Bod, James Bod!
“Bod, James Bod!“
Last week I was browsing Twitter (whilst I should have been working) and stumbled up this tweet by Steve Campbell from Debut Design in Wolverhampton. Having given the photo a quick look, I took my chances and replied saying that I thought it was Gadget Show host Suzi Perry. To my amazement, a few minutes later I got a reply from Steve telling me that I’d won!
I was directed to this page, where I had to upload a photo of myself, along with a brief description of how I wanted my bod to look. I uploaded a photo, and included several things in the description that I considered essential; a beard, long hair, a smile, checked shirt, dark trousers, boots, not too ginger.
I think the result above speaks for itself – it’s a really great likeness, crafted by someone who has never set eyes on me in ‘real life’, and I’m very pleased with it. So much so that I’m now using my bod as my profile pic on my blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and various other sites. Whatsmore, you can get your own Bod for the very reasonable price of £20 – check out the Debut website to order one.
“Four Things” by The Blonde Kid, aged 8…
The Blonde Kid: “There’s only four things I want…although they are quite expensive”
Me: “What are they then?”
1. “A Ben 10 decorated bedroom”
2. “An M3P player or an iPod to listen to my music on” (I think he means MP3 player!)
3. “Virgin Media/Sky (Cable TV) in my bedroom”
4. “A Laptop computer to play Club Penguin on”
Not much of an ask then? Suppose we’d better get saving…son of a geek you say?
To Do? Or not To Do?
How do you to do? I mean, you have stuff to do, right? How do you remember to do it? Do you have the brain/memory capacity to remember everything you need to do each day? Or do you forgot lots of things? Maybe you have the ultimate to do list system? And do you worry about forgetting to do things? Or maybe you just don’t worry about not doing, to do’s?
I’ve been asking myself all of these question of late. There have been a couple of blog posts that got me thinking about this, one of which is here (check out my rambling comment!).
The one conclusion that I have come to is that I have relied on technology to remind me to do things for so long now, I’m incapable of doing it myself – my brain can’t handle it, most likely because it’s out of practice (it hasn’t been used in this way, so it’s forgotten), and possibly because it hasn’t been allowed to adapt to a world where there are literally hundreds of bits of ‘mini information’ being thrown at it from all directions at the same time, courtesy of the aforementioned technology.
I always have lots of things ‘to do’ but I suck at doing them. I make to do lists; most are in my email, some are in an online ‘to do list manager’ (which is embedded in my email), many are saved as reminders in my mobile phone, and very occasionally there’ll be one or two in my head. But as my to do list manager (software called Remember The Milk) so often reminds me, my ‘overdue’ list is always longer than my ‘to do’ list.
So, how do I fix this? Do I need to adopt a super-strict routine when it comes to ‘to do’s’, or perhaps I need to stop worry about it, and in the words of Nike ‘just do it’? Either way I’m not sure, and I’m swimming in a sea of ‘to do’s’.
How do you make sure you remember to get everything done?
Imogen Heap ‘more popular than UK Prime Minister’
Recognition is always nice, and working for myself whilst I am often thanked by the people I work with/for, it’s not as if I get an annual review or ‘employee of the month’ award, so I was very chuffed with myself when I stumbled upon an article about ‘QDOS’, a system that measures an individual’s ‘digital status’ in the UK.
According to a recent QDOS report 9 out of 10 of the most digitally prolific personalities in the UK are musicians, and whilst you’d be forgiven for assuming someone such as Bono would be number one, you’d also be wrong! According to QDOS, the number one most digitally prolific person in the UK is non other than Imogen Heap!
(Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came in at numbers 12 and 25 respectively).
A QDOS score is comprised of four main components – popularity, impact, activity and individuality. Each component is scored separately and these are combined to form a total QDOS score. Popularity measures the number of people one engages with online and the size of their personal network, impact is based on the number of people who listen/read/view/comment when an individual blogs/posts online, activity comprises the total of one’s digital activity including shopping, blogging, banking, chatting etc, and individuality is how unique one is in the digital world based on their name, age and lifestyle.
So as Imogen’s webmaster and gate-keeper of all things online, I am patting myself on the back for a job well done! Although, I’m not the only person that deserves recognition here – there’s Imogen herself for always being up for trying something new, Mark Wood (Imogen’s manager) for letting us try things and always supporting us, and Tiffany ‘the axemaiden’ Le, our ‘myspace housekeeper’ who does a superb job managing Imogen’s MySpace profile and it’s 300,000+ friends.
Having spent the last 5 or 6 years working with Imogen and it’s great to see our efforts being recognised – I’m looking forward to retaining our ‘title’ in 2008!
Read the full article here.
“Who let the stupid people on the net?”
“Why I should be made the Internet Tsar” by Charles Arthur of Guardian Unlimited is as good a reason as any for me to start blogging again.
Not only am I sealing my place in the blogosphere for another month (reference 1), but I’m also effectively “copying and pasting entire stories from mainstream news sites” (reference 2).
This article is a rather amusing read, check it out here.
