What do you do about writers block?

Genuine question!

My last post on here was June 22nd and the last one before that was May 23rd. I had gotten into a nice rhythm with posting after wanting to be a bit more consistent in 2011.

However, at the end of May I was writing up a book review and had a really hard time trying to explain the book. The words just weren’t there and since then I’ve found it really hard to write ANYTHING. By that I mean blog posts, emails, proposals, meeting requests, service tickets. As soon as I open the editor I just go blank. My twitter usage has been up and down too and generally anything I add on their at the moment is in response to something else.

The problem isn’t inspiration, I’ve had plenty of ideas and I’ve started lots of things, restarted and then given up. For example, my “first week with Windows Phone” post will now more than likely be called “my first month with Windows Phone” ! That should have been an easy one!

I mentioned it on Twitter and had a couple of suggestions.

First was to create a structure and then fill in the details. That could be a title for each section or just a bullet list of points you want to cover. It’s a really good way of writing but unfortunately that’s generally how I write all my blog posts normally.

Second was to just write. Get it onto the page and you can turn it into something more meaningful afterwards. Also a good idea and in part it’s the only real point of this post.

I’m just writing something, anything and getting it finished.

I’m kind of brute forcing my brain in an attempt to get over whatever hurdle it is I have in front of me at the moment.

Fingers crossed it works! I’ve got to do something about it not just for the sake of this blog but for getting me back on track. You’ll notice the AMITPRO blog and anything that goes with it has gone quiet at the moment too (apologies to anyone who is a member if I haven’t done something you’re waiting on yet – I’m trying!)

Now I’ve written four hundred words and given myself some therapy in public I’ll throw it open to comment – what do you when you hit a wall like this?

Making money by giving stuff away

One of my new favourite authors is Cory Doctorow. His book Little Brother was the first I read on my Kindle and caught my eye because it was available under a Creative Commons License.

I’m working my way through the rest of the books Cory has written but one thing I look forward to with every book is the section right at the start where he explains exactly why he gives his e-books away for free. They all give the same message but each book puts a slightly different spin on it and I think it’s fascinating.

Part of Cory’s reasoning is that giving digital books away for free helps him in other ways, including more print sales.

This is really at odds with how many entertainment industries are struggling to figure out a way to make money online. No doubt you know all about DRM and the restrictions that come with that whether it’s a music file, a movie, a video game or even an e-book!

Changing a business model from something you physically own, where you have to pay for each instance you obtain versus a digital file from which you can spawn a copy in an instant and give it to any number of friends and family at no extra cost is certainly not easy, but at the moment all DRM seems to do is make it harder for the customer.

This is why I find the sections in Cory’s books so fascinating because as he points out he’s exploring these new business models himself so that he’ll still be around when the big digital shift happens.

By this I mean that at some point there is going to be a tipping point where DRM will either be everywhere or nowhere. People will either embrace it or get so sick of it that they’ll stop buying content that is DRM enabled. As an example many of the online music stores will sell you a DRM free music file, for a premium of course. Why did this come about in the place? Surely it’s because the market demanded it, otherwise why change the status quo?

If we get to this point and publishers use DRM less and or even abandon DRM altogether there are going to be some interesting business models out there and people who are clinging to their old models may not make it out the other end.

The entertainment industry is pretty unique in some respects. Many other market sectors have embraced the idea of Freemium. With this you get a product or service for free and can then pay a premium for extra features. Spotify is a great example of this. Free music, streamed on-demand with the occasional advert thrown in. Simple and easy. If you’re willing to pay though they’ll remove the adverts, up the bit rate for higher quality and they’ll even let you use the service on your mobile phone!

But how does this work for something like a book? What premium experience can I pay extra for after getting the book to read for free? Hard to say but these are the sorts of things Cory explores. One argument he has is that by giving books away he raises his profile which potentially could lead to other opportunities such as speaking engagements, paid writing assignments and reaching out to a larger audience which may then go on and buy a print version of another book he’s written. This draws a parallel with bands and solo artists who put on really great live gigs. Tours can be pretty lucrative so why not give an album away to expand your audience and look to sell as many tickets as possible on tour?

I just find the whole thing interesting as it’s automatic reaction to not be able to your head around why you’d want to give something you’ve put a lot of effort into for free. Especially when being it’s your day job!

There was a book recently I really wanted to buy. It’s available on the US Amazon store in both hardback and Kindle format. I couldn’t find it the Kindle version on the UK Amazon store so I asked the author on Twitter if he knew why (gotta love Twitter!)

The long and short of it is that the publisher has failed to reach an agreement with Amazon over international distribution rights for the digital format of their books. I find this mind boggling. One of the benefits to digital formats is that location becomes largely irrelevant. It costs generally the same to deliver my purchase to me whether I’m in the next street, town, county or country, yet because of a licensing argument I can’t get the product even though I’m a willing paying customer. I could understand with the print version of the book. Maybe there was a disagreement over which printer to use or how to ship them, etc. I can get a hardcopy from the Amazon UK store but they would need ship it internationally! Surely having the digital option is better for everyone in this scenario?

I do understand that content producers want to protect their works, especially when it’s their livelihood but I don’t think massively restrictive DRM or overly complicated copyright agreements is the answer. It certainly feels as if publishers and the like are trying to make business models intended for a world before the Internet existed fit, it’s almost like they are trying to ignore it and hope it will just work out in end.

Also as Cory points out doesn’t allowing people to share your work come with some other side benefits?

I don’t have all the answers unfortunately but it’ll be interesting to see how it all evolves and great to observe! As always your thoughts welcome,

Cory’s website where you can download his books or read more about his thoughts around copyright is here.

Is it really October already?

I’ve just noticed I haven’t posted anything on here in just over a month.

I really had no idea it had been that long!

Everything has been very crazy recently for a ton of reasons. The main one being I’ve just moved house.

The last few months have been some of the most stressful I’ve every encountered and while everything is still a bit chaotic at home I’m glad it’s generally all done and dusted.

I had my broadband installed yesterday so I can finally call it home (I think I’ve also had my upload speed increased as per a recent announcement by Virgin Media)

My focus has been so much on the move I’ve been spread a little bit thin and this blog has been one of many things that have suffered. I didn’t even blog about the fact I’ve recently taken over the running of AMITPRO which I’m very honoured to have responsibility for.

Now I’m all sorted I’m hoping things will start to get back to normal and I can give my usual routine the attention it deserves.

That’s it really – nothing much to report but wanted to get back in the blogging habit.

Have a great weekend!

Vintage Computer Festival at Bletchley Park

Last Saturday fellow geek Richard Tubb and I travelled down to Bletchley Park for the first ever Vintage Computer Festival here in the UK.

I’ve been to the National Computer Museum before but this was a far more interactive experience.

The mansion and various marquees around the site were filled with tons of retro systems that were all powered on and ready for use.

It was geek heaven!

Every possible system from my childhood from Acorn, Commodore, Amstrad and Sinclair was there and it’s amazing the things people are still doing with them!

For example, this is a compact flash card plugging into the back of a Spectrum!

I even found my first love

While the Spectrum +3 wasn’t the first computer that came into the Parkes household (there were lots!) it was the first that was actually mine.

This is the power supply from said computer.

It’s difficult to explain WHY I took this picture but if you’re a bit of a geek you’ll get it

As well as the equipment on show there were various speakers and we sat in on Christine Finn’s presentation which talked about how “organised” computer collecting came about. She’s an archaeologist by trade which gives her a different insight into how and why we should keep old technology other than the reasons someone like me would have! She gave a really good presentation about her experiences in Silicon Valley during the dot-boom in the 90’s and it’s subsequent bust.

She wrote a piece in the Guardian a few years ago which is worth checking out.

She also has a book on the subject called Artifacts: An Archaeologist’s Year in Silicon Valley which Richard purchased and had signed!

In addition to the computers on display a large chunk of the mansion was taken over by the Retro Computer Museum.

This organisation keep old computer systems alive for the purposes of gaming! This was also one of the other lectures we took in. They were raising awareness of what they do and it was interesting to see the difference in body language when moving from the actual presentation to the Q&A session. Their enthusiasm really jumped out and they very much of the attitude that the old systems should continue to be used for their purpose and not locked away in a box.

Due to funding they don’t have a permanent site so hold an open day twice a year. The next one is at that the end of October so I’ll be certainly be visiting! There is also a much larger event going on later in the year but there is a full post to follow on that

So the games itself.

Every possible system you could think of was there to play with

From the Atari 2600 to Commodore Plus 4 to Amiga 1200 to Neo Geo, to Playstation 3. If you can think of it, it was there.

Richard and I played Battle Chess on an Amiga 1200 and Sensible Soccer on an Amiga CD32!

Also, one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen .

Guitar Hero on the Commodore 64.

Picture courtesy of Richard Tubbs Flickr Account

Someone created an adapter to plug a Playstation guitar into the machine and coded a game for it! The 8-bit beeps were amazing though we both sucked at the game itself.

 Picture courtesy of Richard Tubbs Flickr Account

As mentioned above there were a couple of marquee tents on site. One of them was entirely dedicated to the Amiga and were were there when they announced the launch of a new Amiga – the X100.

I can’t really tell you anything about it though as they didn’t bother to give the speakers microphones so didn’t hear a word they said! I think this site may have some more information over the coming months.

We ended our day at the Spectrum tent.

While the coolest thing I saw was Guitar Hero the geekiest think I did has to be this,

Picture courtesy of Richard Tubbs Flickr Account

Tweeting from a Spectrum!

I came across a video of this on YouTube recently (and shared it via Facebook and Twitter of course) so it was great to actually see it in action.

As I’ve already mentioned there is still an awful lot of things going on with some of these “old” systems. We even saw a recently developed game, complete with modern packaging. It looked amazing.

Richard couldn’t resist much more and came away with a couple of purchases. Just as he was making his mind up he realised he didn’t have a tape deck to load programs from. A gentleman stood next to us said that an MP3 would work just find and proceeded to pull out his iPhone and played the sound Galaxians would make during loading.

It’s common sense when you think of it but all the same ingenious!

I picked up a book called Electronic Brains: Stories from the Dawn of the Computer Age and even managed to get it signed by the author Mike Hally

We had a really great time and the event was actually run on Saturday and Sunday. Next time I’ll definitely be there for both days!

Oh yeah, it’s 2010

Ok it’s not quite that bad….but Christmas and New Year were a bit of a blur and even though it’s the Wednesday morning I feel like I’ve been back at the office for weeks!

The year ended with Mrs P getting the operation I mentioned previously so the run up to Christmas was filled with visits to the hospital (which was 25 miles away)

Thankfully the operation went to plan and we’re eagerly awaiting January 18th for the "switch on” (full details on Bryony’s blog here) 

New Year came and went and as usual the break gave me plenty of time to reflect on the previous twelve months

As usual the annual Tubblog yearly review kicked me in the ass and reminded me I’ve still got plenty to learn when it comes to goal setting (go read it….seriously)

So looking back on 2009 there were a couple of things that stood out for me to reflect on

Family – My second daughter Evie was born, Even though it happened in January last year it was still far and away the biggest thing that happened to me last year. I’m immensely proud of both of my girls and can’t wait to see them growing during 2010

Blogging – I finally stopped cross posting here and to my WordPress.com blog this time last year. I’m glad I made the jump and went self hosted but I do sometimes worry if the blog is relevant, interesting, etc. My output wasn’t as high as I’d have liked (I’m partially blaming Twitter!) but I still enjoy writing here and the blog has created a lot of opportunities for me which I’m very grateful for so I’ll be looking to post more frequently this year

AMITPRO – Myself and Guy Gregory took over the running of Midlands SBS User group. This was something I was very proud to be able to do. Getting involved with the group is one of the best things that has happened during my professional career. I’ve met some great people and have learnt so more from both a technical perspective and a business perspective and look I’m looking forward to seeing where 2010 takes us. Our next meeting is on 12th January if your interested

Economy – You may have heard there were one or two problems as far as the economy was concerned! The timing of the problems were a real kick in the teeth for us. Towards the end of 2008 we made plans to grow the business and made some investments. We took on extra staff, got some more office space, brought a van,etc, etc with the idea to spend 2009 growing the business. With the change in the business landscape we spent most of 2009 learning that we suck at sales and marketing which suddenly become a lot harder as people held onto their cash that bit tighter!

That is oversimplifying some but some of the things we wanted to do in 2009 just didn’t happen because someone moved the goal posts!

The downtime at the end of the year gave me time to think about where I want us to be this time next year and how best to achieve that…that probably means I’ll be tapping you up for opinions and ideas so in the vein of this great post on the Ostrich IT blog, I’m sorry

I’ve hit the ground running this year have got an awful lots of things sorted in these first few days of January which is why this post is late!

Whatever you did I hope Christmas and New Year were great and good luck for 2010!

Top Gear, Range Rover, Dual View Screen

If you saw Top Gear at the weekend (and if you didn’t, why not?! It’s one of the best programs on TV!) you’ll have seen Jeremy Clarkson salivating over a Range Rover.

It had a ton of gadgets but the one that jumped out at me was the “dual view” screen. Basically, the screen shows two different images. The driver gets the sat nav map and the passenger can watch a DVD

I blogged about this sort of technology back in 2007! I actually said at the time it would have an application for in-car entertainment but I’d love to see this on a larger scale

Imagine a cinema where one side of the room saw the regular movie and the other half of the room saw the movie with subtitles. The horrible mess which is involved in going to see a subtitled film would just disappear!

I’ve mentioned subtitled cinema on this blog quite a bit as it’s something that irritates me quite a bit so any solution would be a good one!

The Range Rover screen is only a 7-inch touch screen so not sure if it’ll make it to cinema sized anytime soon. Also movies are projected onto a screen as opposed to be it being like a massive flat screen! I still think there has to be a way for the same principle to be applied though

Technology Changing Lives

My job means on a day to day basis I try to help businesses improve by the use of technology. It’s very satisfying when you see “the penny drop” for someone after explaining a concept. I saw this after a SharePoint demo at the back end of last week – I love listening to conversations afterwards as co-workers start bouncing ideas off each other

Technology isn’t just for business though, smart use of technology in our everyday lives can have a huge impact. Whether it’s families in different countries staying in touch via Skype, or re-connecting with long lost relatives via social networking sites there is potential everywhere

We’ve had some news recently that shows how technology can have a dramatic effect on someone’s entire life

If you know me personally or have read this blog for any period of time you’ll know that my wife is deaf and has been since birth

Six months ago she decided to take a look into her options and the hearing team at Selly Oak hospital started an investigation to see if it would be possible for her to get a Cochlear Implant

Last week we had the “big decision appointment” and it was a yes. In addition to this they even had a date so on the 22nd December she’ll be having the operation! (less than ten days time!!) Bryony wrote a blog post about bringing the equipment home and the details of the appointment here

The big switch on will be in January so we’ve got a massive start to the year ahead of us

It’s not an exaggeration when I say this is HUGE. If all goes well Bryony will get as close to “normal” hearing as she will ever know, all down to a tiny computer that she’ll wear behind her ear

It’s certainly a different way to spend your Christmas and New Year!

Writers Block

Having a bit of writers block at the moment

I’ve started three posts this week and abandoned them for one reason or another

Hoping normal service will be resumed soon

Spreading the word

Slightly off topic but I haven’t posted in a while so why not

I’ve become quite familiar with the inner workings of WordPress recently. This blog runs on WordPress but I’ve also done a couple of installations for my wife (who is amazing by the way!)

Photo Blog (www.bryonyparkes.co.uk)

This is pretty self explanatory. Bryony is a keen amateur photographer so she’s been posting photos and writing about the things she’s been learning as she hones her technique

I think she’s pretty good but obviously I’m biased

The Deaf One (www.thedeafone.co.uk)

I’ve mentioned it a few times on here but Bryony is profoundly deaf. She has a type of hearing loss that generally gets worse as the years go by. She has started to look into a Cochlear Implant (the link explains what they are). It’s something that various different doctors have suggested down the years but until recently decided it wasn’t for her

The blog is a journal that talks about the whole process and a bit of an outlet for all the thoughts and feelings that go with it as such it’s a massively life changing procedure

Hopefully it will also give friends and family an insight into process and also what it’s actually like to have no hearing

I just wanted to share so that if you or anyone you know may be interested go take a look!

Road to Gold!

Slightly off topic but it’s my blog

Even though the London Olympics wont be here until 2012 did you know British athletes are competing in an Olympic event at the moment? Even better they actually stand a chance of bringing some gold medals home!

Athletes from 60+ countries from around the world are currently in Taipei participating in the 21st summer Deaflympics with the British team being managed by UK Deaf Sport (who are also on twitter as @deafsport and are giving updates on the games)

The British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust are covering the progress of the British team

The site has all the results as well as pictures and video (fully subtitled of course)

We have friends who are competing so hoping they bring back the gold!

There is also a series of short videos following the experiences of some of the participants

Our friend Beth who throws the hammer features in programme one (8 minutes in)

It’s a shame the event isn’t getting a little bit more publicity. That said the England Women’s Football team reached the finals of the European Championships and you wouldn’t really know unless you were looking for it!

Fingers crossed our team do well