Anti-fan Marketing

Feeder are re-releasing their latest LP, Comfort In Sound, with additional bonus content exactly a year after its original release. This is all very nice, except that it seems to be a good way to alienate true fans.

Feeder fans have most likely already purchased Comfort in Sound in the past year, without the limited edition additions. These fans will now have to fork out some more money in order to own the new DVD content. To me this seems like a marketing scheme which will, no doubt, fill the record company’s pockets with a lot more money, but will not do much good for the trust the fans have for the band. Furthermore, how will future purchases be considered? Should we buy the albums that we want soon after they are released, or wait a year or two for the limited edition to come out? How is that supposed to encourage the law-abiding fans to purchase CDs instead of downloading them, at least until the next limited edition is announced?

A good example of an encouraging approach comes from The Strokes, who issued a limited edition of Is This It last year, but also made sure to have a separate DVD of the additional content distributed to selected stores. It may have required a bit of hard work to get a copy, but at least it didn’t require buying the same album again.

I guess Feeder are in it for the Music, so I’ll just blame Echo for being in it for the money.

The Psychologist

We played a really fun game last night called “The Psychologist”. The basic flow is that one of the group leaves the room. While they are out, the rest of the group decides on a rule according to which they will answer questions. The person that was out then comes back to the room and asks people various questions and has to guess the rule according to which they answer. If one person gets an answer wrong or doesn’t know it, everyone calls “Psychologist” and either the order of the rule changes or people change sits.

Last night we played three rounds. On the first round we played alphabetically. The answers all started with the next alphabet letter to the one before, and when we had a Psychologist, the order was changed backward. A lot of very funny answers came out of people trying to find an answer that starts with a certain letter.

The second round was according to a “Country, City” game in which every answer had to include an answer to the “Country, City” game according to the order of the game (country, city, animal, planet, object, boy, girl, occupation). On a Psychologist we started again from the beginning.

The last round was played by Veggie Vampire who was the only one who got it right. Each person had to answer as if they were the person of the opposite sex sitting to their right. On a Psychologist the seating order was changed. This was hilarious. Veggie Vampire asked some personal questions and some interesting personal notes came out. (One of the simpler ones was when TopKnot was sitting to my left and was asked “When will you go back to writing your blog”, and his obvious answer was “I never stopped”).

If you’re out looking for a good party/drinking game, with or without alcohol, this one is highly recommended.

Holiday Dinners: A Debate

No, I am not going to a holiday dinner tonight. Why? Because I just don’t want to. I can’t stand family dinners, mostly when there’s a religious theme going on. My grandmother only complains anyway. If I’m not coming, she complains that I’m not there, and if I do come, she complains that I’m problematic because I’m a vegetarian. I’d rather just not be around to listen to her complaints.

My non-attendance at the holiday dinner tonight has raised questions from a few people I was talking to and to whom I had to explain my reasons. I’d like to raise some of them here:

• Is it acceptable to avoid a holiday family dinner?
  
• Would you avoid them if you could?
  
• Is it reasonable to force someone to go to such events?
  
• Is it necessary to find excuses for not going? Is saying “I just don’t want to” enough?

What do you think?

Shana Tova and Happy Holidays!

Launching: Sebastian & Friends, a Deviant Brainwave Photolog

It’s finally here! My new digital camera in all it’s glory and with it, the official launch of Sebastian & Friends, a Deviant Brainwave Photolog.

In the photolog you will be able to catch a glimpse of the world around me, and mostly of my gorgeous cat, Sebastian and his feline friends. I will do my best to update it as often as I can. I am still learning all the wonderful features on the Olympus C750 UZ, so I’m sure you’ll be able to notice the improvement as I go along.

The launch party of Sebastian & Friends will take place soon in my little shoebox. The red carpet is already at the cleaners, so get your black ties and evening dresses ready.

Learning to Jump

During a slight fit of hysteria, another kitten found a loving home yesterday.

In the past few days the kittens have been getting climbing down lessons from their mum. So far they all know how to climb out through the gaps in the window slates and wonder around the neighbour’s window’s roof.

Last night, William went one step beyond and managed the jump or climb down to the ground. Under the loving guidance of Diana he was wondering around the garden, and tried to follow her back into the flat. However, he did not know how to climb his way up and panicked. He was so scared that he didn’t even let me get near him to bring him up. I left Diana to watch over him; after all, his mother would know best how to protect her child.

Meanwhile, a couple that found my message somewhere on the Internet vine came over to see the kittens. The little ones were all out watching their brother struggling to find his way, but after a few calls Bagheera agreed to come up and show herself. The couple was excited by her friendliness and took her home.

Happy with the knowledge that another kitten found a home, we went out for the evening. When we came back we found that William came back home and peace was restored. At least until the next lesson.

Rome Photos

Good to be back at home. Everything is still a mess, and nothing is unpacked, but at least I’m with Veggie Vampire, Sebastian and the kittens again.

I uploaded the pictures I took in Rome to the photolog, so check them out. I used a digital camera on a mobile phone so the quality is questionable, but they give a good indication of what I saw.

I hope to have better pictures next time.

Turbulence on Swiss flight 1733 from Rome to Zurich and the captain just turned the seatbelts lights on. I hope nothing will cause us to miss our connection to Tel Aviv. An eventful week is over and we’re on our way home.

The first two days in Rome were hell. Very stressed people in the office constantly calling us to ask for a status on the tests we were doing. We were sent to Rome to work on one project but got stressed by another, while the managers of the first project were still waiting for their work to be done.

Things got so bad that on the second night I returned to my hotel room in tears. P, who was there to use the network connection, didn’t know how to deal with my mood, and kindly agreed to come with me for a night out and get drunk. We went out for sushi in one of Rome’s trendiest restaurants. Unfortunately we were both too tired to consider a long drinking session afterwards and settled for a beer at the hotel bar. This proved to be a brilliant decision. The lounge was populated by a group of Irish tourists, happily drinking and singing traditional songs. We just sat there with our beers and enjoyed the music and the cheerful atmosphere until we could not put off our bedtime any longer.

On our third day in Italy things got better. We encouraged a management decision to cancel our drive to Milan, since it would have taken too long and wouldn’t be very productive. This meant two extra days in Rome in which we had some chance of enjoying the city in a relatively relaxed pace. The tests for the second, unplanned and stressed project were finally over, and we could do the work we were sent to do. We managed to travel a bit, drive around the old city of Rome, visit P’s cousin and even take a short walk in the Colosseum. I think the main thing that made us feel so much better is that we finally felt we were being productive and doing our job properly.

I got some pictures with a phone camera and a disposable camera. Everything was looking up.

Today we got to enjoy our journey some more. Being a Friday and a non-working day in Israel, there were no bosses on the phone every few minutes and no programmers demanding attention. After a short visit to Fontana di Trevi and the city centre, we took a long drive to a little town called Supino. Then, looking for a place to have lunch, we followed the signs to an amazing villa built on the side of the mountain on a small winding country road which wasn’t even showing on our map. At the top of the mountain there was a picturesque village with a church’s bell tower visible from a distance. It was calm and peaceful, and the food was delicious. We were only sorry that we didn’t have more time to have a longer leisurely lunch and take a walk in the village. Maybe next time…

Benvenuto a Roma

Yesterday was a very hard day. A lot of hard work, no rest and not much sightseeing at all. We had numerous problems with the system, and spent a long time configuring, and trying again and again with not much luck.

P., my companion, managed to make it all worthwhile, though. P. is the son of an Italian family but has not been to Italy for 17 years. His excitement of anything Italian here is amazing. He is wondering around in owe of the places he knew in his childhood, noticing what has changed and what still looks the same. His thrill yesterday, when he bought a copy of a current comic book from the series of which he learned to read Italian, was the exhilaration of a 6 year old child.

The best part of the day came at the end, when P. invited me to his reunion with his aunt and cousin who he hasn’t seen for 10 years. It was so wonderful to meet such warm people. The conversation over dinner was mostly in Italian, but I did manage to understand much of it, or at least what they were talking about. I even contributed a little bit, and I think they were a bit shocked to realise I understood what they were saying. A few sentences in English were also exchanged from time to time for my sake. Even our exhaustion did not spoil the evening.

Now, after a well-deserved sleep, we are ready to go out again. I hope today will be more successful, and maybe I will even be able to write more about Rome’s gorgeous monuments tomorrow.

The Business Flight That Almost Didn’t Happen

Less than 20 hours to go until our flight to Italy, and the system was still not ready to go. Of course, priority demanded some other issues to be solved first, so I’m waiting.

16 hours to go until our flight, and finally someone managed to find the time and priority for preparing our system to go.

14 hours to go until our flight and the server on which it is installed is not properly configured. Plan B should be considered.

13 hours to go and we switched to plan B, only to find another problem.

12 hours. I really hoped to be at home by now, pack, get ready and spend a bit of time with the cats before I leave.

10 hours, another problem and another problem… a go/no go decision is required, and my boss is nowhere to be found and does not answer his phone. Time is running out. If the flight is to be cancelled, it needs to be done as soon as possible. If we go ahead, we need to pack and get ourselves ready. I finally find another senior manager who is qualified for such a decision. The word is to go, and we start our way home, with the knowledge that the development team will be working hard all night to ensure we have a system ready when we arrive in Rome, or at least by lunch time. The stress is rising, but the work must be done.

9 hours. I’m at home, packing. The system administrator, who also happens to be a neighbour, a friend and my trusted companion for the trip comes over to use my computer to connect to the office network and try to help the development team solve the problem. Maybe I’ll even manage to get a bit of sleep before heading for the airport, we will need to be there long enough in advance to get all the security checks done on time.

7 hours. Midnight. Bed at last, just 3 hours until I have to be up and ready to go. Still no news from the development team.

4 hours. 3AM. Veggie Vampire only came in about an hour ago. My alarm will go off soon, but the phone comes to life first. The number is not recognised, a clear sign for a call from the office. They still haven’t found a solution for the problem, but at least they know where it is. There is a file for me to download before I leave, they’ll sort out the rest while I’m away.

3 hours. 4AM. The taxi is waiting, the file is downloaded, and we’re off.

Now, somewhere above the Greek islands, everything is calm. The in-flight entertainment system is playing the latest version of The Italian Job, so I think I’ll skip it. After we land, we’ll call the office to check if they have any good news for us. If they do, we’ll get to work immediately. If they don’t we will be spending our time sightseeing around Rome and generally having a good time. I know what I would prefer, but I don’t think it will be very professional of me to state it.

Meanwhile, and as soon as the turbulence stops, I’ll sit back, and enjoy the flight.

Kittens Update

One of the kittens finally has a home! Harriet (formerly known as Harry) was adopted last night. She found a home with a little girl and her father who came over with a little shoe box in which to take the cat away.

I hope they’ll give her a good home.