Shut Up. I'm Talking.

3rd Aug 2010

Got a lot on my mind…

So let’s get started:

Twitter

I’ve been opening twitter (tweetdeck) less and less these days. Not only has the conversation died down but now we are barely sharing links, these days it feels more like status updates than anything else and I am struggling to find the same value in it as I did a while ago.

Where has the conversation gone? Even more surprising is, where have the links gone?

X Games

I love extreme sports, I can’t do any of them but it is still one of my favorite things to watch. This year it was quite a shock to see empty stands at the Olympics of extreme sports. It wasn’t one or two open seats but more like one or two occupied seats. The evening events seemed better attended but during the day… shocking.

The first fail on the current X Games is that they include Rally. Now I am a massive petrol head but Rallying is motorsport and success in motorsport is 70% equipment and 30% skill. How the fuck can they consider rallying an extreme sport in the way Skateboarding is? To top it off, the rally drivers competing are not the best in the World, they are America’s best but America is about 20yrs behind Europe when it comes to Rallying culture.

So instead of getting rid of Rally they have made it into two events, Rally Cross and Head to Head. Both suck.

Where has rollerblading gone? And what about downhill skating? Downhill is about 10x more extreme than Rallying (in this context) and it doesn’t rely so heavily on equipment but more on balls and skill… which is what the X Games is meant to be about isn’t it?

This years Best Trick events yielded nothing new. In Moto X Best Trick the best trick was a double backflip. Travis Pastrana did the double during a Freestyle run. No innovation. Same goes for Skateboard Best Trick, it fell flat on its face. You could hear the ‘excitement’ in Tony Hawks voice (he was commentating). There was none.

Copywriting

I suck at it, so I have decided to try and improve my skillz in this department. Thanks to Cape Town Girl for recommending two awesome books, ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze this’ (I can’t put it down) and ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’. They cost more than double their retail price to get them from Amazon to SA but it has been well worth it!

Formula 1

Schumacher is doing himself no favors these days. RedBull are on another planet and will most likely win the Championship. I am enjoying seeing Alonso back in the hunt and Hamilton struggling.

Design

If you want to see what has replaced glossy buttons and big headings and gradients then pay a visit to Dribbble. Noise is the new gloss, drop shadows are the new gradients. Luckily these days the quality of work is much higher, so even though many of us are absolutely abusing the crap out these effects the general layout etc still looks half decent. BTW League Gothic is the new comic sans, or it will be in a year from now.

The words ‘Entrepreneur’ and ‘Start Up’

Can we get over it? Unlikely. I would like to rant about this a bit more but I cannot articulate my reasoning well enough to explain that just because you have a ‘Start up’ does not make you an ‘Entrepreneur’. It seems like everyone wants to be one these days, it is the in thing.

“I’m so tired”

We are all so very tired. Mention it but don’t make it the topic of your conversation because there is probably someone working harder than you. If you want the above then be prepared to sweat blood for a while. It is the reality. Also be aware when your tiredness is affecting your work because when that happens then you might as well sleep anyway.

The end.