This was in Business Week while we were away, which was rather thrilling. Very nice of them. (Though I can't link to it because it's subscribers only.) But it reminded me that we're getting behind on homework etc. I'll get the marking of Assignment 8 from Ben and give you to the end of this week to get any more Assignment 9 entries in. Then we'll get caught up with something interesting for Assignment 10.
more holiday
But also...
We're off for the last holiday of the summer. (Though remember, I'm Never Not Working). We're going canaling for a week and then up to Blackpool for the Illuminations. I'm quite ridiculously excited. But, in order to keep you entertained I've spent the last hour writing some blog entries that will keep popping up while I'm gone. Hopefully. This means that I won't be able to spot any egregios errors I've made or deal with outrageous comments until I get back so I apologise to any customers who are inconvenienced by a slightly reduced level of service and wish you every success with your onward journeys wherever your final destination might be.
I'm going to try and keep up with email via orange/email and my phone but that's a little flakey, so apologies I'm a little curt or don't answer. It's not personal. Unless I don't like you.
patchy service
As some of you might know the plannr.net thing hasn't really been working. Well, the feed was OK but the site itself seemed to be stuck on the planning.ro feed. I couldn't really work out why but I've removed the planning.ro feed and it seems to work. (Unless it's now stuck on a new set. Time will tell). I'll add our Romanian friends back in when I get back from holiday and see if it breaks again. If it remains broken I guess I'll have to try feedburner and a lot more entering addresses.
portland, or
This is a little self-indulgent, but when I found those rejection letters I also found these pictures from our time with Wieden in Portland. And I thought I'd share with those who remember those days. That's the ever brilliant Trish in the top picture, talking, I think, to Brett. In the middle is Arthur and I with Jed at Cannon Beach, and then coffee in the car, going over one of Portland's lovely bridges.
the past etc
Something that Richard said here reminded me that I found a very old file the other day. A pile of all the rejection letters I got from advertising agencies when I was at college, trying to get a job. I don't know why I kept them, but looking at them now, they seem ancient and quaint.
Most of them are from agencies that no longer exist. At least not under the same name.
And they all speak of a more leisurely time. A time when everything was hand-written and given to a secretary for typing. Or dictated. A time when the post was perfectly quick enough.
But hopefully they give all you people looking for a job some hope. I never got a job this way. I ended up in telesales for The Independent, selling classified advertising. That eventually got me a job in a media department. I did that for a couple of years before I ended up in account management.
I was clearly pretty keen about Ogily. I must have written back to find out why they didn't hire me. Which led Cilla Snowball to write back to me with underlining.
WCRS did everything via telemessage (how modern). This was very cool at the time.
brrr
Arthur and I have just got back from swimming at Parliament Hill Lido.
It's lovely there but there weren't many people swimming. Not like when it's sunny.
It was quite cold.
There were loads of great photos all over the place too. By Ruth Corney. Lovely stuff.
Arthur and I decided that this was our favourite. Icicles over the Lido, and, behind the icicles, someone swimming.
the magic number
Today is the third anniversary of this blog. Blimey. Half of me thinks it's flown by, I've only just started, half of me thinks - three years, that must be enough, I have nothing left to say.
Anyway, I hope you'll forgive a little birthday indulgence, it seems traditional to celebrate with a round-up of stats and posts so I'll do the same.
994 posts - I should have made it the round 1,000 for the third anniversary. But the 2,782 comments, that's all down to you lot. Well, mostly. Many thanks.
Technorati says that 978 links point to this blog. Or maybe 1,082. Who knows? More than you'd think anyway. Which makes me the 8,217th most read blogger in the world. (So if you think of Boing Boing as Liverpool FC, this makes me rather like a reasonably succesful junior school team. Doing quite well at a county level. Though I've just noticed that if you combine all my blogs I get to be the 3,924th most read blogger in the world, which maybe more like being Loughborough University's second team. Don't knock it. They do a lot of sports science there.)
According to statcounter (which I've been using since June 2005) I get an average of about 1,500 unique visitors a day. But that includes ebcb too, I've never worked out how to untangle them. The big spikes are visits from the BBC website, to do with the book.
But what always blows me away isn't the numbers, it's the fact the all these people come from all over the world. Brilliant. Out of the 9,000 visits in the current usage log (and I have no idea what that really means) 3,431 are from the UK, 2,247 are from the US, but more interestingly 32 are from Bulgaria, 15 are from Peru, 1 is from Angola and 122 are from Unknown.
Looking through the archives it becomes very clear that I have a very limited number of ideas and that I just keep repeating them. But these are some of the bits that stick in my head:
Benches. They crop up here and here, two and a half years later.
Silly projects like 'Brands In Our Bathroom' and Hotel Telly. And of course, there was disappointment.
Remember this picture from ShowStudio?
And I think this is the post that taught me what blogging is all about. You just put stuff out there and the world decides what to do with it. Have a read of the 98 comments on this thing. They own this post, not me. Very interesting. And then this is when I noticed I was being read.
I won a pair of FLOM dunks and then I went on sabbatical starting here with Arthur's first appearance on the blog.
And ending 66 days later here, with Arthur worn out in the car.
Looking at the sabbatical entries again it's become clear to me that that was when I decided to build a life that involved more not-working regular hours, hence Nike, freelance and OIA. If you're a little disgrunteld with your working life, don't take a sabbatical, it's fatal.
I found this sign on the door of the loo's at Unilever.
Went to Bucharest with Bill.
I talked about life in badges.
ebcb won a yahoo prize.
We geeked out at the Acton Depot. And I stuck some of my w+k music up, featuring jed and joe. And actually started writing stuff about planning and that.
I think this is my favourite picture on the whole thing.
Here's the first APSotW mention and the first bit of video. And now I'm starting to think like I'm boring you all and there's no point recapping stuff that's not that old.
That's something else I've noticed about my blogging. Lots of it just seems to peter out...
...but before this one does can I just say how much I've enjoyed it all, because of you lot. That's been the best bit about the whole thing, making friends with all of y'all. Thanks.
the great british holiday
There's been a lot of talk in the papers recently about the revival of the traditional British holiday. Especially following the hand-baggage farago. We've been doing that for a while, not because of security scares or because of eco-concern about flying but because going abroad is always such a hassle. And there's lots of bits of Britain we've not seen yet. Anyway. Here are some pictures of our holidaying in Mablethorpe and the North Yorkshire Coast. Just incase you were thinking of cancelling that club med trip.
while we were camping
We've been off camping in Lincolnshire and staying in a house near Whitby/Robin Hood's Bay. Very nice. Hardly been near a computer. Not checked my email. So sorry if you've been trying to get in touch. One thing I did was pop into a cybercafe a couple of times and contribute to the Fast Company blogjam. I suspect I got hold of the wrong end of the stick with this. Everyone else wrote long, thoughtful pieces about innovation, social networking and themselves and I wrote short, pointless things about frozen spam, baseball and goths. Ah well.
Also, while I was away, Mark McGuiness posted an interview we did together about business emotional intelligence and stuff. I can't bring myself to listen to it but I hope it's OK. Mark's a really interesting guy, you should read his blog.
Picture above is of Feedback Loop by Kenny Hunter. We called in at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on the way home, which is always worth a visit. Here's Arthur studying James Turrell's Deer Shelter sky.
out again
We're off to the seaside again. Won't be back for ten days. Posting will be sporadic. Probably pictures from my phone if anything. Except for occasional trips to wifi locations for work stuff.