Today, through circumstances which aren’t relevant, we found out some information about Mrs F from the chap who lives next door to the family to which she belongs (if a cat can be said to “belong” to a family). It seems she’s been actively visiting other houses in the area ever since a small child emerged from the womb of the woman who feeds her a couple of years ago. Which roughly fits our timescale of the first visit was the spring of 2010, give or take.

So she’s been displaced by a baby and is sharing her love elsewhere. Suits us.

I’ve been interviewed.

The other week I had a long Skype conversation with Chris Pinchen about what I do and how it all works financially as part of a series of interviews with people “making a living on the edge” for Edgeryders, a Council of Europe / European Commission project. I was extremely wary as it sounded like some kind of wankery, overblowing my stumbling attempt survival into some kind of utopian best practice, but I’ve known Chris online for a while and met him a couple of times and he’s always struck me as a good chap. And I realised talking about how I earn a living might help me figure out for myself how it all works, since I’m as in the dark as anyone.

Chris ended up with an hour of me talking and when I reviewed it the next day I was pleasantly surprised. Maybe because I was still a little dopy from a late night, maybe because Chris put me at my ease, but I think there are some genuinely interesting things in there.

Chris has edited them into four chunks and posted them with a text summary of the conversation.

Once Edgeryders have had the attention they require I think I’m going to chop them down further into 3-5 minute bites. I might even do some more little videos like this, if feedback is good.

I also made some art out of it, because that’s what I do.

Having been in the volunteer chorus of their performance of Othello I am now, and forever will be, part of the extended Birmingham Opera family and while I wasn’t able to take part in their current production, Life Is A Dream, I was determined to go and see it. Fi and I have tickets for Friday but for some reason I found myself on the “press” comps list for the premier. Liking the idea of seeing it twice but not wanting to take the piss (I haven’t been “press” since giving up Created in Birmingham in 2008) I decided to take my camera and Do My Part for the family.

Having gotten 40-odd decent pics which I hope are good enough, I’m making them available for free use in the promotion of the opera. Usually I just slap at Creative Commons license on my photos which means anyone can use them anywhere for whatever reason as long as it’s non-commercial. Commercial use has to pay me. In this case I’m waving that in the context of this opera. So if a newspaper needs a photo to accompany a review they can use one of mine, and so on. Any commercial use that isn’t connected with this opera requires payment in the form of a donation to Birmingham Opera at the usual industry rates.

It hopefully goes without saying that the opera is fantastic. Yes. the storyline is complex and you’ll be lost if you don’t know the story but that doesn’t really matter. The set pieces are emotionally engaging and unlike the chaos of The Wedding (their last production) this is relatively sane and coherent. Relatively.

Because I was stuck behind a lens all evening, wrestling with some rather complex lighting, I’m not going to attempt a proper review. I’m going to wait until I’ve given it my full attention on Friday for that. In the meanwhile, here are three of my favourite photos. The full set is here.

Here’s a flyer Matt made for the free Photo Walk through Digbeth we’re running on Sunday 25th.

Click on it for full resolution, and please spread it around the place if as you see fit.

We’ve got seven people booked and I reckon 25 is a reasonable number to take on a guided stroll. Full details on the Eventbrite page or book using this widget here:

Not content with having a perfectly functional garden, Fiona has decided to change it. So as the Spring days emerge she’s been out there digging and stuff. I’ve even joined her on occasion. Today the man came and laid the new bits of lawn.

Can you spot the joins? It should settle in time and we may get the middle re-turfed, but for now, feel the width!

Gardening inevitably means cats and we have a new contender. The young couple next door got kittens last year and have started letting them out. The ginger lady is timid and doesn’t go far from the door but the tom is exploring like a crazed explorer. Interestingly this has kept all the other cats at bay (though we have seen Mrs F a couple of times). His name is Battle Cat and he has the most absurd tail.

I have a suspicion that adult cats leave kittens alone, at least for a while, which would explain the absence, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens when Battle Cat is old enough to be a threat to The Ginger Tom (who, we hear, is terrorising poor old Ming from two doors down). I shall report on these developments as they happen.

Having an international airport a few miles away it seemed absurd that we hadn’t visited the viewing area at the foot of the runway in Sheldon County Park and taken the cameras. Today we did.

Lots of fun, though there wasn’t much to do with the angle. We’re going to try finding a spot on the side next. Steve recommends a point on the golf course.

Fiona’s photos are here.

I quite like newsletters, when they’re used properly. The problem is using them properly takes a fair amount of care and attention to detail. Today I had three newsletters arrive in my inbox at the same time. Can you see a pattern?

Gmail, and I think most other email programs, displays the first line of the email after the title. This is very handy when skimming through your inbox to see what’s worth reading. If you’re using your newsletter to get people’s attention you could argue it’s the most important part after the subject line.

Unfortunately most commercial email packages encourage you to use templates which clog up those first few lines with cruft. “View it in your browser” is a handy tool but it shouldn’t be the first thing you read. Yet there is it at the top of the page.

The problem comes from confusing the flow of text in a document with the visual priority it’s given by the designer. Here’s a pretty standard Mailchimp theme ready for populating:

Looking at it you can see what are the most important bits of text – the title, the headings, and so on. But email programmes don’t read visual styles. Unless they’re being very clever they just parse the text in order. So the most important part is “Use this area to offer a short teaser”. Which is right, you should, but as we can see above people often don’t.

So watch out for that. When you test send your newsletter don’t just check it for typos. Look at how it displays in the inbox. You could try looking at the addresses in your mailing list and if there’s a lot of @hotmail.com see how it looks in the Hotmail inbox.

Related to this, I’ve been playing with newsletters a bit myself and someone asked me for some advice on how best to write them. Bearing in mind there are as many correct answers as there are newsletters and readers of newsletters, here’s my basic guide (which I rarely completely obey, to be fair).

1. Keep it short. People get a lot of email and want to get through it quickly. Try and keep it to 2 or 3 paragraphs with a simple call to action like a link.
2. Keep it simple. Don’t bundle up lots of disparate things in one email. Pick a topic and stick to it. If it is a roundup newsletter with lots of items, prioritise one and list the rest.
3. Link out. Don’t put all the information in the email. Link to it on your website or blog. This helps keep the email short and sweet and also, if you’re tracking clicks, shows you what people were drawn to.
4. Simple layouts. Don’t get carried away with fancy layouts. They often don’t display well, especially on phones, and are a distraction. I’m a big fan of plain text emails because they get straight to the point and can be forwarded easily.
5. Look at your own use of newsletters. Do you read every newsletter you’re subscribed to? Do you click on every link? Which newsletters do you actively engage with? How would you approach your newsletter as a reader? You should also do a bit of user testing on your friends.

Finally, remember that while the contents of your newsletter is vitally important to you, it’s of passing interest at best to everyone else. Make it easy for them to get to your point and act on it.

As mentioned before, Antonio and I are curating one of the Flatpack Festival events, something called Bring Your Own Beamer where artists who have a projector of their own are invited to bring it along and beam their work on the walls, all at the same time.

It’s on Friday 16th March from 7-10pm and due to the magic of state funding there’s no charge to attend – you’ve already paid with your taxes. Aren’t taxes brilliant?

I’ll be projecting my work (probably something derived from the KiteCam footage) and will also be playing some tunes inbetween the proper DJs. However I won’t actually be there because I booked a holiday over that weekend before I’d put it in my diary. This is because I am occasionally an idiot.

So please attend the event I’m running where I won’t be present. It should be brilliant. And you can tell me all about it afterwards.

Now the initial burst of excitement over the relative success of This Much I Knew has calmed down I’ve gotten back to thinking about the book proper, the one I was planning on writing and for which This Much was a test-drive. I’ve been using Workflowy to keep notes of potential chapters (they promise to have a revenue model and backup facility in place soon) and this is what I have so far:

• Recalibrating success
  • Doing “media” stuff, be it music, writing, whatever, was an all or nothing game. Now there are gradients, but people still think in all or nothing.
  • Stuart Lee on finding a sustainable crowd that allows him to do his stuff,
  • Steve Lawson casestudy.
• Building relationships
  • Metapod Connect stuff
  • Followers are relationships
• Be helpful on your own terms.
  • Don’t crush your individuality for a broader reach.
  • www.schmutzie.com/weblog/2012/2/25/we-can-become-known.html
• How to follow efficiently.
• The personal in public
  • Levels of intimacy
  • Context
  • www.chrisunitt.co.uk/2012/02/trustfunding/
• Personal responsibility for actions
  • Dont blame medium for allowing you freedom to behave badly.
• Free vs Free vs Free vs Free
  • How can you charge in an age of abundance?
• “how do I get followers?”
  • If you have something people want, be there so they can follow.
  • If you don’t, have patience. These things take time.
• Advertising and the web
  • What’s wrong with advertising in general?
  • The web needs better adverts.
  • keyword driven ads only work when the intentions overlap. Doesn’t work for the good stuff.

It’s mostly ideas I’ve had in the shower or after reading something interesting and it’s by no means a reflection on what I’m going to write, but it’s a start and gives a vague indication of where things are headed. It looks like there are two strands (two books?) – how to do stuff and what it all means. I think the two are connected – you need to know what it all means in order to do stuff effectively, especially in a DIY scenario – the the how-to angle makes it more accessible and immediately useful to people.

I’m still pondering the revenue model for this. I’m definitely going to use Leanpub but that pays out quarterly and is still slightly after the fact. If I’m going to dedicate a good chunk of time to this I’m going to need some kind of advance, so maybe a crowdfunding model is more useful after all. That adds a level of complexity I’m not overly keen on (am I writing a book or running a crowdfunder?) but if kept simple and designed around helping the book get done it should be manageable.

Let’s have a sketch of what the rewards might look like:

Advance purchase of the book – This is a tricky one to do smoothly as ideally people would do this through Leanpub so they get updates. I guess they could download the book for free (the book will be available for free) and I could make an honour payment to Leanpub for those purchases. Basically this is a donation without a “reward” so it might be worth keeping the book out of it and calling it that.

Watch me write – I’ve been joint-writing stuff on Google Docs lately and have been fascinated by the live-updates when your collaborator is writing. As the letters emerge on the screen you really get a sense of their thought processes. I’d like to experiment with this by opening my writing up and allowing people to have a conversation alongside it. (If nobody wants to pay for this I might just do it anyway.)

Skype consultancy – Face to face consultancies tend to use up the whole afternoon I find, but a half-hour chat via Skype would be doable. Basically you have my rapt attention for that time to ask me anything, ideally something to do with the book which I can then turn into a chapter but not necessarily. Maybe you just want to run some idea by me or have a moan about the government.

Signed photo print – I’ve got nearly 10,000 photos on Flickr. 99% of them can be turned into a decent sized print which I could sign for you.

Sponsored chapter – This is riffing off a similar idea Fiona had and it’d need a lot of careful thought but the notion of a chapter about a subject someone wants to be associated with being paid for by them is interesting. Think along the lines of the Future of Local blogging I did for Talk About Local last year which was the sort of sponsorship I’m comfortable with.

That’s about all I’ve got at the moment and I’d welcome ideas, but be aware I don’t want to offer things that would detract from the writing of the book. Yes, I could do a photo shoot, but then I’m spending a day doing a photo shoot.

Also I’m not looking for a lot of money. £500 would be sufficient and I’d set the target lower to ensure I reach it.

(I plan to spend some time on the next edition of This Much over the next fortnight, so hold tight for that.)

Last year I bought a tiny little video camera for a tenner because it excited me. Today I finally put it to some use by attaching it to a kite and flying it over our local park.

The resulting footage was, well, a little sktechy. Not only is the camera really quite poor quality (it’s made out of cheap cameraphone parts) but the box kite wasn’t as stable as I was lead to believe box kites were supposed to be. It’s not as mad as a stunt kite but still a long way from a balloon.

Here’s some raw footage (the timestamp gives away my inability to judge top and bottom on a kite):

That said, the camera’s inability to deal with the conditions does lead to some interesting digital glitches, especially when you freeze frames or slow it right down, and I’m really taken with how the sun is rendered as a purple dot. I can see myself playing with this footage quite extensively. Expect art.