No, Talk Talk, you utter sods. I’ve been frustratingly disconnected from your service (which I continue to pay for) for over three months now. Repeated phonecalls trying to sort the issue have only wasted my time further.

So don’t email me to claim you’re bringing me “the brightest and best of the web”. Clownshoes.

I’m taking part in the F2 Digital Creative Development Programme being run out of the Institute for Creative Enterprise in Coventry.

The other participants are creative types from a diverse range of disciplines – curators, dancers, website and graphic designers, filmmakers and all sorts. There are about 20 of us in all. Best of all, before this course, I had no idea who most of them were – getting out of Birmingham and into new networks is a healthy thing to do.

The purpose of the course is to get us thinking creatively around digital stuff and mixing up the viewpoints we bring from our respective backgrounds. The ‘digital stuff’ part of that isn’t really a huge leap for me as I tend to be immersed in the sort of stuff we’ve been covering. What’s been hugely valuable so far is the thinking time it’s afforded. I’m looking forward to seeing what I’ll learn in the project development stage too.

Anyway, the first phase of the project came and went in the first week of December. This was the stage of ‘ideas generation’. Via a variety of guest speakers, workshops and activities we came up with the germs of 50 or so ideas. Some were good, some were bad, some I’d be interested in pursuing outside this course

The various speakers we had were all brilliant so worth a mention here:

Tassos Stevens

I’d seen a version of his talk at Shift Happens – he’s concerned mainly with interactive storytelling and gave an overview of the sorts of projects he’s been involved in and some of the thinking behind them. After that we did an idea-generation workshop thingy based on classic movies. Actually, the idea for a project that we came up with in his workshop is the one we’ll be pursuing later in the programme.

Nick Ryan

A composer, sound designer and PRS Award Winner for The Fragmented Orchestra. A truly fascinating talk, as I know comparatively little about audio projects.

He introduced us to examples such as Primal Source (which blew my tiny mind), David Byrne’s ‘Playing the Building’, the Stockhausen Helicopter String Quartet, sound waves in salt, this fantastic Rubens Tube video, Advanced Beauty by Jelle Feringa, the music video for Solar by Flight 404 and the fan mosaic video for a track by Sour.

Margaret Robertson

A consultant on all things computer game. She introduced us to the varied terrain of computer gaming and went into a little more depth on Snow World (used in the treatment of burns victims), Prof Layton and the Curious Village (an educational game but never marketed as such), Little Big Planet and the very impressive The Marriage by Rod Humble.

Andrew Wilson

Andrew works at Blink Media and talked to us about located mobile experiences. Examples he used included Free All Monsters, Running Stitch, The Hat Game at SXSWi, Mogi Mogi, Foursquare and Gowalla. He also mentioned a mobile project by Graham Harwood and Murmur – a project using tags on real world items.

While sat in his talk I was feverishly downloading the iPhone apps he was mentioning, including Comob, Star Walk, Layar and some soundwalk and sat nav/audio projects.

What we’ll be doing next

Having spent a few days coming up with lots of ideas and chosen one to work on (in a small team) the next stage is development. Our project is still fairly nebulous but it’s looking like being more commercially driven, as opposed to some of the more purely artistic ideas that others are pursuing. In the earliest stages there was a strong gaming and storytelling component which may or may not follow through to the final thing. We’ll have to see.

Books For as long as I can remember I’ve been halfway through Homicide, Trickster Makes This World and Spies. Quite why I think I might get on to Viral Loop, Bringing Nothing to the Party and What Was Lost escapes me, but you’ve got to have ambitions.

Films The folks have got Sky with all the bounty that brings. However, in case there’s nothing watchable there, I’m going armed with Persepolis, Morvern Callar, Synecdoche, New York and Waltz With Bashir.

Games Thanks to a few tweets by Daniel Nye-Griffiths I’ll be playing Machinarium, Samorost 2, The Path, Fatale and The Graveyard, all of which are on offer at the moment (handy tweet 1 and handy tweet 2).

Of course, I’ve not a hope of making it through much of that little lot, but it should be worth a spirited attempt.

It was ace. The weather was very unDecemberish and we saw a seal playing in the water.

• Good quality stuff with zero marketing; or
• Well marketed dross?

I’m sure we’d all like to convince ourselves it’s the former. However, the idea that ‘the good will out’ puts me in mind of the routinely rubbished concept that ‘if you build it they will come’. As far as I’m concerned (and I base this on nothing much more than personal experience) the chances are slim.

At least I have an article on Edge Online (found via Tom Armitage) to back up my witterings. Essentially, a recent study of computer game sales revealed that a game’s quality (judged by reviews) had hardly any effect on sales as compared to marketing spend:

Using a simple correlation scale comparing marketing spend and sales against Metacritic rating and sales, Divnich found that marketing influenced game revenue “three times more than game scores”

Too many good people hide behind false modesty, a lack of confidence or Bill Hicks quotes, allowing themselves to be eclipsed. It’s hardly a new problem but it’s always dead irritating to see.

Happy times on Saturday when the first magazine from my new subscription dropped onto the doormat. I signed up for this a few weeks ago but didn’t know quite what I’d be getting – instead I’m letting the nice people at Stack decide.

The Ride is lovely – printed on nice think paper and stuffed with writings and photos by real enthusiasts. Most double-page spreads have an article/essay on one side and a lovely photo or illustration on the other. I’m pretty sure I’ll devour it over the next couple of weeks and keep it around for long after.

It’s great and I love it but I’m not enough of a cycling nut to want to read it every month. That’s kinda the point though – I’m happy to trust Stack to throw good things my way. If none of them stick that’s not a problem – I’m in it for the variety.

1. Grab the nearest book;
2. Open it to page 56;
3. Find the fifth sentence;
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions; and
5. Don’t dig for your favourite book, the coolest book, or the most intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

First off the shelf for me was Philip Ball’s ‘Critical Mass – How one thing leads to another’ – a fascinating and surprisingly accessible tome packed with interesting ideas, concepts and explanations. The sort that I manage to keep in my head for exactly as long as it takes to start the next paragraph. That’s my fault, by the way, not the author’s.

What it’s doing in my office, I have no idea. Maybe I think it makes me look intelligent.

The fifth sentence on page 56 is:

Played in reverse, the movie would not look at all odd: the reverse collision also obeys Newton’s Laws.