Hey, so its been a long time since I’ve properly posted on here now isn’t it… In order to get me back blogging fairly regularly I’m trying a 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge. This is day 2, which means I’m already 6 or something % through. Awesome. Obviously proper bloggers would do that without breaking a posting sweat, but I’m working full-time online as an Internet Marketer and trying to reduce my internet addiction a little. I can post across any of my blogs, so my private one, this one, tee-junction, any of the affiliate sites (which I only update once a month in one binge anyway), or Rad-ish the satirical news-site which is just a logo away from a re-launch.

What’s new? Well:

- I have a new house, check out the flickr set
- I’m still working at Sprite, we’ve spent the last three months on our new service. It’ll be in private beta next Friday hopefully, once we fix up some smaller issues. At that point we’ll mail out to a very small group of industry friends and start garnering some feedback and I’ll post some more here about it. I’m really excited about the product, I think it’s a winner, and this is the most efficient development team I’ve worked with, we’re actually on time and feature wise, maybe even a little ahead of where I thought we’d be.
- I still live in New Zealand. I’ve quite bonded with the place actually. The standard of living is high, it’s beautiful, safe, loads of outdoors things to do and I’ve made nice friends quickly, which always helps. Now I’ve moved house, and totally furnished this one I’d say I’ve put down roots here now so will be around at least another year.
- I’m blipping from time to time, when I remember - http://blip.fm/fletchy
- I’m trying to think what else there is, but I can’t think of much. Does that make me old? Probably, darn.
- It’ s been ages since I wrote anything serious, or remotely interesting on this blog. I’m going to half-heartedly try and do something about that.

Well, I’ve moved to Auckland, New Zealand the exact center of the middle of nowhere a mere 88hr flight from anywhere. It was all of a bit whim to be honest, we were just looking round for an interesting place to settle once backpacking in Asia was losing its appeal. We backpacked for a little under four months through China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. All the photos from that trip are on Flickr.

So I applied online from Cambodia, two days later the visa came through, 5 days later we flew from Bangkok and here we are. The past two weeks have been a blur of flat and job hunting. I haven’t done too much on the latter, but I’m now the proud owner of a beautiful city center two bed flat. I’ve a few partially written posts for this blog, an idea for my next one and ton of updates I should do to the affiliate sites which are paying the bills during my hopefully brief spell of unemployment.

Today the Internet was switched on in the flat, so I guess this is a a mini-congratulatory post, normal life can resume again and early signs suggest Auckland is going to be a really fun city to live in. Yay.

Well nothing in a long time. I was going to kickstart the Fletchycorp blog as my new personal blog, but why give birth to a new baby when I’ve got a neglected and resentful toddler sitting right here. Especially as Tjunction is flying right now, with exclusive deals and codes coming out of its ears the tshirt angle is sort of covered, well as much as I want to write about it anyway. So out with the t-shirts, in with the………………….not really sure yet, more general musings, business stuff, travel updates, attempted humour, maybe some t-shirt industry stuff, lets see how it goes.

Greetings from Vietnam!

Jana tagged me a few weeks back, I’ve been scouring the anecdotal quarter of my brain, usually only accessible at parties, after alcohol, in the company of pretty women. It’s not been easy, but here we go, mine are a little longer than most, once I start writing I have a difficulty stopping:

I’ve been in Berlin the past two days attending web2.0expo. To be honest I expect the conference to be bad. Lets get rid of any hint of balance or prejudice out the window now. I was biased, I expected it to suck. It did suck. Any conference that used the words “web 2.0″ in its title is going to suck. The dog is dead, please stop trying to flog it (I hope thats also a US American expression).Web2.0 was the changing mindset from customer to partner. It was intrinsically tying the success of your company to the success of your customers. All old ideas, but amongst a sea of new possibilities made possible by the internet. It was never “web2.0″ just “web done right”.

Whats web3.0?
Well personally I think web3.0 is about access. The platforms are built, accessing them is the next step. Web3.0 is the mobile web, finishing and building ubiquity amongst an ever connected grid of technology. When that’s done there will be no “offline” in the conventional sense. At least no mandatory downtime.

Whenever I attend tech conferences I’m reminded of two things:

1. The story of “the emperors new clothes”. The brilliance of that story lies in its ending metaphor everyones had the experience of looking down and realizing they’re naked, exposed,the game is up. Usually unless earlier in the story is a drunken stag do in Amsterdam or something similar its metaphorical nakeness, of the mental or social type. Shit I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ve talked myself into a corner that I can’t get out of, something like that.

Whats Spreadshirts role in this?
Well we’re clothing the emperor. He’ll might still be mentally naked, but at least physically he’ll keep a little mystery

2. Monty Python.
At web2.0 conferences everyone is the messiah. Or telling your their the messiah. Or is looking for the messiah. The guy at the front on the stage? He must be the messiah right? 10mins in to every talk you realize there are no messiahs. Just people who stopped talking, started doing and then got invited to start talking about how they stopped talking and started doing. “Only the messiah would say they’re not the messiah”. Poignant advice.

I did get to see Cory Doctorow yesterday. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been a big fan of his, but actually he was the best thing at the conference. I don’t share so many of his concerns about the future but I was amazed how knowledgeable, well researched and passionate he is about topics of copyright.

I’ll leave Spreadshirt at Christmas and spend the next five months in SE Asia having a break from what has been a brilliant, educational and exhausting year. I’m not sure what will become of HiphipUK, its been dying slowly for six months maybe I can shift it to a simpler and easier format to update while I’m traveling.

Yes! Someone else hates the AA ads as much as me. The genius’ at the Onion wrote a nice piece about the liberation of 14 AA models.

“Acting on information gathered from billboards, alternative weeklies, and Internet banner ads, an FBI strike team liberated 14 dazed, sallow, and undernourished American Apparel models in a raid on the controversial organization’s downtown Los Angeles compound early Monday.”

Epic

Read it here

Thanks to Fantastic Bonanza for the tip

One of my favourite tshirt sites Headline Shirts also has a nice biting satire of AA as their intro here