Will Knott

From the fevered brain of Rick O’Shea, comes the story of a boy, a blog and an open grave.

no that’s wrong. Its Rick’s fault, he had an idea. A group pop culture blog, and he asked a few people to join in.

And for some unknown reason, he asked me.

I’ll admit that I have a shed load of tracks to review and put up there, but I’m also going to be posting about the impacts of technology on culture, and the impacts of culture on technology.

I need to thank a few people to get this going. So Thanks to to AJ, Rick, Darren, Sinead and Pedro for doing all the heavy lifting in getting the systems running. And a lot of the early posts (oops).

Now, I just have to write.

take care,

Will Knott

A wise woman pointed out that it is perfectly reasonable to talk predictions for the year ahead up to and including 31 January! Well I’m going to type about resolutions.

Yes its a bit late to talk about new year resolutions, but here goes.

Get in to fights again

I ended up dropping out of Capoeira in 2008. A mixture of class clashes and commuting.  Now I can start again, probably from scratch. Of course, if that fails I may be asking for a different kind of trouble. In short, I need to do something which involves a bit of movement.

In camera

I got caught up in an interesting discussion about “what makes a photoblog” om Twitter, well lots. I play with photography, but I think its time I moved up to a better camera. I’m not going D-SLR this year, but I have my eye on something and I want my wallet to match. On a related note, I need to go to more events. Since I’m sort of bi-locational at the moment, when the weather gets brighter things might get interesting.

More sleep

An idea stolen off Phil IcedCoffee; I just need to get to bed earlier. As if that all.

Re: cycling

It’s usually better to keep old resolutions than to make new ones. — Chloe Sevigny. I’ve copied this quote off Tim Ferris‘ resolutions.  And I’ve copied this resolution from last year. This year I think I’m a commutable distance to work, but without showering facilities things could get sticky. Still given the Mad Cow traffic holdups, cycling to the office may not be a bad idea. The only reason I’m delaying this one is making sure I can do it, and timing a weekend run first.

Change the decor

Now that I’m the master of my own domain, it almost been a year since I moved in. Its time to redecorate a little. I had planned to use the Carrington theme with pallet swaps and image swaps (its the one Joe Scanlon is using) but I recently stumbled across a theme on Smashing Magazine which is almost perfect. Things may look a little odd here over the next few weeks.

I had also planned on trying out the Google Friend Connect here too, but I’m not so sure now.

Write more fiction. Read more fiction.

I more or less stopped reading fiction when my studies restarted. With the exception of one Cory Doctorow (which I inhaled in one weekend), the Pseudopod short story horror podcast and the NSFW Tales fomthe MU novel experiment in blog form,  I’ve not read anything for a while. To that end I’ve finally started reading “The Idiot” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (for historical reasons) and a few others thanks to the DailyLit. I’ll take suggested reads from their list please.

The spippets feel too small for me, but I’ll live.

As for writing. When I took part in the Blogmas Christmas Carol, I liked it.

it had been years since I last wrote fiction, and I’d like to start again. A few short stories may appear here. I also have an idea for a very free form group fiction blog. Ask if you’re interested.

Well, thats it. I can see the cycling waning again this year, and I don’t know if I can find an accessable Capoeira group, but the others are managable.

What do you think?

Will Knott

The author John Updike died last night. I won’t write much about him, but he did an interview with the New York Times in October last year (as part of the promotion to his novel “The Widows of Eastwick“, the sequel to “The Witches of Eastwick“). The talk was part of the Times Talks series and is available as a podcast. Be warned, its a one and a half hour talk and the MP3 file weights in at 82MB. But it interesting enough for me to remember it months later.

He also did a video interview for the New York Times in October, for those who want to see him in action.

Some people just enjoy writing. It gets something out of your system (much like blogging). I have to write more fiction.

take care,

Will Knott

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Sometimes I wish I wasn’t bright yellow. But not very often.

That first Christmas morning I stood brightly under the tree on my wheels. Shining not as brightly as the tree lights, but proudly and brightly. The sounds of food being turned in to a breakfast are made beyond the door. Things are calm.
Then there is a thump. Followed by more thumps as a child scrambles down the stairs and the noise gets louder as nearer. Then a small round child appears. I see a face spread in to a broad grin. Within seconds I am sat on as bare feet find pedals and start to cycle me around the room.

But only start. Stabilisers aren’t really made for rooms with furniture.

Annoyed the round one shuffles off after being cajoled in to the room with the food sounds. Then more thumping and a fully dressed child appears and pulls me towards the door. Fortunately saner hands help carry me to the safety of the outdoors and tarmac. Then what becomes a ritual begins. Using black marker, the child’s name is written on my crossbar. Ownership.

Soon a child and bicycle are speeding down the road. The child’s first taste of freedom.

Over the years, miles are travelled. I’ve been dumped outside shops, fields, ditches. I’ve had labels stuck to me, but always removed, ice cream dripped on me and caked in many different kinds of mud. Scratches, dents and repairs.

But a child’s bike, while built to handle the toughest of roads, has one flaw; the child grows.

I’ve been passed on to siblings, cousins and neighbours. I’ve travelled around Ireland to different families. And each new excited child has crossed out the former owners name and had their own written on my crossbar. My once bright yellow frames is now stripped with the names and memories of many.
I’ve crossed seas. A little girl came from Belarus and I returned with her. I’ve been passed on since then.
Many hands.
Many feet.
Many first flights for this bumblebee.
Many first tastes of freedom.

Parts:

1. Thriftcriminal
2. Rick O’Shea
3. Whoopsadaisy
4. Maxi Cane
5. Will Knott
6. Darren Byrne
7. Rapture Ponies
8. Chris P Pancake
9. Darragh Doyle
10. K8 The Gr8
11. Lottie
12. Grandad
13. Someone living
14. Jo

Update : I’ve added the actual story links now rather then just the blogs. Merry Christmas to all etc.

I want to tell you a story, about Catherine Brodigan.

She put together the “Homepages” book. Homepages is a unique collection of stories and photographs, the first of its kind in Ireland. The nation’s best bloggers hold forth on the theme of “home”, covering everything from pets and expat life to parenting and the Kellogg’s Variety Pack. By turns hilarious, heartbreaking and thought-provoking, it promises a captivating read and showcases some of Ireland’s best undiscovered writing talent. All proceeds from the sale of each book, compiled on an entirely voluntary basis, go directly to Focus Ireland, who provide services and support for people who are homeless across Ireland.

The book can’t be bought in any shops, but is available on a “print-on-demand” basis for €14 from Lulu.

Also on the charity theme, the Elfish Damien Mulley is asking that people donate their mobile phones (and their chargers) to the Jack and Jill Foundation who recycle said mobile phones. He is asking that people pass a note in the jiffybag leave a comment on his offer post making sure you add some referer details (as in “WillKnott.ie sent me”)  and put their phone with the recharger bits in a jiffybag and send them to their freepost address: The Jack and Jill Mobile Appeal, Freepost, Ratoath Road , Finglas, Dublin 11.  You see, he’s offering a prizes for your kindness  (Damien is blaming Pat Phelan for this).

For everyone that donates one or more mobile phones to the charity, they’ll be entered into a draw for three prizes (First, second and third out of hat) – a Nokia 5220, a Voyager 815 bluetooth headset and an Elextex rubberised portable keyboard for phones. The blogger who gets these people to donate phones will also be entered into a draw for a Nokia 810 Internet Tablet.

Now, I’ll admit, that as much as I want to play with one, I don’t need the Nokia tablet. So I’ll ask that if you donate, you add your details and a note saying that you found out about this through who ever the first commenter on this blog post is.

So go out there and help someone. It’s the Christmas spirit thing to do.

take care,

Will Knott

Update: This post was updated as I included the wrong information to win your prize.

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This post has changed direction several times in the last three days.

At first I was going to write about green issues. What happened was that I bumped in to a pair of representatives for Change.ie, a government run site for creating a plan of action for environmental change and reducing Ireland’s (and maybe the world’s) carbon footprint. I told the reps that I was surprised that there hadn’t been blogger outreach to other blogs concerning green issues, and pointed out a few that I knew of.

One rep asked me to e-mail in the details of the sites, the idea was to get something of an aggregator going.

The first person who came to mind was Ms. Phoebe Bright…

who seems slightly miffed in this photo about what happened next.

Phoebe presented at the recent Open Coffee BBQ about energy, energy demand and a technological solutions to change the thinking currently driving our consumption habits. Well worth a read if you weren’t at teh presentation.

Also, how can I forget Greennav. Actually I did, which is why I e-mailed in the links. Greennav is an odd mix of a group blog in that anyone can add to it. So its one better than an aggregator, is something of a community. And yes its full of green hints and tips.

Even the landscape gardener Peter Donegan has added a collection of green hints and tips to his site.

And now a change in direction.

Ladies and gentlemen. Get them together, as the response from the government sources was “that’s nice, anyone can blog, go ahead”. Or a “we’ll do nothing thank you”.

This is one of those areas where we should collaborate, and double, nay triple the voices to get the messages, and actions out there. A green meme. Not just an internet meme but a get off our backsides and do something about it meme.

I’m just not sure what.

But its this tendency for collaboration which brings me to to the next change of directions, sponsored by Twenty Major and Adrian Weckler.

They have complained about the fact that …

1. We’re not angry and fighting enough. (But Mr Weckler things me are too angry).
2. We aim for consensus
3. We don’t do enough investigative journalism
4. Bloggers seem to be people who are fake

Well lets see.

I know that I don’t intend to ever get close to Granddad without a stab-proof vest, but the Irish blog-sphere is a small place. If you don’t count Bebo blogs, you could fit most of the Irish bloggers in a medium hotel for an awards ceremony. Because we are a small group, the chances of prolonged bickering are few. Grudges can be held, but so can tongues. And the word “community” tends to hold sway. (Besides, Twitter is the place for small short-lived Irish fire fights). And besides, Barcamps, Tweet-ups, Open Coffee clubs, photo-walks and general get-togethers happen enough to prevent full blown flame wars that lead to bits going missing.

As for a consensus. Well, the early Irish bloggers were either techies, or non-technical people in the technology industry (sometimes in the one person). In this world, standards mean a lot. Consensus gets the job done. And could a barcamp exist without consensus?

As for people who aren’t and don’t aspire to be investigative journalists not doing enough investigative journalism for Mr Wreckler’s liking. Well, circular logic only gets you so far. Maybe you would be willing to teach us the way, and teach us, using your blog or course, on how to do these investigations. I think a few hundred well trained (even if we are bored, lonely or angry) bloggers might do you some justice. (Besides you forgot about Maman Poulet teaching journalists how to do their jobs when it came to Michael Lynn).

And finally, “bloggers are fake”. Now he’s not talking about fiction blogs, nor blogs maintained by a fictional (or pseudonymous) character. He’s talking about people who create great blogs, to get employment, and once employed, stop blogging. I can only assume that he means people who want to write for a living, and are using their blog as a portfolio in the same way that an artist creates work for themselves, to get their own style (or voice) and use that portfolio as a way to become a writer.

Well, if they exist, and I actually expect that they do, then more luck to them. If the only reason they wrote was to get someone to pay for the writing, then isn’t it better that they stop blogging?

Can we all agree to that?

take care,
Will Knott

“So when are you going to upload those photos?”
John, the stage manager wanted to know.

“I’ve uploaded the first lot, Well there is a bit of editing to do, and I’m getting home late, and I’ve an exam…”
“So you’re lazy?”

Well now with the exam over (this morning) and a bit of time, I’ve finished editing the 230 photos from my second night of stewarding Corcadorca’s production of “The Hairy Ape” by Eugene O’Neill.

The delay is caused by the photos themselves, and the fact that I try to take them circumspectly during the show. The first lot has blurring problems. The easiest way to fix this is to reduce the shutter speed… but I’m taking photographs in low light. Reducing the shutter speed simply makes things darker.

So I have to increase the gamma levels on each photograph. And yes, I love the gimp right now.

Which means you can take photograph files like this…

and turn them in to something like this…

or even better.
this dark and hidden photo…

can turn in to this

where you can make out the faces of Peter Gowen (seated at the bottom) who plays “Yank”, Hector Harkness (standing) who plays “Long” and Will O’Connell (seated on the top with the bare feet) who plays “Stoker”.

Also

Here you can clearly see Frank O’Sullivan, who plays “Paddy” when he was an indistinct mass on the unedited photo. The main problem is, you need to edit every photograph to see if there is any salvageable data in there.

I know I would have simply deleted the “empty” shots before now.

take care,
and take a shot of the dark.
Will Knott

When a books comes out with 27 pages of source references, you know someone is trying to prove that he is correct.

Image via Wikipedia

And when the 532-page ebook is free, I suspect that the author is trying to be very correct and get his point across. Partly to stop himself being sued by George Lucas no doubt. The book is question is The Secret History of Star Wars which skews from the Lucasfilm version of history.

According to the “Frequently Asked Questions” part of the book’s site, Michael Kaminski wrote the book to fill the perceived knowledge gap (or at least lore gap) between the observed history from the fan’s perspective, and the official history according the Lucasfilm.

To be honest, I don’t care enough about the politics of the Star Wars movies (or the Jedi religion) to be worried, about the book’s content. But the existence of the book is interesting.

Essentially this book is a compiled collection of sources to create a history of the creation of six highly influential movies; a series which continues to generate controversy. And is of course unauthorised.

When an unauthorised biography is compiled, the person at the heart of it can sue for liable, as long as the accusations (if any) in the book are false). This book is not about George Lucas, but about the creation of a series of products. Which means that is possible to sue for copyright violations in much the same way that a lawsuit was perused against the creators of a printed Harry Potter Lexicon (which was settled out of court). Its not just reputation at stake here, but a multimillion empire. By being a free download, the author manages to avoid at least part of the consequences (financial gain) and given that this 3rd edition of the book came after the above settlement, it is possible that a few discrete alternations may have been made to prevent the “too much of my work” arguments.

There are of course two reasons as to why Lucasfilm has not sued.

1) Suing your fans is not a good idea; you need them

2) Lucas has a Pirates Dilemma problem. Yes its is a derived work, but its taken the history of the series in a direction which LucasFilm never would. While they are unlikely to support it, it would be a bad idea for them to try to destroy it. Because its something they can build on (or at least with).

Could someone who cares about the series and can confirm the truth of any of the books details contact me? Also in the unlikely possibility that someone from LucasFilm is reading this, is there an official response to the book? I can confirm that the author cares enough about copyright to disable copying and pasting from the PDF file.

Still behind the scenes shenanigans are always interesting.

take care,
Will Knott

p.s. I’m waiting for The Secret History of the Babylon 5 series (or at least the collected Hyperion archives). Have I missed them?

An old one from DJ Earworm a.k.a Jordan Roseman, the mash-up artist that wrote the book, the creator of the “United State of Pop” and the video skills of KJ Kline yield us “What’s My Name?. This is a mash-up of 22 songs, namely

Ace Of Base – All That She Wants
Mamma’s and the Papa’s – California Dreamin’
Brandy and Monica – The Boy Is Mine
Aaliyah – Try Again
Britney Spears – Oops! I Did It Again
Beyonce – Naughty Girl
Donna Summer – I Feel Love
Maroon5 – This Love
Eminem – My Name Is
Alicia Keys – You Don’t Know My Name
Destiny’s Child – Say My Name
Snoop Dogg – Who Am I? (What’s My Name?)
DMX – What’s My Name?
The Who – Who Are You?
Madison Avenue – Who The Hell Are You?
Eurythmics – Who’s That Girl
Peter Gabriel – I Don’t Remember
Irene Cara – Fame!
Kanye West – The New Work-out Plan
Lynyrd Skynyrd – What’s Your Name?
Jason Mraz – Eyes Open (Remember My Name)
Phil Collins – Take Me Home

Why do I bring it up? Well apart from the fact that it’s an excellent mashup, Jordan Roseman really did write the book; “Audio Mashup Construction Kit: ExtremeTech” (ISBN-10: 0471771953,ISBN-13: 978-0471771951) so he’s an author as well?

Well I can see that the book is mostly a PC based one (and an apparent Acid Pro lovefest) but I’m a PC boy. Given the low “used” price, I have to wonder… is it worth it?

take care,
Will

True, the news is a little stale – the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike is over. And the deal isn’t that good. Based on the reaction of Harlan Ellison I think the following quote applies…

“From a screenwriters point of view, the correct rendering should be, ‘Film is a collaborative business: bend over.’” — David Mamet from his 1989 essay ‘Film is a Collaborative Business’

tags : quote, wga, Harlan Ellison, screenwriter, David Mamet