Miriam Parkinson

I’ve been back at uni this week and its a lot more tiring than I remembered. That said I’ve been doing a lot more work than I used to so that probably explains things.
Bah!
Brain’s too fried to formulate a blog post.
I’ll write something later…

Fantastic card-trick rendition of the aristocrats joke I just found on youtube

Cameron Reilly CEO of The Podcast Network and friendly neighborhood blogger is currently auctioning off advertising slots in his podcasts on ebay.

Now for those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years a podcast is an online audio/video show usually produced by independent enthusiasts and occasionally organised by a larger scale network.

The Podcast Network just so happens to be the largest independent producer of these wonderful little audio programs which you can download to your computer, ipod or other non-apple-associated-digital-media-listening-aid.

Now the major way in which podcasts differ from radio programs is that they tend to be aimed at a very narrow market, say people with a particular interest in PSPs, for example. If you happen to be selling a product which is of particular interest to a geek who has a PSP then the audience of such a podcast would be absolutely captivated by your product and there you have some highly effective marketing. Hooray!

The Podcast Network caters for a wide variety of people with very specific interests and whilst Cameron could give you a whole lot of statistics regarding numbers of listeners, the types of listeners he has etc I can personally say that I and I am sure many others have a keen interest in what he and the podcasts he produces have to say about the world so advertising with TPN is not a bad idea if you want to be on the cutting edge and appeal to an audience of enthusiastic types with a reasonable amount of disposable income.

Here is Cameron’s Audio promotion for the advertising space

and

Here are the auctions:
Slot #1
Slot #2
Slot #3

Been a bit on the busy side lately which is unusual for me. I had my sister around last week which took up most of my time shopping and iceskating etc (its a hard life) so I’ve hardly been able to jump on the internet for more than a couple of minutes at the time and definitely haven’t been able to get my head around a blog post.

I have my timetable for next semester sorted which is good and I go back to uni in a week which is fantastic.

I hate holidays.

…I happened across Rockstar Supernova tonight. Generally I was surprised by the quality of the talent but I just about wet my pants when I heard Dilana. She has an amazing gravelly voice and an intense stage presence which captures and enthralls you and makes you almost afraid to look away.

I am an instant fan and given I spend most of my time bitching about the complete lack of talent displayed by most famous female singers this is a big deal for me.

Check out her performance here, but trust me, the itty bitty screen (and my speakers) don’t do her justice.

Holy fuck am I impressed! I mean for fucks sake she got a standing ovation from Dave Navarro and rendered Tommy Lee speechless!

And just so you know I’ve been singing since I was 14 months old and have performed professionally so I’m not just some couch expert either.

Wow!

Ok I’m probably scaring people now so I’ll shut up

Edit: its now on YouTube

This ad was brought to my attention by an article on boingboing, and it got me thinking.
There is no doubt that some people have been offended by it but I personally don’t see what all the fuss is about.

Now this ad was displayed in Amsterdam but, no surprises here, most of the outcry seems to be coming from America where there is a lot of PC self-consciousness about proving to everyone that you’re not racist and a lot of African-Americans who seem to have a slightly shaky relationship with white Americans.

The major argument by those that think its racist are the following.

1. It implies the use of ‘black’ and ‘white’ to describe skin colour (dude they’re perfectly viable descriptive terms not racist expressions of hate)
2. It shows a white person dominating a black person.

Given the history of black slavery in America the second argument is understandable although still a little stupid. The first thing to keep in mind is that to the average European the idea of racism is so far from their mind that the only thought of black and white upon seeing this ad would be “what a visually effective contrast” which is exactly what sony were trying to do.

Now personally I think this visual would have had more impact and I think that there would have been none of the outcry over the image.

And what is the main difference?? The black woman is dominating the white. Which brings up an important point.

Racism is treating a person or making judgements about a person based on race.

So if you were offended by this ad, and would not have been offended by the ad if the two women swapped roles. Then you are racist.

I’ve just changed my template so that now if you hit ‘comments’ they sort of appear at the bottom of the post without having to go to a new page to see them which I personally think is a lot better.

This is where I found the code to do this as I am not nearly clever enough to figure it out myself:

The Alliance: Blogger Inline Comments

Incidentally you need to have javascript enabled for the show/hide comments thingy to work, so if you don’t javascript enabled and you want to leave/view comments then just hit the Respond button.