Clem has been busy blocking out her Halloween costume. I'm a bit amazed, she drew the hat, the skirt and the cape and is now working with her nanny to make the costume. I've seen an early attempt and it looks just like her drawings... Of course I quite like the idea of her in the RAF air cadets but I guess dads don't get everything they wish for ;-)
Recently in Family Category
Well it used to be Big Oil or Big Business but we really are seeing the emergence of Big Copyright
Ohna's award-winning short film has been pulled by Google because of an automated copyright alert. This smells exactly the same as Google's ongoing mistreatment of the little guy. The same rules apply: justice cannot be applied by formula or filter. Unless each case is handled (note 'hand' as in 'human') individually by a trained adjudicator a never ending stream of injustice ensues.
I suggest Google work out how to pay for this adjudication service soon as sooner or later they're going to need a new business model...
Ohna reports:
Yesterday our short film SON was taken off YouTube's screening room because someone at Paramount Pictures copyright police company decided that maybe we had used some footage from Son Of Rambow. Whoever made this decision had obviously not watched the film as SON is obviously all original footage and in fact the only ressemblance to Paramount's film is the word SON in the title and the fact that there is a young boy in the cast. Despite the obvious blunder Paramount are making no effort to remedy the situation by removing their notice from YouTube and by doing so are damaging our reputation and possibly causing us loss of income.
The woman could use some words of support. Go comment on her post
And if you are aware of similar events, make you register each and every case with the EFF's chilling effects website.
Ohna's film Son won best UK short film at Edinburgh last month and now the picture is being featured on the YouTube Screening Room and hey I'm impressed :-)
Click on the pic above or on the Paypal button below to make a donation to the Ohna's film fund and download a handy iPod/iTouch mpeg file (make sure you click on "Return to Sister Films" to get your download link).
Nice one Ohna :-)
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Clementine has been learning to write these past few years and I was buying stamps at a stationners in Farnham when I came across this pen. I first heard it mentioned by Richard Binder and since then have thought it would make a great addition for Clem. She's visiting her Nan right now but I'll present it when she gets back (with "Clemmie" on the cap, not "Thomas" of course).
It's slightly tricky, Jed--my dad--is a talented calligrapher and I can manage some fluid strokes myself when I need to. The temptation is to try and get Clem writing like I was taught in school (in France we were taught 'joined-up' writing from the get-go using the the redoutable "Stypen" best known for leaving puddles of ink everywhere) but that's exactly what my dad tried to do and it got me in a bit of muddle on the handwriting front...
So I'm going to bite my lip for now and help her with her non-cursive letterforms:-)
So Charlotte wants me to spread the web2 love re ex-classmate Dirk Blackman's new production Outlander and why not? (that's our in-house Viking Haldane on the big-boy climbing frame over there on the left for our family readers)
As Eva Metalios puts it:
Subject: Fw: Dirk needs our help
Hey all -
After working in the Sisyphean task of being a writer in LA for over two decades, and the three year odyssey that OUTLANDER took to actually be made, the movie our friend Dirk Blackman (Columbia class of '85) authored with his partner and the project's director Howard McCain, is coming out. It is a sci-fi take on the Beowulf legend, nach.C'mon, we are talking Dirk here. This is not
your daddy's Viking movie.
And Charlotte makes the point
Douglas,
the Norway thing, the Columbia thing, the media thing...
Well, yes, she's got a point I guess (and only Charlotte and my mother can get away with calling me Douglas).
The Norway thing huh? well we named our boy Haldane in an attempt to ping him into investigating his Norse roots... He is named after King Healfdene (lit. "half-dane") whose name has survived from myth into modern Danish under the popular form Halfdan
I initially wanted to call Hal Healfdene but worrying got the better of me and in the end I didn't want to relive a boy named Sue so tried to anglicise it some. We could have gone with Haldan, also in use in modern Danish but in the end we settled on Haldane (also good because it's a Scottish name).
Oh, right, back to the link love;-)
- the Morwen character is in development here: G4 video
- Healfdene Goguen is as far as I can tell the only man online to sport the BW original spelling
- and here's another site about Outlander
- here's the trailer on Youtube
Judging from the amount of traffic already generated, Dirk's project doesn't need any help but I liked Eva's closer make the Weinstein Company to feel the noise. Take that Harvey!
I've been trying to get Nick interested in personal branding after listening to @garyvee at Seed3. Gary made a bunch of interesting points and got me thinking about how Nick should develop on her work so far as a journalist. The woman has huge amounts of life experience and when fueled, can tell many an exotic tale of Argentinean vineyards, Tuscan raw-food cooking or tea tasting in the Indian Ocean...
Tim says
...and translate it into an action model for your personal bottom line--how your brand will generate personal wealth ( Me Inc. ) and how you will create social impact ( Me.org )...
Which really resonated... Does Nick settle on a business partner or employer who can work with her to create value using whatever existing methods they might have in place and picking and choosing from a small selection of Nicki's mojo as required?
Or does she choose to leverage her whole experience and develop on her own, working to distribute her mojo-assets socially to a large audience?
I can't help thinking that option one sounds like a bit of a waste...

