Friday 28 September 2012

Is crowd-sourcing really a crowd pleaser?



Welcome to the 21st century, an age of collaborative working, coworking, crowd-funding, crowd-publishing, a new dawn of communistic creation, an open source world of limitless opportunity. Or is it.


In 1991 a young Finnish student studying in the US released the kernel of a computer operating system that came to be know as linux. Since then it has become the world's largest open-source project. Thousands upon thousands of coders, testers, translators and graphic artists have worked together to create an computer operating system to rival Windows and OS X. Unfortunately, what we now have are hundreds of operating systems that for one reason or another have not even managed to replace each other, much less Windows or OS X.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

The Resistance Manifesto


If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Tales from the resistance



Cut out and wear with pride

Greece; you only have to say the word and it conjures up a myriad of images. Sun, sea, ancient civilisation, wonders of the world, economic crisis and moustaches. What doesn't spring to mind is entrepreneurship and business acumen.


Greeks have traditionally fallen into two categories as far as work is concerned; public servant or self-employed. With private-sector employee being very much a consolation prize. A job, any job in the public sector has always been regarded the safe, secure route, not overly taxing with tenure and a reliable pay-cheque. Self-employment, on the other hand hovers around nearly 40% of the workforce, more than twice the UK level and nearly four times the US. Greeks have been running their own businesses for years. From fishing boats to cigarette kiosks, from farming to shipping, Greeks have been doing the business in business. In fact, in spite of the efforts of the country's largest employer, the government, the people of this greatly misunderstood nation have managed to turn a tidy profit and send a fair bit of it to Germany; there are more Mercedes on Greek roads than Fords.

Friday 7 September 2012

Episode 13:...and the cupboards were bare.

from under dark clouds

From Under Dark Clouds

From Under Dark Clouds

After a scandalous legal battle with the Vatican and a very public breakdown, a British media celebrity seeks asylum in a sleepy Greek village. But can he keep his head low? Can he fuck! 

Driven by his own narcissism and under the mentorage of the shady Socrates our anonymous hero goes from paranoia to public office.


Broke
I need a dollar
The constituency was broke, the coffers empty. I looked through the various accounts and ledgers then got somebody who knew what they were looking at but even though some had enough for a bloody good night on the sauce, it wasn’t nearly enough to run a small town and a bunch or provincial villages. My staff, including the well-assembled secretary had been labouring on hope for well over six months now and my wife was not going to be best pleased with my own chances of bringing in a good salary. The cupboards were bare, dear Blogees and a bone was most definitely out of the question. 

According to some crackpot quack I once saw if I continued to drink everything under the sink I would eventually have no memory at all. Now, memory had never been one of my strong points but realising that from time to time I would need to remember at least some key facts, kids’ names, wife’s birthday, change my underwear, I had devised a little method of retaining information. I sang. By singing the things I wanted to remember I'd be able to recall them later on with incredible accuracy and it must have been my joy at winning the election but I was singing for Europe the night I had first taken my place in this now spartan office. More importantly, I had sung my way through all the usernames and passcodes. Humming a tune, the well-assembled secretary took my arm as she realised the relevance of the series of secure international banking sites. Site after site I effortlessly gained access to the previous mayor's transactions and my secretary leaned over me to press the PrtSc key to file all the dirt we may need to sling at those who might have objections to our actions.  


By the end we had enough to cover some of the municipal wage arrears and a new coffee percolator but we weren’t nearly out of the woods yet. 


I had a flash! We would go public, appeal to the goodwill of the people. No. Fuck. They would eat us alive, there would be a run on the bank. No, we had to keep this schtum, no-one must know. I swore everyone to complete and utter silence.


the cat is out of the bag
Somehow the cat had got out of the bag
The next day I arrived at the town hall to find the usual nook for the Vespa occupied by a huge van with a dish on the roof and it wasn’t alone there were at least another three, some with unfamiliar, foreign lettering on the side, and the entrance to the town hall was infested with paparazzi. We had a mole. 

“Mr. Mayor, what do you have to say about the bankruptcy of the prefecture,” a microphone was shoved in my face. 

I chose the fifth amendment and told them to fuck off and that by the way we had plenty of money to run the prefecture.

One of the paparazzi shouted a figure, the others scribbled and I went cross-eyed in thought; it was exactly the amount we had in the bank. We had a numerate mole. 


Within the halls of government a cup of instant coffee sat on a pile of IKEA remnants passing itself of as a desk, my desk. 


The rest of the day continued as badly, until it got worse.


There parked in the middle of the main street was a big black Mercedes van. Its back doors were open and three or four men hewn from dubious stone with minimalist haircuts giving out food parcels. They had created quite a stir and an impatient crowd had gathered but did not dare to push or shove. I walked through the crowd up to the most generous chaps. I asked what they were doing and one turned his attention to me.


“S’fer tha pipple,” he belched then paused but it was his collegue that made the distinction.


“Where are you from, eh?” my accent maybe more obvious than I remembered.

I replied that I was from the Town hall.


“You ain’t one of tha pipple!” he pointed out and turned his head looking for recognition from  ‘tha pipple’.


“I’m not getting you, young man,” I raised my self out of a slouch which belied my slightly above average height. 


“You some kinda ponce foreigner then?” his enunciation started to become a spray. “You not like the good pipple of this country,” he flashed a pitbull smile at them and they murmured in response.  


“No, young man, I may not be but they did choose me to represent them around here,” I realised I was sounding more foreign by the moment and I could not expect any support from those around me, who ever defended a politician? “Just finish oiling the good people and get the fuck out of here, you’re blocking the road, if nothing else.”


With that he began raining blows about my head yelling incomprehensible gibberish. 


I was later lucky enough to be able to nurse my wounds in the relative safety of my office, the well-assembled secretary dabbing my head with something that stung like hell.


Beating an elected official in broad daylight, what had we come to?   



Previous
Next




close to credits...


Don't forget to Follow and share with a friend, they'll love you a little more for it.

Click the social links or send me your experiences through comments or Mail

 

From Under Dark Clouds

The Century of DIY