There ain't no cure...

...for the summertime blues. Except possibly to knock off for two weeks and to see you back here on the blog on August 5th.

Let me know if anything happens.

Nice Work #2

As we enter the dog days of summer the randy mice become ever more reluctant to post. Unless it's very easy, takes little effort and is extraordinarily worthwhile. We offer this in the spirit of never posting on the subject we are supposed to be discussing because that would represent nerdified, tunnel vision. Our qualifier therefore courtesy of CNBC. Nassim Taleb a couple of weeks ago and more relevant now. Sorry about the BIG SPACE below. It seems to come with CNBC embedded player and I'm not going to start trying to hack it about.

Note that the CNBC model actively encourages and invites us to do this quick cut and paste embed job. They must think it's in their interests. It doesn't say 'CC' anywhere, that I can see, just 'embed me'. OK, that's it, we are off to count the black swans for the weekend.

A Really Good Friday

Good Friday 1930 was the day the BBC had no news. ‘There is no news today’.

That hasn't happened again in seventy nine years. News has just kept on growing on a first past the post basis. Biggest story of the day wins.

A friend was asked yesterday if she could pop a post up for a growing blog because nothing had appeared for twenty-four hours. But maybe nothing of interest had happened. Nothing that people were going to break into their daily lives for.

Charles Arthur claims that blogging is dying. That the long tail is shorter, or at least, narrower than we have imagined. Eight out of ten blogs are abandoned ships that still float. He says so in print - The Guardian on June 24 http://tinyurl.com/lsy36b

Personal blogs are a lot of hard work. They cost a lot of time. And the format really is an analogue of traditional media. There's an expectation of regular publishing updates.

Now twitter has released everyone from the drudgery of the past. If this was just a text message then I could it send anytime. Right? Or not at all. If you don’t see my tweet then someone else’s message will appear on your tweetdeck. And I can wait until I have content and context that really is king.

Yes, there are wars, there’s politics, there’s business, but despite all the everyday suffering and the joy, it’s still noise until a big new story comes out of nowhere.

So, today, there was no news.