by
birdsong
@ Friday, Jun. 16, 2006 - 04:33:51 pm
Well, sometimes its good to be wrong.
Like everyone else, I was frustrated by England's performance yesterday but they did very well int he last half hour and looked a more balanced purposeful team.
I do hope tho that we don't end up playing Germany in the next round...
Enough. Real life and all that.
Lj are playing the annoying game and trying to knock down the agreed price for the World Atlas. A complete waste of time that I mind disrespectful. I've been asked to send some provisional work thru to the Indian subcontractors already, but that can wait until we get this silly argument over.
Had a great chat with Maple yesterday and he's all briefed and ready to go with the Botley branding. We then started talkng about the whole issue of websites and the way they are changing rapidly in the event of communities and open sourcing.
made me think if this is the way to go with metamatic. It is really stuck in the early 90s in terms of the laborious way it is put together, and that is now acting against it.
Were it to be re-launched and redefined as an open source network, we could still be webmasters, but everyone who subscribed to the site would have the opportunity to submit content. We could have all the reviews posted up somewhere, fans pictures from gigs, bits from the vaults that come along.
All the stuff that is up at EV now of course, but managed thru metamatic and hosted in a different way.
Seems the way to go as far as I'm concerned and there's a lot of potential in it. Maple did of course suggest that he could help me set up a site that worked like this anyway as an alternative to the 'official' oe, but I need to get a reaction and some feedback from the main man in a couple of weeks time before I even think about going down this route.
Loads of running about with jo today taking display stands down, collecting and delivering leaflets.
Gave me the idea that we could maybe put up some racking at the fete next weekend and give people an opportunity to collect some leaflets. Maybe even sell a few maps for pennies.
I'll run this past the organisers.
pageone has gone up in the Church centre, whcihis really encouraging.
Until the ad goes in the next issue from FYEO, and then I won't be renewing it.
I am still uncomfortable withthis and have made that clear, but our Sales Executive has gone ahead and signed them up anyway. One is going to defer putting the poster together next month and ask for him to do it himself. I can see lots of fallout from this - particularly from the Council of Faiths who are keen to develop their presence!
It was very annoying to witness D's hypocrisy the other day, openly declaring tha it was funny that the organisation should have 'one of least religious people I know' acting as their treasurer and sitting on all the committee meetings.
It's ain't cool... 
One other little rant about things.
Walking round to maples last night, I met a girl we know whose friends with our neighbours daughter. She hung around a lot when LC was born but has now moved a few streets away and doesn't visit them anymore. Still see her about and she always waves at the kids etc etc.
Probably 14 now I should think, and was with two friends last night when I met her.
Far too forward I thought, asking about their recently lost kitten. Too much hair tossing and finger twiddling from one of her friends and all seeming much too keen to chat to me - a middle aged bloke they just happen to know of. This kind of behaviour does worry me. I know and its cool that I am OK with it, and have an open, approachable nature,(perhaps cuz I have teenage daughters??) but at least two of the girls didn't know me from Adam and really shouldn't have been so trusting and all that.
Maybe she was relaxed because she knew she could trust me and was confident enough to behave like this, but I do hope they are not like this with everyone.
Seems there are too many kids growing up with rather too much need for adult attention, and this is what puts them in rather vulnerable situations. I helped a kid the other day who claimed to have been 'stuck up a treee' (did I blog about that?) He called over to me, and I helped him down.
Again, I could have been anyone. These are generally kids whose parents don't know where they are half the time, or give a monkey's about what they get up to. Until the police come knocking because they've either caused trouble or something has happened to them. Then it's everyone else's fault, and they scream and shout and blame the society we live.
Rights are all very well, but whatever happened to responsibilities???
Reminds me of Tenby with the Wilsons five summers ago. IW (who is a policeman) and me were on the beach with his daughter and Alice, rummaging about on the tideline. Two girls were playing near us (maybe 10-12 yr olds?) and we noticed them slowly drifitng over, asking what we had found etc and starting to join in with us. Our two daughters then ran off to show their mums all the suff and generally just stopped being there, leaving IW and myself chatting with these grils, showing them bits of seaweed, explaining about birds etc and IW found a fantastic hermit crab.
They explained at great length how they were staying at Butlins just over there or something, that they were cousins and ther mum, aunty and boyfriends were 'in there. I dunno, doin stuff...' They spent far too long with us and we had to walk back with them later, just to make sure they got back safe.
Its good to be trusted like this, (they dint know IW's profession of course) and perhaps sensed we could handle it, but looking back we said at the time how vulnerable they were and what a potentially dangerous situation they had naively put themselves in.
All they need is a bit of time spending with them, a bit of respect and encouragement.
It's really not hard.
