by cameron | Jun 27, 2009 | Uncategorized
I was at this concert. I’ll never forget this opening number. It was TOTALLY INSANE. This video doesn’t begin to do it justice. Instead of the footage of the audience in the first 30 seconds it should have shown the stage. First thing you heard was the loud thunderous thumping. Then the top of the stage opened up and bright white lights blinded you. Then MJ marched up from inside the stage. Lights dimmed, smoke cleared, he screamed, everything exploded.
I still say it was the most amazing concert I’ve ever been to in my life. He was at his peak and – let’s face it – BAD was his last interesting album. After that he just melted down and become more freak than artist.
I was talking to Chrissy the other day, wondering who taught Michael how to dance – turns out it was a guy called Jeffrey Daniel. Check this video out:
Let’s remember though that the evidence seems to indicate that Michael was a very disturbed human being, a paedophile who only didn’t end up serving 20 years in jail because he could afford to buy his way out of trouble with $22 million of hush money.
And I don’t care that "he had a tough childhood". Yeah sure – being super rich and famous and talented must be a bitch. Guess what? Lots of people who end up committing criminal behaviour had messed up childhoods. And while we should definitely be understanding of that in our legal system, and recognize that emotional and psychological damage need to be treated responsibly, it’s not a ‘get out of jail free card’.
Unless, of course, you are someone who can spend $22 million on out-of-court settlements – like Michael Jackson – or priests in the Catholic Church.
by cameron | Jun 26, 2009 | Uncategorized
At the moment I am still missing the following list of G’Day World episodes. This dates back to the server crash we had six months ago when we also discovered our backup system had been misconfigured. If anyone has copies of these podcasts and would be prepared to upload them for me, I would be extremely grateful.
Gdayworld shows missing from ftp:
59
68
104
106
126
141
156
163
175
180
184
195
198
199
213
214
215
216
224
225
228
229
230
231
232
234
235
247
277
278
303
304
305
306
309
311
314
331
337
338
339
340
345
346
347
by cameron | Jun 25, 2009 | Brisbane, Uncategorized
I just got off the phone after a very annoying phone call with a Three "customer support" person.
The guy was just rude, obnoxious and uninformed.
I’ve had a 3G card from 3 for the last 18 months and never used it. But I’ve paid my $29 a month – so they have done very well out of me.
When I did try to use it a couple of days ago – because my TPG account has been capped for a couple of days – the throughput on the card was terrible, I’m talking single digits. I rang 3 support and was told their network is overloaded in my area (inner suburb of Brisbane) and that it might take a month to resolve.
So I rang them back today and asked them today to cancel my account – and was told there would be an $80 charge! When I explained they are not providing me with the service I signed up for, the guy on the phone had the temerity to try to tell me that it is MY FAULT because I recently moved house!! And that just because they agreed to give me coverage in one location, didn’t mean they provided access across 100% of the country!
I explained that I’m not in Alice Springs – I’m in an inner suburb of Brisbane where they normally DO provide access but they haven’t provisioned their network sufficiently.
But he just kept talking over me, not listening at all. I had to raise my voice for him to even stop talking for a second to let me finish my sentence.
Eventually he went and "spoke to a supervisor" and agreed to cut my cancellation charges in half. I said that I refused to pay them a cent more and asked to speak directly to a supervisor. He said someone would call me – WITHIN 48 HOURS.
It takes 48 hours to get someone to call me back?
What kind of operation are they running?
Network is down.
48 hours to get a call center supervisor to call me back.
Pathetic.
They have made $522 bucks out of me on this card and provided ZERO SERVICE.
by cameron | Jun 24, 2009 | CIA, Iran, Uncategorized
Tomorrow is my 2nd Twitter anniversary so it’s the perfect opportunity to take stock of what it means to me.
At the time of writing this, I’ve done 19,563 public posts (not counting DMs) which works our to about 27 per day over two years. As I’m usually online about 18 hours a day, that works out to an average of only 1.4 posts per online hour.
I often have people who aren’t yet using Twitter ask "how do you find the time?" Although I guess I’m possibly a fairly heavy user of Twitter compared to most, I only post on average once every 45 minutes. Each post takes… what… ten seconds? Hardly a big time waster. Let’s say I spent another couple of minutes every hour scanning replies, DMs and general tweets in my feed. I guess if I was generous, I might say I spend 6 minutes an hour reading and responding – that’s 1.8 hours a day (6 minutes x 18 waking hours) or 10% of my day. And it does sound like a lot. Until I factor in the following:
1. I work from home. No daily commute to listen to the radio and catch up on the morning news / gossip. Let’s say most people spend an hour a day commuting, either in their car or on public transport. That’s an hour they spend (out of 18 hours in the waking day) probably reading or listening to some kind of media. On those rare occasions during the week when I am in the car, heading to meetings etc, I’m normally listening to podcasts.
2. I don’t watch TV news. The only TV I watch at all is pre-recorded stuff on my laptop (at the moment – Mad Men, The Daily Show, Kings and DVDs). Most people spend 30 – 60 minutes a day watching some kind of news / current affairs (including those god-awful morning shows). I get my news from Twitter and from scanning the blogs. Oh and from podcasts when I go for my run, of course.
3. I’ve been living alone for the last year, my girlfriend living half a world away, and so I’ve had no social life and tweet mostly (I suspect) in the evenings to provide some relief from work. Wow… that sounded a lot more pathetic than it feels. 🙂 I guess it’s true – people on Twitter are losers who have no social life.
So, I figure most people spend a couple of hours a day watching, listening or reading the news. I might (and it’s a stretch) spend the same amount of time on Twitter. If I counted the amount of time I spend on Twitter and reading blogs, I’d say it’s about the same. So, for me, Twitter and blogs have replaced mainstream media.
As I said, I’m probably a fairly heavy user of Twitter, which is justified somewhat by the line of work I am in (social media). Having a good handle on how Twitter works is my business.
Let me tell you some of the things I dislike about Twitter at the moment:
- MLM chumps.
- Affiliate pimps.
- People who auto-send DMs pimping stuff when you follow them.
- Follow Fridays.
- The way people are jumping on the Iran bandwagon without much evidence of critical thinking. Cmon people – think.
For the record, I immediately un-follow people who commit the first three crimes.
Okay, now the things I like about Twitter:
- Intelligent debate – it’s hard to find, but it’s out there. Too many people seem to think you can’t have an intelligent discussion 140 characters at a time, but that’s just wrong. It just requires discipline and clarity.
- Support – Twitter is better than any tech support service I’ve ever used. But I’m not just talking about tech support. Mention that you’ve got any sort of problem, and you’ll usually have a stream of people – most of whom you’ve never met in real life and probably never will – offering to help out. These people counter-balance the brain dead MLM and affiliate folks and stop me from giving up all hope for the human race.
- The sense that this is the dawn of…. something. Something big. Something important. Something profound.
Twitter kind of reminds me of the skin jobs on BSG when they are on their base ship, dipping their hands into the pink water that somehow plugs them into the control feed of the ship. It’s also a bit like being Superman with his super hearing, just letting the entire planet’s voices wash over you.
I often find myself wondering about what a mind-blowing platform Twitter (and the interwebs in general) could be in an historical sense for the human race – just imagine jumping in the TARDIS and scooting back 100 years to 1909, then trying to explain the concept of Twitter to folks. What potential! The whole world (well… the connected world) talking to each other! The kids in New York shouting out real time support to the kids (or are they embedded CIA operatives pretending to be kids?) in Tehran! I wonder what the folks in 1909 would want to do with it. Or imagine going back another 30 years to 1879 and explaining it to Karl Marx. I wonder if he’d think it was the perfect medium to discuss MLM, Jon & Kate (and I honestly have NO frakking idea who they are), and whether or not Megan is as hot as Angelina.
Here’s my question for you all – are we smart enough for Twitter? Or will we waste it?
by cameron | Jun 11, 2009 | Uncategorized
The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don’t live there. They don’t get it because they don’t use it. – Trent Reznor
True for most marketing / PR /corporate people. Trent is quitting Twitter. Good. I hate celebrity twitterers anyway. I’ll be happy if they all follow Trent’s example.
