Last night an email came from from Japan. My wife’s mother suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage and is in the hospital, unconscious, with a machine breathing for her. She’d been complaining of a headache and decided to take a nap, and then just didn’t get up. There’s no indication how things are going, but even if they go well, they’re going badly.
I’ll be offline indefinitely. My wife has to go to Japan and I have to keep the kids fed and clothed etc. If you write to me with questions over the next few weeks and I don’t answer, that’s why. It’s a bit of battle stations and uncertainty for a while.
On a related note (and one I don’t like bringing up)… if you or anyone you know requires a bit of web work, design work, writing etc, please send them my way. Likewise, if you know a TV producer or somesuch who’s looking for properties to develop, I will sell just about anything I’ve got (and I’ve got a lot) for peanuts right now, no strings attached. Travelling across the Pacific is an expensive venture, and it looks like it’ll be part of life for a while.
Sorry to all, and hope your September’s going well.
Universal Music pressuring YouTube, MySpace (via BoingBoing):
“The poster child for (user-generated media) sites are MySpace and YouTube,” said Morris, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters. “We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars.”
Yessir, the BILLIONS of dollars they’re making EXCLUSIVELY on the backs of Universal Music artists (which is in no way to be confused with free publicity etc etc) must be RECLAIMED! It’s the good old business plan: “If you’re not the hottest asset on the block, find out who is and sue them. For anything.”
Sigh. YouTube could be toast, but I wonder if MySpace’s masters will put up a fight…?
Unrelatedly, my week is all messed up. Super-complex CMS systems are really nice and all, but to the average user (my clients) they tend to make eyeballs bleed. I’m spending most of my time creating tweening interfaces that let the clients update and manage their site without having to know the intricate subtleties between a page and a story. It sounds like a lot of work, but that’s only because IT IS. Argh.
Also, a personal note to all people out there that hire IT folks to do projects for them: if you expect to be able to call at 3AM to request a change that you saw in a dream, and expect that it’ll be implemented by the start of business, you’d should also probably expect that you’re going to pay for the work within 6 months of being invoiced. It’s common courtesy for the love of god.
And finally, I think I may be taking next week off to do The Vector, so unless Time Warner decides to sue Digg for copyright infringement, I won’t be posting here very often. I hope to make up for it towards the end of the month, once things with kids and school and CopyCamp etc all quiet down.
As you were.
It rained overnight for the first time in weeks on Friday, and something that had been dormant outside came alive with fantastic superpollen, which hit me with allergies for the first time in about 2 years. Just like countless commanders in battles throughout history, I pounded my enemy with the biggest weapon in my arsenal: Sudafed. And just like countless generals in battles throughout history, I burned myself pretty bad. I’m four days behind schedule and only starting to get out the self-imposed haze. Push will be late, as will a bunch of other things. Tomorrow’s my statutory holiday (anniversary) so I won’t do anything much here.
Now on today’s particular anniversary, I don’t have much to add. Lots of people are a lot more articulate, a lot more involved, and impacted by 9/11. I remember writing a really pointless post in the forums on dustrunners.com back in 2001 about everything that was going on… that was me over-reaching back then, and there’s no point in trying again. Ideally, we’d all have the same sense of unity five years later, but focus it on the topics we were ignoring back then. Unity shouldn’t be stuck in the far-right of the spectrum… lefties shouldn’t be the only ones to make the move.
I shall return for Cubits Wednesday, though it may not involve Cubits.
Speaking of Lavender, apparently someone beat me to the voting part already. An ad appeared at the end of today’s Ze Frank episode that showed me a project where you can vote for what the character does next. The site’s a bit confusing and overloaded with non-structured text, but it works pretty well. And hell, it’s someone doing something.
Go check it out and vote ad click and all that jazz.
Mayhaps buying ad-age on Revver.com is actually useful? Hmm…
Bobby Henderson’s nominated for a Quill Award! The only thing more fantastic than hearing that news is to find out there’s such a thing as the Quill Awards!
Please do your civic duty and vote for FSM. Spread the word. Put it on Digg. I would, but I’m pretty sure people hate me there.
