This ain't something else.

YouTube – [HD] Florence + The Machine – Dog Days Are Over GF 2010.

A little flat in places, but it blows my mind.

Like Holland, only with music.

Short attention span? 2 minutes 47. Tell them I sent you.

Have a great weekend.

• Reframing your ducks –
• How to be Insanely Productive and Still Keep Smiling –
• Book review: On Writing Well –

What? It’s an All Star Poo.

See? It does exactly what it says on the can.

… And Why They Need To Think That

or: “ILTES”: WEBTTTDT …AWTNTTT

Which is better, and artist’s earlier work or their later stuff?

On the one hand, in most cases, when a musician is starting out, they are going for glory, pouring everything into it and hoping people like it.

After a few years of success, they have the time and money to do what they want. Sting goes off and records an album of forgotten English folk tunes. Eric Clapton revisits the blues that inspired him. Stevie Wonder, um…

So I’d have to say that artists are better when they are starting out.

Picture the scene

Giverny, 1917

Monet: Hey Pierre. Come on through, I’m in the garden.

Pierre (Monet’s agent): So, what are you working on?

Monet: Oh, you know, outdoor things. Heavy brush strokes, interpretations in vivid colours, contrasts, textures. Same old.

Pierre: You know… That Westminster painting you did killed in London. The English are starting to get this stuff.

Monet: Yeah, but I’ve got time now. I want to work on what I want to do. I want to express myself. I want to explore the boundaries of painting. I want to explore those.

Pierre: Ponds.

Monet: Lillies, Pierre. Lillies.

Pierre: Claude, baby. Landscapes. There’s a foreign market. No one lives on lilies, man. Not even the English.

Monet: My work with lillies has not yet finished.

Pierre: Look, I didn’t say anything with the first 150 paintings, but you need to branch out.

Monet: Why must I? I do not need to work.

Pierre: But you represent a movement. You are an impressionist. Maybe the greatest ever.

Monet: Perhaps it is as you say.

Pierre: No one could touch your Jimmy Cagney.

Monet: I’m just doing my thing, OK. You come in here with your big city ideas and your suits and speak of market forces. It’s about soul, Pierre and yet you’re all “Show me the Monet!!!” Now I know how Vincent felt.

Pierre (quietly): Never sold one pain-

Monet: Never sold a painting, I know, but that’s not the point! He had his sunflowers, I have my lilies.

As a sweeping generalisation, I’d have to go with the earlier stuff most of the time. Ah, I hear you say, what of The Beatles, Steven Spielberg, Sebastiao Salgado, Paul Klee, George Carlin and Elvis Costello.

For every example of late bloomers who turned into mighty oaks (stay with me), I’ll show you two Serge Gainsbourgs, Pearl Jams, Stings, JD Salingers, Woody Allens and Robin Williamses. Or a Paul MacCartney. As an aside, do you have any idea how unbelievably shit John Lennon would be if he were still alive? Macca’s trangressions I can accept, but the sins of a 90’s walrus would have been unforgivable.

Artists need conviction because conviction is soul and soul is self expression and self expression for the enjoyment of others is art.

It’s also why every blogger thinks they aren’t as good as they used to be. Because the thing that got us started is very different from the motivation we need to keep going. And because very few of us can lay claim to being Elvis Costello, we’ll always think not only that we’ve already had our shot, but that we blew it.

Which is why we’ll carry on.

Which is why we’ll get better.

• the manifesto of encouragement –

This isn’t something I normally do, in fact I have never done, but having mentioned it on the podcast last week I wanted to include this post in recognition of the dedicated walkers of Hadrian’s Walk who hiked 84 miles across the breadth of this great nation from Newcastle to Carlisle to raise money for the Joseph Salmon Trust.

The fundraisers, some of whom when they’re not walking they’re blogging, are just a few small hundred pounds shy of the £20,000 raised for the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by their friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005.

The Trust supports parents who have lost a child by providing financial assistance to those who need it most. This may be to help with funeral costs, or enable the self employed to take time off work in order to grieve.

If you’d like to help them hit their target, you can donate here .

Congratulations to the walkers, and I hope the money helps bereaved parents with their own journey, moving them in some small way to where they need to be.

These are the books I am waiting to read, not including the ones under which creaks my bedside shelf.

Robbie Williams (hypothetically): How do you rate the morning sun?

Me: About three.

RW: Really?

CJ: Sometimes, yeah.

RW: Out of ten, right?

CJ: Per cent.

RW: Wow.

So I haven’t been writing here much because of work and things, and I don’t pretend it’s 2005 any longer and blogging’s all there is. That particular train doesn’t call at as many stations it used to, which is a shame.

It really is, how the early bloggers don’t write the future as much as they used to. That’s the thing about movements, you don’t really recognise them while they’re going on. They need their place in time to give you that perspective. I don’t count myself among them, really, because I was late to the party myself. Just on that metaphor, I’ve moved to the couch with a bottle of wine, maybe someone has a number they won’t call and there are suggestions of coffee which I ignore as I’m talking unconvincingly about the government or where the next Olympics are going to be.

This isn’t a melancholy post, by the way. I’ve just been elsewhere. I have been working a lot and reading in the last couple of months, too.

I read Liverpool In The 1930s and The Blitz by Ron Garnett, partly out of research but also because I want to understand the world my dad grew up in and years on now it seems a different planet from 1970’s Pennsylvania where I grew up such as I did. It’s a tender memoir of the city after the first world war and on into the second. The author went to the same school as my dad, and I recognised stories he told me about teachers he had, and the day Oswald Mosley visited the ground outside the school and someone standing near my uncle hurled a brick at the guy. We talked about it last week and he’s reading through it now.

I also read The Wild Things by Dave Eggers, which was OK, but the first of his books that I didn’t necessarily love.

The Name Of The World by Denis Johnson, on the other hand, is a different story, literally (“Nice” – reader’s voice). It’s about an academic and his place in the world alone and how he works in an industry with people he’s not really into, and what becomes of the content outsider when forty hits? It’s a tender portrait and very well written.

Clive James argues against struggling through worthy books for the sake of virtue. He says: “Without enjoyment, there is no art” and that’s completely right. I try and switch up books between those I read for their literary prowess and other for sheer enjoyment. Occasionally there is a sweet spot where you hit both, but sometimes you have to take one or the other.

Right now I’m reading A Connecticut Yankee In King Edward’s Court by Mark Twain, and it’s tough going, because you’re reading a Missouran’s interpretation of medieval English, which slows me down a bit, but the man tells a story like no one else.

I read that on the back of  a fun one, a real romp and adventure. It was light, but I make no excuses – what’s been really buckling my swash these days is the Genghis Khan series by Conn Iggulden. I’m glad that the books are easier to read that his name, because they have a real pace and power to them that draws into view a remarkable era. I’m about to start the third and latest one of the series and they are brilliant.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing as well, trying to flesh out something of a story. They say everyone’s got a book in them. I don’t know if that’s true, but the other day I woke up and all my pencils and about 70,000 words were missing.

I don’t know if much will amount by it, but we’ll see and I’ll share the love here.

I’m also running, which I haven’t done in years. I know that doesn’t seem like a good idea because of my asthma, but I think that if it’s hard then it’s a sign you need to slow things down get better at it, or it’s always going to be difficult. I’ve set myself a goal that by September I’ll be able to run 30 minutes non-stop. This will be awesome.

Which is better, and artist’s earlier work or their later stuff?

On the one hand, in most cases, when a musician is starting out, they are going for glory, pouring everything into it and hoping people like it.

After a few years of success, they have the time and money to do what they want. Sting goes off an records an album of forgotten English folk tunes. Eric Clapton revisits the blues that inspired him. Stevie Wonder, um…

I’d have to say that artists are better when they are starting out.

Picture the scene

Givenchy (year)

Monet: Hey Pierre. Come on through, I’m in the garden.

Pierre (Monet’s agent): So, what are you working on?

Monet: Oh, you know, outdoor things. Heavy brush strokes, interpretations in vivid colours, contrasts, textures. Same old.

Pierre: You know… That Westminster painting you did killed in London. The English are starting to get this stuff.

Monet: yeah, but I’ve got time now. I want to work on what I want to do. I want to express myself. I want to explore the boundaries of painting. I want to explore those.

Pierre: Ponds.

Monet: Lillies, Pierre. Lillies.

Pierre: Claude, baby. Landscapes. There’s a foreign market. No one lives on lilies, man. Not even the English.

Monet: My work with lilies has not yet finished.

Pierre: Look,

Monet: I’m just doing my thing, OK. You come in here with your big city ideas and your suits and speak of market forces. It’s about soul, Pierre and yet you’re all “Show me the Monet!!!” Now I know how Vincent felt.

Pierre (quietly): Never sold one pain-

Monet: I know he never sold a painting, but that’s not the point! He had his sunflowers, I have my lilies.

A Paul Macartney. As an aside, do you have any idea how unbelievably shit John Lennon would be if he were still alive?

Internet publishing directors are busy people.

So are web developers and technical architects.

Windsor is quite close to Farnham.

It’s about 25 miles as the crow flies, travelling as it would over the green belt border through Berkshire skies and on into Surrey. But crows travel light and people prefer to take the train.

Information online moves between people across systems in any numbers of ways. It gets coupled and decoupled and disseminated at its destination and spat out in a way people can easily digest. Often content providers carry lots of data which is split up for different clients to display in a way they choose.

For example, a sport news agency could provide a range of football data including scores, live play-by play updates, in-game text comments from users, video highlights, match stats, half-time summaries, as-it-stands league tables, betting odds, audio commentary, live streaming video, celebrity post-match analysis and a full time summary.

Now imagine you’re the director of a mobile network. You have customers looking at small screens who want information on the move and you have a limited budget.

You really want live streaming video, because none of your competitors offer it, and also know your parent company bought the rights in your territory.

It is the content most desired among football fans, and as far as your budget goes, it’s free. Additional content will cost more, and besides, with video-capable mobile devices becoming a standard, you see littl point in offering text commentary and half time summaries as a poor alternative to live video, right?

Good move. You’re a smart operator. I knew that from the moment you clicked on the link to get here. Which link was that by the way? That’s the one. With the blue text? Or the one with the picture? Exactly, I know it well.

Now imagine you’re a web developer. You’ve been up all night playing dungeons and dragons and you’re on your forth mocha (only joking) and your director walks in (seriously, cappuccino) and says: “We need to get video highlights attached to every weekly newsletter we send. Is that possible?”

And you say: “Yes, it is, but-”

And she goes: “Great.” And she puts the phone that’s been in her hand up to her ear and goes: “Tom? We can do that. I was right.”

Never ask developers if something’s possible without listening to the full answer or specifying your bigger goals.

Attaching a video to an email is possible, but it’s heavy. It will crash your servers, no one’s going to download it on a mobile because it will take forever and don’t even think about anyone sending it on to their friends. A link would do just as well.

It is possible to get a train from the 25 miles from Windsor to Farnham. What you do is get the 9:42 from Windsor and Eton Central to Slough, travelling east. Then go back west on the 9:58 from Slough to Reading. After that, catch the 10:34 from Reading to Northcamp. From Northcamp, walk 20 minutes to the station at Ashwalk and get the 11:44 to Farnham. It should take you under two and a half hours at an average speed on 10 miles an hour.

It takes so long because Windsor and Farnham are on the commuter routes and the lines are geared up to serve London, so services between the two towns aren’t great because here isn’t the demand.

If a manager said: “We need to get more trains running between Windsor and Farnham. Can we do that?”

The infrastructure people could say: “Yes, but it’s a pain to do and there are better ways of doing it.”

The short-manager could reply: “But if it’s possible, then we should do it. I know these things are hard, but we need to overcome them going forward.” They would probably also walk away, noting to self: “(Doesn’t like challenges. Sees obstacles.)”

Technical solutions are much the same. While things are possible, managers need to understand that what they are trying to do might not be the best solution in the timeframes they are given.

Directors should listen to technical solutions, but that’s not their job, and that’s where a product manager steps in. A decent product manager looks why people want to travel from Windsor to Farnham and address that need rather than blindly try to meet the demand.

They would look at how else to provide video rather than use precious developer time building systems to execute an uniformed decision.

If there were a real need to run trains the 25 miles between Windsor and Farnham, a product manager would check whether it was worth the time, money and effort of laying new tracks between the two towns and introducting a dedicated direct train service. Or they would look at a new delivery system to embed video in an email instead of as an attachment.

A decent product manager would tell you you’re going to need more crows.