I have been taken to task this week for not writing more posts here at Bright Meadow. I refuse to feel guilty but I am still going to proffer up an excuse, for all the good it will do me. There is a fine line between when I can and cannot write – I can write when I am physically tired (some of my best stuff gets written then) but I cannot write when I am emotionally tired. I am very much the latter at the moment for reasons I will bore you with only if you buy me a pint or shoot me an email.

On the whole, this week has been remarkably un-eventful. Or was, until Moose went to leave the flat at lunch time and was met with a flood of biblical proportions. You see, we had a mammoth city-wide powercut in Southampton during the week and this must have fritzed the electro-magnet on the skylight above our front door. Only no one on the floor noticed till this morning when the storms over night caused it to open and lock in that position… Picture me knocking on doors to see if anyone had a step-ladder (no one); Moose balancing on a chair with a mop handle to try and force it shut (unsuccessful); and then me ringing every number we have for the property management to try and get someone to come out and close the bloody thing. As I type we’re waiting, with fingers crossed and the hall floor covered in newspapers, for the promised engineer to appear.

And on that positive note, on with the Roast!

The Guardian points to a recent study that shows we’re spending 12 hours a week online. I won’t embarrass myself by calculating how much time I spend online a week, but it is significantly more than that! I just love the stat that says 81% of people sent an email “at least once a month”… At work it is not unheard of for me to send at least one every five minutes!

Are you aware of your internet shopping rights?

Continuing a theme I have noticed that no Simpson sketch is without parallel in the great US of A, a man shoots himself whilst changing a tyre.

Since the Saints are in such financial difficulty at the moment, perhaps they should look to some American investment?

I’m not going to get into the whole debate on the issue, but I do find it interesting that UN panel has voted a moratorium on executions.

In a conversation with Lady P at work last week, she mentioned this Guardian article and mentioned how true she found it. She used Facebook etc but used them in a very limited fashion, mainly because she is not comfortable with the overlapping circles of her life knowing so much about her (she used her sister-in-law as an example). She asked how I sort it all out and keep the online/offline divide clear. My answer was that I really do not have that particular divide. I have a personal/professional divide to a certain degree, and there is a divide between public/private, but it isn’t overt – followers of Cas all over the web get a picture of my life that is enough to build up a fairly accurate picture of “me”, but there is stuff they will never know about. To the same extent, my friends ‘offline’ see different sides of me if they do/don’t read Bright Meadow. I couldn’t explain it coherently to Lady P and I’m not explaining it very well now, but in my head there is one line that is very clear: if you have my phone number or if you don’t have my phone number. Not having my phone number doesn’t mean I don’t like you, but it does mean you’re probably not one of the close circle of people I’ll turn to if/when I’m having a nervous breakdown!

I have a tumblog of my own but I don’t actively post to it, preferring instead to use it as a way non-RSS fiends can easily keep an eye on new stuff that I’ve posted from Flickr, Twitter and Bright Meadow. Tam on the other hand, has a kick-ass tumblog in the shape of espresso. I don’t know how she does it, but practically every entry is oozing eye-candy and gorgeousness. I had linked to seven different posts then figured it was just easier to direct you to the main page!

Continuing a long tradition of lazyness, why rant about something someone else has already ranted about? I will add that I don’t have a MySpace (and only look at it once in a blue moon to stalk/oggle the EDLO) . I am very reticent to add apps to my Facebook. I have a Flickr app that pulls in my Flickr photos so I don’t have to upload them two places, there is a Twitter app that pulls in my tweets, and I have a FluffFriend because it was a penguin and I just couldn’t resist! I did add SuperPoke and by god I wish I hadn’t – drunkenly throwing chickens at people is hardly classy behaviour! I use Facebook to connect to people. In fact, I had my very first instance of meeting someone down a club and just going “oh, find me on Facebook through X’s page” (where X was a mutual FoaF) just a few weeks back. And that’s pretty much it. So stop biting me people and asking me to answer questions!

And keeping with the mild Facebook theme of this Roast, Facebook now allows companies to create profiles. Like many others, I’m on the fence about this. Facebook is about people, my friends, not about big companies asking you to be their “fan”. On the other hand, it’s pretty much expected now for companies to have blogs and to interact to some degree with their clients. So I’ve become a fan of Penguin (yes, I know, predictable 😛 ) in order to see how this fan thing works out. I can think of worse ways to keep up with what new books are coming up, though I’m still reticent about how they’re starting to encroach on my places.

Damn it, that wasn’t exactly the coherent argument I was going for, but what can you expect whilst I’m waiting for Noah to come rescue me from the flood that is my front hall?!

It turns out I write soft porn. Rarely has a comment had me laughing so hard over my morning cup of tea, so the site is worthy of a link if only for that. But on top of that, Andy does take the time to link to a few of his top blogs. Two on the list stood out:
Random Acts Of Reality – a blog by an E.M.T working for the London Ambulance Service
and
Caroline Middlebrook’s piece on thanking your Stumblers. Now I don’t use StumbleUpon for no reason other than it just hasn’t fitted into my e-life (though never say never), but Caroline’s points can also be used towards your everyday readers and commenters. It can take thirty seconds to respond to a comment someone has left or to reply to an email with a simple “thank you”, but that response will garner you more good faith than you realise and will make you stand out.

Marvel Comics are putting their archives online. For a cost and I haven’t researched whether they are DRM’d or not (chances are they are) but still, this bodes well for more comics to go online. *puts on begging face* Fables, maybe?

I don’t as a rule trust book recommendations as they just have a tendency to disappoint. If I am going to go on recommendations, I tend to go with ones from people I know really well (who won’t be upset if I hate the book!) or from authors I quietly worship. It’s quite obvious that William Gibson fits into the latter category, but his write-up of Not Quite Dead certainly made me prick up my ears and add it to my wishlist. Well, Christmas is coming up and I struck gold with last years wildcard of I Capture The Castle…

We all love xkcd, right? So don’t be surprised if I turn up in a t-shirt.

Driving down the A303 used to be a major part of my childhood as it was the route to most of our holiday grounds and my grandparents. To this day I have strong affection for certain stretches of the road as they bring back happy memories. Though I’ve grown up with the landscape and have dragged the CCM around it a time or three, it’s always been nigh-on impossible to see the landscape as a whole beyond just Stonehenge itself, even though my finely tuned Archaeologists senses tell me it is so, and even harder to get it across as I do my best/worst as an impromptu tour guide. So bless Tom for slaving over a hot processor and bringing us this virtual rendering of the landscape.
(As an aside, there’s one particular part of the rendering where you look down the cursus where I had an “oooh!” moment and just knew that was a perfect setting for part of my story. Who said Archaeology had no relevance in the real world 😉 )

Turns out that Bright Meadow is worth $31,620 – who would pay that amount of money escapes me but it’s nice to know that I’ve not been wasting my time here. (Don’t start to lecture me on the invalidity of such calculations, I know that that figure is just pie in the sky. It’s just nice to dream).

On ‘paper’, the Amazon Kindle has most of what I’m looking for in an e-reader, but does it have to be so butt ugly?

Tired of the QWERTY layout? Why not switch of Dvorak? I will admit I’m tempted I just haven’t taken the plunge yet. If someone else wants to go there first, I’d appreciate it.

When Icons go to War

Just two movies caught my eye this week:
Persepolis
P.S. I Love You – I almost didn’t link to this till I heard giggles from Moose’s room the other day and it turned out she was appreciating Gerard Butler’s awful accent as much as I was.

And that is me once more done for the day. Enjoy. Don’t enjoy. It’s entirely up to you 🙂 Don’t forget that the comments field is always open – I know there’s stuff out there in on the Tubes that I’ve missed. Share it!