bookmark_borderShe's IN!

The UCAS website has been updated and my sister-in-law has gotten her place on her course!!!

It’s hard to put into words just how happy we are for her, she wanted this so badly and has been working so so hard. Tears of happiness all round!

bookmark_borderDusting


A minor blizzard of large soft snowflakes and the backgarden is rendered white.

Next Morning Update: It continued to snow overnight, easily twice this, probably more.

Posted in UncategorizedTagged

bookmark_borderKnit One

Imagine my surprise this morning when, upon tuning into BBC Breakfast, I was confronted with the site of people sitting at a table on London Bridge and they were knitting.

Cue “sound bite” from one of the artists (I use the term artist as presented in the piece):

“I like the political aspect of knitting, the feeling of taking things into one’s own hands.”

The political aspect of knitting? I bet democracies across the world felt a small tremor when he said that, dictators peered out of windows wondering why the crows were flocking over their palaces, and across the nation the sound of disbelief echoed through the streets – sounding just like people stifling laughs behind their cornflakes.

I did agree with his second point – that you could also see knitting as a backlash against commercialism – but the order in which he presented his “knitting beliefs” says more about him than I fear he realises.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of knitting – I’ve mentioned all that before though – but I’m not sure I see the appeal of knitting things like lampshades or handgrenades (via) or food (via).

However I do think everyone should have at least one hand knitted garment in their wardrobe. But having grown up with a constant stream of jumpers (in varying colours and designs) I guess I was kinda spoiled. It did stop Aunties giving me knitted jumpers though, always a blessing.

bookmark_borderZ List

This has been languishing in draft status for a while – given Jason Kottke’s recent news (see next post) I thought now was as good a time to post it as any.

I’ve been pondering, amongst other things, the recent Bloggies, and the whole “A list” bloggers thing.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll never join the upper echelons of the blogeratti, nor will I receive a Bloggies nomination because I’m not focussed. I waffle about too many things in too disjointed a fashion. Lack of consistency possibly (but you could never fault me for lack of content).

WHY am I pondering this?

Well, at this very point in time I have three rather lengthy posts in draft state. Two are centred round Information Design and the Web, and one is titled “Why we write”. I’ve been adding to and tweaking them for the past two weeks and they are getting to the stage where they could be published. But what then? Do I revert back to the usual miscellany or do I push on for greatness, honing my writing further, creating a unique(r) voice and becoming the site for.. er… ah problem.

What IS the focus of this site? Well obviously it’s me, but then again it ISN’T me as I don’t really talk about myself in that much detail, and I’m painfully aware that my life just isn’t that exciting, certainly not enough to warrant an entire website. I’m not the funniest writer, nor am I particularly insightful, so I’m left with a myriad of topics to deal with, and that’s not to mention the many grammar and typing errors which I’m prone to.

That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy posting this nonsense but I’m naturally competitive, and have a constant need for adoration (and money) so it piques me a little that I’m not “up there”.

I want fame and glamour, dammit. Who do I have to sleep with to get it!

But, as with most things in this life, I’m getting out what I put in. I’ve made some ‘friends’, met some people, and had the chance to help some others on the way. I’m slowly getting more involved in projects I enjoy and having spent a few days trawling my own archives it’s fairly obvious that the content here is both more frequent but (usually) better considered.

Recently I feel like I’ve been starting over, like the New Year is still influencing my thinking. It’s prompted a few changes, both in my approach to this site and my approach to others, and I think it will continue to do so. It’s a cyclic thing with me, and something I’ve mentioned before. Change and chaos seem to both excite me, forcing me to consider new options, new directions, and depress me, the fog descends again (don’t worry I’ve got a big shiny fan to blow it away with).

Either way, the funk seems to ebb and flow, but it’s providing great moments of lucidity at times, and at least these days I’ve learnt how to see through the fog.

So you A-listers, keep on doing what you are doing, and just remember one thing. WHY you are doing it.

bookmark_borderDay job

In what will no doubt be THE blog news of the week – Jason Kottke has quit his job and will be doing kottke.org as a full-time job.

I’m intrigued by this, particularly as he is calling for patrons to donate money to his venture. More thoughts on this later but for the meantime:

1. This isn’t viable for many bloggers, on the A-list who probably get the number of hits a day that I take a year to gather.
2. WHY should I donate? Is it really a noble experiment to see if it’ll work or has he finally lost his marbles?
3. Do I value his content enough to donate? I think this may be the biggest issue – if I am going to donate, am I getting value for money? He’s already stated that all his content will remain free, and he needs the support to get him through the year. What happens if he doesn’t make it?

Questions, questions. No doubt this one will divide opinion. Whaddya think?

UPDATE: MeFi is going at this pretty hard but as yet (the last comment posted when I read it was from megnut) no one seems to thinking about this from a financial point of view.

I’ve read Jason’s site for a long time, on and off, I’m no crony but I have enjoyed reading his site. Whether you do, or not, is of course your choice based on your personal opinion.

Now, I’m guessing that he has a good idea how many people visit his site every day, and I’m guessing this played a large part in his decision. He suggests a nominal $30 ‘donation’ (micropatronage if you will) and I’ll bet a pound to a penny that he has factored in a percentage of his visitors donating that amount.

After all, be it grand experiment or narcistic self-promotion, without the ability to pay the rent I doubt he would be trying this.

Anyway I’ve not donated, yet, but will give Jason some time and see what he comes up with. If I think it’s worth throwing a few bucks at, to show my appreciation, not through guilt or as forced payment, then I’ll do just that. Either way, it takes some balls to do something like this, a quick glance through that MeFi thread confirms the expected backlash. So from that point of view I wish him good luck.

This’ll be interesting to watch.

bookmark_borderWherefrom art thou?

Over the past month or so there have been several new people who have commented here, and I’m curious – How did you find my site?

Don’t worry it’s not mandatory but I’d love to find out. If you’re ‘new’ to this site, I’d really appreciate it if you left a comment telling me how you found my site. And that’s as in “where is it linked from” NOT “it was in a sorry state”… I know how you lot work!

Hey, let’s not limit things. To all my regular/longterm readers, do you remember how you ended up at my site? If so, let me know. Who knows, there might be some method behind all this madness.