But the main reason is to more tightly integrate my different webchannels. And start to get them working together. Which is why I want to work in wordpress for the blog and also for the www.planningaboveandbeyond.com website which I haven't been able to edit myself for a number of years.I

I won't delete this blog yet but all future posts will be on the new site. The first post which you can link to explains how I am integrating my web presence agcross a whole range of platforms. Here is the picture - for the explanation you are going to have to click through.

I'm feeling a tad smug here but with no grounds for complacency - apparently I am closest to Jamaican men of my age - well down the obesity batting order. I owe this to the Mary Jones run I trained for through the spring which has taken a stone off my weight. Making me lighter than most of my age group in the UK. But I am still heavier than 53% of men my age round the world - I think its time I got into the bottom 50%. Back to the running then. 

  Have a look at this film put out as part of a remix competition. I can't explain everything which is going on. Suffice to say that the song that the film begins with is loaded using Maschine as a sampler. And then Maschine is used to trigger the sounds as a hybrid drum machine/keyboard. You can turn any series of sounds into a musical instrument, trigger any part in any order, mapping it across the musical scale and applying effects. You can fuse voices with synthesisers, turn solo voices into choirs.  All without touching a mouse and computer keyboard.

My interest is in the tools of my trade - talking to people in depth interviews and focus groups. Its partly because I've never heard of anyone else doing it And partly because it kicks over several fences. It raises issues about respondent permission. But it also raises issues about brands - using quotations about them in the public arena without their permission. Positive and negative comments alike. And the whole issue of copyright - is this freedom of speech or theft? Does the inclusion of public figures and brands mean the lawyers will get involved. Let me give an example. Supposing I do a mash up of a focus group talking about London travel during the Olympics and mix it with politicians and Olympic comittee soundbites - is it art, ambient publicity or hacking?  Does the Olympic committe own the spoken word Olympics? Or just the logo.

I'm ahead of myself - I have hundreds of hours of content. I just need to develop the skills on Maschine to composit something together and then to be able to throw it together on the fly as in the film here.  I shall keep you posted.

Sometimes it works for you - here's a clip of no less than f no less that the Queen guitarist Brian May saying what a great guy John Griffiths is. Alas its the Welsh environment minister who decided to oppose a national badger cull - Brian thinks he's a great guy.   

Download Brian May bigs up John Griffiths

I leave you with my obituary - or rather that of John Griffiths former lecturer at Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths, St Martins who was rather good at illustration (as I am not) and effective at teaching.  So here's a bit of artwork produced by .. the late John Griffiths

What was more interesting was the demonstration by Dr Kate Stone of Novalia. She is pioneering the printing of electronics onto paper and cellophane. And inevitably everyone has got and idea or five about what would be a brilliant business. What she needs is investment in a solid business idea. Her demos included paper that played tunes. Which looks a lot like the reinvention of the musical birthday card. Which is hardly new. What was more interesting was the possibility of including bar code reading and wifi as part of the design. Where this is leading is the idea of having surveys on a sheet of card which can be handed out at exhibitions and completed and returned (or thrown away but the data gathered through wifi). Now that wifi is about to hit the London Underground I was intrigued by the possibility that tube cards could be turned into data capture and registration devices which could send data through the system. The major problem as far as I can see if why you would use a piece of paper to do what your mobile phone is perfectly capable of doing. Kate Stone claims that an ipad will be able to be printed on a single sheet of paper within a few years. Yes but which would you rather have an Ipad or an Ipad paper pad?

Unfortunately its a lot easier to treat that brand message as an overlay for - here's a camera that will deliver that experience to you. Take the money and run. Well Kodak kept on doing that. Even when cameras went digital and started to pop up on mobile phones.  Then they cut back on the labs and started up the gallery - roughly once a week for the past 8 years Kodak have invited me to publish the photos of my loved ones in a photo book or to put their mugshots on a mug. Neither of these appeal to me very much. What Kodak never ever suggested was that instead of taking my photos and keeping them as Facebook were so keen to do - with me signing my rights away. Kodak had the credentials to look after my pictures and to keep them safe from fire flood theft and ageing. And to manage who got to see the photos and who wasn't allowed. The Kodak moment could have been preserved indefinitely. And I the punter would have paid for it. 

Now my Kodak photoframe which used to publish photos from the gallery on my kitchen wall at home is obsolete. It doesn't even see the rest of the home network any more to scoop up photos from there to show. Kodak isn't out of business of course - they have more boxes to sell. But that wasn't what I wanted to buy from them.

What impresses is that these are a kind of OTT interface for the most extraordinary cultural capital. The guide who took us around barely scratched the surface - but when you consider that she could casually point to where a German bomb demolished the end of the building and that just outside 10 yards away Guy Fawkes was hung drawn and quartered.  And the hall you walk through to gain access to the palace used to be the commons and it was there (blink and you'll miss it) where the abolition of slavery act was finally passed. If you don't know the history - none of this means anything.  It was a vivid reminder to me of how much British culture depends on cultural capital. You are expected to know it - if you don't then it just feels like a crumbly hospital like building inside (which by the way) is sinking into the Thames!

The other surprise was how accessible it was. The security is hardcore. But the public have to be able to see that fair government is taking place - and to make petitions to MPs - you have the right to walk in and hand a petition to your MP which would be tabled in the house by the end of the day (no I couldn't believe it either) In the event the guides and security people spend more of their time chasing around the swarm of schizophrenics who descend on the place with instructions from the queen, God the prime minister and everyone else. But they have to let them in! Extraordinary place.  

It made me ashamed that I spend little enough time going through the acres of professionally sourced samples and synthesisers that I have when I also have loads of found sounds. Specifically hundreds of hours of people talking yup market research. Wonder if I could make sound sculptures with those?  I have since recorded a peal of bells walking past Westminster Abbey last night and the sound of an idling diesel locomotive while I was waiting on the platform to get home late last night.

Most sound which promotes brands is artificial - synthetic - wouldn't it be great if a brand set out to associate itself with natural sounds instead?