this exists: This

this exists: This

Recursive digital postmodernism lives.

this exists: This

this exists: This

Recursive digital postmodernism lives.

A sign of the Times

Digital Break Up 2.0?

They say that breaking up is hard to do. And They are right. After nearly four very happy years with my other half, things have run out of steam and we've decided to go our separate ways. It's a Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning I head to work with a quiet yet manageable sadness and I am hit with a torrent of instant messages, face book wall scrawls, emails and texts from my friends all asking me if I am ok, if I need to chat, if I need to cry and I am overwhelmed with the offers of support from friends and loved ones. It took a few moments for the penny to drop. This is Digital Breakup 2.0. The news had been broadcast via a simple update from the ex, changing her facebook status from 'in a relationship', to 'single'.

I have a lot of trouble with Monday mornings at the best of times. My brain has changed gear in the days off preceding, and it usually takes until 11am Monday morning to snap back into the 200mile an hour high fly which is my working mindset for the duration of the week. I wasn't ready for this. I hadn't internalized this pivotal, yet mutural decision to split, and yet the decision had been sent out via a contact wide multi-cast, reaching my friends through our many shared friends, and so out to my work colleagues and friends and who knows how far beyond.

I decided that the barn doors had definitely been blown open and this was really it, no going back as everybody now already knew. I so joined the torrent, adding my own twitter broadcast, which in turn was picked up on the right hand side of this blog, and was texted out to those who follow the humble musings of Professor Donshades via the twitter text alert system.

So there we are; Digital Break up 2.0. No longer you email all your friends to tell them your news, you broadcast it as a Tweet or status update. You send out the signal with your rss feed and it is picked up by those friends who monitor you life via netvibes of iGoogle. For good of for bad I am not sure, however it is definitely a sign of the times.

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

Googlisation Cometh!

Interesting news today regarding Google's aquisition of Grand Central telecom. It seems that Google now want to own the network as well as provide the services. The snap above comes from this article on the notion of Googalisation.

Nice Typography

by Jack Turner

Lynx Blow : On the Streets

Here's something that I put together a while ago for entering Lynx Blow into various awards. Yesterday was Campaign Digital judging and I'm hoping the Flo put in a good word...



We'll see.

Clients arn't All Bad

Last night I drank and drank to send off my good friend and colleague Ade Rowbotham. After almost a year of sitting opposite him in the new Dare HQ we've shared many stories, laughs and web 2.0 freakouts as we've slowly been turned from cynics of things 2.0, to happy subscribers of a continually connected lifestyle. Half way through the furious party however, I popped over the road to watch a client play drums in his band at a seedy underground club on Frith Street. Expecting to be not even mildly impressed I happily bore witness to what turned out to be a great prog rock gig with keyboards; fat synth and conceptually led guitar solos. It's often easy to assume that there's nothing behind the suit of a client other than the bare bones of brand loyalty, bottom lines and lists of things to amend so it was great to see a human side to someone who represents a very inhuman brand. Rock on!

TV GO Home

Offensiveness can be great in the hands of a comedian. Here's a snippet of some work by Charlie Brooker.

Money

Don't usually post comedy here so I though it's about time. Right now I'm in a crisis of finance and this rather tickled me.

Who Am I?

Self Portrait, originally uploaded by donshades.

Just trying to work it all out.

Ethan Haas Was Right?

Who is Ethan Haas? and what is The Clover Field Project? Looks like a film from the guys who made LOST. They're doing a good job of creating some Buzz on the net right now by selectively releasing conflicting bits of information to the world of film geeks; and now Paramount have released an official trailer which only throws up more questions.

This is Buzz working at it's best, with a neat Blogger Link also to colour the mood.

Art for All

Saw this on a wall in Soho.

Great idea, definitely improves the ambient atmosphere.

Script Secrets, Secret Geeks

I spent the weekend attending the Script Secrets, Screenplay writing course over at Raindance. Nice going guys, it was most informative. I don't really want to be a screenplay writer, but I thought that since Dare were prepared to foot the bill then learning a bit about the craft of the writer could only put me in better stead to pursue my romantic ambitions of becoming a truly great interactive director.

What did I find? Well I found myself amongst quite a bizzar collection of odd freaks, geeks and oddballs; even by my most liberal and accepting standards.

Dispel romantic notions of troubled creative writers, twisted on drugs, alcohol and ether; staying up all night exorcising various inner demons via hacking away at their typewriters. No. They're just a freak minority of social misfits who want to live out their fantasies of love, lust, valor, honor, betrayal, mystery and intrigue by hiding themselves in their retrospectively created fictional worlds. Where were the twisted, sworded intellectuals, aspiring to write themselves a better future; pointing through this great medium of fiction to the way we should be aspiring to live? Absent that day it seems, instead a collection of flag waving Greenpeace activists who want to mothball all aircraft travel along with the strong contingent of over zealous gushers, obsessed with conspiracy theory.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Really.

I wish these dudes, who made me realise a few things, all the best of luck in a cut throat business.

1. I need to widen my criteria of acceptance and scrub the "of a certain type", from my, "All freaks, geeks and twisted people accepted" sign.
2. We NEED people like this. Dreamers.
3. Nothing ever got created by people who give in to Mr Cynical.
4. Working in Advertising has made me too quick to judge.

In reflection I think that this craft of the word-smith is perhaps one which requires a strong streak of unconformity and an introverted nature; as to master these cynical tools of juxtaposition and cruel manipulation of mood requires reflection along with the ability to bite your own tongue while you wait to construct your thoughts with a more informed eloqunce.

Long live the great screen writers.