ABCe Interact
Last night I took a break from my holiday to attend ABCe’s Interact evening with Rob at London’s Namco. The evening was an industry get together with a few speakers and more importantly free booze ‘n bumper cars!
The evening started with the three ‘industry’ speakers, fortunately all with a ten minute limit! The first two were fairly clichéd - complete with the old “Digital Natives” vs. “Digital Immigrants…” hey - I could quote Rupert Murdoch and be called an industry expert too you know! However the last guy, who if memory serves, was from the Guardian Online (although it is entirely possible I’m making that bit up) was very interesting. What stuck out in my mind was his idea that the internet is in some ways actually moving society backward - the written letter (albeit the electronic letter) replacing the phone call as preferred method of communication and that hundreds of thousands of people who have never contemplated stealing pick and mix are now pirating music off the net. He also talked about how the MySpace profiles of our future polititons are currently being written and promptly archived for prosperity. I won’t comment on these ideas here - but I will say that they were fairly thought provoking.
The rest of the evening was great! We had exclusive free use of the whole lower level of the Namco centre… complete with: Pool… Daytona Racing… Time Crises 3… House of the Dead… Virtual Skiing… Laser Bowling… Tennis… That Weird Dancing Game that Rob likes… and best of all: Bumper Cars!
As the evening progressed and the free booze flowed all of the questions from the dawn of time that have plagued man were answered: Can one man bowl in two lanes at once? What about backwards bowling? Blindfold bowling? The answer being: Given enough beer, anything is possible!
More photos here.
My Sweet Lord: Fury at Chocolate Jesus
I saw this in my RSS News Feeds this morning…
One of the major parts of Christianity is the death and resurrection of Christ, to celebrate this Christians give up (or sacrifice) a luxury food for a period of time to remind them of the suffering of Christ on the cross… mean while children play with eggs as a symbol of rebirth. Well that’s kinda it any way…
So, combine luxury food with eggs and of course you get Chocolate Eggs… and from there you get the Easter Bunny and forget about giving stuff up and the sadistic torture of the Sun God… (Sorry, that’s the Son of God, I always get the two mixed up!)
But not any more! In a deliciously ironic piece the artist Cosimo Cavallaro has made an anatomically detailed sculpture of Christ made entirely out of milk chocolate! The puns keep flowing… as does the Catholic out rage!
Shopping in Bluewater
Day two of the holiday and I went shopping. After a healthy lay in I set off in the sun to Blue Water shopping centre. It’s on the wrong side of the Thames for me so I broke out the Euros and my passpor… just kidding!
Not being a house wife, heavily pregnant or a truant teenager I did feel a bit out of place going mid-week! My only purchase was some clothes from All Saints. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, more and more of their stuff is starting to be branded with their logo, which is something I hate. I love their designs not their brand!
When I got home I relaxed in front of the TV and did some writing, not for the blog - just for me - which is something I haven’t done in nearly six months… I even used a pen and paper!
Lunch and a Walk in the Country
Today being my Dad’s Birthday, and more unprecedentedly, the first day of my holiday from work, we decided to met up with some old friends of my parents for lunch. We went to a little village called Thaxted, which is in deepest Essex. I think I managed to scare some locals with my long hair and trench coat… or it could have been my camera.
We had a pub lunch in The Swan which was followed by possibly the nicest Irish Coffee I’ve had. All in all a very good first day off…
Convicts handed keys to Human Rights
I found this on FARK today. It’s an article in my favourite ‘news paper’ (The Daily Mail) about some prisons giving some prisoners keys to their own cells.
After a closer inspection of this fear inspiring piece of journalism I found a few things worthy of comment. The first being what the story actually is:
Some prisoners are given keys to their own cells to promote a sense of responsibility for themselves or so they can protect their property (or their person) from other prisoners. So this astonishing measure
is in fact an attempt to promote the rehabilitation and security of in-mates… What’s the problem with that?
The next thing I spotted that made me chuckle was a theme best summed up by these quotes:
The astonishing measure prompted a furious response from MPs last night, who warned that the human-rights culture was out of control.
These people are banged up for a reason. But the Government seems more concerned about the human rights of criminals than those of their victims…
So is this scheme the result of Human Rights legislation? No. Was it put in place for ‘fear’ of Human Rights legislation? No. So what has it got to do with Human Rights? Nothing.
We seem to be in the middle of a huge public relations offensive against Human Rights at the minute and I hate to see the spin doctoring of stories like this to put them in a negative light. You see last time I looked I’m a human… and I like the idea of laws that protect me. For example one day, God forbid, you or I could be accused of a crime and I’m really keen on neither of us (well maybe you, but defiantly not me) getting beaten up in Police custody by other prisoners (or by authorities trying to extract a confession…) so aren’t having guaranteed rights a good thing?
The last thing that caught my eye was this shocking report that:
£750,000 [was spent on] nearly 200 drug addicts who suffered withdrawal symptoms after they were forced to go ‘cold turkey’
Umm… isn’t that a good thing too? Surely reducing peoples’ dependancy on drugs will also reduce the likelihood that they will re-offend? Mel Gibson aside, drink slash drug addiction is a serious illness that leads (if not forces) a lot of people into crime… and only The Daily Mail could take exception to their treatment.
So why do ‘Conservatives’ want to see us give up our Human Rights? For a long time I thought that it was simply because the money grabbing SOBs wanted to go back to the industrial revolution days and fill their factories with slave children and not have to waste money catering for disabled people whilst discriminating against every one who isn’t just like them… But these days I’ve become more cynical and think that, while employees not having the right to those unproductive screen breaks would be nice, the real problem is that Human Rights are European… and we all know what that means, don’t we boys and girls?
Jelly Fish Launches (as does Ceros 1.8)
Last week we launched Ceros 1.8 which saw some major changes to the Publisher’s Portal along with some improvements to the page turning engine… but, more excitingly, today saw the launch of another major new consumer weekly, Jelly Fish, which is the digital offering from NatMags’ Cosmo Girl.
Like Monkey, this another example of a huge publisher designing a title specially for the Digital Edition medium and boy does it show!
Check out their CDE here!