The week that was

This is the first post on my new MacBook.  I'm in Leek , in Staffordshire, visiting Wenge's family. I watched the Old Firm game in a pub nearby - I'll take 0-0 although we could have won it in the 2nd half - and now I'm sitting at Wenge's mum's house with the MacBook on my lap, hacked into the next door neighbour's unsecured wireless network.

First thoughts on the MacBook...  The hardware, of course, is stunningly beautiful, built from one piece of solid aluminium and with an illuminated keyboard that is a real joy.  The display is sharp and bright, and it's fast. It's just a gorgeous piece of kit.

I haven't got to grips yet with the differences between Mac and Windows.  For example, as I write this browser seems to zoom in and out without me knowing what I'm doing to cause it.  I can't find a delete key, nor any 'home' or 'end' keys, and when you click on a url in the browser window to copy it, it doesn't select the whole thing so you have to manually select it.  And where are the 'page up' and 'page down' keys?  Basically, after the first few hours I haven't a clue how Macs work.  But I'm prepared to believe that I'll love it in a few months, and I have enough friends with Macs that I can go to for help if I need it.

The more serious issue is that the trackpad isn't responding as it should - it sticks sometimes when I move the cursor.  For the money I've spent I want it to work perfectly, so it's definitely a call to Apple Customer Services next week. 

On Wednesday I went to an interview for a Head of eCommerce position at Ann Summers.  For anyone who doesn't know Ann Summers - for example my new Scandinavian follower(s), they provide goods, mainly for women, of a risque nature (assuming you consider Rampant rabbits risque of course).  I've heard good things about them as an employer; the interview went reasonably well, and there is so much wrong with their web presence that it would be a great opportunity to make an impact.  However, two hours each way by bus, tube and train to a warehouse on a dual carriageway in a small town near Redhill isn't my dream job. I'd like to be asked back before I tell them though...

Then on Friday a sadly familiar story at Ministry of Sound, where I'm doing some consultancy. At around 5.00 we got a call from our eCommerce partner to say they'd gone into administration - just a day after trying to sell us a new platform they were building. So, website down, redirects up to an external site to continue selling tickets for the weekend, and my job here looks like it could be bigger than it was supposed to be.  Glass half full.

If you saw my twitter feed earlier in the week, you'd have seen that I tweaked a muscle in my side after football on Saturday.  It was a stupid thing, caused by leaning over awkwardly to lift up my bag.  Since then I've been amazed at how many things can aggravate it - picking up a cold midweek added a couple to the list.  Anyway, here's a list of things that hurt when you pull a muscle in your side:

• Taking a casserole dish out of the cupboard
• Reaching for anything on my right
• Opening the bathroom window (which requires reaching over the bath)
• Getting up from lying on the sofa
• Turning off the bedside lamp
• Coughing
• Sneezing
• Running

Thankfully it seems to be settling down now so I should get back to footie this week.

It's good to see visitor numbers reach an all time high over the last couple of days, and followers increasing to a massive 15 signed up - but remember we're aiming for 25 by the end of the month. Welcome one and all. And finally, congratulations to Ana, who is joining blinkbox as Managing Editor - exciting stuff and well deserved.

Project for this week: watch more of The Wire - it's been a week since I last had a fix...

Follow Follow

The expression Follow Follow means something different where I come from, but I'm talking about following melvtopia here, not Rangers.

I said some time ago that I'd like to reach 25 followers by the end of February, and right now I don't think it's looking very likely. I have 11 at the moment, so a bit of a way to go. All you have to do, by the way, is click the 'Follow this Blog' link to the right.

In marketing terms you 11 followers are the Trendsters; you don't follow brands, you like to discover them. You are the people who drive the brand (I acknowledge that I'm taking some license here with the use of the term 'brand') but you are selfish - it's all about me, me, me...

The rest of you are Restless. You're early followers. You like to use brands to define yourselves. If I launched a range of melvtopia clothing you'd be my target market. And yes, you aspire to be one of the trendsters.

There's a third group; the Trailers. This is the mass market, who haven't yet discovered melvtopia. And, frankly, never will. Unless I can get a celebrity on board then they'll come flocking.

So you restless ones, this is all on you. I need you to commit to melvtopia. And to give you an added incentive, I'll give £1 to the Disasters Emergency Committee for every follower signed up by the end of this month. I'll even double that for every one over 25.

It's a win-win-win. I get my followers; DEC gets some money and you make sure you become a part of the fastest-growing media property since Facebook. Or maybe Twitter. Or maybe 'Girls and Corpses'.

In the immortal words of the Blessed Delia. Let's be having you!

A new dawn

I'll start by saying congratulations and good luck to Suzanne and Amy, who are both starting new jobs on Monday. It's great to see team zavvi doing well.

I need to react to a comment left recently by my good friend and fiercest critic Lies. "Enough zavvi", he said. "Time to let it go". I confess that there have been quite a lot of zavvi related posts on this blog, which of course is inevitable since I started it just around the time that it was all starting to go pear-shaped. In fact, it was one of the triggers for starting to write melvtopia: if I could keep looking for the positive, and stay optimistic, it would stand me in good stead when the lights went out.

The first readers of melvtopia were in the office, and I'd guess that more than 50% of readers now are zavvi people - so, again, it's understandable that this major thing that happened to us is something that I write about.

But is Lies right? Is it time to move on? Have I said everything of interest that needs to be said about zavvi, and are you tired of emotional rants about how great everyone was? What happened, happened, and it's a chapter of our lives. In a year from now we may hardly talk about zavvi.

Or is it a glue that binds a number of us and, let's face it, is still pretty fresh and is still affecting our working lives. As a 'publisher' is it my job to provide content that strikes a chord with my readership - like, for example, the Daily Mail does every time it puts an article on its front page about immigrants taking British jobs or the failure of the education system?

Actually that's a pretty poor analogy. I'm not a proper publisher. I'm not even a proper writer. So I'm not kidding myself that this is anything more than me doing something that I'm having fun with. But I do try to make it interesting enough for others to want to read it. So what do you think I should do about the whole zavvi/moving on thing? Let me know by voting in the new poll.

And Lies, go easy with those cynical pills...

You, The People

The votes have been counted, and I'm pleased to announce that the inhabitants of melvtopia are veering towards optimism, as they surely should.

I asked how full your glass was and the results looked like this:

Overflowing - life couldn't be better - 6%
Half full - hey, I'm doing fine - 53%
Half empty - it's tough out there - 33%
You kidding me - what glass? - 6%

So a mix of responses, with one lucky person reaching their own utopia which is great. As for the rest of us, good to see most responses in the upper half of the glass rather than the bottom.

Since melvtopia is a democracy where everyone's voice is heard, I'll have a new poll up soon. Thank you to everyone who responded.

I am a PC. Or am I?

Now that I'm using it every day, it's become clear that my laptop is no longer fit for purpose. So I need to replace it.

I've started looking in stores, and online, to decide what I want. I'm looking for a highly portable laptop with great performance, and I've been looking at the usual suspects such as Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Sony etc.

But for the first time I'm considering moving over to Apple. Someone at work showed me the new MacBook yesterday, and it ticks all the boxes for performance, portability, security and of course fantastic usability. It's also very cool, built as it is from one solid piece of aluminium.

So I need to decide. Should I go ahead and move to Mac, or should I stay with Windows? If I go with the Mac should I go for the new aluminium MacBook or the white one that's £400 cheaper? If I go with the aluminium one should I go for the higher spec. or the lower spec. that's £200 cheaper. Is it worth spending money on additional RAM and/or any software?

And how would I continue to use my favourite mind mapping software that's Windows only?

I'm open to advice....

Glass half full thinking at zavvi

The word from zavvi is that something is going to happen today, and I take that to mean there will be a buyer for the business. The only realistic type of buyer is one already in the business, which suggests that opportunities for zavvi head office personnel are going to be limited. I guess the main thing is that everyone needs closure, and however painful it is being told it's all over, ultimately it allows you to get on with your life and in the longer term it's better than plodding along in a dying company.

Easy for me to say though - whatever happens I wish everyone well.

On a more positive note, I received this email from someone within zavvi towers (who must remain nameless to protect the innocent). I quote verbatim:

If you're looking for a glass half full example of working at zavvi at the moment it is this; One of the Administrators is quite fabulously attractive. A six foot Mauritian beauty in 4 inch heels. And she sits in my eye line. Awlright.

Let it snow!

Here's an example of glass half empty thinking. The radio this morning was full of comments about it being the worst snow for 15 years, etc. Now for the majority of people, whether you're a kid or a grown-up, this kind of snow is magical, so that's just nonsense-speak.

It's not the worst snow for 15 years - it's the best snow!