Recommended, very strongly, by a friend who couldn’t believe that I hadn’t read them, this is easily the longest story I’ve ever read. Honestly, it’s a little too self aware and pompous in parts (with King introducing himself as a pivotal character for example) and some of the vocabulary that the author has devised for this story grating at times – but there are long passages that are truly engaging and brilliant. And, although I’ve yet to read the just-published interlude, that sits between books four and five, as with the best books, the pleasure at having finished is inevitably followed by a sense of loss.

Roland, The Rose & The Dark Tower

To be honest, given the size of the thing, that has really surprised me – I found book six and the early passage of book seven heavy going, possibly just because I had fatigue with the series. But as the Gunslinger character draws towards the end of his journey to the center of all things, the last book markedly improves. The text remains dense but, possibly spurred on by the end being in sight, the final 700 page book (that could have taken six months to read alone in other circumstances) whipped past pretty quickly in the end.

I wont spoil the plot for anyone that has either yet to read it or yet to finish but suffice to say that the build up of suspense did suggest itself as the point of the series, rather than it being the conclusion.

I think the most impressive element of the achievement is not that these books manage to unify characters, places and actions from many of Stephen King’s many other works – but that he wrote the seven books over a 34 year span, beginning when he was a teenager. Hence, in preludes, afterwords and other articles, he really refers to the characters and storyline as entities that he’s lived with for a huge proportion of his life – and as though they genuinely exist outside of the author’s imagination and writing.

With apparently 40m copies sold across 30 countries, quite a bit has been written about these books – from Stephen King considering rewriting them all, possibly removing himself (suggesting his unease at this device), to the ongoing saga of filming the unfilmable and the interconnectivity of many references in these and other King books. There’s also a Discordia game based on the official Dark Tower site.

The best news for me is that I can now turn to the comics – written by Peter David and drawn by Jae Lee – which I have held off doing to avoid plot elements of the novels until now.

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) is a great organisation; an “environmental campaign group with a mission to rid the UK coastline of Sewage”.

In doing some research about the Bestival line up later this year, I found this video of Ben Howard’s “The Wolves” overlaid against some amazing footage of surfers riding UK barrels, as a promo for SAS. Admittedly it’s a lot less showy than the big American/Indonesian/Pacific Island breaks that are typically associated with barrel riding – but, for the UK, these are some great waves. I love the track too, which complements it perfectly.

I must have watched this video about six times already since stumbling across it…

UPDATE – Just seen this too: Garrett McNamara has just been recognised as having ridden the biggest wave ever seen on film (78ft), last November, in Nazare, Portugal, from a tow-in. On first watching, my heart was in my mouth when the whitewater hits him.

I just stumbled across his new DJ Kicks album this weekend – even though it’s off piste in comparison to all of his previous work that I’m more familiar with – from tracks on the first 6 EPs such as Water Margin or the later Hidden Camera and Modus Operandi - and indicative of his move into the world of DubStep, it’s striking for a long time fan to see how he’s blended his approach to intricate D&B into this new genre.

The album is well worth checking out – his exclusive tracks Levitation and Fountainhead are two of several high points for me. Full tracklisting here (along with an article explaining some of the reasons for his change in direction) and there’s a great interview with him, featuring a top story about how he managed to chance his way through every DJ’s worst nightmare…

NB – you can buy it on Amazon UK, iTunes or directly from DJ Kicks publisher K7. Or you can listen on Spotify.

Like many people, I have a love/hate relationship with email – I tend to get anywhere from a couple of hundred to up to five hundred or more mails per day on a heavy day. However, for me it remains a terrific tool for being able to delegate quickly, cutting out the need for superfluous meetings and providing a mechanism for tracking back to see the evolution of a conversation. Clearly CRM systems can handle that aspect of use, but then it’s the ease of access, whether by phone, webmail or desktop on many devices that makes email remain so attractive.

I’ve tried various routes to keeping it in check – having had my work and personal lives completely entangled for the last nine years, I made what was a fairly big step for me recently, to set up my first personal email account that I actually intended to use with family and friends. This enables me to keep a little space between work and home, particularly whilst on holidays. Whilst that’s great on holiday, enabling me to turn off work more fully than I could previously, the rest of the time, it just adds to the management burden of coping with email.

When someone leaves Punch, I tend to redirect their email to me, so not only do I get the benefit of my junk, I also get theirs. And over the course of time, that’s now quite a few email addresses. So, over Easter I snapped, and took the time to unsubscribe from every incoming mailer, newsletter and list-based mail that I was getting. It took a good deal of effort – and, one month later, I’m probably still only 80%/90% done – but I’ve managed to cut down the amount of incoming junk each night from upwards of 50+ junk mails to 5 or less. I also get less during each day of course. In short, I think I’ve cut down my incoming mail volume by at least a third – and perhaps by as much as a half.

The reason I’m bothering to share this is to convey how much better email is after a good clean up. Whilst it only takes a few seconds to register and delete each spam item, the effect that the clutter has in terms of preventing clear thought and concentration is massive. And that’s even with a decent spam filter in place.

In short, it’s no longer so necessary for me to cut out the superfluous to be able to identify the important – which means the whole process is less taxing. So, next time you’re having a physical desk clear out to clear up your physical workspace, I urge you to think about spending a bit of time doing the same to your email. A few days of effort can make a massive difference.

(NB – On this subject – here’s a post about TechCrunch’s MG Siegler and his attempts to give up email for a month).

I’m not quite sure why this is. Stewart Lee made a fair point about over-sanitised comedy being responsible for influencing how we laugh – and to an extent I agree with him. He had a go at Michael McIntyre, Live at the Apollo and Mock the Week specifically. I can see his point – but as someone who is unashamedly anti-establishment, there is a distinct risk of it sounding like sour grapes.

I have seen him several times before and have always liked him, so perhaps it was an off day. Or, even more likely, perhaps it was just me.

However I think the trick of playing parts of the audience off against each other and continually barracking the audience, as though they are from a strange, abnormal sect is, whilst superficially clever, obvious and overdone. In fact, Jason Byrne and Dylan Moran both did the exact same thing.

Stewart Lee’s patter about him preferring gigs when he was less popular and when people ‘didn’t bring their mates’ is apparently intended to be bulletproof – as anyone that criticises him simply can’t be correct for the self evident reasons that he states. The one problem is that, unfortunately, it just wasn’t funny. He insisted that if you didn’t like him you probably just didn’t get it, as though his humour was exclusively for a select group of initiates. I think that’s a fairly suspect line of logic personally.

So, it all seemed a bit dated to me, to be honest, which is perhaps the problem. Either I’m getting jaded or some well regarded comics are not developing with – or ahead of – their audience.

So, I have to say, whilst it’s always good to spend a Saturday night at a live event and I’d do so over watching something at home, it just didn’t do it for me.

NB – In the spirit of fair mindedness, two of my colleagues were at the same event and both loved it. As I say, there’s a distinct possibility that I’m the odd one out here…

Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by the games that I’ve played in the last year – Deus Ex, Modern Warfare 2 & 3, Black Ops, Assassin’s Creed etc – but I think the controls are awful, the camera is jerky and very difficult to read and the cut scenes way too long. It took 25 minutes of ‘story’ before the game even begins. Effectively, this cut down the time that I had to play something by nearly half.

I did wonder whether it was just me, so I’ve had a look at Amazon and am amazed to see that the reviews are all 4 and 5 stars. Obviously I’m missing something here as I know that people are treat the franchise with a huge amount of respect.

I have written here before about how much the games industry has evolved over the last decade – since the tail end of my last real affair with gaming. To me, there is a huge difference between the sophistication of how a title like MW2 strikes a balance between gameplay and narrative, versus the way this title treats story as much more important than the gaming experience (or indeed the gamer).

If only the development team had spent a bit more time on sorting out the control system and camera angle management and less about the definition of pixels in the port and the inane characterisation.

All things considered, I think that’s one of the most disappointing first 60 minutes I’ve ever had on a game.

I’ve just finished book 7 of The Walking Dead and, at a friend’s recommendation – see below- I’ve bought the first books of Y, The Last Man & Chew to take a look at next.

I’m also going to have a crack at 100 Bullets, The Unwritten, Locke & Key and bash on with the Sandman when I get a few minutes (it’s taking me forever to finish the Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels – although just starting book six, the penultimate one, now).

So, I’m wide open to decent recommendations.

Failing that, I may have to finally unwrap Skate 3, Battlefield and Deus Ex on the Xbox this weekend.

Right, back to thinning out my inbox…

It was a really strange experience – and whilst it seems that some aspects of the comics industry have changed a great deal in the last few years (i.e. city centre stores, such as Forbidden Planet now only focus on current issues, not back issues. Amazon sells graphic novels cheapest, thereby commoditising everything etc) some things just haven’t changed at all.

There were only seven or eight stalls there, some fairly large, some very small. I went really for a bit of a memory trip, to have a root around and see if there was anything that I fancied buying in sequence.

Whilst there were some of the new titles from Marvel and DC, the vast majority of all stock on show – certainly more than 50% and perhaps more than 70% – seemed to date back before I last attended one of these events. Whilst a certain type of comic enthusiast does go for silver age comics from the 60s, my own interest is just in anything remotely decent, irrespective of style.

So, having spent 20 minutes realising that there wasn’t a huge amount just waiting to be discovered, I thought I’d ask one of the guys who undoubtedly knew more than me about what had been going on for the last few decades. Effectively, I was looking for comics such as those mentioned here – from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to Cerebus, or even decent Batman story arcs.

There was actually very little on show. There was just one recent Walking Dead issue and a couple of broken sequences for things that I may have fancied – such as Alan Moore’s Necronomicon, which is only available in trade paperback with The Courtyard, which I already have and a couple of issues from various Dark Tower arcs, with amazing art by Jae Lee.

Eventually, I just bought two sets – a full run of 1602, primarily because it was written by Neil Gaiman, and Pigeon’s From Hell by Dark Horse. So, a bit underwhelmed really.

So, back to Plan A then – which is to pick up trade paperbacks of titles such as Walking Dead, The Boys, Preacher etc as and when. There were a few of the aforementioned Alan Moore Swamp Thing books, but as hardback, UK reprints – and for some reason I just can’t bring myself to treat them quite like comics as they feel like they belong in the same category as Christmas annuals and just haven’t been presented with the care that they deserve. Sandman is another case in point – I’m reading some of my old books, alongside a couple of new ones that I’ve purchased to plug the gaps – and the new ones are beautifully presented on decent paper and have been recoloured, which makes the old ones look very dated by comparison. A purist wouldn’t care but i have to say that it does affect my pleasure of reading them, much as I wish it didn’t.

So, no plans to go to another fair for at least 20 years or so.

and turned into the soundtrack for the day and also a book that they had always wanted to read and never quite managed to – which they then received at the event.

I am back to reading quite heavily again – I think I’ve read more this year than in the last four or so, now the kids are a little older than babies – so rather than a book for myself, I opted for a comic.

Having read comics pretty much all my life, including the tricky period as an adolescent when it’s deeply uncool and potentially even a matter of some derision, I have more than a few. In fact, if I’m honest, I probably have several thousand, ranging from old Hulk and Silver Surfer comics to more edgy titles, such as Pete Bagge’s Hate and Dan Clowes’ Eightball, through to less well known outside the comic hardcore, such as the amazing Cerebus.

Recently I cleared out my office and brought in a bunch of old graphic novels to create a comic library.

Whilst I’m pretty comfortable these days with the fact that I know my Plastic Forks from my Stray Toasters (both superb), I thought about a couple of big series that had passed me along the way. Of all of them, I can only think of two (that I know of) – the first, arguably career defining, work by Alan Moore on Swamp Thing. Also, although I have a couple of the graphic novels and have this year read both Neverwhere and American Gods novels, I’ve never managed to read Neil Gaiman’s much acclaimed Sandman from beginning to end.

So, the book that I’ve always meant to read but never have was ‘Preludes & Nocturnes’, the first book of the Sandman series. I have books two and three, along with five and ten – and think I’ve only read books 2 (Dolls House), as I understood it to be something of a stand alone. So, in the last few days I’ve finally managed to read book one. It’s a little weird – I sort of wish Sam Keith had made it as artist beyond issue 3 as I’m a big fan of his style and he would have given it a completely different feel but at the end of issue 8, I found that it had won me over. So, I’m now going to revisit Dolls House, then read Dream Country and I have this morning picked up Season of Mists (book 4).

I have the small matter of Christmas and a re-read of the first eight Walking Dead graphic novels to get through first – but then I’m going to revisit Alan Moore’s Miracleman, which I have in original comic form somewhere up to about issue 25, and then see if I can track down the Moore/Bisette Swamp Thing books in the new year, which are currently a little scarce

Whatever the case, as I sit in my newly tidied office, with kids pictures, old surf photos and now a wall of comics ranging from Joe Sacco’s works to Garth Ennis’ Preacher staring me in the face, I have to say that I’m pretty happy to be able to quickly rediscover some of these old comics when I have a spare moment, rather than have them all locked away in boxes somewhere.

Inside work is one thing – although it’s certainly debatable as to whether being super reactive and responsive, which is a trait that I value greatly and I’m told has been something that those that work with us also view as a significant benefit, is sometimes at the expense of greater mental clarity. That’s a balance which is hard to strike and something that I continue to work on. However, I’ve now come the the conclusion, which I’m sure is obvious to the rest of the world, that the battle with the inbox can never be entirely won. OK “battle” might not be the right term, as it implies divisiveness and clearly many of us, myself very much included, would now be lost without email (although this was an interesting experiment by MG Siegler). I’m really referring to the fact that part of my training was that the working day is never done until there is at least white space in the inbox – and preferably that everything needing attention has been actioned.

I’ve written about this subject before. I think that there are two types of users and there is just a few years between them. Those on the slightly older side of the divide have had the above ethos beaten into them through years of doing so. Those a little younger, that have grown up with first Hotmail and then Gmail offering seemingly endless supply of storage, don’t ‘action and delete or archive’, they ‘action and leave it there’ in case they need it later. Clearly this is a broad generalisation but I find it to be true again and again. Those that ‘action and delete’ really only delete from the inbox as they tend to keep important info in some type of folder structure, whereas the second group are more comfortable keeping everything in an amorphous, ever growing, inbox. This tends to govern how people feel about email – with the former group (myself included) needing to ‘be on top of email’ and the latter group being more accepting of the fact that they are merely swimming within the flow.

The realisation that the demands of my current role are such that I can never have a clear inbox at the end of the day have meant that I do feel like I’m continually wrestling with it. The more I do so, the more it eats into my life, both inside and outside work.

So, just prior to going on holiday a few weeks back, I made what will seem like a tiny change to most people but which was certainly a big one for me. Whilst I have several gmail and hotmail addresses, they are not used as personal mail – instead for purposes such as back up of other mail and to sync contacts with my android phone.

However, when moving this blog across to it’s new home at www.petegoold.com, I thought I’d take the opportunity to set up a personal email which I then gave to just immediate family and close friends. Not work.

Effectively this allowed me to turn off my work email to go on holiday yet still have email and the internet to hand, without fear of getting smashed with 500 work emails per day which would doubtless have resulted in me feeling the compulsion to action the important ones.

In short, this small change has meant a major separation between my personal and professional lives.

To be honest it has been a long time coming and it has been essential. The business has been developing whilst my kids have been growing up. I like to think that no one has suffered – quite the contrary, I think the decision to do what we have done was exactly the right one – but being able to choose when and whether to work, rather than it being a reflex action from the moment of waking to the last thing I do before turning the lights off at night and all points in-between, is where I want to be.

Inside work, nothing changes. A number of things have happened this year which have allowed me to reflect on what I love about what I do – and as a result I’ve realised that it’s the freedom and flexibility that is most important to me. If something major were to change in my professional life tomorrow, I’d still work as I do, simply because it’s the way I’m hard wired, so I have no problem with that. But it’s nice to finally feel that I have some power over it and I no longer need to go on holiday to switch off and recharge.