowerPoint. For god's sake, do everyone a favour and read some of them before your next presentation. If you think I'm exaggerating you haven't seen how bad things can get. I'm sure in the deepest, darkest pits of Gitmo there are gathered the world's most evil SCUMDROPs who work in teams to force detainees to watch 3 hour PowerPoint presentations. And each slide features animated text, charts and red writing on black backgrounds.
One thing you'll probably find if you read a few different guides is that they will contradict each other in places. It's more art than science and you'll have to decide for yourself who's opinion you agree with. Whichever guide you choose, remember the following three points over everything else - the rest is just detail:
PowerPoint is no good for explaining complex concepts: You can use it to illustrate or support points but you can't use it to teach. You have to be working closely with your subjects to teach anything complex or worthwhile - you can't do it with words on a screen.
PowerPoint is no good for words: If you think you need to provide your audience with lots of words then POWERPOINT IS THE WRONG TOOL! Don't use it just because it exists, use the appropriate medium. The printed word has served humanity well for centuries, try going with that.
PowerPoint is no good for inspiring an audience: It can work with basic reporting of data, it can reinforce or support points but it simply isn't inspiring. A good speaker can inspire an audience but not with PowerPoint. You can't reach out to an audience with PowerPoint, it actually distances you from them, it gets in the way.
In short: PowerPoint - just say no. Do it for the children. Won't somebody please think of the children? And if that doesn't sway you, remember this: guns don't kill people, people who have been forced to sit through one too many truly horrible PowerPoint presentations kill people. And the presenter is usually the first victim.
The weapon of choice for these SCUMDROPs is without doubt Microsoft's PowerPoint. If you've never experienced someone attempting to inflict Death by PowerPoint, count yourself lucky. I have heard people say that this isn't the fault of PowerPoint, it's the fault of the presenters. Yeah, right - guns don't kill people, people kill people. It's just that someone with lots of guns has a head start on killing lots of people and these SCUMDROPs wouldn't be half as dangerous without PowerPoint in their arsenal.
You get over 7 million hits on Google for Death by PowerPoint but my favourite online resource for showing the horrible potential of PowerPoint to destroy a presentation was done by Peter Norvig. He has constructed a PowerPoint version of one of the most famous speeches in modern history, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. This devilspawn software effortlessly reduces one of the most powerful pieces of oratory ever into meaningless drivel with dot points and charts. Much like every business presentation I've ever seen. Apart from the fact the presentations in question were probably never going to be great oratory in the first place.
Recently I had the misfortune of being subjected to one of the worst excesses in Death by PowerPoint I can imagine. I was working for a company that was looking to acquire an ERP system to run the finances and logistics for their nation-wide business. This is a fairly big ticket purchase so there were a lot of vendors vying for the contract. Included in the contenders was one of the biggest international players in this field (I won't mention them by name but they're known by the acronym of their German name which rhymes, appropriately enough, with CRAP)
Like all of the vendors they were allocated one hour to make their initial pitch. They were told this ahead of time: "You have ONE HOUR to explain your product to us." Their presentation was obviously the company's standard one and it involved 85 PowerPoint slides. 85! What made it worse was nearly all of them were animated, often involving sound and ALL of them were too complicated to understand by simply looking at them. And they barrelled through them in less than 60 minutes. More than a slide a minute when it would have taken a minute just to read the words that were on each slide.
So the audience were barraged with an hour of whooshing noises, flying text and blinking lights that left us all exhausted and more confused than when we started. It absolutely boggles my mind that when several million dollars are at stake, a supposedly world-leading company would not take the time to put together a presentation that would actually be meaningful to a potential customer. Maybe I'm giving the presenters in question too much credit but they could not possibly have though any audience was going to enjoy being rushed through so many slides in an hour. The real problem is that there were too many slides for any length of time and they were far too complicated but their crimes was made exponentially worse by cramming it all into an hour.
Any rational person would say that this is only going to end badly for the company in question. The only conclusion I could draw (besides the possibility that the presenters were clinically insane) is that they thought they could overwhelm us with the sheer volume of their presentation. Then when we were too weak and dazed to struggle they could force us to sign a contract. Needless to say, they shot themselves in the head at this meeting and we never spoke to them again. I was going to say they shot themselves in the foot but seriously, these guys had the barrel in their mouth when they pulled the trigger.
If anyone can explain to me how travesties like this continue to happen in the corporate world I'd really like to hear your thoughts. Every available piece of literature says DON'T DO THIS and yet it continues to happen. I can almost forgive a clueless middle manager who is simply committing a sin of ignorance but this was from a supposedly world-leading IT company! I would be wishing for this company to collapse under its own weight but they're so bloated their collapse would form a black hole that would destroy us all.
There are a million guides out there to help you avoid committing truly horrible crimes against humanity with PowerPoint. For god's sake, do everyone a favour and read some of them before your next presentation. If you think I'm exaggerating you haven't seen how bad things can get. I'm sure in the deepest, darkest pits of Gitmo there are gathered the world's most evil SCUMDROPs who work in teams to force detainees to watch 3 hour PowerPoint presentations. And each slide features animated text, charts and red writing on black backgrounds.
One thing you'll probably find if you read a few different guides is that they will contradict each other in places. It's more art than science and you'll have to decide for yourself who's opinion you agree with. Whichever guide you choose, remember the following three points over everything else - the rest is just detail:
PowerPoint is no good for explaining complex concepts: You can use it to illustrate or support points but you can't use it to teach. You have to be working closely with your subjects to teach anything complex or worthwhile - you can't do it with words on a screen.
PowerPoint is no good for words: If you think you need to provide your audience with lots of words then POWERPOINT IS THE WRONG TOOL! Don't use it just because it exists, use the appropriate medium. The printed word has served humanity well for centuries, try going with that.
PowerPoint is no good for inspiring an audience: It can work with basic reporting of data, it can reinforce or support points but it simply isn't inspiring. A good speaker can inspire an audience but not with PowerPoint. You can't reach out to an audience with PowerPoint, it actually distances you from them, it gets in the way.
In short: PowerPoint - just say no. Do it for the children. Won't somebody please think of the children? And if that doesn't sway you, remember this: guns don't kill people, people who have been forced to sit through one too many truly horrible PowerPoint presentations kill people. And the presenter is usually the first victim.
Post four for The Blogging Times
Here's my fourth video done for The Blogging Times. In this piece I look at evidence that the "bubble" around Web 2.0 is growing. The main evidence that people may be making the same mistakes that were made in the first dot-com boom is when really stupid ideas start getting money. An even clearer indication is when an idea that has already failed once re-appears, especially when it makes less sense now than it did the first time. Like the culprit in this video...
The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TypKD7w-uSU
The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TypKD7w-uSU
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Appearances matter more than reality
I feel the need to occasionally mention that I like my current job. When I talk about work issues it's usually to rant angrily about bad things - partly because I think they are important issues that are worth brining up and partly because it's fun. The experiences seem to be fairly universal as well, so everybody gets some catharsis out of it. The point is, these stories are nearly always from past jobs. My current roles is one of the best I've had, a year after starting a 3 month contract I'm still here, still enjoying it and still being treated well.
If there's one weakness here it's that, because it's a government department, people aren't paid that well. As a contractor it seems on paper that I get about twice as much pay as everyone else (I've explained at length in previous posts why this isn't accurate but that's how it looks on paper.) This manifests itself occasionally when the broader team I work with has any sort of group meeting that isn't directly related to what I'm working on. A decision was made that I shouldn't attend things that aren't directly related to my work because of the associated cost of me attending - they don't want to pay me for things that aren't my main job.
This is fine with me, fewer meetings are good and I'm always included in any social events. But I found out the other day that not all departments work the same and not all contractors are as happy as me. I think it's universal in Australian government departments that the IT help desk is outsourced - it's never staffed by permanent staff. It's certainly the case here and recently one of the help desk contractors came past my area when I was the only one there as everyone else was in a team meeting. She asked where everyone was and I explained they were in a team meeting.
This touched a nerve with her and she started going on about how "this place" treats contractors as outsiders. I decided to act empathetic and not point out that I was happier not being in the meeting. Then she told me a story that I found truly disturbing. The consultancy that operates the help desk used to run regular meeting where they provided free cake for attendees. Someone in management decided this was a bad look because it gave the impression they were paying too much for the help desk services because the consultancy could afford to squander money on cake.
So the word comes down, the consultancy is not to provide cake any more. The individual contractors decide "dumb attitude, but what the hell." They still want cake so they decide to put some of their own money together to buy cakes and bring them in for everybody. This goes on for a while until somebody from management notices and says you're not meant to be providing cake. The contractors explain the situation and the manager says it doesn't matter what is happening, it's the appearance of what's happening that's important.
This is one attitude I really can't stand and unfortunately it's fairly widespread. I don't feel like I get it here but in previous workplaces I've had it crop up in truly bizarre ways. In one case I was admonished for being away from my desk a lot. Bearing in mind my job involves interacting with people in different areas of the business which by definition means I have to spend time away from my desk. Some deskbound knucklehead couldn't fit my behaviour into their narrow, fucked-up world view and so it was suggested I reduce my effectiveness simply to appease a moron.
On another occasion, a divisional manger happened to wander by my area when a few of us had the audacity to be talking and laughing. This did not conform to his worldview and so he gave our manager a dressing down (apparently enjoying yourself at work is the same as stealing from the company). Our manager in turn told us that we had to stop mucking about - it made us look bad. I asked a few pertinent questions:
"Is there any issue with the quality of our work?"
No.
"Is anything behind schedule?"
No.
"Is anyone failing to make their performance targets?"
No.
In short nothing was wrong. Senior management would just prefer it if we never enjoyed ourselves while at work and our manager was too spineless to point out the idiocy inherent in this. To be honest, this department was not a laugh a minute. For this divisional manager to wander by at one of the rare moments people were actually engaged in animated conversation was really against the odds. That actually made it worse - being punished for one of the rare light moments. The idea that someone could actually want their staff to be unhappy is so stupid that I have difficulty processing it. I can live with management who don't want to make any effort to increase staff happiness but actively crushing positivity?
This pervasive attitude is why I can't ever fully shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen, no matter how well things have been going up to that point. Generating and maintaining happiness takes time and effort. Crushing people's spirit only requires a short sighted moron and can be done in a second.
If there's one weakness here it's that, because it's a government department, people aren't paid that well. As a contractor it seems on paper that I get about twice as much pay as everyone else (I've explained at length in previous posts why this isn't accurate but that's how it looks on paper.) This manifests itself occasionally when the broader team I work with has any sort of group meeting that isn't directly related to what I'm working on. A decision was made that I shouldn't attend things that aren't directly related to my work because of the associated cost of me attending - they don't want to pay me for things that aren't my main job.
This is fine with me, fewer meetings are good and I'm always included in any social events. But I found out the other day that not all departments work the same and not all contractors are as happy as me. I think it's universal in Australian government departments that the IT help desk is outsourced - it's never staffed by permanent staff. It's certainly the case here and recently one of the help desk contractors came past my area when I was the only one there as everyone else was in a team meeting. She asked where everyone was and I explained they were in a team meeting.
This touched a nerve with her and she started going on about how "this place" treats contractors as outsiders. I decided to act empathetic and not point out that I was happier not being in the meeting. Then she told me a story that I found truly disturbing. The consultancy that operates the help desk used to run regular meeting where they provided free cake for attendees. Someone in management decided this was a bad look because it gave the impression they were paying too much for the help desk services because the consultancy could afford to squander money on cake.
So the word comes down, the consultancy is not to provide cake any more. The individual contractors decide "dumb attitude, but what the hell." They still want cake so they decide to put some of their own money together to buy cakes and bring them in for everybody. This goes on for a while until somebody from management notices and says you're not meant to be providing cake. The contractors explain the situation and the manager says it doesn't matter what is happening, it's the appearance of what's happening that's important.
This is one attitude I really can't stand and unfortunately it's fairly widespread. I don't feel like I get it here but in previous workplaces I've had it crop up in truly bizarre ways. In one case I was admonished for being away from my desk a lot. Bearing in mind my job involves interacting with people in different areas of the business which by definition means I have to spend time away from my desk. Some deskbound knucklehead couldn't fit my behaviour into their narrow, fucked-up world view and so it was suggested I reduce my effectiveness simply to appease a moron.
On another occasion, a divisional manger happened to wander by my area when a few of us had the audacity to be talking and laughing. This did not conform to his worldview and so he gave our manager a dressing down (apparently enjoying yourself at work is the same as stealing from the company). Our manager in turn told us that we had to stop mucking about - it made us look bad. I asked a few pertinent questions:
"Is there any issue with the quality of our work?"
No.
"Is anything behind schedule?"
No.
"Is anyone failing to make their performance targets?"
No.
In short nothing was wrong. Senior management would just prefer it if we never enjoyed ourselves while at work and our manager was too spineless to point out the idiocy inherent in this. To be honest, this department was not a laugh a minute. For this divisional manager to wander by at one of the rare moments people were actually engaged in animated conversation was really against the odds. That actually made it worse - being punished for one of the rare light moments. The idea that someone could actually want their staff to be unhappy is so stupid that I have difficulty processing it. I can live with management who don't want to make any effort to increase staff happiness but actively crushing positivity?
This pervasive attitude is why I can't ever fully shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen, no matter how well things have been going up to that point. Generating and maintaining happiness takes time and effort. Crushing people's spirit only requires a short sighted moron and can be done in a second.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
The Hater Conundrum
I've been dealing with more than a few haters on YouTube lately and even a couple here on the blog. I realised I'm not in this alone - I got all the masks together and we discussed how best to deal with the issue.
It's fun to have friends!
The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec65vtnk_kw
It's fun to have friends!
The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec65vtnk_kw
Mr Angry's first live performace
Next week I take the first step in one of the pledges I made in my 200th post - I am making my first attempt at performing live stand-up as Mr Angry. This will be at an open mic night in a Melbourne club and hopefully I'll be able to video it so I can put it up here.
So I'm looking for a little help from my readers: of all the stuff I've posted, what do you think would work best as a stand-up routine? I'm thinking at the moment that I'll do some of the "toilet rules" material - toilet humour is fairly universal. Barring some disaster, I plan to keep working on this, probably at least once a week until I decide whether or not there's a future in it. So even if I don't do your favourite material at first it might get a run further down the line.
If anyone is actually interested in going, let me know via comments (identify yourself with your email and/or blog so I can reach you) and I'll tell you the time and the venue. Given some rather aggressive hater attitude I've been getting lately (mostly on YouTube) I'm a little reticent to publicise my whereabouts too openly. Particularly not on my first outing when I'll be nervous enough. But if I get a chance to stack the audience in my favour I'll definitely take it.
So I'm looking for a little help from my readers: of all the stuff I've posted, what do you think would work best as a stand-up routine? I'm thinking at the moment that I'll do some of the "toilet rules" material - toilet humour is fairly universal. Barring some disaster, I plan to keep working on this, probably at least once a week until I decide whether or not there's a future in it. So even if I don't do your favourite material at first it might get a run further down the line.
If anyone is actually interested in going, let me know via comments (identify yourself with your email and/or blog so I can reach you) and I'll tell you the time and the venue. Given some rather aggressive hater attitude I've been getting lately (mostly on YouTube) I'm a little reticent to publicise my whereabouts too openly. Particularly not on my first outing when I'll be nervous enough. But if I get a chance to stack the audience in my favour I'll definitely take it.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Making the right "Build or Buy" decision
A recent post by Mike on his blog Mike-o-Matic gave me flashbacks to some of the most ill-informed management decisions it's been my horror to witness in the past. He provided 7 tips for the great build or buy debate which plagues IT departments everywhere. For those who don't work in IT, this debate is basically "do we buy and off-the-shelf product to accomplish what we need or do we develop a custom tool in-house?" Again, if you don't work in IT this might not seem relevant to you but I don't think there's a job today that isn't affected by IT implementation decisions so this article might give you some insights into why certain IT systems that feel useless have been inflicted upon you.
There is not one single answer to this question. If you are working in a place that decrees there is a single answer ("we will always buy an existing product" - "we will always build our own solutions") that's your whole problem summed up there. If each situation isn't judged on its own merits then it's pretty much inevitable that some inappropriate decisions will be made. It shouldn't be surprising that I have a bias towards up-front analysis - I am a Business Analyst after all - but I don't recommend crippling progress with exhaustive (or should that be exhausting) analysis at the cost of actually doing something.
This being the angry blog of Mr Angry, I'll illustrate my points with some insane decisions I've witnessed that have made me truly angry.
The first example I'll use is a business that had a chronic problem with people developing a custom tool for every little task. I didn't realise how bad the problem was at first because most of my work revolved around the core systems - propping up aging IBM AS/400 mainframes rather than developing any new tools. As an aside, I don't even mention working on these dinosaurs of the Big Iron Age on my resume from fear a recruitment agency will try to place me somewhere else that uses them. I know some people like mainframes - I'm not one of them.
Realistically, it isn't surprising that people were developing custom tools in this environment because the process for making changes to mainframe systems isn't exactly nimble. The trouble is, the decisions being made were all short-term gain, long-term pain. One of Mike's recommendations was to ban widespread use of MS Access across companies to limit people's ability to make their own custom applications. He was being tongue in cheek but it's a classic example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." People learn how to build their own little database applications so they run off and do it despite the fact it would usually be better to have a common tool used across the company.
In this company, people went one better (which really means one worse) and were building applications in Excel. People often stretch Excel's ability (it's a spreadsheet, dammit, that's all it should be used for) to make it perform like a database (a bad idea as illustrated in this fun comic) but these people were actually building full-blown VB applications in Excel. For the non-geeks that means that although it looked they were running a custom built program, it was all jury-rigged on top of Excel. The data they were working with couldn't be shared across the business (like it could have been if it was built on the mainframe as it was supposed to be) and it was pushing Excel way beyond its intended limits which meant it could collapse at any moment.
This was actually the problem I had been called to look at, their "solution" kept crashing and losing all their data. I heard they were running their work in Excel and though that meant they were running complex spreadsheets. I was absolutely stunned when I saw what they were doing. They had gone so far as to design a complex graphical user interface in VB and paste it on top - it looked like a fancy web application. "What can you do fix the problem?" It was a few minutes before I could think of something to say beyond:
"You're the problem, my solution is to shoot you and put a hand grenade in your hard drive so nobody else copies your idea."
In short, this was a textbook case of people developing custom solutions when they should have been looking for a standard company-wide application. The people doing this thought they were right because they believed they had solved their problem. What they had was a work-around, not a solution. The main problems with their work-arounds were that they weren't available across the whole company (and a real solution was needed company wide) and they were totally unreliable.
For the other side of the coin I'll use an example of a company that insisted on buying a system instead of looking at the possibility of developing a solution in-house. One of the problems this company had was they were trying to do too many big things at the same time and so management's focus was completely splintered. The financial system, e-commerce engine and web publishing system were all planned to be replaced concurrently. Any one of these projects is a major undertaking but to plan to do all three at the same time is pretty goddam scary. Oh, and a new head of IT (Chief Information Officer/CIO) was put in place at the same time.
The new CIO issued a blanket ruling: "We are not a specialist IT development company," (accurate enough statement) "so we will not develop any software in-house. We will always buy off the shelf. And we will never use open source, we will only use commercial products." Ouch. That did not go down well in the IT department. The problem with his seemingly logical statement was that we might not have been specialist developers but there were some highly skilled and very motivated coders in the IT department. I was just the shitkicker BA but there were some damn smart people there.
It was my job to put together the requirements and tender documents for the web publishing tool so off I went and started. One day the lead developer comes up to me.
"Can we put in a submission for this project?" he asked.
"How do you mean?"
"Show the development team the tender documents all the vendors are getting and we'll respond with our proposed solution along with everybody else."
He outlined their proposed solution. They had a prototype that involved putting together a couple of open source applications to form a complete web publishing tool. They had worked out how to copy the existing kludgy database of web content straight across so there would be no interruption to the site. Once it was in this more stable architecture they could progressively tweak it until it was better structured which would make it much more manageable, allowing for the deployment of a consistent design across the site, easier editing and it would be much easier to manage the growth of the site. This solution would be quicker to deploy than any alternative, easier to maintain and much cheaper than any alternative.
Management responded with a wall of silence. The wall was occasionally broken with the rote "we are not a development house" line but largely there seemed to be a mentality of ignore it and it will go away. This proved to be an effective strategy as all of the motivated developers quit over the next six months and so did I. So the CIO's vision was not challenged and the company missed a huge opportunity.
At the end of the day, this is not a decision to make lightly. As Mike pointed out, software developers are often the highest paid non-management staff in a company and having them work on development can be costly both in dollar terms and lost opportunity terms. Uncontrolled custom development usually ends up with a series of incompatible (and often unstable) systems across departments that cost time and money to maintain and as often as not, this aspect causes reduced efficiency, not the improvements each individual claims. But likewise, arbitrarily ignoring the possibilities of in-house development can cost the company more and can definitely affect the morale of the IT department (an issue that management ignores at its peril).
The following list is a summary of Mike's 7 tips. They are a good guide on how to make the best "Buy or Build" decision:
1. Do research before building requirements
2. Be willing to change your behaviour to suit a software tool
3. Consider open source
4. Get a range of people involved in evaluating options
5. Focus on flexibility
6. Remove the incentive to empire-build
7. Ban people from building custom applications in Microsoft Access (really, really ban them from building custom applications in Excel)
These are not necessarily in order of importance but number one should always be first as everything else flows from this. In short, THINK before making a decision.
There is not one single answer to this question. If you are working in a place that decrees there is a single answer ("we will always buy an existing product" - "we will always build our own solutions") that's your whole problem summed up there. If each situation isn't judged on its own merits then it's pretty much inevitable that some inappropriate decisions will be made. It shouldn't be surprising that I have a bias towards up-front analysis - I am a Business Analyst after all - but I don't recommend crippling progress with exhaustive (or should that be exhausting) analysis at the cost of actually doing something.
This being the angry blog of Mr Angry, I'll illustrate my points with some insane decisions I've witnessed that have made me truly angry.
The first example I'll use is a business that had a chronic problem with people developing a custom tool for every little task. I didn't realise how bad the problem was at first because most of my work revolved around the core systems - propping up aging IBM AS/400 mainframes rather than developing any new tools. As an aside, I don't even mention working on these dinosaurs of the Big Iron Age on my resume from fear a recruitment agency will try to place me somewhere else that uses them. I know some people like mainframes - I'm not one of them.
Realistically, it isn't surprising that people were developing custom tools in this environment because the process for making changes to mainframe systems isn't exactly nimble. The trouble is, the decisions being made were all short-term gain, long-term pain. One of Mike's recommendations was to ban widespread use of MS Access across companies to limit people's ability to make their own custom applications. He was being tongue in cheek but it's a classic example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." People learn how to build their own little database applications so they run off and do it despite the fact it would usually be better to have a common tool used across the company.
In this company, people went one better (which really means one worse) and were building applications in Excel. People often stretch Excel's ability (it's a spreadsheet, dammit, that's all it should be used for) to make it perform like a database (a bad idea as illustrated in this fun comic) but these people were actually building full-blown VB applications in Excel. For the non-geeks that means that although it looked they were running a custom built program, it was all jury-rigged on top of Excel. The data they were working with couldn't be shared across the business (like it could have been if it was built on the mainframe as it was supposed to be) and it was pushing Excel way beyond its intended limits which meant it could collapse at any moment.
This was actually the problem I had been called to look at, their "solution" kept crashing and losing all their data. I heard they were running their work in Excel and though that meant they were running complex spreadsheets. I was absolutely stunned when I saw what they were doing. They had gone so far as to design a complex graphical user interface in VB and paste it on top - it looked like a fancy web application. "What can you do fix the problem?" It was a few minutes before I could think of something to say beyond:
"You're the problem, my solution is to shoot you and put a hand grenade in your hard drive so nobody else copies your idea."
In short, this was a textbook case of people developing custom solutions when they should have been looking for a standard company-wide application. The people doing this thought they were right because they believed they had solved their problem. What they had was a work-around, not a solution. The main problems with their work-arounds were that they weren't available across the whole company (and a real solution was needed company wide) and they were totally unreliable.
For the other side of the coin I'll use an example of a company that insisted on buying a system instead of looking at the possibility of developing a solution in-house. One of the problems this company had was they were trying to do too many big things at the same time and so management's focus was completely splintered. The financial system, e-commerce engine and web publishing system were all planned to be replaced concurrently. Any one of these projects is a major undertaking but to plan to do all three at the same time is pretty goddam scary. Oh, and a new head of IT (Chief Information Officer/CIO) was put in place at the same time.
The new CIO issued a blanket ruling: "We are not a specialist IT development company," (accurate enough statement) "so we will not develop any software in-house. We will always buy off the shelf. And we will never use open source, we will only use commercial products." Ouch. That did not go down well in the IT department. The problem with his seemingly logical statement was that we might not have been specialist developers but there were some highly skilled and very motivated coders in the IT department. I was just the shitkicker BA but there were some damn smart people there.
It was my job to put together the requirements and tender documents for the web publishing tool so off I went and started. One day the lead developer comes up to me.
"Can we put in a submission for this project?" he asked.
"How do you mean?"
"Show the development team the tender documents all the vendors are getting and we'll respond with our proposed solution along with everybody else."
He outlined their proposed solution. They had a prototype that involved putting together a couple of open source applications to form a complete web publishing tool. They had worked out how to copy the existing kludgy database of web content straight across so there would be no interruption to the site. Once it was in this more stable architecture they could progressively tweak it until it was better structured which would make it much more manageable, allowing for the deployment of a consistent design across the site, easier editing and it would be much easier to manage the growth of the site. This solution would be quicker to deploy than any alternative, easier to maintain and much cheaper than any alternative.
Management responded with a wall of silence. The wall was occasionally broken with the rote "we are not a development house" line but largely there seemed to be a mentality of ignore it and it will go away. This proved to be an effective strategy as all of the motivated developers quit over the next six months and so did I. So the CIO's vision was not challenged and the company missed a huge opportunity.
At the end of the day, this is not a decision to make lightly. As Mike pointed out, software developers are often the highest paid non-management staff in a company and having them work on development can be costly both in dollar terms and lost opportunity terms. Uncontrolled custom development usually ends up with a series of incompatible (and often unstable) systems across departments that cost time and money to maintain and as often as not, this aspect causes reduced efficiency, not the improvements each individual claims. But likewise, arbitrarily ignoring the possibilities of in-house development can cost the company more and can definitely affect the morale of the IT department (an issue that management ignores at its peril).
The following list is a summary of Mike's 7 tips. They are a good guide on how to make the best "Buy or Build" decision:
1. Do research before building requirements
2. Be willing to change your behaviour to suit a software tool
3. Consider open source
4. Get a range of people involved in evaluating options
5. Focus on flexibility
6. Remove the incentive to empire-build
7. Ban people from building custom applications in Microsoft Access (really, really ban them from building custom applications in Excel)
These are not necessarily in order of importance but number one should always be first as everything else flows from this. In short, THINK before making a decision.
Monday, September 11, 2006
The Blogging Times post three - Blog Vigilantes get Lucy Gao and Lee Siegel
This post to The Blogging Times was inspired by a few more scalps being scored by online vigilantes. This phenomenon is nothing new but the thing that interested me about these two was that they come from opposite ends of the spectrum with regards to their transgressions. Lucy Gao made an absolute prat of herself regarding her personal life and Lee Siegel made a very serious professional blunder. Without further ado, here's the video, more discussion to follow.
It's more than a mild understatement to say people have a tendency to be judgemental online. If you haven't heard many of the stories on this topic, the Wikipedia article on Internet vigilantism is a good place to start. There have been a huge number of stories over the years that could be included under this umbrella and depending on your point of view (and maybe the specific case) this is either the rise of empowered citizens or scary as all fuck.
The end of the spectrum that is easier to support involves serious professional or criminal misconduct. Some people go after pedophiles, some bait scammers and there was even the case that basically ended the careers of a couple of US journalists when they publicised a memo that made George Bush look bad. The memo was the smoking gun that proved W had skipped out on his national guard service which he was only doing to avoid going to Vietnam anyway. It was just a pity that they didn't do enough fact checking to find out that the memo was a fake. Personally, I think if someone dug far enough they'd find the whole thing was set up by Bush supporters... I should probably take off my tinfoil hat now.
This is the company that Lee Siegel falls into. As someone employed by a magazine as a professional writer there are standards of behaviour he's expected to follow. It seems he was a hell of an unpopular art critic. It also seems he had trouble dealing with the strong reactions he rather negative and apparently clueless writing provoked. So he invented a persona to post positive comments about himself on his own blog because no real people would support him. Which makes him unprofessional, unpopular and a pathetic loser. I have my fair share of haters but at least I have real supporters in my corner to balance them.
At the end of the spectrum that makes me more queasy are people who have been exposed and humiliated for stupid and/or embarrassing things they've done in their personal lives. There was "dog poop girl" who suffered fairly severe retribution for not cleaning up when her dog crapped on public transport. There's multiple stories of people sending inappropriate emails from their work accounts that get them fired. Sometimes they're bragging about sexual exploits, sometimes they're having nasty bitchfights over petty things and sometimes they're just being jerks.
And then there's poor Lucy Gao. It isn't as if she actually hurt anyone, she's just... well, she's a fucking idiot. A sad little control freak socialite wannabe. But I'm not sure that she deserved to have her life ruined. It isn't as if I lie awake at night tortured by the injustice of it all but being an idiot doesn't justify being vilified around the world. Anyone who believes in karma or simply being fair wouldn't indulge in this shit.
Some readers might be surprised I would be so conservative on this topic, after all, I'm not shy about cutting loose when I think someone deserves it. The difference I try to maintain is I focus on public personalities or at least someone who launched an attack on me first. And I can't imagine a scenario where I'd divulge someone's private details simply because I thought they were stupid and/or embarrassing. I honestly think we're barrelling straight for a hell of a shitty future as this sort of behaviour becomes more widespread. Anyone still want to know why I wear a mask?
Actually, I know I'm playing russian roulette by having this online profile. Because I take an admittedly extreme stance on a range of topics, I piss a lot of people off. If I ever get any halfway serious public profile there will be a long line of people waiting to fuck me over. Hell, outside of strangers that I piss off, I know for a fact a particular ex-girlfriend would go straight to the tabloids to talk shit about me if I attracted any fame under my own name. She's a pathological liar but it seems most tabloid writers are as well so they'd get on like a house on fire.
I know all the bad things I've done in my life and I'm prepared to own up to them. I'd better be, because the odds are I'll have to one day. It's an interesting concept - would a future where every little detail of your life could be made public encourage people to behave better? I'd doubt it. Besides which, even if you're a saint, some fucker will spread vicious lies about you. So OK you guys, when some horrible stories get circulated about me, you know it's all lies, right?
Right?
It's more than a mild understatement to say people have a tendency to be judgemental online. If you haven't heard many of the stories on this topic, the Wikipedia article on Internet vigilantism is a good place to start. There have been a huge number of stories over the years that could be included under this umbrella and depending on your point of view (and maybe the specific case) this is either the rise of empowered citizens or scary as all fuck.
The end of the spectrum that is easier to support involves serious professional or criminal misconduct. Some people go after pedophiles, some bait scammers and there was even the case that basically ended the careers of a couple of US journalists when they publicised a memo that made George Bush look bad. The memo was the smoking gun that proved W had skipped out on his national guard service which he was only doing to avoid going to Vietnam anyway. It was just a pity that they didn't do enough fact checking to find out that the memo was a fake. Personally, I think if someone dug far enough they'd find the whole thing was set up by Bush supporters... I should probably take off my tinfoil hat now.
This is the company that Lee Siegel falls into. As someone employed by a magazine as a professional writer there are standards of behaviour he's expected to follow. It seems he was a hell of an unpopular art critic. It also seems he had trouble dealing with the strong reactions he rather negative and apparently clueless writing provoked. So he invented a persona to post positive comments about himself on his own blog because no real people would support him. Which makes him unprofessional, unpopular and a pathetic loser. I have my fair share of haters but at least I have real supporters in my corner to balance them.
At the end of the spectrum that makes me more queasy are people who have been exposed and humiliated for stupid and/or embarrassing things they've done in their personal lives. There was "dog poop girl" who suffered fairly severe retribution for not cleaning up when her dog crapped on public transport. There's multiple stories of people sending inappropriate emails from their work accounts that get them fired. Sometimes they're bragging about sexual exploits, sometimes they're having nasty bitchfights over petty things and sometimes they're just being jerks.
And then there's poor Lucy Gao. It isn't as if she actually hurt anyone, she's just... well, she's a fucking idiot. A sad little control freak socialite wannabe. But I'm not sure that she deserved to have her life ruined. It isn't as if I lie awake at night tortured by the injustice of it all but being an idiot doesn't justify being vilified around the world. Anyone who believes in karma or simply being fair wouldn't indulge in this shit.
Some readers might be surprised I would be so conservative on this topic, after all, I'm not shy about cutting loose when I think someone deserves it. The difference I try to maintain is I focus on public personalities or at least someone who launched an attack on me first. And I can't imagine a scenario where I'd divulge someone's private details simply because I thought they were stupid and/or embarrassing. I honestly think we're barrelling straight for a hell of a shitty future as this sort of behaviour becomes more widespread. Anyone still want to know why I wear a mask?
Actually, I know I'm playing russian roulette by having this online profile. Because I take an admittedly extreme stance on a range of topics, I piss a lot of people off. If I ever get any halfway serious public profile there will be a long line of people waiting to fuck me over. Hell, outside of strangers that I piss off, I know for a fact a particular ex-girlfriend would go straight to the tabloids to talk shit about me if I attracted any fame under my own name. She's a pathological liar but it seems most tabloid writers are as well so they'd get on like a house on fire.
I know all the bad things I've done in my life and I'm prepared to own up to them. I'd better be, because the odds are I'll have to one day. It's an interesting concept - would a future where every little detail of your life could be made public encourage people to behave better? I'd doubt it. Besides which, even if you're a saint, some fucker will spread vicious lies about you. So OK you guys, when some horrible stories get circulated about me, you know it's all lies, right?
Right?
Pedestrians who make me angry
Here's another of the videos I did on the weekend - a "performance" of one of my older posts about suicidal pedestrians who jump right into traffic. I'll be doing a longer post later to accompany my latest piece for The Blogging Times but I don't have the free time to do it now I normally have (my lunch hour) because I'm moving desks at work today. So enjoy this for now and more to come later.
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The Revver URL for this Video is http://media.revver.com/broadcast/58972/video.mov/20579
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The Revver URL for this Video is http://media.revver.com/broadcast/58972/video.mov/20579
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Defending my right to have an Angry Blog
Mr Angry has a nightmare
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Do you have a big nose?
I'm not being rude, but the starting point for this video was a relatively new YouTube user who seems to think her nose is too big. The YouTuber in question is another in a long line of young ladies using their feminine wiles to garner attention in a way I think she will regret later but she seems to have enough of a sense of humour to get the joke I'm making. Also this video answers conclusively why I wear a mask.
The Revver URL for this video is
The Revver URL for this video is
Mr Angry does not like shallow attitudes
Friday, September 08, 2006
Steve Irwin, Germaine Greer and Jack Marx
Well, the death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin has generated hysterical mourning at a level not seen since Princess Diana had her last car drive. This idea of getting really worked up over the death of someone you don't actually know has always made me a bit queasy. Irwin was a very interesting bloke who did some amazing work both in entertainment and conservation, and his death was unfortunate and undeserved. It was arguably only a matter of time until his rather dangerous lifestyle caught up with him but it's still a bummer that it happened.
Then Germaine Greer decided to lob a hand grenade into the worldwide crowd of mourners with a newspaper column where she said among other things: "The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin." She honestly didn't say anything too outrageous in the piece but her timing sucked - to me it smacked of someone who is either utterly insensitive to the moods of others or someone who is so desperate for attention they do something that they know will generate a tsunami of negative attention for them (negative attention is better than no attention for some people). Germaine being Germaine, she gladly went on a high-rating tabloid "current affairs" TV show defending her view which guaranteed her nationwide vilification.
A day or so later, Jack Marx put an insightful piece on his blog completely skewering the hypocrisy of the situation. Longer term readers may remember Marx as the writer who Russel Crowe attempted to recruit as his "inside man" - his mole in the world of journalism who would write positive stories about Rusty, particularly about his (shudder) music. A job which I'm still open for, by the way Rusty. Call me! The relationship did not work out well for either of them although Marx got an interesting, if self-serving, article out of it. One thing Mr Marx is not scared of is pissing people off.
And I'd just like to round this off with the one piece of this whole circus that made me really angry. Irwin's producer held a press conference to give the details of what had happened. In his statement he uttered one of the most egregious misuses of the term "ironically" it has been my misfortune to hear (another topic regular readers will know is important to me). He said (I'm paraphrasing because I can't find a transcript) that Irwin was filming for a show that would have been called something like "Ocean's Deadliest Creatures" when he was killed, "ironically".
NO!!! Being killed while filming World's Deadliest Anything is not ironic! The title is bloody accurate! It's apt! The one thing it isn't is ironic! It would be ironic if he was filming a show called "World's Cuddliest and Friendliest Animals" and some cute fluffy bunny tore his throat out. This is the real smear on Steve Irwin's legacy, not anything Germaine Greer said. I swear, anyone who says to me "isn't it ironic how Steve Irwin died" is headed straight for intensive care.
Then Germaine Greer decided to lob a hand grenade into the worldwide crowd of mourners with a newspaper column where she said among other things: "The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin." She honestly didn't say anything too outrageous in the piece but her timing sucked - to me it smacked of someone who is either utterly insensitive to the moods of others or someone who is so desperate for attention they do something that they know will generate a tsunami of negative attention for them (negative attention is better than no attention for some people). Germaine being Germaine, she gladly went on a high-rating tabloid "current affairs" TV show defending her view which guaranteed her nationwide vilification.
A day or so later, Jack Marx put an insightful piece on his blog completely skewering the hypocrisy of the situation. Longer term readers may remember Marx as the writer who Russel Crowe attempted to recruit as his "inside man" - his mole in the world of journalism who would write positive stories about Rusty, particularly about his (shudder) music. A job which I'm still open for, by the way Rusty. Call me! The relationship did not work out well for either of them although Marx got an interesting, if self-serving, article out of it. One thing Mr Marx is not scared of is pissing people off.
And I'd just like to round this off with the one piece of this whole circus that made me really angry. Irwin's producer held a press conference to give the details of what had happened. In his statement he uttered one of the most egregious misuses of the term "ironically" it has been my misfortune to hear (another topic regular readers will know is important to me). He said (I'm paraphrasing because I can't find a transcript) that Irwin was filming for a show that would have been called something like "Ocean's Deadliest Creatures" when he was killed, "ironically".
NO!!! Being killed while filming World's Deadliest Anything is not ironic! The title is bloody accurate! It's apt! The one thing it isn't is ironic! It would be ironic if he was filming a show called "World's Cuddliest and Friendliest Animals" and some cute fluffy bunny tore his throat out. This is the real smear on Steve Irwin's legacy, not anything Germaine Greer said. I swear, anyone who says to me "isn't it ironic how Steve Irwin died" is headed straight for intensive care.
Some more video goodness from Mr Angry
I haven't done many videos in the last two weeks, all sorts of things keeping me busy. Here's two that haven't been on the blog before. The first one is one I did a few weeks ago when I was first approached to do vlogs for The Blogging Times. I wasn't sure what they wanted so I submitted a few variations. This was one that didn't get used and I've decided to bring it to you here. It has been described as possibly the angriest I've ever come across in a video.
There should be a new one up at The Blogging Times today, I did it a couple of days ago but I'm not sure of Minic's schedule for putting it live. I'll add it here as soon as he puts it up.
The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXRWdetdtTc
This next one is the two new ones I've done in the last week. I dug through my blog archives and decided to adapt an old post about my thought processes. I titled it, appropriately enough, "What am I thinking?"
The Revver URL for this video is
It's looking like a rainy weekend in Melbourne which means spending a lot of time indoors, which will in turn likely mean more videos. Stay tuned!
There should be a new one up at The Blogging Times today, I did it a couple of days ago but I'm not sure of Minic's schedule for putting it live. I'll add it here as soon as he puts it up.
The URL for this video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXRWdetdtTc
This next one is the two new ones I've done in the last week. I dug through my blog archives and decided to adapt an old post about my thought processes. I titled it, appropriately enough, "What am I thinking?"
The Revver URL for this video is
It's looking like a rainy weekend in Melbourne which means spending a lot of time indoors, which will in turn likely mean more videos. Stay tuned!
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Ten ways everyone can guarantee an angry workplace
This post is a companion piece to the one I wrote last week about how managers can guarantee an angry workforce. This is the "equal time" response acknowledging that not all the ills of working life are the fault of management. Managers certainly have more control over the direction of a workplace than the rank and file workers but a toxic cow-orker is more than capable of destroying any good work done by managers. Some of the behaviours listed here will make managers angry, some will make peers angry and quite honestly you'll make yourself angry and miserable if you perpetrate some of them.
So take control! Wreak havoc on your workplace and show exactly what "the power of one" can achieve. With a little diligence you could probably manage all ten of these behaviours and turn your workplace into a battlefield filled with angry, disillusioned, desperate people. (Mental note: people who actually do these horrible things are usually incapable of understanding irony. Better make the intention here a bit clearer.)
But seriously folks, don't do these things. Really. Even if you think other people "deserve" to be on the receiving end of some of the misery they've been dealing out to you. It's tempting but it's a downward spiral that will screw up your life as much as anyone's. If you're already in a toxic workplace, don't become part of the problem. Find a way to be positive, stay out of the way or simply get out altogether. But don't descend to the level of sociopaths who behave like this as a matter of course.
So without further ado, the top ten ways anyone can guarantee an angry workplace are:
1. Interfere with how others work. Everybody has their own style and it's perfectly possible yours is better than anybody else's. The thing is, trying to change how others work when your opinion hasn't been invited is a recipe for disaster. This doesn't mean ignore dangerous or destructive practices but use some judgement - if it isn't actually your job to coach someone don't rush in to tell them they're wrong.
2. Act as though some aspects of your job are below you. In the feedback to my earlier post, one reader recounted a story where a tech support person refused to go under a desk to fix cabling because they didn't want to get their pants dirty. Nobody should put up with being demeaned but if you don't like what is expected of you, you probably should be doing another job rather than making everyone angry with your intransigence.
3. Backstab people you don't like. Maybe you're right, maybe so-and-so at the next desk really sucks. Maybe one of your peers is actually completely incompetent. Don't make a bad situation worse by indulging in character assassination - no matter how justified you think it is.
4. Encourage gossip. Friendly chats are good. Talking about your own personal life is questionable. Indulging in gossip about someone else's personal life is destructive. Actively seeking out and listening to gossipers is no better than spreading gossip yourself. Everyone likes a juicy story but don't make it a central part of your work life.
5. Pass judgement on the performance of others. If performance appraisals aren't your job, don't offer them. No matter how sure you are of someone else's failings, being unnecessarily judgemental is terribly destructive. Your own performance is your concern, leave the performance of others to their managers.
6. Intrude on the "personal space" of others. There are dozens of ways to do this: physically impinging on others (this doesn't have be touching to be bad), spreading your crap out so it limits the space available to others, talking excessively loudly, having an obnoxious ringtone. Individuality is all well and good but you can hardly expect others to respect your individuality if it involves them being battered by it.
7. Refuse to support co-workers as a matter of course. I'm a bit of an old school "workers stand together" type. It doesn't make sense to be dragged down by someone who is incompetent and/or destructive but if you reflexively sell out your peers and take the other side, it will not only make them angry but it'll come back to bite you some day in a splendidly karmic manner.
8. Try to palm your work off on someone else. If you are overworked, the positive course of action is to communicate this upward to your manager. Don't dump on the people around you. No matter how sure you are someone else is dodging their fair share, unless you are their manager it simply isn't your job to push some of your work on them. Likewise if it's simply an unpleasant task, not a question of overwork. It isn't your co-worker's fault it landed on your desk. Take it up with the boss.
9. Suck up to management. Do your job well by all means. Be on friendly terms with your superiors. But actively sucking up? Don't do it. You've crossed the line when you're spending more time discussing non-work issues with the boss than you spend on discussing work. Just because a manager might be susceptible to constant flattery is no reason to indulge. This sort of behaviour is almost always blatantly transparent to co-workers and never goes down well.
10. Indulge in the negative side of office politics. You have to understand office politics simply to survive. But when you cross the line from protecting yourself to actively playing the game to further your own ends you become part of the problem. Anyone who is actually gaining happiness from playing petty political games is undoubtedly engendering a lot of anger all around themselves.
Many of the above items are a delicate balancing act. A judicious amount of playing politics and sucking up (a friend used the delightful term "upward management") can help everyone. A little social interaction between co-workers is normally a good thing but crossing the line into gossip or imposing on someone in a way that makes them uncomfortable is guaranteed to make you some enemies. In the end, the above list is an attempt to say it's easy (and often true) to blame the boss for everything bad but keep these rules in mind. Unless you can honestly say you're not part of the problem you don't really have the right to complain.
So take control! Wreak havoc on your workplace and show exactly what "the power of one" can achieve. With a little diligence you could probably manage all ten of these behaviours and turn your workplace into a battlefield filled with angry, disillusioned, desperate people. (Mental note: people who actually do these horrible things are usually incapable of understanding irony. Better make the intention here a bit clearer.)
But seriously folks, don't do these things. Really. Even if you think other people "deserve" to be on the receiving end of some of the misery they've been dealing out to you. It's tempting but it's a downward spiral that will screw up your life as much as anyone's. If you're already in a toxic workplace, don't become part of the problem. Find a way to be positive, stay out of the way or simply get out altogether. But don't descend to the level of sociopaths who behave like this as a matter of course.
So without further ado, the top ten ways anyone can guarantee an angry workplace are:
1. Interfere with how others work. Everybody has their own style and it's perfectly possible yours is better than anybody else's. The thing is, trying to change how others work when your opinion hasn't been invited is a recipe for disaster. This doesn't mean ignore dangerous or destructive practices but use some judgement - if it isn't actually your job to coach someone don't rush in to tell them they're wrong.
2. Act as though some aspects of your job are below you. In the feedback to my earlier post, one reader recounted a story where a tech support person refused to go under a desk to fix cabling because they didn't want to get their pants dirty. Nobody should put up with being demeaned but if you don't like what is expected of you, you probably should be doing another job rather than making everyone angry with your intransigence.
3. Backstab people you don't like. Maybe you're right, maybe so-and-so at the next desk really sucks. Maybe one of your peers is actually completely incompetent. Don't make a bad situation worse by indulging in character assassination - no matter how justified you think it is.
4. Encourage gossip. Friendly chats are good. Talking about your own personal life is questionable. Indulging in gossip about someone else's personal life is destructive. Actively seeking out and listening to gossipers is no better than spreading gossip yourself. Everyone likes a juicy story but don't make it a central part of your work life.
5. Pass judgement on the performance of others. If performance appraisals aren't your job, don't offer them. No matter how sure you are of someone else's failings, being unnecessarily judgemental is terribly destructive. Your own performance is your concern, leave the performance of others to their managers.
6. Intrude on the "personal space" of others. There are dozens of ways to do this: physically impinging on others (this doesn't have be touching to be bad), spreading your crap out so it limits the space available to others, talking excessively loudly, having an obnoxious ringtone. Individuality is all well and good but you can hardly expect others to respect your individuality if it involves them being battered by it.
7. Refuse to support co-workers as a matter of course. I'm a bit of an old school "workers stand together" type. It doesn't make sense to be dragged down by someone who is incompetent and/or destructive but if you reflexively sell out your peers and take the other side, it will not only make them angry but it'll come back to bite you some day in a splendidly karmic manner.
8. Try to palm your work off on someone else. If you are overworked, the positive course of action is to communicate this upward to your manager. Don't dump on the people around you. No matter how sure you are someone else is dodging their fair share, unless you are their manager it simply isn't your job to push some of your work on them. Likewise if it's simply an unpleasant task, not a question of overwork. It isn't your co-worker's fault it landed on your desk. Take it up with the boss.
9. Suck up to management. Do your job well by all means. Be on friendly terms with your superiors. But actively sucking up? Don't do it. You've crossed the line when you're spending more time discussing non-work issues with the boss than you spend on discussing work. Just because a manager might be susceptible to constant flattery is no reason to indulge. This sort of behaviour is almost always blatantly transparent to co-workers and never goes down well.
10. Indulge in the negative side of office politics. You have to understand office politics simply to survive. But when you cross the line from protecting yourself to actively playing the game to further your own ends you become part of the problem. Anyone who is actually gaining happiness from playing petty political games is undoubtedly engendering a lot of anger all around themselves.
Many of the above items are a delicate balancing act. A judicious amount of playing politics and sucking up (a friend used the delightful term "upward management") can help everyone. A little social interaction between co-workers is normally a good thing but crossing the line into gossip or imposing on someone in a way that makes them uncomfortable is guaranteed to make you some enemies. In the end, the above list is an attempt to say it's easy (and often true) to blame the boss for everything bad but keep these rules in mind. Unless you can honestly say you're not part of the problem you don't really have the right to complain.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
A message to the nazis
How ya doing bitches? It seems some self-proclaimed aryan saviour of the white race has stumbled across my blog while doing their one-handed web surfing and warned their circle-jerking brethren on some racist forum about how I dared to speak against their glorious plans for the future. This post is going to include some instructions for the inbred nazi fools who seem likely to drool there way in here for a while at least.
Regular readers may have noticed comments popping up for my post from last month "YouTube is overrun by nazis". This is the one the sad little boys are apparently discussing on their forum. I noticed links to their forum popping up in my referrer logs the other day but haven't had a chance to check it out to see what they're actually saying. The site is barred from my work based internet access and I've had more interesting things to do at home for the last few days. Hopefully they'll get bored soon and go back to sitting in pools of their own excrement fantasising about how they're the master race but there's likely to be a few comments from them.
So, pay attention nazi losers. Here are the rules. This is my place so they are my rules. Subject to change at whim and without notice. I get to say whatever I fucking like here and I get to delete comments any time I feel like it. I've been getting this crap on YouTube for a while and I tend to let it go there, simply because the moron quotient on YT is much higher than in my little corner of the blogosphere. I honestly don't feel like subjecting my regular readers to the depth of bile that I get on YT so I will be deleting comments whenever I feel like it.
Don't waste time going off on some insane rant about "freedom of speech". Fuck you. Cretinous morons who think they have the right to deprive others of the freedom to live their lives the way they choose have no rights here. You may not see the blindingly obvious inconsistencies in your rantings but I, along with other intelligent humans, can and I have no desire to indulge your diseased ravings.
Personally I find the vast majority of drivel spouted by racists/nationalist/nazis/aryans to be deeply amusing. To watch you brain dead morons flail and thrash about, completely oblivious to how clearly you are showing yourself to be contemptible idiots gives me quite a good laugh. In fact I regard you rockapes as free entertainment. I'm the organ grinder and you're the particularly ugly lobotomised monkeys who dance to my tune on my command. The fact that you can't grasp that every time you bang out some shit on the keyboard with your six-fingered hands you are playing into my plan is really funny.
As a friend on YT put it - how does it feel to be controlled by somebody you despise? I love the conundrum this puts these fuckwits into. They want to respond with their mindless braying about the superiority of the white race but now they know I want them to respond because I get my best laugh of the day out of their idiocy. They want to respond but they know I'm compelling them to respond but they don't want to do what I want but they want to respond but that's what I want them to do but they don't want to do what I want. I really enjoy the mental image of their feeble little brains imploding from the cognitive dissonance.
So that's the rules for nazis in this playpen. You want freedom of speech? Stay in the pit of filth you've created for yourself and leave decent humans alone. Here I set the rules and I don't give a shit what you think about that. Oh, and some minor points that I don't consider important at all but you fuckwits obsess about them. I'm not Jewish. I'm not gay. I don't consider either term an insult so don't waste your time. I'm 6th generation Australian from Scots/Irish heritage. I don't care what you believe about me.
And the whole "Mr Angry" thing including the mask? It's a CHARACTER. I know most of you nazi morons are no good at abstract thought (or any level of thinking at all) but many people understand the idea of creating a character to make a particular point or simply to entertain. The character and the person behind it are separate entities. And the mask sure as shit isn't about hiding from you fuck-knuckles. You pathetic bastards are completely incidental to my life and don't figure into any significant decision I make.
I'll round off with a saying regular readers will be familiar to regular readers: fuck you in the neck with a swastika you pathetic, snivelling, cowardly, insecure nazi losers. You are not the master race. You are not growing in numbers. You are not going to "rise up". You are an embarrassment to humanity; a discredited and defeated bunch of abject losers.
Regular readers may have noticed comments popping up for my post from last month "YouTube is overrun by nazis". This is the one the sad little boys are apparently discussing on their forum. I noticed links to their forum popping up in my referrer logs the other day but haven't had a chance to check it out to see what they're actually saying. The site is barred from my work based internet access and I've had more interesting things to do at home for the last few days. Hopefully they'll get bored soon and go back to sitting in pools of their own excrement fantasising about how they're the master race but there's likely to be a few comments from them.
So, pay attention nazi losers. Here are the rules. This is my place so they are my rules. Subject to change at whim and without notice. I get to say whatever I fucking like here and I get to delete comments any time I feel like it. I've been getting this crap on YouTube for a while and I tend to let it go there, simply because the moron quotient on YT is much higher than in my little corner of the blogosphere. I honestly don't feel like subjecting my regular readers to the depth of bile that I get on YT so I will be deleting comments whenever I feel like it.
Don't waste time going off on some insane rant about "freedom of speech". Fuck you. Cretinous morons who think they have the right to deprive others of the freedom to live their lives the way they choose have no rights here. You may not see the blindingly obvious inconsistencies in your rantings but I, along with other intelligent humans, can and I have no desire to indulge your diseased ravings.
Personally I find the vast majority of drivel spouted by racists/nationalist/nazis/aryans to be deeply amusing. To watch you brain dead morons flail and thrash about, completely oblivious to how clearly you are showing yourself to be contemptible idiots gives me quite a good laugh. In fact I regard you rockapes as free entertainment. I'm the organ grinder and you're the particularly ugly lobotomised monkeys who dance to my tune on my command. The fact that you can't grasp that every time you bang out some shit on the keyboard with your six-fingered hands you are playing into my plan is really funny.
As a friend on YT put it - how does it feel to be controlled by somebody you despise? I love the conundrum this puts these fuckwits into. They want to respond with their mindless braying about the superiority of the white race but now they know I want them to respond because I get my best laugh of the day out of their idiocy. They want to respond but they know I'm compelling them to respond but they don't want to do what I want but they want to respond but that's what I want them to do but they don't want to do what I want. I really enjoy the mental image of their feeble little brains imploding from the cognitive dissonance.
So that's the rules for nazis in this playpen. You want freedom of speech? Stay in the pit of filth you've created for yourself and leave decent humans alone. Here I set the rules and I don't give a shit what you think about that. Oh, and some minor points that I don't consider important at all but you fuckwits obsess about them. I'm not Jewish. I'm not gay. I don't consider either term an insult so don't waste your time. I'm 6th generation Australian from Scots/Irish heritage. I don't care what you believe about me.
And the whole "Mr Angry" thing including the mask? It's a CHARACTER. I know most of you nazi morons are no good at abstract thought (or any level of thinking at all) but many people understand the idea of creating a character to make a particular point or simply to entertain. The character and the person behind it are separate entities. And the mask sure as shit isn't about hiding from you fuck-knuckles. You pathetic bastards are completely incidental to my life and don't figure into any significant decision I make.
I'll round off with a saying regular readers will be familiar to regular readers: fuck you in the neck with a swastika you pathetic, snivelling, cowardly, insecure nazi losers. You are not the master race. You are not growing in numbers. You are not going to "rise up". You are an embarrassment to humanity; a discredited and defeated bunch of abject losers.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Smelling like a tart's hankie - the video version
Here's a video version of the post I did the other day, inspired by Sean Connery's line about smelling like a tart's hankie.
http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab" width="320" classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" height="272">http://media.revver.com/broadcast/56071/video.mov/20579" />
The Revver URL for this video is:
http://revver.com/video/56071/20579
http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab" width="320" classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" height="272">http://media.revver.com/broadcast/56071/video.mov/20579" />
The Revver URL for this video is:
http://revver.com/video/56071/20579
Memorial Day in Australia
Memorial Day is one of the US holidays that doesn't occur in Australia but I think it's fair to say there's an unofficial Memorial Day in Australia. Poor Steve Irwin. Mr Crikey himself, the Crocodile Hunter met an untimely end in what can only be described as a freak accident. I think he was odd-on to have a tangle with a crocodile that ended badly one day but stabbed through the heart by a stingray was unexpected.
He's a good advertisement for living life by your passions. Even knowing he would suffer a painful death, I doubt he would have changed anything in his life. He's also a pretty good advertisement for the fact that if you choose dangerous activities, you're exposing yourself to risks that other folks don't have to deal with and they might catch up with you one day.
Another passing that will doubtless get less exposure is the death of Australian kids' book author, Colin Thiele, at 85. He was most famous for a book called "Storm Boy". When I was young, every Australian schoolkid had to read this book. It was something about a boy and a pelican and gaining wisdom from an aboriginal bloke. I honestly don't remember the details although I read the book and saw the movie.
On a personal note, things are a bit sad on the home front right now. My girlfriend's cat, Furgle, met an untimely end last night - a victim of the scourge of urban cats: a passing car. He was a very nice kitty and much too young to have this happen (about 4 years old). A faithful companion who won't be forgotten.
OK, I promise to post a few videos later to cheer things up.
He's a good advertisement for living life by your passions. Even knowing he would suffer a painful death, I doubt he would have changed anything in his life. He's also a pretty good advertisement for the fact that if you choose dangerous activities, you're exposing yourself to risks that other folks don't have to deal with and they might catch up with you one day.
Another passing that will doubtless get less exposure is the death of Australian kids' book author, Colin Thiele, at 85. He was most famous for a book called "Storm Boy". When I was young, every Australian schoolkid had to read this book. It was something about a boy and a pelican and gaining wisdom from an aboriginal bloke. I honestly don't remember the details although I read the book and saw the movie.
On a personal note, things are a bit sad on the home front right now. My girlfriend's cat, Furgle, met an untimely end last night - a victim of the scourge of urban cats: a passing car. He was a very nice kitty and much too young to have this happen (about 4 years old). A faithful companion who won't be forgotten.
OK, I promise to post a few videos later to cheer things up.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Clay Shirky knew what was wrong with Reddit years before Reddit existed
That's a longer than average post title for me. I spent a while trying to come up with something more concise but that essentially sums up the purpose of this post. If I think of a shorter title before publishing I'll change it which of course means I'll have to change this opening paragraph as well. There's an insight for regular readers who may have wondered about my thought processes when I'm writing - I spend quite a bit of time thinking about what I'll write and quite a bit of time actually composing the posts but to an extent I'm making this shit up as I go along.
I've had a bit of a train of thought going on in my head for the past few days about the main "social" web services I use and how they make me angry. I had a stab at YouTube last night and today the target is the social bookmarking site Reddit. Calling it that will probably make me instantly unpopular with its regular users and will probably confuse sensible people who don't give a crap about Web 2.0 terms like "social bookmarking" (or even "Web 2.0" for that matter.) So a brief summary - people submit links to stuff they think is cool. Other people either like it and vote for it, which increases the link's prominence, or they dislike it and vote against it which reduces its prominence.
Several popular and long-running sites including BoingBoing, Fark and Slashdot do this but they are moderated - a small number of people running the site control what gets seen. Reddit is one of the wave of sites devolving most if not all of this control to users. The current undisputed king in this field is Digg (I think I'll deal with Digg another day) but Reddit has its own strengths. What's that saying about happy families and unhappy families? It seems that these link aggregating sites that succeed have their own sort of success but when they fail, they all fail the same way.
The success of these sites is twofold. First, there is far too much out there in the world for one person to discover so it's nice to get a helping hand occasionally. As a web user/reader it's helpful to see what other people find interesting. Personally, I find 98% of the web to be crap so any help getting to the good stuff is appreciated. Second, content creators like these sites because they can deliver a massive number of eyeballs to the content creator's site. Of course you have to be doing something of value for these sites to be of any help but there are a lot of very interesting sites with high quality content that wouldn't get noticed without help.
None of my posts have ever featured prominently on either Reddit or Digg. A few have been posted by various people (occasionally even by myself - a cardinal sin to some purists) and gotten some small attention but nothing huge. I think it's impossible to predict what will be popular on these sites. I find a lot of their big hits boring and I submit many things that get ignored. I've had submissions (not my own stuff) to both Reddit and Digg promoted to their front pages but I can't for the life of me say why some stuff hits it big while others disappear. I think everything I submit is good. I won't be submitting this post to Reddit (it seems a bit gratuitous, plus I think I'm saying some things a lot of Redditors don't want to hear) but hey, if anyone else feels like it, knock yourselves out.
Reddit's success is that it gathers more and more users who generate more and more content which gives you more reason to return and find more things. Reddit's failure is that as it gets more and more users submitting more and more content you're overwhelmed with more crap. Boring crap, self-serving crap and outright spam. It seems that every other day someone's posting something along the lines of "Why does Reddit suck so much now? It used to be way better." It's an unavoidable fact of life that people suck. Which is to say, a certain percentage of any random group of people are going to suck by your standards no matter how you measure suckage so as any group gets larger, the number of people in that group that you think suck is going to increase.
Clay Shirky wrote the classic piece "A Group is its own worst enemy" that deals with these issues in 2003, hence me saying he knew what was wrong with Reddit before Reddit even existed. He is a lot more intelligent than me and has a lot more experience. But even I experienced the collapse of Usenet and IRC. It always happens: any medium that does not control access will inevitably collapse under the weight of its own success. I won't waste time exhaustively rehashing his points but I'll give a few highlights.
If this sort of thing interests you, the article (which was originally a presentation he gave) is well worth reading. WARNING: only read it if you're willing to admit being a geek. If you read it and enjoy it then you really are a geek. If you enjoy it so much you feel compelled to extol its virtues in a blog post, well, there's no hope for you.
The first real eye-opener for me was when he pointed out these issues were dealt with long before the internet, "in a book by W.R. Bion called "Experiences in Groups," written in the middle of the last century. Bion was a psychologist who was doing group therapy with groups of neurotics. (Drawing parallels between that and the Internet is left as an exercise for the reader.)" I love his sense of humour as well as his insights.
And for Reddit's central paradox, namely, having no moderator is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness, he has this to offer: "Geoff Cohen has a great observation about this. He said 'The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases.'" Which is to say, the argument about moderation is inevitable. It is also inevitable that said debate will be passionate and get extremely nasty.
And Clay is a solutions man, it isn't enough for him to point out problems. He has solutions to offer as well: "So there's this question 'What is required to make a large, long-lived online group successful?' and I think I can now answer with some confidence: 'It depends.' I'm hoping to flesh that answer out a little bit in the next ten years." I love that as an answer: hell if I know but I'm hoping to work it out.
And then he gets really sacrilegious: "It has to be hard to do at least some things on the system for some users, or the core group will not have the tools that they need to defend themselves. Now, this pulls against the cardinal virtue of ease of use. But ease of use is wrong."
Anyone in IT in general and the web in particular hears the mantra all the time: ease of use is job #1. But he's absolutely right that you have to make some things hard in order for a group to succeed. If you make everything easy for everybody then you're making things easy for dickheads. If you place reasonable hurdles for certain things you won't slow down committed users at all (the ones who make a group succeed) but you might slow down dickheads (the ones who make groups fail).
So in summary, the one thing that makes me really angry about Reddit is people obsessing over these really old issues as if they are being experienced for the first time (that and pissy little bitch comments in response to submissions - but you can vote down comments too). It seems as though some people are able to balance two completely contradictory thoughts in their heads: 1. Reddit is good because it is a real meritocracy, submissions are voted up and down according to user preferences. 2. Why won't these goddam people behave exactly how I want them to on Reddit? I'm surprised the cognitive dissonance doesn't make their brains implode. Guys, the first step towards a solution is talking to someone aged over 25 occasionally. I know old people are boring but sometimes they know things.
I've had a bit of a train of thought going on in my head for the past few days about the main "social" web services I use and how they make me angry. I had a stab at YouTube last night and today the target is the social bookmarking site Reddit. Calling it that will probably make me instantly unpopular with its regular users and will probably confuse sensible people who don't give a crap about Web 2.0 terms like "social bookmarking" (or even "Web 2.0" for that matter.) So a brief summary - people submit links to stuff they think is cool. Other people either like it and vote for it, which increases the link's prominence, or they dislike it and vote against it which reduces its prominence.
Several popular and long-running sites including BoingBoing, Fark and Slashdot do this but they are moderated - a small number of people running the site control what gets seen. Reddit is one of the wave of sites devolving most if not all of this control to users. The current undisputed king in this field is Digg (I think I'll deal with Digg another day) but Reddit has its own strengths. What's that saying about happy families and unhappy families? It seems that these link aggregating sites that succeed have their own sort of success but when they fail, they all fail the same way.
The success of these sites is twofold. First, there is far too much out there in the world for one person to discover so it's nice to get a helping hand occasionally. As a web user/reader it's helpful to see what other people find interesting. Personally, I find 98% of the web to be crap so any help getting to the good stuff is appreciated. Second, content creators like these sites because they can deliver a massive number of eyeballs to the content creator's site. Of course you have to be doing something of value for these sites to be of any help but there are a lot of very interesting sites with high quality content that wouldn't get noticed without help.
None of my posts have ever featured prominently on either Reddit or Digg. A few have been posted by various people (occasionally even by myself - a cardinal sin to some purists) and gotten some small attention but nothing huge. I think it's impossible to predict what will be popular on these sites. I find a lot of their big hits boring and I submit many things that get ignored. I've had submissions (not my own stuff) to both Reddit and Digg promoted to their front pages but I can't for the life of me say why some stuff hits it big while others disappear. I think everything I submit is good. I won't be submitting this post to Reddit (it seems a bit gratuitous, plus I think I'm saying some things a lot of Redditors don't want to hear) but hey, if anyone else feels like it, knock yourselves out.
Reddit's success is that it gathers more and more users who generate more and more content which gives you more reason to return and find more things. Reddit's failure is that as it gets more and more users submitting more and more content you're overwhelmed with more crap. Boring crap, self-serving crap and outright spam. It seems that every other day someone's posting something along the lines of "Why does Reddit suck so much now? It used to be way better." It's an unavoidable fact of life that people suck. Which is to say, a certain percentage of any random group of people are going to suck by your standards no matter how you measure suckage so as any group gets larger, the number of people in that group that you think suck is going to increase.
Clay Shirky wrote the classic piece "A Group is its own worst enemy" that deals with these issues in 2003, hence me saying he knew what was wrong with Reddit before Reddit even existed. He is a lot more intelligent than me and has a lot more experience. But even I experienced the collapse of Usenet and IRC. It always happens: any medium that does not control access will inevitably collapse under the weight of its own success. I won't waste time exhaustively rehashing his points but I'll give a few highlights.
If this sort of thing interests you, the article (which was originally a presentation he gave) is well worth reading. WARNING: only read it if you're willing to admit being a geek. If you read it and enjoy it then you really are a geek. If you enjoy it so much you feel compelled to extol its virtues in a blog post, well, there's no hope for you.
The first real eye-opener for me was when he pointed out these issues were dealt with long before the internet, "in a book by W.R. Bion called "Experiences in Groups," written in the middle of the last century. Bion was a psychologist who was doing group therapy with groups of neurotics. (Drawing parallels between that and the Internet is left as an exercise for the reader.)" I love his sense of humour as well as his insights.
And for Reddit's central paradox, namely, having no moderator is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness, he has this to offer: "Geoff Cohen has a great observation about this. He said 'The likelihood that any unmoderated group will eventually get into a flame-war about whether or not to have a moderator approaches one as time increases.'" Which is to say, the argument about moderation is inevitable. It is also inevitable that said debate will be passionate and get extremely nasty.
And Clay is a solutions man, it isn't enough for him to point out problems. He has solutions to offer as well: "So there's this question 'What is required to make a large, long-lived online group successful?' and I think I can now answer with some confidence: 'It depends.' I'm hoping to flesh that answer out a little bit in the next ten years." I love that as an answer: hell if I know but I'm hoping to work it out.
And then he gets really sacrilegious: "It has to be hard to do at least some things on the system for some users, or the core group will not have the tools that they need to defend themselves. Now, this pulls against the cardinal virtue of ease of use. But ease of use is wrong."
Anyone in IT in general and the web in particular hears the mantra all the time: ease of use is job #1. But he's absolutely right that you have to make some things hard in order for a group to succeed. If you make everything easy for everybody then you're making things easy for dickheads. If you place reasonable hurdles for certain things you won't slow down committed users at all (the ones who make a group succeed) but you might slow down dickheads (the ones who make groups fail).
So in summary, the one thing that makes me really angry about Reddit is people obsessing over these really old issues as if they are being experienced for the first time (that and pissy little bitch comments in response to submissions - but you can vote down comments too). It seems as though some people are able to balance two completely contradictory thoughts in their heads: 1. Reddit is good because it is a real meritocracy, submissions are voted up and down according to user preferences. 2. Why won't these goddam people behave exactly how I want them to on Reddit? I'm surprised the cognitive dissonance doesn't make their brains implode. Guys, the first step towards a solution is talking to someone aged over 25 occasionally. I know old people are boring but sometimes they know things.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
An angry blog post about YouTube
I've been using YouTube long enough now that the little niggly things about it really piss me off. The bottom line is that YouTube is a fantastic free service that was essentially inconceivable even two years ago. The idea that someone would provide a free service to let you host as many videos as you want that you can easily embed in practically any web page at no cost to you would have seemed laughable before the advent of YouTube. Now it seems everyone and their dog is begging you to upload videos for free. But this is the angry blog of Mr Angry, not the even-handed blog of Mr Reasonable. So I'm gonna rip them a new fundamental orifice.
First things first. Fix the fucking commenting system! Seriously, they can come up with a method to serve up a hundred million videos a day with very little technical hassles but they can't manage a commenting system that works to the standard of, say, a dial-up bulletin board from the 80s? They make it next to impossible to develop a meaningful relationship with your audience because you can't have a coherent "conversation" with anyone via YouTube. Replies to comments don't stay linked to the original comment so the list of comments attached to a video make no sense more often than not.
And their response to comment spam was to limit the number of comments you can make. Even on your own videos. Yet again creating the situation where you can't have a coherent conversation with your audience. This is such a fucked-up response to spam - it hurts the innocent and has no effect on spammers. Spammers will create dozens or hundreds of accounts to get around it but honest people are screwed. This is stupid. No sane person could think this is a good idea, yet the limitation remains.
Also, how the fuck do they pick their "feature videos"? These videos are selected seemingly at random to be featured on the front page of YouTube and being selected can easily result in hundreds of thousands of views. And they keep featuring these fucking kitty and bunny videos. Another annoying thing is when the same user had videos featured three times in about two weeks. This wasn't the user in question's "fault" - he had nothing to do with the selection process but from the feedback I saw it created a bad taste in the mouths of many users. And yes, I want my goddam videos to be featured. I'll stop bitching instantly if they feature me (I'm shallow like that) but until then I'll continue to get pissed off every time they feature a shitty video.
And it wouldn't hurt if they were a bit less opaque in their decision making generally, not just about the feature videos. After all, it's a fucking video blogging site. Why don't they post a regular (at least weekly) blog saying what's going on, issues they're dealing with and giving some feedback. There's always going to be some unreasonable jerks who'll never be happy (stop looking at me like that) but they could at least try to show they're listening.
The one thing I'm not pissed off about is their recent decision to feature paid promotional videos. The front page features various ads including movie trailers and shit from Paris Hilton. A lot of YouTubers got their knickers in a knot over this but in my opinion they're either sanctimonious twits or simply don't recognise a business model when they see one (you though they were going to support free video hosting with VC money and banner ads forever?) This business model makes perfect sense for YouTube - take advantage of those millions of eyeballs and give advertisers the biggest controlled test lab in all of history. As this develops they should make an absolute fortune. Until recently, this was the sort of feedback advertisers literally couldn't buy - now that they can buy it, I expect you can charge them a metric shitload for the privilege.
And I'm sure Revver breathed a sigh of relief at this development. If I was a betting man, I'd lay money now that YouTube is not going to include ads directly in contributor videos a la Revver. Users will continue to make no money by posting to YouTube and I can't see that hurting either side any time soon. It certainly hasn't hurt growth up to this point. Each side continues to get something they want out of the relationship without it being explicitly commercial in nature. Contributors get exposure to potentially millions of viewers, the ego boost that goes along with that and a chance at fame of sorts and YouTube gets an endless stream of content and viewers to sell to advertisers.
Revver can continue to develop their niche - the best quality independent original content creators will definitely like the opportunity to make money from their work directly. Although I still have no fucking idea what Sony thinks they are gaining out of Grouper.
First things first. Fix the fucking commenting system! Seriously, they can come up with a method to serve up a hundred million videos a day with very little technical hassles but they can't manage a commenting system that works to the standard of, say, a dial-up bulletin board from the 80s? They make it next to impossible to develop a meaningful relationship with your audience because you can't have a coherent "conversation" with anyone via YouTube. Replies to comments don't stay linked to the original comment so the list of comments attached to a video make no sense more often than not.
And their response to comment spam was to limit the number of comments you can make. Even on your own videos. Yet again creating the situation where you can't have a coherent conversation with your audience. This is such a fucked-up response to spam - it hurts the innocent and has no effect on spammers. Spammers will create dozens or hundreds of accounts to get around it but honest people are screwed. This is stupid. No sane person could think this is a good idea, yet the limitation remains.
Also, how the fuck do they pick their "feature videos"? These videos are selected seemingly at random to be featured on the front page of YouTube and being selected can easily result in hundreds of thousands of views. And they keep featuring these fucking kitty and bunny videos. Another annoying thing is when the same user had videos featured three times in about two weeks. This wasn't the user in question's "fault" - he had nothing to do with the selection process but from the feedback I saw it created a bad taste in the mouths of many users. And yes, I want my goddam videos to be featured. I'll stop bitching instantly if they feature me (I'm shallow like that) but until then I'll continue to get pissed off every time they feature a shitty video.
And it wouldn't hurt if they were a bit less opaque in their decision making generally, not just about the feature videos. After all, it's a fucking video blogging site. Why don't they post a regular (at least weekly) blog saying what's going on, issues they're dealing with and giving some feedback. There's always going to be some unreasonable jerks who'll never be happy (stop looking at me like that) but they could at least try to show they're listening.
The one thing I'm not pissed off about is their recent decision to feature paid promotional videos. The front page features various ads including movie trailers and shit from Paris Hilton. A lot of YouTubers got their knickers in a knot over this but in my opinion they're either sanctimonious twits or simply don't recognise a business model when they see one (you though they were going to support free video hosting with VC money and banner ads forever?) This business model makes perfect sense for YouTube - take advantage of those millions of eyeballs and give advertisers the biggest controlled test lab in all of history. As this develops they should make an absolute fortune. Until recently, this was the sort of feedback advertisers literally couldn't buy - now that they can buy it, I expect you can charge them a metric shitload for the privilege.
And I'm sure Revver breathed a sigh of relief at this development. If I was a betting man, I'd lay money now that YouTube is not going to include ads directly in contributor videos a la Revver. Users will continue to make no money by posting to YouTube and I can't see that hurting either side any time soon. It certainly hasn't hurt growth up to this point. Each side continues to get something they want out of the relationship without it being explicitly commercial in nature. Contributors get exposure to potentially millions of viewers, the ego boost that goes along with that and a chance at fame of sorts and YouTube gets an endless stream of content and viewers to sell to advertisers.
Revver can continue to develop their niche - the best quality independent original content creators will definitely like the opportunity to make money from their work directly. Although I still have no fucking idea what Sony thinks they are gaining out of Grouper.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Angry at the unfairness of it all
There are a hell of a lot of people in this world I'd wish unpleasant diseases on but it never works - they never seem to suffer the way they ought to. So why is it that people who don't deserve it have to put up with ten types of crap so often. Not a particularly new or insightful observation I know, but still.
These particular ruminations are sparked by a phone call tonight with an old college friend, Adrian Calear. I have mentioned Adrian once before in this blog, back in the early days when I was talking about going to the Melbourne Comedy Festival and I went and saw the show he was directing, "I Heart Racism". We've had trouble catching up since then because (a) he's busy (directing two shows in the Melbourne Fringe Festival last I heard) and (b) he's had a series of health issues that seem to be multiplying as time goes by.
So the poor bastard is having more tests this week to confirm he doesn't have anything really serious (you hear that mate? The tests are CONFIRMING nothing really bad is happening - you know, apart from all the shit you already know about). Now, I know a lot of my readers are incredibly positive types who apparently come hear to get bucketloads of cathartic negativity that they're too nice to perpetrate themselves. So guys, any spare positive vibes this week, send them out to Adrian.
And in case you think I've gone soft, I only want Adrian to get better so he can direct a show for me. Oh, and a bit of trivia - the look of Mr Angry owes a lot to a play Adrian was in when we were at college. Every character wore some type of mask with the chin cut out so you could see their real mouth and I really liked the look. So now you know where that comes from.
Truth be told, I only mentioned Adrian Calear by name in this post because I discovered as we were talking I was on the first page of Google results for his name from mentioning him previously (yes I surf Google while talking to people - shut the fuck up, that's completely normal). So, Mr Adrian Calear, you're getting google-smacked my man. I'm moving up that goddam page of results - what are you gonna do about it?
These particular ruminations are sparked by a phone call tonight with an old college friend, Adrian Calear. I have mentioned Adrian once before in this blog, back in the early days when I was talking about going to the Melbourne Comedy Festival and I went and saw the show he was directing, "I Heart Racism". We've had trouble catching up since then because (a) he's busy (directing two shows in the Melbourne Fringe Festival last I heard) and (b) he's had a series of health issues that seem to be multiplying as time goes by.
So the poor bastard is having more tests this week to confirm he doesn't have anything really serious (you hear that mate? The tests are CONFIRMING nothing really bad is happening - you know, apart from all the shit you already know about). Now, I know a lot of my readers are incredibly positive types who apparently come hear to get bucketloads of cathartic negativity that they're too nice to perpetrate themselves. So guys, any spare positive vibes this week, send them out to Adrian.
And in case you think I've gone soft, I only want Adrian to get better so he can direct a show for me. Oh, and a bit of trivia - the look of Mr Angry owes a lot to a play Adrian was in when we were at college. Every character wore some type of mask with the chin cut out so you could see their real mouth and I really liked the look. So now you know where that comes from.
Truth be told, I only mentioned Adrian Calear by name in this post because I discovered as we were talking I was on the first page of Google results for his name from mentioning him previously (yes I surf Google while talking to people - shut the fuck up, that's completely normal). So, Mr Adrian Calear, you're getting google-smacked my man. I'm moving up that goddam page of results - what are you gonna do about it?
Friday, September 01, 2006
Second Vlog for The Blogging Times
Well, my second vlog for The Blogging Times went up earlier today. In this one I take British newspaper The Daily Telegraph to task for the balls-up that resulted in them publishing blogger Claire Zulkey's work under the name of one of their writers. Zulkey ended up accepting the Telegraph's explanation at face value, read her reflections on the matter here. But as for me, I'm not so sure I believe their crap.
So now I have to spend the next few days hoping for another hot topic to pop up for next week's post.
So now I have to spend the next few days hoping for another hot topic to pop up for next week's post.
The best laid plans...
We're being treated to our first taste of real Spring weather in Melbourne at the moment. Wednesday was the first day since last Summer that the temperature reached 20C and today is the third day in a row of 20+C weather. Along with this, it's getting light earlier in the morning so I'm no longer driving to work in the dark.
All of this gave me the inspiration to do another "angry drive to work" video. The last one I did was actually in the middle of the morning so there wasn't much traffic. I thought videoing a drive during peak hour would give me plenty of opportunity to get angry, swear and pour derision on other drivers. So I took my mask along, set up the camera and...
Nothing happened.
It was the most trouble free drive to work I have had! What the hell are the chances of that? I've been doing this drive for eight months and I always have to deal with a cavalcade of morons doing a series of brain-bendingly fucked-up things. But today I bring a camera and everyone's on their best behaviour. There was even a fairly significant accident blocking one intersection that had almost no effect on my drive - it added maybe 60 seconds.
Cosmic forces are messing me about again. And speaking of the fucking weather, there's another Murphy's Law manifestation. Three days of the best weather in 6 months and they're all work days! The weather forecast for the weekend is a 5 degree temperature drop and lots of rain. Absolutely perfect settings for me to stay inside and write very angry things. Every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining.
All of this gave me the inspiration to do another "angry drive to work" video. The last one I did was actually in the middle of the morning so there wasn't much traffic. I thought videoing a drive during peak hour would give me plenty of opportunity to get angry, swear and pour derision on other drivers. So I took my mask along, set up the camera and...
Nothing happened.
It was the most trouble free drive to work I have had! What the hell are the chances of that? I've been doing this drive for eight months and I always have to deal with a cavalcade of morons doing a series of brain-bendingly fucked-up things. But today I bring a camera and everyone's on their best behaviour. There was even a fairly significant accident blocking one intersection that had almost no effect on my drive - it added maybe 60 seconds.
Cosmic forces are messing me about again. And speaking of the fucking weather, there's another Murphy's Law manifestation. Three days of the best weather in 6 months and they're all work days! The weather forecast for the weekend is a 5 degree temperature drop and lots of rain. Absolutely perfect settings for me to stay inside and write very angry things. Every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining.
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