Andrea Grows Up

I think it’s a curse that I can only learn the hard way, by making mistakes and then realising the extent of my actions, trying to patch things up. Essentially, if there are two ways of behaving, where first is when you always have a choice to act with honour and second is when you always have a choice to recognise you did not act with honour and try to rectify the mess you created, then most of the time I went with the latter, for reasons still unknown to me. Said mess currently causes confusion as I can’t define or categorise it. It’s unclear where it ends and where it begins, how to measure it and how to rectify it. It’s all very stressing as the mess does not exist – in a very boring, few words story, I’m a very superficial person and have let a superficial thought overrule strong feelings. I was about to throw away the precious old too quickly for the unknown new and live to regret the instant disposal.

Oh man, I wish I never have let a dumb thought about someone I barely know escape the back of my mind. I wish I could explain that it wouldn’t go beyond the thought because I don’t really want it, but just said it to prove to myself I can say it and get away with it, in a strange false sense of  excitement. I wish I could say all the things I want to say about the last year of my life and how dumb I’ve just been this weekend. I wish I could make up for what I did because it’s the first time in my life I feel so scared about it. I wish I could thank for learning how to love, how to be happy when someone else is happy and try to cheer them up or just live with them through their own moments as they did for me. For looking after me when I was stupid and careless, for giving me what they needed more, for being selfless, for thinking about me before themselves, and for sacrificing their time and things they enjoyed because I was being needy. I wish I could express these things in just a few sentences, say yes and never look over my shoulder because I’ll know they’ll be there. I wish I could wake up, look around and see a familiar face and know it’s only us and fall asleep again. To make someone coffee in the morning. Cook them a nice meal. Say something stupid and laugh our asses off. Bake them cookies. Give them a hug, help them get ahead. Be proud of them.

I want too many things. But at least now I realise I want the real thing, not a cheap imitation of it.

Now it’s been a while since I actually wrote down what was on my mind.

links for 2008-08-30

• Sindromul Costeluş la PRO TV
  "Am conchis obosit, poate cu o uşoară maliţie în glasul vocii mele interioare, că televizorul a devenit un fel de gură de canal care deversează tot soiul de porcării în apartamentul meu."

Finally Some People Get It

You know what the most frustrating thing was while playing World of Warcraft (ages ago)? Apart from spending 9 or more hours per day of your life in a game that felt like work and being socially inept at the end of it all (well, more or less) it was the fact that you spent so much time understanding something fairly complex, you couldn’t be easily fooled by anything else pretending to be World of Warcraft.

When awaited ‘Age of Conan’ came out, people were super excited that it might ‘replace’ World of Warcraft, which is a game everyone loved to hate. It was unfair, it was time-consuming, it felt like it had sub-par graphics if you look at all the other games out there that challenge real life imagery.

The above image (well, screenshot) was taken about two and a half years ago when Blizzard released Naxxramas, whenever that was, and we were slapping ourselves awake at 2.30 in the morning to kill the huge fat blob pictured for some, you know, internet recognition. Yes it was an old screenshot, I had disabled every other addon I had on my PC to make it run properly in order to achieve whatever it was, just kinda pushing everything to the max basically to kill the bastard. For what? I don’t know really, the only things I got from that period were two very good friends whom I still speak to after about 4-5 years. Frankly, it’s pretty strange but it works.

Anyway, considering I’d spend evenings playing the same thing over and over it meant I’d be pretty frustrated and unimpressed when someone who had recently started playing got all excited about something I had done, “like, ages ago, man!” Like when you see someone excited about starting in a new work place and the people working there greet you with a ‘Don’t worry, it’ll die soon.’

So yeah, anyway, you got your first purple item..yeah, well, I got three of those while levelling up. Whatever!

You’ve exploited some design/programming weakness in a battleground and won numerous games in an unfair manner…well don’t be a twat about it and post it on YouTube! Sheesh.

What I’m getting to is this:

• EA’s Tiger Woods video (He’s just THAT good) - Their game did not have a glitch of Tiger Woods walking on water as some dude reported on YouTube.

• Samsung Omnia unboxing viral – Yes, thousands of people have tiny joygasms when they unbox their favourite gadgets, I thought I was shaking a bit when I opened up my iPhone box as well. Some of them post videos of how happy they are when they do and others how unimpressed they are with what their stuff performs and the features it offers. Marching band? Yeah, interesting…just skip to the end, will you?

Why the World of Warcraft intro then? Because people tried to woo us with in-game Toyotas. Seriously, come on. This is World of Warcraft, not the video for ‘Californication‘. If you’re going to dabble into what we do then actually do it properly. We do spend most of our time on the internet and lolcats are cute but they’re last year’s news, we’re not your colleague sat in the cubicle next to you that just discovered I can has cheeseburger on his favourite car forum.

links for 2008-08-24

• How does Nike feel about conspiracy theories?
  "An anonymous internet user, claiming to be close to Nike, had written a web post in which they suggested Nike had forced Liu to pull out because he wasn't going to win, and that would compromise the firm's investment in him. " – HA
  (tags: olympics nike china marketing)
• Advertising as creative destruction
  "The impervious logic of branding means criticism is becoming almost impossible to voice or hear."
  (tags: branding advertising)

links for 2008-08-21

• Advertising as creative destruction
  "The impervious logic of branding means criticism is becoming almost impossible to voice or hear."
  (tags: branding advertising)
• If Architects Had To Work Like Web Designers…
  "Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.."
  (tags: work webdev webdesign project)
• QUIKEA!
  "IKEA has great products and prices, but it takes forever just to walk through. This site is a guide for people who are familiar with IKEA and just need quick supplies. "
  (tags: tips shopping ikea)
• Getting more power to the iPhone
  "The iPhone's power problem revolves around its big selling point: how it handles data and internet access. Apple built a device that makes people want to use those services, but they suck the life out of the battery. Apple was perhaps not prepared for the users who love the iPhone too much."
  (tags: iphone apple battery consumers applications energy)

Obviously

When I bought the book ‘The Wisdom of Crowds‘ it cost me about £12 with shipping, only to find it now abandoned on a shelf for £3 in Fopp. Sigh. Don’t you just hate it?

links for 2008-08-20

• Draping the city in data and dodging augmented urban spam
  "My concern is that we'll end up blundering into cities plastered with the equivalent of flash banners and microsites. Which is bad enough when they're on our screens but will be horrible when they're everywhere we go. "
  (tags: advertising urban cities problem design information)
• 'World of Warcraft' Masters In-Game Bribery
  Get enough Warcraft characters together on their mounts and it's like I Ran the Circus without the Three-Snarper-Harp.
  (tags: games fun wow worldofwarcraft)
• The Dinner Party: Fiction (J. Ferris)
  “What would make you happy?” she asked. “A blow job.”
  (tags: fiction joshuaferris newyorker)
• A (long, but still edited) talk with Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow
  If you understand the statistics of rare occurrences, you get off the plane in Las Vegas and think, "Holy crap, the casinos must have fleeced a lot of suckers to build those," and get back on the plane. But most of us get off the plane, look at the casinos and go, "Think of all the money there is to be won. I’m special, I’m different."
  (tags: writing technology society privacy media internet surveillance security)
• 10 ways Britain changed over the weekend
  "Wouldn't it be lovely if the image of Britain currently encapsulated by boozy and chemical hedonism and being obsessed by making short-term financial gains were replaced by the image of glorious, world-beating performances, the resulting natural highs and a determination to be and stay brilliant shown by some of our Olympians?"
  (tags: uk sports olympics news)
• Please specify your reason for absence…
  Cellulitis ….. I'm never going into work again
  (tags: humor wtf corporate forms)
• When I Grow Up…
  “We call it real play, not working”
  (tags: work news money kids business education)
• Olympic Medal Count Map
  (tags: visualization olympics nytimes news map interactive timeline statistics sports)
• Where T-Shirts, Denim and Tattoos Have Replaced Gray Suits of ‘Mad Men’
  “I only wear a tie because I don’t have to.”
  (tags: fashion advertising television)

Sorry Nike

I really like how the two Olympics campaigns are two very different ideas.

The Adidas one talks a lot about how Gold medals shouldn’t be a given.

“[About Gold] It’s a dream to keep chasing. It’s a dream to keep you going. It’s a dream that sometimes gets put on hold. Gold is never a given.” (6)

“Gold is not into predictions. It’s not into how many you’re meant to take home. It could be one, it could be two or three. It could be none. Predictions mean nothing. Gold is never a given.” (5)

“Gold can be lost in a flash. Lost in the blink of an eye. Lost before the start of the race. Lost months before you step onto the track. Gold is never a given.” (4)

180 Amsterdam’s approach is something close to me and the fact that I’ve always hated absurd expectations, especially those of newspapers, that our country is great, our team should win, and if they don’t well put on a frown but at least they gave their best shot. It’s always been like that, newspapers roaring about how we didn’t win ‘enough gold medals’ that it makes you wonder how much is enough in their view. On a map of historical medal counts, it’s easy to see what countries won most medals and associate them with knowledge of history in order to understand why mostly the rigorous were counting the most wins.

Gold medals are a determinant of effort we couldn’t be able to fully understand, doing our own 9 to 5, worrying about debt, standing in queue at the supermarket every day. We’re not athletes, gymnasts, we don’t live the same lifestyle, we can’t understand what they do and how they do it. But we’re always pressuring them into ‘winning for us as a country’. And we’re never happy with how many medals they bring back because they’re always ‘less than they got four years ago’.

Adidas gave this laid-back feel. Don’t expect loads of medals, appreciate the physical effort being put into competing.  ‘Predictions mean nothing.’

Nike on the other hand, pushed it to the lie detector test with Kelly Sotherton, who would apparently ‘run faster with the support of the British public.’ Her honesty about how determined she is to win was put to the test which makes Nike the ‘fighter’, more cocky brand of the two. If the two were people, Nike would be the one saying ‘I’m in it to win it,’ while Adidas would keep quiet and wait for the results instead. If things went wrong, Adidas would know it put its best effort into it but its best just wasn’t good enough, while Nike would take the bigger fall – one for boasting something it did not manage to achieve and one for disappointing those who believed it would.

PS: I just bought a pair of Adidas shoes.

Is That a Porsche I See?

Following some guy in an ad agency that said he wears a tie just because he doesn’t have to, I could see myself in a few years buying a Porsche. Just because it’s known as a midlife crisis car for men, I’d probably have loads of fun driving one just to see the looks on people’s faces.

Speaking of which, a few days ago I was talking to a friend on why people decide to drive all the way to the UK from very far away or the other way around, our conclusion being it’s a thing of status. For anyone who got big in the UK selling bingo tickets to old ladies, taking their car with the wheel on the right hand side into Europe back home just says ‘Look at me, I got rich enough to afford this in a country where people say it’s hard to get ahead!’

So obviously I had the same thoughts about my own Porsche but realised there would be no point in taking it to Romania for instance (or Bulgaria, where the police drives them, please) because last time I did have driving encounters it was with a 23-year-old lady who had parked her black Lamborghini Gallardo on the pedestrian crossing and people were nudging her to move it to the designated space next to it.

My Porsche would wilt in the presence of her incredibly long legs and years of hard work behind the car.

Gone Missing

I came back home to a sad England. Not really that much of a credit crunched England as I was expecting to see, but the same old ‘go out and buy more stuff‘ England. I also came back to a lot of women with babies. Crying babies, screaming babies, mums that won’t bother to even throw them a quick glance, let alone inquire as to why they’re crying, smell their bottoms to see if their nappies need changing. Mums that walk around with three or four kids but never ever talk to them apart from when they want something. Mums on planes that drag babies aged one or perhaps two at most, screaming at the top of their lungs, scared of the aircrafts, landings, loud noises. No dads in sight.

Where do you find this rare species?