General Musings for the week of 2nd May 2010

So I've voted in the elections. Hopefully you all did too (UK registered voters, obviously). I voted by post which is the only way to do it. The interesting thing is that every postal ballot paper has a reference number on the back of it. Thus can be cross-referenced back to your name and thus they know how you voted. So much for privacy in voting.

I hear that British Gas have an iPhone app. You can use it to tell them your meter reading when they've charged you the wrong amount. Except it only allows you to send a meter reading when they've undercharged you, not when they've overcharged you. Sounds about right for British Gas.

One more bank holiday out of the way here in the UK. Unlike the rest of Europe we Brits decided that our May Day celebrations wouldn't fall on the first day of May, they would fall on the first Monday of May regardless of what day that was. So all the continental Europeans who had Saturday to celebrate could look upon us enviously as we swanned around at home on Monday. Although being a typical Bank Holiday the weather was less than ideal. In one 30 minute period I was rained on, blown sideways, frozen and sunburned! Don't you just love the British weather?

Just heard that Johnny Depp and the guys from Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides will be coming over to London to film some of their scenes. Should be great to get back together with him if it works out.

So BP - a company which spends millions every year promoting itself as environmentally caring - is kicking out thousands of barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico. Can you spell Greenwashing ?


Props to my man Jon T. I've just heard that he's heading out to Argentina this weekend to take part in a new game show where the loser is ejected unceremoniously in an adrenaline fueled way. If he loses he's hoping he gets to drive a car off a ramp into a vat of mud. It takes all sorts I suppose.

More next week.

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Rating movies, movie reviews and the search for the 'perfect' movie

Image via Wikipedia

My good friend and fellow blogger Algo rants and raves about numerous topics over at his Wall Shadows blog, but mostly he reviews movies he has seen. He has developed a method of rating movies on a scale of 0 to 10. If you check out his site you’ll see that he has ratings for upwards of 120 movies (most of which have reviews attached to them) The ratings include the whole range of numbers (as you would expect) but with most of them playing in a '3' to '8' range.

But there are a number of movies that are rated at '10'. For example Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’ is rated at a 10. As are ‘Metropolis’, ‘Seven Samurai’ and ‘The Dark Knight’. Algo and I have a running debate about these ratings (If you follow some of the comments you'll understand why).

Obviously Algo is perfectly entitled to rate his movies however he wishes (and it isn’t my intention to defame either his ratings, his site or his methodology), but it did get me thinking about what sort of a rating system I would put together and whether - in my rating system - there could be such a thing as a perfect movie, let alone 4 of them.

There are a series of questions I would have to ask myself if using a similar rating system. For example:

“Are ratings date dependent?” If I rate a movie as, say, 6/10 when I see it and then - in light of subsequent movies I watch - decide that this rating is inappropriate, can I go back and re-rate this movie? For me, for example, Donnie Darko was a fairly obscure and lowly rated movie (probably a 6/10) when I first saw it. Having re-watched it recently, and in light of watching subsequent disappointing movies by the same director, would I change the rating? Probably. I think it's now worth a 7 or an 8. What about remakes? Psycho (1960) vs Psycho (1998) are ostensibly the same movie shot-for-shot. So would they rate the same? Difficult to say. Probably not - the remake looses marks for originality. But if that is the case, what about the upcoming remake of ‘Clash of The Titans’? It is based on the same story as the 1981 movie, but the script is different (much different!). There is an amount of nostalgia for the first one but - from the footage I’ve seen of the remake (and I’ve seen about 10 minutes of roughly edited footage) - this will be a completely different movie. How would it rate against the original? That depends on your view of the original. I didn’t particularly like it and I welcome the remake, but others have the opposing view.

Do they rate proportional to ALL movies or just similar movies in the genre? I went to see a school production of 'Les Miserables' the other day. In the great pantheon of theatre productions it probably rated about  4 or a 5 out of 10. But as a school production it was easily the best, most ambitious and complex production I have ever seen and would easily rate as a 9/10 (or maybe even a 10/10). Would the same hold true for movies? For example would, say, a 9/10 for the original X-men indicate that this is a great movie by any measure possible, or would it indicate that this is a great comic-book adaptation movie? Does a 9/10 for a comic book movie meet the same criteria for a 9/10 horror movie?

What about other movies by the same director (Terry Gilliam, for example?) Are movies being rated with a view to whether they are the best movies per se, or the best movies by a given director? Let’s take Terry Gilliam. Would I rate, say, ‘The Fisher King’ as a 9/10 knowing that ‘Brazil’ is probably a better Terry Gilliam movie? Or would I be influenced by the fact that ‘Brazil’ had such a difficult gestation with all the Sid Sheinberg interference and the re-editing to create an unauthorised US version (“The Happy Ever After Ending”)? I’ve already mentioned the ‘Donnie Darko’ example above. Subsequent movies by Richard Kelly have proven to be a disappointment. Does this make ‘Donnie Darko’ an even better movie? What about David Lynch movies? He has some pretty weird flicks on the go. ‘Mulholland Drive’ is very watchable if a tad confusing, but Inland Empire is virtually unwatchable by all accounts. (Algo rated it ‘pigs/10’ and couldn’t get his head around it on first watching, although he did like it). How would these rate against each other?

Is there such a thing as a perfect movie? Perfection is something that can only be aspired to. Algo’s description of a 10/10 movie is “There are no perfect films. This is as close as you'll get.”. So should there be more than 1 perfect movie? Of course. If we are working on the basis that a 10/10 is ‘as close to perfection as can be achieved’ then there are obviously movies which achieve that in different peoples opinions. I love ‘The Dark Knight’ for example, but do I think it is perfect? No. Is it close to perfect? No. Is it good? Absolutely, but there are too many plot holes and inconsistencies in it for me to rate it that high. (See this video for a few examples). I would rate The Godfather as a 10/10 because it is a consummate piece of movie making with a great story, great acting and a technical proficiency that was unsurpassed at the time. So is Toy Story. Are their sequels as good as the original? Probably. Do the sequels rate a 10/10? No, because they were lacking the originality factor of the first movies. Of course perfection (or the approximation of perfection) is a very subjective thing. It is like the appreciation of beauty in a women. There are a number of people who are deemed to be ‘pretty’ according to popular opinion but who just leave me cold. (Scarlett Johanssen, Uma Thurman, Julie Roberts, for example). It is the same with movies. Looking at Billy Wilder’s movies, I don’t think he actually made a bad one. But comparing ‘Sunset Boulevard’ with ‘The Apartment’ with ‘Some Like it Hot’ is purely a matter of personal opinion. For the record I would rank them 1) Some like it Hot, 2) Sunset Boulevard 3) The Apartment. Are they 10/10 movies? No. But they are close.

Summary
The only thing to say about movie ratings is that they are, by definition, subjective. I used to say - back in the old days of watching Barry Norman on Film 72 to 98 - that if Barry rated a movie highly I would be sure to avoid it. His taste in movie was almost diametrically opposed to mine. However now that Jonathon Ross is sitting in the presenters seat I find that his views align more with mine than Barry’s did (although it could be said that his views are not radically different to Barry Norman’s, but my tastes have changed as I have aged). So it is with movie ratings. Algo has a set of ratings, and a world view, that differs from mine. It doesn’t make any of his ratings incorrect. It just makes them different.

And we love and cherish the difference. If everyone thought the same it would make the world very boring - although it would make movie marketing a lot easier.

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A retrospective on... Raiders Of The Lost Ark

It’s been almost 30 years since the first Indiana Jones movie - “Raiders of The Lost Ark” -  was released. In the intervening years the character has gone on to bigger and better things - including chasing alien skulls and avoiding gophers in last years 3rd sequel - but most people remember the original with a great deal of fondness. From the spectacular opening scene with the little gold buddha and the rolling rock, to the fight under the flying wing aircraft, the capture in the snake-infested Well of Souls, the valiant escape by shooting the sword-wielding attacker, being smuggled aboard Katanga’s boat and shimmying across to the submarine when the German’s boarded it, to the climax at the end when the Ark is opened and the faces melted, to the final shot of the ark disappearing into seemingly endless warehouse of similar boxes. Absolutely classic!

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How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn't Dumb | Fast Company

via fastcompany.com

Here are four mission statements. Two are from real organizations. Two were created by Dilbert's Automatic Mission Statement Generator. Can you guess which ones are genuine?

1. It is our job to continually foster world-class infrastructures as well as to quickly create principle-centered sources to meet our customer's needs.

2. Our challenge is to assertively network economically sound methods of empowerment so that we may continually negotiate performance-based infrastructures.

3. To improve lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities.

4. Respect, integrity, communication, and excellence.

If you can't tell which is which (and you probably can't) then this article from fastcompany.com should be mandatory reading. Look at how sentimental, nebulous feelings have taken over from hard objectives in mission statements. As the article says 'Mission statements are like corporate Hallmark Cards'.

Make yours stand out by employing the 'BHAG' technique...

Posted via web from The Posterous Cafe

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Let's talk underwear shall we?

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About 12 years ago I was on a skiing holiday with friends in Austria. Some of the girls had managed to inveigle a couple of the Austria Ski instructors back to our chalet and we were chatting about Austrian/English things. One of the girls made mention of "Marks & Spencer" and the Austrians, naturally, were puzzled as they had no knowledge of what "Marks & Spencer" was. By way of explanation I asked the following of the group "When I call out your name could you please indicate with either a 'yes' or a 'no' whether the underwear you currently have on was purchased at Marks & Spencer?" I then went around the room calling out the name of each of the 12 members of the ski party. 10 replied in the positive.

Now, some dozen years later I would be surprised if the same poll had anywhere near the same results. But why? Well there are a number of possible reasons. M&S lost sight of it's customers for a while in the late 90's The rising cost of using British suppliers was also a burden, as rival retailers increasingly imported their goods from low-cost countries, but M&S's belated switch to overseas suppliers undermined a core part of its appeal to the public as it prided itself on sourcing only from the UK. Another factor was the company's refusal until 2000 to accept any credit cards except its own store card. In addition, as an aging and famously bureaucratic company, it was losing touch with potential younger customers, who were reluctant to shop with it. The net result is that turnover dropped, profits dropped and customers left in droves. Recent initiatives to stem this tide appear to be working but there is still a fundamental problem that M&S have with their products. They have let competitors in. Back when I took my poll of skiers, the number of places that would supply underwear to the masses was limited. British Home Stores and Woolworths were other possible places. But both of these have suffered along with M&S - in fact Woolworth's no longer exists as an organisation. But more insidious than this was the rise of dedicated stores seeking to take market share away from M&S. Knickerbox, Contessa, La Sensa and other such outfitters took on the niche market with products that were priced competitively and promoted well. As a result the British public had somewhere to go for their 'smalls' when M&S failed them. And they never went back.

What's the moral of this story? Well, as Seth Godin would no doubt agree: Sometimes you have to keep pushing forward and making your presence known even if you are the dominant player. Standing still in the world of business is equivalent to going backwards. M&S found this out the hard way.

Will you?

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(You should follow me on twitter here)

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• M&S chairman to face his critics (news.bbc.co.uk)

(You should follow me on twitter here)

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It's quiet.. too quiet

You may have noticed that things have been fairly quiet on the Musings Cafe. This is due to two reasons

1) My other job has started to interfere with my blogging (This is good. It pays money)
2) I wanted to make sure that the articles I do post are worth reading and not just 'filler'

In the mean time let me draw your attention to a couple of the more popular posts on this blog in case you are new here and want to see what it's all about.

I wrote a set of articles on the Environment and going green
I wrote a couple of articles about my new Mac and how it compared with my PC
Here are the articles I wrote entitled "Things I didn't know last week"
Here are my articles on working as an Extra.
I also wrote a couple of articles that I deemed to be humorous (Judge for yourself)

I would encourage you to check out the other articles here. Some of them are actually very good (even if I do say so myself!)

Please feel free to subscribe using either -mail or RSS (Click the icon in the left hand column). If you wish you can always leave a comment (Here is my comment publishing policy).

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Thought for the day: The cheap air fare becomes 'less cheap' ... with a price cut(?)

Those of you who read my "Flying Cafe" blog will know of my thoughts on Ryanair and their flight pricing practices.

Well, it appears that they are going one step further in their cheapness and actually charging folks to print their own boarding pass at home!

This article in Wired gives all the details but it does appear that the airline has now taken the step of removing it's £10 airport check-in service and replace it with a £5 on-line check-in fee (A service which used to be free).

The airline is pitching this as a 'price cut' because the £10 fee has been reduced to £5 even though it is actually a price increase (as free check-in now costs £5).What's hidden in the small print (all 10 pages of it) is the £40 fee for lost boarding cards, or for printing them at the airport.

Remember it's a money making exercise all the way. As 'Wired' say in their article "once you get on board your Ryanair flight you’ll be charged for everything but the air you breathe - and we’re sure the airline is looking for a way to do that, too"

Posted via email from The Posterous Cafe

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Thought for the day - Phone company charges

It occurred to me recently that there is a big discrepancy in how the phone company charges.

If I use my phone line to call somebody during the day - Monday to Friday - I get charged by the minute (and usually quite a large amount per minute). But at the same time (and on the same phone line) I am piping internet traffic back and forth pretty much 24/7. The cost? A fixed amount per month regardless of traffic volume.

If the phone company can afford to charge me a fixed amount per month for my internet usage, why can't they charge me a fixed amount per month for my phone calls? The line is the same, the equipment is the same, the exchange is the same. What's different?

Posted via email from The Posterous Cafe

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A 'Must' for all movie buffs...

Image via Wikipedia

Sometime in the late 1970's three gentlemen sat down in a room in Southern California and held a "design session" to discuss a new product they were looking at. Each of the gentlemen in the room had had success designing similar products in the past and it was felt that combining the expertise of all three of them would result in a world beating product. They were correct: the product they designed went on to become one of the bestselling product in its market. But we'll cover that in more detail later.

Recently a document has been released which details conversations that took place in that room in California back in the mid-1980s.

The three gentlemen in the room were: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan. The product they were creating was "Raiders of the Lost Ark". I fully recommend any movie buff to spend a couple of hours reading through the 126 page document to understand the thought process that goes behind creating a blockbuster movie. It is very enlightening

Reading the transcript of the session it is obvious that Lucas is driving the meeting. He has gone into the session with an almost fully formed idea about the story and the various plot points. Spielberg spends most of the first third of the session listening, with only the occasional clarifying question. Kasdan says very little. However, once the overall plot is laid out (a plot which will subsequently change very little) both Spielberg and Kasdan start to interject their own thoughts and comments into the narrative. Lucas, anxious to keep his vision intact, does initially responded with counter arguments, if only to later realise that the expertise of the other gentlemen in the room is improving the end product whilst still adhering to his initial vision and the concept.

What is also interesting to observe is a few of the cycles that the group go around. One of the discussions concerns "the girl" (who later turned out to be Marion Blackwood in the movie) and how she should be portrayed. She was initially identified as being a "double agent" and everybody agreed that this was a good idea but, as the discussions developed, she moved away from being a spy and more towards being the love interest.

Another interesting phenomena from the session was the introduction of plot points which would not used at this point but were recycled later. An example of this is the love interest being a spy, as mentioned above. This plot device was used in the second sequel to the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". Another sequence that was mooted for Raiders of the Lost Ark but wasn't used is the sequence on the mining trolleys in the underground mine. This sequence was discussed in detail by the three gentlemen but ultimately never used in the final movie. It reappeared with very few changes in the sequel "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom".

Of particular interest to film buffs is the detail of the conversations that went through around the character arc of Marion. As detailed above she was originally conceived as a spy before being changed to the love interest. However there were several discussions about how she would actually interact with Indy throughout the movie and whether she would even be included in the finale when the Ark of the covenant is finally opened. I actually find it quite interesting to try and imagine whether the movie would have been better - or worse - if some of the suggestions had been followed up and made it into the final movie. As an example: the original ending of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" involves the Ark being opened and completely destroying the submarine base and island on which is located. The fate of Indy and Marion would not be known as the credits rolled. Only when the first part of the credits had passed would the two characters be seen surfacing in the sea surrounding the destroying island, followed shortly after by the box containing the Ark.

However the final scene of the movie, the Ark being stored away in the massive government warehouse was one of the first things that Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan discussed. It made it all the way through subsequent drafts into the final movie.

The document (126 pages) is actually quite a easy read and serves as a interesting and enlightening reminder of how three focused individuals pulling in the same direction can collaborate and produce something extraordinary.

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The Interweb, it's all... interconnected!

(Image courtesy of Jay Dugger Released under a creative commons Attribution, Share-alike license)

I am always amazed at how we have managed to link everything together using this phenomenon known as the internet.

This post, for example, is being written on my Mac using Scribefire. It will be sent automatically to Blogger where it will be posted. It will then automatically be sent to Friendfeed where it will display in my timeline. Because of this it will also - automatically - get sent to my Twitter account (which is probably where a lot of you readers were first made aware of it)

On top of that I have two other blogs and a video editing web site which also link in to Friendfeed. These are automatically disseminated as well.

Regarding Twitter, I can update it several ways. If I'm out and about I can send in a text from my phone (Twitter still accepts texts in the UK as input although it doesn't send them back out as it used to...). I can also send a picture to Twitpic where Twitter will automatically be notified.

Any update that occurs to Twitter by any of the methods detailed above is automatically sent to my Linked-In, Plaxo and Facebook accounts to update the status of the respective networks.

But it doesn't end there.

I also have an email account which I can use to send to a specific email address. Whatever I send to this e-mail address is automatically transferred and created into a post on my Posterous account. This updates Twitter automatically (and hence, Linked-In, Facebook, Plax-... you get the picture?) with the link so that folks can go and read the post.

There's more. I use Popurl's to check out what's popular across the web. Anything I like that I think others would benefit from I can - with one click - automatically send to Twitter (and Linked-in an-.... you see where this is going) to share.

I might also find web pages of my own which I want to save. With a click on my Delicious.com toolbar I can file these using tags and save them to my bookmarks (from were they will be sent to Friendfeed and hence to Twitter and hence to-....).

Every morning I sit and open my Google feed reader. I can read through the entries and if I particularly like something I can then flag it as 'shared'. All shared entries get posted to my Friendfeed account (this is getting monotonous isn't it?).

But wait.. there's still more! I have a feed from Twitter which I run through Feedburner. This then creates HTML that I can drop onto my Musings Cafe blog so that other folks can see what I've been tweeting about. It's a nice circle...

The beauty of all this is that it isn't just one way. It's almost incestuous in terms of the different ways folks can communicate using simple tools such as these. Popurls are created by people voting or marking their favourites. Delicious is the same way. Anything that I send can be Retweeted by other people and vice versa. All Retweets on my account are sent back to Friendfeed where they can be shared/ liked/ and commented on by others.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that with things like Friendfeed and Twitter being all encompassing nowadays, it's really easy to stay connected with lot's of people and help everybody share this fabulous thing called the Internet..

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If you want me to follow you on Twitter [Update]

[For update see end of post]

I'm pretty late on the Twitter bandwagon. Actually that's not true. I was a very early adopter but then couldn't work out how to use it for anything interesting. When I first started it was just load of folks sending "I'm just waking up and getting coffee" type messages. I couldn't be bothered with that.

However, I recently went back and gave it another go. The reason for this is that the whole social media environment has moved on a little more and Twitter is now starting to become quite a social and useful weapon for a blogger/author and communicator.

This is because Twitter as a stand alone tool is still fairly limited, but linked in with some of the complementary tools now available it works very well.

For example I have my blog feed linked up to twitterfeed which automatically tweets a new message out to the Twitterverse whenever I post. I also have my Twitter account attached to Friendfeed where I generally access everything from.

In addition to that I use twitterfox as a plug in on Firefox to enable me to see my stream as I'm working. It's better than looking at the main page and manually updating.

I'm also subscribed to trendingtopics which shows me keywords that a lot of tweets are using.

So, knowing that, here's how I use Twitter.

1) I use it to tell folks about interesting sites I've found
2) I use it to converse with interesting users in areas I'm focused on
3) I use it to get updates on key areas of interest (for example I am subscribed to the Indianapolis Colts feed (coltsNFL) which catches all the media output on the Colts).
4) I use it to identify people I want to follow. Generally I will check out several dozen people a day to see if I want to follow them. This is through following conversations and seeing who is active. I will then look at their profile and check a number of things
a) Are they active? (a couple of posts per day or 10 per week is usually a minimum I look for)
b) Are they showing me things I don't know? (Links to good pages, breaking news or opinions are good)
c) Who else are they following? If they have 3 followers and follow 12000 people themselves it could mean they are indiscriminate followers. I probably don't want to follow people like that.
d) Do they have an up-to-date Bio on their Twitter profile? I like to know the areas they are interested in and what I can expect them to be talking about. If they have a blog or web-site I might check that out too.

So if you want to follow me, please do. I'm always open to having new followers. If you meet the criteria listed above I will follow you. But I do review this regularly. I was following an individual who was the owner of a magazine dedicated to high net worth individuals. But he started using his Twitter account purely to send the same message every day - a promo for his magazine. I stopped following him (and incidentally within 10 minutes he had stopped following me.... what does that tell you about his marketing methods?). If you're only following me because I follow you then.. well that's your own decision. I'm not worried if I follow you and you don't follow me. Only follow me if you think you'll get something out of it, please! On a similar topic, Tim Ferris has an interesting view on using Twitter which might be worth a few minutes of your time..

There is obviously something about Twitter (and Friendfeed and other social media), but I think you have to decide what you want out of them before you wade in and start following all and sundry.

What do you want out of Social Media?

Some people I'm following:

Mediczar http://twitter.com/Mediaczar
ScribeFire http://twitter.com/scribefire From the people who brought you the best blogging platform tool.
Rodney Rumford http://twitter.com/Rumford
Orlando Thompson http://twitter.com/othompso
DowningStreet http://twitter.com/DowningStreet (Yes, that's the UK Prime Minister: He's on Twitter)
Tim O'Reilly http://twitter.com/timoreilly
E-consultancy http://twitter.com/econsultancy
Macworld http://twitter.com/macworld Yes. I use a Mac....!
Fast Company http://twitter.com/fastcompany
Stu Maschwitz http://twitter.com/5tu Founder of 'The Orphanage' Special Effects house and ex ILM.
Scott Stratten http://twitter.com/unmarketing
blogtations http://twitter.com/blogtations
Dan Ackerson http://twitter.com/dan_ackerson
celinus http://twitter.com/celinus
Steffan Antonas http://twitter.com/steffanantonas
jaycross http://twitter.com/jaycross
Dion Hinchcliffe http://twitter.com/dhinchcliffe
Cristina Costa http://twitter.com/cristinacost
Ben Werdmuller http://twitter.com/benwerd
Jeremiah Owyang http://twitter.com/jowyang

If I'm following you and you're not on this list, don't take it personally, this is just a subset.

[Update: I have started using a tool called Twollow. This will read tweets, identify keywords I have specified and will then automatically follow people who use those keywords. This is both good and bad.

It's good because it identifies people I wouldn't otherwise have found to follow. Many of them follow me back (Thank you if you do!), and my numbers have risen from less than 40 to over 110 in less than a week.
It's bad because there is no quality control of the tweeter. By that I mean there is no check to see if they adhere to the criteria listed above.

As a result of this my following number have gone from about 80 followers to almost 230 in about a week. However a lot of these people did not meet my criteria and have since been 'unfollowed'. If this is the case for you please do not take it personally. There was one account which started sending spam tweet advertising which was immediately unfollowed, and there are a number of accounts which are marginal regarding adherence to the criteria listed above. I am keeping these marginal accounts for the time being but will review these over the coming few weeks.]

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Todoodlist - long live the pencil

Following on from my last post about surviving without the internet I did want to bring one thing to your attention.

With all the newfangled PDA's and on-line time management tools it's nice to know that there is still a way of managing your time the old fashioned way.

It's called Todoodlist and it's created by Nick Cernis:

Half geek, half new-age Luddite, Nick Cernis is a hardened web developer and self-confessed gadget junkie from the UK; an unlikely candidate to write a book about abandoning hard tech in favour of simple solutions. Three years ago he abandoned his PDA and returned to pencil and paper. He combined his experience online with traditional methods to create fun new ways to get things done with paper.

Nick has dropped his ideas (and a number of additional thoughts) into a book called Todoodlist.

Having just read the book I am going to try out his methods of 'todoodling'. It's quite simple really but looks as if it will work very well.

The ebook will retail for around $14 (£8) which is a steal for what it provides. As Nick himself says...

What’s in the book?

Take a look at the index page for an idea of what you're getting in this book.

The full contents are split across 3 handy sections for quick reference:

Part 1) 7 punchy, light-hearted essays exploring our complex lives that tackle the question: “why’s everything so complex, anyway?” Includes Zen Kitten in a Box and Parrots in Space.

Part 2) 5 fun, unmissable, paper-based systems that will change the way you look at pen and paper forever and help you simplify your life. (Don’t miss the story of how I ended up swapping my PDA for a banana!) Features the Todoodlist – a fun way to get things done on paper, and the Sudoku Calendar – another of the deliciously low-tech ideas I use every day.

Part 3) The 5-step guide to reduce complexity in your life. Practical advice to help you live simply that you can put into practice and get results with today. Part 3 also includes the blueprint for launch, a beautifully simple, one-page printable list of questions to help you launch new projects faster and turn your pipe dreams into reality.

Do yourself a flavour and check this little tool out. I did! And at the price it's selling for at the moment it's a steal:

Nick has dropped the price from $19 to $14 - but it can't last for long.
Go get it now!

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Best and worse Bond themes

I had to link to this, purely because my friend Algo is sure to weigh in on how inaccurate (or not) this list is:

The BBC has added a 'news' article detailing what they feel are the best and worse Bond themes from the last 22 movies.

They rate Carly Simon's "Nobody does it better" as the best (which I agree with) and Madonna's "Die Another Day" as the worst (which I probably agree with as well), but some of the ones in the middle are a bit suspect.

Anyhoo, check it out and let me know what you think..

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London cabs attracted 60,000 mobile devices in 6 months

New data has revealed that in the last 6 months over 60,000 mobile devices have been left in the back of London cabs. In total 55,843 mobile phones and 6,193 other devices, such as laptops, were forgotten. Most of these containing key data useful to thieves.

This is coming hot on the heels of the news that a computer hard drive holding details of up to 5,000 justice system
employees had been lost last year and in August a private consulting
firm lost a memory stick containing the details of tens of thousands of
prisoners. In addition, in November last year, HM Revenue and Customs lost two
computer discs containing the entire child benefit records, including
the personal details of 25 million people.

A survey by credit reference agency Equifax in April suggested 16% of
its customers put PIN numbers on their mobile devices while 24%
recorded birthday dates. This alone opens up the possibility of large scale identity theft if criminals should gani access to this information

The morale of the story is actually 3 fold:

1) Look after your personal devices
2) Don't take confidential information on personal devices unless absolutely necessary
3) Encrypt and password protect all personal devices

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50 Ways to Make Your Home More Organized, More Attractive, and More Efficient

I'm generally quite reticent about linking to other blogs without them actually being part of a post, article, or discussion I am personally having. But I saw this post and it struck a chord with me (as anyone who's ever been to my house will know and appreciate).

From Lifehack.org, 50 Ways to make your home more organised, more attractive and more efficient

Enjoy!

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Free Video Editing Software - What's out there and is it any good?

The art of video editing is one that has come down through the ages from the days when editors used to stand and handle roles of unstable nitrate-based film in California right down to current days when anyone with a moderately powerful PC can edit his or her own blockbuster in the comfort of their own home.

But the problem with tools such as that is that they are both complex and expensive. A copy of the Adobe Creative Suite (With Premier, After Effects and a few other image manipulation tools) will cost you upwards of $1800 retail (with Premier alone costing almost $800). Apple's equivalent Final Cut Studio is no less expensive requiring an outlay of $1300 but the purchase of a fairly hefty Apple computer to run it on.

So what if you're just a sensible amateur videographer who wants to be able to take his camcorder footage and slap it together cheaply? Maybe you want to upload it to Youtube or one of the other video editing software packages? Do you really want to spend obscene amounts of money on this hobby?

Maybe you do. If that's the case (and it is for me) then go ahead. Use the top of the range tools and produce video's that are awe inspiring and jaw dropping.

But for the rest of the mere mortals who don't want to go down that road, what's out there that can help?

The good news is there's loads of free video editing software out there.

The Basics

Both PC's and Mac's come furnished with a reasonable competent free video editing software tool. The Mac version is called iMovie and the PC version is called Windows Movie Maker.

They are both the 'drag and drop' type of tool, which basically means that you capture your video from your camcorder and then drag each clip that you want into a sequence for editing. They both allow the creation of titles and the use of fades and dissolves.

For a lot of users this will be enough for what they need. After all, unless you're George Lucas you don't need a whole load of fancy transitions to stick between the shots of Aunt Mable and Uncle Don dancing the hokey-cokey at Maria's wedding, do you?

But if you do want a little bit extra there are some other very good tools out there, which are free.

The Others

Hyperengine-AV is a Mac based free video editing tool which has pioneered the concept of trackless editing. With Hyperengine things like audio and video, transitions and effects can be placed randomly across the timeline without being stuck on a particular track. It makes for an interesting looking timeline! It also comes linked in with all the effects that are bundled with Apple's QuickTime toolset (which do things like allow adjustment of video colour, brightness and other such alterations)

If that doesn't appeal to you - or you want something a little more complex, how about Blender? This is one of the best pieces of open source software available. Not only is it free video editing software, it is also a compositing and 3d computer graphics tool. The functionality is amazing, but so is the learning curve. This is a complex piece of video editing software to learn but it will give most of the top-of-the-range tools a run for their money.

Currently the market leader in professional video editing tools is Avid (most Hollywood movies nowadays are edited on Avid tools). Guess what? Avid has a free video editing tool for home editing as well. It's called Videospin and it is actually a less functional version of their Pinnacle editing software (which is a commercial package). It supports many different formats of video and can output to many different formats as well. The main selling point of Videospin, though, is the fact that it can output directly to Youtube!

A favourite of mine is Avidemux, This is a very simple free video editing tool that works on both Windows, Mac and Linux. It's quite basic, but it will support many different file formats and is very stable.

There are many others on the market, we haven't even touched items such as Wax, T@BZS4 or Jahshaka, and the whole area of tools for video conversion between formats is worthy of an article of it's own, but I hope this has opened your eyes to some of the tools that are available other than the basic ones supplied on your PC or Mac.

Gary Comerford runs the Free video editing website at http://www.free-video-editing.com/ez The site has links to and reviews of Linux, Mac and PC software devoted to video editing, special effects, video conversion and DVD creation, as well as tutorials and other editing related items. It's also the place to find out all about the tools mentioned in this article. Why not subscribe to the Ezine (http://www.free-video-editing.com/eza) to be kept up to date in this fast moving area of software?

Technorati Tags: free video editing, software, movie editing

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Shout out's

I wanted to take the opportunity to point out a couple of completely unrelated web sites that I've found and started to read. These are interesting for completely different reasons:

Wall Shadows: This is a site run by Algo, an acquaintance of mine. We met on a film set (more of that in a subsequent post) and he spends a lot of his time running the Wall Shadows web site. Shadows on the wall are, of course, films that used to be projected onto a wall before cinema screens were invented and Algo takes pains to analyse and dissect the films he sees. He also puts up some pretty interesting religious and philosophical rants. I don't always see eye-to-eye with him on the topics he discourses on, but his debating ability is undeniable. Find Wall Shadows here.


How to draw and paint: I've never been considered 'arty'. My human faces look like badly drawn cartoons and any other scenes I draw tend to be wrongly proportioned and with the incorrect perspective. However, I recently discovered How to Draw and Paint. This is a site run by Liverpudlian Bob Davies. (That's a person who was born or lives in Liverpool, England, to my non-UK readers). Bob is an excellent artist and a good teacher as well. The site has follow along instructions, lots of graphics and plenty of videos to watch too. Within 10 minutes of using the site I was drawing well proportioned animals such as cows, and could draw a human face that looked, well, human. Highly recommended. The site is here.

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Hmmm a New eBook? Better check that out

In the sprirt of full disclosure I feel I need to let you know that Gary the Business Process Consultant (that's me...) has just released a new ebook.

It's called "The Perfect Process Project" and it is the cumulation of 20 years of working in the project world and the process world.

With most new business projects have some effect on the underlying process it is small wonder that many projects fail, as they don't appreicate the impact of making those process changes. Basically this book it will take you through why process projects need to be thought of differently and what are the fairly simple steps that need to be put in place. If you have a project budgeted at £5000/$10000 or more it's probably the best £5.99/$12.99 you'll spend

If you feel like checking it out further have a quick look over at http://www.gcp-consulting.com/ebook.html
Technorati Tags: ebook, process, BPM

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A day in the life......

A number of people have asked what, exactly, I do all day.

I have a job I love. I work at home, I write a lot and I'm my own boss. A lot of people are jealous or envious of that and I can tell you now there's is no reason to be. There is a perception that work-at-home folks have an easy life. We get up when we want, work when we want, go and play golf when we want (actually that bit is generally true...), and we generally don't work as hard as office based folks.

Well, rather than take you through a typical day let me try and paint a picture of my life as it relates to you, the reader.

I subscribe to a number of newfeeds and blog feeds which talk about productivity and so-called 'Life Hacks'. A lot of what follows is a direct result of my implementation of the ideas found there.

Early start
The first thing to remember is that I like to get an early start (6am when possible). Sometime's it's not easy. Sometimes I really want to stay where I am an keep the duvet on. But I try my best to get up when the alarm goes.

Standard routine
The day starts with a standard routine regarding the computer:

I run a Mac (as those of you who read my 'Mac musings' series will know), and this gets turned on just after I get up. First thing that happens then is Morning Coffee. Note that I have put that in capital letters. This isn't a cup of well made java, rather a Firefox add-on that preloads a set of pages I want to read (you are using Firefox as your browser, right?). One click and I can load up all the key pages I want to go through in a morning. These pages change on a daily basis (thanks to Morning Coffee's functionality), but include BBC News, Aint-It-Cool-News, Google Adsense, Google analytics, a couple of forums, Dilbert, and Wall Shadows (a site run by Algo, a friend of mine, that talks about films and philosophy - it sounds wierd, but go!)

I also do a quick check of e-mail at this point (but only to see if there is anything of great interest that needs an immediate response). The productivity guru's swear by not checking your e-mail first thing and I agree with this. However, I justify this by saying that it's only 5 minutes and it's just a skim read.

Yahoo! Answers
First job of the day is Yahoo! Answers. I run several web sites, one of which is about free video editing. As a means of promoting this I spend time most mornings at Yahoo! answering questions related to video. 90% of the questions are along the lines of "What free video software can I get?". In fact this is such a popular question that I have dedicated a complete page at my site to people coming in from Yahoo! It seems to be working - I have answered nearly 200 questions and 2 out of 3 are rated best answers (approximately 1 out of 4 are either still open or not rated yet). I'm quite pleased at that.

Site Build it!
My free video site is hosted by a company called Site Build it! who are the best all-in-one web hosting and site development service. Read more here. One of the things I like about them is that they provide a good number of management tools to help run your site. I check these next. This includes things such as visitor stats, search engine rankings, inbound links etc. I can also check who has signed up to my ezine or left a contact for me through the site.

Writing!
Then I get down to writing. Apart from the free video editing web site I also run three more blogs and a business process consultancy company. On any given day the focus is usually on one of these things. At the moment I am finishing up and starting to promote my ebook "The Perfect Process Project" which will be released next week. The Process Cafe is used as my process blog so I'm adding entries to that in support of the launch.

I also recently got my private pilots licence and started a blog that talks about that. I'm looking to extend my flying skills by doing what's called 'difference training' to allow me to fly more powerful planes. There are entries related to that at the Flying Cafe.

Of course there are these entries on the Musings Cafe that need to be done as well. This is a 'catch-all' blog that has entries which don't fit on the these blogs and which I want to write about. See my posts on environmental tips for an example of this.

I also work on building the business process consultancy business. I spend time on Linked-in answering questions relevant to my area of expertise, connect with folks in that area, answer forum questions from related groups and ensure I keep in contact with business associates from past and present. At the moment I am prepping for a pre-sales meeting with a company in the healthcare industry so I need to spend time researching the company and putting together the presentation.

Productivity
Basically I write every day. It could be a blog post or two, it could be a complete new entry on the latest free video tool to come out. It could be a new chapter in the ebook or a particular white paper on BPA or process facilitation sessions.

So how does this work in reality? Well, getting back to the productivity guru's, they recommend finding the best time to write and write as much as you can in that time. I find that first thing in the morning works for me, before the neighbours are up and before I start to feel tired as a result of waking early! For example, this particular document was started at 6.20 in the morning.

I do realise that I could actually be more productive and I'm working towards it. One of the reasons (as espoused by Leo of Zen Habits) is to declutter your workspace. My workspace sucks. I have papers, cables, documents, 7 hard drives, 3 computer carcasses, boxes and two CRT computer screens around where I work. I really should find time to move that clutter out and get back to something nice and simple. Although, to be honest, when I'm writing I don't find that stuff like that distracts me. I find that if I'm looking for something though, (like a note I made on a sheet of paper about a new piece of video software) I can spend longer looking for it than I would in a decluttered environment, but that's about the only downside.

Wonder what that says about my mind....?


Work breaks/ distractions
The only problem with writing is that occasionally I can get outside the zone. Sometimes it's a matter of not being totally committed to an article or a post I'm writing (that happens if I have a half-baked idea for a post and not enough research into it). So occasionally I need a distraction. I've talked in the past about my cats (one of whom loved to sit and watch me write before he was killed by a passing car), so I do like all things feline. So when I came across icanhascheezburger I was overjoyed.

"Cheezburger" is a site dedicated to funny pictures of cats and kittens but captioned using 'lolspeak' which is the internet chat speak language. I don't spend a huge amount of time on this site, but I can occasionally drop in to see what's just been added.



Generally my writing environment consists of no interruptions. By this I mean no IM (I turn Adium off when writing), no e-mail (I close the email notification noise/alert and just let the mails accumulate in the background), and no phone (generally I send all calls to voice mail). One thing I have found incredibly useful (and infuriating at the same time) is the use of a Mac product called Anti RSI. As the name suggests it's a small application which will work with you to combat RSI. Basically you define work chunks which could be, say, 10 minutes at a time. After 10 minutes a message is displayed with a 15 second countdown. You cannot remove the message and countdown unless you leave the keyboard alone completely. Then, every 50 minutes you can set a ten minute break. It works really effectively to let you work has hard as you can for a while but still remind you to stop typing and give your fingers (and mind) a rest. The infuriating thing is when you are right in the middle of something interesting or inspire) and the message pops up. it can make you lose your focus and concentration for a while! There is a similar product for windows called Workrave

Now that I'm down to one kitten, he can be a little clingy. There was a time when they would go out first thing in the morning and return for food and an afternoon nap and that was it. I would see nothing of either of them other than that. Moe would occasionally come back and sit on the window sill to watch. But now that he's gone Zeke likes to spend time with me. He'll come in during the morning and walk around on the desk, on the keyboard, on my lap and in front of my face. Generally he'll then insinuate himself into my space and settle down across one of my arms, or something. It's very difficult to write with a cat asleep on your arm!

Conclusion
I said I wouldn't take you through a typical day for me and It seems to have ended up doing just that. But there's a reason for this. There are lots of people out there who work in their own routines every day. Some of them work at home like I do, some of them are in an office, some even go out and spend time at the local Starbucks tapping on their laptop.

But however you do it, I think it's worth remembering the following: What I do is not so different to a standard 9-5 job. You work in an office (So do I, but in a different type of office). You are producing in the hope of earning money (so am I). You are trying to get as much done with as little effort as possible (so am I). You are distracted occasionally (so am I).

Where it differs is that I have a lot more freedom about where and when I work. I can work hard all morning, go play golf in the afternoon, and come back and work in the evening if I want. You can't. Although you do get a regular paycheck at the end of the month. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't....

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Environmental madness in the news

Back at the start of this year I wrote a series of articles about ways to become more environmentally friendly.

7 Tips to Environmental Goodness: In this article I wrote about 7 quick things you can do NOW to do your bit to protect the environment

7 More tips to Environmental Goodness was a contination article where I explained some of the things you can purchase as replacements for existing items and be more environmentally friendly at the same time, and finally in

7 Final tips to Environmental Friendliness I explained the key lifestyle changes needed to help the planet


Things have been a little quiet since then. Until recently.

Over the last few days there have been an enormous number of articles with environmental themes.

For example:

1. Businesspundit has a list of the top 25 big companies that are going green
2. Youngentrepreneur.com has a list of tips to save your energy costs
3. The New Scientist reckons that Americans must diet to save their environment. It also says that unsustainable development is putting humanity at risk
4. The Apple Blog talks about Flipswap - a service that takes your old phones, pays you for it and sends it to a third world country where it will be reused
5. And in Monte Carlo the Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies show demonstrated the current eco-friendly cars that japan and the US are producing.

But by far the one that caught my eye most was from the UK consumers association ('Which?'), that was focused on the bottled water craze.

In the UK the bottled water market is worth £1.68b ($3.2b).

The bottled water production process wastes an estimated 2 gallons of water for every gallon purified to put into a bottle.

Some bottled waters also come from as far away as New Zealand, and most plastic water bottles go to landfill where they could take up to 450 years to decompose.

And to make things even more eye-opening: in a recent Which? survey half of the over 3000 people surveyed could find no difference between bottled water and normal tap water. That is incredible.

Personally I don't drink bottled water. I don't like the taste of the local tap water where I live (I am in a region with 'hard water') so I pass it through a Brita water filter system. The cost to me is somewhere around 3p per litre. Compare that with bottled water from 'own brand' supermarkets (8.5p per litre), Evian bottled water (31p per litre), SEI bottled water at Selfridges (£5.58 per litre) and Claridges most expensive bottled water (£30 per litre) and you can see that the savings are amazing.

Quick water tip: Keep a jug of tap water in the fridge. This cools the water and acts to de-chlorinate it which helps taste. Replace the water every 24 hours.

On a water related issue, BusinessPundit have a great article talking about the myth of freely flowing tap water and how we all, still, need to do our bit for the environment.

So how's the water in your area? What are you doing to help the environment?

Technorati Tags: environment, eco

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