Rex at Fimoculous.com recently relaunched his site with a brand new look, and a brand new approach to blogging — intended, he says, to signal the notion that “the future of blogging is self-aggregation”:
In a sense, we’re going back to the future. Blogs are starting to take on more of a “personal homepage” feel — a collection of media, writing, lists, reviews, events, geography, etc. In other words, we’re introducing structured data into what was previously just a text-based form.
That idea inspired me, and really got me thinking about what I want from my own website, and what I want to use it for. I asked myself: Do I just want a blog with other bits tacked on? Or do I want a site for and about me, a hub to collect and store all kinds of information relevant to and for me (events in my life and my thoughts on the world; links to other sites that interest me; what I’m reading/watching/listening to)? The site as it was is best described as the former; what I wanted was the latter. But how to get from one to the other?
More…
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A week from tomorrow I will be popping over to London for a short three-day visit, ostensibly to see the Modernism exhibition at the V&A, and to hang out with my good buddy Dave R who’s escaping from Redditch for a while.
But I do have another motive: I’m determined to visit the Rough Trade shop, at long last, after my two previous abortive attempts (in 2001, lost in Covent Garden; and 18 months ago, bewildered on the wrong section of Talbot Road). If I don’t find it this time I’ll cry, I really will.
More…
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I’ve been neglecting you again, dear reader. But then again, what else is new? Anyway, in lieu of a proper entry here’s a list of bullet points on what I’ve been up to the last few weeks:
- A couple of weekends ago, the hard drive on my iBook started dying. Stressed me out no end, it did. The poor machine is in the shop for a replacement right now — the new shipment of drives is due later this week — so I should have it back soon. I hope.
- Seems like nothing but problems with my broadband recently, too. It was slower than dial-up for two days last week, and a fortnight before was down completely on two separate occasions. Apparently they’re ‘upgrading’ the exchange at the moment… at least I can’t fault the customer service, which was more helpful than I expected. And it’s been working uninterrupted since last Friday. Touch wood.
- After all the stress caused by the above, I gave Lightning Bolt a miss last Wednesday and had an early night instead. But I did go see the Boredoms on Friday night, and boy was I glad I did. Their current line-up of three drummers — plus Yamatsuka Eye on vocals and electronics — is quite a departure aesthetically from the sounds they were famous for with the cool kids back in the day, but the new direction fits them like a Saville Row suit. I’m a sucker for good percussion so I was in my element — if a little tired on my feet after a long day — for the more than 90 minutes they performed, perfectly in sync. Awesome doesn’t even begin to describe it. (And to top it off I bumped into at least five people I know when the house lights came up after the show, and everyone was chuffed to bits. That never happens.)
- Speaking of music, on the same day as that Boredoms show I bought News And Tributes, the new album by The Futureheads. I’ve only ever been as disappointed by one other record, and that one — Chris Cornell’s Eurphoria Morning — stayed in rotation for at least two weeks before I was convinced of its craptitude. Oh, what have The Futureheads done to themselves?! The songs are there, more or less, but the production is just plain terrible; never has a ‘big sound’ sounded so small. And what’s with the rhythm-section-hating? The drumming, especially the snare, is barely audible on most tracks, while the bass is mired in murk. And don’t get me started on that godawful track 11! I’m sure they’ll sell bucketloads and get lots more teeny-bopper emo-lite black-rim-glasses-wearing groupies before they realise how far they’ve sold themselves out, and make up for it with a better third album. But this one? I disliked it so much that I returned it on Monday and got the new Mogwai CD instead, which is far more satisfying. (On a related note, most of the reviews of the Futureheads’ record give it a thumbs-up while almost universally referring to the term ‘mature’, as if pedestrianism in art is supposed to be some kind of virtue. Quite frankly, that’s bollocks. Whenever I see a record described as ‘mature’ it’s the kiss of death as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure others would agree.)
- Oh yeah, and yesterday was my birthday. I turned 26. I feel old. However the wonderful Bee, who also celebrated her birthday yesterday, is still full of youth and vitality and the joys of spring. So I’ll have to live vicariously through her, then. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a place in a nursing home to book…
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Tomorrow morning I set off for my month-long getaway in South Africa. I’ve got a long day’s travelling ahead, as I’m not due to arrive in Johannesburg until 6:45am on Wednesday. However, knowing that the gorgeous Bee will be there waiting for me should help the time fly by quick enough.
While I’m there I may have an opportunity to post here now and again, or then again, I may not. I may also take lots of photos for future posting, or then again, I may not. But one thing is for certain: I will have a fantastic time, and make lots of people very jealous in the process.
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It’s resolution time again, and this year I’m keeping it simple. Just a few direct, attainable goals to make life better for yours truly in the coming months. In 2006, I resolve to:
- Eat less. Not that I’m a pig or anything, but I have been consuming more than my fair share in recent weeks. This one goes hand in hand with ‘Walk more’. I’ve lost the weight before without much effort, and I’ll do it again.
- Write more. I enjoy it, so why don’t I do it more often? That’s a question I need to answer this year. Writing this is a start, at least.
- Read more. You should see the tower of books behind me. They’re leering at me, taunting me… No more! This year I will read the feckers. I’ll read the shit out of them. Then they’ll be sorry.
- Work hard. This is the big one. It’s time to put my degree to good use. I have a craft to refine and skills to use and develop. I am marketable, and I am great at what I do and put my mind to. This year I will have a job I can be proud of, and which will finally enable me to…
- Move out! I’ve been home long enough, it’s about time I had my own place, to make my own home. Even if it is just a bedsit. Moving out of the country will help, too. Watch out London, here I come.
- Travel wider. So many places to see, so many new things to experience. If I strike even one off my personal list, I will consider myself fulfilled for the year.
- Take more photos. I bring my camera everywhere, but I rarely take it out. This reticence simply has to stop. This year I will be snap happy.
- Spend more time with Bee. This one’s a given. A proper job means more income which means more trips to Africa which means more time with Bee much more often. More more more, that’s my motto.
- Enjoy myself. Not as easy as you might think. But I will do my damnedest not to lose any day of this year to unpleasantness. Carpe annum!
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I mentioned reinvention, didn’t I? One of my goals for this revision process was to find away to entwine my two weblogs together into a single strand, like it was in the beginning. I was disturbed by my neglecting of the main weblog in favour of posting links by the bucketful; on the other hand, having just a linklog isn’t enough for me and I need that space to record longer-form thoughts, or photographs, or pretty much anything that isn’t a link.
So what I did was, I changed the names. The old weblog becomes the macrolog, while the linklog becomes the microlog. Simple, eh? One weblog, two components: one for big thoughts, one for little. Suddenly the parts seem like a whole again. Which ever strand I add to — macro or mirco — I’ll be adding to the completeness. And because of this, I won’t feel so guilty for leaving huge gaps between longer entries. Everybody wins! It’s funny how semantics can change your perceptions like that.
As for the front page? Well, in a perfect world there’d be some Feedburner-esque method of entwining the separate strands together into a single rope, akin to what Kottke did for his main page. But I’m not about to spend a week hacking MT with my limited skills to get it working the way he did. I’m a ‘plug-and-play’ kinda guy. No pun intended.
So what I did was, I set up the main page to display only entries from the microlog. Then I added links to my macrolog posts to the microlog, with a nifty trick using CSS and the category label tag to style those entries differently from the rest. So now everything tumbles down the page, nicely twisted together. It’s an awkward way to do it, sure, but I had to improvise. Very crafty of me.
Speaking of tumbling, I think it’s pretty obvious that the new front page is inspired by what the tumbleloggers have done/are doing. But it’s not a tumblelog like theirs. It’s still the same old weblog I’ve been keeping for four years. Only it’s got some new boots and panties. Jack calls it a ‘tumbly weblog’, which I think is spot on.
Expect to see some new things going on here over the next few weeks. (For ‘new’, read ‘shamelessly stolen off other bloggers far better than I’.) Also, expect the usual tweaks here or there, as everything settles. And above all, dear reader, stick along for the ride.
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So my restlessness got the better of me. I liked the last design (which I only finished a month ago) but it was a bit too much. There was something a bit bland and staid about it, too. But above all it overemphasised the design, relegating the content to a mere element within, when the whole point of the site is the content: the links that I post, the entries and thoughts that I write here, and everything around and in between. It intimidated me, so I held off from updating anything for a few days, save the odd post or two. Then other things got in the way — work, life in general — and those days turned to weeks. Quelle surprise.
In the meantime, over at Kottke’s blog I read all about those fancy new tumblelogs that seem to be all the rage. Sites like project.ioni.st and Anarchaia. Even Jack has started one, and a nice one it is too.
Tumblelogs; just a fancy name for the weblogs people like me used to have back in the day, really, back when Blogger was state-of-the-art. Before Movable Type made us put a title on everything, and suddenly posting a link or a snapshot of your thoughts wasn’t ‘substantial’ enough. Of course then linklogs came along, and del.icio.us and Flickr and all that jazz, and it seemed like every component of what a weblog used to be had been spun off into its own format, its own identity. Like sit-com characters starring in their own shows.
Anyway, the idea appealed to me, and germinated in the back of my head. The idea of just tumbling everything down the page, regardless of its content — whether an essay or a quote or a link or a photo. That’s what attracted me to blogging in the first place, back when it was quick and dirty and long before the obligation to write essays made it a chore.
This is not a chore.
So I took that idea, and make it the basis of this (live) redesign. My remit? Nothing but content. The content is king. Nice big bold blocks of text. All the fancy stuff kept hidden. Consider this post obsolete.
And hey, would you believe it? Today just happens to be this weblog’s fourth birthday. Four years! Wasn’t that long ago, but I was a different person then, blogging-wise. Keeping a blog back then was, I dunno, more fun? I want this blog to be fun again. I guess there’s no better time than now to take stock. To re-engage. To reinvent. (More on this later.)
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Since the beginning of July, between this site and my new blog, I’ve written approximately 15,000 words. Fifteen thousand! And that’s even accounting for quotations.
I think that’s the single most productive month I’ve had since I started the weblog nearly four years ago. And what’s more, it doesn’t make my 10,000-word thesis seem like such hard work.
Speaking of which, the dissertation’s coming along nicely. I had a productive meeting with my thesis supervisor yesterday afternoon which was very reassuring, to say the least.
Like my classmate Markham, I have occasional bouts of crazy stress over the slog of it all, the researching and the writing and the theorising and the thinking and the [insert Frinkism here]. But it’s good to know that everything I’ve been working on for the past few months still makes sense today.
Oh, and the title? Try this for size: Blogosphere of influence: Are weblogs enriching journalism in the new media age?* Catchy, isn’t it?
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I haven’t written much about my journalism course, have I? I don’t know why that is. Maybe I felt like it wasn’t worth such close analysis. Or maybe I was just embarrassed about the lack of work that I have to show for the last few months (besides class assignments, that is; always busy with those).
Is it too late to fill you in now? To tell you that the site redesign was just displacement activity to distract me from the proper work I have to get done this month — like the four-thousand word monster essay on Ireland’s media environment since the 1920s; or my very-much-unfinished ethics presentation on George Galloway’s libel victory; or finding the time to study for the shorthand dictation test in three week’s time; or designing the class magazine — not to mention the bloody thesis?
Is it any wonder that I don’t want to write about this stuff here?
Come to think of it, I haven’t written much of anything relating to my personal life in recent times. It’s not for want of good material, that’s for sure — it’s not all doom and gloom around here — but I’ve got text files across two computers filled with half-written drafts on all sorts of things and not much impetus to finish them. Remember I promised a report on my New Year exploits with the lovely Benitha, didn’t I? Sorry about that. I had the best of intentions (aren’t they always?) but I shouldn’t promise what I can’t deliver.
Can you believe how quickly the year is flying in? Next month it’ll be summer already! It’s all moving so fast. Too fast. Can I stop the clocks for a month or two, please? I need a chance to catch up, to undo my laziness and get things done. I see people all around me moving at light-speed and it just makes me freeze. I see my classmates starting top-class weblogs of their own and I feel like everything I’ve ever written is the worst kind of shit and want to erase it all (though I won’t; I’m too much of a chicken for that).
I should confess, I told a white lie when I said the redesign was displacement activity. It’s not just that, You see I needed a new look to spur me on to do better things here; to lighten up and stop being so damn serious and get back to what this blog was like when I started it. I mean, what’s the point of me tagging my posts if I’ve got no posts to tag? (It turns out I’m not the only one who feels this way: D. Keith Robinson has posted a remarkably similar message.)
This was supposed to be my own space, a notebook for half-formed thoughts and ideas. Somewhere along the way I got too concerned about how others valued my writing, though I convinced myself that I wasn’t; it turned into an academic journal and the life was sucked out of it. It slipped out of my hands.
Oh there’s the Linklog, sure, but mostly the thoughts and ideas, the good stuff, stayed in my text files and the blog became a chore.
I bought one of those Moleskine notebooks a while back. You know, the really nice ones that other bloggers evangelise about. It’s sleek and sturdy and functional, the paper quality is amazing. In fact it’s so good that I haven’t been able to write in it. It’s like I’m afraid to sully it with my incoherent ramblings, as if I’m committing a sin every time I tarnish the paper with my ballpoint. It’s stupid, really. It’s just a notebook. It’s made for writing in! And it’s mine! Or it’s supposed to be, anyway. I have to make it mine, first.
Just like this weblog. It’s mine, but in a way, it isn’t. I have to make it mine. It’s time I reclaimed my space.
The blog is dead. Long live the blog.
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Branches of a tree by the roadside, Clontarf (April 2003).
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So this weblog is three years old today. Three!
Still a baby, as far as I’m concerned. Still lots more growing to do. Lots to improve. One day I might even get the hang of it. You never know.
To my regular readers, thanks for sticking around during the ‘terrible twos’. Your loyalty will be rewarded. Eventually.
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Major at the pond in the park beside Dollymount, Dublin.
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Crumbling foundations of now-demolished changing rooms, St. Anne’s Park, Dublin.
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It’s a little hard to believe that I’ve reached the 1,000 post mark here at the OM&TR. Harder still to imagine I might have arrived weeks ago, if it weren’t for my deleting a number of useless entries in a fit of quality control early last year.
When I started this thing in November 2001, over two-and-a-half years ago, 1000 was an intimidating number. I read weblogs at the time that had broken that barrier long before I discovered them, and the thought of me doing the same was a fantastical notion. A thousand-word essay was long enough, but a thousand blog posts? Unfathomable! Did I really have that much to say?
Yet when I look back now on the intervening weeks, months and years it appears, funnily enough, that I did. And I do. Whether most of it is worth reading or not is debatable, but I’ve gone too far now to throw in the towel.
Here’s to another thousand, at least.
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Parrot in an aviary near Benitha’s apartment.
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A somewhat glary shot from the shade at the corner of Burnett and Hilda in Hatfield, Pretoria.
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No, it’s not _that_ Brooklyn. It’s the _other_ Brooklyn; the one in Pretoria, South Africa.
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A phone call to the house yesterday afternoon was the herald of bad news: my aunt Marguerite passed away a few days ago.
It was something of a shock, to be honest. I knew she had been in-and-out of hospital for a couple of years, but it was never anything too serious; I had no idea she was quite that ill.
We hadn’t been in regular contact since the summer of 2001, when I last saw her in person. I put that down to the fact that we were both bad letter-writers; even so I feel guilty for not having done more to keep in touch.
I did send her a card at Christmas, though, to wish her the best, and let her know that things were going well for me. I wrote that I would send a proper letter in the new year, a big ol’ yarn to fill in the blanks. There was a lot I wanted to tell her: all about Benitha, and the great time I had in South Africa last year, and the better times we have planned for the future…
I’d like to think that Marguerite’s up there somewhere, that she knows everything I wanted to say, and that it makes her smile to see how happy I am. She was the only one on that side of the family that I was ever close with, besides my grandfather. Maybe she felt bad about that, I don’t know for sure, but she shouldn’t have; it was her caring that counted. She was good to me, and I will always appreciate that.
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My second contribution to Omnivore is now online, entitled Hot Sauce; a cautionary tale regarding the perils of condiment overconsumption. I hope that you might find it quite galvanic.
As was the case previously, any mistakes in spelling, grammar and/or formatting (for example, _Hot Damn!_ should read _Hot Damn!_) are entirely my own. I should pay more attention before I send things off.
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I had the strangest dream last night.
I am in an undisclosed location reading a tabloid, not paying much attention to the text, when all of a sudden a photograph catches my eye.
It’s a small thumbnail image, heading an inch-wide side column, of Bruce Springsteen. It’s not the greatest picture, hampered by its size and poor resolution, but it’s recognisably him, in his younger days.
Suitably distracted (yeah, it doesn’t take much to distract me) I focus on the accompanying text, immediately drawn to the curt caption directly below the image. It reads:
The Boss: Dead
I am taken aback. (Strangely stunned, since I’m not even a fan. I don’t even bother to scan the subsequent text to confirm it.) I ask myself: Can it be? Is Bruce Springsteen dead? I had no idea! Why didn’t anyone tell me?!?
It’s only a moment or two later when I begin to wonder: Hang on a minute, this is the Boss! Doesn’t he deserve more than a single column inch in the middle of a tabloid?
Then I woke up.
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And so another Christmas is over…
Thank Christ for that!
I don’t know about you, but I’m glad it’s done with, even though this year was a relatively quiet one — almost completely stress free, for a change. And I did get some nice presents, a couple of which can be found here. But nevertheless, I ate far too much, sat through hours of crappy television in a vain attempt to ‘unwind’, and spent virtually every other waking moment getting my computer back in working order.
You see, I installed Panther on Christmas Day. Or rather, I attempted to install Panther. But Panther didn’t like the state of my hard disk, and wouldn’t install using the archive-and-install option, nor the standard upgrade method. The glitch could not be repaired with the OS X Disk Utility, and I wasn’t about to wait a few days to spent over €70 on more powerful disk repair software just to fix one teeny little error. Even though I had backed up all of my vitally important data to CD-ROM a few days before in a sudden burst of inspiration, I really didn’t want to have to wipe the disk and start from scratch. But alas, that was what I had to do.
At least Panther saved me any further headaches by installing smoothly in a matter of minutes. And in a way, wiping the disk was like having a brand new computer to play with again. A few days of uploading and importing all the necessary bits and pieces later, and things are finally getting back to normal around here, with a change or two.
For one, I’m replacing Camino with Safari for my browsing purposes. Not that it’s radically different or significantly better (in fact the lack of bookmark importability is a major drawback — I’m torturing myself by doing it manually) but Safari just happens to look prettier than Camino, particularly using tabbed browsing.
And secondly, with Panther’s improved text smoothing capabilities, I noticed how ugly my site has been looking. I toyed with the idea of a whole new look, but whatever design I could think of would be ripping off someone else’s, and I’m still quite fond of the monochrome thing I’ve got going on. So instead, I made a couple of minor style sheet changes over the weekend. I think it looks slightly more classy now.
And that’s what I’ve been doing with myself for the last week or so (minus the stuff I’m not telling you, that is). Another Christmas done and dusted — how was yours?
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Entry No. 583: Two years old today. Had a nice big cake and got lots of presents. Did nothing special, besides writing this. Everybody loves me! Nobody really gives a fuck. And I love you all too! I don’t care, you all suck anyway. Happy birthday to me! Happy fucking birthday to me.
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A few moments ago, totally out of the blue, I got a phone call from an employment agency.
They were following up on details, they said, from the CV I sent through a recruitment website sometime last week. I had actually applied for a particular job (a nine-to-five sales assistant vacancy for some unnamed trade retailer) but I didn’t expect to hear anything more about it. Hence my surprise at this call, especially since it wasn’t even about the job I had applied for.
So I wasn’t exactly prepared, and mumbled some garbled nonsense about my job preferences for a couple of minutes. (I’m much more articulate when I can write things down, I swear.) They said they’d let me know of any available positions in a few days.
I won’t hold my breath. But even if they do call back I have a feeling I won’t be suited to anything they’d have to offer. I’m just too picky.
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Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my initial foray into publishing on the World Wide Web.
My first attempt at a website, a horrible mess by my current standards, went live on the 15th of October, 1999. I had zero knowledge of HTML back then (the whole idea of it intimidated me) so I created the site using Frontpage Express. Not only was the markup atrocious, but it looked awful too: bright orange text on a black background. I cringe when I think about it now.
A few months later I redesigned, this time with white Arial text on a teal background (which switched to blue sometime later). It looked classier, certainly — there was definite evidence of a better design sense — but it was still pretty bad.
In mid-2001 grey was my background colour of choice. The site was neat enough and easy to navigate, and looked quite snappy provided one was browsing with Internet Explorer (yes, I was still using Frontpage, unfortunately) but like most homepages there was very little substance to it, save for the diary.
I had started the diary months before, writing enormous long-winded and rambling entries, and only updating on average three times a year (I was that motivated!). It was a heap of steaming self-indulgent crap, to be honest with myself, and I didn’t feel much in the way of sorrow or regret when I eventually removed the diary from the web in the autumn of 2001. Neither did I feel in any great hurry to fill the void.
I had attempted blogging once before, at the end of 2000, prompted by a newspaper fluff piece about the nascent phenomenon. If I had known that Blogger existed back then I might have stuck with it, but instead I had to go with one of the services recommended by the article, Groksoup (which doesn’t even exist anymore). I think I made about three or four posts before I got bored and gave it up. I just didn’t get it; what was the point of making a boring list of websites that virtually no one would see? Who would want to read it? And why would I want to waste my time doing it?
Almost a year later, I got it. I started visiting Mat Honan’s site, which in the spring of 2001 morphed from what would be considered a common-or-garden static homepage into a dynamic cornucopia of information. Before I discovered his weblog I felt that the web was a dead space, that there was nothing new to find. Reading Mat’s various writings removed my blinkers and introduced me to a whole new world, the democratic face of the web. I quickly learned that weblogs weren’t just about boring lists of links, nor were they merely diaryesque spoutings of everyday tedium. Weblogs were — weblogs are — whatever you want them to be.
It was still some time before I decided to jump in the deep end and try it again for myself. I registered with Blogger in October of 2001, set up a weblog as an extension of my old homepage, and made my first posting on the 1st of November. Second time lucky: I caught the blogging bug in an instant. At last, my presence on the web had a purpose. Within a matter of weeks the old homepage was dead, while the weblog became the star attraction. (Meanwhile, on the design front, I ditched Frontpage, learned HTML from scratch and started hand-coding the site. This was a big turning point for me, to be sure.)
And now, here I am. I’ve been keeping this weblog for almost two years now, though it feels a lot longer, and I’ve come a long way. I have a simple, clean and professional-looking design (one that I’m actually happy with!) created by hand with standards-compliant code. I also have a vague idea about where I’m going in terms of the information I contribute to this ‘textual repository’, as the weblog has been so humbly appellated. Plus, I seem to have attracted my fair share of readers who take a peek to see what’s happening every now and again, and I’m ever so grateful for it. (I would like to take this opportunity to extend my most sincere thanks to you for visiting, whomever you are, and hope that I encourage you to return.)
But I don’t do this just to attract an audience. First and foremost, I do this for myself. I do this because I live to think, to contemplate, to philosophise, because I have opinions and I want to share them. I do this because I hunger to write, and the more I write the better I get. I do this because I want to make my mark, however insignificant in the big scheme of things. I do this because I enjoy it, and I’d like others to enjoy it too. I do this because I love it.
I didn’t know when I began this journey four years ago just how much it would mean to me today. I wonder how I’ll feel about it four years from now.
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Tomorrow morning I shall leave these shores, this emerald isle, to spend a week (well, six nights) in exotic, wintery South Africa.
As you might imagine, I’m more than a little excited. The gravity of the situation only began to affect me over the weekend. The sooner I get going now, the better.
I’ve spent most of the day so far packing and procuring some last-minute essentials. Right now I am 99% packed and ready to go. I like to get things done early. (There is still one thing that I’m looking for, but I might be able to pick it up at the airport. If not, it’s not the end of the world; I’ll think of something.)
As far as this weblog goes, I may have the opportunity to post a note or two here while I’m gone, but don’t hold your breath. In any case, I shall return on the 27th to enthrall you once again.
In the meantime, I didn’t want to leave you, kind reader, without anything to chew on for the next seven days. So, without further ado I present to you, out of the kindness of my heart, a pair of boobies.
And hey, while I’m at it, here’s some tits, some melons, and bazookas too.
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It’s not often that I find myself directly beneath an electrical storm. But that’s where I was on Sunday evening, sitting reading in my room, when I heard the loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever experienced.
First a slowly building rumble, then a growl, and then all of a sudden SNAP! like a Christmas cracker. Believe me, it was loud.
It’s a real shame that I don’t as yet have any means of recording such events and sharing the audio with you, kind reader. Maybe in the future.
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I had another strange dream recently…
I am somewhere south of the Liffey, Donnybrook presumably. Morehampton Road. I am at a bookstore, a bookstore with a deep blue painted wooden shopfront, its name in blocky white lettering stretched across the front above the entrance. Something like Tarzan, or Tarzana.
I go inside. The store is low ceilinged but large, badly lit but sparsely furnished with lots of space for the daylight to penetrate, to move about in. It’s not very busy. I don’t take much notice but there seem to be at least a handful of other patrons browsing the shelves. It’s also quite dusty. Sawdust, it smells like. The flooring is comprised of plywood sheets that bend underfoot, giving a spring to the step.
At the rear of the store I find a plain makeshift-looking table, topped with books on special offer. I focus on a stack of five or six glossy trade paperbacks, with a dust-jacketed hardcover at the bottom. The price is displayed on each with a round, bright orange sticker. Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi for only €3. I examine the books one by one, checking for creases, for smudges, for dog-ears.
I pick the one that seems to be in the best physical condition, and take it to the counter by the left hand wall. There isn’t much of a queue at the till. The man behind the till has an American accent. He looks suspiciously like Dave Eggers.
At the counter a voice enquires: “Are you Dave Eggers?”
The man behind the till turns toward the voice, nods slightly and replies: “Yes, I am.”
I don’t remember anything after this, unfortunately.
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Of late it seems as if there has been a mass exodus of Blogger users to pastures new. The proprietor of plasticbag.org is but one of many to jump ship.
It must be said that Blogger is – without argument – the most popular personal web content management utility available, and must be credited for the popularisation of the weblog phenomenon. Without Blogger, blogging would be nowhere near what it is today. Without Blogger, I probably would never have started my weblog.
So it is with a slight tinge of sadness that I announce that last night, after much consideration, I downloaded Movable Type.
Blogger has been great to me. It’s helped me to improve my writing, exercise my research skills, interact with communities and people I would never have otherwise encountered. But I have come to a point where I want more. It may just be a hobby but I am serious about my weblog, and my website as a whole. As a result I want, I need more control over how my information is stored, processed and presented, even if only for my own education; I need more than Blogger can give me.
There’s also the fact that due to its immense popularity, Blogger feels like it’s turning into the Geocities of weblog publishing. Not that I’ve never hosted a site on Geocities before (in fact, this weblog began on Geocities), but I have an admittedly selfish need to move up in the world, and beyond such humble beginnings.
I’m preparing to install Movable Type on my server over the weekend. As I write this, I’ve been spending most of my time knee-deep code, editing the MT templates to fit the current uniform. Things might seem a little weird around here for a short while, but trust me; when it’s up and running, you’ll appreciate it.
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I’m cold, and I’m hungry, and I have loads of stuff to read tonight, and a plane has crashed in Queens, NY, and the doomsayers are gonna come out in force proclaiming the world is going to end.
But at least I’m going to WrestleMania.
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I can’t believe I read nothing today. Not that the day has been entirely unproductive. I watched the DVD of Series 7: The Contenders before it was due back at Xtra-Vision. (It was good, could have been better, the ending was a bit frustrating… Girls Against Boys do most of the soundtrack.)
I think I might go to bed early, have a leaf through some of these books that the library so graciously loaned to me.
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I got a text from my friend Sarah sometime after I fell asleep last night. She and her friends were at the gig last night and met Mogwai after the show; they signed one of Martin’s drumsticks that they caught when he threw them into the crowd. Damn. First I miss friends of mine meeting Efrim from A Silver Mount Zion, and now I miss friends of mine meeting Mogwai.
Then again, if I had been there, I probably would have been too star struck to say anything. Like when I didn’t strike up a conversation with George Berz before the Fog show in Manchester, even though I had the perfect opportunity to ask him how the tour was going and stuff. Gotta snap out of that.
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Just got home from the Mogwai gig at the Olympia. Absolutely fantastic stuff. I saw them once before, last April, but this gig was just as good. Most of the gig was stuff from their first album, Young Team, which I wasn’t expecting in the wake of Rock Action. I was well impressed. As per usual, there was an obvious element of the crowd who only moved when they played new stuff – that always seems kinda ignorant to me.
Another thing that bothered me were the two cackling witches I happened to be standing near. I mean, why pay £17 to get into a gig only to talk to your mate about crap – and quite loudly at that – while the band is playing? I don’t understand that kind of ignorance or rudeness. Good thing I had my plugs in so they didn’t bother me too much.
The plugs, by the way, were a great gig aid – I heard the whole thing perfectly, without the pain and the tinnitus. God, I’m so old.
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Sabena, the Belgian national airline, has gone bust.
I’m flying to Brussels next month with Aer Lingus on a route it code-shares with Sabena. Aer Lingus is also in big financial trouble.
Looks like I could be living in Griet’s flat over Christmas (only kidding!).
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I got my logic homework out of the way – it was actually quite easy, once I shook away the tiredness-induced cobwebs. One less thing to do this week.
I also read through stuff for my tutorial tomorrow. It’s on John Searle and artificial intelligence, which was my last essay topic, so I might have a few things to say for once.
I’m going to see the new Wayne Wang movie, The Centre of the World, at the IFC tomororw evening. The last film I saw there was Brian Yuzna’s Faust (with Mr. Yuzna himself in attendance). Should be quite a difference… or maybe not… depends on the GPQ.
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Mat has good things to say about the weblog – let’s hope I can live up to expectations.
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I spent all day at the computer again. I think I’m addicted to looking at other people’s weblogs. Is this a bad thing? Well it’s certainly bad for my eyes. And my back.
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I got Fugazi’s Repeater a few days ago. I’ve been listening to it nearly long-stop since. I also got their new album, The Argument, a week or so before. I haven’t listened to it nearly as much. It’s not that I don’t like it… I dunno… it’s really good… but it just doesn’t compare, right at this moment in time. There’s a lack of groove or something, it’s too subdued… I can’t exactly put my finger on it.
Then again, I can barely keep my eyes open. Maybe I should call it a night.
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My friend Noel recently made me a mixtape. It’s excellent stuff; bands that he saw when he was in Chicago like Lightning Bolt, bands that I’ve heard of but never realy heard before like Melt-Banana and Men’s Recovery Project, and the first album by the mightiest new wave grindcore band in the world, The Locust. I am very happy. I shall have to return the favour somehow.
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This is my first posting, and I am at a loss for words. I’ll think of something interesting to say later, I’m sure.
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