Jan 31

24

Last night caught the first 2 episodes of 24 Day 4 (or should I say Tivo’s them and caught up today). As a special ‘treat’ they were shown on Sky Travel, which is available on Freeview. So to continue watching I need to get Sky 1, which is difficult as none of the major cable companies supply here yet and I can’t put up a dish in the place I’m in (at least without some trouble). Or I can wait til the DVD comes out, most likely in August, or look elsewhere. As one of the prgrammes that I enjoy most, not sure wht I will do 😉

At least we’ve got rid of the addiction storyline!

Jan 31

Is Bill Gates running the country?

This made me chuckle on the Tube this morning, from the Metro, or the BBC. Apparently a doodle from the desk of Tony Blair, at the Davos economic summit, has been analysed by ‘experts’, who proclaim that the Prime Minister is obviously ‘not a natural leader’ and ‘struggling under pressure’, plus he’s got a tendency towards meglomania! Unfortunately for the political pundits, the doodles are from Bill Gates. Wonder how that changes their analysis?

Jan 30

8MB connections

Just seen that UK Online will be offering a 8MB service from my exchange from around March. Pre-registered for it..so need to wait what the cost will be. It’s around the time the BT contract runs out so it looks like perfect timing

Jan 30

Somebody’s trying to tell me something?

I followed a recommendation from Joseph Scott and clicked on the related feeds link in Bloglines, to see which blogs it would relate to this one. I’d love to know what criteria they are basing it on, as the top 5 were all in Spanish and the rest of them all appeared to be related to churches, parish groups and theology discussions. May be it’s just because it is Sunday ;).

But now I go back to take another look and list some of them here and everything has disapeared, Bloglines can find no related feeds. Just blankness.

Jan 29

Weekend Lunches

It’s Saturday, I’m sort of working, but decided to go out for a long lunch as a change from a week eating sandwiches at the desk. So went to a great place in Chiswick called Fishworks. I had a great people watching seat, on a balcony which allowed me to watch the fishmongers at the front of the restaurant. Although watching them gut and fillet a fish whilst eating may not be suitable for all.

A half bottle of Pinot Blanc, aportion of smoked salmon and then the main course – Suppe del Pescatore. Basically, what I would call an interactive dish; I got a warning when 6 utensils were bought to the table to allow me to eat the dish. A serving spoon, knife, fork, normal spoon, shell crackers and one of those peculiar thin little diggers for getting the meat out of shell fish.

The soup was wonderful, very messy, with a tomato and garlic base. One pile of shells later, I was ready to go. So back home I came to continue with site testing. But I did take this picture.

Fishworks_lunch.jpg

Jan 25

Connectivity

Lost various methods of connecting today at work and for a while had to go back to using IE instead of Firefox (IE is the default user to had all the connectivity rules tied in with whatever networking rules they have). Led to a few minutes trying to remember which button does what! Plus the realisation that this blog has layout issues on IE 5.5. on NT! Am I going to fix it? Maybe, but not the highest priority – the content is still perfectly readable.

Jan 25

Conversations

I forgot to add that one of the most important conversations could be the one you have with yourself over the long term on a blog. It’s a great place to explore ideas.

Jan 24

Another day, another conference!

After my listening in to the ‘Blojoucrecon’ on Friday and Saturday, I was planning on tuning into the Blog Business Summit this evening. But a late appearing irc feed means it’s far too late…what with the 8 hour time difference. So I’ll read the notes and try again tomorrow.

And to quote from Jon Garfunkel‘s comment below

I’m delighted that people have posted about what they got out of the conference– this will help the attendees communicate with you, and perhaps help the major news reports paint a more complete picture of what transpired.

To me, that’s what blogging is about – conversations. And allowing the wider broadcast of conferences facilitates this – let’s a far wider range of people comment and contribute to the debate. Links and trackbacks allow the initiation of conversations in ways that were not possible before.

Jan 23

The Thames and Kew Gardens

On a wonderful bright winter day, I took a wander along the river and down to Kew, snapping all the way. Instead of putting them on the site as I have with other photo’s, I’d thought I try out Flickr. So take a look here to see them. I’m going to try out their publish to blog facility as well on the next post

Jan 23

Blogging, Journalism and Credibility

Spent time yesterday listening in to a conference at Harvard on Blogging, Journalism and Credibility. I’m going to have to go back and read the transcripts to check up, but one area that I found strange was the discussion about links and their use in blog posts. There seemed to be a feeling that all links need to be credible, to be validated somehow, and if you link to an unvalidated post, then, somehow, that damages your credbility. One argument for me is that ‘credible’ news organisations, either print or media, don’t always do this anyway, why should bloggers, whether amateur or professional do it any different?

With blogs, with it being a slightly more permament media, allowing you to interact for a far longet time than a newscast or a paper, then surely half the pleasure is linking to things that are dubious, or not fully verified; often linking can be to comment on the quality of the posting/news; or you can go back later and confirm stuff.

Blogs, in fact all web media, is a pull rather than a push media. I choose what I want to see on there, I seek out content far more than I do on TV. It gives me far more opportunity to explore AND make up my own mind about things than a 2 minute story on the news or an article in the paper. The choice stays with me.

After all that rambling, there’s a point in there somewhere. Maybe I’ll come back later and try again.

BTW, loved the sharing aspect of this conference – being able to listen in whilst lurking ont he irc channel reading the asides was a far better experience than just reading the stuff.

Jan 23

Reading or Writing

I was looking at my pattern of writing posts and realise I’m defintiely a consumer rather than a producer. I try and avoid posting from work, as at the moment I think it would push the interpretaion of valid use of computers, despite the fact that I do a lot of browsing – although I can always argue that is for research of the use of web technology . When I get home, I’m more in the mood to consume, to suck down content instead of writing stuff down.

So I tend to store things and write them up at the weekend. Hence the flurry of posts today!

Jan 23

Framing the pictures

Finally got some pictures framed. They’d taken 3 weeks and cost just over £90. There were 2 tapestries plus a screen print I’d picked up from Australia. Now all I need to do is find somewhere to put them; re-arranging the walls is on the cards for later.

Jan 23

Bloggers Meeting

As mentioned, I went along to the London Bloggers Meet on Wednesday. Met a good mix of people, who run a variety of blogs and here’s a few of them:

Looking at these later, I realised how quickly I’d come to rely on the aggregator, instead of trawling through the different sites. I currently use Bloglines, but it could be any of them. It’s harder to check thoese without RSS feeds than those with, which means I’d visit less.

The night was fun, there was a good conversation about a wide range of topics lasting til closing. I’d left work earlier than usual (if you can call 6.45 early) and it was great to think about different things. Of course, this had to be the day I’d been delivered some flowers – hauling those around the tube and the pub was a little difficult. Luckily they were in a large box, so better than a bunch
to manage.

Felt tired all of the next day though, did not get home to after 12.30. BUt will defintiely be going to the next one.

Jan 16

Sunday mornings

Love Sunday mornings when there’s nothing to do except drink coffee, eat toast and actually get round to some of the programme’s that got TiVO’d during the week.

Jan 15

What to Blog?

Julie Leung’s entry about Privacy and Secrecy resonated with me this monning, coming so soon after conversations at work about their blogging policy (or lack of it). Writing on a blog is sharing with a community, even if few people read it. You can share your thought processes, the things that are bugging you, the stuff you want to remember. But there’s always some kind of self-censorship, driven by both internal or external restrictions. I wouldn’t write here the same sort of things that I’d put in a hand written personal diary , but I may write more than I would relate in a conversation, partly because I’ve had time to reflect and can think during the writing process instead of the immediacy of talking.

The connectin to work? We don’t have a blogging policy, but they are slowly thinking their way towards them (i did have to explain what a blog is). We were discussing the dismissal of Joe Gordon from his job at Waterstones and the difference between commenting on a blog and havimg a loud conversation in a pub: permanacy. Something I say here could be round for a while. The team memeber I was in conversation with, is currently extremely conservative: employees should not document any aspect of their work life. I’m more in line with restricting discussion about company strategy, business decisions etc, which is in line with current policies about conversations, emails etc to other people. On our actual products, I should be able to say what I like and don’t like.

But if they go with the most extreme view, that makes a third to a half of my waking life off limits. And work is normally the area of the life that causes the most problems. If things piss me off, if I’m working silly hours or if things are going great, why shouldn’t i vent here. If I worked for Waterstone’s I definitely couldn’t. Where I am now, I’m not sure.

Back to Julie’s post, there are things that I would not share, things that I do share and things that I want to, but it may not be a good idea.

Jan 12

Re-organinsations

A huge global re-organanisation was announced at work yesterday. It looks like out team is not directly affected, we had a good re-ordering not so long ago. So it’s business as usual whilst being extra careful around people that may be affected.

Jan 11

mini Macs

liked the look of the mini mac that was announced by Apple today..especially as it is already for sale on the the UK Apple store site for shipping in 2 weeks. Could definitely see the attraction in getting it for the parents to reduce the support I need to do. However, the grandparents – they’d break anything. But support over Xmas this year for them was showing them how to send an email, much easier to cope with then the normal stuff they have. By now, i think they now have a regular account with the store to fix things.

Jan 11

Creative Zen PMC – number 2

my replacment PMC is working very well up to now..at least it’s passed the 30 day mark which is more than the first 1. Subscribing to a few feeds via iPodder gives me some great random videos from all over the web -keeps me entertained onthe commute home. Just have to be careful to remove the random blue movie that creeps in…..especially before taking it home and letting the young cousins play with it 😉