post a commentI just got this with some of my christmas money. It is extremely shiny and nice:
Archive for January, 2005
Another brilliant t-shirt idea from skinnycorp (the people being threadless). Anyone can submit ’slogans’ which they think would look good on a t-shirt. Then, other users can say whether they would wear them or not. The best ones will then get printed up and the user who submitted the slogan gets $100 and $100 to spend in their store.
Check it out: www.omgclothing.com
Really nice customisable hoodies, tees and lots, lots more:
They’re even more affordable for us Brits at the minute with the weak dollar 
This is geting nuts, it’s made the Scotsman and the Guardian! Joe explains more here.
Also, I started a page collecting together all the publicity.
After talking to Jed (our local friendly lawyer) I figure I should make my position clearer on the whole Joe firing issue. I understand that what Joe did was most likely in breach of his contract and can easily be called Gross Misconduct. It’s just I expected a company such as Waterstones, that sells books, to have a slightly more open-minded approach to this whole thing. A minor reprimand would have been a more apropriate response in my opinion.
Also, stop the presses, Joe has made the front page of boingboing. They’ve quoted a bit of his post where he talks about me, I wish I’d gotten on to boingboing under better circumstances.
I left Waterstones over 6 months ago now and it was basically going downhill when I started about two years ago. Higher levels of management were imposing more HMV-like directives down through the structure and it was all getting very ‘un-bookshoppy’ in my opinion. But hey! I’m glad I don’t work there now because my fellow mate/blogging/geek Joe Gordon has been fired for blogging about working there. OK, he made some small criticisms about the management style but nothing that would warrant a full dismissal. Apparently it was ‘gross misconduct’ and ‘brought the company into disrepute’.
I really do feel for Joe, he certainly brightened the place up when I was there. But he was so frustrated with some aspects of the business that were being imposed. He had to vent somewhere and his blog turned out to be an ideal outlet. His venting was not a frequent thing, after all his blog is based around his satirical magazine, it’s not just a personal blog.
After I stopped working in waterstones I realised how crap it is. I only ever go in there now to talk to people I worked with and get the latest goss. Shops like Blackwells or Ottakars just have more soul. Waterstones is just like a shell that has books and I till in it. OK, this may be a little all-encompassing. There are some renegade branches out there, or ones that have enough clought to get away with stuff (like Manchester Deansgate) but Edinburgh - East End just seems cold. Anyway, I buy most of my books online now from amazon or second stuff from the nice wee shops in Edinburgh.
Joe also seems to have lots of other support on the internet: here, here, here and here.
Threadless, amazing t-shirt suppliers and one of my many money-spending weaknesses have had a re-design. Must resist…
No, I haven’t been honoured. But, Peter Molyneux has been. Molyneux seems to have been around for ever and constantly has amazingly original game ideas. I never really got into Populous back in the day but I did love the Syndicate series and many other Bullfrog games like Theme Park and Theme Hospital. It’s good to see the UK gaming industry getting some recognition at last.