Category: Blogging

Largely older posts, mini blog entries and memes from the past… a vault of dusty nonsense.

G to the D for the PR

Do I really have to?

I mean what’s the worst that could happen to a little ole blogger… what? a fine? HOW MUCH!!? Well, shit. ok.

So what do I store. Well, in the database that holds all the comments ever left here (and there have been at least a few) will have your name or pseudonym, and whatever email address and URL you provided, plus the text of your comment.

If you have left a comment, firstly, thanks! It’s such a rare occurence these days it’s always a pleasant surprise. You should also know that I do not, have not, WILL NOT EVER sell your personal data to any other party for any reason, not for all the money in the world*.

If you want me to delete or edit your data I will. If you want to see the exact data I hold about you, I’m sure I can dig that out of the database although as there are only two unique data points to go on I might not be able to meet that request because I think you need three unique data points to confirm a person as WHO THEY REALLY ARE and until then you are all just scammers and ne’er-do-wells.

What else do I need to do here?

I honestly have no idea.

It’s all so very confusing and if, like me, you’ve already received emails from places you didn’t even know you were a customer/member of, it’s a mass of slightly similar but slightly conflicting approaches.

“YOU MUST CONFIRM if you want us to keep in touch with you” blares my first GDPR email of the day.
“Just to let you know… YOU DON’T NEED TO DO A THING” shouts the second GDRP email of the day.
“Your new sex doll has been delivered to…” ummm hang on, that must be spam, or something. I’ve no idea how that got there….

As others have said, GDPR is a triumph of good intent versus awful implementation. I’ve been on a course about it at work and I’m still none the wiser. It’s a bit like the government announced they were building a house, and dumped some timber, a few random tools, some fixings, and a bag of mixed nails and screws and told us all to build a house by May 25th.

It came from a European Directive, so perhaps the real problem is that the Spanish are forever taking siestas whilst the French and Italians argue about who has the best wine, meanwhile the Germans are point blank refusing to have any part in building a wall, and the UK contingent are all scratching the arses and shouting lewd sexist comments at passersby.

What the rest of the world must think of us beggars belief.

Except, it doesn’t. It’s just another embarassing incident that, like Brexit, will be swept under the carpet as if nothing has happened.

I appear to have wandered a little bit off topic.

To summarise my position on GDPR and its impact on you as it relates to this blog, suffice to say that I store very very little data about you, it’s not enough data to identify you anyway, and if you want it changed or deleted, or just want to see what I have, then get in touch.

And with that, I bid Good Day to you Precious Reader!**

* Ok, maybe for a £100billion cos that way I’ll be above the law and not give a shit about you plebs
** Yeah I’m not sure this post was entirely worth the payoff. Sorry!

May 24, 2018

What’s Next?

The new year looms ahead of us and whilst I know that logically it’s purely an arbitary numbering scheme that governs this thinking, one can’t help but think of the coming weeks and months as something fresh and full of possibilities. I guess the secret will be to keep that thinking through the rest of this year.

Sticking with my say yes more than no approach to the year, it’s probably worth remembering that I already have a few things booked in this year, and whilst I know more will appear, it’s good to have things to look forward to.

First up is the first visit of the year to my favourite dining experience, Six by Nico. This time round it’s the ‘Best of 2017’ and they are currently running polls to vote on which dishes will make the cut. Prior to the new gym regime/classes/torture sessions starting I’ve got a hot stone massage booked in on the 13th, and at the end of the month the first gig of the year; The Muldoons at King Tuts.

February means a new GoGo Penguin album, and then a The Go Team! gig at Oran Mor. I’m also attending a talk by Colonel Chris Hadfield, and have a couple more gigs, namely British Sea Power and Post Modern Jukebox. A pretty good set of gigs for a February.

March kicks off with the double whammy gig of John Grant and Elbow, ohhh and a few days in Barcelona (must book that!). April brings the Festival of Light, a DJ/LED spectacular (apparently), May will bring OMGSOEXCITEDALREADY LCD Soundsystem back to Glasgow, and June kicks off with Derren Brown before a wee jolly to London to see a small band called Foo Fighters play at a place called Wembley (which will be my first time at the ‘new’ Wembley, my only previous visit to the ‘old’ Wembley being to see another small band called The Rolling Stones).

So, a few weekends already planned, and by the time I add in birthdays, a few theatre visits that I’ve yet to book tickets for, a desire to get outside more often than not (I found my waterproof trousers so that should help!), and the usual random nights out and, well it’s already looking like the first half of 2018 is gonna be a good one.

Which all leads me to the real purpose of this post. Having looked ahead (and there is a lot else going on that isn’t listed here) I think I’m going to be relaxing my posting habits here a little.

Throughout 2017 I posted every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It was supposed to keep me in the writing habit but became a bit of a chore towards the end of the year (spot when I started writing up gig reviews and whatnot, just so I had something to write about). I’ll still do the Weekend Reading posts, but other than that I think I’ll be going for a less is more approach, or just posting whenever the mood takes me; which may well mean I post more often. The point is that I’m not committing myself to a schedule, as it’s already looking like 2018 will have plenty more to offer me and I want to be able to properly embrace those moments when they arrive.

And hey, if you are really that bothered you can find more of me on Twitter and Instagram.

OK, OK, what’s next?

January 5, 2018

18 years old

Yesterday.

18 years of writing nonsense and publishing it on line.

18 years of blogging.

18 years of reading, and commenting, and following, and then Twitter, and Facebook, and Instagram and so it continues.

18 years ago I wrote about Sunglasses.

Everything has changed since then.

Nothing has changed since then.

Here’s to the next 18! And as I’m 18 it’s now legal for the blog to have a drink, the question is, which drink?

June 3, 2017

Why I am not quitting Facebook

Sometimes when I’m writing for this blog, it feels like there is a conspiracy going on to make me think about, and write about, a particular topic. So with that in mind I will happily concede that this post was inspired by Lipstick Lori (who is writing some great stuff at the moment!) writing about How I Quit Facebook, Sort Of, my own ponderings around the question of Which Tech Giant Would You Drop?, and this piece by Jason Kottke (uber-blogger) My Social Media Fast.

It’s a slow pull, a subtle trick. It starts with a brief desire and is soon a constant drain. They know what they are doing, they’ve spent a long time designing it to be this way, to game you, to manipulate you, and as it gets larger and larger so it becomes harder and harder to fight.

My Facebook account currently gets the most usage of all my social media accounts. Granted a lot of the things I post are pushed from Instagram, but more and more I will share things into my timeline from elsewhere on Facebook, trapped in the bubble. I find myself idlly scrolling through post after post after post, hardly pausing to digest, a stream of stuff that amuses, annoys, adds to the FOMO, or makes me smile.

I do not like the amount of time I spend using Facebook.

I have books I want to read, TV shows I want to watch, and on sunny days I want to disconnect and enjoying being alive and being present with myself.

I did manage to wean myself off Facebook pretty well a while ago, right up until my niece was born; my sister posts pictures and videos of her almost every day, and oh my heavens she is as cute as a button and fills my heart with joy and love and that gorgeous little thing was the gateway, the lure back into the Facebook universe. I tried to tell myself I was only gonna check it to see if there was anything about her, you know just a little bit now and then, and then I could totally give it up later. Yes, that’s right, I’m blaming my Facebook addiction on my 1 year old niece, what of it!

I have tried to maintain some level of discipline. I had previously uninstalled the app but it’s snuck back on to my phone now BUT – and this is an important BUT – it sits deliberately in a folder on the second screen, right next to its time-sucking sister Twitterific. The thinking was that would remove the urge to ‘just have a quick look’ and for the most part it’s starting to work, which is just as well.

I know what some of you might be thinking, social media is fun! So say the adverts at least, but as always there is a deeper, unadvertised, cost.

There are many meme-able acronyms that surround Facebook; but it is the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) being the one I most associate with it, after all it’s so obvious that everyone ELSE is leading lives far richer than mine and whilst seeing people I care about having a good time is totally awesome and happy making, it can be not to compare and contrast; my lonely sofa to the photos of an afternoon out, all laughter and spilled drinks. And there’s the rub, the mixture of joy and sadness, happiness and melancholy.

And yes, I am well aware that social media is a but a filter, and the most people post the best of themselves, not the worst, but having that knowledge and sensibly processing that knowledge are two very different things. And that’s before you consider that I do this as well, contributing to the very problem I’m trying to avoid. Ironic, isn’t it? (shut up Alanis).

I honestly do love reading, seeing, and hearing, the wonderful things my friends and acquaintances get up to. You lot (I’m presuming, dear reader, that we are connected on some platform or another) are wonderful, quirky, funny, thought provoking, attractive, heart warming, caring and just down right good peoples. But, as Lori points out, that comes at an emotional cost. It’s not always a negative sum game, but emotions need to be processed regardless and it can be tiring.

I’m not completely away from Facebook or Twitter, but it feels more manageable. Instagram remains front and centre though, as I find it so much easier to scroll photos than dodge the diatribes, crap adverts, and all the other noise that Facebook adds.

The flipside to all of this, for there is always a flipside, is that I will have fewer chances to see things that others post. Fewer chances to like or comment on their achievements, fewer chances to laugh with them (or at them if the moment warrants). And to all those people I wanted to echo the sentiment of a wonderful message I recently received (the irony (again!) of having received this message on yet another social platform is not lost on me).

I enjoy seeing what you post, and I see you around on various social media channels. I may not like or comment as often but I see you, and I care about you.*

There is joy to be found in social media, and for me that joy and delight has been found in the connections it has allowed me to make, I have met people I genuinely call friends (for they are not acquaintances) thanks to social media, and there is no doubt that it’s very useful for keeping in touch, however remotely, with many people.

For those connections, those new friendships that I wouldn’t have made any other way, I will always be grateful to social media (ht: this blog of mine which started it all for me) and I can’t see a time when some form of social media or another won’t have a place in my life. It’s just not on my homescreen.

* the person who sent this knows, but wanted to call this out again, it was a simple message that had a big impact on me, and gave me something to strive for in my interactions with others, to make them meaningful, not just another LIKE.

May 23, 2017

Weltschmerz

I think English needs new words or, at the very least, some words that exist in other languages need to be adopted. As an example, look to schadenfraude.

Schadenfreude is defined as “pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Borrowed from German into English and several other languages, it is a feeling of joy that comes from seeing or hearing about another person’s troubles or failures. It is similar in meaning to the English term “gloating”, an expression of pleasure or self-satisfaction at one’s own success or another’s failure”

Which isn’t very nice but we’ve all done it, even in its mildest form, the comedy of the pratfall, the banana skin slip, brings an element of schadenfraude. It’s maybe not a word that everyone who speaks English knows, but a lot of us have at least heard of it in passing.

Given how 2016 has gone (no, it’s not the worst year ever, but a lot of crappy stuff has happened), perhaps Weltschmerz is likely to be the next.

Weltschmerz is an emotion, described thusly “The world isn’t perfect. More often than not it fails to live up to what we wish it was. Weltschmerz describes the pain we feel at this discrepancy.”

Which seems to about sum up most of my emotions over the past few months. The world COULD be so much better, but it isn’t, and that hurts.

Mind you, shortly on the heels of Weltschmerz we should probably just be describing everything as Kuddelmuddel, which describes an unstructured mess, chaos, or hodgepodge, as that’s certainly how things feel most of the time (or is that just me?).

That said, I’ve yet to find a word in any language that describes the annoyance you feel when, as you are walking along a quiet road with no vehicles passing you for most of your walk, that it’s only when you get to the corner that a car appears and so you have to stop and let it pass. This happens at least 2 or 3 times a week. Or, again, is that just me?

Language always evolves, that’s why it remains an important piece of our culture and whilst I think we could maybe do with adopting some new words into the English language, perhaps the very fact we might need them is the key lesson here.

Personally I’d much rather I didn’t have to feel weltschmerz in the first place.

More here: http://www.fluentu.com/german/blog/weird-german-words-vocabulary/

P.S. I’m pretty sure I’ve butchered all sorts of rules in that last sentence. I’m sorry!

December 14, 2016

10 Reasons my blog isn’t popular

  1. My version of ’10 Productivity Tips’ would be ‘pick a system and use it, stop wasting time picking a system, most people just need a list of things that need done that day’.

  2. I write about me. My thoughts, my life. Narcissism central round here.

  3. I don’t stick to one topic. When I’m not writing about me, I write about software I use, or movies, and by god I write about writing a lot of the time. Essentially this blog is a censored diary that I happen to publish on the internet.

  4. I don’t actually know WHY I keep doing this, and so I plod on just posting stuff to have stuff posted.

  5. I don’t post amazing examples of photography.

  6. I don’t (anymore) post reviews of gigs, or books, or movies.

  7. I rarely write about things that might be useful to others – Todoist, Podcasts, iTunes stuttering etc.

  8. I create blog posts that are just lists in an effort to pad things out.

  9. More reasons I can’t really be arsed to figure out at the moment.

  10. There is no number 10, didn’t you read number 9?

I’m sure there are other reasons, but that’s all I could come up with.

June 8, 2016