RSS Feed

‘9rules’ Category

  1. Anything is possible

    May 27, 2010 by Cas

    The question I have been asking myself for a while now is should I acknowledge the monumental lack of blogging activity, or just start up again, as if by ignoring the gap it won’t have happened.

    But I can’t treat it like the elephant in the room; it is just not in me to do that. Just how did I go from such sparklingly-awesome blogging, to the desolation and tumbleweeds which have been prevalent the last year? Seriously, if Bright Meadow had been a puppy, you’d have called the RSPCA on me long since. What happened to the blogger at the peak of her game?

    Would that I knew.

    Was it Twitter taking all my thoughts? A job I adore in my dream sector? Living in a new and stunningly beautiful city? Perhaps it was just that I grew older.

    Or a combination of all of the above with other things I don’t want to acknowledge in the mix.

    What next? I genuinely don’t know. It hurts to think that Bright Meadow has reached the end of the line, but at the same time I just don’t know what I would write about if I was to start blogging daily/weekly again. I had a moment a few months back when 9rules went through more change and, what with one thing and another I gave up the leaf. It was a hard decision to take. 9rules was this HUGE thing that happened to me back in the summer of 2006. You cannot underestimate the sense of pride I had when I first put up the leaf. So to let it go?

    Even now it makes me blink a bit in shock. But I just wasn’t the same blogger any more and the leaf wasn’t where I was at.

    Yes, a part of me, a large part, wants to kick Bright Meadow back into gear to see if I can earn that leaf back. Just to see if I can. Because I still have it in me somewhere.

    But should I? What would I get out of blogging consistently once more? Surely my efforts are better spent at writing that blasted book and living my life.

    Bright Meadow though… It’s something special to me. I want it to have a future. I just don’t know what the future is.

    Yet.

    Category 9rules, Daily Waffle | Tags: | 6 Comments

  2. Code…

    September 12, 2006 by Cas

    Because someone asked – the code you need to make a picture a link:

    <a href=”http://9rules.com” title=”I like reading 9rules”> <img src=”URL OF YOUR PICTURE.jpg” alt=”" /> </a>

    Category 9rules, Mini Meadow | Tags: | 3 Comments

  3. Ooops?

    September 8, 2006 by Cas

    There was a post here that tried to point out, whilst stressing there was no blame attached, things happen to the best of us with regard a slight 9rules domain mishap.

    Then… Oh, I don’t know. People picked up on it, the humour in the situation WASN’T appreciated, comments started getting a bit snotty, then Spam Karma went into overdrive and threatened to nuke my entire comments database (uh, I think I won’t let that happen)…

    All in all, the post deserved to die. (And as an aside, I’m back to just Akismet. I know how to work that!)

    I would like to stress, ONCE AGAIN because I don’t think it got noticed before, I fully support the 9rules chaps and chappette. They have brought much greatness and supreme quantities of joy to the Web. It doesn’t have to be anybody’s fault – things happen. I actually find it quite reassuring to have this little reminder that no one is perfect and safe from the flying fickle finger of fate.

    So yes, send your love, respect and good luck to the 9rules team, and lay off the snarky comments. They deserve the former and really don’t deserve the latter.

    Category 9rules, Daily Waffle | Tags: | 7 Comments

  4. Blog Club – Apple

    August 16, 2006 by Cas

    So it’s time for the second Blog Club. This week’s community is Apple (that’s the computer company, not the fruit). If you can’t remember what Blog Club is all about, go here

    Anyone who’s spent any time around me or the blog will know I’m a bit of an Mac fan. Their stuff is just so shiny (in both the literal and the Firefly meanings of the word). I got an iPod back when they were still so cool they were sub-zero – my brother got one of the very first ones that had square corners, click buttons, and a perspex top (very funky looking) and I got one of the second gen ones that looks more ‘iPoddy’ with the smooth corners etc, but has the buttons in a separate row above the scroll wheel. I love my iPod and wouldn’t be without it and, even three(four/five – I’ve lost count) years on and two car crashes later it’s doing beautifully. The battery still holds enough juice for a transatlantic flight (plus airports at both ends)… And ok, I’ll stop now. I do love my iPod (though I am starting to consider getting a newer, sexier, video version.)

    I also own a titanium 12″ PowerBook G4, lovingly named the PocketCalculator for it’s teeny size. I’ve had that three, nearly four, years now as well and again I wouldn’t be without it (though it is partly responsible for my RSI – tip to anyone pondering one of the smaller MacBooks – get full sized keyboard if you plan to do lots of typing). You’d have to pay me serious amounts of money to run a PC as my home computer again.

    I expect I’d own lots more Apple stuff if it wasn’t so frelling expensive.

    Why do I love Apple’s so much? Apart from the fact they are just so pretty it would have to be because they just work. Yes, things go a little odd from time to time, but a lot less than PCs do. Most days at work I have to restart my computer three or four times due to inexplicable system crashes. The Mac? Once every couple of weeks, if that.

    I also find them so much simpler to use than Windows computers. Switching from Windows to Mac was a bit of a learning curve, I will admit. Three years on I am still learning the best way of doing things but that is because I am having to unlearn a decade of Windows. Three years to learn how to use something… That doesn’t sound too easy, does it? And it’s not just me – on the odd occasions Moose uses the PocketCalculator it takes her a few tries to do things sometimes. Ditto my father.

    So why do I say it’s ‘easy’? Because really it is. If you don’t have to unlearn Windows then you are laughing. We got my mother a MacMini for her birthday last year and, let me stress this, it is the first computer she has ever owned or used. Strange that she should have two such tech-minded offspring and such a gadget-freak of a husband and remain innocent, but it happened. Within a very short space of time, Mum was able to email, find things she wanted on the Internet, and download her pictures from her new digital camera. So those aren’t the sexiest or most complicated things to do on a computer, but it’s all she wants to do, and she can do them. I don’t have to explain why she has to click on the ‘Start’ icon to turn her computer off. I don’t have to explain double clicking. I don’t have to worry about her getting some malicious virus and unwittingly passing it on to everyone in her address book. I don’t have to explain file structures to her – all her pictures are stored behind the scenes by iPhoto; all her emails in Mail. All the programs she wants to use she loads quickly and easily from the dock. So when she calls me up for help as she does sometimes she will say “I clicked on the stamp picture on the bar at the bottom – that’s how I get my email right?” but that’s OK. She doesn’t need to know the program is called ‘Mail’. It’s friendly, it’s pretty, it’s straight forward, and she’s even once or twice braved the help option and found the answer to her question.

    Tell me this – would YOUR computer illiterate Mum be able to use the Windows help option and find the answer? Hell, *I* can’t use the Windows help option and find the answer half the time!

    So there you have it. I’m meant to be talking about the Apple Community and I go off on one about my Apple experiences. Yes, there are some downsides to Macs (price, the rapidity that an OS becomes obsolete, less things compatible with it – e.g., webcams! etc) but… I don’t care. I’m a Mac Fan-Girl and I expect I always will be.

    Before I let you go, here’s what I was meant to be talking about – the Apple community blogs and a few posts I found interesting:

    Paul Stamatiou – now, I should point you to one particular post on Paul’s site, but picking just one is impossible. Regular Sunday Roast readers will probably be familiar with Paul’s site already because I do tend to link to his stuff with monotonous regularity. Um, what else to say? He’s freakishly talented, I’m more than a little jealous, and… Yup, that about covers it :D

    SchwarzTech reviews lots of stuff. Again, I couldn’t pick just one post to link to. I daren’t read this site on a regular basis because I just find myself drooling over the pretties that I can’t afford. Every now and then though, when I can’t resist a little fantasy shop, I pop on over because I trust their reviews of things.

    All you Firefox for Mac users out there will have noticed that the default theme is, well, ugly, and just doesn’t fit with the essential prettiness of Macs. I thought I had it fixed with the ‘brushed’ theme, then I read this article and found the ‘GrApple’ theme. So much better!

    So not technically a post about Apple, this post from the uber geeks (in the Apple community) is a pet peeve of mine, so in to the list it goes :D

    Last but by no means least, we have ‘The Apple Blog’ and their round-up of free web design tools. Invaluable.

    Enjoy, I know I do :)

    blog club, blog_club, 9rules, apple, mac

    Category 9rules | Tags: | 12 Comments

  5. I’m the passionate one

    August 2, 2006 by Cas

    Let the games begin…

    So the day is finally here. Bright Meadow is nestling happily in it’s appropriate communities and I’ve been formally introduced on the 9rules blog. Seems like it’s as good a time as any to introduce myself to any new readers who might stray this way.

    Firstly, hello new people
    *waves*
    Welcome to Bright Meadow.

    What can you expect to find here?

    A lovely community of people.
    Wonderful blog minions.
    Um, other fun stuff.

    I could go into depth but that would just spoil the fun of you getting to know me, and me getting to know you. Take yourself over to the about page for a bit more of the boring bio stuff.

    It’s all fairly relaxed around here. I try and post at least once every two days – sometimes it’s more than that, sometimes it is a little less (life has a nasty habit of getting in the way) – but you are always guaranteed a Sunday Roast on, not surprisingly, Sunday around midday (UK time). In the past year I think I’ve missed like one, maybe two, and that was Christmas-time and right after I split up with the then-BF. Both good excuses I think ;) I talk about whatever comes off the top of my head. That includes, but is not limited to, my life, my friends, and my job. I’ve yet to talk about my pets… no, wait, I have talked about my pets (houseplants anyway. I have no pets at the moment due to evil landlord issues). I also talk about all kinds of stuff that are only tenuously related in my febrile imagination. You know those long rambling conversations you have with mates on lazy summer afternoons where you start talking about how you like your burgers cooked, then end up by solving the drought in Ethiopia, with a detour in the middle to work out what is the coolest superpower? Yeah, Bright Meadow’s kinda like that. Fun, but I haven’t got a frelling clue what’s going to happen next.

    And I have a tendency to ramble. Never been concise in my life.

    Before I scare you off for good, I will just say Scrivs was right when he said I write for the passion. I love it. I’ve made stories up and played with words literally since I can remember. The first one I ever wrote down was when I was six and it was about a big blue sea serpent who was very nice and rescued the princess of the pirates from a horrible fate. And found lots of treasure. I said I enjoyed doing it, not that I was any good at doing it. You’re just the poor unfortunates who are on the receiving end – things were so much easier before the internet, weren’t they? ;)

    I will leave you with what have been some of the most popular posts here on the site (list a mix of personal favourites, those with lots of comments, and what my stats package thinks lots of people have read).

    Watch out for the penguins now!

    Category 9rules, Daily Waffle | Tags: | 2 Comments

  6. Blog Club – Anime

    July 31, 2006 by Cas

    The first rule of Blog Club is… Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

    I started to write this post with an introduction to the whole ‘Blog Club’ idea, then when I was about three paragraphs in, Tammie beat me to the punch. Seeing as how this idea was her baby in the first place, and I don’t think I can explain it any better, I point you in the direction of the linked post for more information.

    Basically it boils down to this: we have two weeks to discover a 9rules community and write something inspired/based on/about that given community. Simple. The aim of blog club is to discover the communities in 9rules and to highlight these communities. As a new comer to 9rules the sheer wealth of fellow blogs is a little overwhelming, so a little structured reading seems like a good idea.

    So, without more ado or further gilding the lily, here’s my Blog Club submission:

    The community for this round is Anime. After history, anime is the smallest community on 9rules with just three blogs. In one respect that makes it a good (and easy) place to start. At the same time my heart fell because the amount I know about anime could be poured into an egg cup and still leave room for a decent sized egg. So I apologize at the start of this post for any factual errors and confusions that are bound to rampage their way through my words.

    Japanese movie and television animation, often having a science fiction theme and sometimes including violent or explicitly sexual material.

    That’s the definition my dictionary widget provides me. A dig further using Wikipedia doesn’t exactly clarify matters in my brain.

    In fact I could spend this entire post talking about what is and what isn’t anime, leaving both you and myself even more confused, and not talking about the pretty blogs I discovered, so I won’t. In my mind ‘anime’ is 1) animation, 2) Japanese. Let’s just leave it at that.

    For someone who has held a life long love of science fiction and fantasy, has played one or two role playing games, and watched a fair few cartoons growing up, anime never really figured on my radar. You’d think I had geek credentials enough but clearly not. So when someone says “anime” to me I think straight away to the two Studio Ghibli films I’ve seen (and loved), Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. Then I remember that I got Appleseed out of the library on DVD on impulse and really rather enjoyed it. But that’s it. Three animes (is that an appropriate plural?) in near twenty four years. Ouch. My geek hat is clearly slipping.

    As I pretty soon exhausted my own experiences of anime, my thoughts started to wander into territory that isn’t strictly anime: cartoons and graphic novels. In my brain anime, cartoons, and graphic novels all share something, and that is their artwork. It is the artwork that links them all together. I read V for Vendetta in the same spirit I watch anime – sometimes with the words, sometimes without. Each time I come away with a slightly different story because I’ve ‘read’ the pictures differently. For someone who is much more comfortable with words, this is slightly odd, but I can stare at this form of artwork (graphic/manga/anime) for stretches at a time and understand volumes.

    With anime pictures really are worth a thousand words.

    I love how meaning can be conveyed without speaking. I also love how drawn characters can be more believable and truthful than standard actors.

    More than all that though, I’m left with the impression of how frelling pretty anime is. Even when portraying horrific war and destruction it’s… breathtaking.

    Now, I’m not saying I’m going to rush out and empty Forbidden Planet of their entire anime stock this weekend, but if anyone has some anime they’d like to lend me (burn to DVD and post me, whatever), I’ll be more than happy to watch it. Look on it as a way to fill in what I’ve just realised is a big gap in my education.

    blog club, blog_club, 9rules, anime

    Category 9rules | Tags: | 17 Comments

  7. Gotta love 9rules

    July 20, 2006 by Cas

    You might have been asking yourself why I wanted to join 9rules.

    It’s the people of course.

    How can you not want to be a part of that?

    And don’t forget to check out their scrumptoulicicious new look. It’s more than just a pretty new face as well – lots of shiny new bits to play with and explore. I’d tell you which communities Bright Meadow is in, but that would spoil all the fun of looking ;)

    Category 9rules | Tags: | No Comments

  8. A pretty flower called “Ma.gnolia”

    July 1, 2006 by Cas

    I just noticed someone tagged me on Ma.gnolia as a “possible designer”.
    If wishing would make it so.

    Which made me think two things – one, how to get in touch with this chap to say “sorry, no I’m not a designer”? I can put you in touch with some great designers, and I wish I was a designer, but I lack the ideas. All of a sudden I had the feeling I was living in a fishbowl with people looking in and making assumptions about me, and me having no recourse to set them straight. So nothing new there – people have been making assumptions since the caveman next door went “oooh! fire!” – it just struck me that instant is all. I blog, lay my life out for all to see, yet somehow I get surprised when I stumble across misconceptions.

    Then again, if he’s tagged me once, it’s possible he’s reading the site. In which case – Hello :) *waves* Sorry, I’m not a designer.

    The second thing I thought was – I need to sign up to Ma.gnolia. I used to use del.icio.us a lot, then… I stopped. It got too slow and buggy on me, and I just didn’t need it. I no longer have the nomadic life between computers that I did last year, so static bookmarks work fine. Now most of my browsing is through sites with RSS anyways, and if I find something I like, I just subscribe. A good 90% of the time the only things I bookmark are sites for the Sunday Roast, and they get deleted at the end of the week to start over.

    I can’t see Ma.gnolia fitting into my browsing life right now, but I still have this urge to play with a new toy. Anything to get me out of writing things for the blog (setup is not ideal at the moment due to a breakdown in communication between laptop and wireless keyboard). And the interface is just so pretty! That was always del.icio.us’ downfall for me. It worked and did things great, but it was a bit… plain. Plain works too, appearances aren’t everything an’ all that, but clearly I am more superficial than I like to admit. It’s 2006 – elegant and simple is one thing. Looking like I’ve just fallen through a time vortex to the mid 1990′s is another thing altogether – it was all those blue hyperlinks you understand. *shudder* So I like things to look good. Does that make me a horrible person? I just believe that form often-times is as important as function. Why deliberately make something ugly when it is just as easy to make it a pleasure to look at as well as use?

    Which got me thinking on interface design and the number of times I’ve looked at a site and been turned off in about three seconds flat. And the other times I just look at a site and drool, wishing that I could make Bright Meadow look like that. I couldn’t quantify what I like, nor do I have the foggiest idea how I would go about changing this site, but I do know I am not happy with what I’ve got. I know it could be better just… Maybe inspiration and skill will strike overnight? Probably not. As I said, I’m not a designer. I don’t have the ideas.

    Then I had a fourth thought – what gave the impression that I might have been a designer in the first place? I had a quick gander at the about page thinking it might be that. Writing, jewellery design, and quilts yes. Web design, no. My content? Sure I brush on the topic because it interests me, but I’ve never once lain claim to any skill in the area. At least I don’t remember doing so… Perhaps it is the company I keep? I won’t deny a lot of the sites I read and link too are by designers and/or are about design – but that’s more because they are interesting people than because of what they do to pay the bills.

    So I have no idea really why I’ve been tagged as a ‘possible designer’ but I’m glad I had a look in my referrer stats now, because I was wondering what I was going to blog about tonight ;)

    Of course, now I’m also wondering what other misapprehensions about me people are labouring under? Scary thought, that…

    ma.gnolia, del.icio.us, designer, assumptions, misconceptions, interface design

    Category 9rules, Daily Waffle | Tags: | 9 Comments

  9. 9rules has eaten my content

    June 16, 2006 by Cas

    The observant of you (at least of those of you who actually visit the site and don’t just read it via RSS) might have noticed a few colourful leaf logos sprouting around the place. So far that is the only change that has been made to Bright Meadow to make my new lords and masters happy and I don’t anticipate any more changes either. I got the member agreement to sign last Saturday and access to the promised land (forums) on Monday and it has been a real eye-opener of a week as far as I am concerned.

    Now it is one thing to be told “we have the best content on the web, we have the best people on the web”, and quite another to suddenly be surrounded by these people who are witty, smart, motivated, and in a league of their own. I’m not sure why I am surprised, especially when you consider that the people already in the network were the driving reason behind me wanting to join in the first place, but I’ve never been one to think through the consequences of my actions. Choosing where I did my undergrad by sticking a pin in a list sure gave a certain frison of excitement to the whole experience, but also led to three years of being mildly depressed by the pervasive greyness of the North. It also probably wasn’t the wisest thing I ever did, getting into a relationship with a guy bare months before he had to leave the country, but at the same time I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Not thinking things through has a history for me of either working out shockingly badly, or abso-fucking-lutley brilliantly.

    I didn’t really think through this whole 9rules gig. Oh sure, I agonized endlessly over whether I wanted to get in, but I didn’t think further to what came after. Mainly this is because I honestly didn’t think I stood a fluffy-kitten-in-hell’s chance of getting selected, but also because of my afore mentioned inability to plan things through.

    So here I am, suddenly a member of the network prided on having the best content and people around. This begs to make you infer that I am one of the best. Only, I compare what I’ve done here with what is essentially a personal blog, with what other people have done – redesigning Flock is only the latest in a long line of things that spring to mind – and I find myself lacking. I’m now gonna be standing alongside the movers and shakers of my digital world and find myself unable to give even a little wiggle.

    As if I didn’t have a rather robust inferiority complex already.

    I feel mildly guilty about the post I made last night about the Moving Pixies (reference being to the pixies that lived in our old office and came out at night to mess things up). It was pants and I knew even as I went to sleep that I shouldn’t have posted it. I threw it together in five minutes flat from a germ of an idea I had had at lunchtime and, well, you saw the resulting mess. Still, the post will stand as a testament to something Dewayne and Rob talked about in the comments of last Sunday’s Roast – the need to spend time over what you write.

    Time, alas, is one thing that has been sadly lacking this past week. I have found myself engrossed, reading the words of fellow 9rulers (the day I don’t get a buzz out of saying that phrase is the day I leave), getting involved in conversations, and generally just marveling at the caliber of people 9rules has managed to gather under its banner. I’ve been inspired to write constantly this week but whenever I sit down at the keyboard I find myself lured away by the bookmark to the forums. Every day this week I’ve been merrily surfing away, chasing down links and thoughts, only to catch a glimpse at the clock and notice that it is near 1 am and that I have to be up at 6.30 for work. This leaves me with one option – scribble the idea down and pray that I will remember what I wanted to say when I finally get back to it. The orange post-it notes are rapidly covering my pin board.

    Not that all these ideas buzzing around my skull is a bad thing, but is unusual for me to have so many ideas hanging around in the green room. And I love it.

    illyna turned round to me today and said “so basically your complaining because it is too good?!”

    Yes, yes I am. I am suffering from a chronic lack of sleep and it is all 9rules fault. The posts this past week on the blog have, frankly, sucked and (again) I know firmly who I am blaming. I look at what I’ve achieved so far and am proud at how far I’ve come, then I look at what’s around me and sigh because there is so much more I could be doing.

    This isn’t a call for “oh, don’t be silly Cas, Bright Meadow is great” comments (though a few would be nice every now and then ;) ). It’s an honest evaluation of the situation as I see it. I don’t blog for profit. I don’t blog for work. I got asked a time or two when I was thinking about submitting why I wanted to join a network and at that time it was a question I couldn’t really answer. I decided it was something I would have to try before I knew either way.

    I remember the conversations we used to have in the courtyard last year. The sun was shining, we were armed with endless cups of tea, and we all had a seemingly never-ending capacity to find things to talk about so we didn’t have to go back to our respective research. So many ideas got kicked back and forth, many goof-ball, many more that made me question my world. I didn’t just get a tan whilst we were sitting out there avoiding work, I learnt new things, and more importantly had an absolute blast doing it. At the same time, in the midst of all this seemingly irrelevant chatter, I found ideas for my own research crystalizing and I saw new and exciting avenues of investigation opening up.

    It’s early days yet, but already I get that same feeling around 9rules. Fun, because even the serious stuff should be fun, but in the background scarily intelligent and driven people kicking ideas around. Yes, they’re mainly making it up as they go along, but they make it look easy. I am in awe. These are people I admire and, perhaps more importantly, respect. I’m realizing I don’t need any other reason to be in a network. Blogging alone is great but every now and then it’s nice to know there’s someone out there who will get your back should you need it.

    Call me silly, but I’m taking this as a call to step up my game.

    Category 9rules, Daily Waffle | Tags: | 26 Comments

  10. 9rules Preliminary Listing

    June 3, 2006 by Cas

    Um, excuse me whilst I go and have a sit down in a darkened room for a moment…

    *comes back*

    Er, yes.

    Well, as you can see, my customary fluency has deserted me somewhat at the moment. Partly this is due to a hard night out last night saying goodbye to the Boy Temp (picture me all :( – work just won’t be as much fun without his tall gingerness to liven things up) which has left me a bit cream-crackered, a feeling not helped by then going out tonight with illyna and the rest of the Collective. It is also partly due to something I just spotted in my RSS feed.

    The list for selected sites for Round 4 at 9rules.

    I have checked the list. Twice.
    I have texted illyna to get her to check the list. Twice.
    I was notified to the link from Tyme by Technorati.
    I’d get Moose to confirm it as well, but I don’t think she’d appreciate being woken up.

    So there you have it. Out of the 700 who submitted, 111 have been preliminarily accepted, and it looks like Bright Meadow is one of them. I keep thinking this is some kind of elaborate practical joke – keep hitting “refresh” just to make sure my name is still on the list.

    Holy Batman on a motorcycle! *1*

    And if that wasn’t enough firsts for the night, the Crazy Canalman has made his first ever comment on the blog. Not totally convinced that letting my father have the URL was a good idea, but he kept asking about what I was doing with my time, and I let slip about this website I wrote. He somehow managed to comment as me (I corrected it), but I think that might be because I signed into the blog on his laptop the other week to do some admin stuff… However it happened, he commented, and then emailed me to say how much he liked it. It’s always nice when your Aged P’s appreciate what you are doing :D

    Well, because I am jabbering, I am going to take myself off to get some much needed sleep. Congratulations everyone else who has been selected by 9rules. Now it’s just wait and see what the member agreement has to say for itself.

    Whatever comes next, it sure is nice to be selected. A much needed happy moment after a couple of shitty weeks. I’ve got a grin on a mile wide right now :D

    I think it was the penguins that got me in, don’t you? ;)

    Endnotes:
    *1* Yes. Unimaginative, but you can’t underestimate how tired I am right now, or how much this news has completely knocked me for six. I just sat here for five minutes blinking in disbelief at the screen. I was then shaking so much it took a further five minutes to type a simple text message!

    Category 9rules, Daily Waffle, Housekeeping | Tags: | 11 Comments

Older Entries