The Soft Folds of Hatmandu

The narrative of illness

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:02:31 GMT

So, yesterday I was felled by illness. The night before, I lay wake hour after hour, aching and uncomfortable with stomach pangs. As the day went on, I felt worse, with hot and cold flushes, more pangs, total exhaustion, and I crept back into my bed for much of the day for further fretful sleeplessness. Even one of usual salves – watching one of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies – failed, as I just couldn’t concentrate. Inevitably, feverish thoughts roved to whether I had the dreaded swine flu.

Today, the day began with some queasiness, but as time has gone on I feel immeasurably better – I’m chipper, punning and have a renewed bounce in my step. Whatever battle my body was fighting, it reached some low points but it eventually won.

Which is what made me think of the parallel with narrative. Kurt Vonnegut said all stories boil down to ‘Man in a hole’: “Somebody gets into trouble and gets out of it. People never get tired of this.” Legions of Hollywood screenwriters (eg Blake Snyder, whose Save the Cat! book is quite interesting – and I’ve only just discovered he died a few weeks ago; or Christopher Vogler, who applies Joseph Campbell’s ‘hero’s journey’ analysis of myth to blockbuster movies) have made a career out of amplifying Vonnegut’s summary into detailed scene plans for film scripts. Everyone knows there are only three, seven, 20 or 36 plots (or eight, nine, 37, 69…) – or just one, really.

All of life is full of these little mini-dramas, overcoming challenges, confronting enemies, battling illness. It’s no bloody wonder we like stories so much – especially the ones where we win.

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

A new look at the publisher’s lunch

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:42:15 GMT

As usual, everyone’s talking about how publishing can survive, and how to make money on the internet. Paul Graham has written an excellent essay, Post-Medium Publishing, where he observes that it is wrong to think publishers sell ‘content’ – rather, they sell a means of distribution, and prices are dictated by that (ie, historically, the price of paper and printing) – if t’were otherwise, we’d all pay vastly different sums depending on the quality of the content. And we don’t. Bottom line: “Whoever controls the device sets the terms.” Prospect Magazine, commenting on Graham, also reminds us that we’ve seen all this before, back in Shakespeare’s time.

Meanwhile, Steve Outing warns that ‘Your news content is worth zero to digital consumers’, and that money is again in delivery systems such as neato iPhone apps. (He quaintly goes on to suggest micro-rewards – tip jars 2.0, I guess.) Jeff Reifman has weighed in against Outing saying ‘Micropayments could save journalism’. It’s hard to see how: if the headline writers are any good, the headline is where the news is – the rest is elaboration. I get my news from a few simple sources, all of them essentially ‘headlines’:

A few snatched moment’s of Radio 4’s Today programme between bouts of baby care – I really just get the 7am headlines
RSS feeds from the BBC and the Guardian on my iGoogle page – I’ll occasionally click through if I want the detail or I’m piqued by something
Twitter feeds

I buy one newspaper a week: the Saturday Guardian. I do read the news in it – but almost invariably I’ve seen it the day before on the web. I like it for the columnists, the features, the magazine, basically as a ritual entertainment to accompany a cup of tea. My wife just does the crossword. The physical newspaper, in other words, has become an entertainment channel rather than a news one.

Micropayments? I can’t see myself paying for news stories. Features… maybe, if they’re really going to interest me. Academic papers: possibly, if I’m researching something. That said, I did make one micropayment this week: we were planning to buy a new car seat for the baby, and only one place, Which, has a decent, up-to-date review of best buys, focusing on safety (ie there’s an emotive imperative here – and the possibility of saving money, I guess). They charge £1 for a trial subscription – but then sting you with monthly payments several times that. You can cancel any time, so I will cancel straight away. It’s very annoying: I just want one article, which I probably would have paid £5 for, simply because it’s not possible to get this quality information elsewhere. I subscribed because I’m bloody minded enough to remember to unsubscribe – though of course their business model partly relies on people forgetting, or being sufficiently charmed by the dull magazine you get in the mail.

Paul Graham says that the only kind of information people will pay for is that “they think they can make money from” – I’d add that saving money (assuming more is saved than the information costs!) might be a motive, and niche issues such as the baby safety report I mentioned.

Graham reminds us, as people like Chris Anderson have done before, that something else people will pay for is live entertainment. I wonder if this connects to another constraint upon pricing for publishing models: it’s noticeable that novels, DVD rentals, cinema visits, CD albums, all generally fall within the £5 to £15 range: people will only pay so much for entertainment that they know can be reproduced. Live entertainment, such as a theatre show, opera, music gigs and a decent meal at a good restaurant, is more of a one-off experience, and commands more value. In his excellent book 59 Seconds, Richard Wiseman points to research showing that people’s happiness is improved significantly more by experiences than by products. There’s no such thing as retail therapy.

Again and again I come back, too, to the feeling that modern content producers – writers in particular – have unrealistic expectations of fame and fortune. Most people don’t want their content, and won’t pay much for it even if they do. As Prospect says, we’ve gone back to a pre-Romantic time (I’m thinking of poets and gentleman publishers such as John Murray here, which is where the modern author-publisher dream of the last 200 years began) where writers have to work hard, diversify, hawk their products themselves, and not just sit back and expect a publisher (whose grip of the medium is now somewhat buttery) to make them millions. The Dan Browns and J K Rowlings are the lucky exceptions.

I’m a writer myself, so it’s not like I don’t have an interest in these issues – but I just write to commission, content I know someone seems to want, rather than trying to sell my own ideas, as the latter is so much hard work (obviously I thank my stars for those commissions – and make most of my money by doing design work anyway – ie making vessels for others’ content). Whatever ideas I have (mostly daft, I admit) I give away for free, often at this website.

Perhaps the answer lies in Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans argument: build a core, devoted audience – if your stuff is good enough (and has a bit of luck and a fair wind), there will be some people at least who will go to your every gig, buy every T-shirt, read every book. If you can’t find 1000 true fans… maybe it’s time to be honest and admit the world isn’t knocking at your door. Do something for free. See what happens. Oh, and go out for a nice meal: it will make you happy.

Edit: After a challenge on Twitter to crowdsource payment for an article, you can now pay micropayments to get me to write an article on ‘The Modern Ninja’! I can’t lose: if not enough money is raised, it proves content isn’t worth much to people (well, er, my content…); if it is, I get a paid commission! (Oh, and if less than $300 is raised, I’ll refund your money folks!)

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

Book meme

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:54:12 GMT

Via absinthecity and others...

"Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. Don't take too long to think about it. They don't have to be the greatest books you've ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."

I notice nobody seems to be including non-fiction, so I won't here either (I could easily fill lists with that too, but it's maybe harder to distinguish them in my head). 15 that come to mind:

The Club of Queer Trades - G K Chesterton
Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges
Aegypt - John Crowley
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
The Inheritors - William Golding
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
A Maggot - John Fowles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Gould's Book of Fish - Richard Flanagan
Lempriere's Dictionary - Lawrence Norfolk
The Pope's Rhinoceros - Lawrence Norfolk
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
An Instance of the Fingerpost - Iain Pears
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco

Oops, there's a lot of dead (or nearly dead) white males there. I do really like Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, too, token female fans.

Ever been ad?

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:29:27 GMT

I'd like to ask your advice. No, not you. You. That's you in Oxfordshire, that is.

As you may have heard, Brighty and I have put our house on the market. (Lovely Victorian end of terrace, two bedrooms, large study/utility, pretty and private rear garden, you get the picture.)

We've appointed an estate agent - but regret our choice somewhat, as they appear to be slow, thick and frequently unavailable. Also, they don't advertise in Oxford, apart from one ad in the Oxford Times coming up soon.

This means we're considering advertising privately as well. Not nationally, as the websites which do that are shit. But in Oxford (or Oxfordshire), which is where we think we'd find people like us, who'd like a house like ours. We're looking for ideas. So far we're considering:
- Daily Information: currently free to advertise property
- Oxford University Gazette: £25 per insertion (published weekly in term)
- Oxford University Blueprint: £45 for a display ad (monthly)
- Oxford Times/Mail, maybe

Do you know of local mailing lists, noticeboards (on and offline), etc where it would be useful and meaningful to advertise (and not frowned upon)?

I shall cross-post this on dreamingspires, albeit in modified form.

The nonsense of an ending?

Fri, 15 May 2009 10:39:59 GMT

I’ve just finished watching the third season of Heroes. I enjoyed it, but various things about it - and about Lost (I’ve yet to see season five of that, though), and other contemporary TV shows, make me ponder about narrative theory. As one does.

One thing that’s really noticeable about these series is their reluctance to let characters die. In Heroes, the same core of characters continues from one series to the next, and various ingenious ways are thought up to aid this, to the extent that they can even reappear after death, whether as a figment of someone’s mind, or as a physical duplicate, or in someone else’s body, and so on (no names to avoid spoilers). The actors must have really good contracts drawn up… Yes, a few loveable characters have died, but they’re the exception.

A similar pattern persists in Lost, which seems to throw Occam’s razor ever further to the wind: it relentlessly multiplies entities beyond necessity, beyond the enjoyable teasing of the audience to the extent of suggesting the writers are rudderless. Season five, I’m told, may change this view - we’ll see.

Much is made of the ’story arc’ these days - how TV shows have become more sophisticated, and demand a complex level of attention. Which is fair enough, and of course books have run over multiple volumes before - but I wonder if the arc is being stretched to breaking point, and sometimes misses a fundamental of narrative: the expectation of an ending.

Frank Kermode, in The Sense of an Ending, wrote that fictions (as with human lives) have an implied ending all along, which makes ” possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with the middle”. Peter Brooks’ Reading for the Plot also studies how we “strive toward narrative ends” - he coined the phrase “the anticipation of retrospection” for that sense of how we imagine ourselves at the end, looking back on where we are now.

We are promised an ending for Lost in season six - but is there any way we can meaningfully look forward to it? What about Heroes: we’ve saved the cheerleader and saved the world a couple of times already - what’s left? It just doesn’t seem clear that there’s a narrative architecture any more. Maybe they’ll have to end, like Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories (another character brought back from the dead to satisfy a hungry audience) with a whimper more than a bang.

Another TV series that comes to mind is Doctor Who - long ago this came up with a clever notion for letting the character die, but the series live on: regeneration. We want the Doctor to keep having adventures - but even he is mortal, and the 12-regeneration limit gives a whiff of the grave that helps keep his adventures alive, I think. But I bet if the series is still running, the BBC will give in to the temptation to renew his regenerative lease when they run out…

Life on Mars worked well, partly because, I think, it had a clear two-series remit, and we knew an end would come, with all the fun of guessing what it might be and looking for signposts along the way. Ashes to Ashes neatly revives some favourite characters without the narrative problem of Sam Tyler (though is less innovative as a result, so far).

Maybe it’s time to start killing things off, and having ideas for new stories, instead of keeping the same ones going at the expense of all sense.

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

Sterling work

Mon, 11 May 2009 08:13:49 GMT

There are some enjoyable web comics about Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace here, here and here - even includes a coupla Gaussian copula gags (and for aficionados of the game of Horse!: representational horse!).

Originally published at hatmandu.net. You can comment here or there.

Living the dream

Wed, 06 May 2009 08:29:20 GMT

As far as I can see (oh, see here and here for comments from people in my flist, or posts by julietk, to whom apologies for my scepticism), the only reason why any of us here are getting Dreamwidth accounts (myself included) is to cybersquat our favoured usernames just in case it takes off/all our mates migrate to it.

So, two possible fates seem likely for DW:
1. It consists almost entirely of empty accounts, and implodes.
2. We realise we're all on it anyway and actually start using it.

I don't doubt its features are much better than LJ, yada yada, but I still can't see why we'd all be arsed to bother. LJ works fine; who's really desperate for more?

Twoogle

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:26:58 GMT

In case anyone cares, today I are trying an experiment: every time I want to do a Google search, I'm using Twitter search instead - posting reactions @hatmandu with the hashtag #twoogle. Will post reflections here tomorrow.

Thinking inside the box

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:17:14 GMT

vigornian has made some good comments about the whole social media/malarkey. Having engaged in the debate on Facebook he mentions, and tried very drunkenly and probably unsuccessfully to explain Twitter to Paul and Craig last week, I feel the urge to explain why I like it so much.

The biggest reason for me is a slightly odd one: I'm obsessed with the idea of 'formal constraints' being a spur to creativity, hence an interest in crosswords, Oulipo, barnacle's "show me the way to go home" variations, etc etc. Having to write in 140 characters or less for me is a hugely liberating idea. I don't use Twitter to keep up with friends per se - that's what LiveJournal and Facebook are for (among other things) - though of course it's great to see friends there, some of whom don't use those other sites much or at all anyway. If you like, I use it to show off to strangers.

I have reasons for that, partly: I like creating oddball web quizzes and so on, and I've got plans for several Twitter apps that I hope could go viral. It's a bit depressing to put it in such terms, but much of this is about marketing - I'm not interested in the whole "drive business with Twitter" tedium that's everywhere, but I suppose I'm ego-brand building, which might lead to interesting work (I'm self-employed, remember?), but better still just leads to meeting interesting people. So, yeah, it's all about me - but really that's all about encountering all the myriad creative, interesting people out there I've never met before. I can gain an audience for my whimsies, and be the audience for others'.

Facebook is fantastic as a shared repository for friends' experiences (tomorrow, I'm meeting a friend I haven't seen for 15 years - thanks to Facebook); LiveJournal is best for discursive reflection and comment - but neither helps you meet new people much. I love LiveJournal because it's all about writing, and that's part of what I do in life; Facebook doesn't offer much creative expression - other than the status update, which I loved until I found Twitter - so leaves me colder.

I also love the elegant simplicity of the Twitter concept. The way you connect to others through @ and to subjects through # is very simple, but has a lot of power (I'm not saying it's without faults, mind).

editor says he thinks Facebook would kill Twitter by allowing public updates. maybe he's right, maybe he's not - but I personally prefer the sites (as cyclotronic says) to keep their separate strengths. Trying to be all things to all people might just end up being disappointing for everyone.

I mentioned to vigornian that I like Twitter's search facility, and he replied with a shrug - why would he want that? I don't know why he would, but I love it: I find interesting tweets and people all the time through it, all well as skimming the thoughts of a zillion people. It's like being telepathic. Many of those are dull as ditchwater, but with just 140 characters, gems shine out. Others on the web have written better than I can on how this "live search" concept is a big thing. It's not Facebook that should swallow Twitter - it's Google.

I couldn't quite get all this into 140 characters.

Small edit: I should also have mentioned how useful Twitter is for news feeds, whether national or specific (eg BBC technology) - if headline writers are any good, you can get the gist, and lately (=baby) I've sadly little time to read full stories. Though I still prefer RSS feeds somewhat, as the timeline gets so cluttered.

Thanks ants. Thants

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:25:37 GMT

OK, so you love or you hate Twitter. I have six accounts so far, so you can assume I'm keen. Also, you may have different views on the celebs in Twitter thing.

But I am quite chuffed that Peter Serafinowicz has started following my daily crossword clue, entirely unbidden my me - I didn't even know he was on Twitter. I shall celebrate with a pint of pilk.

Oops. Ouch.

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:56:20 GMT

Oops. Yesterday I had the rare luxury of a day to myself, with wife and child visiting family in Lincoln. So instead of doing all the things at home I'd lined up to catch up on, I went on an 11-hour perambulatory drinking binge with sillage and Craig, rounded off with the pub quiz. Ouch.

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:17:51 GMT

BoJo MoFo!

Tea for two

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:22:17 GMT

Gosh. Years ago I did some subbing on The Lawyer. They ran an interview with Jack Straw, where da man was very grumpy: when he ordered a lackey to bring tea, he only ordered one cup. My headline was 'One tea, no sugar'. (I think the pic of him might even have shown the tea - I have a copy somewhere.) Cos he was 'no sugar', right? I had to argue for ages to get them to keep it, 'cos they didn't get it. Eventually it stayed.

OK, so nothing very amazing, but I was Satisfied at the time. Today, I've just heard from a dear friend with an absurdly good memory that he met Straw today and they were discussing headlines. He told him mine - and Straw loved it, and then told it to the editor of The Guardian.

This is probably as famous as I'll ever be.

Twitter 1935

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:17:18 GMT

There's a reasonably interesting article here about how Twitter could bring Google to its knees (well, in some ways), but the best thing from it is this:

Sprat, mackerel and other fish to fry

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:21:56 GMT

Every December, my work tends to tail off into the black hole of Santa's arse. Every January, I somehow assume this hiatus will continue, and I'm taken by surprise that it's consistently one of my busiest months. But boy, February this year is gonna be 'fun'.

Owing to the 'economic climate crunch' or whatever it's called, I have lost two clients recently. One involved designing showguides for property exhibitions - the administrators have just moved in. The other entailed writing various bits of frippery for a website which three of my LJ friends also wrote for. In this case, the consultants have moved in and realised that all this cheery content doesn't actually bring any revenue. So it goes.

Fortunately, I now have three new clients. One bizarrely is a London psychotherapy firm for which I initially offered to do a small job for free; one is a chain of London children's nurseries, which needs a new web dude, and for which I was kindly recommended. One is a large national membership organisation which publishes four magazines - I'm part of a small team which has stolen the work from the previous providers (a complicated saga in itself).

This is all good news, really - but sod's law dictates that everything happens at once. We have to hit the ground running with the latter and get a magazine out in the next three weeks - a time-frame in which I already have two other magazines and the flappy monster of the fringe brochure to design and get to press, along with a feature about DNA testing, several news articles and various website management tasks to undertake. This evening I now learn that my co-designer on the new big magazine thing has just lost his hard drive so can't do anything (he too is very busy) - so muggins here will do the whole first mag. Somehow.

I'm spewing all this out just to get my head round it, really - think of it as a very inefficient to-do list. I'm also very tired with baby-related sleeplessness. But hey, all this work does at least mean we can continue to survive while Helen's on maternity.

But if only people's deadlines didn't all collide like this every time!

Music

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 12:32:38 GMT

Oxford chums will be glad to hear that The Epstein, Stornaway, Travelling Band and probably Little Fish will all be performing for Oxfringe!

Twitterature

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:27:54 GMT

09:13 The animals filed in dually: ll~ll ll~ll LV LV lll\ lll\ l\l\ l\l\ ll ll l\ l\ <Lˆ<L <Lˆ<L llllllll llllllll __--T(_____ ... #L #
09:17 LalalalalanternlalalalaladarlinglalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalatenderlylalalovedmelaalwayslalaLililalaLamplightlalaLiliMarlenlalaLili... #L #
09:36 #L IwillIwillIWILLIWILLIWILLyoullseeIwillIllfulfilmywillIwillIwillIWILLIWILLIWILLtheyllseeIwilliwilliwillIWILLIWILLIBLOODYWELLWILLIll (Fail) #
10:52 Having been using Fetch as my FTP client for years, I've finally discovered Cyberduck - hooray! Quack! #

Via LoudTwitter

Twitterature

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:26:08 GMT

14:32 Alas Geeknight attendance unlikely tonight #
15:17 Hillbilly Lil Lyle (Dullsville AL) lolls idyllically;ill Al Bell rollerballs pellmell to Llyn Hall Llanelli,lilts villanelles.Love/Hell? #L #
15:20 @stephenfry - as #L doesn't work, just in case: qurl.com/lllll (50 Ls tell a story) #

Via LoudTwitter

Twitterature

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:21:15 GMT

12:54 The grommet manufacturing industry congratulates Barack Obama on his inauguration today, which heralds a bright future for grommet retail #
20:31 GRRRR! My bloody gmail account has been hacked and sending everyone spam. #

Via LoudTwitter

Cheap Vaga here

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:34:33 GMT

Apologies if you've had spam from my gmail address. Some maladaptive swamp-dwelling pissflap has hacked the account and sent spam to everyone I've ever mailed.

Twitterature

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:19:34 GMT

15:26 www.rentadateforcharity.com is looking for PHP help (for free, but will advertise you) - DM me for more info #

Via LoudTwitter

Twitterature

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:10:15 GMT

10:12 Fans of #cycling might be interested in a new blog by an entertaining and erudite chum of mine: realcycling.blogspot.com #

Via LoudTwitter

Twitterature

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:25:37 GMT

17:10 Retweeting from @tomd - share ideas for alternatives to Heathrow runway 3 at qurl.com/heathrow #

Via LoudTwitter

Twitterature

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:21:08 GMT

09:20 WiFiFoFum! Woo hoo! #
19:06 @Jazza_UK :) I've been trying it from the Oxford Tube (somewhat superfluously I guess). #

Via LoudTwitter

Twitterature

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:17:10 GMT

15:45 Phew! Just finished a huge feature about the 1911 Census, which had to be written today - as it only launched today, right on press deadline #

Via LoudTwitter

The Soft Folds of Hatmandu

The narrative of illness

A new look at the publisher’s lunch

Book meme

Ever been ad?

The nonsense of an ending?

Sterling work

Living the dream

Twoogle

Thinking inside the box

Thanks ants. Thants

Oops. Ouch.

Tea for two

Twitter 1935

Sprat, mackerel and other fish to fry

Music

Twitterature

Twitterature

Twitterature

Cheap V*ag*a here

Twitterature

Twitterature

Twitterature

Twitterature

Twitterature

Cheap Vaga here