NaNoWriMovember

Hi.

As some of you will know, the months of November is the home of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, the now traditional time for wannabe authors to drive themselves crazy hammering out as many words as they can under horrible time pressure. The aim is to produce a 50,000 word ‘novel’ in thirty days. I managed to do this in 2009, and it was thoroughly mentally exhausting. Also, the resultant chunk of words was dreadful.

Still, it was a complete story of considerable length, so at least proved that I was capable of stringing out lies successfully and with purpose.

I have decided to do it again this year as, a) I’m a masochist, b) my writing needs a kick in the arse and c) the feeling of finishing the thing is pretty sweet. Plus there are sometimes money-off coupons.

However.

As many others of you will know, November has also become famous as the month when men of all nationalities jettison their pride and self respect in an attempt to grow a moustache. Yes, that’s right, for any of my American friends out there, it has an “o” in it.

Incidentally, I’d like to see the Venn diagram for people aware of each of these Novembral functions.

Now this isn’t just a frivolous excuse to avoid shaving for four weeks. The aim of Movember is to raise the profile of mens’ health in general and the various common types of cancer we suffer from (prostate, testicular, lung) in particular. Quite how they figure that growing a moustache does that, I’m not sure, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Now, regardless of the fact that my facial hair growth is bettered by some fifteen year olds, I’m going to give this a go as well.

At the same time as NaNoWriMo.

I know. How am I ever going to pull this off? I’ll show all you doubters out there; men so *can* multitask.

So without further ado, please click on this here link to my ‘Mo-space’ page (see what they did there?), and if you can donate a pound or two that’d be great. Last year, nearly £220,000 was raised in the UK alone, which isn’t bad for a bunch of guys being lazy and looking like arses for a month.

There’s a sweetener to this – YOU* can have a say in my appearance during this momentous month. I shall now attempt to add a poll to this post, so that you can vote for the type of ‘tache I’ll be cultivating! To give you some guidance, I’ve been off work for the last two weeks, so the growth you see here represents that, plus a couple of days beforehand. See? Pathetic.

OK, so I need to add images first. Here you go;

And so, here’s the poll;

Please consider your choice carefully but, as I trust the collective you as far as I can throw you, *I’ll be reserving the right to go my own way on this…

Cheers,

 

GBN

The Gap Between Saying and Doing

I wrote a blog post a couple of months ago detailing how I had resolved to change my writing habits. It was inspired by a couple of simultaneous posts from people I respect and admire which referred to their own rituals and disciplines.

I did not publish that post.

More accurately, I didn’t finish writing it.

This here post, then, is partly an effort to catch whatever’s left of the enthusiasm Ken Armstrong and William Gallagher inspired in me that day, and partly a codicil to my last warble about Fantasycon.

There’s a simple and clichéd maxim that writers write. That’s it really; the essence of pretty much every chunk of advice ever dished out to any would-be author. And I haven’t been heeding it. And it’s a good deal of the reason, I now realise, that I was out of kilter with the good folk of the BFS. Essentially, I felt like a fraud. I kept trotting out the same old, “aspiring writer” nonsense but it didn’t feel true because realistically it wasn’t. For the past six months or so I’ve been aspiring to be an aspiring writer. It’s like saying you want to run a marathon but not going for a jog because it’s drizzling, i.e. pathetic.

So the buck stops here. For the last two weeks I’ve been good. I’ve been writing copious notes because, In a fit of idiocy, I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year. This is partly in the hope that it will be something of a springboard but mainly because I quite fancy the Windows version of Scrivener when it comes out and they usually give half-price vouchers to those who get their 50,000 written.

This time’s a bit different, though. This time I’m actually planning. I do not believe it will make one iota of difference to the quality of what comes out – that’s what revisions are for – but hopefully it’ll help prevent the stalls and filler chapters that blighted my last effort.

I’m also pledging (to you, personally) to blog here more frequently – at least twice a month. Again, this serves two purposes, both regularly exercising the writing muscles as well as consolidating my online presence, something almost every panel at FCon emphasised the importance of. So tough.

Right, time for bed. I’m not going to post this quite yet, as it needs some time to mature and I have to tart it up with links on the big computer. But I will post it.

If I don’t, you can… Well, you won’t actually know, will you?

GBN

A Week in the Making: Thoughts on Fantasycon 2011

Nash looked through the doorway, his gaze arrowing between the sweaty shoulders of the two DJs, and down onto the seething, bellowing mass of humanity below. Fucked if I’m drunk enough for this, he thought.

Nonetheless, he made his way down the stairs and picked a path through to the bar, narrowly avoiding a collision with a frighteningly rapid Rob Shearman. Not even close to drunk enough.

Attracting the attention of the barman, Nash ordered two double gin and tonics, no ice. As the second was placed before him, he handed the first glass back and ordered a third, along with a bottle of beer to wash the six little spirits down. There was no other way to play this, he had to prop himself here for half an hour while the alcohol did its work.

Just then a cheer went up and turned into a guttural war-chant. Nash glanced over. Gary McMahon had been possessed by the spirit of Michael Flatley, his feet of flames forcing a ring of baying onlookers wider and wider as they scrambled to avoid his flailing form.

Lou Morgan saw Nash and tried to persuade him on to the dance-floor, but the time was not yet right.

For one thing, Nash could still feel his face.

“In a bit,” he shouted over the pounding music, “just waiting for a song I know.” Lou smiled glassily and nodded as if talking to an idiot before heading back into the heaving throng.

Nash giggled like a girl. Nearly time. He stared around the room, taking his bearings properly now that his initial school disco nervousness had worn off. Here was Rob Shearman, still careening around the room like a hairy Brownian pinball, entertaining and terrifying in equal measure. There was Joe Abercrombie, destroying the dance-floor one tiny, dainty, measured step at a time; and Sarah Pinborough, nominally running the disco but apparently taking her duty of ‘checking the sound levels’ rather seriously.

Up on the holy dais of the decks, the burly silhouettes of Guy Adams and Rio Youers mercilessly pumped out tune after tune with no discernible pattern, often forgetful or simply unaware of what was coming next, but allowing the mad passion of the crowd to drive them on. Guy was frantically rooting through stacks of glinting CD cases like a demented croupier in a giants’ casino while Rio hollered insanity through the mic and whipped the gyrating mass of bodies into further heights of rapture.

Nash touched the near-empty beer bottle to his lips. Numb. Good. He drained the remainder of the liquid, dribbling a little down his shirt front in a manly fashion, and successfully placed the empty vessel onto the bar at the second attempt. He breathed deeply, the scents of talent, sweat and printer’s ink mingling in his nostrils. It was time.

Nash took a lurching step towards the dance-floor.

##

Well, that was the tail end of Saturday night (more Sunday morning, in fact) at Fantasycon in Brighton this past weekend. A few of those memories might be exaggerated or entirely made up, I’m afraid I really can’t remember. I wouldn’t recommend drinking large volumes of liquor as a means of overcoming social awkwardness, but it was all there was to hand.

Maybe we should go back a bit.

This was the first Fantasycon I have attended, though I did go to the World Horror Convention last year at the same venue. That was the height of the Twitter boom for me, and there was a large group of us, largely genre outsiders, who knew each other. Most importantly, Mrs N was there to prop me up when I flagged.

This year, I was on my own. The few Twitterati who had hoped to attend were unable to, and we didn’t have the funds or available childcare for Becky to come with me. The few industry people I did know were engaged in official capacities and, in any case, I’d told myself I had to do this properly and strike boldly forth.

Now, there are three kinds of people at Fantasycon; those who work in publishing, those who are published, and those who want to be published. I fall into the latter category, so the idea of the convention for me was to get my face known, meet as many genuine industry people as I could, and above all not make a tit of myself (see note about excessive alcohol above).

To be brutally honest, I didn’t do very well, regardless of my dancing, and I’ve only got myself to blame.

Ask anyone who’s been to a Fantasycon, and they’ll tell you it’s like becoming part of a family. Everyone’s friendly and warm and welcoming, and all that’s needed to fit in is an ability to get your round in at the bar. And this is all true. The thing that’s not said, that’s perhaps not even thought about by the majority of the naturally gregarious denizens of the convention, is that you have to be at the bar in the first place.

I’ve actually changed my mind a little while writing that paragraph. Yes, I blame myself for my inability to meet people, but now I also blame the convention organisers and, in particular, the sadists that put the amazing programme together.

Granted, I spent far too much time in my room, or wandering the gloriously labyrinthine corridors of the hotel, or on the sun-drenched beach (yeah, God, it was your fault too!) when I should have been chatting and schmoozing. But the length of that “me-time” pales in comparison to the amount of hours I spent at panels, readings and quizzes or raffles. Time when there is little chance of forming relationships.

I originally set out to write this as a point-by-point review of the parts of the programme I attended, but quite a few people have already done that. Suffice it to say, that every single reading, every panel, every event (with the possible exception of the quiz) was stunning. The readers were, without exception, passionate, convincing and captivating. The panelists informed, interesting and engaging. The raffle, which for many people seems to have felt like a stint in purgatory, had me laughing so hard I thought I was going to shit my ribs.

The point is there was too much of it.

In one panel, Stephen Jones quipped that once they actually saw the level of interest in the convention and started putting the programme together, they realised that they could have easily stretched it to five days. To be honest, I wish they had, or at least pushed it through the Sunday night and in to Monday. There was so much content that I wanted to see that the social side of the thing got shunted to the back of my mind. I need such a long run-up to actually become sociable that once I’d got there it was time to go home.

I hope this doesn’t all sound like I’m bitching about the enormous amounts of hard work and time that a huge number of people put in to the convention, because I’m not. It was an amazing experience and I did, on Sunday – when the panels and readings had finished – spend a couple of hours in the bar meeting and chatting to some wonderful people; time which pretty much made the weekend. And, yes, I started to feel like part of the family.

I missed the “newbies corner”, so I don’t know if there were any experienced conventioneers giving out advice there, but one thing I would certainly say to anyone thinking of attending this, or probably any other, convention is this: it’s not a business meeting, a lecture, or a course. Take time out to make friends.

Next year, I’ll be the first one at the bar. What’re you having?

iPad 2: Too Little Too Late?

A Little more than a year ago, I held forth on the subject of the just-announced iPad. If you can be bothered, the post is here.  Now, a day after Saint Steve announced its successor, it seems a good time to take stock and see just how wrong I was in my predictions.

First of all, I can’t get away from the fact that I was sceptical about the whole thing. It turns out that about 15 million people have disagreed with me so far. That number’s going to be wildly outstripped by the new one.

What I did last January was to fall into my own trap. I even said it in the post. The trap is assuming that inferior hardware will produce an inferior experience. Apple aren’t hardware innovators and they never have been. They didn’t invent the MP3 player, the mobile phone or the all-in-one PC. They didn’t invent tablets. They didn’t invent their vaunted processor, either – it’s an amalgamation of ARM parts slapped together by Samsung.

(I’m being rather blasé about that last point, of course. Apple will have had huge input on the design of the SoC, but in referencing its ARM heritage, I can point out with pride that ARM are the last vestige of Acorn computer, of which we Brits should be proud*).

Anyway, Apple don’t innovate. What they do, and with blinding brilliance, is to take an existing concept, pare it down to its bare necessities, ally it with wonderful ergonomics both in terms of hardware and software, and then slap a mammoth price tag on it.

This strategy works because a) their products are generally a joy to touch and use and b) the high price puts them in the realm of the status symbol.

Where they have fallen down in the past is with their ‘walled garden’ approach to content – the rejection policy of the app store, the Adobe Flash nonsense, and so on. It’s this and, ironically, the status symbol tag that has seen them apparently shudder a a little in the mobile phone arena, with Android now becoming the dominant smartphone OS on the planet. In fact, that fight has never been between Apple and Android, but Android and Windows Mobile, Symbian and RIM. And Android won it easily. It’s done it by providing a similarly intuitive interface to Apple, adding some extras (like Flash, open content and the ability to use the phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot, something I was highly amused to hear Jobs drop in to the presentation last night as a new feature of the iPhone 4, as if it was his latest great idea). Crucially, Android also gave manufacturers the ability to release phones across the spectrum of budgets. The superior usability (that’s a word we’ll be coming back to) of Android simply beat the competition into submission.

Nokia’s announcement that they’re jumping in to bed with Microsoft was the death knell of the Symbian OS, something I’m terribly sad about due to its roots in the old Psion organisers (which also ran on ARM…). Windows phone 7, or whatever it’s called, has had a pretty lukewarm reception and I can’t see the coming of Nokia heralding much in the way of a recovery. They’ve lost too much ground, and Microsoft just don’t seem to get it.

RIM, on the other hand, will be around for a while, I suspect, due to their limpet-like hold of the enterprise market. Their products, and I’m including the BES back-end here, are more than solid enough to hold that space for the foreseeable future.

I digress. Android has done what I though it would and become the dominant smartphone OS. What it will never do, unless someone like, uh, Nokia starts making handsets running it, is have a viable competitor to the iPhone. Apple’s baby simply has too much cachet. Their users are all rabid fanbois too, almost to a man (or woman), and with pretty good reason. The product is amazing. Unless you want to do something way off the curve with it you probably can. If I’m to be entirely honest, the new addition of the WiFi hotspot has even intrigued me… But I’m more than happy with my HTC Desire, and I had a WiFi hotspot on my old G1 about 18 months ago.

Anyway, back to the point, and to the title of this post. A great many analysts have taken one look at the new iPad and deemed it unworthy. The hardware’s barely adequate competition for the incoming Android, RIM and WebOS hoard, they say. It will be eaten alive when they get going. But they’re falling into my trap. And, worse, they’re not taking account of history.

Apple may have lost ground to Android-powered phones in terms of market share, but I doubt very much that many people seriously considering an iPhone would have looked at something like the Samsung Galaxy and thought, “Oh, that’s just as good, I’ll have that!” I’d be very surprised if the Android revolution has dented Apple’s phone sales all that much.

But let’s take stock of why they’ve been so successful;

1. Functionality. As I sad before, the interface is very iOS-like, smooth and intuitive(ish)
2. Price. Pretty much every Android handset I’ve seen is substantially cheaper than an iPhone, especially when the contract pricing and data plans are taken into account.
3. Content. They can do some things the iPhone can’t.

Of these, I’m pretty sure that price is the ultimate differentiator, followed closely by what you can do with the things. Their usability.

Now let’s apply this rationale to the Tablet market. I know I said that Apple didn’t invent the tablet. They didn’t. But they did create the first really usable one and in doing so they ‘invented’ the market.

Their market share is unbelievable. When they launched, $499 looked pretty expensive (to me, at least) for a low-capacity device that was essentially a larger iPod touch. Now, however, having seen how their so-called competitors have priced their own efforts, it looks like a steal. And the new one’s the same price.

What Apple have done here is almost to reverse their default strategy. They have, it seems, adopted a ‘pile-em-high-and-sell-em-cheap’ method, and it’s worked. They own the market. To the average Joe or Joanne on the street, any tablet is an iPad. They’ve created the new Hoover, or indeed the new iPod.

Incidentally, that’s the history I was referring to. The only other time Apple ‘created’ a market was with the iPod. Of course there were MP3 players available when the iPod came along, but they certainly weren’t mainstream. Apple rolled up and defined the sector overnight. According to the latest figures I could find, they still have something approaching 75% percent of it in the US. That’s despite the likes of Creative, Sony and Microsoft pumping heaven knows how many millions into R&D.

Back to their tablet: Joe or Jo don’t give a fig whether it’s got an eight megapixel camera, an SD card slot or more memory than a nuclear power plant. They care about what they can do with it. What you can do with an iPad is, frankly, a lot. Many of the apps on show may prove to be gimmicks, but the point is that they all work. They’re seamless. They behave as an end user would expect them to behave, won’t crash and won’t leave you scratching your head or punting the thing through a window. The Apple ‘ecosystem’ (how I hate that word) is all built to work together too. The AirPlay feature, for example, means you can stream pretty much anything from the iPad to the Apple TV (not-so-curiously Apple’s only other notably cheap device).

Of course, there are things you can’t do on it, for example ‘proper’ writing, as many authors will attest, but that will surely come when Apple (or Scrivener) figure out how to do it properly. I can’t see Android or RIM overcoming that particular hurdle first, either.

Here’s the big thing, the thing that most analysts seem to be missing. Apple has moved the goalposts. The incoming crop of competing tablets were only just on a par with the iPad. Yes, they have more raw power and hardware features, but they’re bigger, heavier, don’t last as long and, crucially, they’re more expensive and nowhere near as usable. It’s the polar opposite of the mobile phone equation, but Motorola, Samsung and HP just don’t have the chops to move in to the “high-end” of the tablet space in the same way that Apple did in the phone market. The only way I can see them achieving any decent market share is to undercut Apple on price and with production costs being what they are on new lines, plus the fact that Apple have knocked £100 off the iPad 1 (and if they continue production of that device, even the Chinese need to watch out!) I don’t believe they can.

Heaping more misery on them, they can’t do anything that the iPad can’t, and there’s plenty that Apple’s tablet can do that they’re at least two generations away from. WebOS is the only viable contender I’ve seen in terms of “Continuous Client”-type technology, but it’s vapourware at the moment – the public will have had iPad 2′s in its grubby mitts for almost six months when the TouchPad arrives. Android, while blessed with Google apps that work really well on a phone, doesn’t seem to have anything to differentiate itself in the tablet space.

So, much as I dislike monopolies and closed-source where technology is concerned, and much as I cringed at Saint Steve’s crowing and hyperbole, I really can’t imagine – aside from über-geeks and Apple-haters – who is going to buy a heavier, more expensive device that doesn’t last as long or work as well. I know I’m not.

Here it is, then, prediction time. I’m going to say that, while their market share may dive a little – say to 80-85% through 2011, their sales volumes will remain through the roof, and that the loss in market share will be down to cheap Chinese kit at least as much as it is to ‘legitimate’ competitors like RIM and HTC. I think Apple are more than safe for another twelve months.

By which time the iPad 3 will be out…

*And, to be fair, the creation of the company, back in 1990, did come from a collaboration between Acorn and Apple, so they have done a bit of innovating…

Fernando Torres is NOT a Waste of Money

Apologies for the footballish nature of this post, but deal with it.

Before anyone jumps on the bandwagon of overpaid footballers and how Chelsea were seen coming by the scousers, think on this. We should not bemoan any lack of production from Fernando Torres. Our £50m-man is merely continuing the proud tradition of over-priced and under-performing Chelsea front-men.

Consider; since Kerry Dixon, who finished playing in 1992, Chelsea have bankrolled the following*;

Robert Fleck, 1992, £2.1m, a club record fee. He was the league’s leading scorer in 1992, but managed just 4 in 48 for the Blues before being binned.

Paul Furlong, 1993, £2.3m. Another club record, another disappointment. Furlong scored 13 goals in 65 appearances before leaving two years later.

Gianfranco Zola, 1996, £4.5m. Not quite a record, as Robbie Di Matteo also came in that year. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Maybe not an out-and-out striker, but one of the trickiest players there has ever been. If only he’d played another year, partnered Drogba and won the league… 59 goals in 229 Premier League appearances.

Pierluigi Casiraghi, 1998, £5.4m. Also a club record fee and, predictably, things did not go well. We’d even heard of Gigi, but he only managed 10 games, 1 goal and a ruptured ligament that forced him to retire. Maybe not his fault, but still.

Chris Sutton, 1999, £10m. Guess what? Yet another record. Big Chris played 29 times in the Premiership for Chelsea, scored but a single goal, and was shown the door a year later.

Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, 2000, £15m. We finally got one right, but my god was he stroppy.  177 apps, 70 goals.

Eidur Gudjohnsen, 2000, £4m. One of the best buys we ever made. Eidur may not have been quick, but he had a great touch and a wonderful footballing brain. His partnership with Jimmy Floyd made the first couple of years of the decade a great time to support Chelsea. And he was cheap. 54 goals in 196.

Adrian Mutu, 2003, £15.8m. Yes, a record. Brilliant in Italy, not so much here. Scored a couple of crackers in his first few games before breaking down, failing a doping test and being sacked. Good effort. Scored 6 in 27.

Hernan Crespo, 2003, £16.8m. Then, 12 days later, the record was broken again! This one lasted nearly 5 years, most of it on loan, played 59 games in the Prem and scored 20 goals – not bad in this company.

Mateja Kezman, 2004, £5m. A cut-price bargain, this, and a secret weapon at that. Top scorer in the Dutch league with a goals to games ratio of nearly 1 in 2, we had high hopes. Sadly, the Dutch league is crap, and so was Kezman. 4 goals in 25 games and it was off to madrid for the odd-looking gnome.

Didier Drogba, 2004, £24m. Record-breaking, yadda-yadda. He may also be stroppy and go down like a ten-dollar hooker, but he’s the best player we’ve ever had. At his peak, he’s better than anyone else in any position anywhere in the world(though I haven’t seen him in goal). 191 apps, 93 goals and still going.

Andriy Shevchenko, 2006, £30.8m. I’m getting tired of typing “club record fee”. 9 goals in 47 appearances. £30m for that, you must be mad…

Saloman Kalou, 2006, £9m. Yes, he’s young, yes, he was (relatively) cheap. But he’s also not very good. He’s stuck around for 134 PL games, though, and scored 32, so maybe history will judge him differently.

Nicolas Anelka, 2008, £15m. I never liked Anelka when he played for anyone else, and found it hard to accept him wearing blue. He is, however, insanely quick and talented and he seems to have knocked the nonsense on the head. Sadly, he’s also been more in competition than tandem with Drogba. Rumour is he’ll be making way at the end of the year. Still, he’s at least managed to change my opinion of him. 37 goals in 107 appearances isn’t bad, either.

And so

Fernando Torres, 2011, £50m. A Club and Premiership record. He was great for Liverpool in 2009, not so much in 2010 and seemed crocked in the world cup. We’ve seen flashes so far this season, and then came the big transfer. So far; appearances: 3 goals: 0.

Ov the 14 previous strikers, I reckon that’s 4 (and a half, with Anelka) good ones. A strike rate of nearly one in three. Not bad if you’re a betting person, or if you want to compare yourself with most of the strikers listed above. Pretty poor in real terms though. Which side of the fence will Torres fall on?

* Yes, I know I’ve missed some strikers out. They’re generally the inexpensive, solid-but-unspectacular types, though – John Spencer (he scored one of the best goals ever in the cup-winner’s cup, however!), Mark Stein and so on.

And it’s Goodbye from me…

I wrote, just a few posts and almost a year ago, about my experiences with Twitter, detailing the way it developed in my consciousness via a twee series of “twepiphanies” (see what I did there?)

The other night, after a couple of pleasant hours in the company of the Twitterverse – the first time I’d dropped by for any length of time in several months – I had my sixth, and possibly final, twepiphany; turns out I’m a Twitter Quitter.

There are three things which are important in my life just now. In rapidly descending order of importance, they are my family, my writing and my job. Two of those three can be sustained quite happily alongside whatever geeky displacement activities I can muster. However, since “work” recently presenting a hugely welcome and challenging change of role, I’ve had to split my brain three ways, and something’s got to give.

Let me be clear; I love my family, I want to make a proper fist of writing, and I need to be good at my job. Very different drivers for each, but each incredibly demanding. I’ll be clear on one more thing; I am a procrastinator. No, I am the very archetype of procrastination. Whole weekends can be spent naval-gazing unless I expend titanic reserves of willpower. If we’d had the internet while I was at school (and Britain employed the same yearly graduation method as our American cousins) I believe I would still be somewhere between third year seniors (whatever the hell grade that is these days) and my GCSEs. The productivity centre of my brain has a sticking handbrake. I am inertia made man.

Even thinking up similes for procrastination is being used, by my lazy brain, as an excuse not to continue writing this – right here, right now – in a train carriage just outside Wembley Park station. Procrastination and pool seem destined to be the two things I’m good at in life. Enough.

Twitter is a massive enabler for procrastinators. Qwit, DestroyTwitter, Seesmic or Twidroid exert a powerful gravitational pull whenever we try to do something productive. Even though I’ve not been actively tweeting for a while, I have been dipping my toe in now and again to see what’s what. I see a comment that tickles me. So I view the conversation. Which gets me to thinking, “oh, I wonder how so-and-so’s getting on?”. So I check out their profile, which leads me on to something else, then there’s a weblink or a blog and… Whaddaya mean it’s lunchtime?!

So I came to a decision that night, looking out at the lawn I didn’t mow last week because I’m such a terrible… oh right, we’ve covered that. It’s a tough decision, true enough. There are many excellent people I’ve met and shot the breeze with through Twitter who I would never have met or dared talk to in person, and for that I am eternally grateful. Without the advice and encouragement of some of those people, I would not now be seriously considering writing for anything more than my own amusement. Many of them have my email address and most are also on the dread Facebook, so they’re not going to shake me just yet. Be warned, though, I am crap at staying in touch (see above). Feel free to rip me a new one if I you think I’m ignoring you.

Unlike some, I don’t view Twitter as an evil time-sink. It’s there and I decide to spend time using it, nothing more. Fortunately, I don’t have an addictive personality (far too lazy for that). Remove immediate temptation by way of uninstalling the client and I won’t use it.

Trust me, if Facebook had a similar rash of apps that enhanced its features, I’d be all over the thing. The web interface, though… not so much. Other than Bejeweled Blitz, that is. Have to keep myself on a short leash there.

So I suppose this is it. Get to work, remove DT from my laptop, uninstall Twidroid from the phone and, when I get home this evening, sort out the big computer. Done. Maybe I won’t post this until tonight, just to give myself a little wiggle room…

I never say never, indeed I hope there’s a time in the future when I can slot some Twitter-time back into my day (with any luck I’ll return as a wildly successful author, more likely my job will have become comfortably dull, with the outside shot being that the kids have gone away to University) but, for now, this is adieu.

There’s a nightly sign-off one of my favourite Twitterers uses on occasion (possibly after a little too much of the wine) which is breathtaking, embodies for me the true spirit and attitude that makes Twitter great, but which I daren’t repeat in full here. It starts “Laters taters, while crocodile…” For those who know and appreciate how it ends, I’ll miss your company and wonderfully spontaneous, colourful banter. Make sure you bug me on FB or over email, and keep the twiss-up invites coming!

Cheers,

Gavin

Toilets: Rules of Engagement

Right. This should be blatantly obvious to any men reading, so there’s probably no need for them to continue (get me, the self-publicist). Treat this post more as an effort to explain the subtle arts of Gentlemen’s Micturations (and defecations) to ladies, in order to help them understand what complex creatures we are.

So. Onward.

Imagine you enter a public (men’s) lavatory. There are five hypothetical urinals, which we’ll call A, B, C, D and E. There are also some stalls, or traps. Their number is irrelevant and they require no designation.

These are the rules.

1. If you are the first man to enter the lavatory (that is, there is no-one else taking a piss), you should use urinals A or E.

2. The second man in takes the opposite – E or A.

3. Third man uses C.

4. That’s it. This lavatory was designed for the concurrent use of three men only*. If you really can’t wait, use a trap.

5. In the event that the urinals are full (A, C & E in use), all traps occupied and you’re desperate**, run to the disabled convenience or, failing that, the Ladies’.

6. On no account should you continue, or worse begin, a conversation with a fellow toiletman.

7. This applies doubly if your conversational partner enters a trap.

8. Tenfold if it’s you on the throne.

9. The lavatory is also not the place to conduct a telephonic conversation. (Twitter on the shitter is allowed, in extremis**)

10. A good fart rarely goes down better than when you’re standing having a piss with a bunch of similarly drunken men but bear in mind that, though the traps are just behind you, it’s still rarely wise to push that turtle’s head too far.

11. It is apparently mandatory to hock the largest loogie possible and slowly spit it into the stream of your own piss. I believe this is meant either to mark territory or as a show of macho prowess.

12. Similarly, if in a trap (and not Twittering), spend your time fruitfully by excavating a bogey larger than your nasal cavity and flicking it onto the door as close to (seated) eye-level as you can. Bonus points if there’s some blood in it.

13. For fuck’s sake, wash your hands.

14. If you are unfortunate to find a toilet that still contains one of those old rotary hand towel things, wipe your hands on your jeans.

* Urinals B & D are only there as “overflow” – literally, they will only be used in the case that urinals A or E are overflowing. Note that this takes the overall (standing) capacity of the rest room to two, as urinal C will now be out of bounds due to the proximity effect.

** The term “desperate” here refers to the immediate threat of voiding either bladder, bowel or stomach (or possibly all three) due to the effects of drink or, more rarely, the Ebola virus.

*** ie you’re after a crafty ten minutes peace and quiet because some idiot’s bought a round of tequilas, you’re hiding from an ex-girlfriend who’s just entered the pub, or your Mother-in-law’s there.

That’s about it, I think. Quite simple really. If anyone can think of something I’ve missed, please let me know and I’ll amend this set for the next printing.

Peace,

GBN.

It’s My Birthday

Afternoon.

I woke up this morning with some trite crap in my head about life being like a journey on a conveyor belt. Older generations – parents and grandparents – were up ahead and, eventually, kids and grandkids appeared behind.

Trying to walk backwards on the conveyor is useless as, due to relativity, it’s travelling into the future at the speed of light (near as dammit) and the thing is that you don’t notice how fast you’re travelling until the horizon begins to shorten with bum-clenching alacrity.

This is how I imagine most mid-life crises begin; this crystalisation of mortality followed by a frantic, panicked, paddling back upstream in the direction of the younger fishies.

It’s pointless, of course, and you end up looking a dick in the overpowered convertible that your reflexes can no longer handle,  sporting a fake tan and a haircut that would look ridiculous on someone half your age.

The thing is, that horizon’s still coming, still hurtling towards you at the same speed, only now you’re pointing the wrong way, so you can’t see it coming. Surely better to turn around and look Fate square in the eye, right?

I’ve no idea why I’m getting so maudlin about all this. I’m only 35, for chuff’s sake. Gender-neutral-most-likely-non-existant-pantheon-of-gods willing, that’s not even halfway. Perhaps I’m just turning into precisely the type of miserable old bugger I’d assumed would appear in my dotage a little early. Ah well. Might make me more fun at parties.

There was supposed to be a punchline in here somewhere, but it seems to have got lost in translation, sorry about that. Hang around for the next post, you might like it better.

G.

Public Service Announcement #1

“Hi,” I said, “I’m John.”
“Martha,” she replied, “pleased to meet you.” We shook hands, her warm skin and sparkling eyes causing a frisson down my spine. This speed dating evening was the first I’d been to and, so far, it was going well.
“So tell me,” I said, “what do you do for a living?”
“Oh, I’m a shoe monitor.” Martha replied with a smile. I must have looked rather baffled for she laughed; a pretty sound like tinkling bells. “It’s a new position that some high-up at London Underground invented.” She explained, “I go up and down the carriages and if I see someone with their feet on the seats I remove them.”
I was temporarily at a loss. “That must, er, have its moments?” I managed, weakly. Martha, who had leant over to rummage in her large, shapeless handbag, looked up at me and grinned with enthusiasm.
“Oh, its much more rewarding than you’d imagine,” she said, laying a massive, heavy and wickedly sharp looking meat cleaver on the table between us. “But the blood’s a bugger to get out of the seat fabric.”

Welcome to the 34,221,498th Blog Post on the iPad

That figure at the top’s probably out of date by the time you read this.

Firstly, a disclaimer. This post is being written straight off the top of my head, only a couple of hours after I wore out the F5 key refreshing the various feeds from Apple’s event. I’m just smooshing ideas around in my head. The likelihood is that I’ve overlooked some things and will be calamitously  wrong about others. Continue on at your own risk.

So, this iPad then. Is it the revolutionary device that will destroy all netbooks and relegate the printed word to the dark ages, or is it just a steroid-inflated iPod Touch?

Let me start with one thing that Steve Jobs said right at the beginning of his keynote (according to the Engadget liveblog). He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that if there were to be a third category of device, somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop, it would have to be far better at doing some key tasks, and he cited browsing, email, video, ebooks and photo viewing as examples of those tasks. He said that some people thought that the netbook would fit into this category, but that the netbook wasn’t better at anything. He got a big laugh for that, but I think it’s the bedrock for his entire philosophy for this new device.

Let me explain. A lot of people, myself included, dismissed netbooks when they first appeared as having too-tiny screens and too-slow processors. And then I actually got one. The thing that most people overlook (and again, I’m one of them) is how far hardware has outstripped software, particularly operating system software. Consider Windows, however distasteful that may be. Back in the mid-90′s, we had the first pentiums, running at the ungodly speed of 75MHz. They were packed with 16 megs of memory and sported (if you were lucky) one  gigabyte hard disks. And they ran Windows 95. In the intervening 15 years, we’ve seen ’98, 2000, XP, Vista and, now, Windows 7. Quite how they get to 7 when the one before 95 was 3.1 I don’t know, but I digress.

The recommended system requirements form Win95 were these; 486 processor (We’ll assume DX/4 100 for the sake of argument), 8mb RAM, 55mb hard disk space. For Windows 7 they are; 1GHz processor, 2Gb RAM, 20Gb hard disk. Discounting processor generations, that’s a  ten-fold increase in speed, 256 times as much memory and about 375 times as much space on disk. Seems a lot.

Now consider the last two computers I built. Coincidentally, one was in 1995 and the second was last year (I kid you not). The 1995 vintage had a 486DX/4 100, 8mb RAM and a 500mb HDD stuffed within it. That’s spot on for processor and memory and nearly ten times the amount of disk required for Win95, Nice. Last year’s box contained a 3.2GHz processor, 8Gb RAM and  2TB of HDD. Hmm. That’s three times the processing grunt needed for Redmond’s latest offering, four times the RAM and, well, I won’t need to worry about disk space for a while. Oh, and the processor’s got four cores, so, erm, never mind. You get the point.

In any case, I run Linux, exclusively, so I don’t give a fig for what Microsoft say I need. Ubuntu runs perfectly well on all the computers in the house, including my netbook. What Mr Jobs probably won’t want to hear is that OSX also runs on the netbook – I’ve tried it (for academic purposes only). In fact, it runs faster than Ubuntu. I’ll put that down to the extra work they’ve done on optimising their code and the fact that all but the barest minimum of drivers are loaded. It’s a lovely OS. So why didn’t Saint Steve stick it in his tablet? 

Of course, other than eye candy, the OS’s real job is to provide applications with the resources they require and this is what really kills your PC. Remember the old days, when you had a 14″ CRT monitor running at 640×480 with only room for one app on the screen? No tabbed browsing? No rich media content? Then Nescape went and spoiled it and Flash came along jumping up and down for attention and… All of this stuff eats memory and, to get back on point, it’s this sort of thing that Apple have neatly and elegantly avoided.

By refusing to put a “proper” operating system on the thing and saddling it with a single-threaded environment, Apple have allowed the minimal OS to assign every available resource to the task at hand. It doesn’t need to worry about window management, about allocating succicient system memory or CPU cycles to background processes. It’s just “here you go, mate, all you can eat” to whichever app is on screen.

Now this is no bad thing for a “media” device, like the iPod, but if we’re talking about a proper computer there are issues. For example, as an eBook reader it looks beautiful, but what if I want to write an essay and I’m using some eBooks as reference. Can I alt-tab and flick between the word processor and the book? Can I switch to my Twitter client for a 5 minute break, then bring up my email? All without saving (or losing) my essay? Will I have to reopen the word processor each time? From what I’ve seen of the interface, it does fairly fly along, but it’s only doing one thing at a time. If you can stick a keyboard on it (and you can) people will expect it to act like a real computer, which I don’t think it can. (Please note, I would *love* to be proved wrong on this).

What Apple’s engineers have cleverly done is something like the Emperor’s new clothes. They’ve shown the public a technically inferior product (My 2-year-old netbook has a faster, if less efficient, processor), made it look stunning and given it enough polish that it excels in areas that present well. I don’t believe it will be anywhere near as versatile as a netbook.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate the design or functionality that they have squeezed in – Apple are masters of the UI and their hardware is unparalleled. But let me tell you what I wish they’d done. The form factor is stunning. Leave that alone. But stick a proper processor in there – an Intel mobile dual core jobbie. And a decent amount of RAM, say 2GB. A 64GB SSD is OK, but that should be the baseline. And for god’s sake, a full version of OSX. Put it under the covers, by all means, the touch UI is clearly a winner, but let me run real software, like Scrivener and (erk) MS Office on it. Oh, and this is the killer, stick a displayport on the side, so I can drive my 24″ widescreen monitor with the thing.

Obviously that wish list would have blown the size constraints, not to mention giving it the battery life of, er, my G1 phone, and it would have got so hot that you wouldn’t be able to hold it. But it would have been amazing. What we have now is not so much more than an oversized iPod Touch after all and, while that’s not such a bad thing, it’s not going to do nearly everything that I (and I have some pretty strenuous requirements) want it to do. In fact, its pricing, which is pretty spectacular by Apple standards, actually makes the 64Gb iPod Touch at £290 seem like a good deal. But then what would I use that for? Bejeweled Blitz and Scrabble, that’s what. Those would be the two most expensive games I’ve ever bought.

So thanks, Apple, but no. Right now I’ll take a pass on the newest jewel in your crown. I may covet it like crazy and I’ll surely go all dribbly and incoherent the first time I get to play with one, but it’s not for me. I’ll stick to my cheap, slow, ugly netbook with its outdated UI metaphor (whatever the hell one of those is) and wait for the next big thing.

GBN