"And then he said..."

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• Another Monday, another headache. Life is always better when you know what to expect in advance. #
• Spitfire has been taken to a Triumph specialist – early prognosis is gloomy ( #
• RT @artesea good to see BT finally pulling out of Phorm http://bit.ly/oQqv6 hopefully the death of it. #
• Things any would-be politician should do: http://bit.ly/10hx3E [Actually works just as well as a forced refresher for existing politicians] #
• Sooo… raining here. How's it with you? #
• Woke up at 5.30am… dunno why. Can't get back to sleep. Oh joy. #
• Just trying the special edition Marston's Pedigree #Marmite, issued for the #Ashes – bloody hell it's strong stuff http://bit.ly/dhKnS #
• Is nervous at seeing Flintoff in – at least he didn't get a golden duck, which is what I expected from him. #Ashes #
• I wonder if it would be possible for Captain Jack and Torchwood to dematerialise those drunken gobshites chanting away in Cardiff? #Ashes #
• Oh FFS. Formula One goes crazy again. Now FOTA teams claim they've been told they're not entered for next year after all http://bit.ly/5U7Zq #
• Splendid stuff – today's Wikipedia article of the day on the curious history of Gropecunt Lane http://bit.ly/NIC4W #
• RT @sensorywhisper Man dies in chocolate vat http://bit.ly/9MCPT firstly ouch now eyeing yorkie suspiciously #
• Love and Liberty: What Do To About the Screws http://bit.ly/xT3d1 [Analysis of NotW criminal activites] #
• Blimey, it's like listening to Twenty20 – Swann plays a Pietersen switch-hit for a four… #Ashes #
• Supremely frustrating afternoon in the #Ashes – Aussies playing as solid as frozen treacle and just as hard to shift. #
• The brilliantly funny video and story of how a musician took revenge on an airline that smashed his favourite guitar http://bit.ly/BnWiX #
• Freak cricket catch – Ed Joyce out when ball lodges in fielder's pocket: http://bit.ly/184HV4 #

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• Here we go again. Late Sunday and I'm still bloody working. Just filed the WSR report, now to Justin Wilson's brilliant victory at the Glen. #

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• Went for a walk in an attempt to clear my head and improve efficiency. In this regard it succeeded. But back has now locked up. Pain… #
• For them as like small balls of squawking fluff, see this new site that we built and sent live yesterday for a client: http://bit.ly/SE8bb #
• This heat is really doing for me… can't work. Reduced to watching the tennis. And lunch – I'm 'aving 'oops. #
• FINALLY at 9pmish it's getting cool enough to start work for the day… writing up the notes from yesterday's marketing session. #

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• Calm before the – well, not the storm, but the busy period. Got a half-day marketing training session here at our home office. Wish us luck. #
• Emerged unscathed from seminar, plenty of ideas, but now hungry and a bit raw. #

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• For a day that started so dismally, it seems to be picking up as it goes along. #
• http://twitpic.com/8r2kb – The Spitfire goes in for repair next week – will be so good to have it running again! #
• Andy Murray getting murdered out there… #thecuckooclock #

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Just a quick note to anyone who remembers the end of Perplex City and my role in it.

A while back I was contacted by some researchers in Finland and Sweden who were working on a book about what they dubbed ‘pervasive games’ – ARGs and suchlike.

I agreed to let them use some of my photos from the climax of PXC, and I’ve just had an email from them to say the book’s now out. With photos, apparently.

You can read about it here – sounds interesting. Here’s one of the supporting quotes they’ve gathered for the marketing blurb:

“This book is the definitive guide to the past, present, and future of stories and games that jump out of their cages and into your real life. Whether it’s characters that call you on the phone or game play that happens on the bus on your way to work, this kind of immersive entertainment will define the culture of the next century as surely as the movies dominated the last one.” – Sean Stewart, Chief Creative, Fourth Wall Studios, and author of the cross-media international bestseller, Cathy’s Book

I don’t know if that’s true or not – it takes so much work, time and money to set up a game like PXC, the Beast or the one Nine Inch Nails ran for their fans, and that leaves me not at all convinced they’ll ever go mainstream.

If there isn’t a viable economic model for this sort of game – and if there is I can’t see it – then the best they’ll ever be is a marketing exercise or an underground fan-run experience. Never a dominant form of mass culture.

But that’s OK – they can be our little secret.

Like the best geocaches (by which I mean the cunning and the sneaky and the not-for-children ones), a good ARG, or pervasive game, or piece of chaotic fiction, or whatever you want to call it, is inherently subversive.

The day an ARG clue is buried in a McDonald’s tray insert, as I seem to recall Mind Candy hoped to do as part of its now-abandoned model for developing future seasons of Perplex City, is the day these games stop being worth playing for the people who enjoy them now.

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• feels rough. #
• is looking back fondly to the days several years ago when weekends last weren't working days too. #
• More shaky arms after garden strimming. Poor tortoises – all the clumps of long grass they were used to hiding in have suddenly disappeared. #
• Can't believe how many idiots failed to put their own web address in their Tweetboard Alpha request instead of http://ReplaceWithYourURL.com #
• Has once again lost his nerve and chickened out of going to a social thing. Sorry Spike – hope that thunder I can hear isn't over your BBQ. #
• Should clarify. Not scared of thunder, but of gatherings of people. See, this is why I preferred Second Life. #

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• Gah. Head hurts, back hurts, feel very woolly-headed. Supposed to be having a biz dev away-day today but the word is thunder and bad roads. #
• BBC NEWS: Web slows after Jackson's death http://bit.ly/hQD2M [I hope you're all pleased with yourself - you broke teh interwebs.] #
• Off the mark quickly: http://www.ismichaeljacksonstillalive.com/ (via PL on Facebook.) #

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• Another day very much like other days before and yet to come. So please feel free to insert your own witty comment here: [ ] #
• Had good business dev day looking into pricing etc in prep for marketing consultation (note, will block all Twitter marketers, don't try it) #
• is deeply amused to find the Lib Dems' new acting chief exec replacing Chris Rennard is Chris Fox. Who's next – Basil Brush? #
• New La Roux album reviewed in Guardian http://bit.ly/148ks3: "Sounds like an album produced by Jet Set Willy and engineered by Juliet Bravo" #

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• So difficult to focus today. Working from home is great but on days where your brain is fuzzy there's nothing to force it back into shape. #
• Frantic few minutes updating our motorsport site & @britsonpole after Max Mosley announced he won't restand as FIA boss http://bit.ly/19MXEw #
• has taken off his web onliney hat off and replaced it with his print designer hat. #

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• Finished Freya North's 'Secrets' last night. As ever, she transcends her genre. Not saying it's great art but it's far above usual chicklit. #

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• In foul mood today after heavy working weekend. Have vented by being rude/angry to two cold-call salesmen. One asked for it, one didn't ( #
• Good stuff from MySociety on the Govt and what it fails to understand about the web: http://bit.ly/iIkg9 Should be compulsory reading. #
• Right. I might just feel ready to face the day now. Anything interesting going on? #
• Adaptive CSS-Layouts: New Era In Fluid Layouts? | Smashing Magazine http://bit.ly/1btmOD [Scary amount to take in here, but all good stuff] #
• Marvelling at idiocy of a Twitter user flogging sales leads who thinks my rant earlier about cold-calling salesmen is a reason to follow me #

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• RT @radioriel Today on Radio Riel we take you back to the years of WWII http://tinyurl.com/lz2a7w [wonderful music & interesting story] #
• Have written up our visit to #F1 Silverstone yesterday here http://bit.ly/staof – really interesting day on a lot of different levels #

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• Still scheduled to be at Silverstone later as Shell/Ferrari guests despite last night's implosion. Could easily be cancelled, obviously. #
• http://twitpic.com/7sev2 – Silverstone weather holding up, just. #

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• Still a bit stunned: if it all kicks off tomorrow in Formula One, we'll be in the Silverstone paddock as Ferrari/Shell guests to witness it. #
• is back from a trip into town to buy a camera and dictaphone. I swear the guy in the gadgets shop hasn't aged a jot since I was a schoolboy. #
• That Dean Macey is one scary bastard: http://bit.ly/3POMwc #

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• WTF? Am awake and it's barely 6am. Not Want! #
• RT @ElrikMerlin @billt:http://twitpic.com/7lyr7 – Pizza with radius "z" & thickness "a" has volume pi*z*z*a ! [Oh bloody hell that's bad...] #
• RT @girlonetrack INCREDIBLE hi-res photos by Boston Globe of gov't violence post #iranelection http://is.gd/13o9W [via @Swerdloff] #
• One door closes, another opens – Renault cancel their F1 factory tour but Shell/Ferrari confirm their British Grand Prix garage tour… #
• Dealing with insomnia by tackling some of the 470 blog posts left uncategorised when they were imported from DeadJournal to WordPress. #

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• Good day so far: a van has arrived with 24 bottles of Cornish real ale, bought from Sharp's at http://bit.ly/cfvne. I <3 teh interwebs. #
• RT @white_hart RT @unblinkered Will be "living" in Tehran for a while…..explanation here http://bit.ly/GNyon #iranelection #

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Here, look. I’m writing an actual post, rather than filling this with digests of Twitter posts. Well blow me down.

It’s motivated by anger, of course. The smug bastards at The Times are crowing about how they’ve been big and brave and public interesty by forcing the naming of Nightjack, the CID blogger who recently won the Orwell Prize for being bloody brilliant.

I’d link to his site, but he’s taken it down in self defence. Any quiet ‘we know it’s you but we’ll keep schtumm so long as you don’t go too far’ policy that his bosses might have had is right out of the window now.

Nightjack was someone I disagreed with quite often, but also someone whose honesty (fuelled by anonymity, of course) and insightful analysis was frequently spot-on – and whose craft with words allowed him to make his points with brutal, poetic precision.

And now he’s been permanently silenced by the Thunderer, which farted in the face of freedom of expression and dressed it up with a pompous public interest rationale based on how, if you assigned a journalist full time to the job, you might possibly be able to identify what colour his underpants were.

Incidentally, I see no reason to use the poor sod’s real name just because he’s been outed. So far as I’m concerned, he’s Nightjack – just as the sex blogger outed by the sister paper in an equally underhand way a couple of years back is still The Girl, Abby Lee, to me.

I was going to leave a comment on their site telling them what I thought of them, but you’re only allowed 300 characters – so I dusted off this not-at-all anonymous blog of my own instead. Below is what I was going to write. I’ll send ‘em a link instead.

(And, like Alix Mortimer and Iain Dale, I aintn’t linking back.)

Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself – another low blow by the dead tree press as it thrashes around in its death throes. It was your sister paper that named The Girl against her wishes, wasn’t it?

Having twice, quite separately from this, seen friends on the receiving end of your determination to stand up for your precious rights to screw over their lives, I can truly say that I look forward with eager anticipation to your demise.

And I say that despite having trained and worked as a newspaper journalist myself, where I spent more years than I care to remember spouting the same sort of self-serving rubbish that you’re serving up in your justification here.

Smarter minds than yours are trying and failing to find a business model to support print media into the internet age, and when they finally concede defeat and you collapse, you’ll all be dusting off your CVs and sending them to the likes of us.

And we’ll remember this, and laugh in your faces.

There – I feel better with that off my chest.

Perhaps I’ll actually sleep tonight for once.

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Originally published at And Then He Said.... Please leave any comments there.

• All hail the healing power of tea and cornflakes when faced with an early-morning splitter of a headache. Almost feel human at the moment. #
• RT @girlonetrack We should line up all the blog commenters who shout "First!" in front of a firing squad and ask them, "Who's first, then?" #
• Headache returning: need more tea. Will pass on the second bowl of cornflakes though. #
• RT @rhianonjameson wishes @Kirakitty a speedy recovery. (Seconded here – good luck and all) #
• "Corse itz Monday." – http://cheezburger.com/tw/?v2-29484 #lol #dogs #
• Hurrah for Nigel Short – sill mixing it with the teenage prodigies and winning http://bit.ly/3R1GKH #
• Last link for a while – the Magistrate's Blog on where power REALLY lies in the UK: http://bit.ly/1Fhmck #
• Can't sleep as usual, making instant noodles. Reading the latest Freya North – no Jane Austen but, like JA, far better writer than her genre #

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• Is this 'counting data' proof Iranian election was fixed? Looks pretty convincing to me. http://bit.ly/EDpoD via @ElrikMerlin & @MusicThing #
• Am sitting here thinking 'okay, it's the weekend. What now?' Tea probably. May well go to watch the town cricket team in Herts Cup later. #
• http://twitpic.com/7ddtc – #
• Hmmm. Test of sending photo to Twitpic worked, but the caption didn't send… that was a test photo, nothing very interesting. #
• Came home from cricket. Felt too visible, fewer spectators than fielders. Saw 3 balls of 2nd over, 1 wicket fell. No clue which team batting #
• We've been sat round the radio like refugees from the 1940s listening to the cricket as England eliminate India from the Twenty20 World Cup. #

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