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Cast

biscuitmedia and our clients were podcasting before we had pods. We called it casting. Or something.

It’s not Geeky

Well it might be. Next week I'm doing a presentation for Biscuit/GRP on the Xbox 360 at the very cool Stereo Stereo. Looking forward to showing of the capabilities of the 360 and it'll be the first time that I'll have seen the 360 on a hugh HDTV screen. It's going to be a very cool night.

To Be or Not To Be?

Should biscuitmedia do a podcast? What would you like to hear? We have ideas but we'd like to hear yours. That is all.

Hoaxing, Clients, Intergration and the Missing ‘N’

Had a wee bit of drama yesterday with someone on-line pretending to a group of people that they were Billy Boyd, a client of ours, and talking to them. Of course it wasn't Billy and this cruel person had raised the hopes of many wishing that they were talking to a hero of theirs. It's happened before, it's very hurtful and I'm pretty vigilante in making sure that both my client's good name is not taken in vain. It's always pretty difficult to tell those who really want to believe that they are talking to Billy that they are in fact talking to a small girl in the midwest. Still, all's well that ends well and at least the truth came out. We've had some great news regarding clients and it looks like we're all going to be very busy in the next wee while. I'll drop a quick post here once things are confirmed but it's lookig very exciting. Last night was my first real night out with some of the people from GRP. We went to the Living Room and then off to Walkabout to celebrate Australia day. It was very funny and I have been suffering for most of the day. But we did have a laugh. I got home around 3 then made the international delicacy of a fish finger sandwich. Class. My last post was really badly spelt and I apologise. It's not all my fault, my 'n' key sticks and so sometimes it shows, sometimes it doesn't. It's the glamour I do this for. Have a great weekend. S

Live is Good

Put your gamertag here too. This is my Xbox Live card that tells all about the games, rep and achievements that I've got while playing my Xbox 360. I'm loving this kind of commuity buildig on-lie, it's more than just playing games, it's cred, it provides good on-line relatios based on the player rep score, it's very cool. It'll be interesting to see how the Live service expands over the next few years, I've got some ideas and I'm excited about the introduction of the webcam in the next few months and how that will affect the community. Also thinking on how this inter-service offering will expand, for example while you're online with Live, you're not on the Internet as such but you can gain access to your stats on the Internet. It's very clever. Now if I could just beat Zuma....

Changes

So as you may have read here, it's been all change at biscuitmedia over the last month which explains the lack of blogging. We moved in between Christmas and New Year and while it is only a month ago it seems like we've been here forever. But why did we move? Well, it just made sense. GRP have been looking to create and develop the 'new media' side of their business for some time and we've been looking to grow our client base and get ccess to bigger clients. GRP can help us do both and we can work with them to develop further and streamline our process. Lastly, and most importantly, we share common values in how we approach our work. So we're still getting settled here, we're still integrating slowly and surely with the rest of GRP. Already being here a month we can see a great deal of potential. I'm having the time of my life. A whole lot of stuff has been happening but I'm going to leave that for another post. All good, we have a world to wi

Well, earlier today you wanted a gun — now you get a gun and a wetsuit.

Things have been so hectic at bm that I've been lacking in my blog entries. I can only apologise. So what's been going on? In the outside workld Adobe finally took over Macromedia and I did have a nonsense lump in my throat when I went to the Macromedia homepage to see that the Adobe logo was in place. It'd all good and hopefully we're doing some sweet stuff next year thanks to that merger. I was given access to the next version of Hotmail and it's amazing how the web interface is so very like the desktop version of Outlook 2003. It's still an e-mail client though but the usability is very cool. I finally joined up with del.icio.us and have started adding my bookmarks. As soon as the service is back up I'll post my links to that website. I'm eating a very nice cookie. Today I've been recording the video for the Langs website. It's been on the boil for a while but it's looking good for the early part of the new year. What else? I saw reindeer yesterday and they just look like dogs with antlers. We launched, sort of, a new design for Simul8. We didn't build the website but we did provide them with the design templates. It's pretty. We're working on a few new websites, one for a credit card information site, another for a lovely company called Peak Scientific which is very exciting. We're also planning to do some more work for API and the list goes on. At this time of year we're also doing a few e-mail Christmas cards, all good. We have a new face in the team too, Marc Love, developer to the stars. You can find out more about him on our 'About Us' page by clicking on his No. 23 shirt. It is all sadly true what the intro says..... I'm about to go into another in a series of important meetings. While I'm waiting I thought it would be good to do a quick update. I also had my birthday and I would wholeheartedly recommend getting Nigel Slater's new book, The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen. It's very, very good both in terms of the recipes and also the fact that it's a good read too. John Spencer, who played White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, died on Friday. I loved him as an actor, he was great in 'The Rock' and simply brought Leo to life in The West Wing. Bartlet for America is one of my favourite episodes of the West Wing and John won the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Well deserved. Like others, I will miss him. Going out for dinner tonight with a friend and I'm very, very, very much looking forward to it as we've not been out just us for sometime, too long in fact. I'm sure we'll swap some West Wing moments too. Big block of cheese.

Taa-Daaa!!!!

Stuart started today and it's all good. Though I've been running about daft trying to grab a minute here, a minute there with the man. Hopefully it'll calm down tomorrow a little and we'll be in a place that will allow us to chat. But we are going for a pint at 5pm. ho ho. Crazy week the past week, I was on my course and that led to two nights of serious drinking, serious humour and a voyage of self discovery, a voyage that I am still on. It is very nice though and I'm smiling all the time. No websites launched last week but we are looking at the final pass for Langs, we have a couple of new clients on board, we are talking to a few new friends and, all in all, I'm having a great time. Not much else to report really. I'm doing a couple of web audits that were part of our news mailing list send out a couple of weeks ago. Busy lil bees. Right, pub then a continuation of the voyage. Magic. S

All That Remains…

Is his empty chair. Allan's leaving night was on Friday and what a night. I did break the Angel's Ambulance though by singing "I'm a Believer" and we we had to cancel the Ambulance after 30 minutes but that all added to the charm. We then met Ms. S and then off to various posh pubs in Glasgow before dancing the night away in some club or other. We also met some strange chap who nearly got us thrown out the club and then proceeded to smackdown the bouncers. I'm blaming Al. Still, that was all last week and now we are allan-less. Met up with the Lovely Mr Murray last night and he was telling me all the good stuff that's happening at his lovely place of work. He has also appointed a great production manager, a name I hadn't heard in many years. I look forward to shaking his hand. Then met the lovely Ms. Kelly at the creative entrepreneurs club networking event. I sort of crahsed it at the end and was persuaded to have a glass of wine or two. I was introduced to the lovely Ms. Hunter and had to apologise for crashing her fine do. Then off to another cheeky wee pub were I then discussed all manner of things with Ms. Kelly. She is a very good friend and I am very lucky to have her as a friend. I'm busy just now trying to get a number of actions plans out to clients to get progress on work, Langs website is being built just awaiting images, video and content and we're busy. Stuart now isn't starting until next Tuesday due to a problem in his last contract but we're coping. Busy, busy. Ta, s

Ego Driven, Alcohol Fuelled

Had a great night in the pub with Allan last night as we chewed the fat and went over the last two years or so. It was very, very cool. Though we were only supposed to be going for one pint.... Had a great session on the application that Allan built for the GFO. Last week I had a meeting with the GFO and all the location managers that are active in the Glasgow area. The application Allan built can be seen here and it's really very, very clever. Considering the old version of this application that was originally built the new version is a million miles away. The meetin that we had was largely constructive and we had some great ideas fed back to us, not just about the application but the website in general. A number of these idea will be hopefully put in place early next year. All good. So why didn't I have a huge sense of elation after the meeting? Well, after talking to Allan it was because I was too much in love with the technology. I was wanting oooo's and aaaaa's and the eway that the page doesn't refresh when you get new data, etc, etc, etc. They, quite rightly, looked at the way the technology was going to make their live's easier. I had put the technology above the outcome. Now, this is rare for me and I'm surprised at this. As a lighting designer you had three kinds of reviews:

• A review that praises the lighting
• A review that doesn't mention the lighting
• A review that criticises the lighting

You don't want the last point, you'll love the first point, you aim for the second point. Why in that order? Well you are there to become a whole solution, to be one part that makes the whole greater. I always belived in that, I did a huge amount of shows in my time and didn't recieve one negative review (though I probably deserved it, Endgame anyone?) a few 'Wow' reviews and lots, lots and lots of not being mentioned. Don't get me wrong. Each time I read a review I was was wanting to see my name. After all I'm ego driven, alcohol fuelled. If I wasn't mentioned I was cool, I knew I had done my job, I took it a s very good thing and moved on. So it was odd that I felt unsettled by last week's meeting. It was a great meeting but I was looking for the validation of our work, probably as it was the first time I met a user group who were using this technology that we had not fully let loose to the outside world yet. I am happy though becuase we used the technology not for technology sake but to make the life of the end user better. And the non-reaction to the technology demonstrated that we had achieved that goal. So we talked about that. And other stuff.