• A brief lesson on the practicalities of the internet filtering/censoring for the Australian Government – So true it's funny User Friendly's take on the Oz goverment's filtering plans.
• Obama to shut down Guantanamo Bay – Obama has (already) announced that Guantanamo will be shut down and replaced with terrorism courts on US soil – with the related rights of presumption of innocense, fair trials etc. Well overdue, and a promising first step…
• Adopt a village – My friend Rhoda is involved in the "Little and LOUD" campaign which has been featured in this promotion on news.com.au – raising funds for a school in Fote Village, Solomon Islands.
• CoalFinger – Great piece of activist animation from Greenpeace

These links come from my del.icio.us feed.

Just a quick update on Arketype, given I’ve been quiet on that front of late around these parts. (For new blog readers – a bit of background here.)

Today I’m heading down to Rise Up to pick up our second fit sample – the dress shirt. The t-shirt fit sample was good, but we’re refining it further and that’s currently with the pattern maker.

I’ve been speaking to Sonny and Biddy at We Buy Your Kids (WBYK) about creating the designs for the initial range of tees. I’ve also been talking further with sustainable fashion designer Timo Rissanen about working together. So far our discussions and the ideas being generated have been very promising.

(As an aside, be sure to head down to Incu at The Galleries Victoria and check out WBYK’s instore displays – v. cool!)

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking on the business plan (especially in light the current economic climate) and have been doing some more market research. I’ve come to a point, though, where I could really use the help of someone with solid retail management experience involved in the project.

So if you happen to know someone (in Australia, pref. Sydney) who’s working in fashion retail as a manager (or store owner) – i.e. someone who has managed a store or perhaps is interested in starting their own fashion retail business, who has experience in the area and knowledge about volumes etc. – that you think might be interested in engaging on the project, please feel free to pass on my details or let me know.

This is a random little rant – feel free to pass it over if that’s not your thing..

I am one of those weirdos that takes his own mug to the coffee shop, to avoid the wastage of a paper cup.

A life-cycle analysis of a paper cup vs. a porcelain mug shows that, if the mug is used enough times, the carbon footprint is lower – so I use it as often as I can. I probably have used my mug for hundreds of coffees – and I intend to keep using it to maximise the use of the resources involved.

I’m consistently dumbfounded, though, when I turn up to a cafe with my trusty mug and one (or both) of two things happens:

• The barista takes a paper cup to put the espresso in, rather than a re-usable container. I’m bringing my mug to reduce wastage (why else would I do it?), then you go and waste the cup anyway.
• They then only half-fill the mug, or fill it and complain that it’s bigger than a normal cup. I’m saving you the $0.02 of the paper cup, you can afford to give me that $0.02 back with an extra 25-50ml of milk.

If either of these two things happen, I usually don’t go back. Even if the coffee’s good. It’s a basic attention to detail/service thing. Yes – I’m sure that I’m being picky, and probably unreasonable (there are, of course, bigger things in the world to get upset about).

But I’m sure there are lots of people like me that notice these things, and many cafes that are losing custom because of them. And many cafes get it – my favourite one charges less because I bring my own mug.

Which is a long way of saying that I won’t be returning to either of the cafes I went to today…

</rant>

• Obama-Wan Kenobi on Flickr – This has to be my new iPhone wallpaper…
• CIO – Hands off the Internet – CIO mag chimes in on the planned filter and creates a petition to support their efforts (site sign-up required)
• Barack Obama makes history by becoming the US's first black president-elect – Wow. Yay! That's the best way I can describe this news; the best news since, well, Howard getting ousted… I do hope that we see some significant change from his presidency.
• nvohk – nvohk claims to be "the first community-managed, eco-friendly, lifestyle clothing company". They have just launched their first range of t-shirts, based on American Apparel tees.
• Are Designers also Marketers? – Joshua Porter: "when designers are tasked with selling their product they make better products. When they are not tasked with selling their product they have less responsibility, and thus aren’t forced into getting feedback on what they’re making. It’s that feedback you get from selling, from your success/failure at marketing, which pushes back positively into the design process."

These links come from my del.icio.us feed.

• Adventures in connectedness – Twitter – Stephen Collins outlines the value of Twitter from his perspective as a social media consultant. I have to say his experience has been similar to mine…
• Subscribe and go in the draw for a free book! – Peter Brandis, a friend of mine (and sometimes a client too), is holding a competition to give away Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin, which you can win if you sign up to his (free) email newsletter.
• No Opera Mini for the iPhone – Yet another example of how the Apple iPhone App Store system is broken…
• Enkin: navigation reinvented – an interesting method of navigating map data in a 3-dimensional space.
• Australia’s top web 2.0 entrepreneurs – Saasu (makers of NetAccounts) gets a mention in Smart Company's top list. Awesome! Thanks to Marc for the mention too – v. unexpected!
• Message in-a-Box – Priscilla Brice-Weller (solidariti.com) says of this site: "contains information on using technology for social change, including photographs, video and mobile. The site is aimed at beginners to intermediates, but without a patronising tone " Looks like a great resource…
• Mobile Marketing: Bet on the iPhone – Proof positive for anyone that doubted the iPhone is the game-changer it's heralded to be – punching well above its weight in mobile data usage.
• Accountants critical to climate change response – "…an essential element in addressing climate change is how businesses allocate and manage their resources for the production of goods and services. Accountants are the managers of strategic business resources, and as such make crucial decisions on how and where these resources are allocated. In a setting where businesses have to be increasingly accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions and such emissions will have a cost, this role is crucial." I've long argued that the role of carbon management within a business will fall to the accounts department (thus suggesting accounting systems should embrace this as a new business opportunity). Kate Brent from CPA Australia bolsters the case.
• Greening the Apparel Supply Chain: Tapping the Power of Collective Leverage – An argument for opening up and sharing supply chain information for competitive advantage.
• Sustainable Innovation/Biomimicry & Innovation: Part 2 – John Bradford, VP of operations and R&D for Interface discusses why Interface started mimicking nature to design eco-friendly products, how to turn concepts into design and offers tips on product innovation through biomimicry.
• Repreve – Hopefully this is an option to replace the polyester yarn we're using to make our tees…

These links are automatically posted from my del.icio.us feed.

The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Quite amazing. Can’t help but think a film-clip done in this style would be mind blowing…

On Sunday and Monday we had the pleasure of working with Sean Carey to record 5 tracks for our next EP at GPHQ/gigpiglet.

We had an absolute blast, and managed to track all the instrumental parts for 5 tracks in under 2 full days in the studio (we even had a bit of time to experiment with some piano and glock parts).

I’ll be tracking vocals (and we’ll be doing a couple of minor guitar overdubs) with Sean in the coming weeks – so we’re not quite there yet. But given the results so far, I’m really looking forward to it!

Our time in the studio was as fun and productive as last time I worked with Sean – back when I was in a band called Glance with Barry and Dave (along with Toby who is also in Fuzu). Sean’s just getting back into recording after pretty much being on tour for the past few years – so if you are wanting to record we can thoroughly recommend him.

The studio had an awesome vibe too – and we’re really chuffed with the results. Gigpiglet founder Gareth has created an amazing place to record. The studio is climate neutral – part of gigpiglet’s sustainability policy – which is awesome, as we were unable to do that for the last EP. He’s also developed some great sustainable packaging that we’ll hopefully be using if we press CDs.

Anyways – hopefully we’ll be able to share the results before too long (we don’t intend to take as long this time ’round getting everything up and out). And if you’re in the market to do some recording, we can’t recommend highly enough both Sean and GPHQ – check ‘em out…

Update: Toby has posted some great pics of the session to Flickr.

A couple of other thoughts popped into my head after writing that last post.

In no particular order:

• I wonder if the lack of credit available is a result of foreign governments, such as China, basically decided to stop propping up the US spending spree? If so, this looks a lot like the scenario George Monbiot outlined in his book Age of Consent.
• Given that the market has decided that these loans are too risky, why on Earth does it make sense for the public to underwrite risky investments like this?
• I wonder if now is the time for the public (and US politicians) to get behind the Code of Corporate Citizenship – does this crisis open a window of opportunity to push this through?

I was chatting to Ang the other night about the economic crisis, and I can’t help but think this is just a big “reboot” – the market correcting itself after years of abuse.

And if you’re a true believer in market economics, now is the time you should be arguing that we need to let this happen, as it is “the way of the market”.

What’s interesting is that’s not what’s happening. Instead we’re seeing what amounts to the biggest nationalisation project the western world has seen in a long, long time. (As Wade says: “So the AU govn’t is assuring all credit. Now all these private companies are publically funded. Remind me again why privatization is good?”)

We need this correction – to stem the tide of greed that has flooded the economic system over the past few decades (in this sense I agree somewhat with what Marc says on the matter – it’s not just the CEOs and banks at fault).

I’m actually fairly liberal (note the small “l”) when it comes to markets. Testament is the fact I’m starting a business as my method of achieving social change. With that in mind I say let the market do what it does best – let it balance itself.

Maybe I’m naive, but I think that such a correction would see a blossoming of sustainable businesses to fill the voids left by the unsustainable ones that toppled the market. In “sustainable self reliance as David Ransom puts it [via Wade]). Perhaps that’s part of the “balancing” process – a recognition that business does not operate in a vacuum with infinite resources and growth.

Yes there will be significant fallout that will affect a lot of people – some who can afford to “ride it out” and others who can’t. But instead of investing billions in banks (essentially supporting those who can afford it) why not funnel those dollars into support mechanisms for the people that are most directly affected, in their day to day lives, by the crisis. i.e. the ones who will need assistance with their rent and food bills, not bolstering their spouse’s trust fund.

That could take the form of state-run services – which, after all, is what the state is meant to be for (to pick up the pieces where/when the market fails). But could mean many things – I suspect many of them better than propping up corrupt executives.

As most folks know, I’ve long railed against the Chinese government’s internet censorship regime, commonly referred to as the “Great Firewall of China”.

Seems that the fight is about to take off in earnest to stop Australia from introducing a similar scheme.

The Australian Government has announced that they will introduce filtering for all Australians. Ostensibly this is to stop child pornography, but don’t be fooled – this is not what it’s about. Crikey explains it well:

The Government is fond of yelling kiddie p-rn every time anyone disagrees with their censorship policies, but there’s always been a problem with that line: that content is already illegal, and the AFP works with international agencies to target that content at its source, and to target Australians who view it. The real problem with the censorship regime (besides the economic burdens it will cause) is the extent to which the Government wishes to control what Australians can view online, and its chilling effects on free speech.

What the Government has proposed is a blanket censorship regime with no “official” opt-out (these measures are likely easily circumventable using TOR or similar anonymous proxy services). The censorship extends to anything deemed “illegal”.

Need we be reminded of the sedition laws that are in force currently, a result of the alarmist response of the Howard regime to the London bombings. The following excerpt from Sedition Law in Australia published on the Arts Law website:

The classic definition of sedition is that it is a political crime that punishes certain communications critical of the established order. Sedition crimes have been enshrined in state and territory based Australian laws since before federation and inserted into the Commonwealth Crimes Act in 1920. Under the Commonwealth Act, seditious behaviour that intended to: (i) bring the government into hatred or contempt; (ii) excite disaffection against the government, constitution, UK parliament and Kings Dominions; and (iii) bring about change to those institutions unlawfully, was criminalised.

One reading of this suggests that content on this blog, and many others, could be considered “seditious”. Some may argue that this is absurd and that it would never happen.

Supposedly we’re meant to set aside the fact that the “absurdity” of other anti-terrorism laws being used for political purposes was also claimed. Need we mention Hanneef?

The fact is, there should not even be the possibility of free speech being curtailed in such a fashion.

Even if we concede (which I clearly don’t) that we need a filtering mechanism in place, the best place for this is in the home – in a decentralised manner, and by educating parents on how best to protect their kids. The choice is a parental one, not one for the state.

Update: just came across the No Clean Feed site that provides some actions (and a sample letter) if you oppose this legislation.