The Future Mr. Scotch & myself have been trying to find a good wedding song for our first dance as husband and wife. Well, that's a simplification. He said he has no opinion, but vetoed my choice, which was Little Red Corvette by Prince. Now, I haven't been to many weddings, but the ones I have attended have featured a LAME first dance song. I want something that's funky, soulful, and romantic. Any and all suggestions will be considered. We have 35 days left and I'm getting really antsy to pick one. Keep in mind, the first dance will take place at an outdoor luau here:

 

Alternately, if you agree with me that Little Red Corvette is an AWESOME first song, please post that sentiment here and perhaps my man friend can be convinced.

 when Richard tells Liz:

Groceries, you gotta let it go...

just sit and watch the world pass for a while...

chasing life so hard will lead you to death... and time when pursued like a bandit,, will make it behave like one...

this is something to share from the book im reading now.. :)

My comedy cabaret show the House of Hee Haw! will be back on stage this coming Friday, July 4th, to celebrate:

 

**Download your flyer here and bring it along to claim your

This party is going to be country fried finger-liking good fun.
*And I bet a £1 that everyone will be hee hawing it up all night. No party poopers welcome, this is dance all night, sing all night wild and wacky fun.

***Please note, the artists request that you please leave your hat at the door, following pretend cowboy, cowgirl and hillbilly fun times at the party -- so we can use the hats the next time!

Featuring...

♥♥♥ Cheer-A-Go-Go! ♥♥♥

(Hillbilly Comedy Cabaret)

♫♫♪♫♪   HellzaPoppin’ ♫♫♪♫♪

(Rockin’ Stray Cat-Style Trio)

London debut of:

♫♫♪♫♪ The WildCat Tamers ♫♫♪♫♪
(Country,Soul,Rock’n’Roll)

♫♫♪♫♪ DJ Jon the Boatman ♫♫♪♫♪

& Surprise Special Guests

Barbecue & Grill. Very Reasonable Bar Prices

Friday 4th July 2008. Doors 8 ‘til late. £6/£5 concs. 

Inn On the Green, 3-5 Thorpe Close,  Portobello Green, London W10 5XL.

1 minute walk from Ladbroke Grove Tube Tel: 0208 962 5757  www.iotg.co.uk

www.myspace.com/littlebitcountryuk

At bTWEEN 08 the motto was Seed Share Sell -- with many of the UK's digitial industry gathering to offer up ideas,

listen to ideas, and in some cases sell concepts. It was a mash-up that saw indie and fringe digital media types meet up with the mainstream superstars of the digital media industry, and it was a match that proved fruitful for all.

Last week I was part of bTWEEN, held at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, representing my agency Hai Media Group, where my seed idea for a promotional campaign called Rare Fruits was among the final selections to win a £5K prize, and possible commission by a company to support their marketing efforts. Along with my talented media partner Isabella Hu of Ecolocate, we bravely faced a panel of digital media and branding experts to showcase our idea. We were honoured that our Rare Fruits idea for the Branding Talent competition was selected, and nervous to present our ideas to 4Talent, BBC, Aegis, Ogilvy, and others.

It was a learning experience, and one that took a lot of courage for the many small entrepreneurs or, simply a few folks with good ideas, to face their more senior peers in the creative digital industry. In talking to other finalists, many

likened the situation to being in the TV show Dragon’s Den, complete with its very own Digital Dragonoids. The finalists presented their sometimes fragile ideas to a panel of experts, most who were helpful idea cultivators, and never shy about picking and preening at concepts, all in effort to help support making the ideas a reality. As the experience moved along, bTWEEN, for me, as I do not speak for others who attended, morphed into far more than just a contest entry.

The two day conference included a star studded line-up of speakers from the emerging

media space. Highlights for me was learning more about Flourescent Media from Carolyn Maze, hearing what’s happening with music in the emerging media landscape from Kevin
Bacon of AWAL and seeing all ages represented. Teenager jellyellie spoke and over 60 cartoonist Bill Tidy drew pictures and told stories. Cory Doctorow, co-founder and editor of Boing Boing focused his talk on digital rights, and Matt Locke, Commission Editor of Education & New Media at Channel 4, was an excellent ‘navigator’ of current happenings with this innovative broadcaster, including youth programming.

Keynoter Kaiser Kuo, from Beijing, gave bTWEEN attendants an insider’s look behind what many Westerners

describe as being “the great firewall of China” with his speech Censorship, Culture and Chinese Netizens. You can read his thoughts about the conference here.  He was a popular person at bTWEEN, as attendants discovered that he is also in a Chinese heavy metal band called Tang Dynasty, in addition to his role as Group Director of Digital Strategy with Ogilvy (China). He won the prize for being the Most Inspirational Person at bTWEEN.

I met other competitors who’s ideas were representative of new creative, new technology, social and environmental motivation and above all enthusiasm and passion. Here’s a few magic moments that I witnessed at bTWEEN:

1 + 1 = A Better Business Model

Andy Davison presented his idea for regenerating abandoned and derelict space in communities across the UK, that involves documenting the effort with film over a three year period. The documentation would track progress, but also provide a film archive that a broadcast outlet (Channel 4, BBC or other) could turn into a documentary or film about how the UK is Going Green. Andy’s professor also attended to support the idea and offered this commentary about the project:

“Exactly the kind of thing we should be supporting in this age of environmental destruction. This is something we should all get behind - use new media tools to do something REAL and meaningful in the world.” –David Robinson, Lecturer, University of Bradford

The magic happened when later that night I met Mark Alexander, who’s seed idea is called Hugs Everything, a concept he describes as “Facebook for environmental awareness.” As it turns out, his idea complements what Andy Davison is getting up to, and the two have connected and have started meeting to incubate how to bring their mutual ideas to life.

Like I said in the title of this blog post -- Rare Fruits are growing from bTWEEN!!!

1 2 1 = Incubation

Among the senior mentors attending bTWEEN was Steve Taylor, Director of Development & Innovation for Aegis. Steve was a judge in the Branding Talent competition, and from what I understand was instrumental in pulling in more agency creatives to bTWEEN than have previously attended, making the conference a real mix of agency types, entrepreneurs and technologists. He also set up his own mini-incubation lab at bTWEEN, where he kept back-to-back appointments to discuss new business ideas with entrepreneurs. I heard that he met with more than 20 people, helping them better define what role they can play in the industry.

Somewhere in bTWEEN 

bTWEEN included a number of features that I’ve never seen used at conferences before. The organizers deserve praise for incorporating:

Live Webcasting

The crew of Kinura worked non-stop to keep the speaker’s discussions and other happenings broadcasting live from Manchester. The webcast included a chat feature, that allowed anyone watching the speakers from elsewhere to contribute, and ask speakers questions. The chat also made for hilarity at times, when the chatters commented on speakers presentations, or in some cases, got sadly mean about a few things. bTWEEN's chat feature was created by muchosmedia.

Another highlight was Timelines, a techy feature that allowed attendants to ‘bookmark’ points of interest, connect with people, and re-visit the experience online, using RFID tagging devices, supplied with registration badges.

Most amazing was that so many of the new technology industry of the UK were in attendance, alongside what can be

credited as part of the very beginnings of computing. At 60-years-old, ‘The Baby’ was probably the greatest star of the bTWEEN show, as it’s the world’s first stored-program computer. The Baby was designed by a dream team of engineers at the University of Manchester in June 1948.

My Photo Magic Moment

For me, one terrific magic moment was meeting a truly impressive multimedia installation artist, who I plan to spotlight

in the future on this blog. While chatting about his upcoming installation in the north of England, we started taking some photos. He took my camera and informed me that he would take the best photograph of my life. Sure I thought, whatever, I can’t stand most photos that are taken of me. But he proved his artistic genius on the spot, and sure enough this is the best photo I’ve ever had taken in my life:

Thanks for the best photo of my life Simon!

 

What's happening with Rare Fruits?

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention what became of our contest entry. Well, we didn’t win

the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but we did win plenty of valuable insight and

counsel for pitching our Rare Fruits idea to others. The champion of our Branding Talent competition was Robin Cramp, who’s Little Me  idea won over the judges, and may likely be developed further for use with Littlewoodsdirect.com.

We got awesome feedback from the mentors about our idea, including spot-on tips from 4Talent about what we can do with the Rare Fruits idea. I'm now cultivating the seed of the Rare Fruits idea, and hope to see it grow into something absolutely beautiful, in time.

yess, i'm alive.. :)

and thank GOD.. everything is going okay with me.. and Thailand is the place i wanna go to this summer due to budget issues and tickets prices to europe.. they are so EXPENSIVE.. still, excited about it.. !!

i got myself a DHL account for online shopping... still have to get myself a Visa or what banks call, internet shopping card.. ! hehe.. stupid i know.. gotta do this and order the LENS and the ZUNE PLAYER... YEAAAAHHHHHHH !!!!!

what else? school? well, it's also strangely Okay.. :D
and im kinda keeping up with the work, thanks to friends who keep helping me.. good stuff.. !!

emmm,, and there you go.. one gift to tell you guys that im sorry for my lack of updates and rants !!

since i got nothing to do.. i should read... im almost half way through my book,, and it's a nice read.. not a light read of course.. heheh.. !

to try to install a program to use for solving your homeworks for the whole day and it doesn't work with you !!

Ansys.. ! yea.. Ok... going back to solve the homeworks.. !

My student loan provider is terrified. I made a huge double payment yesterday and I thought it was going to crash the site. Every step of the way, a message popped up asking, "Are you SURE?" "Really? YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS???" Four times, in fact. Once the payment was finally submitted, I received a scary looking email from them that looked like the kind of thing you get from your bank when there is a suspicious charge on your account. Clearly, they were hoping I would continue to pay the minimum until my scheduled last payment - May 17, 2020.

Yeah. That's right Sallie Mae, you better be scared, BEYOTCH.

Just have to share some pics of our little garden...we're loving it and we're totally hooked on gardening.  My hubby is already planning to expand the garden next year.  He says he wants to grow sweet corn.  Dare I mention we live in your typical 1960s built, totally suburban, split-level style, less than a 1/4 acre per lot type of neighborhood?  A corn field would really work with that type of landscape, don't you think?

Yeah, I can see our neighbors now giving directions to their future visitors.  "Um yes, make a right on Elm, hang a left at the at the cornfield in front of the yellow split-level."

But I digress. 

So here are the pics.  I think my Grandpa's pride is shining down from heaven.  I asked Shawn if he wanted me to take a picture of him in front of the garden... he said "why do you want a picture of ME in front of the garden?"  I said "well, my grandpa used to take one every year, so why not...might be good karma."  He thought no...

So here's the kiddos with our very first harvest...two yellow squash and a zucchini.  And Katie and her new haircut.  And Jon with a squash up his nose.

been uploading a lot to my flickr... it is my main photography station.. 
i guess you guys missed some good ones.. ! :)

TO THE MOST HATED TEAM IN FOOTBALL...

THIS GOES TO YOU... !!!

CAMPEEOOOONNN,,, CAMPEEEOONNNN,,,, VAMOS VAMOS VAMOS CAMPEEOONNNN !!!!

AAHHHH.. SO HAPPY TO SEE ITALY CRY LIKE BABIES... ! YOU DESERVE NOTHING .. !!

GOING TO CELEBRATE ... DRINKING WATER FOR THIS OCCASION ! :D