Author Archives: Cas

It flies, phoenix like!

BrightMeadow.co.uk has risen, like a mythic-creature, from the rubble of what turned out to be a hack.

Yes, someone thought that Bright Meadow was worthy of hacking! (For the intrigued, it turns out that this was the problem).

Anyway, thanks to the sheer glory of that marvelous personage known as karmatosed, who spent this morning fingertip deep in sql databases, order has been restored to my blogging universe. I cannot begin to tell you how great that feels! Plus, I am now running WP2.5 on that domain (about bloody time too) so have access to all sorts of shiny new stuff and features. The one I am currently loving is the ability to tinker with my template from within the admin panel. No need to mess around with ftp!

Yay!

There are lots of other lovely benefits, but before I totally geek out, just take this as notification that life is back where it belongs at Bright Meadow. I will be posting there/here from now on, letting brightmeadow.wordpress.com retire into the background (though I expect I might have to return to it if/when my server gets wiggy again!). I have done sneaky things with the feeds once more, so if you read through RSS, you shouldn’t notice any change.

If, however, you aren’t sure, the correct feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BrightMeadowFull and this is the correct comments feed.

At some point I am going to see if I can merge the databases so posts from wordpress.com will be folded into the archives here. If I can’t do it automatically, I’ll do it the old fashioned way and copy/past across!

That’s it! Thank you SO much everyone for sticking with me through this debacle (yes, it rates being called a debacle)

Sunday Roast – You can’t improve on MacGyver

This post is cross-posted with the alternate Bright Meadow whilst I resolve some server issues

There were a few moments this morning when I didn’t think I would get this Roast written. Settle back whilst I tell you the tale…

I woke up this morning at the ungodly hour of 8.30am – not actually that ungodly I will admit, till you take into consideration that as a rule I am never conscious before 10am at the weekends and, if I am, I make a concerted effort to go back to sleep. But for whatever reason, this morning I just couldn’t get back to sleep so I thought “Sod it! I’ll get up and write the Roast before lunchtime for a change!” Best intentions and all that, because I couldn’t log into Bright Meadow to post the bloody thing. Which kind of threw my morning for a loop! The mystery deepened when it became clear that you could still view the blog, but anything requiring a php script to be triggered (commenting, logging in…) was borked. I could still access the site via FTP but then folders kept randomly disappearing as I tried to edit them and…

You can probably imagine the swearing.

So I have reinstated BrightMeadow2 here at wordpress.com and I expect I will keep on this domain for a little bit till I can be satisfied that all is as it should be. If you read via RSS then I have been sneaky and automatically redirected you, so you don’t have to do ANYTHING to keep on reading the Meadowy-goodness. If you are a non-RSS reader (and I know there are lots of you), then adjust your bookmark to brightmeadow.wordpress.com. That is it. Keep reading and commenting as usual 🙂

(I will be cross-posting things on both blogs when/if I can gain access to brightmeadow.co.uk to try and keep the archives in as much of synch as possible – keep commenting at wordpress.com though if you can. I’m going to take this as a sign that I really need to upgrade my WordPress install and get that new design sorted. We could be on wordpress.com for a little while!)

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How the Net has changed how I read

I have been using the Net and screen-reading for many years now and I don’t think I am alone or unusual in this. I have been reading books and physical print media for an awful lot longer. I cannot remember being taught to read, it is just one of those skills I have always seemed to be able to do, and I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t avidly devouring every piece of printed media I could lay my (often grubby) little mitts on. Mum went through a phase when we were kids that there was to be no reading at the breakfast/dinner table. The phase lasted all of a month or so till she got fed-up of us reading the back of cereal packets – clearly conversation wasn’t on the cards, so why not let us read something proper if we were so insistent?

So it surprised me when I was in the library the other day looking for something new to read that how I read (at least pick the books I am going to read) has been so influenced by the Internet.

When I read on the computer I have become used to scanning and making snap judgments on websites. A blog, for example, has very few lines to capture my attention and make me want to read more, let alone subscribe and visit again. When I read longer content such as articles, again my attention is more likely to wander and I need regular prompts or section breaks to keep me hooked. I found myself doing this at the library as well. I would browse, my attention would be grabbed by a title or pretty cover (yes, I am seduced by pretty things), I would scan the blurb, and (if still intrigued) glance at the first page.

This is in and of itself is nothing new. I have always tended to graze for new authors that way if I am not going on recommendations. What is new is that I am much more impatient and have to be grabbed much quicker by either the blurb or the introductory lines. It used to be I would read through at least the first page to get a sense of whether I would like the writing — and, hence, the book. Now most books don’t even make it as far as the first paragraph.

I am not sure why, nor could I really quantify what grabs me about some books and not about others, but whatever it is I base my judgments on, it has become a lot more impatient. I am harder to please and I think it is a direct response to all the web browsing I am doing now.

There is simply so much out on the web that is constantly yammering for our attention. We have had to learn to filter all the noise out and our inherent “spam filters” are getting pickier by the minute. When I started blogging I would subscribe to anything and everything that came my way, sucking it all into my giant bookmarks collection. I was at an all-you-can-eat buffet and getting fatter by the second. I quickly found myself in overload and, much trial and error later, discovered that for my own sanity I could only deal with about 200 feeds. More than that, I just wasn’t giving things my full attention. Less than that I got bored — which is bad for everyone. But with so much great content out there, how do you decide what to keep and what to send to oblivion? It is hard, deciding what does and doesn’t get your attention and you have to be ruthless. A blogger hasn’t said anything interesting lately? Her/his style of writing annoy you? Out in the trash they go.

Conversely it has meant that when I find my favourites I am so much more of an avid fan. I relish every word they write, greedily guzzling everything and everything they say. If they recommend something, I am so much more likely to trust what they have to say. Once they have my attention, we can start to build a relationship, and we all know how hungry for love I am.

How does this tie into my book reading?

I have already mentioned how I find myself browsing for new books in the same way I browse for new websites. If I am feeling like putting some energy into the search, I will chase down links (recommendations from other authors I enjoy, reviews and so on), but mostly I am lazy. I will wander around the store or library till my eye is caught by a pretty cover or title. I will scan the blurb and, if I am further intrigued, flick to the front page. It seems that very few books get further than that but, as my groaning bookshelves will testify, clearly I end up buying lots. My bookshelf space however, like my imposed limit on the number of RSS feeds, is finite. Once I have a book I very rarely let go of it so only books I want to read over and over tend to make it as far as my shelves.

Bookshops must be aware of how I shop, because they put those tantalising piles of books on tables near the door. I rarely make it as far as the shelves themselves, or if I do it is because I am looking for a particular author. Because If I find an author I enjoy and they have written other books then it is pretty much a given that I will chase down those other books and buy them without recourse to the whole ‘scanning’ process. They get a free pass through my spam filter because the author already has my attention.

I am not actually that happy with this state of affairs because, lately, I have found myself at a loss for new books to read. I know great books are being written, I just never seem to get my hands on them. All I seem to get presented with when I walk into bookshops are the same fifty “best sellers”, including the celebrity biography de jour. The gems and marvels pass me by because I am caught in a loop of impatient grazing I cannot seem to break. I beg for recommendations and occasionally I will stumble across a gem, but that is so rare as to leave me caught up my current backwater of fluffy chick-lit.

Help me? Rescue me from my current diet of Jill Mansell and Freya North. I used to read books by brilliant authors who stretched my mind. I used to have a fairly decent literary taste. So I enjoy fluffy chick-lit but time was it would take me a few days to read a book because I was savouring the words and digesting multi-faceted plots. Now I am on a book a day, gorging myself on happily ever afters, and it isn’t exactly what I should be admitting to.

P.S – a little note to publishers – I like the ‘lists of books already written by this author’ you sometimes find on the fly pages of a book. It is a great help, but can you please make it clear which order series books are to be read in? This especially holds true with fantasy/sci-fi. For genres rife with trilogies and multi-book-sequences, sequels and prequels, character reuse and mulitverse-crossing storylines, you’d be surprised how often a simple “read in this order…” list is omitted. Grr.

Wednesday Waffles: There are no excuses…

… for my lateness, but there are sometimes reasons… not least a trip to Portsmouth and then Brighton for leap-year parties and then a stag do for a very very good friend of mine. I did not return to Southampton until well past Sunday Roast time, then events took over me on Monday and Tuesday.

That and despite 2. 3 degrees I am a technological cretin and have not retained the knowledge of how to log in to Bright Meadow and upload this lovely effort. Which also means I have had to write it in a text editor, and revisit my third year computing course (which I have just realised was six years ago!!!!! Six years!!! WOW) to remember basic html tags, then wait till Cas got back to S’oton after a visit to the homestead so she can upload it for me, so sorry if it isn’t all pretty and several days overdue!

What I did remember/ find time to do was collect linkage to share with you all… and your beloved host, (who will return soon and save you from me I promise!) sent me some too…

I know that a lot of geeks read this blog, and I include myself in that. I’m guessing therefore that most of you already know about the passing of Gary Gygax… (for those not in the know, he co-wrote Dungeons and Dragons (the game, NOT the awful movie!!)). I’m not a huge D &D fan myself, but as the first roleplaying game it spawned the genre of hobby that is responsible for almost all of my non university/ school based friendships. I’m proud to be part of a community of worldwide geeks who produce witty and sweet tributes to their heroeslike these.

Fulnic found this: Cuddly Toy Web Hacker Taunts Met Police and posted it on his facebook, so I’m shamelessly stealing it for the roast waffles, including his comment- ‘love the part that says “badly-spelled message” – they obviously can’t read haxxor-speak. Noobs.’ Indeed.

No wonder I feel like a lump when I consider the women lots of my male friends drool over- not the unrealistic women in magazines, but the even less realistic women in comics! Why all female superheroes look the same

Yet more with the geekery I’m afraid, though this time found by a friend who does not (yet) frequent the meadow… Re: your brains is a very silly song, that a lot of very silly geeks have been making videos to… the WoW video is funny in it’s own right but you really have to listen to the words 😉

Random House are doing the right thing , about DRM as far as me, Cas and Cory Doctorow are concerned.. I’m going to watch this space and see if any of the other big players go the same way.

I’m with Randall- f@~k grapefruit. They are evil, and this particular web comic made me GLAN (giggle like a nutcase) in the PhD office at uni for ages, so much so that everyone looked at me like I was being even crazier than normal!

Cas has found Freakangels a webcomic by the truly gifted Mr Warren Ellis, who also has a great blog. I’m now addicted, I challenge you all not to be…

I think Taylor Kitsch is a bit too pretty to play Gambit – I mean, he should be a drawling rugged charmer from the bayou, right? Josh Holloway would have hit the spot just about right (Sawyer from Lost)…

The NYT has an article that warms my heart and confirms something I’ve felt to be true for a while- the internet is not just for boys. Lets hear it for the geeky girls!

Why 9rules is a nice place to be : memes like this.

And finally, just for Abi so she has some trailers to watch:

The Visitor – Perhaps a little ‘feel good’ and with a bit of a message for America, but looks like a good one to go and watch with the girls…

How does your comment policy affect your blog?

I am a firm believer that it is personality that is important in this modern age of Web 2.0, distributed communications and mediated, online societies. I have always felt that blogging is about making connections between people. Easier said than done, but possible. The blogs I enjoy reading are the blogs where the authors are clearly identifiable. They have personalities and opinions and voices that I do (and don’t) enjoy reading.

As Mia has pointed out, blogs from a “personal” standpoint as opposed to an official view are rare in corporate environments. This is not to say that they can’t be done and done well, but these are the exception rather than the rule. I think that people need a ‘face’ to relate to. The Net is a hyper-crowded market place and you need to make full use of any hook you can develop to bring the customers in. One of the reasons I keep coming back to Innocent smoothies, despite their high price, is that they are just so fun and approachable as a brand.

How does this relate to blogging and in particular the “personal” blogging that I practice?

I used to joke that Bright Meadow was a small community of people, more than just me, made up of everyone who reads and comments. I have also said time over time that I couldn’t do it without y’all. I would still be writing and blogging without the regular input of readers, but for damn straight it wouldn’t be the same. It was brought home to me recently that this jest has actually become the reality. In my latest moment of blogging angst (yes, even the best of us have our moments of insecurity) several people stepped up to the plate and flat out told me that I had created a great community around the site.

And that chuffed me to bits.

I am also chuffed to bits by the fact that I have had just three – yes, three – trollish comments in the five years I have been blogging. And the people responsible for two of those came back to me, apologised, and now contribute to the wider BM community.

What has perhaps chuffed me to bits the most is the welcome my guest writers have received. I know it was/is a big thing for both of them so my heart is always in my mouth when they post (not because I don’t like to let anyone loose on my baby, but because what if the readers are rude?!) but I should know better. Somehow there has developed a unique group of people who hang around Bright Meadow and I can trust them (you) to treat the space and everyone in it with respect.

How have I done this? I am not exactly sure, but I think it is something to do with my personal policy on comments. I do have a comment policy, but as you can see it is fairly basic: no spam; no meanness; and I reserve the right to remove/edit obscene or inflammatory comments. My unofficial comment policy is that I leave no comment un-answered, even if it is just a “hello”. All first time commenters get a “welcome to Bright Meadow and thank you for commenting” and as much of a personal response as possible. Even if the comment left is rude I much prefer to respond in a reasoned fashion and try to engage the person in dialogue than just summarily delete it.

I think it makes a difference. I know it has worked on the trolls because one of them flat out emailed me, said mea culpa, and now joins in the fun.

I know when I comment on other sites and don’t get a response, something that happens all too often, I feel unwanted by the blogger. Quite frankly, I find it rude. If you don’t want to join in the conversation, don’t have a comments field. I am a reluctant commenter at the best of times because I am shy and hate to be rebuffed. I can’t be the only one who puzzles for an age over the simplest comment and who more often than note clicks on from the page leaving her contribution unsaid. It is a big thing for someone to leave a comment. Acknowledge it!

This policy, I think, has directly led to readers getting involved with Bright Meadow; makes them want to come back and contribute again and again. It has got to the point where whole conversations and debates happen in the comments between readers. We even had our first duel a few months back! I can’t express what this means to me. It means I have succeeded. And it makes me think other bloggers should do the same. Without our readers we are just one more self-obsessed geek pouring our hears out to the disinterested Net. People read our words, especially on personal blogs, because they want to make a connection. It is unpardonably rude to ignore them.

Where did this thinking stem from? I am not totally sure. It certainly has something to do with my background in customer service, where more often than not a smile, an anecdote and a personal connection with a customer got me that machine sale, and more importantly for my manger, repeat sales. I wouldn’t be surprised if my first introduction to the web being on gaming communities where all the posts contributed to an ongoing story doesn’t have something to do with it. But it is also the inescapable conclusions my research over the past few years have led me to draw. I am not the only one. Neko is finding it hard at the moment to get this personal approach into her research and I can understand her frustration *. There are currently certain arenas where it is not deemed appropriate to bring the personal voice (scientific research being one of them) but blogging is categorically not one of those arenas!

So how has my comment policy affected by blog? It has made my blog! It is not an after thought, but something integral to the site. Just as I will not tolerate spam or meanness, I will not tolerate ignored comments. If I ever ignore a comment you make, feel free to take me task.

And now we perhaps come to the best bit and what keeps me sitting at the computer, typing away despite the RSI in my wrists. Here, as always, is where you all get to say your stuff. How did the welcome make you feel? What are your thoughts on commenting? Am I totally talking out of my hat?

And can you help me update the Usual Suspects page? I really want to get it up-to-date and to include as many of you as want to be included, but I don’t want to miss anyone! If you want in on the page, pipe up in the comments or shoot me an email. Requirements are a name and a short bio (no bigger than 50 words if poss). If you want to include a link to your own site, then even better 🙂

* Yes, I did read it sweetheart, I just needed to think things through.

Sunday Roast: how very 1967 of you

I have noticed a distressing tendency of mine to start Roasts with “So…” I could make this into a motif, a signature of my blogging, but I won’t. I want to be able to keep you all guessing as to how I will start each week. This particular Sunday sees me sitting at the computer, bundled up in a scarf and wooly socks as I prepare the post for your delectation. I could put the heating on but the stubborn streak in my refuses to give in. Perhaps I’m just too enamored with imagining myself as a struggling writer in a freezing garret in bohemian London or something. Or I’m just too much of a cheap-skate to have the heating on during the day. Take your pick.

How has this week gone? Much of a much-ness really. Lots of going to the gym (damn it, but I genuinely enjoy going now); a very rock’n’roll evening spent in the pub with illyna and Moose drinking… cups of tea; a Saturday made special with pancakes and a late afternoon nap; and now a Sunday I expect will be spent primarily curled up watching TV.

Dear god I need to get me a life to write about! No wonder I’ve not felt the urge to write much lately, or that y’all are getting bored commenting!

I am toying with the idea of having a holiday at the end of February/start of March however. Somehow I still have two weeks of leave to take before the end of March and I could do with a break from the chaos that is the office – another couple of weeks like the last few will have me wreaking havoc with some form of deadly weapon. Or handing in my resignation a few months early! The thought of two whole weeks of lie-ins, pampering and time to write feels like a sheer decadence I greatly deserve. The only thing stopping me is that we have yet another office move looming large on the horizon and the thought of the horrors which I will come back to if I am not around to organise it… At least I have got the seating plan pretty much settled. I would have enjoyed the power if there wasn’t so much politics flying through the air. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? I did get to tell the uber-boss-boss that this summer would see my departure. Oh, the look on his face still gives me the warm-fuzzies. And telling the RLO to be a man (using those exact words) was another highlight of the week. You’ve got to take your fun where you can find it I guess. On the upside, the new office is just across the road from the gym. I can see me getting very fit as I take the opportunity to dash out each lunch break and vent my frustrations on the machines!

And now I have vented far more than I meant to, let us get on with the reason I am sitting shivering fit to make my teeth chatter. A note about the NYT articles – NYT have started putting a lot more of their articles behind a registration firewall and I’ve not yet worked out the rhyme or reason to which articles are or aren’t. I’ve got a registration so I rarely notice, but apologies if any of the links cause you to stumble.

HarperCollins is going to release versions of books free on the web. Groovy. It sucks they’re not downloadable or anything else (I think this is a misstep personally), but it is a step in the right direction. I am one of those people who likes to taste my books before I buy them, and I am actually more likely to buy a print copy of a book once I have read an e-version than not.

Continuing a theme, Random House is testing selling books on a chapter-by-chapter basis. I know this works for music where a single track from an album can also stand alone, but a chapter of a book that is designed to be part of a coherent whole? Then again, cooking books, travel books, short story collections – those could work I guess.

Ever copy/pasted one of those little blog-quizes that spread like so much viral wildfire? Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea

I like Twitter – it gives me a quick and easy way to update about the little stuff. It has integrated rather well into my life, though I need to work on a better solution for responding to people who reply to me (as yet, I only receive updates online, so when people respond to a mobile tweet, I don’t know till I get back home). Sometimes though, it’s not the solution you think it might be

Licencing people to smoke? Interesting idea.

I remember the oral section of my GSCE German and French to be a bit of a sneak – so long as you could memorise your speech fairly well, you’d do ok. What it wasn’t, was stressful – and before you think I’m just a swot, foreign languages did not come easy to me. The whole exam process was stressful, rather than just the oral component. Which is why I think it’s ridiculous they’re talking of dropping the oral component of language GSCEs. How else are they going to see if you can speak the language? A wider argument definitely needs to be made on the validity of the exam process as a whole (how can one stress-inducing exam that is just a snapshot accurately assess my ability in any subject?) but just dropping one segment because it’s too hard?! Pah! Pah, I say!

Yes, I’m on an e-book kick in my thinking at the moment. Could you have guessed? I bring you the ever-sensible Jeremy on the relevance of paid-for digital products in the era of the ‘free’ internet. What really jived with me in the article he links to is the idea that authority and personalization are what increases value.

Turns out I’m a bit of a Twitter minority when it comes to my follower/following ratio. I’d like to follow more, but I just can’t keep up with everyone! (If you follow me but I don’t follow you back, please don’t be offended. And in keeping with the Twitter Stats thing, here are mine (I love that the most tweets seem to come from the end of the work-day when I’m waiting at the bus stop!)

Sometimes it’s just nice to know you’re not the only one

We are all living in the world that Google Search built to a greater or lesser degree. I’m not naive enough to think that people couldn’t find out far more information than I wanted them too if they cared to look beyond the first page of a google search, but to see my house? As Fred rightly says, it is the scale of the streetmap programme which has the potential to get really creepy.

As close as I get to archaeology these days. If you are ever in/around York, I can highly recommend the DIG centre for any budding Indiana Jones’ in your family. The centre is really well thought out and executed. I had the privilege to visit after closing with a group of similarly hard-to-impress professional archaeologists and we all loved it. If only more museums had been like this when I was a child!

Playing with author tag clouds sounds like great fun. Might be time to get me a CueCat and scan my library (my old spreadsheet is woefully out of date – and yes, I did once upon a time track all my books on a spreadsheet. I am a geek. Live with it)

Priceless. A trail quite ruined by gravelly voice-over-man, but this still looks really funny.

I’m going to end this week with a call – my RSS feed list has remained remarkably stagnant for the past six months or so and I think it is time that I mixed it up a little and read some new stuff, so I need you to suggest sites and things you find interesting. What forms part of your weekly travels through the internet? What floats your boat? Which writers rock your world? Who is the one blogger who knocks your socks off? Big, little, screwball or straight, I don’t care. I’ll give everyone a chance, so hook me up with some link-love people 🙂

(Just a warning: if you drop links in the comments, you will get snagged in moderation I’m afraid, but I’ll rescue you real quick, I promise. I’d like to do away with moderation totally, but I got greeted with 50 spam comments that slipped past various spam filters, godlike Akismet included, into the moderation net last night alone, so it is necessary unfortunately. One of the downsides of popularity!)