Category Archives: General Musing

General stuff

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)

Me and my Moleskines (repost)

(This is a cross post from here as it was originally posted in the midst of an epic server fail).
I think they call this 'unorganized'?

What is it about notebooks that makes them appeal so much to me? I have this weird obsession for all stationary in general — to this day my mum finds it incomprehensible how I will spend happy hours browsing round Paperchase — but notebooks in particular just seem to do something to me. I see a notebook and I just have to have it.

Which might go some way to explaining this little pile, to which I have just added another one to the collection (a soft cover, squared large moleskine).

Yup, I have a problem.

So what is it about notebooks that gets me so silly? Partly I think I blame Anne Frank. I can’t put a finger on exactly how old I was when I first read “The Diary of Anne Frank”, but along with the horror of the Holocaust, I also got my first introduction to the world of diary writing. Plus the idea of someone, one day, reading my words was seductive even at that young age.

Soon after that, my life started to go to hell in a handcart and I fell in love with the idea of writing as escape. Stories started to churn out of my fingertips into the computer with my hopes, dreams and fears thinly veiled in god-awful fan fiction. I still kept at the paper journals though and I stopped/started so many diaries full of the traditional teen angst that I hope to all things holy no one ever finds them! (I believe the really early ones have been destroyed. Thoroughly!)

I have, in my life, finished just one journal, one with a brown leather wrap-around cover which appealed to my traditionalist tendencies. It documents some of the lowest six months of my life, from July 2002 to February 2003, tells tales of three boyfriends, two New York trips, and… oh, so much more I want to remember and forget at the same time. I opened it up just now for the first time since I closed it five years ago and felt pride at the constant, close-written pages. I accomplished this. It served the purpose it needed which was to give me an outlet. If nothing else it gave me a loose structure when I needed it most and proved that yes, I could stick to something and see it through.

Notebooks of all shapes and sizes fill my draws, some stuffed with quotes, others with story ideas, still more with abortive diaries. I am always on the look-out for the perfect notebook. Every one I find has the wrong sort of paper, or the cover is to thick or bendy, or too garish, or the lines are too big or to small. It might lack a ribbon to mark the place or something to hold it closed or… Who knows. I think I will always be on the search for the holy grail; the perfect notebook.

There is something about a fresh page in a notebook that just begs to be written on – I have a brand new moleskine sitting next to me, just screaming at me to get out a decent pen (another quest) and despoil the cream pages. But there is also something intimidating about the blank page, especially the first page. What to write? Always at the back of my mind is the thought that someone else will read the words that I have put down and I don’t want to be embarrassed. Which might be why I have so many; the really good books, those closest to the ideal, I want to save for something really worthwhile, but I don’t want to write the crappy ones as they are just… crappy!

I still feel an urge to write a journal, though the urge is a lot lesser now I blog so much. There are things however that need to remain private, at least till the dust has settled on them and I feel ready to expose them to the public gaze. So now my notebooks fill with more with story bits and pieces. One holds character bios, another plot points, one more chunks and pieces of inspiration that strike when I am away from the computer. It is certainly easier to scribble out the bare bones of a scene on a notebook curled up under the duvet, than it is to get out of bed, stumble over to the computer, wait for it to boot up and tip-tap on the keyboard with RSI riddled wrists at 2 in the morning! One teeny one stays in my bag at all times and is perfect for everything from shopping lists on up.

All my notebooks have a purpose. Some I use more than others, and I tend to find a purpose for a notebook once I have brought it instead of buying a notebook because I need one, but each and everyone is needed. The insides aren’t as pretty or as well planned as some, but they are still interesting to flick through. Will they help the police solve the mystery of my grizzly murder as notebooks always seem to in Numb3rs or CSI? Doubtful. One day will they be enshrined in some library vault for students of English Literature to pour over as they research my masterpieces? Even more unlikely. But do they bring me joy? Without a doubt. Like all obsessions it is really inexplicable, but it keeps me happy, so why worry. There are worse things I could be doing with my time and money…

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.

Small Hurdles

I was lying on the treatment table yesterday whilst a nice lady called Maya did cruel and unusual things with some thread in order to tame my eyebrows, and it struck me that when I move I’ll be screwed. The problem is not the big things, but rather the little things.

It has taken me four years of living in Southampton to find a hairdresser I trust to do funky but liveable-with things to my hair (and not cost a fortune). The same goes for a beauty parlour where I can trust them to work magic with my caterpillar brows, my favourite deli, coffee shop, skate shop, tattoo parlour, jewellery stores…

The list of the little things is endless.

Now, I’m not saying that London doesn’t have any of those things. I know that it has lots of those things. The possibilities are endless, as the advert says, but how do you start to find them?! I still know people who commute back to their home town to get a haircut. My hairstyle maybe glorious and groovy, but glorious and groovy needs regular maintenance, and there’s no way I’m going to be travelling up/down on the train just to get a haircut!

I know that rather than the little things, I should be worried about the big things: getting a job, where I’m going to be living, things like that. But those are such big worries that I am just not acknowledging them right now. The little ones, those are the concerns that are freaking me out. I’ve settled in Southampton, that’s the problem. I never planned to stick down roots here, but I have.

And then there is all my stuff. Oh lords have mercy, the stuff! I’m a hoarder, a nester, and I’ve got the flat stuffed full of belongings to prove it. Once upon a time I could pack my life into a suitcase and a few cardboard boxes. Now the shoes alone need half a transit van!

Tell me again why I’m so fixated on moving to London?

Little Girl Quiet

Fairly regular Sunday Roasts aside, things have been a little bit on the quiet side of town around about Bright Meadow for a few months now. There was a time you could be almost guaranteed a new post every other day on top of the Sunday serving. I couldn’t speak to the quality of all those words, but they were there.

Lately though… Not so much with the writing. Why, you have a valid reason to ask?

I think I can split it down into two main reasons. Reason one is the most boring, so I’ll get it out of the way first. Simply put, I’m knackered. Cream crackered from here into the middle of next week. I have no fun reason for being tired, I just am. Work is hectic (as always – I’ve been waiting on a quiet patch for eighteen months now. I think it’s time I faced the fact quiet isn’t something we do very well). Plus I’ve got a few niggling health issues and other stuff batting around in the gloom behind me. Nothing serious or that I really want to talk about right now, but they are there all the same, sulking away, making me have to self-sensor to find the vein of fun this place deserves.

Reason two? Can reason two be slightly less depressing? Well, ok, since you asked so nicely.

Reason two is I think I have reached the “rabbit in headlights, year three, holy smoking mackerel” moment of blogging. There is a stat lurking somewhere about how most blogs make it to three years and then fall off the face of the earth. If someone could dig the source out I would appreciate it, because it is bugging me. Now I’ll be damned if Bright Meadow is going to go the way of the diplodocus but three years does seem to be my natural time for re-evaluating.

So why am I rabbit/headlight-ing it at the moment? Well, Bright Meadow is on the cusp of something. I am not sure what that thing is, but things are ever so slowly starting to happen. My readership – all you lovely, lovely people – is going up week on week by a couple of people each time. I am starting to get emails that are more “we are a valid company/respected person and we would like your opinion on stuff” rather than “ooh Cas, you’re so cool!” (Though a girl can never get tired of the “you’re cool” emails). I am starting, in my own small way, to have a little impact on people.

All of this is heady stuff and more than a little unsettling for someone who is essentially sticking her journal online!

There are other more intangible things going on as well. With all the good stuff comes the slightly less fuzzy fun. Given the people close to me who I know are reading, I am slightly more limited in what I can say, compared to the days my sole readership was Moose if I reminded her that week. It probably wouldn’t be wise, for example, to air dirty family linen out for all and sundry to see, now that my dad, my boss, my friends, potential dates (and possibly my brother, though he has yet to admit it) read on a regular basis. I gave up on anonymity a while ago, so any potential employer googling me is going to hit Bright Meadow, at a minimum, at the third result. I stand by all I have said here but you never know what is going to come back and bite you in the arse.

Then there is the pressure. I do feel a responsibility to keep the words coming and to make sure people have something nice to read and that is starting to be a drag. The Roasts especially take a good two or three hours to write and sometimes lately it has just not been fun. I always said, if nothing else, Bright Meadow was to be fun. Then let us not forget that part of the whole 9rules gig is contributing “regularly” for a given value of regular. I don’t want to be stripped of that leaf now!

I really do have to face it, but this website doesn’t exactly have a purpose beyond “ooh, let’s just write about something today”. Which is great but… Sometimes I think it might be time to re-focus. Re-brand. Re-think where I want to head.

Am I going to “monitize” Bright Meadow with ads? Hell no! The proverbial fluffy kitten stands a better chance than that ever happening. So income stream it most certainly is not.

Am I going to bring in other writers to ease the burden? *shrug* I don’t know. I’m not sure I could find someone to fit or – perhaps more importantly – I’m not sure I could let go! The Boss Lady won’t be surprised at this, but I do so like to be in control…

Is it time Bright Meadow changed direction and became a tech/lit/joke/… blog? Ne-yah. I can’t see it as anything other than what it is right now if I’m being honest. I like the mix of content I’ve got going on. I love the mix of people that are drawn here. I like that one day I can post a book review and the next a scholarly essay on wikis and personality on the web. I think my focus might shift slightly toward the new technologies and fields of research I’m interested in, but that is all.

Simply, is anything going to change, and why am I writing this damn post? I am not sure really. I am just doing what I always do when I have a problem; write it out and try to order my thoughts, see a coherent path through the chaos.

I need to take the pressure off myself and remind myself it is just fun. I need to stop having in the back of my mind “oooh… wouldn’t it be great if I got writing gig out of this” (for example). I need to stop wanting to be internet famous. That will happen on its own if it is going to happen. At the same time I need to fight my inferiority complex and start to believe that, perhaps, I have got something good here after all. That my opinions count. And that I deserve it.

So will things change? Probably not. Most likely not. I expect that I will go on exactly as I have been doing for the past three/four/five/six/seven (depending how you count the archives) years and write whatever the damn-hell I like and keep welcoming people to the party. I fully plan to keep on being star-struck when my internet idols speak to me and ask my opinion. I doubt the day will ever come that I don’t give a giggle of girlish glee when I get a “you’re great, Cas” email.

The day I’m not the blondest brunette on the block? That’s the day I’ll hang up the blogging shoes and not a moment before.

(But I do reserve the right to keep things ticking over for a few more weeks yet. With all things, planning is one thing; making the shiny future happen is quite another all together!)

*poke*

I know I haven’t been updating much lately. Forgive me peeps – I’ve been a bit too busy living life at the moment to write about it. There’s oodles going on, swirling round in my head right now, but I’m afraid it’s the kind of swirly-stuff I have to deal with/live through before I’ll be comfortable writing about it. Plus, people keep forcing me to socialise, which is really putting a dent in my writing time!

I’m just giving y’all a quick update to let you know I am alive and thinking of you. And to inform you that I’m deserting you once more! I’m off to an archaeology conference and am getting back at silly o’clock on Sunday morning. I might be in a Roast-able mood, I might not! The dear and fluffy lord alone knows what I’m going to find to talk about to people all weekend, as I haven’t done a scrap of archaeology in years, but I’m a “Doyenne” of the Internet now (according to the godhead, and he should know), so I’m sure it will be fun for all concerned 🙂

I expect when I get back I’ll be 1) ever so slightly hungover and 2) buzzing with lots of exciting ideas from sitting down and drinking talking to lots of intelligent people all weekend, so expect some nice posts when I return!

Toodles 🙂 (And, if it is working, keep an eye on Twitter for random instances I feel like sharing!)