Russell Davies

a bookish walk to work

Good listening on the walk to work this morning - a couple of bookish audio adventures; this feature from NPR's On The Media about the present and future of books and this programme from Studio 360 about Moby Dick.

being a catalogue of my relationships with music by age

0-10  This sound makes me go bouncy and I can shout it.

10-13  This music is good for dancing and singing and it reminds me of telly.

13-15  What music do my friends like? I must like the same music.

15-17  If I like the right music then girls will like me.

17-25  Nothing is more important in the world than [insert band] and only I and Paul Morley understand their significance. I don't care that girls don't like me.

25-30  What is it with [insert band]? They are ridiculous, strutting sell-outs. Music is just a rip-off man.

30-35  There's more to music than pop you know. This jazz stuff is fascinating, and there's music from round the world and have you heard some of those blues guys and John Cage and everything.

35-40  I'm still very much aware of today's music, there are a lot of incredible bands out there, even these days. I'll never get caught in some retro trap.

40-45  I only really listen to the music I liked when I was 17.

(I'm assuming that fairly soon I will revert to 'this sounds makes me go bouncy and I can shout it'.)

a funding model for newspapers must be found

somehow related

Apparently so.

compare and contrast

Not many people would argue that creating something useful, distinctive and successful requires hard work. Though I might argue with this particular definition of working hard. I would definitely take issue with the idea that constantly hanging out with people from your industry is a good idea, but I don't have to because Anil Dash has already done that.

in praise of fragments

Something Tom Coates entweetened about blogging the other day has stuck with me.

The urge to write longer things makes blogging more considered and therefore harder. Some would say that's a good thing. Filtering out the chaff. I'm not sure. For me, blogging is about momentum and 'more considered' makes momentum harder. Interesting things emerged from the less filtered rush of words. I enjoyed blogging because there was room for fragments of thought as well as something polished and finalised.

But we were seduced by the speed and reach of twitter and started putting our fragments there instead. But bits of thought on twitter are ephemeral, they slip away from us. Whereas on a blog a fragment of thought is pinned down, tagged, permanent and can become part of a larger body of accreted thinking. On a blog the fragments can become part of something larger and slower, on twitter they get swallowed up by something bigger and faster.

Or something. Anyway. Back to more fragments on here from me.

(He's right about Facebook too)

cult of sap

I wasn't entirely convinced I'd explained our Augmented Aural Reality app idea properly the other day at Playful and was thinking about writing it up again. But, fortunately, Giles has done a much better job than I could over at Cult of Mac. I'm glad it made sense to someone.

I've finallly worked out what I was trying to say at playful

bad at blurb

A friend pointed out that I'm quoted on the back of the UK edition of The Invention of Air. I assume this is the result of a canny publisher thinking that using a "Russell Davies" quote stands some chance of positive confusion with Russell T Davies, and the Radio 2 Russell Davies. It's like three endorsements in one.

I'm just disappointed that they've selected such a banal quote. Right there, for all to see, is my worst stylistic habit - overuse of stuff - one I thought I'd manage to shed. In fact, for a moment, I was convinced it wasn't me because I couldn't find it in here. But then I tracked it down.

I'm such a huge fan of Steven Johnson's work that it's a tremendous honour to be stuck on the back, I just wish I'd had the opportunity to come up with something a little less generic.

Ah well. You should read it though. It's packed with excellent stuff.

light works

I worked with Alex decades ago, then we reconnected over flickr. He takes lovely pictures. And he's got a show in Brighton at the beginning of December. I can't go, but you might want to, I bet it'll be good.