Writersbloc.co.uk

Kings of Leon’s new album - free track for download

If you like Kings of Leon, you should go here and download the first track taken from their new album, which is due for release on September 22nd. I’m not sure what my opinion of it is yet. It’s not bad.

Thou Shalt…

Inspired by this quite wonderful single by the terribly named Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip:

Everyone should have rules for living their life, regardless whether you’re religious or not.  Here’s what I came up with whilst I was sitting on the train last week:

Thou shalt:

• Not accept that it’s “too difficult”
• Not doubt yourself
• Not give up
• Not care what most people think
• Strive to stand out
• Allow yourself to be creative
• Express an opinion
• Know when to keep your mouth shut
• Do what you enjoy
• Search for happiness
• Stay in the present
• Accept that shit happens.  All the time.
• Dream
• Say yes to most things
• Concentrate on what’s important
• Respect everyone.  Even the morons.  Most of the time.
• Take time to do nothing
• Recognise the shit that you don’t need
• Make time for yourself first, friends second, everyone else third
• Travel
• Expand your horizons
• Smile
• Do something straight away if it takes less than 5 minutes to complete
• Keep learning
• Not worry about what you can’t influence and control

What are your rules?  Do you have any?

How to achieve your childhood dreams - RIP Randy Pausch

You probably haven’t heard of Randy Pausch.  Since he’s a Computer Science professor from Carnegie Mellon University in America, you can probably be forgiven for not recognising the name.  He’s worth thinking about today, because he died today at the age of 47 from cancer of the liver.  He was involved in cutting edge virtual reality research, and worked on a whole bunch of cool projects at a whole bunch of cool places (including Disneyland).  When he was a kid he wanted to achieve these things:

1. Being in zero gravity
2. Playing in the NFL
3. Authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia
4. Being Captain Kirk
5. Winning stuffed animals
6. Being a Disney Imagineer (someone who designs all the rides and stuff)

Yes, it’s a list - the same stuff that I was talking about yesterday.  The good news is that before he died, Randy achieved all but one of those things.  He never played in the NFL, but he came pretty damn close.  Last year he gave a lecture at his university as part of a series called “The Last Lecture”.  The university invite various scholars to give one lecture as if it were the last lecture they would ever give.  When Randy Pausch gave his, it actually was his last lecture.

Here’s the video.  It’s touching, and moving and inspirational and gut-wrenching.  It’s long (over an hour) but it’s well worth taking time out for.

How to be successful, step one.

I’m a big fan of ‘To Do’ lists, mostly because I’ve got a terrible memory.  Over the last couple of years I’ve worked my way up to a relatively complex system involving two notebooks and a diary.  The diary is very much something that I’ve carried over from running the bar, and I honestly don’t think I’d have made it through this academic year without it.  In January, I decided to write down a few goals that I had for 2008.  The to-do list that I usually make up is short term - one week maximum - but I thought that I should write something for the whole year.  I didn’t think about it too much, just wrote down everything that I’d like to achieve in the year, no matter how silly or unrealistic it was.  Here it is:

You can see the to do list on the right, and the goals on the left.  I’ve scrubbed a couple of them out using photoshop, just because I don’t want to share them all, but there’s two that you should pay close attention to:

• Get published in a major mag/newspaper
• Gain solid contacts for music/newspaper/mag in Toronto and Glasgow/London

I can honestly tell you that there’s very few better feelings in the world than be able to score that shit out.  Seriously, it’s exhilarating and fills my soul with happy juices.  It’s worth writing this stuff down, just so you can put a line through it.  I’ve been in a ridiculously good mood all week, simply because I got to do it.

A dream list like this gives you a concrete yardstick to measure yourself against.  Every day I try and get a tiny little bit closer to one of the things on that list.  If I go for a couple of months and I haven’t done anything to get nearer to achieving any of this stuff, I kick myself in the arse until I do something (ANYTHING) to move forward.

I’m not writing this to boast about how great I am (because I’m not great, at all), I write this because I guarantee if you do this one exercise you’ll be amazed at what happens:

1. Sit down with a blank piece of paper.
2. Write down ten things you’d do if you had all the time in the world, all the money in the world, and were 10 times smarter than you are.
3. Put the list somewhere you’ll see every day
4. Do something TODAY that moves you closer to achieving one (or more than one) of those goals

Okay, the last part might be hard, but it’s not as difficult as you think.  The two goals I’ve scored out were due to me sending out some emails and interviewing some bands, which is a lot easier than you might think.  Don’t let your brain put you off by coming up with reasons for not being able to do something.  I’m going to score out another one in a week or so (details coming soon), I aim to finish the script for the pilot by November, and if I move to Toronto in January, then another one will be checked off the list.  Learning to snowboard will come at the same time as visiting BC, and hopefully I’ll keep in touch with the Postelles in the coming months and get to hang out with them in New York.

Trust me: if I can get published in NME with my less-than-perfect knowledge of modern music, you can sure as hell do whatever it is that you want to do.  If I can do something to help, just let me know.

Jon in NME Update!

Turns out I’ve written two pieces for NME this week.  One of them is uncredited though, which is a bit of a pain in the arse.

Yay!

Look See Proof and NME

I’m pretty hungover, so I’ll keep this brief.  I should have a review in NME (the magazine, rather than the website) of Look See Proof.  It’s released today, so be sure and buy a copy, or at least read it in the newsagent.  As soon as I’m well enough to walk downstairs, I’ll buy a copy and scan the article onto here, but get yourself to your paper shop and see 130 odd words of Jon related awesomeness.

Why is honesty in such short supply?

To a remarkable extent, gaffes are what keep people’s interest in politics alive, not least because they provide peepholes into what politicians are really thinking through the smokescreen of hypocrisy with which it is usually cloaked. The presidential election campaign has been defined by a series of gaffes in which the candidates’ true feelings about each other have been exposed, as have those of other politicians who claim to support them. Both Hillary and Bill Clinton, for example, revealed their resentment of Barack Obama’s success in the primaries by dismissing him in ill-judged remarks as a marginal black candidate.

The above quote is taken from a op-ed piece written for the Guardian by Alexander Chancellor.  It caught my eye because of the headline: “Gaffes are what keeps people’s interest in politics alive”.  Now, any interest I have in British politics is purely co-incidental, for precisely the reason that the emboldened part of the above quote states.  It is rare nowadays to have a political candidate actually state an opinion, or should I say, a truthful opinion.  I think this is endemic not just in politics, but across society as a whole.  Since when did it become impolite to tell the truth?  When did having an opinion become dangerous?

Politicians obviously don’t want to offend anyone, hence why they talk such utter tripe, but I think by not telling the truth, they also lose the power to get people excited about politics.  It is only when people can start discussing differing opinions in an honest manner that people can feel passionate about anything.  Granted, I don’t pay much attention to politics in this country (I don’t know why the American electoral process is so much more exciting - I blame the Daily Show) so that could explain why I’m missing something, but I honestly couldn’t tell you what any of the politicians in the UK believe, or what they stand for.  Actually, now that I think about it, I know that David Davis is against the new laws regarding terrorist suspects being held without charge, and I know that David Cameron hates foreign people. But apart from those two, I have no idea.

More and more people are afraid to speak their mind for fear of pissing someone off, but I think it has never been more necessary to tell the truth and be honest.  Now, I’m not saying that people should go around calling people names and generally being a prick, but why not use my experience as the model?  I called a guy an idiot with too much money and he offered me a job.  Of course, I wasn’t really calling him an idiot - I was being honest about my opinion about his advertising campaign.  The reason that I got the job (I think) was because I was able to offer reasons for my opinion, and I’m guessing that he must’ve agreed with me.  Let me be clear - honesty and opinion are only good if what you’re saying is right.  If you’re talking nonsense, then expect people to point and laugh at you, because it’s what you deserve.  You silly, silly person.

Anyway, when Will asked me what I thought of his internet marketing campaign, I could’ve just went the way of the politician and told him what I thought he wanted to hear.  I could’ve told him that it was great, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it - it was perfect and couldn’t be improved in any way.  Of course, I didn’t.  There are things that KoS are doing very, very well, and other things that they’re doing not so well.  I believe that there are ways that they can get better, and I suggested some things that Will might want to try.  It might not have been what he wanted to hear, but it’s what he needed to hear.  If you can be the guy that someone trust to give an honest viewpoint, then I’m betting that you’re gonna be very valuable, very quickly.

This doesn’t just apply in politics and business.  Imagine in your personal life, if people stopped with any gossipy bullshit behind someone’s back and actually told people what they thought.  Things would be dealt with a lot quicker, and there would be a lot more drama.  Instead of saying “Nothing.” when someone asks what’s wrong, imagine how differently it’d go if you just told them?

Honesty isn’t for everyone.  There’s some people that’ll find it too scary, too confrontational, but I truly believe that it’s one of the easiest ways to improve your life.  Try it - start being honest.  Let me know how it goes.

Free King of Shaves Giveaway!

As part of my working arrangement, Will suggested that he send through some of the King of Shaves product line, so I can try some of it out.  It’s very difficult to sell something if you don’t know what it’s like.  I, of course, agreed.  This arrived in the post last week:

For the record, that’s:

5 Shave gels

4 Shave oils

4 Hair gels

4 Hair waxes

1 Moisturiser

1 “Pre-shave primer”

1 Face wash

2 (very manly) perfume type things

1 Eau De Toilette

1 Deodorising body spray

I, for those who don’t know, look like this:

Man, I look all kinds of terrible there.  Anyway, as you can see, I don’t have enough hair on my head, and I have too much on my face.  Shave gel, shave oil, hair waxes and hair gels might take me a while to get through.  Particularly when I have 50 squillion of them.  However, I do still want to find out about how good the products are.

So here’s the deal - if you want some free King of Shaves product, leave a comment on this article explaining why I should send you something for nowt (I’m hoping the postage won’t cost too much…) and I’ll get something along for you.  I’m using the face wash and moisturiser (as you can see above, I need all the help I can get) but all the hair waxes, hair gels and most of the shave oils and gels are up for grabs.

There is another caveat - you need to email me (at jon AT writersbloc.co.uk) once you’ve used it a couple of times with a review.  If it’s great, then by all means say so, but if it sucks then tell me that too.  Honesty is the best policy, people.  I’m confident that you’ll find that it’s better than most things you’ve been using (I gave some of the shave gel to Stu and he thinks it’s brilliant), but feedback is essential here.

I’m heading up to Edinburgh to catch up with some old friends this weekend, so I hope y’all have a good one.

Terrible customer service or Why Jon is getting a new webhost

Over the last couple of weeks, there’s a pretty good chance that if you tried to go to this site to read whatever new content I had thrown up, you would’ve have been unable to for a couple of hours because my server (hosted by web-mania) has been playing up.  It’s been like this for a couple of months now, but it’s been getting particularly bad lately.  It has coincided with me receiving emails like this one:

Jon Kane

You have services at Web Mania which are due for renewal in the near future on Invoice 97659

To prevent any disruption in service, it is important that you renew your account before it expires.

Hosting renewal
Renew due before 29 Aug 2008
Account: xxxxxxx
writersbloc.co.uk

Subtotal: £xxxx
Vat: £xxxx

Total: £xxxx

You’ll notice that my existing (12 month) contract with them doesn’t expire until the end of August. A short 7 weeks away.  I’ve been getting emails like this every two days for the last two weeks.  I can understand them giving me plenty of notice so that the site doesn’t go down permenantly without me noticing, but every two days is extreme, and expecting me to pay two months in advance of the end of my contract is just retarded.

Now, this is a very, very long post, so if you want to read it all, you should, it’s pretty funny.  However, if you can’t be arsed then just skip to the end where I make my point.

THE BEGINNING

The site has been going offline, so I got in touch with them on the 2nd of June to ask what was wrong:

Hello,

My website (http://www.writersbloc.co.uk) has been experiencing a considerable amount of down time recently, and I was just wondering if there was a particular reason for this period of poor service.  I can understand when there are upgrades taking place, but I seem to have had downtime every two days for the last week and a half.  I’ve not really had any problems with webmania before now, but my website being down so often for so long is proving to be a major problem.

I hope you can help clarify why this is happening, and perhaps some provide some assurances that this won’t continue happening with such regularity in the future.

Yours,

Jon Kane

As you can probably guess, I got a particularly helpful reply.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us. We have checked website writersbloc.co.uk, it is working fine. We have also checked the all services for your account and at the moment all services are fine.
Please check the same at your end.
If the problem persist, please let us know.

Please feel free to get back to us in case of any further queries.

Regards.
Simon,
Technical Support Team.

I actually deleted it, since I was so pissed off.  It didn’t address any of my concerns, and simply stated that it was working fine now.  Something that I already knew, since I could access the site again.  So I deleted the email, and hoped that everything would get better.  The site was up and down for the whole of June, but it wasn’t happening that often, so I didn’t care too much.  However, July kicked in and it started happening ALL THE TIME.  It was time for another email.

Simon,

Further to this rather unhelpful reply, my site seems to be down again - for the third time in the last two days.  My initial email was not to check if the site was working (because I’m well aware of when the site is down and when it isn’t), but as to why I am continuously being faced with this type of server downtime.  I have been receiving emails requesting that I renew my hosting with your company within the next month and a half, and if this is the level of service that I will receive in future, I will be looking for a new service provider.

Any explanation you can provide as to why the server is down, and why the performance of the server has been so poor during the last few months would be greatly appreciated.

Yours,

Jon Kane

You can tell that I’m getting pissed off, but I’m still being polite.  I just want a straight answer, right?  Fortunately, web-mania were quick to respond.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us. I have gone through your issue and found that the domain writersbloc.co.uk is working absolutely fine now. As we are not having any issues on our servers. Everything seems to be fine now. Please check same form your end.

Please do not hesitate to contact us back if you have any further queries.

Kind regards

Steve

Automated emails.  Brilliant.  They went to the trouble of changing the guy’s name from Simon to Steve, but the wording is identical.  Incredible.  Somewhat conveniently, when I received the email the server was down again.  A reply was in order, mailbots be damned.

The server is down at the moment.  Please address my previous question - why am I experiencing so much down time?

Yours,

Jon

Looking back on it now, I can’t believe my own optimism that a human being with eyes and the capacity for reason could have been reading my emails, but I stuck with it.  I have such faith in humanity.  Webmania got back to me:

Hello,

Thanks for your response.

This has been fixed now. We have restarted all the services on the server which has been resolved the issue.
Please check your website is now working fine and let us know if still you are getting any error so we can assist you for the same.
Please feel free to get back to us in case of any further queries.

Regards,
Rachel

Ooooh.  Rachel.  I like the name Rachel, it reminds me of my first serious girlfriend and my teenage (who am I kidding, existing) crush on Jennifer Aniston.  Sneaky Web-mania, tapping into my manly desires.  This reply is much better, since it shows that they took some ACTION.  Finally, it’ll all get better!  Yay, problem solved!

24 hours later:

Further to my three previous emails, the server that hosts my site seems to be down.  Again.

Jon

Hopefully Rachel will get back to me and make everything better, just like she did the last time.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.  I have again gone through your issue. We have made some necessary corrective changes on our server which seems to be working absolutely fine now. Please check from your end. Still we are continuously monitoring your issue from our end as well the server on which site is currently hosted on.

Please do not hesitate to contact us back if you have any further queries.

Kind regards

Steve

Damn, it’s Steve again.  Steve’s already shown how useless he is.  Again, they’ve made changes, it should be fixed now.  In any rate, it’s being constantly monitored, so I really have nothing to worry about.  Thank God for that.

THE ANGER BEGINS

Hello,

It lasted about 23 hours.  The server for www.writersbloc.co.uk is down again.  This is getting beyond a joke.

Jon

Sigh.

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.  Please check now. The site writersbloc.co.uk seems to be working now. Currently there are no issues with our servers. Please check same from your end.

Please do not hesitate to contact us back if you have any further queries.

Kind regards

Steve

WHERE HAS RACHEL GONE!?!  This is practically the same as the very first email that I received.  We’re going backwards.  I miss Rachel.

The server for writersbloc.co.uk has gone down TWICE today.  There is no point in me even having a website if it can’t even stay online for longer than 48 hours.  Am I going to get any explanation as to why this keeps happening?  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve emailed you in the last ten days.

Jon

I’m not even pretending to be polite anymore.  I’m surprised I haven’t started swearing.  I usually swear.  Come on, Steve, MAKE IT BETTER!

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

Please check now. The domain writersbloc.co.uk is working fine now. I have fixed the issue.
Still we are continuously monitoring your issue as well as our servers.

Please do not hesitate to contact us back if you have any further queries.

Kind regards

Steve

Or just send the same email as the last time, that’ll do the trick.

The site hosting www.writersbloc.co.uk has gone down.  Again.  Is there any record of how many times that I’ve contacted you?  Is there any reason for this continually bad service?

Yours,

Jon Kane

Are you amazed that I’ve persevered with it for so long?  So am I, but it illustrates a very important point.  A vast majority of customers will go out of their way to give you the opportunity to make things better.  I’ve now given them SEVEN opportunities to escalate my problem and tailor the reply to answer all of my questions and make it all better.  They haven’t taken any of those chances.  They did reply to me, however.

RESOLUTION

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us.

We would like to offer our apologies for the inconvenience faced by you. There was a temporary problem with the mysql services on the server on which your domain is hosted. Now we have fixed the issue and would like to assure you that you should not face the same problem again in near future.

Thanks for your understanding and kind co-operation.

Please feel free to get back to us in case of any further queries.

Regards.
Simon

So, Simon has saved the day.  I got that email yesterday, and I haven’t had any further problems since.  So what is the point of all of this?

THE POINT

I’ve exchanged something like 14 emails with webmania in the last 6 days.  I’m certainly going to be shifting to a new host in August.  I’ll have to pay a bit more cash, but I think it’s certainly worth it if it means I don’t need to go through all of this again.  The thing that gets me is that this is all very avoidable.  In the first email (or the sixth, whatever) all Simon/Steve/Rachel had to say was this:

Hi Jon,

It’s terrible that you’ve been having problems with our service, it must be a real inconvenience for you, and we’re very sorry for that.  It’s all down to the mysql settings on the server - they’ve been very tempremental recently.  We can’t use that as an excuse (because you deserve the best service possible) but please believe me when I say that we’re trying our best to stay on top of it, and we’ll try hard to avoid any more problems in the future.

I can see via our records that you’re account is up for renewal - by way of an apology, and to make sure that this doesn’t stop you from staying with us, we’re going to knock £2 of your renewal fee.

I hope you’re having a good day, and if you have further problems, please email me directly at steve/rachel/simon@webmania.co.uk.
Yours,

Simon/Steve/Rachel

Of course it’s not automated, and it involves an extra two minutes of time, which makes it as far from what webmania want to do as you can get, but if they’d sent me this email, I’d be renewing my contract.  Without a doubt.  If you’re looking for a host, don’t go to webmania - go somewhere that actually gives a shit what their customers think.  You deserve better than a fake “kind regards”.

[EDIT - Somewhat predictably, two hours after I originally posted this, the site went down again.  If I get paid in the next three weeks by anyone, I'm gonna use the cash to pay for a new server.]