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Too big and pointy
I've said it before, but I don't like reading hardback editions of books, for the most part. They're too big, heavy and unwieldy compared with paperbacks. But of course many big publishers will only let you have the hardback for the first six months or so of a new book's life. I assume other justifications are sometimes offered (such as the supposed preferences of reviewers) but I see it as a way of charging more money from those readers prepared to pay more, before the paperback edition comes along to mop up the remaining demand at a lower price. And some will say that the hardback is a toe in the water before committing to a paperback release which might not be viable, but that makes very little sense to me. If you suspect the book won't sell, keep your costs down with a paperback-only release. But, if you refuse to publish the paperback simultaneously and you absolutely must attempt to fleece the public with an exclusive premium edition which precedes the paperback copy, why not offer an elite 'travel' edition, with higher-quality paper stock, some sort of softback cover and perhaps a gimmick like rounded corners. That way I'd be able to read it in comfort and pop it into a bag to take with me. Pretty please.
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Doctor Who: Sat 29th May
Well, frankly I'm at a loss to explain it, but for whatever reason I've rather enjoyed this recent Dr Who two-parter. I even (brace yourselves) even found myself thinking Matt Smith was doing a good job on a couple of occasions. Small things, like there were a couple of jokes that I felt he delivered with a flourish rather than stepped on. And big things, like when he was supposed to be feeling a particular emotion I (gasp) quite often got a sense that he actually was. Really, I don't approve of burning through most of a season before you begin to find your feet, but this double ep was the first time I didn't find myself hoping they'd replace MS for 2011. If I had to put my finger on it, I'd say that he'd finally managed to conjure up a little gravitas (presumably not easy for someone in their mid-twenties). And while there were all sorts of things wrong with the story - emotionally, logically and dramatically - the whole wheezing contraption still somehow swept me along with it. I suspect I might be in the minority with that reaction but I'd rather it was this way round than be left out in the cold. [keep reading for more spoilery thoughts]
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Doctor Who: Sat 22nd May
You know, I find of enjoyed last night's Who. It was a little humourless and there was nothing particularly clever about it, but still I found myself having fun. I've thought in the past that the writer, Chris Chibnall, should be under house-arrest for crimes against television. He was the show-runner for Torchwood and wrote a number of episodes for them. Really, that should result in an automatic five-year ban from media work. But his first Who episode, 42, was in the 'fairly good' category and that's probably where I'd put last night's effort, The Hungry Earth. I can't quite judge the pacing of last night's episode because I got a phone call in the middle of it. (Why would anyone call me at home at 18:45 on a Saturday? Unless they were my mother, I mean, and had a question about furniture.) But I'm hoping next week's ep can keep up the pace without doing anything too foolish. [Continue reading for one or two spoiler-laden irrelevancies]
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Ahh, lovely design
Just watching The Genius of Design on the BBC. I missed the first ep (though iPlayer will catch me up when I get a minute) but I'm enjoying episode two: Designs for Living. Fascinating to see that all modern fitted kitchens are descended, in design terms, from the Frankfurt Kitchen of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. And that minimalist apartments were more or less invented by Le Corbusier and his pals. But what's equally striking to me is how rubbish both of those inspired and original designs are.
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My Bijou Who Review
My verdict (for what it's worth) on this week's Doctor Who episode, Amy's Choice:
"Yay!"
One or two additional [spoilery!] thoughts...
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Wise old rocker
The more I hear about home-taping downloading killing music, the more I wonder who decided that recording musicians then charging others to listen would be a good permanent basis for a business empire. It's always been a tricky thing to insert oneself in the middle between musician and fan. In the olden days, the best you could have done was get the musicians working for you and then lock the door to anyone who wouldn't pay to come in and listen. That model will probably never go away. But for a while, when physical disks (records and CDs) were the commonest way to hear a tune, it got easy to charge for recordings. Now it's more difficult again. But don't take my word for it, listen to Mick Jagger's wise words on the subject:
Jagger: Well, it's all changed in the last couple of years. We've gone through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and we've gone into a grey period it's much easier to pay for things - assuming you've got any money.
BBC: Are you quite relaxed about it?
Jagger: I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money out of records. But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!
Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone. So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.
[source: the BBC via BoingBoing]
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What are the odds?
Are you thirty-six? Time to sell your first novel. Jim Hines has analysed the particulars of 247 published novelists and found that however you slice it most of them sold their first novel in the second half of their thirties. He also analysed the factors that might have played into their eventual success. Learn all about it here.
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Asymmetric responses
And while I'm on the subject of design, I was just reading about the new version of Ubunti Linux. It doesn't really matter if 'Ubuntu Linux' is just a bunch of syllables which convey no meaning to you, because you don't need to know about software to appreciate the point. Which is, as part of a move to convince more people to use Ubuntu instead of Windows or Mac OSX, there's been an ongoing design project called 'Papercuts'. And when I explain that 'Papercuts' is about fixing tiny design niggles in the user interface which otherwise might not be considered a priority, you can see how well-named it is.
Something I noticed a while back about the way people interact with shops - and it's also true about the way they relate to computers - is that the negatives count for more than the positives. Ten good experiences can be more than wiped out by one bad experience. Which is why a project like 'Papercuts' is so sensible. Before trying to come up with the next big thing, first make sure you're not screwing up all the good stuff you've done so far with silly, avoidable, niggly mistakes which become all your users notice or talk about. Death by a hundred papercuts.
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Laying it out
The thing I love most about good design is that it usually doesn't cost any more than bad design (particularly true when it comes to printed layouts). That's to say you can often have something that works well for the same price as something which works badly. And of course things that work well are more likely to become commercial successes - so there's even an incentive to aim for perfection. But we're all busy people, so we invented the concept of 'good enough' so as not to spend all day tinkering with the design of our till receipts. Or, in the design case I was just reading about, our boarding passes. Top left is the real boarding pass; bottom right is one suggested redesign produced by an unimpressed traveller. Click on either of them to see the full-sized version. There's a rather sweary, but amusing page about the whole thing here. And in the comments, loads of other people have taken a crack at a redesign. (Now, despite having more pressing things to think about, my brain keeps trying to come up with new layouts. I'm not going to let it, though. )
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Who
Last night's Doctor Who. My verdict. Meh.
Update: I've got two other things to say but one is tangential and dull and the other is scurrilous.
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No good deed goes unpunished
I suppose books are sort of the ultimate soft-sell. We print them and then we just, you know, put them on a shelf. They don't bleep or flash. We don't hand out samples of them on street corners. We wait for the reader to get a bus into town and hunt through the racks until they find one they like. Compare that with, say, cold-calling. You interrupt someone during their dinner and try not to let them get a word in edgeways while you reel off your pitch at them. Popups and their Flash equivalents are a little bit the same too: they cover the webpage you're trying to read as a way of holding your attention hostage while they try to sell you something. What I don't really understand is, who goes for that sort of marketing? It must work or it would have died out by now. But isn't everyone as turned off by it as me?
Anyway, I've made it my policy not to take up any offer pitched to me, unsolicited, over the phone because I don't want to help sustain those tactics with my custom. I've also signed up for the Telephone Preference Service, which does help cut the number of cold-calls I get - except that I got tricked recently into triggering a fresh deluge of cold-calls. What happened was this: a 'market survey' company called me and they happened to catch me in a good mood. They wanted to ask me some questions that would 'take no more than five minutes' (untrue). Now it seemed to me that market surveys are a good thing. If I'm going to complain when companies misread their customers' wishes, maybe I should be prepared to contribute some feedback. So I answered some questions along the lines of 'would you consider switching energy provider if you found a cheaper alternative?' and 'would you consider using a comparison service if you were trying to find cheap double-glazing?'. Only afterwards did I realise that any time I said 'yes' I had apparently 'expressed interest' in having various companies contact me to offer their products. Sneaky. But of course I'm more determined than ever not to have these firms profit from their trickery. So who is it that ensures the high-pressure deceptive marketing pays off?
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Adobe CS5 available
Just in case you don't know, but you do care, Adobe's new version of Creative Suite is now available. There's some 'content-aware' jiggery-pokery in Photoshop that sounds amazing. (And some rotoscoping miracles in After Effects, if that's on your radar.) And the whole thing is 64-bit, which means that you can buy a machine with multiple CPU-cores and lots of RAM, and now Creative Suite will actually notice. So I can run a Creative Suite app and let it grab 12GB of RAM and all four cores if it needs to do some heavy lifting. This is highly preferable to watching it lock up or crash. And you can try the whole thing out today using Adobe's 30-day trial. The tricky bit comes on Day 31 figuring out how to pay for it.
If you have five minutes, why not watch this little video about what 'content-aware' filling and painting are? Basically, you can delete an unwanted object from a scene and Photoshop will guess what was behind it, with pretty impressive accuracy. Or it can extend an image beyond its borders, guessing at what should be there. It's a little bit spooky.
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New Who Review For You
Flesh and Stone was good, wasn't it? I think it was. I certainly didn't dislike anything about it. Yet I felt a slight lack of satisfaction that I couldn't shake. But this might just be part of the natural ebb and flow of Weltschmerz we all experience. BUT! But next week's episode is written by the chief writer and creator of Being Human. Last Who Review I happened to mention Being Human, and soon we'll see what it will look like to transplant a little piece of that creativity into the Whoniverse.
For a little more pontification on this week's episode (not to mention spoilers), read on.
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Signing
Wayne Simmons will be signing copies of Flu here this weekend. Therefore you should go, if you're in the vicinity.