Check out the man himself here. I would embed the video put the Guardian didn’t put it on Youtube, didn’t they hear that the future for publishers is about pushing content out rather than bringing people in? Tch…

“Guessing is so 2009″

Might need to build a garage though…

Virtuesphere!

I think that’s the kind of issue that could be discussed in the pub all night and you’d never have a straight up idea about it.

Anyhows, this dude’s presentation on perception of time, work ethic and digitalisation of culture is pretty interesting. And it looks cool too…

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Alan Bennett gets mugged in Camden

This is a good example of old fashioned pick-pocket mugging in ol’ London Town. As Oliver Twist taught us, work in groups, target old people and use a little theatrical style (hence the ice cream prop). I’d almost feel sorry for Bennett except for the fact he was carrying around £1500 in spare change! Think about it, he could have sponsored a University student for that!

What else could Alan Bennett have done with £1500?

• Funded 1 and a half centres to provide support and advice and a financial alternative to loan sharks and poverty to help the worst hit in the recession to build a better future for their families
• Provided ongoing support to 3 families recently bereaved due to violent crime
• Supply grain banks for 5 villiages in India so that they will have enough to eat all year round
• Fund a Rape Crisis Centre to support the 5% of women and 0.4% of men who are victims of rape 
• Fund approx 6 microarrays to help fight Cancer
• Fund 20 local support group sessions for women who have experienced domestic violence
• Help kit out around 30 RSPCA vans
• Fund 75 counselling sessions for children who have been victims of sexual abuse
• In one month, sponsor 107 children living in poverty to help them and their communities change their lives for the better for good
• Help 150 deaf people fill out a job application form or practise for an interview
• Help to buy a vehicle so that some of the 200,000 old people who do not receive enough support to get out of the house can do so

He could have also bought me 2 top of the range iPads but after looking at those sites I think he’d be better off donating the money to people who really need it.

Y’know, if he hadn’t been just walking around with £1500 in his wallet, just waiting to get nicked…

Probably off to buy a bespoke suit or some organic food…

What else do you spend that kind of money on? Usually illegal stuff…

I don’t like his plays either…

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It would be nice if they did, don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see them win! I mean, a large part of me just wouldn’t care. That part of me that thinks, brilliant no traffic or crowds at the shops! And equally thinks I’ll just stay in tonight so I don’t have to run a gauntlet of drunken, leary men.

But realistically, it’s not going to happen. Because of things like altitude and injuries which are dogging the team, not to mention shitty goal-keeping, yet for once we seemed to have a no-nonsense decent manager. See, I do understand the footy. I understand the offside rule and everything (news flash: it’s not rocket science). I just don’t care.

I can understand why people get excited and that fun feeling of being united, national pride and competitive spirit. But really, when it comes down to it, isn’t it just another excuse for people to drink a lot and fanny about?

My mum watches the football. I don’t for one minute beleive that she cares one jot either. However, as a couple you should try and share each others interests and it means that she can spend some time with Dad instead of being a widow of both the golf and footy variety. She never used to watch it. I noticed a change one day. She’d watch patiently and coo  something appropriate at the right time, “ooo, that was a good shot.” Mum, if you really liked the footy you’d go Delia Smith on us, paint the England cross on your face and run around town in your bra picking fights with skinheads.

 Do you think Dad watches Coronation Street?

I don’t want to feign an interest in football any more than I want to be a “ladette.” Is this what feminism was aiming for? No, obviously being a feminist these days is all about joining the W.I in an ironic way and dressing 50s because it’s retro and knitting and baking because old school skills are so hot right now. Darling, ladette-ism is so… so, 90s! In the year 2010 being feminist is all about linking yourself somehow back to baking.

That’s not really me.

On the upside, there are always some interesting ad campaigns around the footy season. Men are so sentimental about these things. Really, they are just big, squishy piles of cotton wool. Covered in hair.

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So, according to the video I posted in the last blog, using the internet for social sites has overtaken porno as the no1 use for the web. Which is handy really, considering this BBC report on how porn sites are full of virus’ and the like. Surely everyone knows this? I guess there’s a lot of people out there taking their chances regardless

What I particularly love about this is that someone was actually paid to trawl through porno sites as research – they even built their own porno website as “research.” Can you imagine the sweaty little lab assistant putting together the proposal for this research?  

But, like I say, surely people know that porno sites are full of viruses. What next in the headlines? “Shock, Horror! Students Take Drugs!” No shit BBC! Everyone knows that, athough I suspect that journalists probably take more, and I feel kinda sorry for this poor schmuck who was set up so some journo could get a sensationalist story. Is entrapment of low-level drug dealing really the height of investigative journalism these days? Drugs really aren’t my thing (just not my bag baby) but considering that employers tend to Google job applicants (and trust me, they do!) this story could seriously damage the life of someone who just did something stupid at Uni – and we have all done stupid things when we were kids! That’s the trouble, technology does not have the capacity to forget.  It doesn’t suffer from an imperfect human memory, it’s just records all the information it can, storing it possibly forever, which could be used by anyone in future and quite possibly in a way that was not intended. In class our teacher told us about how the Nazis used census information collected by the governments of some countries they invaded to identify and persecute certain groups. I found some stuff on ID cards and governments collecting information here. Basically it gives you an idea of how information gathered “innocently” could be used in a unintended and dangerous way in future. 

Pervasive computing, sousveillance and life-logs are ever becoming the reality of our existance. To forget might not just be human, but also divine…

“Much forgetting turns out to be more benefit than bereavement, a mercy rather than malady. To forget is as essential as to keep things in mind, for no individual or collectivity can afford to remember everything” (Lowenthal, 1999, xi). The Ethics of Forgetting in an Age of Pervasive Computing.

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So it’s all about Apple again. When is it not? They are relaunching the new ‘n’ improved iPhone along with the launch (again?) of the iPad. There’s a whole section dedicated to it in the Guardian which makes me wonder how many free iPads they got. Is that the cynical PR side of me speaking? Oh, don’t get me started on that darling…

I wouldn’t mind a freebie. Hello, Apple? Didn’t you hear? Online PR is all about bloggers these days. We’re more trusted apparently. It must be true because the shiny infomatics say so.

Needed updating didn’t it?

Hopefully, I’ll get a new laptop with my new job (premature thinking, I know). Laptops are the shiz. They outrank “hot-desking” anyday. Hotdesking just drills home how much of a small and replaceable cog in the big wheels you are - it’s so impersonal, like those nightmarish “paperless office” ideas. I’m not big on paper myself but come on, sometimes you need to use paper. If you work at a company like this it feels like another corporate attempt to suppress personalities and suck any difference out of the employess. Corporate control. And then they complain that they need to hire outside of the company to get fresh ideas in. Well duh…

Also my charger lead isn’t working, it has to be in at a precise angle to charge. And it’s starting to smell like it might catch fire at any moment. And it’s really, really hot. It’s probably not a good sign.

I leave you with this. It explains, a) why I love Italians (I think he’s Italian, I may be wrong) and b) how to get great coverage from apparent “contraversy.” Although it’s not really contraversial at all! Is it even news? Who cares, I like it. I bet the coverage from the story brings in more business than slutty wife poster ever would.

If this were a Daily Mail headline it would be something like, “Sexually Degenerate Immigrant’s Kinky Wife-Swapping Threatens Local Grandmothers”

Unfortunately, it’s going to have to stay like that for now. I’m working on projects that require a lot of attention and though I need to diarise my activities there, I cannot publish them as it might be confidential information. Not interesting confidential information, like that time I had a passionate affair with a high ranking MP, but boring confidential information like which drawer the biscuits are in. It’s just to make things easy rather than have to check it’s ok to share all the time…

It’s a shame because you would have found it interesting.