EPICWIN. Finally an iPhone To Do list app that I think the Snook might actually use!

Crustgate
So yeah, yesterday that whole “Crustgate” thing happened.

Summary: Crust Pizza are a pizza chain with a highly-regarded social media strategy, including a Twitter account that gives pizzas away every Friday. Yesterday they tweeted: “Need a laugh? Hilarious compilation of female driver madness.” with a link to a YouTube video of women crashing into light poles and such. I didn’t see the original tweet, but I saw one of my friends responding to it. I was really surprised they did it; their brand appeals a lot to women. So I retweeted it myself, adding: “Sexism FAIL. Badly done, Crust.” A bunch of other people chimed in. By the end of the day, Crust had apologised and the social media experts started weighing in. Mumbrella had a story (which quoted my tweet amongst many others), as did the Amnesia Blog. As you might expect, the anti-PC brigade was out in full force defending the post as “funny” and branding the complainers as overly defensive whingers. This guy implied that only “social media experts” had issues with the tweet. I’ve just posted my thoughts on the subject over at Warlach’s World, which I’ll repeat here for posterity:

I tweeted about it fairly early on, just noting: “Sexism FAIL. Badly done, Crust.” I stand by that. No, I wasn’t offended. I’m not crying over it or anything. It’s the CONTEXT. I expect blonde jokes and bad women driver jokes in emails I get from my Grandpa. I also expect that type of thing on South Park. It doesn’t make me angry; it doesn’t get me worked up. I probably wouldn’t even have batted an eye if a brand like Dominos had sent the tweet out. But Crust’s brand, to me, doesn’t say larrikin. Their well-designed website; their social media presence; the weekly contest; their fancy pizzas… that’s all stuff that I associate with being at the higher-end of the market, with appealing to a female audience. (Every Friday, I’d estimate that 75% of the tweets I see entering their contest are from women.) So yeah, to me it struck a really wrong note and I couldn’t believe they’d made such a misstep.

That said, I’m totally happy with their response and the apology. That was well done. I just resent being lumped in as some sort of panties-in-a-wad “social media expert” (newsflash: I’m not) hyperventilating over political correctness… when in reality I was just a consumer going, “Huh, maybe this brand doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.”

HA! I don’t really like Jewel’s music that much, but this video makes me love her a little bit. She put on a disguise and went to karaoke and sang her own songs. It’s pretty cute. (I like pranks that don’t involve humiliating people.)

This is for my Mom: Patchwork Pattern Maker from the V&A Museum. You upload a photo and then it converts it to a quilt pattern. Really cool! (Link courtesy of not martha.)

The only thing better than “Guy amazed by double rainbow” is the DOUBLE RAINBOW SONG. (I especially like how they did the Pomplamoose thing of showing the performers at the end…)

Knitters Guild Meeting at Surry Hills Library
Saturday was the July meeting of the Inner City Group of the Knitters Guild. It was also our first meeting at our new venue: the Surry Hills Library and Community Centre. Our old meeting room at Customs House Library was just too small for the big crowds we’ve been getting at meetings. I was responsible for organising the move, and I was really worried that people would think it wasn’t worth the extra effort of going to Surry Hills. Luckily we still had 41 people at the meeting (with apologies from another 10!). Everyone seemed pretty thrilled with the space. It’s twice as big as our old room and absolutely filled with natural light. It has a separate kitchen with sinks and a long bench. We’re up on the 1st floor, so we don’t have to worry about annoying library patrons if we get rowdy. It’s really just the perfect space, and I’m so grateful to the City of Sydney for allowing us to use it! After the meeting, several of us stayed around to help with the “Learn to Knit” workshop that Miss Fee had organised. I taught a woman named Christine who claimed she’d never knitted in her life. (She was a natural though; I had her knitting and purling within 90 minutes!) There are photos from the meeting on the Guild site. Thanks to everyone who came along and helped with the move and the workshop!

The Language of a Marriage.

There’s a clichéd idea that what makes people stay in love is things like candlelight and flowers and sexy glances across crowded rooms. All that is lovely, and it helps. But so does our nerdy private language.

This. A million times. There’s only one person in the world I can say “This one.” and “Where’s the hat, Snookums?” and “Taikonaut!” and have him know exactly what I mean. That’s the best.