• Danger Room Debrief: How to do Defense, When the Money’s Gone | Danger Room from Wired.com: “The current global economic and financial meltdown may yet become something worse: a protracted global depression. As with the last century’s Depression, which spawned fascism and WWII, it could recast the world at a fundamental level. As such, it may soon represent our biggest security challenge in over 50 years.”
• The Power of Nightmares | YouTube: The 2.5-minute introduction to The Power of Nightmares, to give you a flavour of the full 3-hour documentary series.
• The Power Of Nightmares (DVD) | Internet Archive: This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today: “Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret organized evil that threatens the world, a fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.” The full DVD image is free to download.
• Irrelevant Al Qaeda | Jon Taplin’s Blog: Is it time to declare Al Qaeda irrelevant and downgrade the War on Terror a police action that’s just mopping up the stragglers?
• Mother Earth Mother Board | Wired 4.12: A massive 1993 feature article in which Neal Stephenson toured six countries following the roll-out of fibre optic cables. It introduced me to his writing and it remains an excellent read today.
• The End | Flickr: A collection of classic “The End” title cards from a wide variety of films.
• Fiscal Conservative vs. Tax & Spend Liberal | Be the signal: Another variation of an infographic pointing out that the Republicans don’t have the best track record for the US economy.
• Opinion graph | Junk Charts: On average, the US stock market does much better under Democrat Presidents than Republicans, as this graph shows.
• How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign | Advertising Age: A groundswell of opinion on Twitter caused Johnson & Johnson to pull an adverting campaign.
• Thesis Theme for WordPress | DIY Themes: A high-quality but not-free theme framework for WordPress. While I currently use the free Tarski theme for my website maybe this is worth a look at some point.
• NSW Parliamentary Research: Mandatory ISP filtering is not what it seems | Internet Industry Association: Research by the NSW Parliamentary Library shows that Senator Conroy’s claims about other nations’ compulsory Internet censorship regimes are wrong.
• Kerr's curse | ABC Unleashed: If nothing else, I love this essay for the phrase “cardboard cutout think tanks”. But there are many other reasons to like it.
• Internet Censorship and the Irukandji Jellyfish | First Dog on the Moon: Only First Dog on the Moon could successfully combine Senator Conroy’s Internet censorship plan and jellyfish in one cartoon.
• PG Nation | ABC Unleashed: An interesting essay about the neo-wowserism of the Rudd government.
• Europa Film Treasures: An archive of European cinematographic treasures. It looks like there’s a lot of material here.
• The Trojan Horse | Business Spectator: “The current government policy of forcing ISPs to offer their customers a so-called ‘clean feed’ has the overt intention of helping parents to protect their kids while surfing the Internet. It is, we are told, all about child protection. However, the use of content filtering to make the Internet ’safer’ for kids is already available, to the extent that any statistically significant real demand exists to solve it.”
• Failing hard drive sounds | Datacent: A collection of the sounds made by dying hard disc drives. Yes, they can be used in music provided you contact these guys first.
• 19-year-old Commits Suicide on Justin.tv | NewTeeVee: Abraham K Biggs committed suicide on Wednesday while broadcasting himself on video site Justin.tv. Apparently the 19yo Floridian was egged on by commenters on Justin.tv and forum users on bodybuilding.com. The article canvasses some of the legal and ethical issues.

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• Making money twice | 37signals: A good portion of this industry is still trying to figure out how to make money for the first time (hint: charge people). But for those who’ve mastered that, I want to talk about the next step: making money twice (or three or four times).
• NYT: Obama saying goodbye to BlackBerry? | msnbc.com: The limitations on the President, both legal and security-based, mean that Barack Obama may have to give up using email. Unable to get unfiltered access to The Real World, he’ll become increasingly dependent on a worldview filtered through his “advisors”.

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[This article was first published in Crikey on Friday. It covers much the same material as my previous three posts [1, 2, 3] but for a general non-Twitter audience.]

Wednesday 1.35pm. Someone logs into the newly-created account “KevinRuddPM” and types “Looking forward to communicating with you on Twitter“. Thus did our Prime Minister enter the crazy hyperconnected global front bar cum water cooler conversation that is the Twitterverse.

It took a couple of hours for word to spread and for KevinRuddPM to gather his first ten “followers”. But soon the numbers grew. People said their greetings, asked questions and offered opinions — and most of the opinions were calling for an end to the Internet filtering trials. Smart-arses like me even offered snarky advice.

By mid-evening, KevinRuddPM had more than 700 followers. Those hanging out for a response eagerly devoured the second Prime Ministerial tweet: “Thanks to everyone for adding me on Twitter.” [My reaction: OMFG! Kevin Rudd tweeted again!] And then all the followers suddenly disappeared. Huh?

Next day The Age reported that high demand had “crashed” KevinRuddPM’s Twitter “page”, quoting Rudd’s spokeswoman as saying, “It’s because Twitter essentially is not used to people getting so many followers in such a short time.”

Not true. Twitter comfortably copes with stars like Al Gore and Stephen Fry attracting thousands of new followers an hour. Much as a political ego might like to think their popularity is overwhelming, it wasn’t a crash. Twitter’s overly-zealous anti-spam system had kicked in when KevinRuddPM followed back all his followers in a sudden burst.

Still, the big question was whether KevinRuddPM was actually Mr call-me-Kevin Rudd himself typing, like Opposition leader TurnbullMalcolm, or an unnamed staffer. Turnbull has been using Twitter for a month and, after initially banal tweets like “reading the morning papers” he’s getting into the swing of it, replying to questions and posting links to his speeches.

Meanwhile DowningStreet is operated by three people from Gordon Brown’s digital media team. While faceless minions, they still manage to inject real personality into the role with tweets like “Among the crowds in the UN basement the PM has an unplanned catch up with Bono and Bob Geldof, here to push the development agenda” and “No10 admin is on a rain soaked freeway in New York. The sky is a bank of featureless grey cloud as the PM heads into the city”.

KevinRuddPM’s profile isn’t at all clear on this question, which is a mistake. His spokeswoman didn’t know either. She’d “need to come back with information on whether Mr Rudd updates Twitter himself,” The Age wrote.

KevinRuddPM sits on a cusp. Used well, the PM’s Twitter account could be like John Howard and talkback radio, speaking over the heads of “the media” directly to the people. Used badly, it’ll look like another lame government attempt to be hip and cool, like dad dancing at your 21st. The Twitterverse awaits with bated breath.

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• New Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Causes Chaos | ReadWriteWeb: The real reason Kevin Rudd’s Twitter account was misbehaving.
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I’m not particularly surprised to discover that the Prime Minister’s Twitter presence isn’t really Kevin Rudd but a minion of some kind.

I’ve already written about this [1, 2], and will doubtless write again, but I figure today’s the day they really do need to sort out how they’re going to use this Twitter account.

Are they talking in first person like “I’m on my way to the G20…” or the third like “We think getting 700 followers in 7 hours + following back caused us to crash“? How will they respond to the massive return traffic, making sure everyone feels like they’ve been heard while not sounding like a robot?

Why wasn’t this written up on the site before the account went live? After all, those basic ground rules would have been negotiated well before the PM approved the idea, wouldn’t they?

I’m still not convinced by this “we crashed Twitter” line either. Al Gore joined Twitter the other day and was getting 2000+ adds an hour. It coped fine then. I don’t see why it wouldn’t cope now. Linkage please, Prime Minister’s Minion!

I’m also surprised that they seem to be stumbling a bit, even by rolling out the account while the PM’s travelling. Surely they’d have hired an expert for such a public activity?

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OK, I’m not going to write a blog post every time the PM tweets something. But this gives you an idea of the scrutiny he’s under. He (or an as-yet-unnamed minion) types eight words and suddenly hundreds of people are a’flutter. Or a’twitter.

Mr Rudd’s first challenge will be to explain why he had over 400 followers last night, and had followed most of them back, but now half of them are gone. It’s probably just a Twtter glitch, but we all Need To Know. Now please. I’m sure the friendly folks at Twitter will respond quickly when they know it’s Australia’s Prime Minister (or an as-yet-unnamed minion) asking. That’s like even more important than Sarah Palin!

Have you ever seen Sarah Palin and Kevin Rudd in the same room? Spooky!

Since my welcome to the PM yesterday, I’ve been thinking about some suitably Prime Ministerial tweets.

Most of us don’t get that classified message each morning telling us where the Prime Minister will be, so it’d be harmless enough to feed us a little information as the day goes by. He could add a personal, reflective note without being a security risk.

“‘Only’ 200 pages to read over breakfast. Now I know why the coffee is free.”
“On way to CBR airport, flying to SYD. Constant travel is the tiring part of the job.”
“Glad to see NSW farmland looking better after the rains. Have farmers started to recover”

As I said yesterday, Twitter is about just being yourself. Twitter could humanise the role of PM. Make visible the questions in the PM’s mind, like the ones about the farmers, and people will respond. They’ll also understand that Rudd is busy man and won’t respond personally to every reply, but he does need to show that he’s seen what they said.

He could also use Twitter to send (not-so-)subtly coded political messages.

“Meeting Gordon Brown, looking forward to resolving the pensions problem”
“Hoping Conroy’s finished writing his resignation letter”

The folks who write books about political tactics said that one of John Howard’s more successful tricks was using talkback radio to speak over the heads of “the media” and communicate directly with listeners. His mistake was thinking all those bitter, hate-filled time-wasters on the phones were actually representative of Australia now, rather than being an old-fashioned whingefest — the last remnants of a medium almost dead. A bit like Mr Howard himself.

Twitter and other social media tools could allow Rudd to take that tactic to the next level, talking directly over the heads of the talkback hosts, his media minders (read: limiters) and forum moderators to interact directly with The People. A bit like that story of the King going amongst the peasants in disguise, but without the disguise.

He could also use Twitter to listen over the moderators’ heads. If Rudd (or any politician) learned for themselves to use the searching and filtering and analysis tools, they could investigate what they wanted to see, rather than on the minions who, let’s face it, are only serving the PM because they want to climb that greasy pole themselves. Would you trust them to give you accurate information if it showed them, personally, in a bad light? I thought not.

There’s a whole essay in there about how politics and government is the last remnant of an age when information was hoarded rather than shared. Us hyperconnected folks know that sharing information is where the power truly lies. That’s the big difference between the industrial age and the post-industrial.

We’re in transition, though. Some organisations get it, some don’t. The open source software community is all about sharing and making the process public — warts and all — and as a result they can deliver a secure operating system like Linux for free when it takes Microsoft hundreds of millions of dollars to come close. The NSW state government couldn’t even roll out Wi-Fi hotspots in Sydney because they wanted to plan it from the top down with similarly top-down centrally-controlled businesses. Wrong tool for the job, people!

But, as I say, another essay for another time.

Both of Kevin Rudd’s tweets so far have been exactly eight words, and eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture. Will the next tweet also be eight words, making it the super-lucky “888″ message from Chairman Rudd?

Or, it’s a Full Moon in Spring tonight, the first in Rudd’s time as PM. Maybe this is when he reveals that he’s a super-powered were-robot, and the Twitter account will spew forth the hypnotic trigger-words to activate his army of Iced Vo-Vo-eating slaves. Man, that’d be so cool! Scary though.

Full Moon is at 5.18pm Sydney time.

Bonus Link: The mild-mannered Stephen Collins has unleashed his own super-powers to write Welcome Prime Minister. Now please engage.

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Dear Mr Rudd, it’s wonderful that you’ve joined Twitter. Of course Mr Turnbull was here a month before you, but Twitter has been around more than two years. Even sceptical old me has been here a year. You’re both complete n00bs. May I offer some tips?

The first thing you must understand is that Twitter is about human communication. We already have more formula-driven spin-doctor-approved crap than we’ll ever need. What we want to see is you, Kevin, that smart hard-working control-freak slightly-daggy-but-endearing father of three. The guy who after a long day’s campaigning could still crack a joke with The Chaser crew when they turned up at your home.

This afternoon you walked into the world’s weirdest non-stop front bar cum water cooler conversation and said “Looking forward to communicating with you on Twitter”. Outstanding. And now 430+ people have turned around to pay attention, and quite a few have even said hello. More will join them. What happens next is a conversation. You’ll be judged on that conversation, not what you do elsewhere — though we’ll certainly want to talk about your work. And your pets.

And your tea towels.

I’m guessing that right now your Hollowmen are analysing every reaction to your tweet (singular), agonising over how you should respond. Tell them to piss off. You’re a grown man — you’re the Prime Minister for God’s sake! — so if you can’t talk with a fellow human when they say hello without someone advising you what to say, you might as well give up now.

Just. Be. Yourself.

The second thing, though, is that you will find it strange and challenging. And that’s OK. We all did.

Twitter is both ephemeral and on the record all at the same time. It represents a new mode of communication. Society (and politics!) will need to adapt to people’s actual humanity. Twitter’s ambient intimacy provides you with a window into the lives of the people you follow, and us with a window into yours. What will we see?

We understand that you won’t want to reveal everything. Old-fashioned tabloid journalists, hypocrites that they are, make a big deal about what is actually normal human activity. Those of us who’ve made the transition to the hyperconnected world don’t care so much, because we see more of humanity’s actual variety. We know that people express frustration after a tough day, or doubts in uncertain times, and we don’t think any less of them. In fact, we think more of them for sharing.

We know that you’ll draw the curtains from time to time. We won’t see tweets like “Ordering the RAAF to bomb Wellington” or “I so want to stab Malcolm Turnbull with a pen, the smarmy prick!” or “ZOMG Julia Gillard is teh hotness!!1!!!1!” — though we’d all relate to that last one! But it’d be good to loosen that media mask just a little. Us hyperconnected folks respect honesty.

The other thing to notice is that Twitter is fast. Very fast.

The inimitable Mark Pesce has already written all about this in his lecture Hyperpolitics, American Style. You might want to put your feet up, make a nice strong cup of tea, crack open the Iced Vo-Vos and watch. He “gets it” more than those Sussex Street machine men will ever understand. If you’ve got time, you might also try Only Connect or even the more challenging This, That, and the Other. If you can absorb the lessons and work them into your personal politics, you will be full of WIN!

If you truly engage with Twitter — or rather, engage with the people who sit right in front of you thanks to Twitter — you’ll be able to bounce around ideas and reach a consensus before one of the old political dinosaurs has even finished his first canvassing phone call.

The real lesson is that you can’t just translate what you do in industrial-age media into this new world. You need to learn new skills, and the best way is to immerse yourself. Take the plunge. We won’t laugh.

Well, not at first.

Of course if @KevinRuddPM is not actually you but a minion, things are different…

There’s nothing wrong with a minion-operated Twitter account. @DowningStreet has even managed to inject real personality into the role even though it’s shared by three humans! Just be honest about that up front, and let the minion be a human.

It’s even kinda OK if the Twitter account is only to tell us about new posts to kevinpm.com.au — though that’s also kinda lame because the website already has an RSS feed and your first tweet did use the word “communicating”. We have expectations.

Over to you, Prime Minister!

P.S. Can you tell Conroy to pull his head in about the Internet censorship thing? It’s not a good look to have been elected on talk of “evidence-based policy” and then ignore the evidence.

P.P.S. Do you agree with John Birmingham when he says that Conroy does a “puckered cat’s bum thing with [his] mouth” when equating freedom of speech with kiddie-porn-watching? Just wondering. You can message me privately about that one, promise I won’t tell.

[This post was also re-published by ZDNet News Australia.]

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That well-respected and mostly-respectable renaissance woman Kate Carruthers has asked me (and four others) this: “And how do YOU decide how/what/when to blog?” Good question, Kate.

Actually, why do I blog at all?

I have four answers, and they overlap.

1. Because I can. I enjoy writing. Sometimes other people seem to enjoy it too, even to the point of paying me money. I gives me pleasure, and I can do it while sipping wine at my local pub. Unlike masturbation.

When I’m writing for pleasure I tend to produce observational essays like Saturday Night at The Duke and Burnt out sofa, burnt out life, or satire like The Inaugural Paul Neil Milne Johnstone Award goes to….

I usually write this material because some vivid observation kicked it off and, after a not-too-long gap, I found a spare hour or two to record the words.

2. Because it helps me understand. When thoughts have been tumbling around in my tumbling mind like so many damp underpants and unmatched socks, essays like Winter Solstice Meditation and Disconnected from Nature help me find the centre. When I’m trying to figure out how to deal with a professional situation, essays emerge like Scaring the shit out of clients and Is it really so wrong to mix business and politics (and religion)?.

Sometimes, though, I just want to join the rest of the human mass and record my personal reactions to major events — like Australia Day in Are you proud of your culture?, mass murder in The Ghost of Cho Seung-hui, or like The compulsory “Sorry Day” post or The Compulsory 9/11 Post.

When I write this material, it’s usually either early in the morning when it’s quiet, or at dusk when the world is winding down for the day. I’ll tentatively put a few words on screen, maybe even a few sentences — then wander around the house, make a cup of tea, play with the cats, walk to the corner shop because I’ve run out of milk, stare at the sky, write another few words, poke at them for a minute or two and repeat and repeat and repeat until it starts taking some sort of shape. Every now and then there’ll be a flash of insight and I’ll blast out half a dozen coherent paragraphs in one burst — then wander around the house, make a cup of tea etc.

I’ll tumble around that loop dozens of times, maybe even putting writing on hold a day or two, until suddenly PING! The essay drops out in a warm crisp burst of lemon freshness.

3. Because it helps me remember. Like Kate, I’ll record interesting quotes, links and observations for later use. I put them into the blog in case they’re of value to anyone else.

4. Because it’s my duty. Somehow, despite my best self-indulgent contributions to long-term brain damage, I’ve ended up with a capable mind which can analyse the world and communicate. Since I’m not one of the breeders whose role is to pass on their genetics, I figure it’s my role to pass on memetics. I do actually think it’s important that my eccentric worldview is recorded for posterity — if only so future humans can point and say, “Stilgherrian was just so wrong, and we must never make that mistake again!”

Umberto Eco (pictured) explained this better than I ever could in the preface to the US edition of Travels in Hyperreality:

There is another reason why I write these things. I believe it is my political duty… In the United States politics is a profession, whereas in Europe is it a right and a duty. Perhaps we make too much of it, and use it badly; but each of us feels the moral obligation to be involved in some way. My way of being involved in politics consists of telling others how I see daily life, political events, the language of the mass media, sometimes the way I look at a movie…

Perhaps I have written these things, and go on writing similar things, for other reasons. I am anxious, insecure, and always afraid of being wrong. What is worse, I am always afraid that the person who says I am wrong is better than I am. I need to check quickly the ideas that come into my head… That is why I like to write for the newspapers, to reread myself the next day, and to read the reactions of others. A difficult game, because it does not always consist of being reassured when you meet with agreement and having doubts when you are faced with dissent… Sometimes you have to speak because you feel the moral obligation to say something…

As Eco uses newspapers, I use a blog. I continue to write pieces on censorship and journalism, as well as more philosophical pieces like Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish and Stay alert, ye nameless, toiling animals and “Let’s just write that down…”.

As I said, these four reasons overlap.

An essay like Anzac Day Rememberings is observational, political and personal all in one. I don’t think about the categories when I write. I simply write when I have the passion. Or when Crikey has commissioned something — though that’s usually within my passion-zone anyway.

I should also mention that I draft and re-draft many times. I read everything aloud so I can refine the rhythms. I polish each sentence until I’m happy. And before hitting “Publish”, I usually take a shower or a walk or otherwise take a break so my eyes and ears are fresh before doing one final run-through.

But Twitter is changing everything.

And so is Ustream and Delicious. And so (soon) will Qik.

I’ve almost completely stopped my one-paragraph Notes, as those pithy observations seem to fit more naturally into my Twitter stream. As do links, which I also dump into Delicious to be returned here as Daily Links blog posts (posted only every few days, so sue me).

I’ve also experimented with a new type of Twitter-based observational writing in Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown. It seemed to work. I intend to do more.

Meanwhile some of my political commentary is now in my video program Stilgherrian Live, and as soon as I get a new phone I’ll post to my Qik stream more often.

How do I use all these different media outlets? How do balance these and other demands upon my limited time? NFI. But writing this post is helping — category 2 FTW!

So how do you decide how / what / when to blog?

I tap you on the shoulder, Nathanael Boehm, Nick Hodge, Simon Rumble, Trinn (’Pong) Suwannapha and Zern Liew. There, all in the second half of the alphabet by given name.

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I’ve always thought that my essays are my best work, even if I say so myself. I’ve done observationals before, like Saturday Night at The Duke and Burnt out sofa, burnt out life. But this one’s different.

As I walked home through Newtown last Saturday evening, I started sending little observational comments to my Twitter stream:

Actually still on Darlington Rd, a long-haired woman plays melancholy guitar on the terrace-house balcony as a currawong flops past.

As I moved into King Street, I kept going. As I went to Kelly’s On King for a beer, I kept going. I discovered that a rapt audience was watching my comments — although not everyone liked the volume of material. I suggested they use Twittersnooze to unfollow me for a while.

The 140-character limit imposes a certain staccato style which I quite like. I was chuffed to be compared with Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw and (especially) Hunter S Thompson!

Here, then, is my first attempt at Live Gonzo Twittering, across about 90 minutes last Saturday night. the only changes I’ve made have been to fix some typos. Is this the best way to present it after the fact? Enjoy!

Saturday Evening in Newtown

The sun has set. Opposite corner of Church St two guys play the blues, set up with portable amps under the hardware store verandah.

Outside the bank opposite, a woman in fishnets and a black top hat plays gypsy accordion. Welcome to Newtown.

Outside Better Read Than Dead bookshop, a 16yo artfag in hornrim glasses enthuses at his friends about his visit to Louis Voitton & Versace.

Another bank verandah, this one with guitar and fiddle players churning out playful Irish folk tunes.

It is, indeed, a normal Saturday night on King St. I bought dinner from Taste, but have stopped at Kelly’s for a pint of people-watching.

(I’m sure that @ApostrophePong is too deep in his editing to want dinner yet, what with a late lunch n’all.)

As dusk falls, a cool breeze drifts in thru the pub windows as the video jukebox plays Promises’ “Baby It’s You”. http://is.gd/4ixh

6′4″ of young gothboi with sleek black hair and perfectly-formed flowing black trench coat strides out into the street, purposefully.

Dear fat red-haired man on passing bus, your combination of straggly beard, slightly-too-tight shorts & Led Zeppelin singlet does not work.

Two middle-aged women stroll by looking well-educated and stylish in their Little Black Dresses. One carries a small gift, wears a red boa.

Two rough-voiced cropped-hair dykes walk the other way in jeans and singlets. One carries a bottle of wine, poorly wrapped in brown paper.

The stylish gothboi returns, accompanied by a curly-haired friend who looks like an off-duty car radio salesman in a cheap striped shirt.

Two chubby middle-aged lesbians stroll slowly, holding hands, smiling, chatting about passers-by. I’m guessing mid-ranking govt staffers.

More immaculate gothlings arrive and are carded at the door. Red plastic spikey wristband. The Maori/Islander bouncer smiles, waves them in.

The third in the group, a young women, is slightly older, but only slightly. Hair tightly tied back, she’s either a librarian or a spook.

A wogboi in baseball cap revs his spoiler-equipped electric blue BMW. No-one is impressed. He moves 2m forward in the traffic jam.

Shaved head, muscles, “celtic knotwork” barbed wire tattoos, baggy jeans, black singlet: Sydney gay cliché. Alone. Pauses, crosses road.

Two young Chinese student girls, sharing the carrying of their brand new rice cooker. Sentimental Jap-kitch t-shirts.

A Greek couple, him in white shirt and dress jeans, her in dark skirt & blouse, her hand down the back pocket of his jeans.

Gangly curly-haired politics student in khaki shorts and battered shirt, carrying his Thai takeaway, striding awkwardly.

Old man shuffles, long white hair, long white beard, black-rimmed glasses, green-chequed flannelette shirt. He looks very, very tired.

Woman strides into the pub, bright red dress, bright red lipstick, henna’d hair, whistling. Moves with all the grace of a farmer.

@NickHodge Yes, the old guy looks like one of the local old Communists. I think he’s remembering the good old days, but only dimly.

His t-shirt reads “sotally tober”. She has seven stars tattooed just above her left breast. Her blouse is… skimpy. They’ve been drinking.

Skateboarder. Tall, skinny, black-clad but for white baseball cap. He almost drops his drink in its bright pink disposable cup, straw.

Mostly couples in the street now, pointing to potential eating-places. Also men, either alone or in rowdy pairs.

Family. Tired mother shepherds three children, each carrying bookshop purchases. Father looks into pub window disapprovingly. I glare back.

I suspect the people strolling slowly have already eaten dinner, those walking faster are still looking.

The man talking to the bouncer is trying to maintain eye contact, so he keeps missing when trying to put his lighter into his pocket.

A man with a mid-life crisis and a racing-green convertible has his son in the passenger seat, wide-eyed with delight at King St’s wonders.

A young couple looking very pleased that the bouncer is taking a toilet break. I don’t think they’d have passed carding. Upstairs, fast!

Young man in sports car passenger seat! It’s an hour after sunset. You do not need sunglasses on your head. Arm inside the vehicle, please!

Bleached-blonde woman on phone outside pub, carrying a plastic toy golfclub. More pretend-golfers inside. She’s loud, tanned, gold-bangled.

On the video jukebox, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta have been replaced by a popular but simplistic dance track.

@JonoH I’m drinking one pint of James Squire’s Amber Ale, maybe one more before I deliver the chicken and salad home. Watching my village.

Bleachy-pseudo-golfer is STILL on the phone, tapping the toy club against her leg like a riding crop. Bright purple, with a blue handle.

That is the shortest short brightest bright purple dress I have ever seen! Just a flash as she almost runs past, handbag flapping.

The mob of 10 pseudo-golfers emerge, shouting at their bleachy friend to get off the phone girl. All have the toy clubs.

They’re blocking the street as they decide their next move. The men chat quietly, the girls scream & giggle & shout. 2 separate circles.

“Hi Alex! Let’s go!” One of the girls pretends to fellate her golf club as a camera-phone picture is taken. Flash. The group turns, is gone.

Man walks in carrying guitar case and a box. The next man carries a Marshall amp.

Gothboi and his car radio salesman friend leave, followed by all the other gothlings. I think they saw the band arriving. Good call.

Grey-haired man t-shirt “I got Bourbon-faced on Shit Street”, 7yo daughter in floral-print She’s fat, bored, skin like too many burgers.

Lights changes, masses cross, a jumble of alt and punks and respectables and then the change again and the bus roars into action.

“Where’s your friend?” a boring regular shouts. I pretend not to hear. But he shouts his question again. I shrug “dunno”, return to kbd.

It’s not a floral print dress it’s a dark blue beach dress with orange crabs and yellow fish and a red button holding it closed at the back.

She is still too fat. She and the grey-haired man are waiting for the women to finish using the pub toilet before moving on.

Drummer arrives, and drummer’s girlfriend.

Fat girl has an older sister, maybe 19 or 20, fat in her zebra-print blouse and jeans which yes your arse does look big in them. Drab hair.

Dammit I will stay for another beer, which I have now. Fat Family has negotiated their way up to the terrace for a family dinner.

Visitors. @katska and @matthewlandauer arrive. The old man admonishes me for being antisocial. I go offline to drink beer with friends.

The karaoke kicks off with a bunch of drunken drag kings singing “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”. Kill me now.

Correction. It’s not karaoke. It’s just that the cover band has been totally pwn3d by drag kings. Well, the whole pub, really.

Hah! Both Jebusfone users have flat batteries! Losers!

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The journey home was enlivened with an interesting experiment. Instead of me broadcasting Stilgherrian Live — bright TV lights in a moving car at night would be a plan full of FAIL — we created an inside-out radio station. Some of my followers on Twitter took up the offer to send us links to music — which we streamed live from YouTube. The audience chose the music and we listened to it.

This experiment in crowdsourcing a playlist was remarkably successful. I’ll publish the music later. But even more remarkable was the power of the hyperconnectivity. Even though we were driving through rural New South Wales, we were still in touch with our friends — wherever they were too — doing the usual things we do of an evening, like swap links and tell each other bad jokes.

I’ll have much more to say about this soon. But for now I must rest.

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You can follow our adventures on Twitter by searching for all tweets containing the hashtag #rtcowra. Wish us luck! More soon.

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Last week I posted a long, angry piece describing how Dell screwed up an important order. Well, important to me. Pissily tiny to them. Within hours I received a phone call from Winston Robins, Dell’s Purchase Experience Manager for Australia and New Zealand.

What immediately impressed me is that he’d actually read what I’d posted, here and on Twitter, and instead of glossing over the mistakes he seemed genuinely interested in finding out what went wrong.

The short version is that the monitors I’d ordered were delivered as quickly as possible after that, and Winston kept me informed of progress at all times. He acknowledged Dell’s mistakes, and said the staff responsible were “coached” — which is a nice little euphemism, eh?

So what went wrong?

In my previous post I said that Dell’s service had failed in three specific ways:

1. Dell [took] so long to respond to anything. Bounced to “export control” days after the order was placed? Why is this not same-day, even instant?
2. What was the problem with the credit card? Did I mis-key card numbers? Was there some other problem? Why didn’t Dell detect this when I placed the order two weeks ago? Why not do a $1 transaction then reverse it to check a card’s validity before proceeding?
3. Why, on five occasions, did Dell promise someone would call back, but no-one called back? Why not have enough staff to handle volume?

Winston Robins provided this on-the-record response — written more formally than his phone conversations presumably because it’s been vetted by Dell’s “corporate communications” people:

Hi Stilgherrian,

I am following-up on our discussion. In response to your three questions:

1. Delayed response to process your order.

Order velocity is one of Dell’s key differentiators. Our goal is to custom build and deliver within Australia on average within 6.6 days from taking the order. Currently we’re hitting 0.5 days from order receipt to in production.

Your order was highlighted as an exception requiring further information and our automated workflow system forwarded this to our team dedicated to resolving the issue. Your order was delayed at this stage. We’ve taken the opportunity to coach those involved to ensure this does not repeat.

2. Credit card.

Credit card processing is the final stage of order confirmation. Only after clearing through our Export Compliance Team do we attempt to charge your credit card. Initially when we charged to your credit card we received an error message. This was subsequently resolved.

3. No ownership or call back.

The best and quickest solution to getting your order in to production was a simple phone call. I’ve provided this feedback to the functional leaders.

Regards,
Winston

Thank you, Winston, for fixing the problem and, just as importantly, taking steps to help ensure no-one else suffers the same fate.

Problems — “mistakes”, “glitches”, “issues”, whatever you want to call them — can happen in the best-designed systems. But as the old saying goes, we need to learn from our mistakes. It sounds to me like a few people have done some learnin’ here!

“This was a case when procedure ruled over common sense,” Winston told me at one point.

Dell’s people were sending emails to call them back, I was calling back, but then when I left my number no-one called me back. They just followed procedure and sent more emails, and the receptionist just followed procedure and kept taking my number and passing it on into the void. Until I exploded at her.

Winston’s observation that “the best and quickest solution… was a simple phone call” is spot on, and I’m glad the relevant people have received that message. It shouldn’t have taken the intervention of a national manager before that happened, though, and certainly not my angry speech to hundreds of Twitter followers before anyone noticed.

One problem with outsourcing is that it’s often done to countries whose tradition is to respect “dutiful people” — those who follow the procedure. This means you can build efficient corporate machines like Dell. But creativity requires you to break the rules to achieve something new and different — and at its heart, problem-solving is a creative activity. A flexible machine usually isn’t efficient.

I accept that this screw-up was probably a rare one from Dell, and I’m pleased it was sorted out efficiently and with good humour — once we got a high-level human on the case.

I acknowledge that Dell makes some good kit — yes, these big monitors are fantastic and I might consider one myself — though if I’m going to do more media work then the colour quality of Apple Cinema Displays would be an important factor.

But whether I try Dell again remains to be seen. I’ve always preferred to deal with a local business who provide a named human to support me, and to order from a warehouse where I can see whether items are in stock now. The nasty taste from this experience is still too strong in my mouth. For the time being.

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