Yearly Archives: 2006

Grrr take two

Ok, if the blog suddenly falls of the face of the earth, worry not – it should be back up shortly. Turns out fasthosts really suck as server providers. Or Bright Meadow is just getting too darn popular.

Anyway, looks like I’m exceeding my monthly bandwidth ( 😛 ) I do have a solution to this in the form of a years free hosting from Media Temple (the card is sitting on the desk right now, thanks Bryan!) but I actually need to grit my teeth and do the whole migration thing.

Ugh.

And eek! Because it’s scary!

Anyway, please bear with me through this (potentially) buggy period. Things will hopefully be shiny and new soon 🙂

I’m gonna keep posting, and y’all keep commenting, and hopefully if I ignore the problem it will go away 😉

Sunday Roast: women! act cool! no son, that isn’t cool

I’m going to start of with a link, not to a particular post, but to a whole blog: I will then, be a toad.
Frequenters of the comments on Bright Meadow might have occasionally seen bits left by meowkaat. (She’s been posting a bit more lately, yay!) I can’t remember when meowkaat first commented on the blog (it was back in the blogspot days so I can’t even search) but it’s been a fair while and she’s been a stalwart of Bright Meadow ever since, even becoming a blog minion. Until very recently meowkaat never let on that she had a blog so I felt real honoured when she finally included a link back to it. She is one of those rare writers that can make you respond with genuine emotion to their words. Some of her posts had me in tears, some laughing so hard I fell of my chair. I do recommend I will then, be a toad to you not just because meowkaat is a wonderful person (though she is), but because her words have a true beauty and grace to them.

(And yes, I did check with meowkaat before I linked in to the blog, so she’s prepared for the lot of you to go tromping through).

Turns out that online news has a half-life of 36 hours, where the half-life is the time taken for half the total readership of an article to have read it. Whilst this research applies specifically to news sites, I imagine that something similar holds true for blogs. I know I find something similar which is partly why I’ve fallen into a pattern of roughly posting every other day. I found that, with my readership, if I posted more than one article a day, neither article would get as much traction. (I’m mainly basing this on feedback I’d get through comments). I also find it’s rarer that I will get comments on articles that are over a week old. I imagine this is partly due to the sheer length of the majority of my posts – wading through one must be bad enough. Wading through two (or more) every 24 hours would just be off putting. What do you find for your sites?

Call me a purist if you will, but it *isn’t* a retelling of the Godiva legend when it’s based in Oxford and the lady is wearing clothes!

The Radio Times 25 films you must see if you are an aspiring film buff. The list is pretty eclectic. I’ve also only seen eight of them. Better get down Blockbuster!

It’s been a while (seven months) since I officially stopped research in the field of social computing when I handed in the Demon Thesis, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still interested in the topic. The following crossed my radar earlier this week (you might have spotted it tagged in my del.icio.us feed):
The Hype vs. Reality vs. What People Value: Emerging Collaborative News Models and the Future of News.
If the full thesis looks a little scary to read (it is quite long), here it is in digest form.
I quote the bottom of the digest “This is fascinating stuff. Anyone who cares about collaborative online activity, especially in the news category, should take a long look at the survey.”

I’m feeling in a spiritual mood this week. Not totally sure why, but there you have it. As is often the way with the world, in a moment of serendipity, a few other people were also taking the time to talk about things other than the Web:
Will over at thinkBuddah mused on loving kindness, in particular the need to ‘love’ yourself before you can properly love others. This is something I have trouble with at the same time that it rings true to me. I have big problems being happy with, or ‘loving’, myself, yet does that mean I am not capable of loving others? No. But I do appreciate how I would be able to do this better if I was happier and understood myself better.
The other person is Ben, over at Open Switch with his ask a minister podcast. Yes, the chap is actually a minister. Odd, the people you run into with this blogging malarky. Quite a deep question this week – why are so many people atheists? (And some stuff about poodles. Just because the chap’s a minister doesn’t mean he hasn’t got a sense of humour).

The NYT movie critic, who’s opinions I am more apt to trust than not if I am wavering about a film, does quite an amusing job defending critics in view of the perennial discrepancy between what critics think and how the public behaves. Film critics are an odd bunch of people and I normally take what they say with a pinch of salt, at least until I have built up a ‘relationship’ with that critic, understand something as to their prejudices, and whether I trust their judgement or not. I like the NYT reviews on the whole because, though they can be snobby, they are normally pretty good at flagging up the ‘bad’ movies. Those movies that aren’t even good popcorn movies. Empire Online is the other source of reviews I trust – they review each film as an example of it’s genre. A lover of sci-fi movies will go to a sci-fi movie and review it as a sci-fi movie. What they don’t do is send a fan of rom-coms to review a horror movie. Just makes sense that way.

Do you blog for validation? Chris Garrett at Performancing finally got a picture marked ‘interesting’ in Flickr (congrats Chris, I am very jealous) which got him thinking on why he blogs – turns out, he likes the comments. Not surprising really, I think most of us like the comments, but why do we like the comments? I guess we’re all seeking validation in our own ways. I know it gives me a buzz when my words have prompted someone to think, then speak.

It’s not overly often I get excited about a piece of software, and it’s even less often that I get excited about a piece of WINDOWS software, but I am excited about Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0. Yes, I would feel like a fool speaking into my computer (one of the reasons the BrightCast’s are so infrequent), and I also like the action of typing as akin to writing my thoughts, but just think – no more RSI!

When I saw the title for hedgehog spaghetti carbonara I thought the ‘hedgehog’ bit was a joke. Nope. Really, you need a hedgehog for this recipe. No idea where you *get* a hedgehog from, but you need one. Not sure I fancy eating a hedgehog to tell you the truth 🙁

Stargate 2 and 3 are planned…

Daniel Craig has signed for a second Bond film. Whilst this is a ‘yay’ in my book (Craig is a fine actor and always a pleasure to watch) er, shouldn’t they wait till the first film is released first?

Curly Durly went to Holland back this spring and had a lovely time there wandering around countless gardens. Now my mother is a brilliant gardener who has been slaving for the past three decades in the garden back at the Homestead – it shows. I would put my hand on my heart and say it is as good as some professionally designed gardens. I would also have said it couldn’t have been improved. Then she came home from Holland all inspired. Last time I went back there was a distinct flavour to some of the plantings that just weren’t her usual style, and I didn’t understand where it had all come from till I saw her photos from the trip.

More or less since first crossing paths with JB I have been under the impression that he is a couple of screws short of a hardware store. In a good way, I hasten to add. I can’t exactly lay claim to the full compliment of marbles myself. I am even firmer in my convictions now he’s climbed Mt. Fuji. At night. By himself. All to see a sunrise…

Career guidance required

It’s odd, what sets me off to blogging. I had to take the morning off work as there was a workman from Bob’s Plumbing (no joke, that is the company’s name!) coming round to do something technical to the boiler here at Meadow Towers. Non-urgent work, but work that had to get done before the cold weather comes back – knowing my luck if they weren’t looked into now the repairs would become urgent just when we were starting to freeze in our beds. *1*

Now I am so completely snowed under at work at the moment (the Energizer Bunny has had no admin for the past nine months… The resulting backlog and mess has to be seen to be believed) that I can’t really afford to take a morning off, but then again Moose was even more unable to take the morning off, so I had to do it. I quite enjoyed the extra hour in bed 😀 I had all these grand plans of what I was going to do this morning as well – I would catch up on emails, I would write some content for the poor blog (I have been neglecting it of late, sorry), I would… Oh, all kinds of things.

Do I get any of it done? No, of course not. For starters I am incapable of ‘catching up’ with emails. Some things are never gonna happen, no matter how much we may want them to. Blog posts? Don’t be silly. Part of the problem was that Bob the Plumber spent a fair amount of time drilling holes into the wall between my room and the boiler cupboard – hardly conducive to nice computing. The other part of the problem was, well, day time TV. Much though it sucks, I still ended up spending my precious morning off loafing on the sofa watching crap on Freeview. So I got nothing blogged.

Then what happens – I’m sitting in work surrounded by enough piles of paper that it looks like I’m building a fort around my desk and I get all inspired. Bollocks.

Luckily I’m able to fire up Outlook and write myself an email with the germ of the idea in it, but I do find it very hard to just leave things at the ‘germ’. Once I get an idea, I like to sit down and just write till the idea is done. I can leave it at the final polishing stage easily, but anything less and I get all antsy. I don’t like leaving things half finished and on top of that I am petrified that when I get back to something half-written, I won’t be able to finish it off. That the muse will have deserted me (this has happened on more than one occasion).

Aw crap. I clearly really need to get me a job where I can write for a living. The more and more I think about it, the more and more that sounds like a wonderful job. Not journalism – the whole sniffing out stories thing has never appealed – but… something. The dream, dream? Get a gig like Carry in “Sex in the City” and write a newspaper column (or, ok blog if you insist) about something that interests me, or failing that my life, and that pays enough to keep me in the style to which I would like to become accustomed.

Failing that, I would love to be an editor…

Anything but what I am doing and what I have the qualifications for, basically.

Anyone got any ideas how I can make this dream a reality? I would be really, really grateful! Make you a Minion and everything 😀

Endnotes:
*1* Meadow Towers is lovely, just really badly insulated. In the winter it is freezing to the point of being able to see your breath if we don’t have the heating on full blast. In the summer it can get sweltering to the point it’s hotter inside than it is outside. Other than that, and the lack of outside space, and the no-pets thing, it is a dream apartment.Back

Race for Life follow-up

Last Sunday I completed the Race for Life 2006 in Southampton. My reasons for deciding to do the 5 km run (that’s around 3 miles, give or take), can be seen on this post. Suffice it to say, I’ve lost lots of people I care about to cancer, and I know there many more who are battling the disease at the moment.

The Race for Life is an annual women only event organised by Cancer Research UK. All the money raised through sponsorship goes directly to the charity – all admin costs for the run etc are covered by the entry fee paid by all the runners – so you can be assured that any money you donate will go straight into funding the fight against cancer.

This is a cause I care passionately about and, I promise you, this will be the only time I ask you for money (till next summer rolls around and the 2007 Race for Life). Several of you have already sponsored me and you have my heartfelt gratitude and thanks. Several more of you have said things along the line of “damn it, I missed it. I’ll sponsor you next year”. Why wait till next year? The online sponsorship page is still open and will be till the 30th of July.

So how did the Race go? Well, I managed to beat last years time and got home in under 50 minutes. The actual time is somewhere between 45 minutes and 50 minutes because the girl with the watch (Moose) and I got separated at about the 2 km mark and I’d been finished a little while before I remembered to nab someone with a watch and do a time check. Moose managed it in 43 minutes! (Big woot to Moose!) I was no where near as fit as I was last year, or as fit as I wanted to be – I had grand plans to run the majority – but it was just too hot and I’m just not built to move at any great velocity I am afraid.

My thanks also to illyna and Super Girl who looked after house-keys etc, waited around for an hour on a blazing hot Sunday afternoon, and met us at the finish with large bottles of water. I didn’t take any pictures this year but the ones from last year basically tell the same story. Lots of women, lots of sun!

It’s a cliche, but every little really does help, and I would love to reach my target of £180. Whether you decide to give 50p or £50, I appreciate it. Sponsoring is really simple – go to the online sponsorship page, click on the pink “sponsor me now” button at the bottom of the page, and follow the instructions. If needs must I’m also still accepting sponsorship via paypal – if you want to use this option (though I do recommend and prefer the official sponsorship page) contact me and I will let you know the details.

Thank you again to everyone who’s already sponsored me, and thank you in advance to anyone else who decides they are going to do their little bit for a very worthwhile charity. The closing date for sponsorships is the 30th of July – just over a week left, so you’d better get a wiggle on 🙂

Cas

ahh, del.icio.us

I’m starting to rediscover del.icio.us, and I love how it now knows when I tag something ‘research’, I’m likely to also tag it ‘toread’. Ditto when I use ‘collaboration’, ‘socialsoftware’ is presented as a recommended tag.

I like it when software learns and presents sensible choices like that.