Have you seen any French films lately?

I have, and they’ve all been excellent.

First stop is “Paris”, directed by Cedric Klapisch, who also did the wonderful “Un air de famille” back in the mid 90s.

“Paris” is about, well, the French capital, or rather, the people who live in it, and the effect of the city on its residents.

It is part of the “slice of life” film school, where the goal isn’t to tie up all the stories’ loose ends but to make you enter their world. Its power resides in making you believe for two hours that you indeed live in Paris and you know those people.

The central themes are life and death, which really, is the theme of life itself, isn’t it? It’s an atmospheric film but unlike such films, there is also a lot of action, it isn’t a “slow” film like films described as atmospheric can be.

Next up is “Les femmes de l’ombre” (Female agents), by Jean Paul Salome, and starring French film star Sophie Marceau.

Jean Paul has managed to get me enthusiastic about a film dealing with World War II, which is probably my least favourite subject in terms of films, I normally hate films on that theme and was a bit reluctant to watch it at first. but I gave it a go upon a recommendation and I’m so glad I did.

Normally, I don’t like World War II films because it is all about heroes, and the heroes winning. Well, this film somehow subverts this clean view and presents likeable and not-likeable characters on all sides.

It adds no glamour to the situation while clearly showing off both the remarkable and not so remarkable actions of its heroes. It also reminds people that war wasn’t only fought on the front, and soldiers were not all male.

Lastly, the oscar nominated “Entre les murs” (The Class), by Laurent Cantet.

It follows a teacher in a difficult parisian secondary school, a school with kids from different ethnic backgrounds who somehow have all found themselves living in France. Some of them are happy to be here, some are not. Some of them like school, most do not.

It’s another “slice of life” film, a very intense experience that leaves you thinking that you’re glad that you’re not a teacher and leaves you with even more respect for those who have the courage to take on the job in such schools.

All these films are available on DVD and some of them are currently showing in UK cinemas so if you feel like a change, give them a go. Don’t let watching a film with subtitles put you off, they are well worth the effort!

I’ve been thinking on and off for a few days about the reading experience online, and among my research, I stumbled on this excellent article In defence of readers.

Mandy Brown has written a very thorough article about the act of reading and how web designers can help it along.

As a writer, I wonder how many people read fiction online. I haven’t read much fiction myself online. I wonder if this is because it isn’t a good way to present fiction (it’s hard to beat lying on my bed with a good book!), or because I don’t know websites with fiction I would actually enjoy, or if web designers have failed to present fiction in a manner that allows one to escape into the reading world with no distraction.

I also question which fiction format would be the most appropriate for online fiction. After all, I have read Charles Dickens’ novels as books but they were originally serialised in newspapers and he himself went on tours to read them to audiences so during his time, people didn’t all come across them in the book form.

Would it be more appropriate to publish a novel online over a week (about the time it takes to read a medium sized novel), publishing a few chunks throughout the day, with each chunk representing about 10 minutes worth of reading time?

I am talking about full novels, not just a few chapters to make you buy the book.

I want to do an experiment with my own novel “Taking Off” (currently in the last editing stages) and put it online for free. Crazy? The premise behind this is that you cannot sell reproduceable objects in vast quantities anymore.

People already get most of their music for free and once everybody will have a Kindle or similar book reader, it will be the same for books (it won’t be long before somebody finds out how to scan a book and turn it into a Kindle file or similar). However, all is not lost for the creative type. You might not be able to sell reproduceable objects so easily anymore but people still crave “the experience” and will pay for such events/items.

For musicians, “the experience” is often a gig. For writers, it could be a gig too (reading from the book), or it could be a hand-made and signed copy of the book for example (an original object, not something that can be reproduced with modern technology). I haven’t really thought about that part yet, because there is no point in doing so until you have avid readers - and when you do, they will let you know what they want from you.

Essentially, my experiment would be two folds. Firstly, make my fiction fully available online for free and reach readers directly.  Secondly, offer one-off experiences to those fans of my writing who want more (monetisation).

The second part is important in this experiment, because without it, it would mean no income at all, and well, we writers have to eat too.

You could well decide that only the first part matters to you, that you want readers without getting money, that you want to share your work without giving up the day job. This is of course fine. However, as a potential alternative to the old model of finding a publisher and then getting royalties for your book, a monetisation system must be introduced.

I have no idea if this is a viable system. Not viable in the economic sense, though this is something that will have to be looked at after the experiment, but viable in terms of the first step, which is finding readers by offering fiction for free online. It goes back to the initial question: do people read fiction online? Or, to refine this, could people read fiction online, given the adequate presentation?

As well as Mandy’s Brown article “in defense of readers” mentionned at the start of this article, I’d also like to mention Novelr, an idea blog dedicated to Internet fiction.

Pakistan’s Taliban generation is a Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary about the impact of the Taliban on children in Pakistan. Pakistani journalist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy goes to the north west region of Pakistan, as well as to Karachi, and interviews various children.

It is the scariest documentary I have watched in a long time, scary because of what the children say.

For example, a teenage boy says that women should be kept at home, and that force should be used to keep them there. He is ready to sacrifice himself for the Taliban, by becoming a suicide bomber, and he isn’t the only teenage boy expressing that thought throughout the documentary.

Two little girls explain to Sharmeen that their school has been destroyed by the Taliban so they cannot get an education anymore. Elsewhere, a girl, who has lost many family members through a mortar attack from the Taliban on her home, explains that her dream is to become a doctor, to help look after her mother, but her village has fallen to the Taliban so she cannot pursue her dream.

The worst thing about this situation is the feeling of helplessness. The army seems to be putting on a good fight but their strategy seems to make the Taliban stronger, not weaker. Due to the constant attacks on the army on the grounds, they focus on air attacks, and of course, this causes a lot of damage to civilians and only exacerbates the problem. However, when they go on the ground, they get killed so who can blame them for favouring air raids.

The national school system has apparently broken down, with many schools being attacked by the Taliban, so many families now send their boys to madrassas, from where they get recruited for the Taliban. As for girls, in areas with a strong Taliban presence, they are too scared to get out and aren’t getting any kind of education at all anymore if their school has been destroyed.

While out on a walk a couple of years ago, I started brainstorming ideas to convert the energy from each step into reusable energy. More specifically, I concentrated my thoughts on ways to stock the energy generated by the pressure of the shoe on the ground.

I didn’t get anywhere with it back then, but I did write a list of requirements.

So, what are the requirements?

As you can see, my requirements do not shy away from the impossible!

I am now totally stuck and cannot find even a glimmer of a solution. I love creative technical puzzles like this but this one is beyond my imagination at the moment. Any takers?

Fountain pens have got the advantage of being easy to refill and therefore, you can keep them (almost) forever, but what do you do when the ink runs out in rollerball pens?

Well, you can buy refills for those too!

So if you’re like me and love writing with a good pen, get yourself a Pilot G2-07 pen of the colour of your choice (plenty to choose from), and then get refills when the ink runs out.

It sounds easy, I know, but have you tried finding such a refill in a stationery shop? Almost impossible. However, you can get them on the internet (try http://www.penfountain.co.uk/ if you live in the UK).

And no, I’m not sponsored by Pilot in any way, nor am I receiving any money to direct you to penfountain.co.uk. I’m posting this to share some information I have myself found difficult to get hold of, in order to save you time and encourage you to get refills instead of throwing away your pen and buying a new one.

I crossed the street five times today. About every fifty yards. There were people I didn’t want to see. Or rather, I didn’t want them to see me.

I kicked the wall at the bottom of the park. It hurt. It felt good. My rage gave me power.

I went to my bedroom. I checked some porn on the internet. It didn’t cheer me up.

I cried. I cried. I cried. I asked my mother how long it will last. How long for the pain to go away. How long before I can leave school and forget about the ones who make fun of me.

She assured me things will get better. I believe her, because if I don’t, I might as well kill myself. And I don’t believe in life after death. So I don’t want to kill myself, really. So I believe things will get better.

Until then, I’ll cross streets many times. Risking my life in the traffic so I don’t hear them shouting at me. The other day, one of them threw his empty Coke can in my face. They laughed. It wasn’t funny.

Running. Dropping. A. Knife. In. The. River. Too late, too late. The Police car is here.

I jumped. I thought I was drowning. But he pulled out his arm and lifted me up.

Then I saw it. The blade. He took the blade out of his pocket. A kitchen knife. He yelled at me. Said it was payback time. And he slashed my wrists.

I’m dead. I killed someone with a knife. I got killed by a knife.

As many musicians, I use CDBaby to distribute my music and therefore, I am familiar with Derek Sivers, CDBaby’s founder. I regularly read his blog and one of his projects, MuckWork, has caught my attention.

The project is basically about outsourcing tasks such as designing a poster, promoting a gig, booking shows and so on. Nothing wrong about this per se.

However, I have a slight problem with the way he presents this. He keeps calling it “boring stuff” and then, he goes on to explain that MuckWork can do this, with the help of a huge network of people to help you. As an employer of those people, I think this is really disrespectul to refer to their work as “boring work”.

I understand that he’s trying to sell the service to musicians and he uses words to sell it. This is what troubles me.

Here, I want to state that I actually have a lot of respect for him in general, and this project of his doesn’t change my opinion about him in general (he’s done a lot to help musicians, I respect him 200% for that, and I wish him good luck with his current projects - he’s got many projects besides MuckWork).

His description of the service fits a more general trend known as “outsourcing”.

Perhaps, the most famous example of this is Timothy Ferris “The 4-hour workweek” book. Here, I have to put my hand up and say that while I haven’t bought the book but I have browsed through it in a bookshop, I have read the chapters about outsourcing and I have read quite a few articles on his website.

A lot of the “4-hour workweek” lifestyle relies on outsourcing.

Outsourcing could mean trading (I outsource this to you and you outsource this to me) and this is what we do every day. As soon as our ancestors started to organise themselves, they started to outsource certain things. For example, some people would grow veggetables, while others would hunt animals for meat. So if you were a veggie grower, or a fruit picker, you’d outsource your meat needs.

However, the outsourcing Timothy and others refer to is closer to exploitation. Namely, they outsource their admin tasks to assistants in India. Why not have an admin assistant in your own town instead? I’m thinking money has got something to do with it…

Essentially, this lifestyle, which is sold to us as a cool and smart way to lead your life, relies on the fact that residents from another country will accept to do certain work for less money, so we just dump onto them all the things we don’t want to do. Not very different from when India was a British colony then…

We might hide it under different names, but it is economic exploitation.

I don’t know where MuckWorkers will be hired from but the name of the project and the description of the work as “boring stuff” doesn’t bode well. Why not call it an “admin support” company, rather than an “outsourcing” company?

I don’t have a problem with a musician using someone else to do some of their work. It’s called giving somebody a job. Or perhaps, giving somebody a summer work experience, or a volunteering experience. But outsourcing your work to someone in India, someone you have never met but who agreed to do the work for much cheaper than it would cost you in your own country, is a new kind of colonialism.

An argument used over and over again in the congestion charge debate in London is that charging car drivers for driving into the centre penalises poor Londoners.

Let’s debunk the myth.

Where do most poor Londoners live?

Possibly in South East London, or in East London, or in a few pockets elsewhere.

Costs of running a car

Let’s say you buy an old second hand car for £1,000. Then, you need to MOT it every year, and if it’s an old car, chances are you will need to fix a few things.

There is also the cost of insurance. Usually, for a small car in London, it will set you back £40 a month.

Then, there is the cost of petrol. At about £1 per litre, a small car will set you back about 10p per mile. So let’s say you work 5 miles from home, a return journey to work will cost you £1, just in petrol.

Parking costs. If you are lucky enough to have a private parking space, you will still need to pay for parking if you work anywhere in Zone 1 as there is very little free parking available there. Also, if you go down your local high street, you are likely to have to put money down into a parking meter.

What other modes of transport are available, if not using a car?

Buses. If you’re lucky enough to live near a station, the tube and local trains. You might also cycle and walk. You could also use a motorbike.

How much do these mode of transport cost?

Walking is free.

Cycling is free, bar the cost of a bike and a helmet.

Motorbikes have similar costs to running a car, though the figures are lower (unless you buy yourself a shiny new one!).

A weekly travelcard, valid on the tube and trains, for Zones 1 & 2 is £25.80. If you’re unlucky enough to live in Zone 6 and work in Zone 1, it will set you back £47.60.

A weekly bus pass is £13.80.

So, if you are poor, what is the mode of transport you are the most likely to use?

As you are unlikely to be able to walk everywhere, and you are left with using the bus, for £13.80 a week, or cycling (free after the initial investment for a bike, perhaps £80 or so).

What are the most annoying things with buses?

They turn up late due to traffic. They get stuck in traffic.

What are the most dangerous things for cyclists?

Cars, vans, lorries and buses stuck in traffic, pushing cyclists to zig zag, as well as angry drivers jerking out of the traffic the very second that they can and focusing more on the time they are losing than on the road.

So trackling traffic congestion is the best thing you can do to help poor Londoners, those londoners with no access to tube and local trains. Poor Londoners use buses, not cars. Poor Londoners will not suffer from the congestion charge, because they do not have a car. But poor Londoners suffer every day from rich Londoners and out of towners driving into Central London.

Of course, the congestion charge should finance improvements for public transport, and it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation at the moment. Of course, certain individuals need to drive into town (people carrying tools for their job, disabled drivers who cannot get on their local trains etc). Of course, no solution will please everybody.

But do not use the “Poor Londoners” argument, because I don’t see many poor Londoners having a car (have you noticed that the busiest bus stops are the ones near council estates?).

In this day and age, it seems like we suffer from too much information. TMI. Get in the queue. Deliver it to me in 2 seconds. Time over. Move on.

Many blogs are rehashing other blogs’ information (hey, I’m guilty of this for my post punk music news blog myself). Either they directly take the feed from a blog and pass it off as theirs, or they paraphrase an article, or they join two sources together in a brutal copy and paste. Do we really need to know all this?

Let’s look at the information. Celebrities. Celebrities. Celebrities. Perez Hilton, move forward. A celebrity made out of gossiping about celebrities. We all know who Jennifer Aniston is going out with. Does that help you? Does that help me? No.

What is more difficult to find, though, are thorough articles. No more than 500 words seems to be the common length. Speed reading. Extract all the information in ten seconds, pause for one, then move on.

Last year, the world economy collapsed. Big time. Where are all the marxists? Now is the time to make your case against capitalism. Now is the time to explain why it doesn’t work. Now is the time to push forward other ways to live. But of course, you cannot present another system in 500 words. So the marxists are left to themselves and their thoughts don’t get through to the general media (I’m not saying the marxists have all the answers but I think it’s pretty obvious that our current capitalist system has failed and it would be good to hear about other options).

They say the internet makes access to media and news easier, and it does. But it also doesn’t. So many things to check, do you ever check anything you don’t want to? What do you do if you inadvertely click on a website you didn’t mean to check? Hit the back button? Yeah, I do. Quite often.

So there are many things left to say. No need to shout. I just want to sit down with you and listen to your story. Imagine you are down your local cafe and sipping a yummy hot chocolate, and we are chatting about the meaning of life and death. Or the design of a post-modernist building. Or the type of vitamins in each veggetable. Engage me with your long meaningful blog posts.

What happened to TV? Ten years ago, we had “Friends”. It was a light sitcom but it dealt with modern situations, situations that may scare some people. Ross was learning to accept his ex-wife was lesbian for example. It wasn’t about who looks the cutest or who pulls the most (Joey certainly did, no contest about that). Now, it’s Reality TV. It’s a 15 minutes show they try to make last for one hour, by repeating everything after each ad break, as if you had forgotten what the show was about.

They are many things left to say. But please, stop passing off a celebrity getting married as news. It’s news for them, and their family and friends, not for me. I really don’t care where they go on holidays. Or the true shape of their ass.

Many things I want to talk about. Read about. Learn about. Discuss.

Africa. Corruption in some African countries. AIDS. Link between religion and the spreading of AIDS. Climate. The impact of climate change on their already difficult conditions.

Islam. Different sides. Moderate muslims. Extremists. Women.

China. The rise of capitalism in China. The difference between towns and the countryside.

Israel. Palestine. Iran. Iraq. Pakistan.

The USA. Do people really believe the world was created in 6 days as per the bible? How could the government implement a better welfare system? Have all the kids got the same opportunities to get a good education?

France. What is the future for “cites”, those giant social housing blocks hidden in the suburbs? Is the 104 year old secularism threatened?

Germany. Is there a difference between the ex-West and the ex-East Germany?

Many other things I’d like to learn about. Get exposed to. Discuss. Debate. Not all things I’m interested in are political. I’d also like to learn and discuss the following.

Art. Where does art stop and commercialism being? How to take the arts to the street.

Music. Songwriting. Can you write a song every day or would you run out of inspiration? Can you write a song about anything and make a good story out of it?

Comedy. Dark. Light. Laughing at least 5 minutes a day.

And then, there are things about every day life.

Is it better to walk twice fifteen minutes or once thirty minutes?

Is Diet Coke healthier than Coke?

How to get better at tennis.

Safe ways to boost my computer.

Is it true that tea keeps me awake at night?

Whatever. Those lists are not complete. This isn’t the aim. The aim is only to give examples. Many things are never talked about, while others are talked about to death.

Yes, there are many things left to say. So say them.