A better city bike

I have three* bicycles, a road bike, a mountain bike and a town / hack bike**.
The one that is used most frequently (as opposed to the one that does the most miles or takes the hardest knocks) is the oldest, cheapest and ugliest of the three, a hack bike in the classic sense. It has mudguards, a rack, 28mm semi-slick tyres, a single-speed converter and security bolts on the axles. It also has a coating of grime so thick that it serves its own anti-theft protection purposes, but it's a few things away from a perfect city bike.
So what might a perfect city bike look like?
Well, one thing you can guarantee is that it would look nothing like the various ridiculous concepts that get splashed around every now and then. Take this one. Please just take it. With that much fancy carbon-fibre on show you can guarantee that if you don't someone else will. As long as it's not raining of course, because there are no mudguards. And as long as there's nothing to carry (no rack). And it's full daylight (no lights). And...
I'll stop there, you get the picture.

So, again, what might a perfect city bike look like?
I think there are a few constants that would be welcome anywhere:
Integrated lights. Good ones, one that will do a job both to be seen by and to be seen, built into the bike so as to be theft-proof and running off a dynamo with a back-up battery for the traffic lights.
An integrated lock. I don't want a d-lock swinging off my handlebars and taking chips out of the paintwork, worse I don't want to arrive and realise that I've left my lock at home.
A belt drive. Whether linking to a hub-gear or a single-speed (we'll come back to that) a good city bike is one that you arrive on clean and presentable (or at least as much as you left the house). I want a nice clean belt-drive (this at least the bad-example above does get right) and I want it enclosed as much as practical. If I forget my bicycle clips I don't want that to mean that I need to buy a new set of trousers because of chain marks all down the right leg.
Some kind of secure compartment on the bike where my emergency toolkit can live without needing to stuff my multi-tool, pump etc into my pockets every time I go to the pub.
Integrated mudguards. This should be optional, not everyone lives in such a god-forsaken climate, but if you're selling a town bike in northern Europe then full guards, with mud-flaps should be there as an option.
An integrated rack. Again optional, but a key job of a proper city bike is to be able to transport stuff around. Personally I don't like cycling with a rucksack, give me somewhere for my stuff.
Security bolts on the wheel QRs. I don't want to be un-hitching a wheel every time I lock up, sorry, I just don't.
Tubeless tyres. Possibly a bit controversial this one, at the moment there isn't a lot of choice in road tubeless road tyres but, having switched to tubeless on the mountain bike about 5 years ago and not having had a puncture since, I'd like that same confidence in my city bike please.
Disc brakes. Again this is potentially a bit controversial but better modulation and more consistent braking in the wet is worth, to me at least, a slight weight penalty. Also brake pads are much cheaper to replace after a crappy winter than rims...

So if those are the constants, what are the variables?
Firstly I see two types of geometry being required; a sit-up-and-beg Amsterdam-style option for those who prefer to be upright and relaxed, and a more aggressive, compact set-up for those who like to go and play in the traffic and take a faster route (my preferred approach).
Secondly there is the variable of local geography; places like Cambridge, or York, or Amsterdam can be easily tackled on a single-speed bike. The topographies of Sheffield and Durham however, require gears.
Finally there is the matter of climate and all-year cycling; for some a full set of racks and mudguards is essential, for some lucky buggers (living in LA or Seville perhaps) rain is simply not worth worrying about and wet-weather protection is simply unnecessary mass.

From these variables I see a line of 8 bicycles being derived: two geometries, each offered in a hub-geared and single-speed version, with all 4 of these available in a fair-weather*** or all-weather flavour.

Below are some sketches suggesting how such a machine might look and work. Feel free to criticise the artwork but know that in doing so you are missing the point...

Integrated lights:

Front and rear would have two LEDs, a flasher and a constant. Both rears and the front flasher would be set up to disperse as much light as possible, the front constant beam would be correctly set up to light-up the road and not on-coming traffic. I think a 300 Lumen high-power and 150 lumen low-power should be sufficient for open roads and lit roads respectively.

Integrated lock and retention point:

A cable lock permanently attached at one end with a spring-retention mechanism to help with re-coiling the cable. The lock is designed to loop around a fixed object and lock on itself. I know it's not as secure as a D-lock but it has practical benefits and the lock you have with you is always better than the one you left at home. The rubber strap on the top-tube stops the lock head rattling around and is designed to be replaceable in the event of  it perishing.

Bottom-bracket locker:

Simple bit of bent aluminium, attached to the frame with some security-head torx or allen-bolts. The lid lock is the same as the one on the main cycle lock so only one key is required. Large enough compartment for a spare-tube, a multi-tool, some instant patches and a couple of CO2 cannisters with an adaptor. Again not perfectly secure, but nothing is.

Initial thinking, Frame options and seat-tube cluster:

A basic upright frame and a compact variant. The kick up at the back of the compact top-tube is to ensure the rear light remains clear of any panniers or racks. The seat-tube cluster is designed so that the frame has a naturally compliant nature to offset the necessary size of the bottom-bracket area. Heavy use of hydro-forming is required but this can be done quite affordably now.
Throughout I have attempted to balance the requirements of integration with use of standard components, hence the lighting wiring doesn't go through the bars and stem, the rear light isn't built into the seat-post and the option remains to have a version without mudguards and rack so that standard after-market parts can be used.
I suspect you might not be able to hubs that have a dynamo / disc and gear / disc combo yet but I believe this will come along fairly quickly.

Looking at what's currently easily available it seems that Gazelle appear to be the closest I can find to this kind of approach but some bits really don't feel that integrated and the locks aren't really fit for purpose. They do seem like nice bikes though.

Anyway, that's my thoughts, what are yours?

* Well, 3 1/2 if you count my share of the tandem.
** This is widely recognised as the minimum number of bicycles by the way, if you were wondering.
*** N.B. Mounting points would still be included on the frame and forks of course.

Nokia Lumia 1020 review and comparison to N8

After a great deal of waiting I have finally got hold of the phone some of us have been waiting for Nokia to make for the last couple of years, the Lumia 1020, so I thought I'd write up a quick review on it.
For the most part I'm comparing this to my old N8.
This may seem a bit of an odd comparison (why not any of the newer Apple, Samsung, HTC or Sony phones for example?) but there are two simple reasons for this:
1) I suspect a reasonable number of people who bought the N8 for its camera have been hanging on for the 1020 for the same reason.
2) I do not own any of the other above-mentioned smart phones (though I did manage a couple of comparisons with an iPhone5 on the same night).

Hardware:
Physically the 1020 is a much bigger unit that the old N8 (on a par with a Galaxy S3), though it's actually slightly shallower at the deepest point. It still slides into your pocket easily enough but, with my average-bloke-sized hands it's really not as easy to use one-handed as the N8. The lens bulge seems to sit in a a bit of a funny place when you're holding it as well. From a design perspective I really don't like how they've chosen to house the additional gubbins; there are a number of alternative methods that would have produced both an easier-to-hold design as well as one that looked a bit sleeker.
A different design approach might also have allowed them space to fit in a couple of the nice hardware touches from the old N8, e.g. an expandable memory slot and the HDMI output.
Overall, of course, the phone hardware is much better - as you'd expect from a device several generations newer - the screen is a delight, both from a display and a touch perspective. Though it can register a false touch if you hover your finger too close. It being a dual-core processor (and newer software) everything runs much faster, with the possible exception of the camera start-up, it's a world apart in terms of regular use.

Software:
This is my first windows phone (I shouldn't think there are many people who are on their second) and I have to say that overall I've found it very easy to use and I'm more than happy with the operating system. There's a couple of things that took me a couple of attempts to find, and I miss the slide down access to wifi / data / silent but aside from that it's been very simple to figure out. The only things I had to look up were how to add a playing song to an already extant playlist* and how to close down apps when they're running in the background (a two-touch process rather than the old one-touch one).
On the app front, anyone coming from an android or iphone will find nothing like the same range and number of apps (it's much more like the symbian store) but so far the only thing I'd like to have but haven't got is a Strava app, but that wasn't available on symbian either so...

Anyway, the thing that most people wanting a 1020 will want to know about is:

The Camera:
It's good. Better than the N8 by a chunk actually. The reason for that bulky protrusion on the back of the phone is so that it can fit in a whopping great 1/1.5 sensor. Interestingly this is smaller than the old Pureview 808 (which had a 1/1.2) but still about 4 times the size of most other top-end camera phones and also larger than a lot of budget point-and-shoot cameras.
Some reviews will tell you that you can dump your compact camera once you have one of these but that is going to depend on what your compact was, if it was a cheapish one then this is probably true, if you've got something quite nice then you might want to do a bit more research.
I even read one review that claimed you wouldn't need your DSLR anymore - this is what's technically known as "bollocks". It's good, but let's not be ridiculous.

So, some details.
Firstly the phone comes with two camera apps, SmartCam and ProCam, built in. SmartCam takes a sequence of photos and lets you do funky things like removing background objects, correcting blinking faces, picking the best shot of a sequence etc. All very nice - and probably good if you have kids or do lots of other people photography - but I've never used it.
ProCam is a nice little app that gives you a bit more manual control of your photos. A series of simple swipe arcs allow you to make basic adjustments to white balance, focus (as well as tap focus), ISO, shutter speed and aperture. Whilst these are fairly basic they're actually very useful. Being able to ramp up the ISO at a gig for example (no flash required, especially as there's a mechanical stabiliser on the camera too) or being able to crank up the shutter speed for action shots.
Again, it's nothing like a proper set of manual controls on an SLR but it does allow you be much more creative than the competition.

Before I link you to some sample shots, a quick word on the output files. The 1020 saves two files for each shot, an unprocessed 41mp file and an over-sampled 5mp file for easier sharing etc. Weirdly if you look at the 41mp file it can look kind of blurry and out of focus. I don't know why this should be but frankly I've been sufficiently happy with the 5mp shots that I've never felt the need to export the 41mp version and try and play around with it. Anyway, for the comparison shots below, it's a 12MP N8 shot vs a 5MP 1020 shot as I figure that's what most people will use most of the time. (These shots have been uploaded to picasa, I'm not sure what compression they might use so this could be a bit of a dodgy comparison but I'm afraid I don't have any personal web-hosting to put the uncompressed files on).

Sunny(ish) day, outside, detail and inside shots:
N8 Outside, N8 detail, N8 inside
1020 Outside, 1020 detail, 1020 inside

Very low light (Dan Webster gig) shots:
N8 Stage, 1020 Stage.

A few shots to show different ISO effects in low light:
ISO400, ISO1600, ISO4000

A couple of other gig shots to show the zoom effect (again, very low light):
Low Zoom, High Zoom

The video is pretty handy too. Not having any other kind of camcorder I don't have anything to compare this to but here's a couple of clips you can make your own mind up about:
Low Light, Daylight and a Low light recording from the N8

And finally a couple of shots to show that with any camera, when the light is right, you just have to point it in the right direction:
Brough Castle 1, Brough Castle 2

So that's it for now, any questions or follow-ups, please shout.


* The reason I couldn't figure out how to do this was simply because you can't, well, not without plugging the phone into a PC and doing a drag and drop. This isn't just on the music player that comes supplied, but on any of the independent apps either - I find that to be a significant, and odd, omission.

A Manifesto for the Content Industry 14. Do not sue your customers.

I know this is the same as 1 but it’s so important I thought I’d say it twice.*

Well here we are at the end and you’ll be relieved to know that this final entry will be very short.

The bottom line is that, as part of the content industry, your business exists to serve your customers.

If you choose to provide a service that is worse than the competition (be that legitimate or otherwise) then you can expect to lose customers.

If you choose to provide a service that excludes certain sections of your potential customer base then you can expect to lose customers.

If you choose to provide a product that is more restricted that that offered by the competition (legitimate or otherwise) you can expect to lose customers.

And finally, if you choose to treat your customers like criminals, and make them feel like criminals when they do support you, you can expect to lose customers.

But, as I’ve hopefully explained, you don’t have to choose to do any of these things…

* With reference to Red Dwarf: “Kryten: A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws. One: we don't have any defensive shields. And two: we don't have any defensive shields. Now I realise that, technically speaking, that's only one flaw; but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice.”

A Manifesto for the Content Industry 12. The gravy train has stopped; it’s time to get off.

You are no longer the gatekeepers to content and you no longer have a monopoly. Lobby if you like (and we know you do) but you’d be better off coming to terms with it and adapting.

Let’s go back to the difference between middlemen and gatekeepers: What are you bringing to the table? If you’re adding something to the mix (distribution, promotion, technical expertise, access to fans / artists etc. etc.) then you’re a middleman. If all you’re doing is charging people to get to the table then you’re a gatekeeper and, let’s not beat around the bush, you’re doomed.

Before the advent of recorded media things were pretty simple. If you wanted to listen to some music you either played it yourself, went somewhere where someone would be playing it or (for the very rich) paid for someone to come to you and play it.

There were no movies of course, but the theatre was there and off you went.

The gatekeepers were just that, the men on the gate and, in some cases, the booking agents, but they were relatively few and far between. The middlemen were the tavern landlords, the ticket sellers and the folks who stuck up the bills.

With the advent of recorded media the game changed. Suddenly the option of bringing the entertainment to you existed for everyone, not just the very rich. But producing, distributing and advertising this content was expensive, very expensive. It also took a long time and required a lot of very specialist resource.

This meant there quickly became a clear divide between the amateurs and the industry-backed professionals, a divide that led to a massively successful set of industries for about 50-odd years and an ever expanding set of restrictions on what could be done with the output of these industries.

Towards the end of the last century, along with the rise of the personal electronics and the increasing availability of home computing, three things happened that started an inexorable change for these industries:

1) cheaper hardware and software brought media creation capability to the masses. Prices have continued to fall and quality has continued to rise to levels unimagined just twenty years previously. £1000 will buy you a brand new computer, the recording software, a solid-top acoustic guitar and a condenser microphone. With that you could record music that will surpass a lot of the stuff from some of the professional studios of the seventies and 80s.

2) The internet arrived and then, critically, morphed into web2.0, shifting from being yet-another-mass-media-distribution- channel to being a true many-to-many distribution mechanism for User Generated Content (UGC). In the music world sites like myspace (RIP), cdbaby, last FM, bandcamp, soundcloud, thesixtyone and many others sprang up to help artists distribute and advertise their work directly to fans. Amazon, Lulu and others are providing the same service for authors and crowd-funding tools like Kickstarter are offering aspiring film-makers and game designers (see 3) the chance to make this shift as well.

3) Computer games and consoles made the shift from the arcade and nerdiness to the front room and mainstream acceptance. In a world where digital content is effectively infinitely abundant, disposable income is still depressingly finite. The music, movie and publishing industries have been forced to adapt to a new competitor for these entertainment dollars and, in general, it’s a competitor that is born of the digital revolution and is reacting to the changing world more quickly and more profitably.

Content will always be produced, fans will always exist but the gates are going or, in some places, have gone entirely. There will always be a place for those who can add value to the connection between fan and creator, but if your business model exists solely to stand at the gate demanding admission then your ex-customer will just walk over the ruins of the walls around you.

Or, to go back to the original metaphor, the gravy train has stopped at the buffers, the passengers and artists have disembarked and are mingling on the platforms planning new journeys on new trains, cars, planes, bicycles and everything else under the sun. How long are you going to sit in the carriage waiting for them to come back?

A Manifesto for the content industry 11 - This is a global market

If you charge western prices to the third world then people will find a way to get the content for free. 99c might not be a lot to readers of this blog but it’s a day’s wage to large amounts of the globe. The bad news is that you can’t stop a European going to an African website and buying from there, your unit cost is zero, expect your prices to trend that way.

This will be a short entry because it’s really just simple economics (even if it’s frequently missed by a great number of corporations who should know better).

Point 1: Once something is on the web it is effectively available everywhere. Sure you can try blocking things by regions and this will work for casual users and non-techy folks* but these things are easy to work around.
Point 2: Your unit cost is effectively zero**, everyone understands this, your unit price will have to be close to that for people to feel that they’re not being ripped off.
“Close to zero” is a variable though. In Western Europe or North America you can just about get away with 99c (or 99p) being “close to zero”. In the Far East, Eastern Europe, Russia, India and other areas of Asia, South America, anywhere in Africa, 99c gets ever further away from “close to zero” and ever closer to “a day’s wage”.
People will not pay a day’s wage for a digital entertainment file.

If you price your product that way then you can expect a high proportion of piracy in those countries. So you have two options: local pricing or acceptance that that market is not going to provide you with any income from digital downloads***.
However if you go for local pricing we get back to this “global market” thing. I have a friend who buys all his MP3s from a Russian site. It’s all completely legit (as far as he’s aware), but only a 10 th of the price. No laws broken, no copyright infringed, 1/10th the outlay.

But maybe 10 times the risk?
I’ve never used this site for two reasons:
1) I’m not comfortable giving my credit card details to a Russian website.
2) I’m not convinced that any of that money will ever make it back to the original artist.

And those two reasons mean a business opportunity still exists.
Let’s face it, a lot of the countries that have the lowest standards of living are also rife with corruption, if you run a trusted, 1st world web-company then that alone will be reason for some people to buy (see Amazon and iTunes for examples).
Secondly the success of things like Kickstarter, NoiseTrade and Bandcamp shows that there are a lot of customers out there who want to support the artist.
If you can facilitate that, show that you’re helping to get that content made, and provide a trustworthy service, then there’s a place for you.

* Warning, non-techy folks are a decreasing proportion of the population, building your business model on them is not a long-term strategy.
** I know that there are hosting and management costs for large businesses, but those large businesses are shifting lots of units.
*** It could still provide you with income from other channels though, don’t write it off.

Proposed UK Copyright reforms draft paper out (2)

Thanks to @copyrightgirl I have been reading the snappily titled "GOVERNMENT POLICY STATEMENT: Consultation on Modernising Copyright". Here is the second part of my initial analysis looking at Extended Collective Licensing and Collecting societies (part one is here).

Extended Collective Licensing
I was going to tackle the second third of the consultation today but it turns out this has largely been done for me already. To save me the effort of re-writing something already better written (and to save you the pain of reading it) I'll just direct you, well, directly to the bemuso blog site where you can read his* analysis.
There's 4 sections to it so it may take a while.
Go ahead, jump there now, I'll wait here.

Back? Excellent.
Now we don't agree entirely in our analysis, but only in context of who might be calling for this and benefitting from it. It's altogether likely that Rob (I hope he doesn't mind me calling him that) has sources of knowledge that I don't, but I wonder what makes him suggest that the people pushing for these changes (we agree that it's not the consumer) are "Google and the free content lobby". It feels to me that the people most likely to benefit from these measures are the currently incumbent collecting societies themselves.
So having concluded that the second section of this consultation serves only to bring confusion and complexity to both consumers and creators I shall move on to the final section of this document.

Codes of Conduct for Collecting Societies
This bit gets me down a touch because it shows such a lamentable failure to a) look at what's happened elsewhere and b) stand up for the public against vested interests.
Shorly after pointing out that this is a billion pound operation it says "However, the Hargreaves Review noted that collecting societies tend to be monopoly suppliers in the sectors in which they operate, and that there was evidence that practice could be improved in some areas. Hargreaves argued that greater protection was required both for members of collecting societies, and for their licensees."
It then describes feedback that raised issues "in relation to lack of transparency, administrative costs, and negotiation practices around licences and tariffs" - so pretty much everything they're supposed to be doing then?
Despite this we're going to extend these collecting societies? Even though there are plenty of other options that already exist out there in the market and aren't requiring government intervention (see the 3rd bemuso blog).
Clearly codes of conduct are required in order to make sure these collecting societies operate properly.
Well, no, actually that's not clear at all, but that's not how governments think.
But codes of conduct do a good impression of making it look like something is being done; that is definitely how governments think.
"Collecting societies and some rights holders favoured a purely voluntary model based on principles developed by a working group of the British Copyright Council. Considerable effort has gone into developing these proposals, and collecting societies argued that they would deliver the intended benefits of the policy. However, licensees overwhelmingly sought a statutory basis for codes of conduct, supported by the potential for penalties to ensure compliance and counteract the monopoly position of collecting societies. Their fear was that without a credible enforcement process, the codes would not have any real impact. This was seen as particularly important if collecting societies’ powers were extended (e.g. via authorisation to operate ECL schemes) to allow them to licence on behalf of non-members."
Well no shit. The vested interests want a voluntary code of conduct. Ask yourself how well that works for advertising and the press?
Fortunately there are some people involved who are at least nearly as cynical as me so we have "Government will therefore legislate to allow the introduction, through Regulations, of a backstop power to
enable the application of a statutory code of conduct. This power would be used in the event of failure by a
collecting society to implement or adhere to a voluntary code which encompasses the minimum standards."
I wonder if that will make it through to the final draft?

I still don't understand who, apart from the licensing agencies, is benefitting from either the ECL or the codes of conduct. This really feels like a classic case of "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
And I find that very depressing.

A Manifesto for the Content Industry 9 - Be Genuine

We’re sick of spin, we’re sick of hype. If you churn out repetitive and unoriginal content whilst claiming it’s the best thing since last year’s clone, we’ll stop listening and go elsewhere (a lot of people already have).

“The best thing since sliced-bread” gives over 3 million hits on a google-search, I wonder how many of those things really are?

There is a theory that for any headline that ends with a question-mark*, the answer is “no”.

“You can tell when a politician is lying, his lips move.” Gets you over 500 hits on Google.

“Don’t believe the hype.” By Public Enemy reached number 18 in the UK chart

“So what?” I hear you ask. Well, we, as a populace, and hence as customers, are becoming more cynical. Advertising is pervasive but untrusted, techniques such as having the volume of the commercial breaks louder than the host programme and releasing ad campaigns that are designed to be offensive safe in the knowledge that any ASA activity will be retroactive further heighten the sense of intrusion.

Programmes such as The X-Factor are routinely referred to as “glorified karaoke” and the shelf-life of the winners is generally planned only to last until the next series (anything else is a bonus).

Media conglomerates have control of so many different channels that it is easy to find an advertisement for a TV programme masquerading as an article in a paper owned by the same company (or vice versa).

We, the customers, have known this for a while but, with the advent of a truly interactive web, people are finding out how to route round the hype, the misinformation and the adverts and are finding their own trusted sources.

Many legacy companies are seeing this as a threat. This loss of control means that their influence is reduced accordingly:

If people are TIVO’ing shows then they’re not watching your expensive adverts

If people aren’t listening to commercial radio they’re not hearing your carefully selected play-list

If people aren’t reading the newspapers then they’re not reading your trend-setter’s latest must-watch / -read / -listen to recommendations

But overall spend on entertainment is going up, especially for independents. So where are they getting their recommendations?

Well, the same way that they always did really, from friends, peers, colleagues, trusted reviewers, fanzines etc. It’s just that now, most of these are online and can have a far wider influence than they did previously.

And the reason that people are listening to these sources is that they respect the opinions and advice given. These new sources have established a track record on honest and reliable output that allows people to make a judgement based on that history.

This is an opportunity, and an easy one to open up. Most aspects of the content industry have their talent scouts (in one form or another) who could easily open up a credible dialogue with potential fans and customers, but very few are doing so.

More often than not this gap has been filled by amateur  / semi-pro bloggers and websites.

Sometimes industries will embrace these new sources, frequently they will do so in a confused, contradictory and ultimately litigious fashion.

This link [http://www.techdirt.com/search.php?cx=partner-pub-4050006937094082%3Acx0qff-dnm1&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=dajaz1] shows the list of articles about popular hip-hop blog Dajaz1, a blog that was taken offline for hosting infringing content, a significant chunk of which was found to have been provided by the record labels for promotion.

There are plenty of other examples of fan-supported sites being closed down for copyright reasons that, ultimately, just drive people away from legitimate content.

From accounting practices to promotion techniques the legacy content industries (particularly music and movies) don’t have a good history of honesty. That’s a gap in the market, that’s an opportunity.

P.S. As well as my recurring concern about companies adapting before I’ve finished writing this I sometimes wonder if I’m going the wrong way with some of my analysis. Fortunately there is no shortage of regular reminders that reform is needed, generally in the form of one of the industries taking some ridiculous legal action. After writing this up last night my vindication came with this article from techdirt** about how skipping commercials might be considered illegal.

* e.g. Did radio-active, nazi gerbils kill Elvis in JFK cover-up?

** My go to source for all that is wrong in the Intellectual Property world.

Cycling, Music and Design (well, poking a bit of fun at fashion)

I think this video just about sums up all the key areas of this blog. And it has lots of swearing in it, which is always funny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgCqz3l33kU
[EDIT - updated with embed]

SOPA so bad

I feel I should be posting something about SOPA/PIPA here being as it's such a crock of shit and seriously fucks up this wonderful little thing I like to call the web.
But in truth, everything that needs to be said is being said and collated by those far more intelligent than me, so I'll just point you here: http://www.techdirt.com/
The other reason that I'm trying to avoid writing anything about is that the outright lies and bullshit that is being spouted by the likes of the MPAA and RIAA makes me so angry I'm almost unable to write a coherent sentence.
So all I'll say is, get out there and make a noise.

Maybe it's while we still can.

How not to do it.

Now, full disclosure upfront, I'm not a fan of Virgin media at the best of times. I'm not a customer of theirs but, despite being on the Mail and Telephone Preference Services they continue to bombard me with advertising. One of these days I will completely lose my rag with them, but in the meantime i'm working on the principle that moving house is the easier option.

But I digress...

Through the door the other day i got this abomination of a mail shot (click it for full size).

Would you just look at the small print at the bottom of that? Seriously, an eighth of the page is small print. WTF?
There is more text in the small print than in the advert ffs.
If i didn't like the company before receiving this i certainly wouldn't trust them afterwards.

I'm in the market for a new bike...

...because some thieving little shit stole mine last night. bastard.
So, any suggestions? What was taken was a heavily modded Giant NRS3 (the frame, chainset and stem are original, everything else has been upgraded), and i'd be looking for something similar (though i'm also thinking about a hard-tail).
I reckon i've got about £1500 budget.
What do you suggest?

Talking crap

I've been accused of this many times, but this time i'm doing it deliberately...

Toilets are funny things, i have no idea if it's different in other cultures, but here in the west we're still a bit embarrassed about it all. As such it's an area of design that really hasn't progressed very much (I know Toto are doing interesting things in Japan though) so i will probably return to it on a number of occasions.

There are few things in life more satisfying than taking a well-needed dump in the privacy of your own toilet. You know this is true.
Now compare this to the horror of those situations where you absolutely-cannot-possibly-avoid having to use a public toilet. Especially ones at any kind of transport interchange.
Slightly less unpleasant are the loos at work. There's probably a multi-point sliding scale that could be derived, but that's not the point of this post.

This post is about a change of architectural approach and the installation of some simple technology.

Let's talk architecture first; it's an area of design that likes to consider itself cutting edge, right up until you get to the toilets. They may have a swish new sink or a funky Dyson airblade but chances are, on the other side of the room, is the usual grim array of stalls.
I recently started working in a new office block, and there the architect has made a fantastic decision. Instead of one large room with a number of toilet stalls, half that number of sinks and only one hand-dryer (why do people always seem to think that that is an acceptable ratio?) the architect chose to put in 6 small, individual rooms off a short, central corridor. Proper rooms with proper doors and walls. They each have their own wash-basin and hand dryer as well.
The whole toilet experience is much more pleasant; perhaps this is why they appear to be better looked after by the staff as well?

"But wait!" You may be thinking, "surely that takes up much more floorspace? And surely small rooms retain the previous occupant's odour for a much longer time?"
Both of these are good questions, let's look at them one at a time.
Floor space. For the benefit of the regular office moves my company publishes floor plans of all our buildings. Using these i have been able to work out that, on a like-number-of-stalls basis, the individual room approach takes up only a fraction more space. It could easily be made to take up the same amount of space with just a small (read negligible) reduction in individual room space.
And what of the whiff? Well now, this is one area where it does appear to fall down. Despite each room having its own extraction duct it can be an unpleasant experience to step into a frequently occupied and heavily used room.
And that's where the simple technology comes in.

Toilet timers. I shit you not.*
Have display above each toilet door showing the time since the room was last vacated. Link the timer to the lock so that it reset when the door was unlocked and that way anyone entering the corridor can take a quick look around and see which room has the longest period of absence (and thus the highest chance of fresh air).

You may snigger at such a suggestion, but that is just our western embarrassment coming to the fore again. Ask yourself what other scenario would it be considered to expose yourself or others to aerosolised human faeces?
If you can think of an example i don't want to come to any of your parties.

So, individual rooms, with timers. Taking a dump at work could be as relaxing as doing so at home. Just don't install a magazine rack or your productivity could take a huge hit.


* Did you really think i was going to let you get through this without that joke coming in somewhere?

A light in the darkness

Driving along yesterday in the bright sunshine, approaching a roundabout the "other half" pulls out causing me to emit a more-than-slightly-panicked gasp as she then desperately accelerates across the gap. The reason for this sudden cardial exercise? In the bright sunshine she hadn't seen that his right-hand indicator was actually on and we shouldn't have been pulling out. I had seen this but hadn't realised that she hadn't until too late. As it were.

Anyway, we're alright, he probably gave us a mouthful, but there was no sudden impacts or deafening squeals of brakes and children.*

But it got me thinking.

Given where we are with the state of our technology and its inclusion in automobiles, why don't we have ambient-light-sensitive indicators? Ones that are brighter during the day and then revert to normal levels at night (so as not to dazzle or distract). Doesn't look like there are any patents on this one if anyone fancies making a bob or two...

Similarly, why don't we have pressure-sensitive brake lights? The harder you brake the brighter the light. This is potentially very useful information to following vehicles.

A patent was filed on this in 2004 FFS! Tell me we're not going to have to wait until it expires in 2021. Please.

Both of these things are absolutely piss damn easy to do, with obvious benefits.
So where are they?

And why aren't they on your car?

*As my brother is wont to say

1000 just isn't enough

In my opening post i mentioned the stuff i'd been reading on the technium about the concept that's been doing the rounds for a while now, that a band can get by with 1000 true fans.

What defines a true fan is probably up for debate but for the purposes of these arguments it can be taken as someone who'll buy everything you release. Which is nice of them, but, and this is where it gets interesting, being a true fan they're more likely to want some kind of hard-copy product rather than just a download.

This, therefore, means upfront production costs. This is particularly true of any merchandise other than music (ever tried downloading a t-shirt?).

Production costs rack up quickly. Let's say that your true fan will spend £25 on your products per year, say, for the sake of argument, an album, an EP and a t-shirt. That's going to cost you about £1500 for a thousand t-shirts, about £1000 for a run of a thousand albums and a similar amount for the EP. These are ballpark figures, you can probably find cheaper if you search around but it's a good place to start.

That's £3500 you've got to find upfront (albeit potentially in installments) to produce the physical item.
Let's talk studio costs now. In fact, let's do it in reverse.
You have 1000 fans all willing to spend £25 (+ or - a few fans and + or - a few £)
So your merchandise income is £25k
less VAT of 17.5% (£3723)
less production cost (£3500)
leaves you 17700 (and remember this is your full time job)
Studio time will cost you probably £20 and hour for the studio and another £20 an hour for the engineer (last time i looked)
Now if you spend every penny of that £17700 on studio time, that works out at about 444 hours. If you compare that to a 9-5 job that's about 3 months. That's probably enough time to record an album and an EP.
But you're not going to be eating in that time, out of that money, partly because you won't have made it yet, partly because there isn't any left.

So you're basically going to need to live off your live performances.

Now i don't know about you but i have found one thing to be consistent on the live circuit - the "better" the venue (i.e. the more it is a recognised venue with appreciative audiences and big name draws), the lower the payout at the end of the show for a supporting act.
If i wanted to live off music i could probably manage it playing covers in bars 3 nights a week in the region. Just*.

But playing covers in bars doesn't get you true fans; you want true fans you have to be playing your own stuff. And that doesn't get you gigs in bars.

I dunno, maybe that's just me, but that's my experience. So basically, 1000 fans isn't enough. 2000 might be, 3000 is probably closer to the mark. And that's for a solo artist/duo. If you're a band then you've got to be looking at around 5000 i think.
And that's a helluva a lot of people to get interested in your music by yourself.

Which i'll come back to in the next installment...

* Money is drying up in the recession, fewer places are putting music on and fewer people are going out.

This week...

I have mostly been listening to:
Meursault on thesixtyone.com (Which irritatingly i can't link directly to)*
Trouble in the Wind on myspace
Chris TT's new album on my CD player
and
Natalie Merchant's new album on my phone.

I'm trying to avoid overdosing on the Mumford and Sons, Joe Purdy** and Langhorne Slim albums (alba?) that i bought the other week and was in definite danger of over-playing.

Now, one of the things i've been doing this week is illegal. And it's not listening to the first two artists for free.
Yep, copying the Natalie Merchant album (that i bought legally) to my phone is format-shifting and that's illegal in the UK. What a pissing ridiculous law. Hopefully the new coalition won't stop at repealing the digital economy bill. But i suspect they have other things on their mind at the moment so i won't hold it against them if it takes a while...

Whilst i'm briefly on the subject of Natalie Merchant's Leave Your Sleep, i should point out that it is, without a doubt, the nicest piece of CD packaging i have ever encountered. If you want an example of how to add value to the hard-copy in a digital world this is it.
The challenge comes when you think about how much this cost upfront. And this remains the challenge for trying to make money in a band by merchandising; whichever way you play it you've got to pay costs upfront, and that's money that could be spent on your next studio session or petrol to play at more gigs.

More thoughts on this will follow once i've checked out CD baby.

Oh yes, and be sure to check out Vestan Pance coverage of the Giro d'italia, complete with a the latest on the Landis saga.

* for someone in my job i should really be a bit more technically literate
** Is this the most ridiculously priced album on amazon?

Yet Another Music, Design And Cycling blog

Welcome, Wilkommen, Bienvenue, in the words of the best band in the world ever*.
So here we are on our first of an irregular series of blogs that will cover, generally speaking, Music, Design and Cycling. I've chosen to write about these three things as they are intrinsically linked in a singular way.
I.e. I'm interested in them.
But nowadays with music comes technology; so i'll be touching on that here and there as well.
In fact, we'll be starting with that.
I've just finished reading a very interesting article on The Technium called Better Than Free; it talks about ways to monetise a product in a world where copies are free. And it's a lot better thought out than most posting on the subject.
This is especially true when read in conjunction with two of his other posts: The Reality of Depending on True Fans and The Case Against 1000 True Fans.
It seems the debate is still very open with only one clear example of someone managing to make the new paradigm (did i really write that? I guess i did, oh well) work being Jonathan Coulton.
I suspect that where we will end up is with the rise of either the marketeer / artist or close collaborations of the two. Either way, it's not enough just to produce music and publish it on the web, nor is it enough just to produce music and play live. There's a huge amount of effort required to persuade people to get off their arses and come to a gig, and then another chunk of effort to persuade them to buy what they can otherwise get for free.
And sometimes that's kind of hard to do at the same time as holding down a day job.

* Blot - Midnight Oil