I’ve been saying this in various grumpy ways for years now, but never quite articulated as well as you’ve done here, so thanks.

Birmingham is a bit shit. That’s what makes it such a great place to live. It’s inability to be a Great City means you can do practically anything here if you want because everything’s accessible. And the broken, shonkey nature of a lot of the infrastructure means interesting things happen in the cracks. The worst thing that could happen to an area like Digbeth is for the Big City Plan to actually happen as it was intended.

But I digress. Arguing against the “Birmingham should pull it’s weight” idiots is hard because the assumption is if you don’t agree with them you hate Birmingham, which is nonsense. If I hated Birmingham I’d live somewhere else. What makes Birmingham a great place to live is the fact that is doesn’t do BIG very well. It does small excellently, though, spread thinly across a massive sprawl of communities. The best stuff I’ve seen in Birmingham has usually impacted 20-100 people at a time, but this never seems to count to the Big City morons.

But that doesn’t really matter. Those people will keep on doing the stuff that matters to them irregardless of what the shrieking baboons in the Brum-ist camp say and Birmingham will continue to be a great place to live in. Because it’s shit, not despite it.

That bloody @mrmarksteadman has hooked me into attacking QR codes again.

Watched this last night out of curiosity because I really admire Moore and Harris and have a soft spot for Harrelson. (Also it turns out it’s written by the guy who played Jonathan in Buffy, though that wasn’t a deciding factor, more a WTF?)

It’s rather good. Not as gripping as the high-end HBO stuff (which, to be fair, is the only HBO stuff we see in the UK) and the pacing is a little clunky at times, but the actors really pull off the characters without turning in to parody. Unlike Oliver Stone’s W which I only managed 15 minutes of before getting very bored indeed.

And it’s always great to see Ed Harris in action, even if he is looking a little old…

I think my big problem here is most people involved in local politics are either idiots or engaging with local politics make them act like idiots. So an elected mayor would just add another layer of party-centric idiocy to the mix.

The best solution would be to ban anyone with associations with a major policial party to stand for election and start again from scratch.

Oh shit, I just engaged on a local policial issue, hence the idiocy, Sorry.

The concern, if any, isn’t so much with the protest which may well have validity, but with the way the councillors have communicated it on their blog. Specifically :

The buildings of the School of Art will, instead, will be used to run courses for foreign students preparing for other university courses.

The two buildings affected would be Ruskin Hall on Linden Road which has always been the original School of Arts and the Maple Road building which at one time was used to educate Cadbury employees.

They seem to be tapping into mild xenophobia and romantic nostalgia which have nothing to do with the practicalities of what the Bournville ward actually needs. As a Stirchley resident I’m fairly happy with their work – Hazelwell Park is looking lovely these days – but this kind of communication is weird and unnecessary and implies an ugly subtext which I really hope isn’t true.

In short, if change of use is an issue (and I’m not sure it is) why highlight the “foreign” students?

Soppy song made Grumpy Pete feel strange. Emotions are weird.

There’s something about context here too. The Matter kids aren’t necessarily talking to The Whole World, and no even the Kickstarter community. They’re just using the Kickstarter platform to talk to people who know and trust them.
Years back there was a kerfuffle over Tim O’Reilly’s FOOcamp (which in turn gave birth to the BARcamp model) where O’Reilly was inviting a select group of people for what could be termed an “elitist” gathering (in a positive and negative sense) but, and this was the key thing, conducting the conversation about it in public on newsgroups, blogs and the like.
This mix of the public and the private struck some people as odd. If you’re using a public medium them surely the stuff you’re talking about should be for the public. Open begets open, and all that.
But it doesn’t have to, and in practice it never really works that way. Trust, reputation and all that stuff already create a niche of understanding which acts as a barrier to entry for those outside the conversation (the story, if you like) so even on a massive broadcast platform like Kickstarter you’re still limited to those who already have a connection with you.
In other words, unless you’re already tapping into a popular narrative (say, iPhone accessories) you can only expect people who know you to contribute. I’ve be very surprised if Matter raised much if any money from people who didn’t already know them by reputation. And that’s to be expected.
(This should have been a blog post really.)

Not to be a defender but I’ve got three Western Digital MyBooks and have never had trouble with them. I think the general rule of thumb is never, on pain of death, buy the cheapest HDD. Always go one or two price bands up. And back up every hour on the hour.

Hard disks, especially now they hold terrabytes, are frighteningly fragile things.

Just seen this. Was thinking I'd like to pay £10 a month or something but £120 in one go is a bit much. Can you consider this a vote for monthly subs? For now I'll throw a note or two in the tin and try and remember in a few weeks to do it again.

As someone who takes lots of photos at events and probably uses the camera as a crutch / something to do, I’ve thought about this “experience” thing quite a bit. Probably too much, really. But here’s an observation.
In order to take a good photo you really have to understand your subject. Sure, you can rattle off hundreds of shots and select the best, but that’s not very satisfying. To really get that photo that means something you need to watch, to get under the skin of the performer, to predict what they’re going to do next so that you can capture it. It’s a lot like big game hunting in that respect, I guess.
So yeah, when I’m taking photos of performers I’m experiencing the shit out of them. Though I accept not everyone waving their shitty cameraphone is.

Two words: Justice Inc.

Now that was a good comic.

The positive thing about Twitter breaking their service (if indeed they have) is the Internet tends to route around blockages like this and some other system will emerge, hopefully less dependent on a corporate centralised hub.

Somewhat perversely whenever Twitter or Facebook do something to piss off their users I find it cheering.

Technically it hasn’t been removed from the site – it’s still in the history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=So_Solid_Crew&oldid=469707478
But yeah, humourless Wikipedians spoiling our fun…

Assume y’all are familiar with Jon Rafman?

Re: Wikipedia. Isn't "contextual, unobtrusive advertising" an oxymoron on a par with military intelligence?

"Arts organisations need to optimise the giving process to give donors reasons to feel good and to look good in front of their peers"
I'm reminded of the Skunk Anansie lyric - "just because it feels good, doesn't make it right."
There's something here that concerns me. Something about building on feelings rather than rational decisions and how that's potentially unstable. If people are giving because it makes them feel good rather than because they've made a considered decision that it's the right thing to do, what does that do to the organisation in question? And how does that effect the long term benefit of having those donors involved in the process?
Another phrase that springs to mind is "infantalisation of donors" though that might be a little strong.

I must say, I'm impressed by the literal titling of this video. Says what it is, no bull. Nice one.

When I (finally) got my Alec Pants I was wondering where these chaps were...

What is the technical term for this? Whistling through your teeth?

I’ve been using http://www.ghostery.com/ to block tracking bugs (Google, Facebook, Comscore, Quantcast, etc) and the like when I’m browsing and it has the added benefit of reducing the page load. Recommended.

Can’t take too much credit. Came to me from at least three sources at once.

Why oh why oh why oh why is the Guardian giving space to Taxpayer Alliance rentaquotes? I expect this from my local rag but surely you guys are above this? Jeezus...

On the sofa, Birmingham UK. Have just put the gas flame fire on for the first time this Winter so the room stinks of burnt dust. About to cook dinner then watch Serenity, the final stage in introducing the girlfriend to Firefly.

I think Fi just felt it would be nice to stroke and cuddle. But yes, indeed, and so forth.

33, though I’d like to take the test without knowing what it’s measuring. I’m one of those people who probably isn’t Asperges but likes to think they are so I’m probably trying to game the system into proving my belief.

Also, some of those questions need “when sober” appended to them. I thoroughly enjoy social situations when I’m shitfaced. It’s when I’m sober that they bring me out in the sweats.

While I agree with you 100% and thank you this illuminating post (I never knew the “marathon” origin) there is a handy get-out in 300. It’s not supposed to be The Truth. It’s a story told by Dilios at Platea to get everyone stirred up. In other words it’s propaganda. Whether than excuses Miller and the idiot-boy Snyder I don’t know, but it does explain the prejudices and omissions in the narrative.

Oops, found myself watching the conspiracy stuff. By golly they’re insane, aren’t they?

Sorry to hear that. On the off chance you haven’t, have you considered speech recognition software? A friend was using Dragon (I think) the other day and apparently they’re rather good these days.
Personally I communicate better through my fingers and you might be the same.

I was too distracted by the irritating 3D nonsense to be that bothered by the uncanny valley, which might explain why I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

This seems to be a similar line of thinking to Rushkoff’s Programme or be Programmed – understand the origins and intentions of a tool to understand what that tool is really for. Very useful perspective – thanks for writing it.

I noticed on the timetable that everything is indoors this year, so it won’t be quite so cold.

It wasn't so much that I thought the book worthless and therefore only suitable for a child. It was more than I thought Daniel might get more out of it than I was going to and that it would be wasted on my shelves. The oomph for money thing was just a more general complaint about the hardback-fetishing some comics publishers go in for.
As my friends kids are growing up I'm noticing I'm thinking about stuff to lend / give them to read, hence Bone for the (quite awesome if you've not met them) kids of Marty and Sas.

That aside, I'm dead chuffed Daniel's identifying with Feynman. ;)

Hooray for this!

Seriously, thanks so much for writing all this stuff. It's really helpful for those of us also trying to get our heads around what this week I'm calling "the abuses of narrative".

I think I would very much be in the market for an A3-ish print of that. Or a high-res jog I could print myself.

I use Instapaper all the time. Even have an ifttt to send starred items from Google Reader to it. Invaluable, especially at night when I can’t sleep.

Readability I used to use when it was a simple browser bookmarklet. Now it loads the page on their site which seems unnecessary, but that’s no reason not to use it. I guess I just don’t read long text in the browser anymore.

My experience with Dabs is that there's a reason they're cheap. I once accidentally had something sent to an old address where no-one currently lived and the only way to cancel it was to wait for it to be returned-to-sender. They cut costs by automating everything and, evidently, not updating this sort of info, which is fair enough if you go in with your eyes open but maybe should be flagged at the beginning:
"Dabs: Get what you pay for, in every way."

Pretty sure the Numskulls in the robot said they couldn't kill Hitler because it was too early. I assumed they'd return in 1945 and take him from the Bunker. Then, once it was established no-one was going to kill Hitler, he wasn't relevant anymore.

Works for me.

Ooh, is the backlash against “heritagism” happening? Can I join in?

I noticed the filter.me.uk site is advertising itself for young people interested in “arts, sports and heritage” and I thought to myself, who ever says they’re interested in “heritage”? Is it a thing one can be interested in?

Anyhoo…

I do this. Sort of. Being a grumpy, antisocial type I like my own space so don’t tend to stand in the queue. If there’s a shelter I tend to stand outside it and lean on the advertising board. Then, when the bus arrives, being a well brought up young man I wait for those who were there before me to board, frequently blocking the swinefaces who have gathered at my end.

I hope this helps.

Joyce left me a rather emotional and rambling voicemail after I blogged a link to an item about Tabloid last July. I popped the audio up here:

http://peteashton.posterous.com/voicemail-0

Needless to say I'm rather intrigued by her now...

I wouldn't say all cartoonists. It's more those who have first hand experience of the "community media" (for want of a better word) environtment of the small press that I find make the transition to social media easier.

This film will also have a special place in my heart for it represents how I came across Clusterflock in a mutual Joyce McKinney hissy-fit.

I came across your post yesterday and it really concerned me. You're doing important work in an important area but the manner in which you're doing it pisses me off.

Home of Metal may look like a massive thing with a huge budget, but it's not. It's put together by Capsule, a small team of music promoters who also do the Supersonic Festival. Much of the promised funding has been withdrawn thanks to the bullshit economic climate we're enduring but they're still managed to pull off what looks to be a quite audacious and impressive range of events. Even more so given they've spent the last 3-4 years pushing for this to happen against initial apathetic indifference from our delightful city leaders.

So when someone out of the blue threatens what little financial support they have from the Arts Council (who, as it happens, rejected Capsule's application to be a National Portfolio Org) by pointing out in a public forum that they've potentially broken the law, one week before the launch of the event when time is short and tempers no doubt a bit frayed, and having done this expects an immediate measured response, well, it's a bit much.

Knowing Lisa, one of the two women who run Capsule, a bit I expect the reason she didn't reply is because she's not given to the sort of empty platitudes folk normally dish out to complaints like these - those given after the Hello Digital debacle of a couple of years ago. She's more likely to get defensive about someone sabotaging her baby and say something regrettable, so she says nothing.

Yes, the Home of Metal booklet should be available in large print, braille, etc.

Yes, the facilities for deaf and other disabilities at the venues should be listed.

Yes, yes, yes. All these things should be done. Making this a priority is a worthy and important aim and I respect it. But doing it by pissing off people and threatening the viability of their projects and, effectively, livelihoods, is utterly the wrong way to go about it.

I've publicly complained about stuff on my blog and on Twitter and I know I've fucked up on occasion. It's an easy medium to shoot from the hip without thinking it through. That doesn't make it right.

My main concern is that your actions will contribute to the "chilling effect" on people who want to do things without the resources of a large organisation behind them. The sort of DIY activities that make the world exciting and vibrant. I see people not having live music at their public events because they're worried the need for a license, or simply thinking they can't do something because they're not "professionals". What I see you heading towards here is a situation where if a thing is not as accessible as possible, it should not take place.

I hope you appreciate that it took a lot to write this. Criticising someone for getting upset about being discriminated against for their disability is not something that comes easily to me. I am not attacking your motives or your goals, merely your tactics.

(Conflict of interest note: I've worked with Capsule, been on their Steering Group and am an active fan of their activities. This is why I care about this as opposed to you attacking some org I don't have a personal connection to, but the point still stands, I hope. I'm also no speaking for Capsule and have had no contact with them at all this week.)

I’d take the position that if you discover your has been replicated in Urban Outfitters (whether by accident or evil intent) it’s probably time to get a new idea.

Small point, but I wish people wouldn't blame "the Internet" for infantalising debate. There's plenty of serious, sensible and in depth debate happening online (here, for example) including on Twitter. The problem, as ever, is people behaving like people. To blame Twitter is just lazy. I'd rephrase:

"Some say politics doesn’t ‘get’ the Internet; I simply say the Internet is often too immature for politics."

as

"Some say politics doesn’t ‘get’ the people; I simply say the people are often too immature for politics."

But other than that you're 100% on the ball. Making the distinction between real politics and playing the Westminster game is essential.

(Four days late, as usual) I totally misread that as Betty Page’s Pigs-In-A-Blanket which send the mind a-boggling.

“occasionally of this blog”??? Cheeky sod…

Seth Lakeman has played Moseley Folk a couple of times. I think he appeals to the ladies in a Tim Henman kinda way, although that might be doing his artistic credentials a disfavour. I did enjoy his music but was very aware of the ladies in the crowed looking like they were thinking dirty thoughts. (Not that there's anything wrong with that - Eliza Carthy had a similar effect on me...)

This appeared on the inestimable Copycunts the other day.

That blog is like my brain…

I went through a phase of collecting reviews. It’s like reviewers are cats who’ve pounced on a wounded bird and are loving the freedom to tear it apart.

http://www.ultraculture.co.uk/6695-sucker-punch-zack-snyder-review.htm

http://www.slashfilm.com/sucker-punch-2/

http://www.film4.com/reviews/2011/sucker-punch

As a recovering comics nerd I see a parallels between Zak Snyder and Rob Liefeld, except Liefeld never pretended to be all feminist and that.

@Jojo Def not phoppyshopped. You see a lot of these on doors in Soho, central London. There’s also one saying something along the lines of “this door is not a toilet – please don’t urinate here”.

No you don’t.

While I sympathise 100% with your point, I’m not sure this makes a good economic argument. You could say relying on out of town shopping centres is costing IKEA money as people who chose not to have a car cannot spent their cash there, to which IKEA might reply the cost of being connected to a public transport infrastructure would force them to increase prices, and they’re doing okay with the car-owning majority as customers.

The other arguments against DRM are sound, but saying publishers are losing money because they don’t cater to their GNU/Linux desktop owning customers is likely to get the reply “yes, but it’s not that much money and we can live without it.”

Shame it's not deliberate. It does seem to be a natural progression from the instruction to "search for [brand name]". Especially given networkwestmidlands.com is such a terrible url to remember.

Now if only they'd promote the excellent http://netwm.mobi/ service instead of those ridiculously overpriced text shortcode things...

£15? Are you mad? You should be selling signed prints for £15, not original art. I'd swear at this point but I know you have young readers these days so consider big loud swears punctuating this comment.

£30-40 minimum. More once they start picking up. I mean, postage alone is going to come to £2-3.

The most dispiriting thing was buying a singed A3 print by a cartoonist for £5 which was posted in a cardboard tube. His profit must have been a quid, if that. Pointless.

Sorry, this sort of undervaluing of work by comics types really bugs me. Just because it was good enough for the 1940s Jewish guys doesn't mean it's the law.

10. Ignore the rules. Sometimes you just gotta break them.

Dunno what the genre might be called – maybe Gonzo – but I’m thinking of those by the likes of Nick Broomfield. Wikipedia calls it “reflexive film-making” where the film maker is as important as the subject.

Due to the unique way the mac’s new website deals with being a website, that box office link doesn’t work. Try this one:

http://tickets.macarts.co.uk/PEO/loader.asp?target=show_events_list.asp?shCode=18749&interface=2

I wonder if it's a hangover from "In The Media..." as if The Media is some monolithic, single thing.

I’ve often been of the opinion that when things like blogs are easy to set up it should be easy to shut them down too, or at least archive them, when they’re no longer useful. That said, I was in favour of shutting down CiB a few years back so probably best to ignore me.

The flipside, of course, is city councils are rather hard to set up so maybe shouldn’t be shut down quite so quickly…

Interesting seeing this as “British humour”. Being British I guess I’d taken the Britishness for granted and just thought Cyriak’s stuff is more Internet culture – animated gifs, photoshops and so on. But looking at it again through your lens I can see what you mean. Beyond the subject matter there’s something, forgive me, Pythonesque about his aesthetic (Gilliam being an honourary Brit) and the execution echoes loop-driven music. I think I’m right is saying US-originated GIFs tend to be less about the loop as a narrative device, although I may have to think more about that. Don’t forget the low-brow anti-establishment tone which we do so well, all been fermented in the b3ta.com vats which history will show to be a good thing indeed.

So yeah, you’re probably on to something there.

See also his relatively recent and rather slick video for Ninja Tune:

http://cyriak.co.uk/blog/?p=166

All sounds very sensible. And I do like a bit of in-depth bloggery. Looking forward to it!

This is probably the only thing anyone needs to write about Radiohead's album, and nails the problem with The Daily nicely. Thanks.

It also brings to mind the discussion about Apple's subscription service with the realisation that they care primarily about the user experience over the 3rd party companies' experience. See

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/02/15/brilliant-brazen-batshit
http://twitter.com/#!/gassee/status/37642355649675264

Which makes Apple's backing of The Daily even more weird. There must be some other reason for Jobs supporting it like that. A favour to Murdoch?

If you were doing Bad Machinery a decade ago you'd probably be reaching 500 people tops. And you certainly wouldn't be making any money from tshirts. All you times would be spent contacting agents and publishers and reworking your comic to fit their arbitrary trends and such. You wouldn't have any actual freedom to do what you're doing now.

Garen Ewing's Rainbow Orchid is being published by Egmont. Talking at Caption last year the publisher said the reason they signed him was because he'd developed a solid audience online on his own with no resources. They take was if he could generate X then they could increase that exponentially.

I'd also recommend reading the interview with Darryl Cunningham on Comics Reporter. Darryl was doing stuff in the pre-Internet days so has a nice perspective on giving his stuff away for free online.

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_sunday_interview_darryl_cunningham/

You'll get there. Your stuff is good. It will find its audience. It will be hard but you'll get there.

Thank you for writing this. It articulates a lot of things I’ve been thinking about over the last few years.

While I’d love to see Whitby replaced by, well, anyone really, I’m not overly optimistic about Labour doing a better job. I think we need a better caliber of councilor in all parties. In fact I’d like to see coalition of Not Stupid politicians from all parties running the city. Bring on the Philosopher Kings, as Plato might say.

Lovely stuff. I've been mildly obsessed with photographing the ground for a few years now and, co-incidentally, did one of those Pecha Kucha things about it last week.

http://iam.peteashton.com/looking-down/

The execution of this is way better though. Beautifully hypnotic.

I’d ask about assisting arts’n'culture people and orgs make the transition from a state funding culture to a sponsorship/patronage culture. It’s not necessarily that people are unwilling – it’s that this is often alien territory for them (just as the funding mindset is alien to people outside of that culture). Guidance on best practice and so on would be useful.

I’d also probably scream in his face incoherently about lack of mandate so it’s probably for the best I’m not there.

Sounds like the inconvenienced councilor was Deirdre Alden of the Alden clan (husband John and son Robert) who stood for MP in Edgbaston last year.

She has a blog. http://deirdrealden.wordpress.com/

If I might play devils advocate, you don't often find people worrying about the other 39 Water Dispersant products.

Less flippantly, it's probably because there isn't a snappy way to say "this page doesn't exist for a variety of reasons" so the geeky shorthand stuck.

Having named a fair few things with “Birmingham” in the title I’ve always shied away from “Made In Birmingham”. Since no-one owns it everyone can use it. It’s practically public domain.

JP’s MiB site is pretty damn cool, though.

Couple of simple things I'd like to see added to the app:

1) Add an "Open in Safari" option. Currently you have to start an email, copy the URL from that and paste it into Safari.

2) Allow text to be selected. Not sure why you don't allow this but it's very annoying when you want to sent a quote by email or Twitter.

Other than that I'm happy.

(OK, Instapaper integration would be nice but I can't see that happening.)

Oh, please do. I’m sure I’m building straw men left right and centre. In fact I’m probably not talking about zines at all – just tramping over them to get somewhere else.<br />
<br />
Bring it on, sir.

Spot on. I'd only add, don't be afraid to fail. Just make sure you fail interestingly and learn from it.

I haven’t given christmas cards since 1988. I still appear to have a few friends.

Yay! Very happy to hear this and very happy to pay the price of a sandwich and a cuppa tea for it. Was worried the pay-once model for the app was stalling its development.

(Newspapers commenters are SO behind the times - we went through this "I protest at paying for v2 apps!" with Tweetie back in the day. Get over it.)

I just noticed you called people who use Twitter "customers". They're not - they're at best users of Twitter and at worse Twitter's product. Twitter's customers are advertisers and those who wish to buy and exploit their product - you and me. Sure, it's in Twitter's interest to keep its product happy, just as a farmer keeps his cows happy, but let's not get ideas above our station here.

And the end of the day Twitter is a flaky service held together with string, chewing gum and rainbow wishes. The reason official RTs are a disappointment is because Twitter hasn't developed them properly.

You're wrong, but that's fine because no-one is right about Twitter.

The biggest problem with old-style retweets is people editing content in and out of them, producing a Chinese whispers trail of inaccuracy. I've had my words mangled and pre/suffixed so badly in the past that I'm firmly against the RT-with-comment camp now.

If you want to point to something interesting on Twitter use the RT function.

If you want to comment on a tweet outside of the overlap between you and the tweeter, link to it or something.

But don't mess with people's words. That's just rude.

There was a spurt of Stravinky back in 2007 too from BRB and Fierce.

I looked into the 45/7 "every five minutes" claim and it's true... during peak hours. So if you're working 9-5 then you can benefit from this but if you're not then you're stuck with the worst main-line bus route I've experienced in Birmingham.

Moan, grumble, bitch...