Fun Wordplay

This is an intriguing little web app. It's called wordoid and was developed by one Oleg Podolsky. Not being a technophile, I can only do my best to explain it as being a naming app, best used if you want to devise a URL which stands out a bit. Apparently it's difficult to come up with a good domain name (what sort of a name is 'the Puumaja Crew' after all?!?) which can really make or break a start up, but this app can help you. You type in a word, and it comes up with a load of permutations using that word in 'natural', 'almost natural' and 'hardly natural' modes. You can also limit the number of letters in the name (obviously domain names don't want to be too long; wordoid won't let you go beyond 15 or below 5) and devise names in a few languages other than English (sadly Estonian isn't included here!).

For example, when we entered "Kentigern", after our beloved BFK in the natural sounding mode, with a limit of 12 letters, we got names like "kentigernoon", "kentigerness" and "kentigerned", we're sure he loves that. Do the same in hardly natural yields such shibboleths as "kentigernal" and "crokentigern". Doing the same but in German threw up "sickentigern", which is what BFK will be if Lotus don't recreate former glories in the new F1 season, and "kentigernauf"..  etc. Try it!

How to Pronouce Seth's Name Finally Revealed

Since I started posting regurgitations of my big brother Seth Godin's blog here at the P'maja Crew we've been agonizing, or at least thinking, about the correct pronunciation of his name. Well, here he is now to clear everything up. Those émigrés..tchah.
 
And a worthwhile quote 'Just because it's important to YOU that I see your press release [or blog!] doesn't mean it's important to me. And even though it costs you nothing to send to me, doesn't mean you have the right to do so". Hear, hear, as they say in the House of Lords.

BFK's Dream

Benedict Francis-Kentigern, or BFK as we know him, is an affable motoring journalist of the old school. Dropping out of some big public school somewhere in England to pursue his passion pretending to race cars, he's acquired such an array of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, arran sweaters and empty travel sweet tins, that you can't help but ignore him. Look forward to BFK's "weekly" reports on motoring, cars, and what drives the people that drive them, in his section to be found somewhere on the site.

Today BFK asked us to post this grainy and jerky picture he managed to take, somewhere in Tallinn,  of one of his fave machines of the moment, an Aston Martin DBS! Nevertheless it's the first pic we've ever posted here! So here it is...

Providence Doesn't Want Futile Things Glorified..

..good old you tube. Managed to find an old favourite, the Name of the Rose made over 20 years ago with Sean Connery, whose career I think was at a bit of a nadir at the time (and seeing him playing a celibate monk makes for worthwhile viewing) and a very young Christian Slater.

Needless to say it didn't make a splash in the States, but its international cast, including a German, a Latvian, even Feodor Chaliapin Junior (not to be confused with Feodor Chaliapin Senior) as the venerable Jorge, its extremely evocative music, climactic finish and the fact that it's not nearly so subtly meaning-riddled as the book, makes it something in a category by itself. Seem to remember as an undergraduate studying medieval Europe as part of my History BA that I was excited to find that two of the characters, Ubertino de Casale and the inquisitor, Bernardo Gui, were actually real people.

Forget the Oscars if this didn't win one. You foolish boy Adso, try thinking with your head and not your heart..

Noone Is Really Cool...

...I'm happy to say. The whole thing's just a front. If you're a member of a highly successful band, sooner or later you're going to end up releasing a 'greatest hits' album; fashion designers get old and ugly in the end, and writers get misinterpreted by legions of clones who like to hold up one of their efforts whilst on public transport or

I once worked with the former manager of a band who made it very big in the UK and worldwide in the late 70s and early 80s, and he used to eat his lunch with a napkin tucked into his collar so there was this kind of white triangle hanging over the front of his shirt, like people did in Edwardian times or something. He was a former Lloyds' name and didn't he just know it. I was not impressed.

In the final go round, being cool is incredibly hard work, one slip, one overheard conversation about train times, prices or whose turn it is to feed the cat and your cover's blown. And not even stupid people can maintain that indefinitely.

The only way round this is to die young, then you might just make it, but a fat lot of use it's going to be to you

So wear your horizontally striped jersey, red corduroy shirt or fleece top with pride, and take some comfort in the fact that your life is not a lie.

Thought For the Day - With the Rabbi Anders Weiss

 ..religious leader, psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

 Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

 

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search For Meaning.

 

 

The Genius From Dunfermline

The Puumaja Crew is today feeling reassured that it's ok to like Andrew Carnegie, the emigre Scot who effectively WAS the US steel industry there for a good while and was the second richest man in history according to some reports (Rockefeller was the richest). The moderator's mother had in fact told him that he was 'horrible to his workers' without elaborating.

The seal of approval comes from our older brother Seth Godin who tells us today that Carnegie realised the value of people over infrastructure, capital, process, culture etc. something that in our experience has been lacking in every place we've worked, big or small. And we guess, unless your name's Rockefeller you're not in much of a position to question that!

How to do Cover Versions Properly

..in our view is to add something more. Slavishly following the original as seems to be the norm nowadays doesn't really add anything new. We have many favourites, some of the Byrds' Dylan covers spring to mind, Cream's 'I'm So Glad' (originally by one of the delta blues greats Skip James)  or the Sex Pistols' genuinely novel and rather good treatment of the Who's 'Substitute'. But the the latter almost win the award for sheer added value, with the admittedly already great song 'Young Man Blues' by one Mose Allison, who was about 40 when he wrote it, as Pete Townshend slightly sneeringly (and now very ironically) mentioned on the remastered Live at Leeds album. This is from that era, at the Isle of Wight festival. The real winner in our view isn't really a cover; just take a middle of the road French hit from the mid 80s, change the lyrics (and the language) and add in a cool sound (and Sarah Cracknell) and you're away...