bookmark_borderBeen and went and done it

I spent the weekend in London and have a posts garnered from a rather wonderful weekend. Here’s the first one:

Friday evening, a pub in London, and a gathering of bloggers. What can I say, a great night in the company of smart, funny people.

I’ve been blogging for a while now, and over that time I’ve retained a central group of blogs that I always visit. They are my daily reads (at least they were, the advent of RSS means they are now the “read as soon as they’ve posted” reads) and their popularity is well deserved.

During the evening, at a point that is slightly hazy (not only are they nice people, they are very generous too, hic!), I suggested that us bloggers should be less self-effacing and be proud of what we do. Sitting around the table were people who have been published, people who write for magazines and newspapers, and all of whom share one thing. Quality.

Then there was little ole me… (yeah, I don’t handle praise all that well…).

Quite seriously I had to pause myself during several points of the evening to take in the slightly surreal gathering. To give a comparison, most people, when asked, could provide a list of people who’d they invite to a dinner party. You know, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Hitler.. that kind of thing.

Well Friday night was my equivalent. Although, with all respect to the people who turned up, not QUITE in the same league. I mean who would bother chatting to Gandhi if mike from Troubled Diva was there?! (for the record, mike couldn’t make it, and truth be told it would be a hard decision to decide between him and Gandhi…).

My “list of bloggers I want to meet” has suddenly shrunk, far further than I thought (I retained a fear of sitting alone in a pub in London, desperately hoping someone, anyone, would turn up, only to be turfed out at the end of the night, alone).

Anyway, I guess I’d better name and shame. To all of you, thank you for taking time to come and meet me (even if not everyone managed to remember which pub it was in, and left a panic-stricken message on my voicemail, no names though…).

A list of attendees then, in no particular order as I after the first few drinks I kinda lost track…

Phew. God, I hope I’ve not forgotten anyone.

I did take some photos as well, but I managed to capture everyone at their worst. So I’ll plead ‘privacy’ on those and they’ll remain hidden anyway (in reality I’m just scared that, if I were to post them, I’d be hunted down and forced to start up a MySpace page!).

Once again, thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. It really was a great evening, and I only wish I’d managed to get more time chatting to each of you. Of course that was just the FIRST time I’ve meet you, here’s to many more.

bookmark_borderSlimline

There are two things I’ve been meaning to fo with this website for a while.

1. Slim the number of categories.
I went a bit mad when I first installed WordPress, and I’m pretty sure I can trim the number down from the 22 I currently have (although not all are used, grand plans and all that) to a more manageable and sensible 6 or 7. More on that in a minute.

2. Categorise all of my archives.
I started this about a year ago and after slogging through some of the backlog – I’m tidying up, and adding titles as I go – I began to realise that I should have slimmed the number of categories FIRST. Yes, it’s obvious now but I was all caught up in just HAVING categories that I went a bit OTT.

Weird. Just got a massive dose of deja vu…

Anyhoo, onto the task at hand. Firstly I’m going to list all the categories I have available to me at the moment, and then I’m going to take a stab at a shortlist. If you have the time or inclination, I’d appreciate some feedback on the shortlist. Is it too short? Too long? Do you guys even USE the categories? Etc etc. I’m sure you know the drill by now (e.g. you leave comments stating your opinions, and I come along later and either correct you or ignore you!). First up, the current list of categories:

  • Articles – in a pretentious moment I deemed some posts should be ‘articles’. Usually the long waffling ones that no-one reads.
  • B.B. – the stuff I wrote before I had a blog.
  • Blogs – posts about blogs and blogging.
  • Books – reviews of books and posts about books
  • Diary – posts about stuff wot I have done in my daily life…
  • Firefox – posts about Firefox
  • General – the default category, used for stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else.
  • Gigs – reviews of gigs
  • Meme – posts about… ohh you get the idea…
  • Movies
  • Music
  • My site – stuff about this very site
  • News – commentary on current affairs.
  • Personal Musings – largely written B.B.
  • Software
  • Technology
  • TV
  • Web
  • WordPress
  • Writing – writing about writing… again with the pretentiousnessness!

Phew, far too many. What WAS I thinking? So, let’s trim that lot down, merge a couple and see what we end up with:

  • Articles – in a pretentious moment I deemed some posts should be ‘articles’. Usually the long waffling ones that no-one reads.
  • B.B. – the stuff I wrote before I had a blog.
  • Diary – posts about stuff wot I have done in my daily life…
  • General – the default category, used for stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else and the posts with multiple topics.
  • News – commentary on current affairs.
  • Personal
  • Media
  • Books – reviews and whatnot
  • Gigs (not strictly media I guess…)
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Technology
    • Software
    • Firefox
    • Hardware
  • Web
    • Blogging – posts about blogs and blogging.
    • Meme – posts about… ohh you get the idea…
    • My site – stuff about this very site
    • WordPress
  • Writing – writing about writing… again with the pretentiousnessness!
  • Right. Looks OK to me, over to you ladies and gentlepeeps. Set your inner librarian free!

    Actually there is a further question relating to the usage of websites. Categories can be found all over the place these days… how useful are they? Do you use them regularly or only on certain types of sites? My own opinion sways on this. For my site I think the categories are useful as I tend to veer onto different topics as my mood takes me, so finding similar topics as the one you are currently reading can be tricky as there might not have been one for a couple of weeks. For sites that are a lot more focussed than mine they can sometimes seem like overkill, but then again, if you are surfing a knitting site and don’t want tips on needle choice, then a “patterns” category would be useful? No?

    And then there are tags. Useful? Perhaps. The ones listed on this site should fire technorati searches allowing you to find other sites with similarly tagged posts (hmmm should maybe make that a bit more obvious), but maybe they’d be better used to navigate this site. Tag clouds are possible, but are they better, or worse, than categories?

    Comments please (ohh and the bit below is just to remind myself that I am occasionally capable of reasoned discussion, it’s all a bit ‘overly analytical’ and may bore the pants off you.. if you are wearing any..
    Continue reading “Slimline”

    bookmark_borderIck

    It’s one of ‘those’ emails that will be forwarded round the world time and again, so a word of warning..

    It’s subject line is “READ FIRST”, and begins “This actually happened last week in Atlanta.” It features some very, very graphic pics of.. well you’ll get the jist from the email, but not all of it.

    It’s quite disturbing seeing someone’s head ripped off you know. So thank you to Dianne for sending it to me. Luckily breakfast had been digested.