Rain on the train

I was on the tube the other day and it started raining. Over the tannoy, the driver made an announcement using a classic bit of British understatement.

"Ladies and gentlemen" he began, "do be careful when exiting the train as it is raining outside and there's a bit of a breeze blowing"

When the tube stopped at West Acton station, the doors opened and there was almost a hurricane, which blew so hard that it soaked most of our legs all the way to the middle of the carriage!

A light breeze indeed!

My appearance in the Liverpool Daily Post

That's me at Brouhaha Liverpool 2010 in the Liverpool Daily post

mini-Andy interviewed

I recently received a flickr mail from a toy making company in the US called Happy Worker, who custom design toys for companies. They had stumbled across mini-Andy on flickr and asked me a few pretty probing questions about our favourite miniature Hero.

I believe they will be writing a blog post about it soon, though I'm not exactly sure when it will come out. Here's a sneak preview of the questions and my responses on behalf of the little guy.

#1. People seem to like to take pictures in different settings, what I would like to know is why do you do it? What’s your motivation, what prompts you to photograph this little toy critter in your photos?

A1 - The idea for mini-Andy was initially educational as I was a teacher in a high school in Spain. The idea for mini-Andy came from a birthday present my students made for me, which was basically a miniature version of me. Flattered, I thought it would be nice to give something back to them, so I decided to take the joke a little further and sent them off with the toy that they had made whenever they went on holiday or visited famous people.

So initially, mini-Andy was like a class mascot, a little character that the students could relate to, to stimulate class discussion and bridge the student-teacher divide. As I'm quite an unorthodox teacher, the students thought it was quite cool and we would sit and create stories together featuring the character. I'd sometimes use him to explain complex scientific phenomena and my students would bring him away to meet people they knew

This was quite cool, cos it meant that using an intermediary we could explain to each other things that were important to us, without someof the boundaries that inhibit pupil-teacher communication.

#2. Taking pictures of toys is a big deal these days and there are a whole bunch of flickr groups dedicated to ‘non-gnome travellers’ and ‘toy travellers’. Why do you think this is? What do you think motivates other people to take pictures of their own toy?

A2 - I think that social networks, digital photography and the internet have played a huge part in the explosion of interest in travelling toys. With so many people on facebook gloating about where they have been, I think that people have become kind of sick of seeing their friends in exotic locations with smarmy smiles on their faces, and people have perhaps become sick of taking those photos too. I guess there's a bit of embarrassment about having travelled to all those place in some cases, not so much "embarrasment" but a conscious pang that you shouldn't be so smug.

Travelling toys however - that's a different matter! If a toy appears in 10 countries in a year on a blog instead of a human that's a little more socially acceptable. The toy develops a personality that people connect to and sees things that we as humans may not, because everything is BIG and ALIEN to the toy.

Because mini-Andy is so small, you can get away with foreshortening camera tricks and taking photos of things that would otherwise be quite inane and dull, because next to mini-Andy they look big and exciting! For example, I would never have taken a pic of myself next to these objects - They just wouldn't have made for interesting photos. But when mini-Andy stands next to them he brings a sense of scale and other-wordliness to the whole thing.

#3. Some people consider their toys to be muses, companions, or even stand-ins for loved ones not around at the time. What do you think the relationship is between people and their toys, and how do you think this affects the many photographs of toys? What do you think your relationship with your toy is or what do you consider it to be?

A3 - mini-Andy is perhaps a mouthpiece or additional personality. If you read the Batman comics you may be aware of a villain called Scarface/Ventriloquist. The character of the ventriloquist and his psychotic wooden dummy is intriguing. Initially, you suspect that the psychotic ventriloquist character is living out his sick fantasies of being a gangster through the dummy, but many of the writers of Ventriloquist/Scarface play on the idea that actually the wooden dummy, carved from a gallows is actually the one in control.

mini-Andy, although less sinister, is a similar dichotomy. When I write mini-Andy adventures on my blog I always write in a very specific way (as Scarface the doll speaks in his own voice) and the kids relate to the stories (as do my friends who have taken him away on trips too)

Then, when it comes to their turn to take mini-Andy away on trips, they too write in the same style. It's not like I ask them too, but people have read the style and imitate. Or perhaps it's mini-Andy really writing through them...

Who knows

So in many ways, the toy dictates the agenda over time, establishing his own personality. This personality has, at least for me, been strengthened by the group of writers, children and adult that I have had writing on the blog.

#4. Of course every place has a different meaning for everyone, but does taking a toy in that place make it any more meaningful? Does it give it a unique flair because it feels like a more personalized experience? Also, what about the toy – does it gain meaning from this as well, being able to house many memories and experiences in such a small object?

mini-Andy is made of papier- mache and is VERY brittle. The act of taking him to a place and keeping him in one piece is in itself a huge commitment and it was only the dedicated students who took him, knowing that. Whenever I've taken mini-Andy to a place and spent ages trying to prop him up on his crazy uneven legs it's always put my mind into sharp focus.

Just as when I first got a camera, my eyes began to see the world differently (i.e. I began to frame things in my mind and consider that perhaps the world was made of pretty pictures waiting to be taken), when I take mini-Andy out, my mind sees stories waiting to be told of high adventure and miniature underdog heroes.

The stories that are waiting to be told merely need the characters to play the part and mini-Andy fits the role.

I guess that having a miniature version of me around lets me see the world twice, once through my eyes and once through the eyes of a miniature Swashbuckling hero made of papier mache.

In the Sahara again

Just dug up another clip of me in the background of this news report.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhwE7XHvFU4&NR=1

On the TV again

Blimey! I'm on the TV again - this time in the Sahara desert working on an electronic postcard workshop with the Saharawi refugees of the Dhakla camp.

Check it out!

Missing the Buzz - what Google could have done

So Gmail now incorporates Buzz, which to all intents and purposes looks like a watered down version of twitter/facebook with picasa and youtube links replacing twitpic and twitvid and I stated in the last post that I don't wish to have anything to do with this monstrosity.

Regular readers of this blog, and those of you who follow <a href="http://myrealwall.blogspot.com">my REAL wall</a> know what I think of crass status updates on facebook. For those of you who don't, my opinion of facebook status updates is that they are a nice thing to gossip about. And that's it. I believe facebook status updates have little intellectual value outside of self-promotion and marketing.

Recently Google have become obsessed with chasing this vaucous market oh tweets and status updates at the expense of real content and this ultimately has led to Buzz, which is a show of just how badly out of their depth they really are.

Google has always been about indexing content on the web. They are great at it and with their acquisition of Blogger from Pyralabs just over 10 years ago they moved into the business of providing a platform to create that content too.

Numerous acquisitions followed that blazed a trail for the company, showing that they were commited to content creation and sharing of knowledge and resources, such as picasa and youtube, which were both great acquisitions. They missed out on flickr of course.

With the media hyping up facebook and twitter, Google should have realised that the content creation tools had already been made in the area of microblogging and they should have chosen to catlogue that, but I think with the launch of Buzz they have signalled that content indexing is not enough for them. But their product is hugely flawed, years behind the competition and just unpalatable in so many ways, that it's unlikely in my opinion that takeup will justify the investment. Social networks are already cemented and google may just have to face that.

I think even hardened Google fans (I myself am one) will find todays rollout of Google Buzz disappointing. Really, you should ask yourselves, would this product, which is essentially a bit of a crap aggregator and oh-so-2007-Twitter/facebook clone have stood a chance of getting media coverage, let alone users if it had not been tagged on to the gmail interface? I think not.

So Google appear to be stuck in this mindset that they want a piece of the social pie and nothing we can say will change that. So how about considering what they could have done instead of release this patronising clone.

Firstly I feel that Google had already reinvented the wheel of social networking a few months ago with google wave. Although I didn't see it then, within the realm of the new social direction the company seems to want to take it makes perfect sense.

Google should have chosen to integrate wave-like features instead of wheeling out the same old "status update" rubbish that we've seen on twitter, facebook and ning among other places in thelast few years. The consumer is drowning in status updates, which contain little real meaty information in depth.

Why wave though?  On Twitter and facebook there is no-one I particularly want to create content with. I don't actually KNOW most of them in real life. However, my gmail contacts include my closest friends, my work colleagues and my family. These include people I would happily write a blog post with, or share (privately) work information through the email.

The gmail environment would be far better suited to being a workspace and collaborative area online for the creation of deep content, than to being a social area for discussing what my dog dug up last night.

To use a REAL wall analogy, my gmail space is my creative office space, a place for thinking and creating. Twitter and facebook are the pub where soundbites are an acceptable form of communication. By using the gmail interface to send status updates sends out the wrong message and panders to the lowest common demoninator. google need to pull this back and focus on the creation of much deeper content through sharing, rather than the piecemeal offerings of many, so that Buzz can rise above facebook on it's own terms, that of collaborative content generation, rather than individual posturing.

And ultimately, google would own all this deep content. Although it may not be an easy short term solution and will not immediately grab those status updatin' facebookers, google need to aim higher rather than directly at the opposition if they hope to hit the target.

(Andy Hoang is an e-learning advisor at Roehampton University - any opinions on this blog are his own and in no way reflect those of his employer)

Google Buzz off

Today I opened up my Gmail account to see a message from Google asking me if I wanted to activate Buzz, their new "social" service in my gmail inbox. I knew about this from the reports on mashable but thought that it was all a bad dream.

In my opinion, Google Buzz will turn out to be a bad dream for Google in the long term and here's why I think that. As a long time fan of gmail, I have always put my trust in Google to look after my information, and to keep my contacts a closely guarded secret. Alright, there were some suspicions that Google was not too sure of how private I liked my email, such as the linked advertising and google chat's seemingly random addition of contacts into the main list.

All of these little privacy invasions though could be forgiven in the past because the service of gmail was so far superior to any other email provider out there and they were only passively invasive into my personal space. And that's what email should be. PERSONAL space.

But now, with Buzz, gmail is actively looking to make our content public. I and many other gmail adopters didn't sign up for a public system to share our content with many people. We signed up for a private and personal system to manage our contacts and communicate personally without having to look over our shoulder at who might be watching.

There are many examples of where the contents of my inbox may be damaging if it fell into the wrong hands, and I still trust that google won't divulge this. However, by suggesting that people add me to their Buzz contacts and make it easy to connect with what was essentially my private profile they open us up to all sorts of intrusive opportunity.

But more so than other networks? I share all over the place, so why make such a big fuss about this? Because this is my INBOX we're talking about. It's a whole private ecosystem that I created purely for me. I don't even let Elena look at it.

On the web, we create contacts and personas under different guises, most of which filter back to our inboxes anyway. When I comment on postal stuff I may comment as Andytgeezer or as my REAL wall or as mini-Andy but the comment would usually be attributed to that persona and can be taken in context. I still take responsibility but in a persona that suits the topic.

By linking my public opinions with my private ecosystem, i.e. by making comments attributable to my inbox directly, I hold these views that I express as an individual, as a person who can be shot down. The person then becomes the centre of the discussion as opposed to the opinion.

This is a very bad thing indeed.

No longer can I be the e-learning expert or the postcard fanatic when the need requires, but instead I have to wear all caps at once and be held personally accountable.

Using a REAL wall analogy, by delivering messages straight to my gmail inbox, Buzz effectively takes the opinions of people and delivers them to my door, whereas before I would choose to go and pick them up in the places I wanted them. Imagine if people were to come over and knock on your door to hold you to account for something you said down the pub. That's the sort of fear it brings in me.

So, I've deactivated Buzz straight away. I have no intention of sharing any of my life online, except in the forums I choose and as the persona I want. It's not that I'm not accountable, but I want to choose when to be accountable. And I didn't sign up to gmail to share, I signed up to be bloody selfish and control what I want you to see.

So Buzz off Google. You're not for me

The beginning

For those of you who follow my other blogs, you'll already know this news.

Last Thursday I proposed to my girlfriend Elena and she accepted!

Not bad for my 1000th post here...

It's Thing-a-day February!

Apparently, February is a big month for postal craft and creative types and this month I got invited by Sunnysidey, one of my postal contacts I have made since starting my REAL wall, to take part in something called The Unofficial Thing-a-day 2010.

The thing-a-day is a month long project undertaken by creative types every February for the last 5 years. The idea is simple. For half an hour a day every day of February you just have to do something creative and blog about it. Couldn't be easier right!

The original Thing a day is this year taking place on Posterous and people are invited to post up their blogs there on that platform. For that project I've decided that during the month of February, I'd like to make sure that my REAL wall has a new wall every single day for February. For the sake of the project I'll post these up on the posterous site at http://myrealwall.posterous.com, but obviously these will also go up on the normal my REAL wall site too 

With this and mini-Andy's resurrection for the Unofficial Thing of the Day, looks like February is going to be a long month!

Woah - 2 bookings already for mini-Andy 2.0! (in half an hour)

The internet is a truly wonderful thing. After announcing the new, improved mini-Andy project, featuring postal interaction, I have already had 2 bookings, from Perth and Florida!

Want mini-Andy 2.0? GET IN THE QUEUE!

mini-Andy 2.0 - Take part by post

The main challenge of February's mini-Andy comeback is to make sure that the little guy is a tad bit more robust. mini-Andy 2.0 will be open to all to participate in as he should be able to fit in the post!

So if you want to hang out with the mini-Hero, leave a comment somewhere on this site or on his site

Check out Day 1 on mini-Andy's road to recovery at http://unofficialtad2010.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/mini-andy_day_1/

February's project - The UNOFFICAL-THING-A-DAY 2010 - mini-Andy returns!

I was invited to take part in 2010's Unofficial Thing a day and decided that this would be an awesome reason to take up an art project that would challenge me. I decided to take the opportunity to repair mini-Andy and so by the end of February, mini-Andy will be relaunched with new skin and new ideas - stay tuned for mini-Andy 2.0. I'll write it up at http://unofficialtad2010.wordpress.com/ with selected stuff reprinted right here.

mini-Andy - The comeback : Day 1

I was digging around in a box earlier tonight for something and came across a very sad sight. Everyone's favourite miniature Hero was looking a little dejected and out of sorts.

I have to confess now that since returning from Algeria, mini-Andy has not been quite himself and his recovery has waited while maxi-Andy went out and lived it up with postcards and that sort of thing.

Disgraceful.

So today the comeback begins for 2010.

Keep watching this space for more mini-Andy adventures!

Sunday Times 1 - Front Page Header Crop - me and Elena in top left

Here it is folks! Me and Elena made the front page of the money section of the Sunday Times money section! On page 4, we are featured in a larger spread.

On Friday, I got a call from my mortgage advisor telling me that the Sunday Times had been in touch with him. They wanted to interview a young couple who had recently taken out a mortgage, and so he thought of me and Elena, and gave me a call.

The paper arranged for a photographer to be around in an hour and interviewed me on the phone as to why I chose the mortgage I did and next thing you know, me and Elena were on the front page of the Sunday Times money section!

I could hardly believe my eyes on Sunday, when I picked up the paper and saw our thumbnail on the front page in the top left hand corner, the very first thing you see when you turn to the money pages, and all my friends have remarked how little sense it makes that I, who care not a jot about the stuff, should be there looking like some money guru! As Jason says "...it just doesn't compute"

Amusingly, the paper reported my name as Anthony Hoang, the second time that my name has been spelt wrong in the papers. And yes everyone I know has ripped the piss out me for that already, so feel free to add yours below...

For REAL wall fans, me and Elena tried our very hardest to get your mail in.

The picture on the front page, which is also featured on the online version of the story was taken with the official REAL wall as the white background. The photographer was looking for a white background and said "Could you take those postcards down and we'll take the picture over there"

D'oh!

Inside the paper, on page 4 me and Elena are pictured on the stairs. After clearing the place up a little, Elena slyly draped Okadascat's knitted banner across the top of a table in front of us, and I set up a postcard from Richard Canard at our feet on the staircase.

Desperately we tried to maneuvre ourselves so that the photographer would take a pic of a postcard, but to no avail. Shucks. Maybe next time.

Yippee! I win a postcard!

Just been getting through some blogs as part of a swap-bot event and came across this one from Rhodyart. Based in Rhode Island (which is apparently not a part of New York), she has this rather cunning blogging knack of putting a song title in the occasional post title. If you can guess the song title, you win a postcard, and obviously I'm always on the hunt for postcards, so here's my stab at the title for this one.

The title of the blog post is "Good Morning Mr Rain" and I tried hard to rack my brains for the solution. Finally, good old Mr G came through and out popped....The Bee Gees!



So another day into 2010 and I've now appeared in a national newspaper and won my first competition (I hope). Whatever next!

Me and Elena appear in the Sunday Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/property_and_mortgages/article6990719.ece

Buy a copy today! Further write-up when I get to a computer (I.e. when I'm not freezing in Greenwich park on my phone)

my REAL wall vs Hammersmith and City council - final chapter

I just got a call from the editor of Westside Magazine, who featured my REAL wall this month. It seems that Hammersmith and Fulham council read the article in the magazine and have decided to set the record straight. They send me a quote from the council's communications officer

It became apparent that this was a hobby and not a business, so the matter was dropped and Mr Hoang was not fined a penny

and asked for my quote back by the end of the day, to which I wrote the following, which I doubt will be published in all it's glory. Let's wait and see what happens.

I and the readers of my REAL wall are so relieved that the council have backed down over this without unnecessary fines and it's such a relief to know that it only took a 50ft sign over Tower Bridge, blu-tacced protest postcards on the door of the Town Hall and a sustained blog campaign to get them to do so. my REAL wall will continue to showcase the most innovative mailart in London and I'm looking forward to including a postcard from the council on my REAL wall soon.

Watch this space for more and thanks again to everyone who sent in protest post!

Westside Magazine December 2009

This months press coverage is in a local magazine called Westside

The write-up is on page 10, under a headline about the local library running out of books.

I have to confess I don't particularly like this write-up. I wrote a full write-up of the incident and they've pretty much left out the facts and written up a pretty poor, humourless article. There's no mention of my REAL wall, the headline screams that the council have actually levied the fine, which they haven't and the picture is a generic pic not one that I sent. I'm most miffed that your protest mail hasn't made it into print anywhere too, which is a real shame.

Oh well, any publicity is better than nothing I guess, and I've finally got some time to get your protest post to the council this weekend, so watch this space.