Monthly Archives: June 2007

Jun 05

Do you speak kitteh?

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The Globe and Mail, the Toronto paper, had a lovely piece on Thursday about the rise of kitteh, the ‘language’ found on the lolcatz images and the derivatives that have sprung up. Unfortunately I left the paper in the hotel and it’s behind a paywall on the site, although the article does appear to be here for now (I wonder for how long, as this appears to be a back door). It’s a semi-serious look at the language and the rules around it and how they have evolved.

Lolcatese is often based on such catch structures or snowclones. Grown-ups don’t recognize these snowclones because the formulae may come from gamerspeak or from the dramatized sequences of Japanese video games. Variations of the phrase “im in ur base killing ur d00ds” (apparently, a famously hilarious joke to players of Warcraft III) are a commonplace of lolcatese, where the sentence “im in ur x, ying your n” is frequently varied.

They can analyse all they wish, I just enjoy the stuff.

Jun 05

Behind the Buzz posts

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If you’re not reading the marketing stuff on behindthebuzz.com, here’s some posts from the last few weeks you may be interested in:

Mesh talks: Building a community, teaching new markets old tricks and an interview with Richard Edelman.

Heinz have a new ‘create your own TV ad’ competition, but is it as effective an engagement tool as Volvo’s Treasure Hunt.

I’ve spent a few session over the last few days looking at how to approach bloggers. Here’s a couple of posts that show you how not to do it.

Jun 04

London 2012 Logo

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The perils of user generated content, originally uploaded by Martin Deutsch.

Cost of the Olympics: 9.36Billion GBP
Cost of the New Logo: 400k GBP
BBC news (and website) displaying a goatse reference: Priceless

Jun 01

Maid of the Mist

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IMG_7171.JPG, originally uploaded by RachelC.

I took a bus trip down to Niagara Falls today. A wet trip on the Maid of the Mist to get close to the falls, definitely a trip to take. An easy experience, no queues or anything for me, although I think I got there before the school groups as later in the day the place filled up with them.

The boat trip was fun, getting that close to the falls. Everything just got soaked – glasses and camera – but the blue macs they hand out do a good job. There was a moment as the boat tried to hold steady in the churning water and the mist and spray dripped everywhere and the breeze created by the force of the fall chilled that I thought enough was enough, but the time is well judged and the boat moves away before it gets too bad.

Next was a walk to the top of the falls; I was surprised at how shallow the river seems as it pours over, you can see the bottom easily. The roar of the falls is loud, sounding like traffic on a motorway, a steady drone.

Niagara itself just feels a bit of a mess. There are casinos there and tacky stores and museums, all neon and glitz but little substance. Even the guidebook despairs; makes me wonder how they make the money, who goes into them, but they do. Please stop, those who chose to go into them.

Three hours and I’m on my way back, on a full bus that takes 12 hours to drive from New York to Toronto. I’m returning the quick way on Sunday, a plane that takes a hop and jump. On the way up we flew over the falls and you clearly see the break in the earth and the maelstom of mist the boils off the horseshoe. If you are ever in the area, go and visit, it’s a site to behold.