The SFPN (Science Fiction Podcast Network) provides a number of ‘casts loosely related to the science-fiction and fantasy genres. Freed from the constraints of having to fill a whole radio-schedule or half-hour time-slots, podcasts allow science fiction to break out of the constraints of radio scheduling.
In addition to ‘Escape Pod’, a truly excellent series that I wrote about a month ago you should also be listening to ‘Earthcore’, a splendid audio-novel. This story has it all… robots, monsters, insane NSA agents, arrogant scientists, rocks, more rocks and futuristic mining technologies. It’s a story of an ambitious mining expedition gone terribly wrong.
This is not the forum to reveal the plot, so if you have not yet tuned in I strongly urge you to do so. Earthcore is performed by it’s author Scott Segler.
Following disappointing 1st-quarter results, our shareholders felt that Stodge.org was in danger of loosing it’s brand-equity. From our peak of several thousand readers per day (in the late nineties), the Stodge blog was floundering – barely attracting a hundred readers per day. Something had to be done.
We commissioned a leading market research company to investigate our problem and the competitive context: Our researchers suggested a long-running international panel project – this would allow us to sample and track the opinion of blog-readers over time.
The news was dire. A cross-section of the blog-reading community described us as “out of touch”, “lacking credibility” and “irrelivant”. There was only one thing to do: Rebrand.
A grueling year of soul-searching followed. We employed the finest creative minds. We ran hundreds of brand-development workshops. All to answer a single question: How do we define a brand positioning for a leading “opinion-provider” targeting cash-rich, time-poor mid to senior executives? The solution, turned out to be as radical as you might expect from the stodge.org team – we had to re-define the very notion of a blog.
We commissioned a major advertising agency to develop a radical new brand proposition. In addition to suggesting our wildly popular mission statement: “Forget the Euro - attitude is the new currency!!!”, they suggested that we make a clean break from the tired old format by sacking the former editor Randi Mooney and his staff.
Finally, we commissioned a trendy London based design agency to revamp the appearance of our site; As you can see, the drab coffee-bubbles have been replaced with the swimming-pool image you see on our banner. Subsequent panel research found that this image was “Aspirational”, “Engaging” and reflected brand currency.
We are delighted with the results, and we hope that you will appreciate our hard work.
While spending a week’s holiday in Gran Canaria, (it was a last-minute deal, we booked it the day before) my girlfriend and I noticed the preponderance of Comic Sans, a horrible font.
As we noticed more and more instances of this pernicious weed (menus, shop fronts, signs, notices, posters, fliers, etc) we developed a kind of shorthand “look, Comic Sans” gesture. The satisfaction - similar to that felt in the mid-nineties upon sighting of a prime mullet, before the term had seeped into the public consciousness - was short-lived. It became less funny and our tastes became more discerning.
Now only the crassest use of the font will hold our interest. We haven’t seen any funeral homes using Comic Sans yet, but pictured above is a handout from a course my girlfriend attended. It quotes (probably erroneously as it turns out - see Wikipedia article) Petronius Arbiter, a noted satirist and courtier in Nero’s Rome, who committed suicide in AD 66.
Am I to be scoffed at for my Victor Meldrew like beliefs when I suggest that small children should be discouraged from riding their ‘minibikes‘ up and down a local nature-reserve during school hours?
Am I an old fuddy-duddy to suggest that motor vehicles driving on public land should be licensed, insured and MOT inspected, just like the motorbikes that grown-ups drive? Perhaps I am showing my age that I hold such reactionary views.
And am I being unfair to these children, whose glee I am most likely stifling with my cantankerous old-man attitudes? Is it bad that I think these vehicles should be crushed and the parents fined? Oh what have I become?
Centre Point in Puddle
Originally uploaded by salimfadhley.
On a blue-blue day I looked into a puddle and everything was transformed.
This is a spectacular week for comedy; Tommorrow (19th of July), I intend to watch Britian’s finest stand-up commedian Stuart Lee do his new Edinburgh fringe show at “Downstairs at the Kings Head”. Will any of you accompany me? The following day (20th of July), we can see the almost final performance of Richard Herring’s “Someone Likes Yoghurt” at the Pleasance theatre Islington.
And if that were not enough, Ian M Bank’s newerst sicience-fiction novel “The Algebraist” is now out in soft-back. You can get it posted to you for around £6.
Typical of the internet, and particularly Google Images. I’m trying to research images for a cartoon I’m directing. I have a mob of villagers with torches and farm implements, so I search for spade, and get only one image in twenty that’s any use!
This Animation is just amazing; It’s a Gilbet & Sullivan style all-singing, all dancing number about Mr Clarke and Blunkett’s notional national identity cards.
I particularly like the idea of suggesting EDS for the role of co-ordinating the ID card programme; these big IT firms are spectacular at billing billions and delivering broken software. If EDS were tasked with building the ID card infrastructure, we can be certain that it would never be delivered.
I want representatives in the European Parliament to save Europe from software patents by following the Buzek-Rocard-Duff amendments.
The Software Patents Directive, as approved by the European Council of Ministers, would legalise US-style Software Patents in the European Union.
If that happens, software developers will no longer own what they write and can be sued for selling or distributing their own software. This would not only endanger your job, but the entire European software sector.
