Cennydd Bowles on user experience.

Archive for May, 2006

Why I’m supporting England

Wednesday, May 31st, 2006

Two months ago, a BBC poll that claimed 83% of Welsh fans will be supporting England in the World Cup.

Rubbish.

I’d put the figure much lower, and the outraged replies seem to back that up. Still, whatever the true figure, I’m nailing my colours to the mast and supporting England.

To start with the basics: I was born in Wales to a Welsh family. I have a Welsh name. I live in England and have spent most of my life here. All fairly insignificant to the one true test of nationality: how you ‘feel’. And I feel Welsh, through and through.

But, just as equally, I feel British and, as such, I have an affinity for the home nations. I’ve no interest in petty “rivalry” and, frankly, the sooner it ends, the better. Does anyone truly believe it? And, more importantly, is this really how we have to define our nationality: by sulking and thinly-veiled xenophobia? I prefer to celebrate the positive things about my country, rather than focus on the negative aspects of a long and distant past.

Don’t get me wrong: I want England to suffer a 5-0 thrashing when they’re playing Wales. But it doesn’t happen often and, particularly since we’ve not played in a major tournament in 50 years, any Welsh fan who prefers to enjoy the game than whine about it should be forgiven for looking for vicarious fulfilment elsewhere.

England looked good last night. I really think they have a chance. Yes, the reactions of media, fans and Tony Blair alike would be pretty insufferable if they won, but I hope in my lifetime that we’ll get a chance to taste success of our own.

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All Tomorrow’s Parties

Friday, May 26th, 2006

ATP was, of course, quite excellent. Indie. So very indie. Probably too much so, but I’m sure Thurston Moore will redress the balance in December. Sue and I joked that the biggest ruckus of the weekend would be an argument over the merits of various Belle & Sebastian albums.

Quite a few bands worthy of note, particularly The Black Heart Procession, Herman Dune, Magik Markers and The Decemberists. Also quite a few worthy of scorn (I really wasn’t impressed by The Shins’ lineup), but the beauty of the festival is of course that there’s always plenty to see. Step forward R Kelly’s Trapped In The Closet, shown repeatedly on ATP TV and quoted a-cappella by pretty much the entire chalet throughout the weekend. Hard to describe the ambivalence I feel to such a funny work by such a loathsome person. Watch it if you ever get the chance.

Lightning Bolt played four times, but had elected to allow only 500 people into the room. Having been at their insane ATP show 18 months ago, I can see why. Of course, to be one of the lucky 500 you had to queue. And so it was that I left Sleater-Kinney’s sloppily enjoyable set early to sit cross-legged downstairs talking about Ex Models to London strangers. On came Lightning Bolt, to a flurry of video cameras and Radio 1 press passes. It took maybe two minutes for people to break ranks and stand up. It then took maybe two more minutes for Gibson’s amp to break, and that was that. Bugger. I suppose you can’t really ask for spares with a patched-up system like theirs.

Earlier that day I’d been lucky enough to see Joanna Newsom play one of the best solo sets I’ve ever seen. The ATP audience mix made for an unusual atmosphere devoted fanboys hanging on her every note and noisy passers-by chattering in the corners, but she played so well that by the end I think everyone found it impossible not to listen. Lots of new songs, and very epic affairs they were too, clocking in at around 15 minutes each. We’re told there will be full orchestral backing on the next album which should be well worth the wait.

I’m feeling quite positive about music recently. Granted, Gnarls Berkeley is still number 1 (the longest stint since Wet Wet Wet), but The Darkness’s new single has sold precisely sod all, and it’s Dot to Dot on Sunday. Hard Rock Hallelujah indeed.

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The Abbot’s gift

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

From 101zenstories.com:

A Zen monk, early in his training, is preparing to leave the monastery and switch locations, for that is common in the Zen practice. Before he leaves he goes to the abbot of the monastery to say goodbye. He does so, but the abbot says he has a gift for him. Now, it is part of the Japanese way to accept gifts and be appreciative; to do otherwise is rude and, therefore, wrong. The abbot takes a pair of tongs and picks up a red hot coal from the adjacent fire pit on which he has a tea kettle.

The young monk starts to contemplate what he should do, and after a few moments, runs out of the hall distressed, for he cannot figure out what he is supposed to do. He can take the coal and be burned, or he can refuse the gift of the abbot. Both, in his mind, are things he cannot do.

He meditates on the problem for the next week, and comes back to say goodbye. However, the same scene is played again, and the same frustration is found when he tries to figure out what the abbot wants him to do.

He meditates further on the subject and feels he has discovered how to respond to the abbot’s gift. He returns, for the third time, to say goodbye to the abbot, and as before the abbot picks up a red hot coal and presents it as a gift to the young monk. The young monk simply replies, “Thank you.”

The abbot breaks a grin, nods his head, and returns the coal to the fire pit. “You may go now,” he says.

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ATP preliminaries

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

Off to All Tomorrow’s Parties in 24 hours, so no posts for a while. Subject to mobile reception, I’ll be uploading pictures to my Flickr account all weekend, so you might want to have a look if (as looks likely) the weather is keeping you indoors.

Frankly, my ATP enthusiasm is a little subdued right now. The lineup’s notable for “would like to see”s rather than essentials, and the forecast is disappointing. Was looking forward to ice creams and the beach, particularly after suffering through December and February ATPs. Still, I suppose we have a tacky arcade, boom hammers and three Lightning Bolt performances to look forward to.

Edit: You know what? I just spent a quick coffee break looking at some ATP pics and I’m back in the mood. Bring it on.

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New toys from Google

Thursday, May 11th, 2006

One pretty and trivial, the other complex and far more potent.

Google Trends: www.google.com/trends

Trends is a logical extension from Zeitgeist, allowing you to compare term search volume. Google News events are matched to spikes (at least, that’s the theory) and everyone goes home happy.


It’s fun, and it has some SEO / e-marketing implications which could be quite useful: helping you to choose cost-per-clicks, seeing visually whether a particular campaign has been effective, and so on. To be honest though, I think I’ll mainly use it to track cool patterns like this:


As Hugh would say, rock on.

Google Co-op: www.google.com/coop

In which Google puts its foot into social search in a pretty convoluted way. No screenshots because, in its present form, it’s so abstract and techie that it’s next to useless for the majority of the searching world. Still, it’s still only in beta and we know how good Google’s user interface work can be, so I fully expect this to grow into something very important.

“Help other users find information more easily by creating ‘subscribed links’ for your services and labelling webpages around the topics you know best.”

This doesn’t sound particularly new, but there’s a subtle distinction at play here. We’ve become accustomed to two sides of the coin: automated search (Google, Yahoo) and social bookmarking (del.icio.us, digg). As far as I know, this is the first step a major search company has made in bringing the two together. Great potential, but there are a few questions they’ll need to answer:

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Postscript

Monday, May 8th, 2006

While we’re on the subject of filthy lucre, Steve Pavlina has a great article on making money from your blog:

Can most people do it? No, they can’t… [but] I would say that most smart people can. What if you don’t know whether or not you qualify as smart? Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you have to ask the question, you aren’t.

A man after my own heart, except that myself I’ve about as much interest in “monetizing” this blog as I do in being one of Sugar’s lackeys.

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On big business and narrow minds

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Working in the business support sector* gives me a tangential interest in the concept of entrepreneurship and how it can be encouraged in the general public. According to the Small Business Service, 11% of the adult population is “seriously considering” starting a business.

That’s not an insignificant amount, but personally I suspect it would be much higher if we had a more modern, positive view of business in the British media. As a test, just think of a few British entrepreneurial role models.

Go on, have a go.

Sir Richard? James Dyson? Perhaps you thought of Anita Roddick but then remembered the whole L’Oreal debacle and changed your mind? Or maybe what’s-her-name from what’s-it-called.com that was so very trendy but didn’t really sell very much?

Bit of a struggle isn’t it?

Over the Atlantic, it’s very different. American TV, papers, and in fact its whole culture is saturated with men and women who’ve lived the dream, put in the work and ended up ludicrously rich. In contrast, we have The Apprentice, a Thatcherite treatise on bullying and one-upmanship, and Dragons’ Den, a panel of smug and vaguely spiteful venture capitalists taking potshots at naive 30-somethings who’ve invented a new type of bathplug. Not to mention a host of unscrupulous (even seedy) TV drama businessmen selling their grandmothers for a brown paper bag of used tenners.

We still seem fixated with the idea of commerce as big business empires, globalisation, exploitation, greed. It’s frustrating. Business doesn’t have to be like this! Half of the UK’s GDP comes from small businesses. There’s a surge in social enterprise activity, a growing trend of customer-centred design and, particularly in the tech sector, a rekindled passion for creating cool and profitable things through partnership, collaboration, openness and generally “doing the right thing”. For once, I’d love to see that recognised.

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* Quite obviously, these opinions are my own and not those of my employer. Have to say that just in case, you know?

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Twee-er than thou

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

I’ve challenged Tom from Page45 to a contest: compile the twee-est CD you can. I think my entry is pretty strong one, consisting as it does of Aberfeldy, Architecture In Helsinki, The Boy Least Likely To, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Cocorosie, The Innocence Mission, The Magnetic Fields, Mates Of State, Joanna Newsom, Of Montreal, Nobuo Uematsu and Woodbine.

I’ve just finished the test listen, and am now searching for lemons to eat and firearms to discharge.

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