Recently in Family Category

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 ;-)

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 :-)

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...

Well, actually her first go on the GS was a couple of years ago in a Paddington car-park but today we got her into some jeans and strapped Nicki's old helmet on. We didn't go far as the fun-fair was only a few streets away but she kept her feet on the pegs and held on like a trouper.

Not something I'd want to do again before getting her a proper Clemmie-sized helmet but it's great having the other travel option available.

That, and her driving doggems for the first time and hopefully she's had an interesting evening:-)

Couple of weeks ago I was on hols in Avignon with the whole extended Falby clan and we all wrote games for the evening's entertainment. Margaret, Nicki's mum came up with a devilishly difficult Balderdash (I knew only two of the ten words) and I did a pub-quiz.

Don't know if you've set a pub-quiz before but this was my first go and and was way more difficult than I had anticipated. It's not enough to find things people might not know--you need to try and prevent folk getting bored and you need to make the questions relevant to your audience. In my case I had an audience of three 70-year-olds, three 40-year-olds, two teenagers and Clemmie who is six now and was supposed to be in bed (she helped by numbering the questions and that's her below trying her first diabolo menthe).

Tricky stuff.

At the end of the evening Billy--who knows about these things--reassured me that I had got it about right as the two teams scored better than average but not so much as to make it seem easy.

I'm on the flight back from Chicago listening to Laura Cantrell's version of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald while flying over Lake Erie (which is kinda weird) and was going to do a little work (and write some stuff about Seed) when I found the quiz questions in my bag.

So I thought I'd share them before dropping the sheets in the bin:-)

1. In United States law, which branch of the government declares war. The supreme court, congress or the president?
   (for 1 point)
2. Who were the last captains of the RMS Lusitania and the Edmund Fitzgerald?
   (for 2 points)
3. What do Lorne from Angel, Raven from Teen Titans, Peter Petrelli from Heroes, Pru and Phoebe from Charmed have in common with Betazoïds and for a bonus point who the missing character in this list?
   (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
4. Where would you find your "minor arcana"?
   (for 1 point)
5. What connects Danish physicist Neils Böhr and Eels frontman Mark Everett?
   (for 1 point)
6. Name two grape varieties common in the "Côtes de Ventoux" appélation and for a bonus point what do Côtes de Ventoux winemakers call their terraces?
   (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
7. If you've just passed Governor's Bridge and The Cutting and are half-way to Creg-ny-baa what are you doing?
   (for 1 point)
8. How many goalposts are there on a regulation quidditch pitch?
   (for 1 point)
9. Which motion picture won "Best Picture" at the 1968 Oscars? Two bonus points available for naming one or both of the two "more worthy" runners up that year.
   (for 1 point with 2 bonus points)
10. In the 1994 San Marino Formula One Grand Prix Ayrton Senna carried a furled flag in his cockpit. Of what country was the flag?
    (for 1 point)
11. In French cooking, what do "nappé", "petit boulé" and "grand cassé" refer to?
    (for 1 point)
12. What is the waltz from Tchaïkovski's fairy-tale-inspired ballet of 1890 better known as?
    (for 1 point)
13. Who first invited Harry and Stein to the Bronx? For a bonus point, who took his place in the video when he was sick on the day of the shoot?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
14. What did King of France Louis XIII create in 1622? For a bonus point, who succeeded Richelieu as Cardinal?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
15. Excluding Rockall, what is the Northernmost point of Scotland?
    (for 1 point)
16. By German law, how must Weißbier be fermented? For a bonus point, what is "botrytis cinerea"
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
17. Who broke the production motorcycle land-speed record for the rolling kilometre at Nardo on 29 September 1985
    (for 1 point)
18. What was the first film Alfred Hitchcock directed (title and year)? What was the last film he directed. For a bonus point, which film did he direct in 1935?
    (for up to 4 points and bonus 1 point)
19. What problem did John Harrison solve to win £20,000? For a bonus point, what was his solution made out of?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)
20. First Babakoto then Mojo Pin then Dear Eskimo. Who is this? For a bonus point, what is this person's current label?
    (for 1 point and bonus 1 point)

Well, of course with the interweb y'all have the answers to hand, but (as Barney the Purple Dinosaur would say) it's fun to try and guess them the hard way first...

This just in from Billy:

Finally, Kiloh discovered that Boris's full name is Boris de Pfeffel Johnson so we came up with an ad campaign based on the Dr. Pepper approach: 'Boris de Pfeffel, what's the worst that could happen?'

Doctor Pfeffel, I like it :-)

Hey, Jed's on TV :-)