The party carries on without you

Details from the evening after 10:00 p.m.

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May you be delighted with light

Beelightful selling up a storm of beeswax candles.

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Well under way

It is hot in a house full of people:

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Still going strong: minus 3 hours and counting

squirrel I love you but get out of my house!

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Michelle, Maria and Killer Miller meets Phyllis Diller

More setup for show, three more artistis setup.

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Getting ready for the show: kukucaju setup

Still so much to do but will be live blogging! Ha.

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Digital Ghetto

Searchengine 2008 - 12 - 01 by Cbc Radio: Search Engine  
Download now or listen on posterous

searchengine_20081201_9664.mp3 (7026 KB)

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Bring back the real Christmas (batteries not included)

I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal called "Online Retail: Dead or Just Resting". What I found funny about this article was a comment someone wrote in lamenting the demise of Christmas as Christmas. No this wasn't a some Christian suggesting we put Christ back into Christ-mas. It was someone reminiscing about the days of yore when Shopping Malls cared. They actually put tinsel up in the parking lot, and had real christmas music playing!  Now all you see are plastic santas and experience the same shopping experience as any other day. Oh the irony of commercializing.  Don't these capitalists know you need to differentiate the capitalist experience otherwise people will be unhappy. Bring back the real Santa, bring back real (canned) Christmas music, bring back the holiday bustle of shopping in Bricks and Mortar. Please, please won't some corporate mogul get a sentimental, nostalgic feeling for shopping of days gone by and bring back the tinsel in the parking lot!

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15% off at Pistachio opening this weekend, November 21-23

Celebrate the opening of Pistachio this weekend, November 21 - 23, and enjoy 15% off with their Friends & Family event!

 

You can save 15% on an assortment of eco-friendly paper, gifts, apothecary, custom stationery, and more at either of our Pistachio locations. Present the attached coupon in-store to save.

 

And join us for the grand opening of Pistachio Yorkdale

Enjoy this discount and join us on Friday, November 21, for the grand opening of the latest Pistachio location at Yorkdale Shopping Centre! Festivities begin at 7 p.m.

Don't forget to bring the kids! Santa arrives at Yorkdale on Friday, November 21 as well! Holiday fun and savings for all!

 

 

Happy Holidays!

 

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Pistachio - 15% off Friends & Family.pdf (158 KB)

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Loving Kindness

I went to hear Sharon Salzberg lecture this evening. I am just realizing now the impact the evening has had on me. A room of 300 or more people all meditating on every sentient beings happiness, peace and contentment, freedom from suffering and experience of loving kindness. I am feeling the love. I can only imagine those who are doing the whole weekend are going to be on fire afterward!

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New Business Model for Publishing?

Over at www.concordfreepress.com a free-conomy model with a twist. Here is what they have to say about it:

Our first book—Give and Take by novelist Stona Fitch—isout and circulating through the world. We're distributing 1,500 copiesfree via online requests and our network of independent bookstores. Inreturn, we ask readers to make a voluntary donation to a charity orsomeone in need. And we ask them to pass the book on, so that everytime the book changes hands, it generates more contributions.

"The nonprofit publishing house Concord Free Press operates on an unusual Robin Hood-style publishing model."
–Los Angeles Times

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Liz Noble's paintings

05.Perched
06.detail 1 Perched
07.detail 2 Perched

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Future of the Book

 Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, a collaboration between Apt and The Institute for the Future of the Book, is now live. This is a pretty cool looking project with comments by 7 women shown in the margin. This project is an attempt to develop conversation in a more conversational format on the web.

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Have a happy bat day

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Ah summertime

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Filterbox

I think filterbox is a great idea but I think I need to put better filters on my filterbox. Still way too noisy.

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How long would you stand in line for free love?

Reading an excellent book on the psychology of free: Predictably Irrational

The New York Times had an article on the author and some of the research that is going on around the idea of free. Apparently we are not all that rational when it comes to shopping - who knew?

In a study on how free shipping affects online shopping, Professor Bell and his colleagues found that when people are offered free shipping on their order if they reach a particular spending threshold — Amazon, for example, provides free shipping on certain items if you buy $25 worth of goods — “they increase their average order size and also increase the time between shopping trips,” Professor Bell said. So it may balance out, right? More is purchased at one time, but less frequently?

Read the rest of the article

Neuromarketing article

What would Jeff Bezos say?

Over at Harvard Business Review Anita Elberse has published a critique of the long tail based on a study which looked at sales figures from online music vendor Rhapsody, on-demand video vendor QuickFlix, and Nielsen VideoScan and SoundScan services, as well as performing less rigorous analyses on Amazon and other online “entertainment and publishing” vendors.

Needless to say there is a lot of debate going on around this article not to mention a dialogue between Chris Anderson and Elberse both on Anderson’s blog and the HBR site. Over at O’Reilly Kurt Cagle has got into the mix with his own insight into the ‘complex, multivariate structure of the long tail. He has this to say about Elberse’s finding:

This, in fact, conforms remarkably well to William McPhee’s Formal Theories of Mass Behavior, publishing in the early 1960s, which describe the traditional blockbuster pattern of marketing consumption, which argues that statistically, the top 1% of most large segmented markets (such as those found for entertainment products) typically does as well or better than the top 9% after it, and that there is a dramatic logarithmic falloff that makes the tail generally unprofitable.

Harvard Business Review

Spot the problem:

I'm reading a neat book on the "Cult of significance" . So there is this idea of the "sizeless sciences" the "statisticians" the "doctors" the "scientists", "econonomists", whose quest involves finding statistical significance at the 95% level of confidence - no matter what!

anyway
spot the problem in this statement:

In the next census, you will find that about 30% of people are getting a college education and many more are getting advanced degrees because of something as simple as learning to read at an early age.

To me, I don't think I know what census - I assume America. So too say learning to read at an early age resonates with me, I still don't see why you have to jump to that as the correlation. I am sure based on absolutely no data, that learning to read at an early age is important, (if it is in the right language), there may be other variables involved, like next census where?

The Observer staff combed the stacks to choose 10 enticing summer books:

Dear American Airlines, Jonathan Miles

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewsk

Rites of Spring (Break): An Ivy League Novel, Diana Peterfreund

Somebody Else's Daughter, Elizabeth Brundage

When We Were Romans, Matthew Kneale

Schooled, Anisha Lakhani

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running , Haruki Murakami

Pharmakon, Dirk Wittenborn

The Wrecking Crew, The Wrecking Crew

Waterstone' s up 3.3 on same-store sales:
UK chain Waterstone's reported sales for the fiscal year of 564 million pounds, up 3.3 percent on a same-store sales basis and 5 percent overall, while income remained flat at 16.3 million pounds. In the continuing process of absorbing Ottakar's, the chain took a charge of 4.6 million pounds to cover the closure of 11 stores. (Only one new store was opened during the year.)

The company says "the biggest single initiative to help build links with our customers has been the Waterstone's multi-channel loyalty card, which launched in September 2007, and now has 1.5 million cardholders." They also highlight "the successful introduction of new children’s departments and a high quality range of gift stationery into 100 stores, where these new ranges have performed well."

Lots going on but starting to notice how easy it is to add content to the blog now with all of the tools available. Does this mean more, better richer - No! Just observing.

Hey, Art!

What is new media?

Bankruptcy Results in Big Loss for Quebecor
-- Publishers Weekly, 4/29/2008 10:20:00 AM

Printing giant Quebecor World released its delayed financial results for 2007 this morning and as expected the company took a big hit due to its January bankruptcy filing. Quebecor recorded a net loss from continuing operations of $2.20 billion compared to earnings of $30.6 million in 2006. Revenue in the year fell 6.5%, to $5.69 billion. Charges associated with the bankruptcy, including goodwill impairment charges, impairment of assets, and restructuring and other charges amounted to $2.1 billion. In addition to the charges, Quebecor said profitability was depressed by lower volume, pricing pressure, underperformaning European assets (which Quebecor is trying to sell) and higher expenses. The decline in revenue was attributed in part to the closing of several older plants in North America.

In a statement, CEO Jacques Mallette said the company has made good progress in restructuring its operations. “I am pleased with what we have accomplished so far,” Mallett said. To finance its operation during the bankruptcy proceedings, Quebecor received $1 billion of debtor-in-possession financing earlier this year, and the company said it believes it has enough cash to operate until it emerges from bankruptcy.

To help with its restructuring efforts, Quebecor has hired Randy Benson as chief restructuring officer. Benson has worked with other large companies in bankruptcy, including Hollinger and Ivaco.

Google moves ever forward with Google Book Search. I think there new viewer API is very likely an attempt at viral acquiescence - the more people who link the less likely publishers will be able to find a toe hold. Library thing got on it right away.

Big Brother promise finally fulfilled? Interesting article in the Globe and Mail this morning about PVR's ability to track viewing habits.

Globe and Mail article

MySpace is now playing catch up. You have to love disruption!

Read more.

Steven Pinker's new book coming soon to a bookstore near you.

Really enjoying myself at BookExpo right now. The Devices and Desires conference was excellent. It is more fun for me than I had anticipated.

Just came back from a conference in New York that BISG organized It was sponsored by codeMantra and Vista.
It turned out to be a pretty interesting conference. However, the big thing for me was being in New York, downtown Manhattan, for my first time. I have been all around Manhattan but never there. Publishers Row, McGraw Hill, Simon and Schuster, Random House, all located in these huge beautiful buildings in Times Square.

Oatmeal for breakfast, thoughtful discussion about the digital revolution that is happening in publishing till lunch, and then a stroll to Greenwich village and back.

John Seed was in Guelph town on Friday and had some interesting observations to make about climate change. John is a student of Joanna Macy who has a book out called Coming Back to Life.

A couple of the big insights I took away were:

1. If the US reduces the speed on their highways from 70 to 50 mph then there would be a savings of a billion barrels of oil a year. That, said Seed would keep things like the Iraq war from happening. That is a phenomenal idea!

2. Ruminate animals cause more greenhouse gases than all the cars on the planet. We need to eat less of that kind of meat. It isn't surprising that our agri business is as bad for the environment as our industrial practices.

One of the attendees of the conference said that he had just been at an environmental trade show and that there was a vendor there with a label for products that indicated the ecological footprint that was involved in manufacturing that product. There is a cool idea, let people decide how they spend their dollars based on that kind of information.

And finally, I don't have the article but a bunch of people were talking about a great article by Paul Hawken. I've read a Ecology of Commerce by Paul and it was great so want to track down this article that everyone was talking about. Fortunately I can just go talk to Stan Kozak down the street from me and ask him what it was. He sent it around.

Maude Barlow in Guelph:

Went to a talk given by Maude Barlow last night organized by Guelph Water Watchers. It was a great talk if not a little of a downer.

Here are the keypoints:
Humanity (that is us) is affecting the hydrologic cycle so that the planet is losing usable water. We are polluting the surface water, sucking out the ground water and creating polluted water. It is the ground level equivalent of global warming.

Our investment in nanotechnologies means we stop putting our efforts into conservation and thereby create bigger impacts on the eco-system. Not only that but water becomes a commodity under corporate control. The plants are nuclear powered, dirty and then we have to buy back the water for exorbitant amounts. The rich are the only ones who can afford water, not the ones who really need it.

Maude talked about NAFTA, North American Security and Prosperity and the efforts being put forward by short sighted business leaders to deregulate everything under the sun, which is nothing new.

Check out Council of Canadians, raise your voice, protect a precious resource, join the fight against Nestle who is basically stealing the future. Also think about joining this group on facebook if you are using facebook.

Spent the weekend puttzing around with Facebook and attending the first year of Suzuki Strings concert. Also started watching Deadwood. I knew I would like it and sure enough I do. I started with the first episode of season two. I was on the train and it was rainy out. I just needed to tune out and wanted to watch some t.v. so I did. It was perfect! When I got home I raced to Thomas Video and rented the first season.

So I just had to say I was wrong for slamming the readers for not having The Road available because they do here at The Road

It may be telling that I have yet to pick up the Iliad and start trying to use it as a reader. It may be telling that I turned on the Sony reader almost as soon as it was in my hands and started to load things onto it...only a few burps with the install of their updates. I had to uninstall the software and start over and not apply the update. There is nothing I hate more than an update that makes the thing it is updating stop working altogether.

I have heard people say that the Iliad is hard to approach as a non-technically minded user. Even the somewhat technically are intimidated by it and say things like there isn't anything to load onto it.

Nevertheless, the Iliad sits on my desk for one reason or another. A $1000.00 experiment waiting to be tested.

Our blog has started on the BookNet site. Michael started it off with a bang. Now we're all too intimidated by the audience and the quality, never mind that we are all busily reading all that stuff you can't get easily with an electronic reader. For instance, is one of the highest selling fiction books, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, available on the Sony reader, or the Iliad?

So anyway, I am the perfect candidate for using one of these pocket electronic libraries. I commute an hour and a half to work and lug a lot of reading material - not to mention a laptop - back and forth 3 hrs every day. My pack probably weighs close to 30lbs. I love to read! My tastes are varied, I go through cycles. I will read business books, math books, poetry, fiction, science, science fiction, cookbooks, gardening books, spiritual stuff, political, books like Fast Food Nation, Botany of Desire, Pattern Language, How Buildingd Learn, The Ingenuity Gap, Envisioning Information, The Sparrow, The Road, and I am a follower of Earthseed. I love the confused persons dummie guides to Statistics! (oh yeah and don't forget all of those amazing computer books from Pearsons). So how do I fulfill my reading desires with one of these devices?

This weekend I swear I will start looking at the Iliad. But I can't do what Michael did and swear off the printed page for an extended stay in London. Just can't do it.

E-readers: preliminary report
We received our ereaders this week and just a couple of early observations. First off it cost a lot of money for the Iliad reader from irex. The total cost Cdn. was almost 1000 dollars! That is 3x the cost of the Sony reader. $120.00 of that was for shipping. O.K. that is too much. The sad part is that the handling fee was only $8 and gst and pst made up the rest. Ouch. It remains to be seen if the extra cost is actually worth it.

The Sony reader came with excerpts of books which is about as useful as reading the back of a book. I mean why bother. Include the whole text or nothing. I got a public domain copy of Vanity Fair and loaded that on and also loaded some word documents which so far has been the best use of the reader. Technical documents make a lot of sense on the readers.

I'm not crazy about the usability of the form factor for the Sony reader. There are things I want to do like scroll the page that you just can't do and it is frustrating.

More on the software and form factor later.

The conference happened and was a big success. It was fascinating to see so many people who are involved in Canadian culture gathered together thinking about the state of affairs. If only we could have had a social network mapping of the event so everyone could see how the nodes on the tree fit together... Want to keep working on that aspect of organization, the book trade social network map.

One of the things coming out of this conference is the purchase of an Iliad and Sony ereader. We are waiting on these devices so we can blog about usability and content etc. I will get to use it on my commute to Toronto and see if I can drop some weight from my backpack. I can't imagine I will have the same content that I currently have though. I use the library a lot and if I could get the library loan onto the reader that would be awesome. Automated checking in and checking out....

The blogging is going to happen over on the BookNet site so stay tuned.

Harper Collins and Random House have made their own search inside widgets. Pretty cool little things that let you read the inside of the book ala Amazon. So now the problem is obvious. Publishers blow their brains out on developing this stuff but Amazon and Google offer much more content from a single source. Anyway, I think I prefer the random house widget over the harper collins but it will come down to content.

Help protect our water supply!

GCL member Mark Goldberg and James Gordon are the signators on an official
application made last week to the Environmental Commissioner Of Ontario
to object to the renewal of Nestle's water bottling license.

THEY NEED OUR HELP to help convince the province to deny this renewal.

At the Nestle bottling plant in Aberfoyle, they are basically taking our
water for free.

They can now draw 3.6 million litres per day from the same aquifer as
the City of Guelph and they pay nothing for it! water! (That is about 7
percent of our city's daily intake) This is the commercialization of a
public resource. The world’s largest food and beverage corporation is
bottling our water and selling it back to us for more than the price of
gasoline! Their permit is up for renewal in June. When they apply for a
renewal, their application will be posted on the Ministry of the
Environment’s Electronic Bulletin Board and people will be asked to
comment during the following 30 day period. They are hoping to organize
a campaign to get thousands of people to say they are opposed to the
renewal, and are asking us to help them.

There is an organizational meeting scheduled for:

7 pm on Tuesday February 13th in the Canada Room, ground Floor, the
Co-operators Building on Macdonnell Street.

Review the text of the application

Better late then never:

So I have been a bit late on the trends that are happening in the publishing world but I pledge to make amends:
Here is a link to the penguin wiki novel, a novel idea or a marketing ploy? You decide, and have some fun while deciding. Mitch Joel has some reservations about it. You also might like this idea for receiving your novel reading, I am getting Cory Doctorow's novel delivered every second day.

Digital Times:

Thought I should post something about the Conference that we have been putting together at BookNet Canada. Can check it out Here

This has been a fascinating project for me to sink my teeth into. I have learned quickly that the publishing landscape has changed drastically and that convergence is king. Convergence in devices and other technologies. Will post more later.

Well season 5 of 24 is behind me, and I have to say I wasn't disappointed. I'm not sure how they do it but the tension is never eased up. I have a whole new appreciation of Kiefer Sutherland based on this series, so much so that I even purchased this month's Men's Vogue that has him on the cover.

Happy Holidays Everyone:

Noah and Tim two fish working!

The ubiquitous umbrella.
Toronto a town like any other town where people dress in black and carry black umbrellas. Foggy rainy days bring out the device where ever you are. If you don't look black and ready to attack then you are a fish out of water.

Here is a story from my last days of working in Guelph.
I was biking to work and decided to take a side trail that wasn't part of the main road traffic. The trail follows the edge of a forest out in the Hanlon Creek watershed. It is well back from the road and you only see people out walking their dogs.
I was very surprised when I rode past a dead deer. It was lying just off of the trail and at the edge of the forest. My inclination was to keep going because I was running a bit late, but then I thought no this is not an accident.
I went to look at the deer and it was sort of horrific the state it was in. The hind quarter had been basically ripped off, one leg was missing and all of the fur. I was somewhat confused as to what happened. The road was a good ways away but obviously this deer had been hit by one and then somehow dragged itself through the business park across the trail and died right at the edge of the forest. I found this pretty amazing. The will involved to get back home was inspiring.

Life in the big smoke:

I recently started a new job in Toronto which is about an hour and a bit on the train form my fair city. It has been a great change for me and has offered all sorts of little obstacles to overcome, not least of which is adjusting to the new rules of home life.
We told our girls what the new rules were last weekend and I think they apply to life in a general sense:
rule one Pay attention
rule two listen
rule three what did I just say? pay attention.

So I am paying attention. So far I have made a good network on the train and have been listening to what people are saying and doing in their lives. It is fun.

Tim Bits
I was recently at a Tim Horton's ordering my lunch. I was ordering a turkey club sandwich and a bowl of soup which totaled almost $11.00. The cashier saw me fingering my debit card and said oh we don't accept debit here. Now this is not the first time this has happened to me at Tim Hortons but I have to say my reaction was the same this time as every other time: why the *&#* not? The answer, there is an ATM just around the corner.

Well I tried to figure out why a multimillion dollar service company does not provide this service. Is it for speed? I think this is the best possible spin you could put on it, but was my transaction not considered valuable enough, I was allowed to walk away around the corner and go get the money so everyone else wouldn't be slowed down? And yet every other fast food company in the world accepts debit.

Is it because Tim Horton's is only a donut shop and it doesn't make sense to allow debit on such small transactions? Then why was I spending my lunch money at Tim Horton's and why was I spending $11.00?

No the simple truth is that Tim Horton's is very sneakily, well maybe not too sneakily, passing on it's cost of doing business to the consumer. Why should I have to pay Tim Horton's ATM costs? Is it not better business to accept the cost of allowing debit cards from your loyal customers and take up your argument with the big bad boys of the financial services world?

I just don't get it, but I'm willing to look at real numbers, real complaints and see what the real problem is.

I'm listening to a cd by the Dalai Lama. A friend gave this to us and has called it OM His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. It is beautiful. I listen to it over and over when I am working around the house. It is amazing to walk into the house from outside. The trees are almost bare and the colours have been spectacular. And then the deep rich chant of the Dalai Lama. Amazing. I feel reinvigorated after listening to it.

Here in Guelph:
The election has a white knight in the Guelph Civic League. Hopefully this links you to the research on past voting by the current council.

The buddha and the light:


Last night at dinner I decided to light some candles and one of them was a bees wax buddha candle that someone had given me. I had already lit this at some other time and so most of the head was gone. When I put it on the table my daughters both said hey, it's the buddha! And then they looked at it as I lit it and said the buddha's head is gone. This made me reflect on the light and I said it is amazing isn't it that the more light the buddha gives the less of the buddha is present. I see this as part of the occupation of buddhism and enlightenment. Bring more light, be more open to the way, and more and more of the self, the ego, identity seems to disappear. Now, the point is the candle isn't disappearing, it is transmuting, becoming one with the flame, with the air, with everything so there is less of the so called object.

Back in the saddle.

I was challenged lately at the Eden Mills writer's festival by a friend. We were talking about blogs and I mentioned I have a blog but I haven't written anything on it for a few months. He said that isn't a blog! I said it is an artifact of the blogosphere and realized I didn't want to be an artifact. So I am back.

I think the reason that I haven't blogged for a while is that I am writing about my spiritual experience and to be quite honest things are a bit stalled for me. Not to say I'm not still meditating and thinking about connection with truth but I am not having those so called insights that I was having. Life, stuff like working and repairing the homestead and people getting married and people breaking up, has been getting in the way. Now I am realizing that is all part of the big picture, so out the artifacts and into the art.

Fear is the enemy of learning.
It is the enemy of learning how to live together as one, it is the enemy of learning how to resolve differences, it is the enemy of learning to live in peace, it is the enemy of learning to listen with openness, it is the enemy of learning to let go of the things that we think we need.


Love is the quality that overcomes fear allowing us to be together, supporting one another and helping one another grow! Love is not scarce, love is everywhere for those who are not blinded by fear.