Tag: rant

A dissection of advice

This went over so well last time I tried it, I think I’ll do it again. Since this advice was given to me in private, via a series of text messages to my phone, I’m going to keep the author anonymous for now. I’m going to say a bit about the mystery author in the commentary, and his/her actions towards me as a member of the community. This person will probably flip out when he/she sees I’ve posted this; such is life in 2010.

If you think you know who gave this advice to me, please do not reveal the source. Also, please do not claim authorship if you are not the author of the advice I dissect. The former is extremely tasteless, the latter is fraud, and really, I’m in the mood to just ban people from commenting in my blogs and be done with it for either. At the very least I’ll edit the mentions out of your comments.

There were actually more items than this. I’ve clipped those that are of dubious relevance.

1. Life is short. Real short. Be around those who care about you and want to grow with you. Experience life with others is a beautiful thing. Treasure it. Wasting your time with people who are not friendly with you makes life tougher and [censored]. Trust me I should know.

I don’t know what’s worse. People that are overtly hostile, or those that pretend to be friends and are hostile behind my back. The former are at least easy to identify; the latter are like snakes in the grass.

It’s possible for one to waste time with people who appear to be friendly to oneself but in fact have their own evil, sinister motives at hand.

To me, life has been long, way longer than our mystery advisor would claim it to be. And he/she is still alive as of the time I wrote this. I saw him/her in person just tonight; we no longer talk, which quite conveniently brings me to the next item:

2. Be transparent and honest. To yourself and those who care about you. As well as when you meet new people.

Now, a note here: my friendship with the mystery advisor ended when I followed this piece of advice. What does that tell you? I know what it tells me.

There is a limit to opacity and dishonesty. A certain amount of it is a damn good thing, though. Sometimes, it’s worth it to blow enough smoke up the nether regions of others to keep them guessing. Because apparently, it’s one thing for one to tell others to be honest and transparent; it’s another to accept that kind of honesty and transparency oneself.

So no, I’m not going to be completely transparent and honest. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice, shame on me. Burn me three times, shame on me again.

Moving on:

3. Be yourself. You can always grow into a person you want to be. One’s growth is noticeable by those who care. Including yourself.

I can make the case I was following this nugget of advice to when the mystery advisor and I parted ways; I am who I am. I’m pretty much the same person online as I am in person. I don’t play the game that certain others in this community play of having a split persona, one that online invites all kinds of contact and attention, but in person is much more “private” and reserved.

I say it’s quite healthy to try, once in a while, to pretend one is something one actually isn’t. In that respect, “be yourself” all the time, is a rather piss-poor lifestyle.

I’m not going to spill all the beans right now. I will say that a business plan I’m formulating may well qualify as, technically, being something I am not. Or, more accurately stated, being something I’ve never been before.

So no, being yourself is not always the best course of action either. A little careful B.S. artistry can go a long way. (And I don’t mean drawing in crayon over a bachelor of science degree either…)

I’m going to sign off here before I turn this into an advice column. Slam me all you want, maybe you think my advice is just as bad as the advice I ranted against not too long ago, and such is your prerogative. At least I’m trying to communicate what has and hasn’t worked for me in a no-nonsense fashion.

How not to promote events (long rant)

I’ve mentioned Quinn’s Big City (QBC) a couple of times here (“here” being this blog, if not this blog in its current location), mostly in passing. I try to keep most of my long drawn-out ranting here; the longer pieces on QBC I have referred to as “verbiage pieces” and I try to keep my usual no-holds-barred rant style out of them.

For those of you not familiar with it, the centerpiece of QBC is a feature called the LOVIEE (Listing of Very Interesting/Exciting Events), a “best of Houston” events list with weekly, monthly, and holiday special editions. (Well, usually they are holidays, I’ve had one that was not for a specific holiday; it’s a long story.)

Anyway, so during the week when I’m not doing either paid work, out and about having a good time (at an event I posted to QBC or otherwise), Twittering, checking Facebook, writing a piece for this or Iced Tea and Ramen, or otherwise keeping myself entertained at home, I’m updating one of the upcoming LOVIEEs. It is probably easiest to show the process in a video, at some point I will post a video, probably to YouTube but possibly elsewhere as well, showing what goes into QBC (and possibly even my other blogs as well, but QBC is probably the most interesting one to make a video about).

Anyway, since I haven’t made a video yet, I’ll try to describe it. I have an e-mail box where people can send me stuff they want me to consider (and I have posted a few events this way) but the majority come from the cyberspace equivalent of a wild goose chase involving several local events calendars and myriad venue-, artist-, and organization-specific calendars. Some of these are better than others. I’m not going to name names (yet) but I am going to list just a few examples of the problems I’ve run into:

  1. Omitted details such as the starting time of a music act, or just one time without it being clear if that’s the time the doors open or the actual show time. I run across these a lot. Unless the act is really good or I’m running out of things to post, these are in danger of being skipped outright. Sometimes, such as for the New Year’s Eve LOVIEE, I have made exceptions, figuring it’s obvious most parties will not start until at least 8pm or so and most music acts will probably go on at about 9pm. If I do post anyway, it usually winds up being “no time given” which has the potential to come back and look bad on me when the venue decides to amend the listing later. Really, the time a show or event starts is basic information and there are very few excuses for not including it.

  2. No clear indication either way as to whether or not there’s a cover charge and if so how much it is. I try to avoid saying “no cover” or “free admission” unless it’s specifically stated. If it’s likely there’s no actual admission fee, sometimes I just make no mention of it. If I have the least bit of doubt, again, it’s like the time, “cover charge not stated.” The farther out from downtown the venue is, the less likely I am to attend your event if I’m not even sure the cover charge is within my budget at the moment. Nothing kills a night like being told the $10 budgeted for drinks or food would be needed just to get in the door, without advance notice of same.

  3. Venue/artist/organization Web sites that don’t provide a direct link to the calendar, or change it every month and make it part of a frameset. Very annoying, I should be able to bookmark your event calendar and be done with it, and come back in a month, three months, six months, a year and have the same URL work. Framesets are so 1996, and should never have made it into an HTML standard, but I’ll rant about that some other day.

  4. Event calendars so far out of date as to be useless. If we’re in December and I’m looking at a venue’s event calendar that is still showing October, September, or even January or last December, it’s so tempting to fire off an e-mail saying “look guys, you may as well take the damn thing down, it’s not doing anyone any good.”

  5. Venues, artists, or organizations that serve a Flash movie over HTTP as their primary online presence, instead of a Web site. (When I refer to a “Web site,” I mean something in HTML and CSS, preferably with only optional Javascript. I do not use the term “site” and especially not “Web site” for Flash movies.) Serving up only a Flash movie is gambling that my Flash plugin will both be present and will play the Flash movie. More frequently, that Flash plugin will be Gnash, not the Adobe official Flash player, so the latter is not necessarily guaranteed. I’m in a hurry rather often; rather than wait for Iceweasel/Firefox to load, I may well load up your calendar in Lynx. If I see “[EMBED]” and an offer to download something “application/x-swf,” you lose. Thankfully, this is a relatively rare problem.

That covers most of them. I’m sure I could probably come up with a few more. If you have others, either as an event list maintainer/blogger or just someone who goes out a lot, please comment.

Photojournalism mistaken for terrorism, yet again

I rarely blog from a press release like this one but the subject matter is too important to quietly let go and it’s no stranger to regular readers of my blog.

A Bindmans press release details the plight of Ms. Jess Hurd, a photojournalist in the UK; it does not say what city she calls home, though this incident occurred in London.

According to the press release, Jess was covering a wedding in the London Docklands area when officers questioned her as to what she was doing. Even after offering her press card to confirm she was a legitimate journalist, Jess saw no immediate relief from the harassment.

As part of their interrogation, the officers viewed all of Jess’s footage and she was in fear that the officers might even decide to erase (“wipe” in British English) all of it. And I might add, quite rightfully so; even though even in the UK the officers do not have the authority to do this, this has happened elsewhere, particularly in parts of the US, and the UK’s “counterterrorism” laws are draconian by comparison.

In fact, Jess was told she would not be able to use some of her footage (perhaps even all of it) due to a copyright claim by either the officer individually or by the Metropolitan Police press office. This has to be one of the most ludicrous things I have ever run across, even by UK standards. (For the new people, I’m no huge fan of the UK government, and the archives on past rants of UK government misdeeds demonstrate that quite well.)

As for the resolution, I quote part of the press release, dealing with the remedies sought, and a quote from the National Union of Journalists legal officer who has some choice words about the officers involved:

What Ms Hurd seeks

Ms Hurd is seeking a full apology, confirmation that the officers involved have received training in relation to the appropriate use of S44 of the Terrorism Act and the responsibilities set out in the Association of Chief Police Officers (‘ACPO’) Police Media Guidelines (‘the Guidelines’), which are in force nationally, as well as any other measures considered appropriate given the many breaches of the Standards of Professional Behaviour, The Police (Conduct) Regulations 2008 arising from the treatment she has received.

Ms Hurd’s lawyer, instructed by the NUJ, Ms Chez Cotton, Head of the Police Misconduct Department at leading London law firm Bindmans LLP said:

“The police appear to have been interested in Ms Hurd only because she was filming and used S44 of the Terrorism Act where suspicion is not necessary to stop and search her, in full knowledge that she was a photojournalist. Ms Hurd had voluntarily explained her presence and provided identification that only accredited members of the press carry, which it is agreed that police forces nationally will recognise. Despite this, her footage was viewed for the most spurious of reasons and counter to basic principles of a free press. A Joint Committee for Human Rights report of July 2009 stated, ‘…we deplore the obvious overuse of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in recent years’. The treatment of Ms Hurd is a stark example of such misuse of S44 and made all the more serious because officers were fully aware of the status of Ms Hurd as an accredited photojournalist professionally engaged at the time of the use of the controversial provision.”

NUJ Legal Officer, Roy Mincoff said:

“It appears that for no good reason Jess Hurd was treated, and continued to be treated, as if she were a suspected terrorist. The NUJ considers The Police’s apparent failure to recognise the PressCard, and ignorance of ACPO Guidelines and lack of knowledge of the law to be unacceptable. We welcome more recent ACPO advice as to the role of the media and how legislation should be applied, and Ministerial assurances that anti-terrorism legislation must only be used for that purpose, given after considerable and continuous efforts by the NUJ to achieve that progress.

Now these issues must be addressed in practice by the Police.

We will be keeping very close sight of this and take such action as necessary should further breaches occur.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. This is a flagrant mockery of justice and fairness. I have said this before, but I’ll say it again: a terrorist will not use the same types of video or photo gear that a professional journalist would use. A point-and-shoot similar to my Nikon Coolpix L18 (which is maybe a tad bigger than my wallet) would definitely get “surveillance quality” pictures and draw less attention than even an entry-level DSLR. Heck, the Coolpix L18 and most similar compact cameras technically do video as well (that’s not their primarily designed purpose of course, but the feature is present).

The Dallas experiment

The New York Times reports on a rather disturbing development at the Dallas Morning News.

Some of the senior news editors, specifically the sports and entertainment segment editors, are being asked to report directly to the general manager in addition to maintaining a relationship to the editor and managing editor.

[Bob Mong, the editor of the Dallas Morning News,] said the announcement caused some unease among reporters and editors, and “they had all the questions I would hope they would have, and believe me, they’ll be very vigilant.” He said editors were told explicitly to fight back if they were told to do anything unethical.

Another quote further down the article states that the change grew out of a situation where no advertising employees focused on an online section added by the sports department. While this is certainly one way to keep the problem from recurring, in general I have to question the prima facie connotations of news people reporting to those in charge of advertising sales. It definitely gives the implication that ethics are being set aside even if in reality the ethical issues are being addressed adequately.

I can only imagine how fast the FCC would swoop down on a TV or radio station that did something like this. I wish I had more time to keep an eye on the Dallas Morning News over the coming months to see just what becomes of these changes. Or maybe I won’t have to, and those asked to compromise ethics in reporting the news wind up being part of the news instead. It is understandable that reporters don’t want to wind up being the subject of reports themselves, but should this become a trend it has the potential to trigger the downfall of news reporting as we know it today. And that would be a shame.

Apologies for the slightly glitched version that was posted earlier. I am in the middle of testing some new blog editing software that did not function as well as I had hoped.

What happens when Elmo goes off his meds, er, batteries?

This absolutely must be seen to be believed. And I know it’s not exactly the freshest item I’ve posted here, but I just now came across it.

You know how some electronic devices tend to not work properly after replacing the batteries? Well, this is one example of a failure mode unexpected by anyone, let alone Melissa Bowman, the parent of a toddler who’s probably the biggest Elmo fan in the greater Tampa Bay area, or anyone in Fisher-Price’s PR department.

A WFLA news cilp posted to YouTube refers to a rather shocking and horrifying surprise Melissa got after replacing the batteries in an Elmo Knows Your Name doll. According to her, the Elmo toy decided to exhibit a homocidal streak and say “kill James” instead of “hello James” or whatever innocent greeting it’s supposed to give.

Others are insisting that’s not what the doll is saying. I’ve listened to the clip over and over again through a decent pair of headphones (I don’t have an adapter for the studio headphones I bought back in 1999 and I’m not sure what condition they are in), and it sounds rather unmistakable to me.

The most horrifying part, however, is summarized by this quote from Melissa about the conversation with a Fisher-Price customer relations representative: “Considering the fact that my son was repeating it has really upset me, and there is nothing that they are going–they didn’t even sound concerned about it, really, when I spoke to them.”

Later reports state that Fisher-Price finally did the right thing and gave the family a coupon for a replacement. But really, what could the representative that Melissa first talked to have been thinking, to not even show concern over this kind of a malfunction?

Let this be a lesson: If you program computers or tinker with electonics, especially if you are making something a kid’s toy like the Elmo Knows Your Name doll, test, test, and test again, especially for what happens after a battery replacement or similar power interruption.

And if you’re the one the customers talk to when it hits the fan, don’t forget to show concern. The parents that buy toys like this for their kids are the reason you have a job.