Monthly Archives: January 2006

The things we bloggers do…

If you want a truly… odd… eight minutes (and 29 seconds), then go download JB’s first (and he claims last) podcast. There really is nothing quite like listening to someone’s voice for the first time to completely screw over your impressions of them.

Trust me, got a grin on a mile wide.

Among other things, I have just learnt that Austin Powers: the spy who shagged me, is Austin Powers Delux in Japanese. Sure to come in handy next time we get invaded by Canadians at Meadow Towers and go on a mammoth Trivial Pursuit drive.

Oh, and before you ask, no. Definitely not. I won’t be doing a podcast any time soon ever. If you’re curious, my accent is apparently posh with a side order of Somerset wurzel. If you are really curious, I think there’s about 10 seconds of me on one of the Race For Life videos, but I’m not helping you out by linking to them.

(And oddly enough, my spell checker likes the word “wurzel” without any input from me. Cool.)

Happy New Year!

image from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4571816.stm Well, as I write this post a very nice man is having a look at the insides of our front-door lock for the second time in as many months. Fortunately this time around I managed to get into the flat before it died, but still… here’s hoping I won’t have to see the nice man a third time.

Traditionally, this time of year is given over to taking stock of life, noting what happened in the previous year, and planning what you would like to happen in the next. It seems that, on the Internet, life is no different. Seeing as how my sheep-genes seem to be taking control, I feel that I should do the same.

2005 – the good, the bad, and the slightly unpleasant bits.
Well, 2005 has been a bit of a mixed year for me. Mainly good, but with a few things I could have done without. Known forever more as ‘the Year of the Thesis’, 2005 was, not surprisingly, heavily dominated by my completing an MSc in Archaeological Computing. Much fun was had, a fair amount was learnt, inordinate amounts of tea (and beer) were drunk, and a complete nervous breakdown was headed off at the pass. Just.

If anyone would now like to hold long conversations with me about the democratization of information, multivocality, hypertext authoring, social computing, wikis, archaeology, GIS, and a whole host of other scary things, then I am now fully qualified to talk about them. As much as the next person, anyway, so long as the next person isn’t Jerry Huggett.

Elsewhere in the land known as “the Past”, 2005 was also the year that I started Bright Meadow. Though you can trace the origins of the blog back through several geocities sites (which now exist only in the cobweb laden blog archives), April 5th 2005 marked the very first post at the new brightmeadow.blogspot domain, and at the close of the year, December 14th 2005 marked the appearance on the scene of brightmeadow.co.uk, a self-hosted, WordPress powered version of the blog.

2005 will also be remembered as the year in which:

  • Moose and myself moved into Meadow Towers.
  • I had fun seducing Canadians 😉
  • I raised nearly £200 for the Race For Life.
  • Curly Durly was forced to wonder if the universe hates her.
  • I wrote of my beloved car back in February 🙁
  • I watched far too many movies and purchased more DVDs than really I should have.
  • I met some wonderful new people through the blog
  • And I learnt that, whilst it is technically possible to fit six people in the back of a Nissan Micra, it is not advisable. Especially when you are attempting this in someone else’s car.

2006 – a space odyssey.
So what does 2006 have in store for Cas? That really is the 60 carat diamond question.

Off the top of my head:

  • I’d like to put a few plans I have into action regarding the future of brightmeadow.co.uk
  • I need to find a job, though I’d like to find a career.
  • It would be nice to think about starting a Ph.D, but I don’t think I am silly enough to do that to myself.
  • There’s a few guest articles I’ve been asked to write. I really should get on with writing them!
  • More in the way of fiction writing should be coming your way. Maybe. Perhaps. If you’re nice to me.
  • I really want to get my teeth into some proper coding. I have this bug in my brain for some application mods/new apps that I think might be quite groovy, but, well, I need to learn proper programming first! If anyone has tips on good places to start (i.e. a good beginners/intermediate book, or a fluffy language that won’t scare me too much), comment or drop me a line

According to the dude on Jools Holland last night, because this is a New Year without a new moon (rare, apparently), resolutions made this year will actually come true. In that case, mine are:

  1. Get fit – yes, I know, unoriginal, but I’ve got the past three months of slacking to make up for. Loosing weight isn’t my main goal. Rather, I need to tone up what I’ve got. The loss of a few pounds would be nice though 🙂
  2. Get some direction in my life. I need to find that… thing… to get me out of bed in the morning. I’m drifting right now, and I’m not a fan of drifting.
  3. Lastly, just be happy. Easy to say. Not, in reality, that straightforward. Here’s hoping!

Anyway, that’s me. What are your resolutions?
Hope you all had a wonderful New Years, and here’s hoping 2006 has even more fun bits than 2005 did!

cas signature

Start as you mean to go on.

Well, you had to do without a SundayRoast last week, what with it being Christmas an all, so I hope you have a hearty appetite for today’s main meal. Seeing as how it is a new year, I have decided that from now on the SundayRoasts will be smaller, but more perfectly formed. Truly the best of the best. For other things that caught my eye, but that didn’t quite make the grade, keep an eye (as always) on the leftovers feed.

Boing Boing: Couple spends 28.5 years repainting baseball, now 119″ circumference – You do have to ask yourself why…

DIY Metal Chess Figures – oh so pretty! I didn’t get a new chess set for Christmas this year (despite dropping hints the size of that big painted baseball). Perhaps I can make myself one like this to make up for the lack?

Customizing K2: Part 2 at PaulStamatiou.com – Most of this stuff I already know, and most of the rest of it I actually enjoy working out for myself (I am sad like that), but there are one or two very handy tips in this article, and other articles that Paul writes. Yet one more case of “I could write a how-to myself, but why bother when someone else has already done a much better job of it”.

A Consuming Experience: Backlinks etc: links to Delicious bookmarks of your posts . Some more handy snippets of code if you don’t want to faff around working it out for yourself.

turquoise & diamond quartz stone chunky ring. So far out of my price range it might as well be on Mars, this ring is just to die for. Thanks to Kim for finding it, and other, beautiful things to look at.

BBC NEWS – Post service opens to competition. This is NOT, I repeat NOT an excuse to send your post, business or otherwise, via TNT. TNT suck. Every single item I have ever had delivered by TNT has (1) been lost – when this is a £2000 PowerBook it suddenly becomes not funny, (2) delayed, (3) broken on arrival, and (4) necessitated me dealing with their customer service staff who think that customer service is a rarely visited village in Outer Mongolia. Don’t, if you value your sanity and post, use TNT.

Working at the PC Isn’t So Lonely Anymore – New York Times. I have one or two issues with the tone of this article, mainly the one that bit that implies this piece of software does something new. It doesn’t. There are many other programmes and applications out there that do exactly the same thing, better than NoteShare. Still, I guess it brings all such things to the attention of general readers, not just the geeks, so I’ll get off my hobby horse now.

Interactive Nature of Browser Colors Past and Future. This one’s been sitting in my research and need to read delicious queue for a while now, so you might have already seen it if you subscribe to them. (Does anyone subscribe to them? Links can be found on the Links page if you are interested). This is an article I think I am going to be going back to a few more times yet, just to work out the kinks in my brain. Not exactly indepth, but a good starting point, and poses some questions.

Archive the year | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com. Some good tips. Now all I need is to get me a dvd burner 😛 I think it would just be easier to get that external harddrive I’ve got my eye on…

Shiny Shiny: Thermometer Earrings. They dangle. I’m hooked!

Halley’s Comment: Touchy Subject: Guest Bloggers. I feel pretty much the same way. I go to blogs because I like how the blogger writes. There is too much good content out there to put up with it being badly written. There will be someone else writing about the same subject better. I am fine with multi-author blogs, so long as it is clear that a blog is multi authored. If it’s normally just you, and you get a guest in, do as Halley says and make it clear who they are and how long they are around for! Please!

ThinkGeek :: Set Of Circuitboard Coasters. I never understood coasters until I had to live in rented accommodation with a Nazi-in-training landlord who’s pet hate was water marks. Coasters became my new best friend. Even now, when it’s my own furniture I’m trashing, I still find myself using coasters. (There is no hope for me, I will end up the little old cat lady). My inner geek is thinking that these pretties are really rather, well, pretty!