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Sunday, 09:31 pm, 09 January 2005 Pull Up a Pew... I have been meaning to post for the better part of a week about the Pew Internet and American Life Project's ''survey'' set out in the director Lee Rainie's 'Data Memo'. The document got wide media coverage and it raises a number of interesting issues. I would consider myself an intellectual property rights hobbyist. It isn't part of my profession, bar co-chairing the IGDA Intellectual Property Rights Committee, but it is something I think about and read on casually. I feel the same way about statistics. Statistics are supposed to mean something. But they are regularly used without reference. I have written in the Log in the past about my view that the numbers associated with weblog writing are far lower than the numbers popularly reported in press releases or investment paraphernalia of web log companies. The Data Memo begins with the claim; 7% of the 120 million US adults who use the internet say they have created a blog or web based diary. That represents more than 8 million people. It's not a good start. The peak of internet use was projected at 120 million in the US in 2000. It has since fallen to around 100 million. I would assume with the tail off that this number would be closer to 95 million. In order to make a claim like 7%, they would need some statistical basis for this. Did they find 1000 people and ask them if they used the internet? This isn't clear, but I suspect not. Let's play the numbers the other way. Weblogs.com registered updates of weblogs and this peaked at about 12,000 per day. If my memory fails me, lets double that number for argument sake. I want to show how the number of thousand is relatively unimportant. It was never more than 25,000 updates on weblogs per day. This is over all the major commercial weblogging companies. Even my humble logtrack - occasionally updated on weblogs.com. The average web log author updates their log about once every fourteen days. Lets double that again for the maximum error margins. Let's say they update it once a month. So, that at most is about 30 days x 25,000 weblog updates per day = 750,000 weblogs. Really the number is more likely around 190,000 or less - total. Of this, a majority write a few entries and then never weblog again. The media picked up the Pew/Internet Memo and ran with it with no analysis. The over inflation of the importance of weblogging by weblogging companies is in fact killing the technology for a quick cash-in - virtual reality style. Boxing Day... For the past day and a half, we have been boxing our UK lives. I really like to pack. I like the logistics of it. The items passing through your hands. Memories in a physical form. I can only imagine what it must be like to live in a house your whole life and have an attic full of lost items. The logistics of moving remind you why you have what you own. My wife, a first-time serious-international-mover, has lapped me thoroughly in the packing stakes. As the narrative shows, I might hold things a little longer as I arrange them into packing boxes. My wife has a different style which involves sitting with three boxes feeding the central packing box. In volume, my wife has won hands down. We are averaging about 8-10 boxes a day. They are large boxes, but that also includes some serious breaks and paper exchanges. I suspect it is going to get slower towards the end as we have to actively search for things to pack. My wife is packing roughly double the rate I am. I have less things thanks in large part to serious eBay sales for the past year and a half. In terms of communal packing, there is probably only two boxes worth. I'm estimating only another weekend to pack everything. Although I will take Friday and Thursday afternoon off this week to make sure it is all packed. Good night. Thursday, 10:57 pm, 06 January 2005 Respect Due... Never underestimate the power of publishing on the internet. A single post and a slew of emails. Good to hear from folks and good that the Log is read. I will be putting more images online this year and track the move in images as well as text. I've got to put out a couple of shout outs from a week of silence. First props to my man Johnathan James aka Haxwell who maintains the WeFunk Playlist Project. Anyone who could marry WeFunk and an open source project - respect! I'm a semi frequent contributor. Static and Groove seem to be sending plenty of respect Hax' way too. Ian Kitajima sent Christmas and New Year greetings. Ian and I go back to heady days in San Jose when I used to wear a lot of white shirts and was a posterchild for naive innocence and the Silicon Valley dream. It is amazing I lasted as long as I did and good to see photos of Ian and his family. Mridul P got in touch to fill me in on his progress and timeframes for working on aspects of Noble Ape. To be honest, Mridul could never touch another line of Noble Ape code and he would still be someone I would feel indebted to for all his contributions to Noble Ape to-date. I was an open source sceptic before the works of Mridul P. I received an email from my mother mentioning a grammatical error in the Log which I have now corrected. Actually, the disturbing point was that it was a grammatical error that had gone totally unnoticed for a number of months. Fred Reed dropped me a Happy New Year email. He and I are working through the logistics of the Kirill sculpted Orcs in Space army. Animated Orks... Between Christmas and New Year, we serviced my wife's PC and found that one of the RAM sticks was dud. With the new RAM, I can play Dawn of War once again. It is a funny thing. I am quite jaded with GW's new figures, direction of White Dwarf and my miniature collection in terms of finding figures I would like to collect is virtually complete. But Dawn of War, seeing Space Marines and Orks battle it out. Watching dreadnoughts lumbering and seeing the effects of rapid bolter fire. This seems familiar to me like the Lord of the Rings films to a Tolkien enthusiast. Intellectual property manifest. I have reflected recently about what I remember of my childhood. My favourite moments. Reading White Dwarf magazines and listening to music in my friend, Alex Brooks' room seems to return as a fond childhood and teenage memory. In fact even when I was at University I used to go over to Alex's religiously every Sunday. There came a time I must have stopped doing it. Perhaps when he moved out and started working for Games Workshop, then moved up to Sydney. Fitting my time together in Australia seems to be with only scattered memories. That Safran Dude... When you move away from somewhere, you forget all but the most calming memories I suspect. In this light, I visited my father just after Christmas and a John Safran vs God DVD was produced. When I was in Australia, John Safran was famous for Race Around the World. He made a pretentious media school student show watchable. John Safran does what Michael Moore fails to do. He makes confronting television seamless. Michael Moore is at his worst when he is chasing after people with a camera trailing behind. It is that element where Safran is at his best. Safran did so well, that some of his best work was banned from Australian television in 1998 and only exists now online via a relatively shabby RealVideo. If you have never heard of Safran before, and you have broadband. Here's where you start... It's good to remember that there are folks in Australia to contrast to those shooting over refugee boats and creating 1940s-era camps in the desert. In reflection on the DVD, my wife said 'Thank God for that Safran dude!' Amen. Now for a Little Advertising... Barbalet's Log is quickly becoming a mecca for the Montreal hip-hop scene thanks to WeFunk and related contributors getting in contact. I was emailed this flier today...   Good night. Wednesday, 10:32 pm, 05 January 2005 Happy New Year Barbalet's Log reader. This is going to be a particularly interesting year as we pack up and move once again. I don't reflect regularly on being an internationalist but it is too familiar to me to pack up life and change country. Barbalets have been travelling the globe for many generations. There is not a generation of Barbalets - in my bloodline - I know who have stayed in one place. It is part of me. With the advent of computers and jets, cheap tickets and a good international shipping/postal service, moving countries seems less logistically daunting. Finding work is only challenging past the accent. Leaving the UK, I have starting thinking about what the UK will have added to me. What I have learnt from living here and how I can use this experience in the future. Changing countries, you always find good and bad. It is never more than a zero sum on a number of points. The UK has been quite calming. Almost a quieting experience. I have lost a lot of my rapid humour - which I am hoping will return on departure. But I will leave the UK with a large miniature collection and a happily married man. I didn't come to the UK with this. Socially the UK has been a complete vacuum. Aside from my wife, there hasn't been any social outings in the UK. This is something that has been totally alien to me. The cost of living in the UK will also not be missed. Coming from the San Francisco Bay Area to the UK, the cost of living is comparable. But for a number of things, the UK is more expensive for less benefit. The weather has, in part, contributed to the slowing in humour. I will not miss long repressive winters and short summers with no more than two days of sun in a row. I had long repressive winters in Canberra. It effects the population. So on departure, I promise to smile more. I also want to return to the social entity. Join clubs, meet people, attend conferences. Expand professional ties. There is hope in the departure. Not that the grass is greener. But the lessons learnt can be reflected on. The benefit of a conclusion. Good night. [ Previous Log ]
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