David Emery Online

Timeless

As you may have noticed I’m totally behind posting this week, and for that I apologise.

It’s not going to get better, I don’t think, certainly not in the immediate future – I’ve just got too much on at the moment. It’s not that I don’t have time to blog – anyone that tries to spin that one is talking rubbish. What I don’t have, though, is time to think and that quite frankly is the most important bit.

I’m hoping to try and get back on track next week but we’ll have to see how it goes.

It doesn’t help when I see sites like this:

Web Designer Wall

Hell – I’m never going to be that good…

Best laid plans

So today’s post was scheduled in to be a bit of a photography post, with the focal point being the rather lovely new camera case I’ve just bought. Maybe slightly boring, I guess, but it’s actually very rare that I plan a post more then about a day in advance so I was kind of looking forward to it. The case was winging it’s way from Australia (for some reason the only country Canon has blessed to sell this case) so it’s been over a week since I ordered it; plenty of time to plan a post.

Enter problem 1: Instead of a little parcel of camera-joy on my desk yesterday morning I instead found a Royal Mail slip, pleasantly informing me that I needed to pay £14.07 custom fee. The camera case is only worth about £40 (depending on the exchange rate) – I can’t for the life of me see how I can owe £14 odd but I have no real choice; I’ve already paid for it so I loose either way.

Enter problem 2: So, off I trudge (in the rain, of course – it is summer after all) to the postal depot which is, as is always...

Prepare to flee

A simple, short thought today:

What if this is the end of the world?

Now, I don’t for a minute think that it is; in fact, the reverse is true – not only is it not the end of the world, but I don’t think any of this record-braking flooding is anything out of the ordinary. Sure, it hasn’t happened like this for 50 years, but so what? A big flood, based on a certain amount of meteorological coincidences, once every 50 years or so seems fairly reasonable to me.

Anyway.

I have a hunch that if the world has an end, in the traditional sense, it would be somewhat like this. No big, calamitous wave of water; no wall of flame circling the globe and certainly no clichéd horse men. There’s no way they won’t have got bored by now and jacked in the apocalypse trade; it just doesn’t make business sense.

Yes, a slow and gradual end is the most viable option.

First, some minor floods here and there. Then, another week or so later some more. And it keeps raining. No-one notices until it hits London, though, and by that point the rest of the UK is...

Environ-mental

You can’t failed to have noticed how the current hot topic is the environment; are you “green”? What’s your carbon footprint? Do you recycle? Obviously none of these questions or topics are new as such, but they seem to be ever more prevalent in the media, mostly due to the potential good PR celebrities can manufacture by appearing to be “green”.

Of course, most of the spiel is utter nonsense.

Take the Toyota Prius, for example, which is one of the worst cars on the planet but yet every celebrity (and hence every clueless sheep) seems to have one. I’m sure you won’t find too many people willing to defend the looks, specification, interior design or passenger space as they’re all very sub-par for the high price you pay. ‘But!’ I hear you say ‘It’s very green!’ (imagine said with utter smugness). Well, no it’s not. Yes, the MPG is relatively high, but in this country – unlike the US where most of the celebrity owners roam – we have diesel, which means we have really quite a lot of cars that will do a similar milage on a tank of fuel. And that’s without taking into consideration that the Toyota published...

Sleep. Needed.

This post is brought to you by Sub Standards.

(This space left intentionally blank)

Photography

I don’t, as a general rule, believe in things like karma or fate.

It’s all made up rubbish designed for simple minds*.

However, after writing this a few months ago I’m willing to concede that I rather set myself up for a fall. If you haven’t guessed – or were too lazy to follow that link – I had a sick day today, having been caught out by a nasty cold that crept up on me over the holiday weekend. Hence, no major thinking today.

It does however, mean I’ve managed to do a little tinkering with my blog – if you look down at the bottom of the home page you’ll see I’m bringing in my last 10 photos from my Flickr stream. This was achieved really incredibly easily using the vdh_flickr plugin for Textpattern, which does exactly what I wanted (and a lot more besides). It all took about 15 minutes to set up, including CSS-ing etc, which is nice!

Of course, finally adding photos as a feature to this site is indicative of two things: firstly, and most obviously, I’m taking a hell of a lot more photos then I ever have before, and this is completely down...

Watch things

I think I wore myself out for the week yesterday, on the writing front at least, so today I’m going to highlight some nice bits of video that are floating around these here internets recently.

First up is this rather wonderful advert for Skoda:

Firstly, the concept is just brilliant – simply the idea that instead of faking it, that they just did it for real. Secondly, it’s just so much fun and seems to really reinforce the brand judging from the people I’ve spoken to.

Next, the new White Stripes video for the forthcoming single, Icky Thump:

Such a good song, and a great video to go with it.

Next up, the brand new video for Emma Pollock:

The song is great, and I quite like the almost retro feel that the video has going on.

Finally, a live video from The National on MTV:

After going on about how good they were on Tuesday, I thought I’d share this with you –...

Land of the free

I’m still very much recovering from my stateside trip; two thoughts:

1) How on earth are you supposed to sleep on a plane?

2) Surely the easiest way to cause a plane crash – rather then sneaking explosives through security in your shoes – is to turn on your phone, pager, wifi enabled laptop etc mid flight. If not, why do they make such a fuss? And if they could take down a plane, why don’t they make you check them in?

Dumb Blood

Dumb blood.

Shit poor.

Always making excuses.

Never blaming you.

Writing no sense. Copying apologetically. Watching time.

Tiredness overcomes thoughtfulness.

Tomorrow maybe better.

Or not.

Maybe.

Gameshows and Niches

Every market is a niche market, but some niches are smaller then others.

Take, for example, someone like McDonalds. At first glance you’d probably think “don’t be silly, McDonalds are flipping huge – they aren’t in a niche, natch” (read with a strong Brooklyn accent). They are, though: they’re not trying to compete with – for example – Pizza Express (a slightly more upmarket pizza restaurant chain in the UK); they don’t do waiter service, serve alcohol or pride themselves in serving the best food.

All those things are outside of their niche.

The next step is to remember that their are an unlimited amount of niches, if you make your niche small enough. For our second example, lets look at game show software. Firstly, I bet you didn’t even think that there was specific software for game shows, but there is. From what I can tell, there seem to be 2 companies that make it.

Two.

Game show software is a very small niche.

And yet, there it is; while it is a small niche there is still demand for game show software, and that’s not going to go away until we get sick of inane entertainment on TV (which is probably never). The demand...