A Donkey on the Edge

Loved this piece by Maggie Mason

I can find my own damn shelf extender. Tell your clerks to stand down, before I knock one unconscious with a Keepsake Shadow Box.

Thank you.

I'm guessing Container Store is a little more in your face than M&S ;-)

• Temperature 6° overcast + foggy
• Icknield Way between Britwell Salome and Aston Rowant closed to vehicular traffic until summer 2005, but the old road cuts North West from Aston Rowant and continues to Chinnor where it becomes the B4009
• Spent hours on the boggy section South of the B4445
• Three lovely deep fords. First just a straightforward wet dip, the second small, but very technical with a bend and a difficult climb out of the sandy bed (almost visited neighbouring field but got the gas off in time and avoided large block of concrete farmer had placed at exit) and the third a bloody massive pool. I couldn't walk this third one as water was getting in my boots. In the end I leaned off the footbridge and shoved a stick in the water. Deep but definitely doable:-)
• GS in muddy bog to the axles (sump-guard skiing?) negotiating tractor tracks. Almost binned it several times but stayed upright all day. Quite a bit of embarrassing paddling in the deep mud, but by the end of the day I was gliding the beast around in the slick standing on the pegs. After the final gate couldn't resist whacking the gas full-on and got lots of lovely mud everywhere.
• I was worried about the front fender filling up (mud gets wedged between the GS's low fender which locks the front wheel) but in the end the mud sort of leveled off and it never got too bad.

On the way back, spotted other byway with this old guy Steve lighting the oil lamps on a tiny level-crossing in the middle of nowhere. Turns out he works on a steam train. Two miles down the track I get to open the next level crossing gates and wave a gorgeous old loco past (The Santa Express I think it was called).

So three fords, four spotted byways and a steam train--huge grin the whole way back to London :-)

I was following a link from Gail's very funny piece on the cli·ché and ended up at The Telegraph (she linked to this piece).

The list of book review clichés was hilarious, but what struck me was this list of available RSS feeds -- who'd a thunk it? A major UK broadsheet offering RSS with the understanding that they might be syndicated. As much as I hate all things Tory, I have to do something to the brim of my cap:-)

I'm just going to post this as is. I read a piece by Mark Kingdon To Flash, or Not to Flash? on ClickZ and was prompted to send a reply.

Most Donkey readers know how I feel about Flash, but this was different. This was one of the industry's most senior marketers advocating irresponsible behaviour. OK, that's an over-statement...

Anyway, here was my reply. Must flesh these ideas out properly.

In six years of energetic debate, this is the first time I've seen Flash v. antiFlash make it out of the studio and into the world of the senior marketing consultant.

While the topic is the nearest thing we get to living in Northern Ireland or the Balkans (few other topics engender such headed and irrational debate), Mark Kingdon's words carry weight, so I feel a responsibility to comment.

I don't want to bore you with the nitty-gritty of what the latest greatest version of Flash can or cannot do better than clever, standards-based programming. Lets just assume we all agree on where Flash is appropriate.

My concern is what we as an industry are doing to the internet and how ultimately that will harm our customers.

"Flash will continue to play a major role creating increasingly more sophisticated Web applications and brand experiences that will ultimately propel online marketing further."

I agree, but Flash movies are not part of the Semantic Web. Flash interfaces and content are always islands of content. So I have to question how creating web services that do not build on the internet as a whole can bring long term benefits.

What are we talking about here? Is Mark just pushing expensive Flash design solutions on his clients? Once you've hooked a client on Flash content they'll never go back. The buzz they get from showing their little Flash movie to friends and family is too great.

I am concerned that Flash content erodes budgets that would otherwise be spent on good AI and big picture thinking. We need to present big, compelling ideas for services that reach out and grow organically over time. Modern marketing should be about steadily growing long-term relationships. Flash can be a part of that but only if rigorously managed.

As an industry we need to guide our clients to create marketing that respects and benefits the internet and its citizens as a whole. So let's use Flash to create an interactive walkthrough, but let's not forget that true interactivity is what happens when you connect people. It's the bit between the computers, not in their web browsers.

All the best,
Dug Falby

I was caught with my pants down by this bug in late September. After deleting both Donkey and Roblog databases I've finally found the time over Christmas to rebuild all the templates from scratch. So keep your MT database backed up campers.

On the bright side, I was pretty sure I was a major moron for deleting a blog--not only once, but twice.

I am actually a moron for forgetting that my whole /www directory is backed up daily by my host. By the time I had remembered and requested a restore, the backup had incorporated the delete. Stupid stupid stupid ;-)

Amen Jon Armstrong for putting into plain English the abstract pissed-off cess-pool that I've been brewing re MT category implementation. Thank you:-)

Just wanted to explain what has happened to Donkey as a result of the recent spam attacks on MT installations.

The short story is I got very tired of deleting 50 comments about viagra every morning.

The slightly longer story is that until blacklist et al get beyond beta, I'm not going to upgrade. I still can't beleive that the 'delete one blog for free' bug was only discovered in November and I'm feeling seriously stung. Anyways, the software stays where it is for now, so as a result, I've enabled Typekey login for commenting.

While initially impossible to configure as a result of some quirky vocab in the documentation, the system works really well for visitors. One you log in, you are logged in to all blogs on the Typekey network, which is kinda neat. The registration isn't a big deal and finally, selfishly, I haven't had a single piece of comment spam since turning the thing on...