Russell Davies

Wired shownotes: URLs etc

I done wrote another thing for Wired. About URLs and the psychogeography of domain names. Or something.

I always want to have a credits page for things I write. For everything that didn't get in there and all the people I stole the ideas from.

So, for this one: all the actual ideas came from conversations on Slack with Chris and James. And the apparently detailed recall I have about what suck.com was like and how they changed writing was all based on an Amazon 'look inside' of Steven Johnson's Interface Culture.

So, thanks to them!

How hard can it be?

There are jobs that people tend to assume are easy ('how hard can it be'?). You only notice that those jobs are, in fact, really difficult when you appoint people who aren't brilliant.

Making podiums and stage sets and signs so good that people don't notice them is one of those surprisingly difficult jobs. We were very fortunate at GDS to have people who paid attention to that stuff. Mostly no one noticed, that was how you could tell they were brilliant.

Polite blogpost

Yesterday's newsletter. With bonus picture for the RSS crew...

I've long been fascinated by the Polite Notice signs you see, written in a semi-official font, trying to trick the quick glancer into thinking it is, in fact, a Police Notice. I remember seeing them a lot at the seaside when I was growing up in the 70s. People trying to stop tourists from parking in front of their garage.

Are there other examples of wide-spread societally-sanctioned punning? I hope so but I can't think of any.

Clearly, though, now, for many people, that original deceptive purpose is lost and they imagine that's just what you have to write on a notice. Like writing Dear Someone at the beginning of an email. And that maybe if it says Polite Notice then it will be seen as Polite. 

I was out for coffee this morning and I saw a moped rider who'd taken this to the next level. He was wearing a hi-viz jacket with POLITE written on the back in a bold police-y font. Apparently these are quite common. This approach seems more likely to actually achieve something - it'll get drivers to slow down in that reflexive way that seems to work for cardboard police officers.

It also conjured up the obvious ultimate end-state, people driving round in cars with checks and hi-viz markings, lights on the top and POLITE emblazoned on the side.

I might do that myself.

 

This week in references: Tom Tom Club

Entirely like a blog post

Yesterday's newsletter is below. For the RSS massive. I wrote it, re-read it and realised it's basically just news about me, that could only be of interest to me. So that's why it's called Entirely Like A Blog Post...

"You've probably been worried all to hell, unhinged with panic and doubt. For this newsletter is a week late and your world has been turned upside down.

Maybe.

It's a week late because I've started doing an occasional column for Wired. 

(I say 'occasional' because that was how Greg, my esteemed editor, described it in a recent tweet. When we chatted about it before I started it was going to be fortnightly. I think he's hedging his bets, we shall see. I'm going to write something fortnightly anyway. Whether they publish it...)

And that fortnight clashes with the fortnight I've been doing this, so I've nudged this off a week to give myself a regular weekly deadline. 

I like that; a weekly deadline. I wrote a weekly column for Campaign for years and years and I used to like the shape it gave the week. The thinking, noticing and note-taking during the week,  the head-down panic for an hour on Sunday. The relief when you've hit send. I was pretty good at hitting deadlines, I think because I'm more anxious about punctuality than I am about writerly merit. Presumably if I'd been more like Dorothy Parker I would have written better stuff but I would have annoyed more editors. Clear the bar. That's my motto.

(In fact I once wrote something for Wired about of 'weeks' as a concept. I was reminded of it by this marvellous tweet from Susie Dent:

"I love the old markers of time. To go with ‘fortnight’ (fourteen nights), English once had the lovely ‘sennight’ (seven nights) for a week, too. ‘Yestreen’ meant ‘last evening’, ‘ere-yesterday’ was the day before yesterday, and ‘overmorrow’ the day after tomorrow."

The plan for Wired is to do something I've always wanted to do; to review the internet like people review TV or art or theatre. To write about it like it's not new. I'm not quite sure what that means but I'm very keen to find out.

(There are currently 429 of you. 429 is the HTTP response status code for Too Many Requests. One of many HTTP response status codes that feel like they would be useful in ordinary life.)"

This week in references: crime, death, rie

Ten years ago

Five years ago

An internet of enthusiasms

I wrote a little thing for Wired. I hope you like it.

Drums on Sunday

Went to an exhibition at Two Temple Place on Sunday. Interesting place.

It was called Rhythm & Reaction, The Age of Jazz in Britain. It's good. Small, but good.

My favourite bit was the beautiful vintage drums. From the Sticky Wicket collection.

And the story of South African drummer Joe Daniels who fitted a trap door in his bass drum so it could lay eggs as part of his act.

Here's Joe in action: