Sunday Roast: When I’m dancing on tables, I know I’ve gone too far

Todays Roast is late for one simple reason that can be explained in one short sentence: It is sunday. I am not ashamed to admit I slept late, or that I then stayed in bed till midday reading. It’s been a hard week, I am cream crackered, and I need as much beauty sleep as possible before Thursday because I’d hate to fly 3000 odd miles and have the Cute Canadian take one look at me and go “Ug! What the frell did I ever see in her?!” (I like to think an unlikely scenario, but it could happen).

Good things, however, come to those who wait. Voila! Happy eating 🙂

I’ve been lax in commenting over at Successful Blog lately, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been avidly reading. Liz has a wonderful (when aren’t they?) piece on 10 reasons to get jazzed about writing. Reasons three and eight are the ones that speak most to me. I rarely (if ever) sound coherent or intelligent in spoken dialogue. A combination of nerves, shyness, and my brain working faster than I can get the words out is probably to blame. Writing gives me space to put my ideas down in coherent form. Whenever I face a tricky situation – be it personal, work, whatever – I invariably find myself writing something down. The end result may have nothing to do to with what I was originally pondering, but the very process of writing helps clarify things for me. Why do you write?

I hummed and haaaed over including this in the ‘Roast as it is more for me and my research/interests, but in the end it made it through if only because this way I won’t be able to delete the bookmark! (Already misplaced it twice *blush*) Stowe is doing a webcast on what web 2.0 means to you and (he promises) he’ll put up the slides for us poor people unable to gallivant around the globe going to conferences and the like. Ahh, bless the Interweb. Soon I’ll never even have to leave the house 🙂

This week is a “how/why do you write/blog?” kind of week, I can tell. Performancing tells us that we need to tell a good story when we blog. That’s certainly how I like to do things, and most of the blogs/sites I enjoy reading most also fall into this format, so I’d agree.

Dewayne has a link to a model of Serenity made from paper. When I saw this mid-week, it was VERY impressive, and made my crafting fingers tingle. Sadly, the site was down when I checked today. I’m keeping the link though on the off-chance it comes back up.

BBC has a piece on what makes a good book? Expect a longer blog-post soonish giving you my choices for my top books – wouldn’t be surprised if Cryptonomicon and Neuromancer didn’t make it onto my list though 😀 Any books out there that changed your life?

Improbulus has something on creative commons licences being upheld in court. I’ve had a CC licence on most of my stuff more or less since I started, but I was always rather dubious as to their enforceability in the real (legal) world, so this is good news indeed!

Ben Metcalfe has a great and well-reasoned response to the MySpace essay by Danah Boyd I pointed out to you last week.

It was a sad day when the Blue Peter badge scheme was suspended. I always wanted one of these badges when I was growing up (hell, I still do want one!) but I would never stoop to getting one off eBay. The shame.

I like my shiny jewelry, but I have such quantities of it that, not surprisingly, some bits don’t get worn for a while. They then start to look a bit dull and no longer so shiny. The last time everything was looking sparkling was when I was doing conservation work on the collections up in Liverpool – they had a nice, large, ultrasonic bath and no one minded if the odd ring, necklace, or earring found it’s way into the cycle. So I was very excited when I saw this home version of the ultrasonic bath. Then I saw it needed chemicals to work and changed my mind. Still, if anyone could point me in the direction of a small, inexpensive, ultrasonic bath that DOESN’T require ammonia etc, I would appreciate it.

Performancing are calling for authors. I am registered there so technically I could also blog there… Something though, is stopping me, mainly (I must be frank) the thought of such a large audience scares the shit out of me. Also, what would I say? Still, if you feel you have something to say, but no where to say it, go and register with Performancing. They are nice people 🙂

Of all the April Fool’s pranks that filled the web yesterday, two tickled my fancy:
Google Romance (read the FAQ on contextual dating…)
Flickr being overrun with cats. Lots and lots of cats.
Sidenote: I hate April Fool’s day and normally hide away in the flat not speaking to anyone on the off chance they’ll try to prank me. I am NOT a fan of practical jokes – too many memories of being the butt of such jokes at school I guess, or an overactive empathy gland or something.

A little while back (in this Sunday Roast) I mentioned Antarctic bloggers, one of who was Phil Jacobsen. I’m gonna big him up again, because whenever he posts, he makes me laugh and then think. I’ve tried to email him twice but got bounced both times, so I’m going to have to resort to giving him the wild applause he deserves on this blog instead.
:clap_tb: :clap_tb:

Annnnnnnd… That’s it. I’m off to do the laundry and clean the flat. Enjoy 🙂

6 thoughts on “Sunday Roast: When I’m dancing on tables, I know I’ve gone too far

  1. Hi Cas,
    Thanks for the mention. Actually I’m the same way, my writing is so much more coherent than my speaking. Whenever I say that I write better than I talk, people say, “Yeah, and a lot more concisely too.” 🙂

    Liz
    Successful-Blog

  2. I swear till he saw a piece of my written work my supervisor thought I didn’t have two braincells to rub together. Then he saw something I’d written, and (whilst he still thought I was more than a little silly) he grudginly admitted I might have a good idea or three knocking around my skull.

    Alas, you can’t walk into an interview and say “please let me write all my responses down” – this might explain why I’m still doing temp work 😀

  3. It will serve me right for not downloading/saving the instructions as soon as I saw them. It’s almost as if there are forces in the universe conspiring against me waisting time making a paper model of Serenity.

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