I’ve never really been a guy who puts stickers on, well, anything. I’ve never had them on my car or binders in high school and never on a laptop, either. There’s nothing wrong with them–I’ve just never had the impulse.

I wanted to make a custom skin from a photo I’d taken. So I spent a while trolling through my Flickr account and settled on this one (click for bigosity):

I wrote about taking that shot–it’s from Malta. So, too, is the photo on Julie’s laptop.

More or less at random, I chose Unique Skins, and placed an order. It costs $20 per skin, which seemed pretty reasonable to me. The skin arrived last week, and here it is on my laptop:

I’m pretty happy with that result. That photo doesn’t really do the colours justice, but they feel quite true to my original capture.

I asked around on Twitter, and a couple of people recommended Gelaskins as an alternative, Canadian vendor of custom skins.

It’s a pretty fascinating article, and reveals some surprising (to me, at least) facts about the concert business. One is that TicketMaster and Live Nation have struggled, financially, and lose huge chunks of revenue due to scalping. Another is that, of course, many concert tickets are radically under-priced. From the article:

The phenomenon of below-market value tickets has inspired a cottage industry of economists seeking to explain seemingly illogical pricing in the rock-concert business. Alan Krueger…an economist…is one. “There is still an element of rock concerts that is more like a party than a commodities market,” Kruger told me. A ticket to a rock show, he said, bears elements of a “gift exchange,” in which intangible benefits accrue for the seller. Cheap tickets increase the possibility of a sellout, which augments merchandise and concession sales. Sellouts make the concert experience better for the musicians and audience alike. And, one might add, a cheap ticket is the price the music industry pays to preserve the illusion that the sixties never ended. “In some fashion, I help people hold on to their own humanity–if I’m doing my job right,” Springsteen once said, of his performances. At least, he helps people hold on to their savings.

That’s kind of a provocative idea, isn’t it? While we (myself included) complain about the high cost of concert tickets, they’re actually priced well below market value. This applies much more for the Springsteens and the Madonnas than local bands, obviously, but the former is where TicketMaster and Live Nation make all their money.

I don’t in any way mean to be an apologist for TicketMaster. Their business model is built on controlling the marketplace and delivering shockingly little added value to their customers. It’s only getting easier for venues to handle their own ticket sales. So, it’s my hope that TicketMaster may die off with the generation of rock and rollers they depended upon for their revenue.

Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 11:00pm
Location: Autumn Brook Artists Gallery, 1545 West 4th Avenue (map, view from street)

We’ll do a brief talk at some point in the evening, followed by a short reading from the book. We’ll also be available to personally inscribe the many, many copies you’ll surely be purchasing to give out as Christmas gifts.

Sundry details:

• Appetizers will be served.
• Convenient cash bar.
• Autographed copies of our book will be available for purchase for $20.
• There’s lots of street parking around, or you may want to consider parking on Granville Island and walking up to the gallery. Otherwise, the location is served by many lovely bus routes.

If you’re local to Vancouver, feel free to stop by. Please either RSVP to the Facebook event or, if you’re not the Facebooky type, drop us a quick email at rsvp@capulet.com.

I tweeted about this clever idea, and the Twitter account Climate Smart pointed me to Carbonsync (yes, I am troubled by the inconsistent capitalization of their name on their site–let’s move on). They’re offering a similar delivery and pickup service to your home in and around Vancouver.

The Living Christmas Company doesn’t indicate pricing on their site (or, at least, I couldn’t find prices). Carbonsync offers their rental tree program for the princely sum of $125.99. It’s been a very long time since I bought a Christmas tree, but that seems pretty rich. How much does your average Christmas tree cost? $25? $40? Maybe $60 for a really fancy tree?

I’m usually happy to pay a green tax, but 100% feels a bit steep. If we assume that delivery and pickup cost $40 or $50, then I guess that’s in the ballpark. Still, that price point feels a little steep, doesn’t it?

Happily, we’re not really a tree-buying household, so I’ll remain $125.99 richer.

As an aside: the version of “Crossroads” I’m talking about is a live recording. As the band finishes, you hear applause and then somebody says “Eric Clapton [something] on vocals”. I’ve always wondered who says that? Bassist Jack Bruce, maybe?

“Crossroads” is track three on disc two (unquestionably the best of the four CDs). It’s followed by a mid-tempo Cream tune called “Badge”, which starts with a nice rolling baseline and some crunchy chords.

Every time I hear the end of “Crossroads”, I expect to hear the start of “Badge”. This is true even though I probably haven’t heard that particular combination of songs for ten or fifteen years. I’ve probably heard “Crossroads” followed by other songs at least 50 or 100 times since then. And yet I still have that aural expectation embedded in my brain. The pattern doesn’t seem to get broken. Odd, eh?

Another example is that my family’s LP of “Sticky Fingers” had a scratch on it, so I always expect to hear a little glitch or skip in the second chorus of the Stones’ “Brown Sugar”. I’m sure everybody has such formative listening patterns. What are yours?

Also, will the iTunes and MP3 generation–people under the age of, say, fourteen–be free from the Next Song Syndrome? They may never have bought a CD, so they may not acquire the same sort of listening patterns.

When I say “how the web works”, I’m not talking about DNS or HTTP. I’m referring to the profound impact that the web is having on community, commerce, communications and so many other parts of our lives. It’s these big ideas that are difficult to absorb, and I find the essays help.

James does the same thing, and he came up with the idea of curating a book (maybe it’s electronic, maybe hard copy, maybe both) that showcases a bunch of the best essays. In short, a toolkit for getting the web.

We were at a business retreat up in Tofino this weekend, and we hashed out the idea a little. Following the best advice of Ze Frank (rude words ahead), we started implementing the idea on the spot. Hence, GettheWeb.org. For now it’s just a Google Sites page with a Google Docs form and a YouTube video (owned by Google) explaining the project.

At this stage, we’re just looking for recommendations for “great essays about how the web works–socially, behaviorally, philosophically”. Plus we made a 78-second video discussing the project (thanks to Jay from Giant Ant for being our two-elbow duopod):

Have you got an essay about the web that you love? Submit it.

February 11th, 1978. Eventually is released simultaneously in the American and British markets. Some critics find significance in the fact that the first single off the album, “Blow Away,” is not a Lennon/McCartney collaboration but instead a George Harrison song; others find themselves underwhelmed and suggest that the Lennon/McCartney “Free As A Bird” should have been the first single instead. (”Free As A Bird” is released as the second single six weeks later.) Harrison, for his part, says that “Blow Away” was “a lot less of a rocker” before Lennon suggested an increase in tempo and “letting Ringo go nuts.” No music videos are produced for the album: Lennon says “no, that would be too much bother. We want to have fun with this. Work’s for our own stuff.”

I’m sure these have been done before, but there are a number of creative projects that extend naturally from this kind of ‘what if’ exercise. A book-length version, maybe, or writing songs that the still-together Beatles might have written.

This year I was thinking back to the Remembrance Day assemblies in elementary and high school. One year, I have a clear memory of a video being shown, featuring a song, I think, by Bryan Adams. I even remember some of the lyrics:

The guns will be silent - on Remembrance Day
There’ll be no more fighting - on Remembrance Day

This wasn’t the video, but here’s the song. It’s hardly In Flanders Fields, but it’s what I was thinking about today.

I was given a particularly challenging word to draw, and I thought I did a smashing job of it. My team disagreed. Travis kindly snapped a photo. My rendering is everything above my finger–we did multiple drawings on every sheet of paper. Can you guess the word? Click for super-sizing:

Hmm…in retrospect it’s not really that clear. Though, in my defense, two people from another team guessed what I was on about.

UPDATE: The correct answer is ‘taxidermy’. So maybe I failed. I did like an alternative suggestion I received by email: “Dance dance critter death edition”, which seems to be in the ballpark of correct.

That’s good news. I wasn’t looking forward to selling little USB drives at our book launch if the actual books got held up in customs.

They smell a little odd, if you stick your nose right in them (as I always do with pretty much everything). That’s probably just because they came fresh and direct from the printer.

Of course, those two mincing Tampa Bay defencemen made him look pretty good, but it’s still a fantastic goal.

Confronted with a very rainy afternoon, I lingered for a couple of minutes in the lobby of the cinema. I looked over the eight movie posters in the lobby, and was surprised to see that five of the films they promoted had been directed by women. I snapped some bad photos on my iPhone, and made this unpretty collage:

The films are, in order of my dodgy collage:

• It’s Complicated
• H2Oil
• When We Were Boys
• Amelia
• Whip It

Of those five films, three are mid-level Hollywood flicks, one is a Canadian indie and one is a feature-length documentary. How surprising is that result? In 2007, of the 13,000 members of the Directors Guild of America, only 7% are women. I don’t claim that my little lobby survey has any sort of authority, but it’s at least a little encouraging. The role of director has always struck as one of the last bastions of near-total male domination.

I’ll admit a little of my own sexism here: I was surprised to learn that best movie I saw all year, The Hurt Locker, was directed by a woman. Kathryn Bigelow has made a minor masterpiece in that movie. I wonder how many other war movies women have directed over the past fifty years?

I’ve played with a Kindle a couple of times, and they’re pretty nifty things. You can store about 1500 books on them (have I read that many books in my life? Surely not) and the battery apparently lasts for two weeks worth of reading. Amazon offers about 300,000 books at US $12 or less, and you can get a bevy of newspapers and magazines online as well.

And yet, I don’t want one.

Cost, Backlog and Snobby Appeal

First there’s the cost. With taxes and import fees, the Kindle is going to cost at least CAN $325 before you buy a single book. Given that you might save an average of $10 per book by buying digital versions, you can start realizing cost savings after buying about 30 books. I wish I read more, but 30 books represents at least two years worth of reading. And who knows what options will be available by then?

Yes, it’s thrilling that I could carry a ton of books with me on the go. But, I don’t have a too-many-books-to-carry problem. I have a not-enough-time-to-read problem. I have at least five or six Audible credits waiting to be used because I’ve got a backlog of audio books which I haven’t listened to yet.

Plus, I’m totally unexcited about yet another electronic device which requires recharging. Plus there’s the ‘valuable object’ problem. If my bag gets stolen and there’s a book in it, then no big deal. If my Kindle gets stolen, then that’s a bigger problem.

Finally, there’s the snobby appeal of having your walls lined with bookshelves, and those bookshelves lined with books.

It’s a cool object, and I can see why lots of people want one. If I ever go back to school, for example, the idea of having all of my text books on one device sounds awesome. Still, I’m not salivating about yesterday’s announcement from Amazon.

Do you want a Kindle?

There’s no question as to who is cruel in this second video. Those are some serious anger management issues.

The player’s name is Elizabeth Lambert–here’s an ESPN report (auto-playing video ahead) about the match. They rightfully raise two questions about these incidents: why aren’t the teammates of the fouled player standing up to Lambert, and how did she make it through the whole game with only a yellow card?

UPDATE: Phillip sent along this New York Times article in which Ms. Lambert responds to the video. The reporter goes pretty easy on her.

The second is The Vetala, and seems to be a bit X-Files-esque. Aesthetically, this feels heavily influenced by Battlestar Galactica. Here’s the first episode:

The third is the slickest of the three, kind of a sci-fi show featuring a girl and her wolf entitled Riese. Again, the first episode–note the great costuming:

Here’s a Georgia Straight piece about Riese.

Things get punchy whenever people explore monetizing a new channel. Let’s begin by thinking about some other controversial forms of advertising in social media, and how sponsored tweets might relate:

• Static ads on blogs - Not particularly relevant. In my experience, the majority of income from blogging comes from one’s archives, not the front page flow.
• Sponsored posts - The blogosphere dabbled with these for a few years, but I rarely see them anymore. This could be because I don’t read the sort of blogs that would employ sponsored posts, or because they’re utterly forgettable, but I don’t think they’ve caught on in any significant fashion.
• As in RSS feeds - This is somewhat germane, though I usually see these ads not as separate feed items, but rather as add-ons to existing posts. Sponsored tweets are standalone units of content.
• Ads in IM conversations - In a way, this seems like the most relevant comparison. That said, I’ve never actually seen an ad in an IM chat. I mostly use Skype or Google Chat, though. Maybe something like Omegle will start inserting one-line text ads into its hosted, serendipitous IM conversations.

There’s also the Facebook Beacon debacle, among others. In short, people’s tolerance for advertising in their social media channels feels pretty low.

I know it’s a bit lame to excerpt and redirect you, but what can I say? It’s a busy week ahead.

1. It’s way more work than you think it will be.
2. A co-author is an excellent idea.
3. This may be obvious, but if you get a publishing deal, you’re immediately on a schedule. There’s no looking back. If you want to write the book on your own time, write it first and then look for a publishing deal.
4. There’s probably just enough time to write the average book in a year and a half of evenings and weekends.
5. If I had to divide up the process, I’d say it’s 40% thinking and research, 30% writing a first draft, and 30% rewriting and proofreading.
6. Don’t be precious. As a professional writer, the more I’m paid to write something, the less likely I am to receive credit for it. So I’ve learned to be fairly fire-and-forget about my writing. It’s probably not worth the emotional effort to argue with your editor or publisher about small stuff. Win the big battles, and let go of the rest.
7. Once you submit a first draft, a ton of people touch your book. Our book had an editor, technical reviewer, copy editor, proofreader, production manager, graphic designer, cover designer and indexer (a soul-destroying job–I speak from experience). That excludes the marketing people and the publisher himself.
8. You’ll never have enough time to make the writing as good as it could be.
9. I forget where I heard this, but there’s so much truth in this quote: “Publishing isn’t an industry, it’s an organized hobby.”
10. Amazon punishes publishers for missing publication dates. So publishers tend to initially set a publication date which is strikingly far into the future. Don’t let this panic you.
11. This was something I already knew, but it’s worth mentioning: don’t write a book to make money. For the vast majority of authors, it’s not a moneymaking proposition. Write a book to spread your ideas, to earn ‘because-of’ income through speaking, consulting and so forth, or to get the perceived endorsement as a capital-a author.

• Web marketing and its endless jargon.
• Authors’ very common anxiety around promoting their books.
• Tightening belts, cost-cutting and staff turnover at publishers.
• General workplace incompetence

Here’s my favourite bit:

Do you blog? If not, get in touch with Kris and Christopher from our online department, although at this point I think only Christopher is left. I’ll be out of the office from tomorrow until Monday, but when I get back I’ll ask him if he spoke to you. We use CopyBuoy via Hoster Broaster, because it streams really easily into a Plaxo/LinkedIn yak-fest meld. When you register, click “Endless,” and under “Contacts” just list everyone you’ve ever met. It would be great if you could post at least six hundred words every day until further notice.

I should mention that, perhaps because our publisher handles mostly technical books, they ‘get’ the web, and have been very pleasant to work with on a promotional (as well as every other) front.

The opening act was Thomas Bartlett, the lead singer of Doveman. Meme-trackers may recognize him from his charming 2008 cover album of the entire Footloose soundtrack. He was a chatty performer, introducing each song with an explanation or anecdote.

He told the story of a song called “Angel’s Share” off the new Doveman album (you can hear it on their MySpace page). The Angel’s Share is the name of a tiny bar in Manhattan’s East Village, which is what Bartlett was originally writing about. He discovered that the bar is named after a piece of distillery jargon. From Wikipedia:

Angels’ share is a term for the portion (share) of a wine or distilled spirit’s volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels. The barrels are typically French or American oak. In low humidity conditions the loss to evaporation may be primarily water. However, in higher humidities, more alcohol than water will evaporate, therefore reducing the alcoholic strength of the product. In humid climates, this loss of ethanol is associated with the growth of a darkly colored fungus, Baudoinia compniacensis, on the exterior surfaces of buildings, trees and other vegetation, and anything else that happens to be nearby

Comparing the Wikipedia article to the name of the bar and song, I see there’s some disagreement over where the apostrophe goes. I suspect that Wikipedia is correct, in that this is brandy or wine or whatever for all the angels, not one in particular.

A few minutes later, I received this reply from @TransitPolice, run by a sergeant who’s the Media Relations Officer for the Transit Police Service:

Here’s the brief conversation that ensued:

Does this strike anybody else as just a little creepy? I should know better, but I was a little taken aback. It wasn’t my intent to report a potential crime, to “let them know” as Sgt. Seaman put it. I was just recounting a little nugget of an interesting overheard conversation.

And there’s no question as to whether these guys were actually going to vandalize a bunch of cameras. They were, if you’ll forgive the phrase, just shooting the shit. They were really just talking. These were two heavy-set, balding middle-management types who, to look at them, have never dared disturb the universe.

Not Carefully Mitigated Enough

I should know better because I’m voluntarily broadcasting updates to a bunch of people over the web. And I’ve been doing that sort of thing for quite a while. I always tell people, blog (or tweet or whatever) like everyone is listening in.

I’ve been largely comfortable with the carefully mitigated content I push to the web. And yet this little incident gave me pause. The irony is that the Transit Police’s monitoring of Twitter is very like what closed-circuit cameras do. The authorities are using technology to seek out wrong doing. I’ve never been particularly comfortable with CC cameras in public spaces, and so this Twitter monitoring weirds me out a bit, too.

Not to sound all paranoid, but it would be easy enough for the Transit Police to determine roughly where I was when I tweeted that message. Then they could use video from inside the train to identify where I was sitting, and thus identify the two clueless dudes who were talking nearby. I’m pretty sure the Transit Police won’t do that, but I don’t ever want to be complicit in that possibility.

What’s the Lesson?

Take care when publicly publishing any messages that might be of interest to the authorities. Assume that they’re listening.

I don’t write this to demonize law enforcement. I think they have a tough job and, like any other group of people, most of them do it well most of the time. Their failures are necessarily public, and that doesn’t help their reputation.

Still, we live in an increasingly surveilled world. The authorities don’t need my help in watching over us.