#0 Blog

We Know How To Breakfast

Lincoln University, for whatever reason, graduates it’s students in September. This week was spent in Lincoln with old friends, old haunts and old habits. It’s been more than a treat to return to the places I’d found and grown to love in the East Midlands. Amongst the hangovers and mid-morning coffees I had time to think and amidst the late-evening drinks and friends I was able to talk.

Some ideas have gained new momentum and new paths of research and development are being explored with some real potential. This next week will be spent researching similar projects and then pulling the successful parts of these existing projects and fusing them with what I have written down right here in my notebook.

Nice Blinds

It will be working to combine all the previous frustrations, motivations and hopes that so far have merited their own projects. It will cater for the needs of many that have yet to realise it, or have tried to fill these needs with sub-satisfactory means. I will keep you posted as the idea moves on in the hopes that good will come from it. Anyway, yes. I have graduated, I am now Matthew Harris BA (Hons)… I think that’s how it’s done. If it matters to anyone, I got a First and the award for ‘Best Digital Media Student 2011′. Which were nice for my ego.

Sunrise over Caister beach

Whatever ill I am suffering continues as my sleep pattern becomes ever more erratic.

Sleepless nights are filled with sun filled mornings; the beach is my home this week. My new found obsession with cooking continues and my family gets to wake up to the smell of blueberry pancakes and waffles twice.

Blueberry Waffles

A surreal half and half psychosis, I feel awash with sleight confusion as to what it is to be truly asleep and what it is to be awake.

Seemingly, some odd internal agent is depriving me of sleep, I am restless. Completely different to last week where I couldn’t get out of bed, now I find it difficult to stay still for more than half an hour.

The Last of the Great Summer BBQs

These new hours I’m spending half-awake are of course thankfully bringing more productivity. My literacy is better when I’m conscious. I’ve been reading some more guides, some more Terms and Conditions, information sheets, handouts, presentation notes, photographing, video editing and researching.

That’s right, I spent four paragraphs talking about myself and half a sentence talking about what #0 has been up to

But I am #0.

For now it is just me and if I stub my toe: the company stubs it’s toe.

6 Followers

The Most Highly Anticipated Documentary From #0 Ever

Each and every day I get more and more dedicated to this project. The more I read, the more I wonder what I wanted to do with my life and how best to really make use of what it is I know.

I see a large portion of the information I have learnt as having a shelf-life, it’s relevancy and value is decreasing as time surges on (in the Information Age time surges – trust me) so it’s wise to act sooner.

Next week I graduate.

It’s been a fast one. This week has gone by quicky but I put that down to being occupied – I find the weeks that go slow are not necessarily the best.

SUMMARY

1. Home-made office is constructed out of locally sourced materials including coffee from the kitchen and furniture from my bedroom and surrounding area.
2. Research and Development on the documentary is well under way with Matthew Morris being added to the project’s list of talent.

This week sees the first #0 Vlog in edit currently. A little mashed video diary and collection of experiences that I have recorded and remixed to give an impression of the month in a short video to be released soon.

I plan to keep these monthly, it instills an effective self-monitoring system and provides a great level of transparency and invites connection with those that come into contact with #0.

Home Office

Working From Home

When I was writing my dissertation at University, I spent some time reading Mark Deuze and about the blurring lines between work and life and working outside of the office. Yet I still find myself lusting for a space seperate to those in my family home.

Working from home is really splitting my attention and the demand for my time is conflicting with the time I want to give to the company. Environment has a strong effect on my psychology and as soon as the company is making enough money I would love to create a work environment specifically for the #0 initiatives.

Black Vodka - Clearing Out the Cupboards

Falling Ill

I don’t often get ill. More accurately I suppose: I don’t often acknowledge that I’m ill – I don’t realise it for what it is and just put it down to a poor night’s sleep.

Being ill when you constitute 100% of the company is not an effective business strategy. Can you imagine if the entire of facebook went down for a week because Zuckerburg was feeling under the weather?

Doing my work regardless of if I’m ill or not.

Autumn Season

The Documentary

Research and Development is under way now on #0′s first documentary, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. The nature of documentaries has always interested me and it will be great to bring my own skills and style to the field and put them to the test (for better or for worse).

Met with Matthew Morris this week via Skype and we’ve begun to put a plan of action together and have been sharing resources and ideas surrounding the subject of our investigation. Morris is my co-pilot in much of life after we met at University and shares a lot of the same ideas, interests and stlyes as I do and will be integral to the development of this project.

I’ve spent the week watching all of the documentaries I could get my hands on, mostly drawing from the top rated documentaries listed on IMDB.

Plenty of Research

Massively Depressing

I’ve watched over a dozen documentaries now, taking notes on what I believe makes them successful – comparing strengths and weaknesses and how these attributes can guide #0′s project. They are massively depressing. Every top rated documentary really pulls at the human emotions and it is very draining watching injustice after injustice.

I have many complaints about my time at University, but none larger than being instilled with Morals. After studying Philosophy in college for a year I was pretty much freed up of morals and was able to go through life as a functioning Nihlist. I would have done brilliantly in this Free Market Capitalist economy, unempathetic cold and machine-like I wouldn’t have had too much of a problem.

For whatever reason, I put it down to reading BOOKS (dangerous and evil things that are written on paper and kept in temples known as ‘libraries’) I now have some morals. Or what would appear to be some morals, though I’m not too sure about them. The documentaries would have perhaps been much easier to watch if these morals had been abscent… that’s all I’m saying.

In Conclusion

The Research and Development goes on as I continue to do all the paperwork to keep the company legal and operating and hope that soon enough we’re going to make some money. Thanks to the near to zero overhead however the only imperative is my need to eat.

My New Found Passion for Cooking Continues.

Friends and Travel

Taking the ‘well needed break’ that students are required to take after University, I’ve been visiting friends around the country.

BBQs are great.

Namely Hull and London (West and East – and either side of the riots) this uncharted and unplanned space after University is very odd indeed and leaves me equally excited and lost and by seeing the friends that had made University such a positive experience (and the ones that have made life brighter since) has been a great way to maximise the good and minimise the bad.

I suppose we can justify these excursions as ‘market research’, finding out what people are about nowadays and piloting some of my business ideas on their patience, but these justifications are whimsical. It might be wiser to count this as life experience and inspiration, for there is nothing but life to inspire.

1st World Problems

Coffee in Hull

This blog has become the vessel of self-monitoring, some mornings this week I’ve woke up all ready feeling the ‘business blues’ a slight ‘can’t be bothered rash’ that can’t be solved with coffee or a kind word. These made up and hardly punny diseases threaten to keep me from doing anything productive for months or just throwing the towel in.

However by having this blog to report to each week, regardless if anyone reads it, keeps me doing rather than not doing. It means I still film, write, photograph, make calls, make connections, make light, shave and wash. I’m not saying the blog is solely responsible for me doing those things, but it certainly helps and I recommend anyone in my position should keep some similar log of activities.

Business News

Elevator in Hull, I was feeling abstract.

Learnt some new lessons this week and saw some of the old business ‘battlefield’ that would see our new company as unarmed. But we’re not about direct competition, vindictive or otherwise but instead about the forwarding of our goal (as it currently stands) ‘To Raise the Standard of Living in the Information Age’, to realise the positive opportunities that are available to all that would otherwise be ignored or prohibited.

With that in mind then, competing against companies or freelancers is not only heavy on resources (time, money and morals) but also detrimental to the realisation of that goal.

This could be argued, but I think there is an important delineation to be made between competition for the sake of competition and the benefits of market competition; diversity, driving lower-costs and higher quality. In fact there’s far too much to go into here really isn’t there, and my opinion is not objective.

Will continue to learn.

New Projects

*Trumpet Noise*

I want to take this opportunity to announce the newest project that #0 will be realising.

A Documentary

In the name of instilling anticipation and excitement I will be releasing details over the weeks and engaging with anyone that wants to contribute. I can disclose that the documentary will act as a revealer – mapping out the environment that we live in and the function that #0 aims to operate within that environment.

Does that sound too ambiguous and complicated? Yes. It does. This is when projects go through a Research and Development stage to focus and refine their purpose and method. You will be kept posted.