My brother Kieron has the worst imaginable job in the entire universe. He's Senior Test Lead with VMC Game Labs in the UK, testing Xbox games for a living.

In this long and very informative article at the Team Xbox site, he gets to explain why the job is not nearly as much fun as it might sound. Except that it kind of is.

Things have been really starting to tick upwards in Kieron's life of late. This is very, very good news. He's an absolutely fantastic bloke, who I'd love even if he wasn't already my brother, and he's lived through a pretty long period of miserable nastiness in the last year or so. Nice to see his star in the ascendant again. Yay Kieron!

The Team Xbox site does the smart thing with interviews and encourages open reader comments at the end of the piece. One cool thing about this is that Kieron gets to leap in and respond to some of the commenters. Very blog-like.

Not so good news for Kieron is the fact that the article also outs him as the gamer known as "SquidBot"on Xbox Live. Brace for the frag fest next time you sign in, Kieron :-)

Now that the UK version of Google Maps has added some satellite overlays, I've been having fun (and getting a little choked up) zooming in on childhood haunts.

My parents made the incredibly courageous decision to move from working class Dublin to the heart of middle class Solihull, smack in the middle of England, to give the growing Clarke boys chances their Mom and Dad never had.

Not far from the centre of this image on Google is 247 Castle Lane, the simple 3 bedroom semi my parents bought in the early 60s (for something like £7,500, I think -- is that about right Da?). An absolute fortune for an immigrant family back then - and a huge leap of faith for them to make such a stretch investment in their kids' future.

It was a fantastic place to grow up. About 120 feet of garden, with roses, honeysuckle (my madeleine scent), apple trees, gooseberry bushes, rhubarb and - the best bit - a back gate that led directly out into our own private wonderland.

Zoom in on the centre right of that Google image and you can see a sizeable chunk of woodland. This is Hobs Moat - an ancient and beautiful space.

It was our wilderness, our moonscape, our prairie, our battleground, our bike trail, our Africa, our construction site, and our jungle gym. A place where I climbed every tree, scraped every knee - had my first kiss, my first drink, my first fight, and stored away the fun that would endure to become my fondest memories of a golden boyhood.

We always knew there was something genuinely special and historic about "the woods". The very names of the area were loaded with clues - the Hob's Moat, Castle Lane. It wasn't until about ten years or so ago that the woods were finally designated an Ancient Monument, and proven to be the site of a 12th century fortified manor house, home to one William de Odingsells, one of the founders of the town of Solihull.

To us, of course, the ancient moat and counterscarp were simply ideal bike hills upon which to pull outrageous, insanely dangerous stunts with the beaten up bikes our Dad cobbled together out of a shed full of spare parts.

A magical land of endless summers. No boy could have wished for a better place to grow up. Thanks Mom and Dad. I love you.

Writing that last piece reminded me of one of my all-time favourite stupid gags. I think I may have even blogged this one before, I like it so much. A groaner, but I can't help repeating it:

So this Zen Master walks up to a hot dog stand and says: "Make me one with everything."

The guy fixes a hot dog and hands it to the Zen Master, who pays with a $10 bill. The hot dog vendor pockets the bill and smiles back at the Zen Master.

"Hey, what about my change?" asks the buddhist. To which the hot dog guy replies: "Change must come from within."

I think there's a third part to this one, but can't remember it at the moment. Probably just as well.

This morning's National Post has a good-sized piece on executive blogs and bloggers, page FW5 in the FP Weekend section (online edition starts here, but it's stuck behind a paywall, alas).

It's a pretty well-balanced story, looking at how "Blogging Comes To The Corner Office" - why CEOs and other senior execs should consider blogging, and why so few, particularly in Canada, have taken the plunge.

I'm quoted, sounding slightly intelligent, and I'm thrilled that the writer spoke to each of the people I suggested she should ping. Some excellent points made by Rick Segal, Tim Bray, and Ned Blinick.

Rick's closing quote in the article makes very good sense, I think:

"I don't expect to see a lot out of the existing crop of CEOs [blogging] ... as the younger generation takes over those executive seats, it will become more normal to do things like blogging and other forms of communications to customers."

I've had a warm feeling of what I can only describe as "mudita" over the way this thing worked out. Mudita is the closest term I can find to characterise the opposite of schadenfreude - it's a Buddhist concept, describing that state of pure happiness at seeing another's success in life. Pretty much a defining emotion for PR people and publicists.

I spent over an hour on the phone with the writer, Gigi Suhanic, early in the week. Thought I said some reasonably sensible things, but - as a natural born flack - I couldn't help spending much of the discussion pointing away from myself to other, much smarter (and frankly better suited) subjects for the story. So Gigi was able to source some real Canadian executive bloggers for the majority of the piece (but she's still kind enough to give me quick plug too).

This is what happens when a PR guy gets a chance to promote himself. Too busy boosting others to stop and say "hire me!"

:-)

If I say the word "ukelele" - depending on your age, you'd probably come back with something like: "Huh?!" or perhaps "George Formby!" or "dumb titchy little annoying toy guitar for kids".

Prepare to have your preconceptions and prejudices turned upside down.

Jake Shimabukuro is like no other ukelele player you've ever heard. This 28 year old guy just stone cold rocks on that little thing.

If your bandwidth will support it (this is a huge streaming file), check out his stunning version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", live from Strawberry Fields in Central Park.

Scorching.

From this afternoon's bumper crop of spam, comes this choice nugget:

>>From: Midriff Net Solutions
>>Subject: Exclusive web based solutions in Advertisement Era

>>It’s a privilege to introduce our Company into this blooming Advertisement Industry.

Well bloimey, guv'nor - it's a roight treat t' welcum yez t' the bloomin' industroy too, an nah mistake.

In other spam folder news, the security of my Paypal account has apparently been breached even more often than Paris Hilton's cellphone. Curious, as I don't actually have a Paypal account.

...or blissfully knackered, to be more accurate.

Two absolutely wonderful, if exhausting, days, celebrating Lily's sixth (sixth!) birthday in the company of fine friends.

Our extraordinarily full and rewarding Saturday started out on a high note, with breakfast and Lily's bithday presents. There are few things more warming to a father's heart than to see that look of pure, unfiltered joy in your child's eyes.


Clearly, the flashy new rollerblades were a big hit. She lost no time testing them out (even though she was already togged up for Saturday morning ballet class). I think the leotard and ballet skirt give her that whole 70s roller disco queen thing.

After ballet and a quick change into one of her new birthday dresses, Lily set out for a friend's birthday party at the movies (to see Madagascar). Shortly after, I took a quick trip up the road to rescue our afternoon guests, AKMA and Margaret, from the labyrinth of Victoria Park subway station.

A long, slow, calm afternoon followed - the kind of purposeful idleness that soothes the soul and lifts the spirits. AKMA and Margaret were warm, funny, and completely charming in person - exactly as I'd imagined they would be, even though we'd never even spoken until yesterday afternoon. Character and charisma absolutely can come across online. People are people - they're just who they are. Whether through far-removed, pixel-based connections, or up close, in your face and hand-in-hand - the person comes through. We have DSL filters on our phone lines, but they don't block voice.

One of our favourite, lazy ways to spend a weekend afternoon - at any time of year - is to take a slow stroll through the Glen Stewart Ravine, down to Queen St. East and onwards to the beach. We were blessed and utterly charmed to be able to share the walk with AKMA and Margaret.


Lovely to get to see our neighbourhood through visitors' eyes - especially two such perceptive, delightful visitors. Also particularly flattered that our "blog-relatives" chose to share a chunk of their very special 23rd wedding anniversary celebrations with us. Thank you, AKMA and Margaret, for everything. Congratulations again on your anniversary. May you continue to love as long as you live, and live as long as your love.

After the obligatory stop for frozen dairy product and a barefoot meander down to the beach, it was time to wave goodbye, all too soon, to our guests. We trekked back up from the beach and across Queen Street - making sure to observe appropriate Toronto street crossing procedure ...

... then introduced AKMA and Margaret to the special charms of the 501 streetcar ride, as they zipped off (or trundled, perhaps - it is a streetcar, after all) to meet up with the very fine Joey DeVilla for dinner and the obligatory musical accompaniment.

We polished off Lily's big day with a special supper at one of the local nosheries, then marched, dog-tired, back up the hill. Knackered, but heartwarmed.

Today's birthday party was an altogether noisier and more hectic affair. Billed "The 2005 Lilylympic Games" - we hosted ten little of Lily's best friends for a good old-fashioned garden birthday party. The complete schedule of events included:

There was a short break for refreshments (cake!) and present opening, followed by thirty minutes of freestyle waterslide.

Chaotic, nutty joy.

Happy birthday, baby girl. We love you very much.

If I had a sister, she'd have one of the most honest voices on the web...
If I had a sister, she'd marry a musician and live in Georgia...
If I had a sister, she'd have a beautiful, talented daughter...
If I had a sister, she'd care about the same kinda things as me...
If I had a sister, she'd have a way cool job, doing her own thing...
If I had a sister, she'd be 43 today.
Happy Birthday, virtual Sis.

From our little-known facts department.

Couple of days ago I picked up my old copy of Martin Esslin’s “Mediations”, a collection of dense, fascinating essays on Brecht, Beckett, and the media, which my brother Gerard gave me as a birthday gift more than 20 years ago.

In his essay “Samuel Beckett and the Art of Broadcasting”, he describes how Beckett’s collaborations with the BBC’s Third Programme came about. In a section describing the complex production work that went into Beckett’s first BBC radio play, “All That Fall” (first aired in 1957), I came across this passage:

“The experiments with sound effects had been going on for some time ... The sound technician principally involved was Desmond Briscoe, a radio enthusiast of immense inventiveness and imagination. Beckett’s script demanded a degree of stylized realism hitherto unheard on in radio drama, and new methods had to be found to extract the various sounds needed (both animal and mechanical – footsteps, cars, bicycle wheel, the train, the cart) from the simple naturalism of the hundreds of records in the BBC’s effects library. Briscoe (and his Gramaphone operator, Norman Baines) had to invent ways and means to remove these sounds from the purely realistic sphere. They did so by treating them electronically: slowing down, speeding up, adding echo, fragmenting them by cutting them into segments, and putting them together in new ways. These experiments, and the discoveries made as they evolved, led directly to the establishment of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop. Beckett and All That Fall thus directly contributed to one of the most important technical advances in the art of radio (and the technique, and indeed technology, of radio in Britain).”

So next time you're watching the new Doctor, or just playing with your Radiophonatron, remember to thank old Sam Beckett for all that lovely bingy-bong oo-ee-oo stuff.

All together now: Waaah-oooooo (wibbly-wum diddly-dum wibbly-wum) Ooooh Aaah Woooooooo (wibbly-wum diddly-dum wibbly-wum) Godot-ooo WaaahhooooAhooo...

(repeat to fade)

The BBC is currently running a series called "The Beethoven Experience" on Radio 3. The website they've built around the radio series is a great resource for Beethoven fans, with lots of links to interesting background material.

Perhaps the best bit of the project, though, is the fact that they're making all nine of Beethoven's symphonies freely available as MP3 downloads the day after they're broadcast (in new recordings by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Gianandrea Noseda).

Go get your digital Ludwig on, over here.

(Wave o' the baton to BoingBoing for the link)

In a comment on my "Flack Back" post, below, there's a really bizarre, seemingly random string of geekspeak - looks like it might be the work of a particularly inept Markov Babbler.

Most odd.

The only clue to the origins of this incoherent and apparently pointless spam is in the author's homepage link, which goes to a site listing links to US real estate sites, here: http://precast.com.pl/sell-my-house--house-new-sell-york/ (I'm not direct linking - why send them any traffic?)

The root of this site http://precast.com.pl/ has even more babble. Here's a representative sample:

"...nothing persistence per Burek , individual Christian hire the ,a Company information. w years ,Where's Charles Podobne what pole ,accessed Intra-Americas ocean. an Do ,MP3 of pay of countries, ,this two third visit Hemingway..."

Is this the work of some SEO gonk?

Searching for other newspapers with podcast feeds turns up this interesting excel file from the Newspaper Association of America's Digital Edge site.

Twenty-three feeds on the list so far, and I'm sure there are others out there they haven't found yet. Wouldn't be surprised to see the list top 100 by the end of July.

The Toronto Star, Canada's most read daily newspaper, has quietly started podcasting - and they've chosen some cool content as their curtain raisers.

In addition to running a regular podcast feed of John Sakamoto's popular and influential "Anti-Hit List" column of new alternative music, the Star podcasts page also features two superb examples of "professional" podcasting - showcasing what the deep resources of a mainstream media organization can bring to the fast-evolving podcast medium.

Storm Chasers, from the May 21 feed, channels the "Twister" vibe:

"Feature writer Scott Simmie ventures to the American midwest with people who choose to spend their vacations under stormy rather than sunny skies. Drawn by the natural drama of funnel clouds and hailstones, these storm chasers criss-cross Kansas and Nebraska – and visit the world's biggest ball of twine on their day off." (10.7 MB MP3)

And in the very first podcast on The Star's site, there's this:

VE Day vets, in their own words.

To many, World War II may seem like a distant struggle in a far-away black-and-white world, but for three veterans – from Burlington, Richmond Hill and Toronto – the vast global conflict is still the stuff of living memory. Listen to their wartime experiences – in their own words. (6.8 MB MP3)

That's the first podcast I've heard that has brought a lump to my throat.

(Full Disclosure: I'm currently chasing a job at The Star as their head of communications. Does that mean this post is biased in their favour? Perhaps. But how could I resist wanting to work for a big paper that so clearly gets it?)

Turns out, Apple are actually switching to Sun chips.

Full story here.

Straight from the source:

"CBC Radio, Canada's public broadcaster, is developing a weekly on-air program about the blogosphere and podcast community, using the voices of audio bloggers and podcasters.

"CBC has commissioned Tod Maffin to host and produce the show and a pilot is currently in production (not all pilots make it to air). Maffin is an active podcaster and blogger, and maintains CanadaPodcasts.ca. He has been a national producer and host for CBC Radio for several years. He is also the network’s technology columnist."

The CBC just plain rawks.

I want one of these:

I’ve been painfully resisting the urge to leap in and fisk the living daylights out of most of the clueless “blogging, what is it good for?” diatribes that have popped up in the last few months.

Passionate personal prejudice requires me to recuse myself from launching into rebuttals that would almost certainly turn out to be as shrill and unbalanced as the worst of the blog-backlash flamebait.

Every now and then, however, a work so completely devoid of even the faintest demi-clue flips my snarky bit, and I simply cannot hold back the venom. Such a work is this truly remarkable post on the AlwaysOn “blog style product” (as CheezWhiz is to the dairy aisle, so AlwaysOn is to the blogosphere).

Let the fiskage commence...

Why smart companies don't use corporate weblogs.
Why would smart companies avoid adoption of the hottest internet trend to date
jesse tayler

-- Um... Microsoft, Macromedia, Edelman, Jupiter Media, IBM, Sun - these are dumb companies? And don't you need a question mark in your subhead there, "jesse"? Or are you being daringly modern?

Weblogs are the hottest trend in online publishing today. Their popularity just seems to grow without end. Recently, industry observers such as Technorati have been tracking close to one million article postings each day, and the number continues to climb.

-- Fair enough. So far so oatmeal...

Weblogs are a public broadcast-medium...

-- Woah there! "public broadcast-medium"? Um, no – they’re not. Perhaps they have that potential, but even the highest traffic bloggers would probably stop short of describing their medium as “broadcast”. A key part of the real appeal of blogs, in fact, is that they narrowcast to specific interest groups – communities of people with shared interests and ideas who are finding and connecting with each other online in ways they could never have done without the web. And what, pray, is that hyphen doing there?

...a medium which can effortlessly publish personal thoughts to innumerable viewers.

--“Innumerable”? Maybe. Potentially, perhaps. See above.

This simple medium has truly become a major source of periodical information, special interests and news. Weblogs are literally spawning millions of articles that compete for reader attention worldwide.

-- True. An uninspiring little filler paragraph with all the instructional value of wallpaper paste, but unarguably true.

So if joe down the street can break a news story just as fast as CBS, why are most corporations largely disinterested in adopting this new medium?

-- I'm guessing "joe" must be an uppercase-deprived cousin of yours...?

Weblog publishing is blind to the values and intentions of those very viewers it serves.

-- I'd love to fisk this point, but I have no idea what it means. Sounds good, though.

Public weblogs have very low accountability, and they return no information or insight back to the author about their audience.

-- Simply wrong. If a weblog has comments, trackbacks, a traffic logging feature and a contact email address (and without most of these features, one could argue, it really isn’t a weblog) – then the returns from the audience can be very high indeed.

And as many others have already commented, one of the key differences in the way bloggers work is: “When bloggers make mistakes, they correct them—faster and in a much more direct fashion than most mainstream media outlets”.

Accountability are us. Without accountability, you soon lose your credibility. And in this world, no credibility = no audience.

Authentic customer communication is hard to come by and the fact that weblogs do not gather information about the viewer means that weblogs are just another publishing vehicle that is no more valuable than the website maintained today.

-- Again: why assume blogs are unable to gather information about the viewer? This weblog has a publicly accessible SiteMeter (up there, in the top left corner). It gathers a great deal of information about my “viewers”. If I wanted more, I could easily require readers to create an email-validated account before they could post comments. Not a big fan of that approach, but it’s not unusual in blog circles. [UPDATE: Just occurred to me that jesse's own blog space at AlwaysOn has both a validated comments feature (i.e. you have to have an account to comment), and a "rate this post" widget. Two ways to gather information and feedback from your viewers right there, bucky.]

In short, corporations do not expend resources for weblogs because they simply do not return extra value or information from the investment.

-- By what measure? How are you calculating "extra value" or ROI here? In my experience, and the experience of every corporate blogger I’ve spoken to, blogs accrue extraordinary extra value to the companies using them – they extend the company’s reach, solicit real customer dialogue, engage an audience in ways not possible with other marketing tactics, and can have a significant positive impact on the reputation capital of the organization. Ask Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s superstar geek blogger, what extra value his blog has returned to the company. Better yet, ask his boss. In short, corporations expend resources on weblogs because they return tangible value and information from the investment.

Blogworking realizes the business potential in corporate weblogs.

-- Quoi?

Blogworking is a combination of social and business networking within a like minded community, by way of weblog publishing. Blogworking allows members to authentically communicate their ideas in a fun and safe way, while establishing themselves as active enthusiasts or thought leaders within that community. This addition compliments traditional weblogs by combining authorship, content and information with accountability, authenticity and visibility.

-- Sorry? This is different from regular blogging how, exactly? That last paragraph reads like a pretty good description of some of the principal benefits of plain vanilla blogging, if you ask me. I’m missing the relevance of adding the “working” suffix. Oh, and "fun and safe" makes my teeth feel furry, but we won’t dwell on that. So what's this marvellous new "blogworking" thingy? I'm all ears...

Blogworking, takes traditional weblog publishing and adds highly specialized business and social networking features. These special features, and the context they create, is what brings authentic customer visibility straight up through the enterprise and into the executive office.

-- Great! What the hell is it and where can I get one?

Companies can now manage public relations directly, and using Blogworking, even smaller organizations can expect financial return and business savings from their online investment.

-- How, goddammit? In what specific ways is this “blogworking” bollocks any different from regular blogging? Rewrite that last sentence with the unmodified “blogging” in place of your rather limp buzz coinage “blogworking” - the delta 'twixt the two is lost on me. Oh, and your comma placement is appalling. Buy a copy of Strunk & White, fercrissakes.

In the future, smart companies will continue to avoid traditional weblog publishing, while at the same time, smart companies will to continue to see the financial and customer relations incentives offered by true blogworking.

-- I really have no idea what you’re blathering on about here. Sorry. You’ve completely lost me. If you’d made any kind of half-arsed effort to actually define this spiffy next-generation “blogworking” trope, we might be able to figure out if there’s any substance to your contention that “traditional weblog publishing” is headed down the bog.

And that's it. Just as he seems to be warming up to his subject, he stops. Rhetoricus interruptus.

I think Frank Paynter’s analysis of the many, many problems with this piece is probably the most accurate. Over to you, Frank:

Rather than muddle around in the narrative tangle that might tie the misrepresentations at each end of the narrative arc together, the author makes the better choice of leaving out the middle. Now, if his editor can get him to work on leaving off those beginnings and endings...

*snort*

[UPDATE: 5 June, 2005 - an email from Constantin Basturea and a comment from a reader of this post succeed in lighting the blue touchpaper again. The fisk continues, over here...]

My "professional" blog, over at Corante, is currently the #2 hit if you Google the term "faustian bargain".

Scores of high school students, looking to crib some notes for their Marlow essays, are no doubt winding up there, sorely disappointed to find the result isn't quite what they were looking for.

I'm pretty sure I still have one of my old A-Level English essays on Dr. Faustus knocking around somewhere. Maybe I should dig it out and post it here, with a link from the other place, so that the seekers get some satisfaction in their quest...

If there's anyone in the universe who still lacks a Gmail account, and wants one - I seem to have amassed 50 invitations here. Let me know in the comments and I'll gladly hook you up.

Have to say, I've grown to love Gmail more and more in the last few weeks. I started using it exclusively for my job search stuff, as I knew I'd be able to access it pretty much anywhere I could find a browser. I've since switched almost all of my email traffic over to Gmail - it's just so darn easy.

Another entertaining piece of faux science from the Annals of Improbable Research site, this one from no less a source than the NASA Ames Research Center.

"We have all been present at discussions (or arguments) in which one of the combatants attempts to clarify or strengthen a point by comparing the subject at hand with another item or situation more familiar to the audience or opponent. More often than not, this stratagem instantly results in the protest that "you're comparing apples and oranges!" ... it is not difficult to demonstrate that apples and oranges can, in fact, be compared."

And they proceed to do just that, complete with a mass spectrometer analysis of the two fruit.

With a dry smile, the author concludes that their telling findings: "can be anticipated to have a dramatic effect on the strategies used in arguments and discussions in the future."

Thanks to Tom Murphy, both for the link and for reminding me of the fun to be had browsing the AIR archives.