Listening to: Monkey Gone to Heaven - The Pixies

Now this is what I want - the
new KVM from Belkin:

(src: Gizmodo)

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

I am fan of the design philosophy of William McDonough and found Cradle to Cradle an incredibly readable book. He doesn’t provide all the answers… but he does provide a pragmatic direction for ecological design practices. Further more he actually implements them. So I found this BBC World article interesting: 

Internationally renowned designer, sustainability architect and author of Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough, argues that we can only think of our future cities if we think about what our intention is as a species.

The question for designers of what is dubbed the Next City is how to love all species all the time.

Mr McDonough’s ideas for the Next City are about to be played out in China where his company has been charged with building seven entirely new cities.

His book has been adopted as government policy in China, which needs to house 400 million more people in the next 12 years.

(src: /.)

Listening to: How You Remind Me (left ear) Some Day (right ear) -
Nickelback

Here are two Nickelback songs…seperated
by two years, and not much else as far as I can tell. (src: The
Broken Drum)

Listening to: Love Me Like You - Magic Numbers

Found this over
at BoingBoing. A
concise list of the pressures that face Hollywood…

1. Hollywood cannot control its marketing costs or star salaries.  The growing
importance of DVDs increases the “needle in the haystack” problem for any single film
and thus locks studios into more marketing, creating a vicious spiral.

2. TV is now so
much better, and offers artists greater creative freedom.  Why watch
movies?

3. The Internet is
outcompeting cinema, whether at the multiplex or on DVD.

4. Big TV screens are keeping people at home, which lowers box office receipts. 
This also hurts the long-term prospects of many DVDs.

5. The demand for DVDs has fallen because movie lovers have completed their core
collections, just as the demands for classical CDs have fallen.

6. The demand for DVDs was due to fall in any case.  Forget the collectors,
you buy DVDs to have a stock on hand so you don’t have to run out to the video store
on short notice.  Now everyone has a stock.  Stocks must be replenished
every now and then, but there is no longer a large new cohort simultaneously building
up a stock from scratch.

Listening to: Fasten Your Seatbelts - Pendulum

eWeek has interesting comparison of
the perception of .Net vs Open Source as far as investors are concerned.

A nice follow up from Brad
Feld:

While some of my companies use non-Microsoft technologies, plenty use Microsoft
technology.  Virtually all of them have lots of Windows desktops, servers, and
desktop apps running everywhere.  I’m not religious about this issue and I don’t
really think the platform discussion is that interesting (I’m equally comfortable
with Microsoft platforms as I am with non-Microsoft platforms.)  As most of my
VC brethren who commented demonstrated – we are pragmatic, agnostic, or - in
some cases – simply ignorant - about platform issues.

Listening to: When Just Right Goes Wrong - Strawpeople

Eurogamer has a set of screen
shots from Black and White 2…yikes!

Listening to: I Believe - Strawpeople

Tonights reading: HBR
- Managing for Creativity

Over many years, the leaders of SAS Institute have distilled a set of principles
for getting peak performance from creative people. Among them: Value the work over
the tools, reward excellence with challenges, and minimize hassles.

Verdict: Awesome! That’s right lovelies… so good I think you should read it yourselves.

Listening to: National Geographic channel

The final The New Cool Seminar featured:

• Kylee Davis - Insidious Fix

• Steve Hodge and Simon Morse - Illicit

• Tanya Thompson - Misery

• Dan Buckley - Huffer

Of all the seminars that have been presented over the past 3 weeks this one dealt
most with globalization and the way in which companies needed to adapt to the new
economic environment. All four companies are clothing companies and because New Zealand
doesn’t really have clothing manufacturing sector anymore (the deregulation of the
late 80’s and early 90’s dealt to that) they have meet their production needs in different
ways. Insidious Fix pursued a vertical integration route. They generate their own
cloth and construct their own clothes. Huffer, Illicit and Misery have all moved some
or all of their production to China.

Belief in ’self’ was the second theme that came out of this seminar. For Steve Hodge
and Illicit that self belief was crucial. Illicit decided to open their own shops
and sell online because of the problems they had in convincing retailers to stock
their product. Frustrated with being beaten back they opened their own outlet and
haven’t looked back.

What I found most interesting about Illicit and Misery was how they intrinsically
treat the entire world as their market. This seems to spring from both their product
and the attitude of the founders. This runs counter to the ’success in NZ first’ approach
that drove many of the other companies that have spoken at these seminars. Hodges
mentioned a number of times about how Marty
Emond always targeted the world-wide market. Though Emond has now passed away
that belief is still strong at Illicit. Their product is inspired by trends overseas
and a desire to be involved in those movements.

SEE ALSO:

• On
  The Couch

• Aotearoa
  Beats

Listening to: Animal Planet

For a second weekend in a row I have seen a movie that alters my perception of ‘the
way things are’. While I would like to claim the credit for this insightful cultural
diversion… I think it would be fairer to hat-tip the missus.

Touch the Sound (imdb)
is a movie about … well, sound mainly. But more importantly it is about how we perceive
sound. The movie is a very good at investigating this because the main focus of the
movie, Evelyn Glennie, is a magnificent percussionist
who just happens to be deaf.

Glennie is this effervescent Scottish woman who has this innate ability to pick rhythm
out of any environment. It is through this that the viewer is shown a different way
of perceiving sound, a way that challenges the standard ‘I hear with my ears’ concept.
Her frustration at this limited way of thinking is shown when she describes how annoying
she finds it when people ask her how she is able to hear. Invariably, she says, if
she asks the same question she is not able to get a sufficiently insightful answer
from supposedly ‘hearing’ people.

While I found the movie was a little too ‘conceptual’ at points Glennie is great at
bringing things back down to earth. One scene involves her sitting on the floor in
a Japanese restaurant using a beer bottle, an ash tray, an empty can and a pair of
chopsticks to belt out a fantastic bit of music… it really reminded me of a line
by the The Red Hot Chili Peppers:

Music the great communicator
Use two sticks to make it in the nature

Having said that her classical training is also highlighted as, in the same restaurant,
she plays a magically moving piece with a glockenspiel accompanied by a piano.

If you get a chance check it out.

Listening to: Office burble

The final The New Cool seminar is
on clothing:

Dan Buckley from Huffer, Steve Hodge from Illicit,
Kylee Davis from Insidious Fix and Tanya Thompson, aka Misery,
are the creative brains behind four very different clothing labels. They talk about
the ins and outs of the rag trade in New Zealand, and how they’ve found their
niche in a very competitive market.