theLaconic

Help Foster

My old copywriting partner, Mr Simon Foster has delusions of being a great writer... eh sorry I got that wrong he is a great writer and has the delusions of getting published... er sorry I got that wrong too. He will get 'found' and published and then I get to say I am friends with a great author but before then he has entered his rather spiffing novel: nest of rotting grass into a contest online, please read his email:

OK. This is where I call in a return favor for anything nice I've ever done for you. (If you can't think of anything nice that I've ever done for you, just pretend that I might do something nice for you in the future.)

I've entered my novel in a contest to win a publishing deal. Will I win? Probably not - there were thousands of entries. But I definitely won't win without your help.

So do me a favor. When you have a minute, preferably sooner rather than later, click on this link:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976935957

It will take you to a posting of my first chapter. Read it (if you want), then vote (ten stars would be nice). You have to register to join gather.com to vote, but it only takes a second, I promise. You can also leave a comment, if you like it.

If you do this for me, who knows...I might return the favor one day.

Thanks in advance,

Si

So if you have one little spare minute, go and vote and make him happy and help him win, the rest of the book is amazing - he's been working on it for ever...

Yes it's Seattle

So here I am again, flying up to Seattle for another meeting at Microsoft, this is getting more commonplace but it still holds some excitement. It should be getting boring by now but there is something about flying over snow topped mountains that excites me.

I wish I had more time in the city to have a look around but this is how my day is going to play out: land at the airport, get in a cab, go to a big office building at the campus, sign in at reception, go to meeting room without windows, talk, listen, talk some more, leave meeting room, get in a cab, wait at airport, fly back to Oakland, get back home 12 hours later. This was for two one hour meetings and I prefer this to trying to present work over the phone.

Work seems to be getting a little more hectic as I discover that there is a lot of opportunity to make some cool shit. Part of the problem is that I keep putting my hand up and say 'yes I'll do that', I suppose I should really learn how to say no but it's always been a habit of mine to say yes...

It's warm

It's been warm, very warm - in fact, I think I am little sunburnt. Oh well the price you pay for living in California I guess... sorry dad.

This was screen grabbed when we got back in from walking around the neighborhood, while we were looking at apartments for Kayla. After 3 months and 11 days of us being bi-coastal she finally moved to San Francisco this weekend, so now we live in same city again.

Sunny weekend + Girlfriend = Life is good.

USBX 07

DSC00582.JPG
Originally uploaded by james dower.

Neil told me that dower had posted some pictures of the trip to Les Arcs in France (i think my email was bouncing according to him).

It's nice to see a group still giving it some welly. In other developements known to myself: Les and Emma went to Switzerland with the boys, Jim is still in Canada for half the season, Rachel was in Europe some where, Neil went to Killington - that's north of New York.

Nigel, Kayla and I went up to Tahoe at Christams with Tommy and Claudette and will be going up as soon as we can.

Back to old blighty

I just booked some flights back to England for Kayla and I in late April. We are just staying for six nights before we fly back to San Francisco, mainly because we don't get many days vacation. In some respects I wish it could be longer stay but I am sure that my bank balance will be happy, being i paid in US Dollars means that the UK is bastard expensive.

So all you Londoners who still read this stupid blog, we will be arriving in London on either the evening of Sunday 29th of April or sometime Monday and flying out of Heathrow on Tuesday lunchtime. Put that in your diaries and we'll figure something out nearer the time.

It's my Grandad Griffin's 90th birthday celebration on the Saturday evening, I am really looking forward to seeing all my family in one place and introducing Kayla to them. I've already meet all of her aunties, uncles and cousins so now I feel like it's time to re-address the balance.

Here's a photo of my Grandad Griffin from the WWII that my Auntie Viv used on his party invite, isn't it kind of strange to see pictures of your grandparents younger than you are?

And here is a photo of my grandad that I took when I came back for my sister's wedding.

Hooray for hollywood

I was quite tempted to just post this photo and let everyone just go at in the comments section but I figured you might just do that anyway and this is more interesting with an explanation.

I spent Monday to Wednesday in LA shooting some green screen video for a website I am working on. As the websites I work on have become more complicated and involved so has the production of them. And this was no exception, two days with a full film production crew and cast on a sound stage in West Hollywood and now 4 weeks of post production for a 5 minute at best, web experience (please note it will a great 5 minutes!).

It was kind of funny and I wish I could go into more detail but that will have to wait until we have finished it. I'll just leave you with this thought, we had a professional stunt Ninja...

i'm making a difference

My latest piece of work for just launched, it's only contributes money if you are in the USA at the present but that still shouldn't stop you downloading and spreading the word.