Month: April 2007

Fill your ears

Reading time: 4 mins

I picked up some new albums recently, and I’ll pause here to echo a comment I heard on the radio the other night as I can’t remember what the inside of a record store looks like, especially now I don’t work in the city centre and no longer have the evil geniuses at FOPP fleecing me on a weekly basis. I’m not even sure I’m bothered by this, although there is something satisfying about physically opening a CD, reading the sleevenotes, and extracting the disc from the spindle … but that’s a transistory pleasure at best, after the first few viewings, the cover art and sleeve notes are much of a muchness usually.

For a change, every single album I picked up is pretty damn good and as I’ve not done any review type posts here for AGES (mainly because the competition is of such a high standard) I thought I’d rattle through my thoughts on the following:

  • Amy Winehouse
  • Mark Ronson – Version
  • Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
  • Midlake – The Trials of Van Occupanther
  • Explosions in the Sky – All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

And no, I hadn’t planned to list them in order of increasing name and title. These things just happen.
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April 20, 2007

I'm like a bird

Reading time: 3 mins

But no, I’m not going to fly away… instead a quick update and a couple of questions.

Current Events
I considered posting more on the “Cho shootings” but really can’t be that bothered. I seem to have fallen into a “you made your bed, lie in it” frame of mind. Which isn’t really a good thing but there’s just too much else going on so I’ll skip it right now. Today’s headline is tomorrow’s … what IS the completion of that sentence? “tomorrow’s budgie cage liner?”

Scottish Blogs
Over on Scottish Blogs I’ve been caught out, big time. I recently asked for some volunteers to help me go through the entire directory and weed out the dead, moved and unwanted sites. I figured I’d get 3 or 4 people and it’d take us a couple of weeks to get through a few batches at a time.

10 people volunteered, and after sending out the first batch of 30 URLs to be checked at the weekend, some are already onto their second batch. I can’t keep up!!

It’s great though, and has the additional bonus of restoring my faith in humanity. The downside is that I’ll need to buy them all a drink at the next blogmeet (most are coming I think) and you know what they say about us Scots. Yup, that’s right, we DO have big hands.

Vrroooommm
The new car, which I’ve not mentioned for.. ohhhh.. DAYS now, is still motoring along very nicely. I’ve finally stopped trying to turn the key to start the ignition, and the automatic windscreen wipers have stopped freaking me out. The only niggles I have include a weird clunking from the rear suspension when I first reverse the car out of the drive (fairly common in most cars apparently but was a first for me) and the fact that the automatic lights go from OFF to DIPPED, rather than staging up from OFF to SIDELIGHTS to DIPPED. All minor annoyances though, I’m still loving the fact that people are looking at the car as it drives by, another unique experience!

The Running Man
Still running, and last night saw, finally, a good run. It wasn’t that fast, or that far, but I felt really good. I’ve not had that feeling for several weeks now so here’s hoping it continues. I’m about to book my place in the Balloch 10K in June so I have a firm goal as well. Onwards and upwards.

The “other” me
Work continues on my other blog and on the re-vamping of my “online presence”. At some point this blog will move to a new host, and possibly a sub-domain, or new domain itself. Yes I’ll lose some visitors, yes it’ll piss people off but I’ve considered all that and can live with the consequences. It’s quite exciting to be starting a new blog as well, especially as I’ve a much better idea of HOW do it this time around.

Questions
Finally, a couple of questions.

1. I’m looking for a bag that will hold a 13″ laptop. Something functional with additional pockets, without being too clunky, and it can’t be a “black laptop bag”. Something with some style, some verve and that won’t break the bank. I’m off to a conference in June and my current option is the bog standard (huge and ugly) DELL laptop briefcase thingy.

2. Anyone got any tips for digging out a bamboo? It’s been in for a couple of years and I cannot even get a spade or fork into the ground near it, completely solid. I’m thinking a heavy dose of water to loosen things and a pickaxe. Alternatives?

April 19, 2007

Where There's a Will

Reading time: 4 mins

After posting about my lack of willpower of the weekend, and receiving some useful and thought provoking comments (thanks!), I think I need to step back and see what else could possibly be the problem.

Or, indeed, if there is a problem at all.

I started jogging last summer, the inspiration for which came about at the end of a 10K race near where I grew up. We happened to turn up at Lomond Shores last June, only to find that it was the finishing line for the Polaroid Balloch 10K which was being marshalled by some local groups, one of which was the Boys Brigade. I bumped into one of the officers that I knew and got chatting in that “haven’t seen you for 10 years” abbreviated kind of way. I asked how long he’d been helping out with the race, and he said he’d been doing it a fair few years now and it was always fun to see ex-members of the Boys Brigade, he then suggested that I should be out there running it but “I guess you’d need to lose that spare tire, eh!”. It was a tongue-in-cheek comment and certainly not meant as an insult.

But boy, did it sting.

Like most fatties, I know that I’m overweight. I know WHY I’m overweight and I really don’t need reminded of it as I’m perfectly aware of the facts. Feeling uncomfortable in clothes, always wondering what other people think of you.. well it’s not the greatest way to live your life. I don’t worry about it all that much, to be honest, but jibes about my weight always hit home hard.

And so, two days later I found myself scanning the local free paper during some.. eh… private time (e.g.), when I stumbled across a small advert. It said that “JogScotland” was starting up soon and was open to everyone, of every level. It made specific mention of the fact that it would help you get from walking to jogging in ten weeks. In a rare act of spontaneity (I DO like to plan things), I phoned up, signed up and two weeks later I was standing about with a bunch of complete strangers. Most of whom were women.

My goal, even then, was simple.

I WILL run that 10K in June 2007.
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April 16, 2007

By the Power of Will

Reading time: 2 mins

Ack, damn attention deficit disorder. My brain has just skipped from the title of the post to a distant childhood memory of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. I had a few of those toys when I was younger including He-Man himself, who had a built-in spring for his “power punch”, and … eh… the bird thing with “lifelike” flappy wings.. and .. yeah that’s about all I can remember. Ohh that wee stocky guy who liked to dive head first into doors, and the lion.. tiger… big cat that He-Man rode when he was in a hurry.

You know I’m sure I had something in mind when I sat down and started typing. I USUALLY start with some vague notion in my head, something that I will train my huge intellect on and reduce to a quivering mass of hypotheses. Or I’ll just ramble on and see what spews forth.

Ahh ha! I remember.

Willpower, and more specifically, the lack of any on my part.

It’s a topic I’ve touched on a few times in the past, and one that I’ve never really been able to nail down. What is it, where does it come from? Strictly speaking, willpower is the ability to extert your will on your self, but it’s more universally recognised as the ability to withstand temptation, the ability to stick to a diet, and I guess the ability to self-motivate one’s self into action (is it just me or is that whole “self” thing bloody hard to word in a sentence? Just me? Right then, as you were).

Yes, that’s right folks, I’m talking diets, jogging and trying, yet again, to develop good habits in those areas.

Or rather, I’m not.

You see one of the tactics I’m currently trying is to ignore these issues altogether. Obviously not completely, or I’d end up stuffing myself solid and developing a Homer-esque butt print in the sofa (actually there is one already there from when I broke my foot and spent a few weeks just sitting there watching TV). No, I’m ignoring them because I’m beginning to believe that if I spend less time pondering these things, and just tackle them as and when they come up, it’ll be easier to handle and therefore more successful.

That’s the theory, at least.

Admittedly this new regime is relying on some rather shakey methods mostly derived from the “ohhh, just get on with it” school of thought. You know the one, it’s practised by the people who believe that anyone who is suffering from depression just needs to be told to “cheer up, it can’t be that bad”. Mind you, thinking about it, it is rather surprising that there are still so many practitioners of this school of thought. Surely, by now, they should all have been stabbed to death with rusty forks? I digress.

Needless to say I’m not entirely convinced that this approach to developing willpower will actually work and was kind of hoping that someone else might have a better suggestion. Or five. I mean, seriously, ANYTHING must be better than this… right?

So, feel free to rush to my comments and proffer forth your willpower related suggestions, techniques and general nuggets of information.

Please.

I’m desperate.

And not just because there’s a Double Decker sitting here, demanding to be eaten!

April 14, 2007

Friends and Codes

Reading time: 2 mins

Blimey, a fairly busy week or so of overly gluttonous introspection in blogland. No surprise I guess but this time round it has been fairly forthright and more vociferous than usual. I’ve linked to a few of the following before, but, pulled together they encapsulate most of what has been said. I think.

It all started with Kathy Sierra’s announcement of her withdrawal from a conference due to threats to her person. Obviously this was followed by shock and outrage and so on and on and then Tim O’Reilly drafted a Code of Conduct for bloggers (he has since posted a follow up with some more considered thoughts).

This was met with no small amount of derision but, as I said in comments in that post, I applaud him for doing it as I’m sure he was aware it was doomed to failure. But sometimes these things need done regardless. Admittedly I do agree that you’d be as well to post a “warning; may contain nuts” message on your blog. It is a nonsense of course, and the backlash was predictable (although very well designed).

Even Auntie Beeb weighed on the matter, a sure sign of the changing face of the blogosphere, although even then it should be noted that (and I wish I could find the quote from who said it first) there isn’t ONE blogosphere but many (you wouldn’t compare Beethoven’s 9th with the latest single from Girls Aloud, but they are both “music”… yikes, that was a bad example…).

The New York Times paid the issue some lip service, and it was from there that I found my way to the best round up of the Kathy Sierra saga so far.

Of course that is not to forget that recently, here in the UK, there has been a court case where some person has been found guilty of harassment (if you do go here, DO NOT google and visit the persons website, you are only then feeding her delusions).

What on earth is going on! I hear you say.

Well, every now and then, like a child growing up, the blogosphere (god, I’m actually getting used to typing that blasted word) needs to go through some pain to fully mature. Don’t you think? No I’m certainly not condoning the actions of the few that sparked a lot of this, but this is not the last time negative actions will bring focus on to blogging. With that in mind we are all responsible for how we conduct ourselves, so I guess I need to count my blessings that you lot are always civilised, and that I’ve never had to invoke my own commenting policy.

It’s a times like these that I wish I were more eloquent and could string the various threads that run through the current stream of “blog news”. Thankfully you don’t need to rely on me to do so, as mike returns to tug all those strands into a wonderfully lucid and thought provoking post. If you do nothing else after reading this, go read that.

April 12, 2007

Do I REALLY sound like that?

Reading time: 3 mins

In an effort to compile a list of what I consider to be the best posts of this blog, and yes such things are highly subjective I know, I spent some time perusing my archives last night.

It’s an odd experience, as I found myself re-living a lot of my past via this strange yet familiar narrator. For, you see, I don’t actually talk like wot I write, y’ken? Hmm I don’t talk like that either mind you… although I do say “och aye” more than I realised, much to the amusement of a colleage of mine from New Zealand.

Of course this isn’t such a surprise as no-one really talks the way they write, nor sings the way they speak, but I did catch myself wondering if I really did write what I was reading. Which is both odd and comfortably flattering at the same time.

I guess this comes down to that old “people don’t see you the way YOU see you” thing, where, as the name suggests, other people don’t see you the way you see yourself, and their opinion of you isn’t swayed by your own internal insecurities, unlike your own.

There are far too many commas in that last sentence, this is another thing I’ve noticed and which litters my archives like dog turds on a cycling path, consistently terrible punctuation. What of the semi-colon? Honestly, as someone who writes for a living I am shamed. Of course there isn’t much call for personal writing in the midst of a technical manual so maybe I have a small get-out clause?

Yes, browsing your own archives is both enlightening and informing in many ways. I recently commented, on another site, about why I leave my entire archives in place rather than removing the nonsense, or starting over completely. The simple reason is that they remind me of how this blog started and how much it has improved. Looking back to the first year or two of this blog I’m still surprised that anyone visited at all, let alone returned more than once. Zip forward to 2007 and the stats continually surprise me. Hundreds of you visit every day, and then come back again, and again. I may not get the most visitors and I may not get the most comments, but I have to admit to a quiet satisfaction that, for the main part, my visitors and their comments are of a consistently high standard. Thanks you guys.

Stepping back to take a new view of something is always intriguing, regardless of the subject matter. Everyone has a different viewpoint, a different point of approach, a new angle. Given the recent round of news in the blogosphere regarding “codes of conduct”, self regulation and so on, this is something worth considering. I’m happy to be disagreed with, I’m happy to be proven wrong, I’m happy for people to voice their dissent in the strongest terms but my comment policy stands. I enjoy reading comments from people with a different point of view, no matter how opposed. I’m always willing to learn from others, so if I say Black is White, please feel free to disagree with me (and yes, I know Black and White aren’t colours).

I’m not going to tackle that topic though, others have been before me and most of the ground has been covered. I will point you to the new Blog Advisory System though, it seems to be very accurate.

Whoa, bit off-track (there is another post in this, about how the fact my miniblog refuses to work is effecting how and what I write here in the main posts) now, were was I?

It has, and continues to be, an education to read through my own archives. I don’t have that great a memory, with a lot of the stuff I post here largely being posted as a method of NOT having to remember it, so it’s an excellent way to re-acquaint myself with my own content. I am intrigued to know how everyone else keeps track of such things, are you all as disorganised as I am? Or do you remember what you wrote?

Do you read through your own archives from time to time, or just search them when you have a vague memory of possibly, maybe, posting about a particular topic in the past?

How do YOU use your own archives?

April 12, 2007