as im getting used the subtleties and nuances of book collaborations and vowing not to repeat the process again for a very long time.
I thought Id pause and have a look round and see how others are conducting book collaborations in other areas such as writing a novel. It turns out a couple of months ago. Penguin, the publisher in conjunction with De Montfort university and their creative writing course, started a collaborative wiki-based creative writing exercise called A million penguins. According to them it was ‘with the best spirit of scientific endeavour’ and the result so far is 1030 pages of content. well, its pretty disjointed narrative if you ask me- even if you started reading from the organised section by section listing.. but its content nonetheless and a fantastic experiment helped in part that its backed by such a big publisher.

I recently came across this too in the social writing / crowdsourcing sphere:
oort-cloud.org

“…authors create and distribute their work, and readers, individually and collectively, including fans as well as editors and peers, review, comment, rank, and tag, everything.”

Interesting times. As for me, my book writing days are gladly nearly over.

This is the aftermath of my surgery on my arm. It’s a week now since I’ve had it done, and to everybody always asks me - ‘does it hurt?’. The answer to that very simple question is no! The nerves that run under the skin have been severed and may not grow back!

Anyway kids, one lesson I shall teach you all is - always check for the cyclist in your mirror before you go kicking open the door…!

I can’t go into much more detail on a public blog, because I want to sue the bastard!
I’ll probably remove the image in a bit as well, its not exactly design oriented!

“VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks.”

And it don’t half have some nice pictures!

Need a new shredder?

I’ve been back since Sunday lunch time and I’m still tired?

The trip was incredible, we did so much in so little time, including my debut hitchhike! I’m pretty sure the US+A diaries are best told in a public house so I will save you the trouble by not going on about it here.

The good news is I have started to sort out my pictures, got 2 of 4 sets sorted for your viewing pleasure right here.

Incase I haven’t told you a thousand times already, tomorrow I will embark on my trip to Coachella. I will return from my festival / road trip holiday on Tuesday 8th of May, therefore you should not expect any lightweight blog / link postings from me until then. Good luck and Good night!

Earlier this week, Tuesday February 6th to be precise, saw the first birthday of Please take note. Happy belated birthday!

pylon.tv is Live!

This job wasnt as straightforward as i imagined.Thanks to Simon and his precious minutes of CSS layout and div jiggery expertise, and Dimitre for his great little email obfuscator and several tests, i’ve learnt quite a bit about the limitations and joys of CSS only layouts, and workarounds for common issues from CSS Mastery by Andy Budd and some of that will be passed on to students.

Ive also developed the site on a mac, which is quite a thing to put yourself through if youve been using a PC since you were 9. in my head there are murmurings of a switch. Ive enjoyed it, especially as this machine i was working on frequently glitched (apparently thats pretty rare though)

anyway off to berlin in an hour, ill post hopefully from transmediale

Lots of women in bikini’s, sourced by a gentleman, zoom avaliable here.

I was blog-tagged by my good friend Dave Pattern whom I now know was in a pretty cool band!! and now Dom who apparently has lady-length eye-lashes.

I might as well submit to this meme, it was going to be the first post on my shiny new blog (address intentionally omitted), but it cant wait any longer. I was originally going to do a non serious one but someone beat me to it.

1. I have very poor location coordination, often made fun of in parking lots, Trying to locate where we parked the car. Do not put me in charge of reading maps in the car, if a GPS is not in sight then heaven help us. I came about 100 from the last person in mass orienteering event. there were thousands of people, and Im sure I didnt find all the points anyway. This occasionally extends to the virtual world as well, in which I will unintentionally test the limits of a first person shooters by running round in circles. I found an undocumented bug in Chronicles of Riddick because I backtracked four times on a single level, to my credit, I figure no beta tester was that thorough.
2. I got hit by a van on a motorway in the suburbs of Tehran and survived to tell the tale. I have experienced that near death thing when your life flashes by your eye and your brain starts oversampling.. everything slows down just like in the movies. Whats not funny about this is we didnt actually have to cross that motorway section to get to get back home ( we were heading back home from a waterpark) , and suprise surprise, I have a feeling I was leading the group and therefore in the middle.. Make sure if youre in a group of five, at least two of your friends are to the side of oncoming traffic. needless to say my friends were all fine too (- ish), one managed to get off doing military service because of his leg. -I’ve been in countless car crashes too. So I guess sadly and tragically none of this is a big deal over there.
3. I was a very shy as a kid, but now Im pretty comfortable talking in front of any number of people. kinda helps in my job.
4. I used to speak with a thick Glasgwegian accent till 1999, my accent started fading as I was living in london at the time. I couldnt get rid of it quick enough while I was there, theres nothing worse than sounding like a glasgwegian tourist in oxford street. Sorry to my two scottish friends who may read this. I wasnt ever overly fond of living in london if it makes you feel any better.
5. My name Iman ایمان means Faith in the persian language and also its original arabic. Coincidentally, If I wanted everyone to pronounce it correctly it would be (’E’ + mun) E as in ‘bee’ and mun as in mum with an ‘n’ in the end. Though Im so used to alternative pronounciations, I dont care much how you say my name. It actually sounds odd when someone pronounces it the persian way. My brain may get confused and I may answer you back in Persian.

Some of the people Id like to blog-tag i dont actually know that well anyway to ask, therefore it wont count.. but like dom Id like to tag the Pleasetakenote authors, specifically Simon, a man whom very little is known about and Miss Mealey if she ever reads this (I wont put her warcraft blog address here), Dimitre Lima , Rob Lycett and Tom Betts .