Lee Stacey - Musician / Geek / Thinker / Blogger
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April 21, 2010

Dear Neighbour - A Letter I May Not Bother To Send

Dear Mr. Bang,

I'm sorry, I don't know your actual name but as your only means of communication with me is of a percussive nature, until you learn to articulate yourself in a more evolved manner (step it up to a grunt, perhaps?) "Mr. Bang" it is.

In fact the aforementioned banging is exactly the reason I'm writing to you.  It appears that you seem to want to communicate with me when I practice my baritone horn.  I don't know if you've noticed but this is not a good time for me and I'm sad to say that I don't actually understand whatever it is you are trying to say.  If you're capable of speaking English, perhaps we should have a chat sometime.  I'll bring my drum if it helps break down the language barrier.

With regards to my practice time, Please allow me to point a few things out.  I'll try to keep it as simple as possible for you.  I'm a baritone player in a marching band.  Being part of a band means I have to maintain a decent standard of musicianship.  This requires daily practice.  Playing brass instruments requires that you have a decent amount of warm up time or you will suffer in performance and possibly even damage the muscles used in playing the instrument.  It's like any kind of exercise, warm up, do your thing, warm down.  In short this means that I need to practice for at least an hour a day and as I work for a living and don't get home until around 8PM I have two choices:  Start practice at 4.30AM before I leave for work or practice when I get home.  In the interest of being neighbourly I take the latter option and try to stick to the minimum amount of time I can get away with, always aiming to be wrapped up and done by 9PM or 9.30PM at the very latest.  With that, I also try to play as quietly as possible for as long as possible but bear in mind that I do need to practice dynamics too so it's going to get a bit louder at times but because I'm a nice guy I try to stay below mezzo forte.

You should also know that the banging is not really helping your case, whatever that may be as I find it irritating.  If you continue trying to communicate in this manner I may start to become a little less considerate with regards to how long, how loud, how often and at what times I practice.  I'm always happy to do more and until you find the cognitive capacity to use words and construct sentences like most modern, evolved human beings, how on earth am I supposed to know what you're trying to say?  For all I know you might just want to borrow a cup of sugar or a club to hunt wild animals.  In case it is the club you're after, I don't have one.  My food comes from supermarkets.

If you find my practicing a problem and for whatever reason can't work out to communicate like a human being, you should make a note of when it is happening, what it is and how often (I suggest keeping a log) and report it to the Mid Sussex District Council Environmental Health Department.  You can find details of how to do this at the following web address:
http://local.direct.gov.uk/LDGRedirect/index.jsp?LGSL=412&LGIL=0&ServiceName=Report+a+noise+nuisance

Good luck with that.

Yours Sincerely

Lee A. Stacey


p.s.  The banging isn't working so save your energy and give up.

p.p.s.  I'm already doing the bare minimum I can get away with so if it annoys you that much you had best go and find somewhere else to live.

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Filed under  //   baritone   brass   bugle   environmental health   horn   instrument   mid sussex district council   music   noise   noisy neigbour   nuisance   practice   statutory  

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November 30, 2009

How To Get Retweeted

One of the best ways to improve your reach these days is by way of a retweet but with so much social media noise and so little meaningful signal, how do you make that happen?

Make It Interesting

Nobody is going to retweet a post about you doing the ironing because that's just not interesting.  Not that it's a bad thing to tweet about the mundane things in life, it isn't because the mundane things in life help your followers relate to you on a personal level but it's just not going to wow anyone.  However, if you can turn that tweet into something funny or interesting (with a creative mind anything is possible) people might feel like passing it on.  If one person passes it on there's a good chance others will.

People Like Funny

Funny is good.  If you find something funny, people like you will probably find it funny too.  If you're not just a follow whore it's likely that a good percentage of your followers are into the kind of things you're into.  People also like seeing other people make fools of themselves so if you do something really silly and tell other people about it, it's a win!  Tweet something that makes you look like a complete idiot, if it's crazy enough it will fly.

Newness Is Goodness

Breaking news is always good.  If you can give people compelling or interesting news before anyone else does, your value to them will be enormous.  Again, if it interests you it will interest people like you so throw that stuff out there!  This isn't always easy because there's a chance that those people like yourselves will get that news pretty quick anyway so you've really got to have a good nose for these things and the ability to think and react quickly.

Retweet A Retweet

Something that has already been retweeted is probably good to retweet.  If it's been retweeted already that means someone has already found it interesting.  Also, if a tweet has "RT" in it twice, the eye of the reader is instantly drawn because it MUST be interesting.  Those two letters "RT" are like a knife that cuts through the social media noise.

Make It Easy

If your tweet is 140 characters in length it will need to be edited down in order to be retweeted.  This means that the retweet will either look a complete mess made up of horrid nuspk abbreviations or it just won't be retweeted because the retweetist can't be bothered to edit before sending.  As a general rule of thumb I always make sure I leave 20 characters free on every tweet I think is worthy of a retweet.

Please RT

If something is genuinely for the greater good then don't be afraid to put "(Please RT)" at the end of your tweet.  Of course, if it's just self promotion or you're selling something it won't work and may even annoy people... Especially if you do it all the time!  When used wisely and carefully this is a useful tool.

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Filed under  //   funny   interesting   noise   reach   retweet   retweeting   retweetist   signal   social media   tweet   twitter  

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