by Suw on November 24, 2005
A pattern appears to be emerging. I look at my diary on a Monday and notice that it looks comfortably empty. About thirty seconds later I get a slew of emails and suddenly my week looks like the revenge of the iCal Gnomes. I get up, deal with urgent ORG stuff, go in to see my client, go over to my other office at lunch time, pick up on ORG and stay there way too late. (Although my workload is a walk in the park compared to Cory's and Paula's, really.)
I love what I'm doing, so I'm not complaining, but it is exhausting. My only consolation at the moment is that t'other's workload is just as mad, so when I get tired on the weekend the pair of us curl up and fall asleep, with Miss Ella the cat curled up atop us both.
Mind you, I do owe an awful lot of people emails. Erk. The trouble with that is that I'm turning into one of those people who gets more email that they can possibly cope with, and whom other people then accuse of deserting them because they're one of the 'little' people. Which is bollocks. But I do worry that I don't get to reply to everyone promptly, for which I can only apologise.
Right, nearly home. Time then for dinner and to get some more work done.
by Suw on November 23, 2005
The impudence of the music and film industries never ceases to amaze me. First they make crap products no one wants to buy. Then they sue their own customers because they aren't buying said crap products. Then they follow that up with DRM that kills your computer. And now they are trying to hijack proposed data retention legislation originally tabled to fight 'terrorism and organised crime', saying that it's essential that all your telecomms and web browsing data be made available to them so that they can sue your arses off with it.
Yes, that's right. The music and film industries think that there are far, far more dangerous things in this world than terrorists and organised crime. Oh yes. You nasty little file sharers and DRM breakers are going to bring down civilisation and you must be stopped! Stopped, I say!
And, of course, there's some more new legislation, going by the acronym IPRED2 which makes this all much, much easier for the industry as it criminalises copyright infringement. So, with Data Retention forcing ISPs to store all the information they can about your web habits, and IPRED2 mandating that the police must work with rightsholders to investigate alleged infringement, the music industry can now get investigation and prosecution done at the taxpayer's expense, instead of having to pay out lots of money to go through that pesky civil system.
You weren't really using your civil liberties and human rights, were you?
Come 13th December, the European Parliament are voting on Data Retention. And if they get suckered into voting yes, we're all buggered. It's not often that European legislation truly does affect all 457 million Europeans, but this time round, they mean business. 457 million people's mobile phone usage, including who you call, where you were when you called, and how long your call lasted, will be logged. 457 million people's internet usage will be logged, including your VoIP call details, your email and the website you visit. And there won't be bugger all you can do about it.
So, don't delay, Email Your MEP today, and tell them that you don't like Data Retention, and you certainly don't like the way it's being pushed through the European Parliament so quickly, and could they please brush up on the meaning of the word 'democracy'. I urge you to be polite, be informed (that's easy – read the two links at the top of this post), and be brief, and I urge you to email your MEP now.
by Suw on November 22, 2005
The Movie Show is up. Cam does his own show notes, but all you need to know is that I get heckled a lot, provide a piss-poor review of MirrorMask, which goes along the lines of 'it's beautiful, you should watch it', get heckled a bit more, talk about Dead Man, to the tune of 'it's wonderful, you should watch it', get heckled a lot more, enthuse quite sickeningly about the forthcoming Beowulf, something like 'it's going to be brilliant, I can't wait to watch it', and finish off with a round of heckling, just for a bit of variation.
No one should have to listen to this. No one. Specially not t'other or Neil Gaiman.
by Suw on November 21, 2005
This is just too funny not to pass on: The Morning News, Is He Cute Or Is He British?
I once spent a happy, drunken evening with my English friend Debs and our Welsh friend Aaron, sitting in Debs' lounge in Trefor, north Wales, making Aaron repeat the words 'guarantee', 'Llanrwst', and the phrase 'it's at the bottom of a runway', because when he said those things, they sounded like heaven.
(Remember A Fish Called Wanda? Remember Wanda's … 'reaction' to foreign accents? Yup. Ditto.)
by Suw on November 21, 2005
And no, I don't mean the pretty-boy chick-stealing Trojan but the great and beautiful capital of France, where I shall be for Les Blogs 2, where I am going to be telling Marc Canter and Hugh McLeod to shut the fuck up so that Anina can get a word in edgeways to talk about socialising in the year 2055. Some call it moderating, but I prefer to think of it as an opportunity to practice my golf swing.
If you're in France and you want to come to lunch on Sunday 4 December, let me know. No idea yet where, but it'll be somewhere near wherever it is that Les Blogs is at.
by Suw on November 18, 2005
John Batelle had better bloody be worth it.
*grumps off*
by Suw on November 16, 2005
The emergence of new communications technologies has radically changed the civil rights landscape in our society. Privacy, intellectual property, and access to knowledge are just some of the areas where digital rights are being eroded by government and big business.
The Open Rights Group (ORG) would like to invite you to an evening of digital rights discussion, networking and wine at 01Zero-One Hopkins Street on Tuesday 29 November at 6pm to debate these issues.
This inaugural ORG event will begin with a short presentation by special guest speaker Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. Lloyd Davis from Perfect Path will then moderate an open discussion, asking: Which issues are a priority for you? And where would coalitions strengthen your hand? There'll also be plenty of time to meet and talk with fellow organisers and activists.
To reserve your place, please email events@openrightsgroup.org now. There are only 100 places available, so be quick!
This free event is open to digital rights campaigners, grassroots activists, the press and the general public, so please do forward this information to anyone you think may be interested.
Where: 01Zero-One Hopkins Street (corner of Peter Street), Soho, London, W1F 0HS
When: Tuesday 29 November, 6pm – 9pm
Guest Speaker: Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford University; Co-Founder, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
RSVP: events@openrightsgroup.org
Map: http://www.01zero-one.co.uk/map.htm
What is the Open Rights Group?
ORG is a new not-for-profit digital rights activist group, working to raise the profile of digital rights issues in the media and help other groups get their voices heard. For more information visit www.openrightsgroup.org or email Suw Charman, Executive Director, at suw@openrightsgroup.org.
This event is presented with the support of 01Zero-One's InSync Programme.
by Suw on November 15, 2005
I found my favourite earring. There's a lesson in there somewhere, I'm sure, although it's probably less about the nature of possession and more about things you shouldn't do whilst wearing earrings.
Funny how a delay on the train when I have my Treo and a blog post to write isn't as bad as when I don't.
Things are really good at the moment, quite exceedingly so, and I'm mainly spending my time being obnoxiously happy, despite once more having more work than I can comfortably do in a mere 35 hours each week. I feel like I have a lost sight of the blog a little though, so I can only beg your forgiveness if that's truly the case. I hardly read any blogs at all now, which is ironic considering what I spend a lot of my time doing.
(For those of you who worry about me overworking, the reason I have been rather quiet of late is that I have spent the last three weekends in a place where my laptop isn't. Sometimes, ya gotta switch off, and these days I have good reason to.)
ORG is coming up to a sort of crescendo, with the pledge soon to top out. Frantically trying to get everything ready in time, which is a challenge but I think we'll make it. Keep an eye out for news on the ORG blog (the blorg?) of the event we're planning for the end of the month.
In a complete non sequiteur, I now have shelves (thanks brov!) so I have all my books nicely unpacked and neatly displayed. Well, I say 'all' but I brought such a tiny fraction of the books I own that 'all' is a gross misrepresentation. It pleases me very much, though, to finally have some books around me. I hardly have time to glance at them, let alone read them at the moment, but I have every intention of making at least a dent on them at Christmas. Not literally, obviously. That would be wilful vandalism.
So I have 20 minutes to wait for the next train, and am starting to feel that this post is just so much more about keeping me from being bored than about being entertaining or insightful or interesting for you. But then, I tell other people off for assuming that the most important thing about blogging is the reader when in fact it's the writer, so I'm just eating my own dogfood. (Assuming that the readers are the most important thing creates a sense of 'audience' which then wrongly encourages the broadcast mindset by compounding the false dichotomy and furthermore it devalues blogs with small readerships when the value there is inherent in the meaning to the participants, not to uninvolved onlookers.)
Wow, my bum is cold. Why can't they make benches at train stations out of something warm? Metal benches may be durable but they suck the heat out of you like a fruitarian vampire bat sucks the orange from an ice lolly.
10 minutes.
So, I was thinking the other day that horoscopes are just like weather reports: they are fun to read but are forgotten as soon as you finish; I only read them when I am expecting bad news but wish there were good; and they are usually a load of bollocks.
On the train now.
Bum beginning to thaw.
Mind now blank. Surely there must be something more to prattle on about? Oh well. Consider it a lucky escape.
by Suw on November 11, 2005
And here was me, thinking my friend Joi was a bloke… and all this time she was just leading me on and disguising her true nature:
8. Joi Ito of Technorati (http://joi.ito.com ) has her hands in a lot of Web 2.0 companies, some you might not even know about yet. This makes her damn powerful. Often times the one you don’t know that well is the most powerful. My personal favorite because she seems to help people get shit done.
From Jack of All Blogs.
Who says all bloggers do their research?
by Suw on November 11, 2005
Salsa Cymraeg.
Wel, nid gweld, per se – dw i ddim eisiau gweld tomatos wedi cael eu torri – ond clywed. A dawnsio.
