Thursday, September 15, 2005

Legal, DECENT, honest and truthful!

I've had to change my 'comments' stuff on my blog as I am miffed off with them being used to advertise someone else’s crud.

I work in Search Engine Optimisation, and it's narrow minded, weak of vision, pathetic, semi-automated, link hungry, flat headed, illiterate, juvenile, flatulent, spam-mongers like this that gives the work of
serious online marketeers the worst of names.

Why should I have to suffer their thinly veiled, generically bland commentary and platitudes that has obviously only been created with the soul purpose to cow-bar in some trawlable link to the webcam charms of a 19 year old. Trust me, if I find I need the services of a Viagra vendor I am perfectly capable of finding my own.

I apologise to my friends and to the genuine well wishes, you will now have to authenticate postings via a short security system to prevent automated posting. Unfortunatly, these people have made it neigh-on impossible for genuinely interested visitors to share opinion or to throw their own musings into a (all be it superficial and badly spelt) debate. If I were less a creature I would mail-bomb every last man Jack of you back to the Stone Age and multiply submit your pages so that no search engine would ever register your like again. I just glad Blogger has come up with a midterm solution.

Legal, DECENT, honest and truthful. Have you forgotten, or did this new brand of advertiser never learn?

If you would like to discover how to conduct yourselves properly and effectively within an advertising environment, may I recommend the personal blog of Seth Godin and his highly amusing All Marketeers are Liars. We do not have to let our standards and ethics slip just because the internet provides us with a degree of
anonymity. We are not immune. There are better ways of gaining a few trawlable links and click-throughs.

Apologies for the rant, but these people are pond scum, filth-wizards and swine’s to a man.

If you've no clue what I'm whitterin' on about, check
this classic article on The Reg.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

DVD Review - Hustle, Series 2

"The Con is On, again..."

Just as slick, just as cool, just as smooth and just as glossy. We're back again with that lovable bunch of hard working crooks as they rob from the rich of our capital and give to, well, they keep it actually, but that doesn't stop them being jolly nice people...

Surfing on charm and wits, and covering all the angles, comes the regular tight-knit players. The talented long con artist Mickey Stone,
the young fiesty wannabe Danny Blue, the world-weary fixer Ash Morgan, the clever (and drasticly foxy) Stacie Monroe and the old hand (the one and only) Albert Stroller.

Some characters, notably Stacie, are a bit under-used. Extras are a bit thin, but there is a nice and fairly comprehensive BBC style 2-part documentary, 'The Big Finish' - The Making Of Episode Six.

All in all, not much to grumble about, and if you saw or bought the first series don't miss this. Yet another twisty-turny, beautifully scripted, 2 disks of BBC quality drama. Television like it 'orta be.

Please take my licence fee and make another series.

Movie: 4.5 out of 5
Extras: 2.5 out of 5

Saturday, September 10, 2005

What I'm doing...

Sometimes, usually at parties or when I get to hang around on shoots, people sort of shuffle their feet, look into their coffee or their JD and Coke, and say the inevitable "So man, er, what is it you do for a living now". Great. In that 'Didn't you have a career once' kinda way...

Many moons ago and back-in-the-day, I did a shed load of SEO (for Mannie and the guys at PNL as well as for my own Internet Marketing co-op venture) when nowbody else knew Jack about the likes of Google, Auntie Yahoo and Uncle Inktomi. Suddenly it's the thing to know and it's deja vu on our classified site and I'm designin' the likes of Houses for Sale in Derbyshire (incorporating Cars for Sale in Derbyshire and Jobs in Derbyshire through an open portal of For Sale in Derbyshire) and the same for Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Hull and East Riding and rolling out all over the country in the coming year to supliment our AdWords campaign for our This Is Derbyshire, This is Leicestershire, This is Nottinghamshire (etc.) sites.

While not movie orientated, this is actually surprisingly cool because I'm also hip deep in Accessability and W3C stuff, Info Architecture, Design Elements and the whole User Experience thang, plus I'm on constant stand-by for any multi-media projects (now being the official Multi-Media Producer for, I guess, the whole Northcliffe Group) and ready to leap into a shoot like a gazell when the oppertunity arrises.

Plus I still go work with good-old Shafts McGuire and Howard 'H' Smith with the inevitable steadicam rigs and the new MK-V Alien Revolution stuff.


As most will know, there was a big flap last year cos the loverly folks I work with at Northcliffe Electronic Publishing and I got ourselves a 'Childrens Learning' category BAFTA for the key stage 2 history interactive education site, Headline History.

Please go and check it out. It's massive and it was a 2 year labour of love (I doff my cap to Duncan, Andy, The Snellmeister, Julie B, Elaine, Genevera, Jon 'Milkeybar' W, Julian, Ben, JAP and the crew, plus my A-Team of performers from Burton Theatre). I don't think I've ever worked as hard on anything, ever. I was co. designer, technical coordinator, director, sound and video editor, a plethora of assorted hats. We also won a load of other shiny desk fodder as well, too numerous to go into.

So now you know what's occurin'. I can say 'oh, it's on my blog' and you can follow some links and witness the pitness and it'll stop me having to justify my existance at parties untill the wife chirps up with the thoroughly scripted 'He got a BAFTA you know' (actually, she loves that line, almost as mush as my mum does).


Back to movies soon, uber streamin' stuff again. We have plans here and I'll post any news when I'm allowed. Things are afoot at NEP, this is a very exciting time but Duncan and Julie B would butcher me if I said too much ;-)

Boomshanka.