chocolate and vodka
A whole bunch of inane ramblings about stuff. I can't be more precise than that, I'm afraid.


Saturday, May 31, 2003  
Two headed tortoise
In South Africa recently was born a two headed tortoise. It seems that the tortoise is doing well, eating with both of its mouths and generally acting tortoisy. Unfortunately, one head seems to operate the front pair of legs, and the other head operates the back pair, which makes for a grand total of going nowhere when the tortoise is panicked.

Now, the BBC piece left it there, but don’t you think this begs a few questions? Like, has the tortoise’s nervous system been split in two with one head getting the front half and the other head getting the back half? Or have the heads simply apportioned responsibility for different sectors of one nervous system?

Something like either of those two scenarios has to have happened because if you had both heads controlling the same part of the body then you could end up with some bizarre mental fracas going on with both heads trying to get the same leg to do different things, for example.

And what happens if one head wants to go in a different direction to the other head? Or if they argue?

I don’t know much about the physiology of two-headed tortoises, but I find myself strangely curious.
posted by Suw | 5/31/2003 12:46:00 PM



Friday, May 30, 2003  
Reality bytes
Salam Pax has been getting some shit lately, from people who don’t believe he’s real. The rumours are that Salam’s some sort of agent or spy, or maybe not even in Baghdad at all but quietly forging his blog from some comfy pad in Kansas.

Then there’s a bevy of other pieces quietly affirming that Salam Pax is real, is in Baghdad and isn’t an agent or spy but a simply architect with attitude. Chief amongst the believers is Rory McCarthy at The Guardian, whom one would imagine probably has the inside story considering that he’s managed to persuade Salam to write a column.

Somehow, I doubt very much that the Guardian would be publicising their newest, shiniest recruit if he was in fact some bird called Dorothy from Kansas.

The thing is, I don’t know jack shit about Iraq really. I know that I didn’t like the war, and that I wasn’t (and am not) happy about the way that the government lied to us, or the way that Blair has allowed himself (and thus the UK) to become the lapdog of the maniac Bush.

I know that I was astounded (in a good way) by the number of people who protested against the war, and I know that this whole affair has been a wake-up call for the apathetic who have suddenly discovered that they are not willing to sit by and watch whilst atrocities are committed in our name.

I also know that I do not trust the media to tell me the truth, nor the government. Both have lied and been caught lying throughout the entire episode, and I have no doubt that both will continue to lie for as long as they can get away with it.

Salam Pax is a lone voice in all this. One man telling his story, explaining his reality as he sees it, and he sees it in a way that no one else (online) does. His intelligent prose goes a long way towards showing us what life is really like in Iraq right now, for him, his colleagues and his family.

Salam also goes a long way to undoing some of the propaganda that’s been forced down our throats (and which some netizens seem only to eager to swallow with pride and patriotic fervour) by the American and British governments and media.

See, I know I’ve said this before, but it seems to me that the authorities want us to view Iraqis either as The Enemy, to be exterminated and shown no mercy, or the Poor Pitiful Peasants incapable of doing anything for themselves and therefore reliant on ‘our’ kindness and generosity. Oh, look at us, the redeeming forces here to save your souls from the foul evil of your own culture and country.

Salam gives the lie to this - he is intelligent, articulate, well informed and savvy. He presents his viewpoints in an articulate and engaging way and we get to see through his eyes a human story. It’s just one of the uncountable stories in Iraq right now, but it’s the only one we’ve got.

And this is, I think, why certain individuals have an issue with Salam. He’s smarter than they are, more intelligent, more articulate. In fact, that’s what makes them so suspicious - how could an Iraqi be so intelligent and speak such good English? How could he possibly know so much about American culture?

Er, hello? Wake up! Smell the roses! American culture gets everywhere, like creeping slime mould. I’d be more shocked if the obviously well educated Salam didn’t know about American culture.

But in all the furore over Salam, people have really lost sight of what he is doing. He’s writing a blog - a personal account of his life. He’s not there to document the war and post-war collapse of Iraq. He’s not there to uncover Saddam’s crimes and those of the Ba’athists. He’s telling us what goes on his world, what’s happening in his life, and we need to remember that in order to keep things in perspective. This is one man’s viewpoint, not some history book in the writing.

A happy side effect of Salam’s blog is that he’s educating some of us as to what life is like outside of our cushy little countries, those of us open-minded enough to take in what he’s saying of course. The others he’s just pissing off, which is frankly scores some serious points with me. Anyone who pisses off narrow minded racist middle-classes elitist fat-bellied Americans is right at the top of my party invite list.

So yeah, Salam, you’re welcome round mine anytime, although I can promise you that you’ll not be overly impressed at what passes for architecture round here.

All this discussion about whether or not Salam is real, though, has bugged me today. Not just because I’m a Salam believer and sympathiser, but because this whole online reality thing is major food for thought in my own life right now and has been for some time.

I really am fed up of people telling me that you can’t get to know people online, and that online friendships are somehow flawed.

"Oh, but you never really know them," they say. "How can you tell that they are who they say they are?"

Tell me something, please. Email me - my address is over there on the left… no, the other left… ( ;-) ) and it works, really. Or leave a comment.

How do you know that anyone is who they say they are? I’ve been taken in by people before, people I’ve met, people that have seemed perfectly normal and reasonable and nice. Then three months down the line, or three years, whatever, they have shat upon me from a great height.

On one particularly notable occasion, I employed a guy as a sales rep for a company I was running. Seemed like a charming enough guy, had a reasonable CV, couldn’t immediately see anything wrong with him at all. So we gave him the job. Things didn’t go so well, he didn’t get any sales and the company was floundering, so we ditched him, as you do.

So, in a perfectly natural reaction, he harassed us by phone. He’d ring up several times a day and as soon as anyone answered the phone, he’d hang up. To start with, you don’t think anything of it, but when it keeps happening again and again and again it starts to bug you. Then it starts to worry you. Then is starts to piss you off. Then you realise that if you keep reacting to it, he’s fucking won.

We did a bit of research then, and oh boy, oh boy, do I wish I’d known some of the things I found out then before I’d given the freak the job! He’d been fired from his previous job for sexually harassing the boss’s wife. He was running a dodgy business from a non-address… oh I could go on, but I won’t.

The irony is that I would never have found out this stuff if it weren’t for the fact that I was now in the same boat as his previous employers. They were all rather unwilling to talk to me until they knew that I was suffering the same thing that they had. If I had rung up before giving him the job, they would not have spoken to me, because giving references now has become so dodgy in terms of slander/libel that may people simply won’t do it.

So my point is this - at which point in the past were people ever always who they say they are? Why has this issue of identity been flagged up as unique to the online environment when it’s an ages old issue that’s never gone away and probably never will?

On the one hand, you could say that the internet makes it easier to be someone you’re not, but on the other hand, it’s the internet that allows people to check their facts, if they can be bothered to look. The resources are out there to help you find out about someone if that’s what you want to do, and it’s infinitely easier to do precisely because of the net.

I’m no expert on digging for personal information online, but even I managed to find out stuff about our ex-employee that gave me pause. I never would have located that info offline, that’s for sure.

Within most of us there is an inherent instinct to trust. It’s hardwired into us, a part of our physical make-up. If you have oxytocin in your brain (which you do) then you have trust, according to the New Scientist (password required but you can get a free 7 day trial).

This instinctive trust is what makes the world work - without it, you can’t be a part of any kind of social group. And that’s just as much the case online as it is offline. Ok, so you’re missing the visual clues online, but you have other clues in the way that people write, the language they use and the way they react, and with a bit of experience you do get to pick up on whether or not someone is talking shit.

I’ve been online for seven years, and I’ve met a lot of people online whom I have subsequently met offline and I don’t think I’ve ever been wildly wrong about any of them. This is not to mean that I’ve not subsequently misjudged people, but on the whole the number of nutters per square inch has been pretty low. One, actually, and although he was hammer-wielding he wasn’t in my presence at the time and it was only his computer which suffered.

I’ve met some pricks, obviously, via the net, but then I’ve met many more in real life. No environment, or country, has a monopoly on pricks nor is anywhere exempt from their presence. It’s just one of this irritating things in life, like the way it rains whenever you don’t have your umbrella, or the way that you wait for hours and then three buses come along at once.

The internet isn’t full of axe-wielding murderers. It’s not full of liars. It’s full of people, the majority of whom are simply saying it as they see it. You may disagree with them, you may not like them, you may think that they are pricks. But that doesn’t mean that they’re all Dorothys, pulling the wool over your eyes from Kansas, and if you really think that it does, you need to see a psychologist pretty soon about your paranoia.
posted by Suw | 5/30/2003 02:37:00 PM



Thursday, May 29, 2003  
Junior Senior
Ooh, I like this. Oh yes I do.
posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 02:29:00 PM

 
Another good idea
According to Journalism.co.uk:

Web guru Steve Outing has urged online publications to improve their journalistic 'talent' by scouting for bloggers.

I think that’s a fine idea, yes! Someone somewhere should pay me large amounts of money to talk shit for a living. I’m expert at it - been doing it all my life for fun, so why not do it for money? I always said that if only I could find someone willing to pay me to talk crap, I could make a small fortune.

Sadly, though, I suspect that online publications are about as capable of picking up a good blogger as Business Link are of ever making a decision.
posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 02:11:00 PM

 
Blogwise
I'm listed on Blogwise now. I've had one click and rank 4153rd. LMAO. I'd make some quip about watching my blog plummet through the ranks, but I'm not sure there's anywhere to plummet to. Anyway, Blogwise is a good idea, I think - there has to be some sort of index of blogs that does more than give you a rank and a URL.
posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 01:56:00 AM

 
Bum
Forgot to set the video before I went to bed last night, so missed my interview this morning. I think maybe that was my subconscious kicking in. I'm not sure that I'm not entirely happy not knowing how stupid I sounded.
posted by Suw | 5/29/2003 01:12:00 AM



Wednesday, May 28, 2003  
Be' tisha gwybod?
Weird day today. The interview with Irfon Jones from Radio Cymru was brought forward to today, which meant less time to prepare, but also less time to get nervous. I don’t really do nerves, though, not beforehand. I get kinda calm before something scary. Then I fall apart afterwards.

I have to say, Irfon was lovely. I wouldn’t have had a problem with doing an interview with him at all if it were in English. I’ve done a few during the last year and, whilst the first few wigged me out somewhat (I’m much more used to being the interviewer than the interviewee), I’ve started to get used to it. It’s a business thing. I need to promote my business, so I need interviews. Easy.

But the idea of doing radio in Welsh, well… That’s a whole nother ball game. There’s this lag… My comprehension isn’t perfect, so I hear the sounds and there’s a pause whilst my brain sorts them out into words. Then I have to figure out what those words mean. Then I have to think of a response and then I have to think of how to say that in Welsh.

Disappointingly, I was thinking in English and stumbling over my Welsh. Usually when I speak in Welsh I try to think in Welsh - and it makes a big difference. Today, I thought in English and spoke in gibberish.

And I giggled. Gah. I knew I would either corpse or freeze, and I corpsed.

Still, it wasn’t live, and Irfon was very sympathetic and promised that they could edit something together from the shite that pour forth from my gob. I think I would have been better if I’d known in more detail what they wanted to talk about. I was expecting the competition questions, but not the questions about me, and why I started learning Welsh, how I learnt, stuff like that.

It’s so hard to explain to someone why I started learning Welsh, because I don’t really know myself. It was almost arbitrary. I wanted another language, any other language and Welsh won out by default because, five years down the line, I’m still learning. I’ve tried Polish, Russian, Dutch, French, Latin, Cornish, Norwegian, Swahili… the list goes on.

It’s an accident that I now speak Welsh, not part of some grand design. But try telling that to people. They don’t understand that you can do something like this by accident. But the thing is, people kept emailing me in Welsh and I had to translate in order to reply to them. Learning was almost a side effect.

But anyway, apparently my Welsh is better than some Welsh people’s Welsh, so I guess it will be ok. I shall tape it tomorrow morning (it’s on before I get up), and hope that I don’t sound too much like a twat.

Anyway, like I say, I get really nervy after the event. I’ve always been like that. When I did stand up, I used to be really horribly calm beforehand, then just go to pieces afterwards. I did that today too. The only thing I could think of afterwards was to call J in Australia, just to hear his voice to calm me down. If he could have seen me, pacing round my flat, riddled with nerves, I think he would have pissed himself laughing.

Still, glad it's all over. I can get back to my Matrix obsession now, until it wears off, of course.
posted by Suw | 5/28/2003 02:27:00 PM

 
Get your Matrix here...
I was looking for Matrix stuff on Slsk the other day (although I didn't find anything worth getting), and was quite surprised to see a file of the Matrix Reloaded for download. I didn't really believe that it was actually the Matrix Reloaded though, so I ignored it. Not that I would have downloaded it even if I had believed it, cos I want that full-on cinema experience rather than to watch some crappy pirated copy playing jerkily on a computer that can't really handle it. But according to the Beeb it's not a crappy pirated copy that's doing the round, but a copy taken from a film print complete with surround sound. Someone somewhere's quick off the mark.

I think, though, that there's an upside to all this. The Matrix Reloaded was released worldwide two weeks ago to avoid piracy, and I think that's a good thing. I really hate it when you have a film released in America months before it comes out here. What's the point of that? Just to make us wait longer and get all annoyed at it? I presume they do it because they're a bunch of cheapskates who don't want to pay for the number of prints required to give a film worldwide release, but with the amount of money some of these films make, that's a pretty weak excuse in my opinion.
posted by Suw | 5/28/2003 12:35:00 AM



Tuesday, May 27, 2003  
DVDs, the Matrix (again) and cachu planciau (that's "shitting planks" in English)
I found out today that this ‘new’ computer of mine can’t play DVDs, and I’m gutted. I was going to treat myself to the Matrix DVD but I’ve had to go for the video instead. I almost never buy videos. In all my adult life, I’ve bought maybe twenty videos. Most of them have been either Eddie Izzard, or Newman and Baddiel (which shows you just how rarely I buy them).

I started to get into the whole DVD thing when I bought Spider-Man and then felt compelled to go buy everything else that Tobey Maguire has ever done, and I really can see the attraction now. It’s not that I don’t or didn’t like film - I love film. I used to go to the flicks almost every Monday, cos it was half-price, and I’d see whatever was on. Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, Speed, Stargate.

Oh yeah, seeing Speed sitting in the front row of the Screen on Baker Street was just fantastic. Talk about peripheral vision - that close to and the screen’s virtually wrap-around. Ah, those were the days. I worked just round the corner from the Tottenham Court Road screen, so it was all very convenient. Then I moved jobs (jumped just slightly before I was pushed), moved house (from the very convenient Tooting to the totally inconvenient and lacking in any advantages whatsoever Hounslow) and my movie going kinda slacked off a bit.

Now, of course, I’m here in urban isolation and organising a trip to the flicks is a major hassle. I should get into going on my own, but I really hate that. Kate and I went to see the second Harry Potter a while back, and fair near pissed ourselves laughing, particularly during some of the allegedly scary scenes. We were just howling, and I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have had that moment had I been on my own. I like to feed off the reactions of people around me, if you know what I mean.

My very first DVD ever was the Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around The World album. I rarely play it though, mainly cos what’s the point? I have the album, and I play that a lot (it’s on right now, actually), but the DVD is just kinda a keepsake.

I actually only own six now, that and the five Tobey films I’ve managed to buy. What a collection! Film 2004 will be ringing me up and asking me to present just as soon as they find out.

And of course, as I’ve said before, I don’t have a DVD player. Although now the urge to max out my credit card and get one is stronger than ever. But I’m going to resist, because I need to save my pennies for America.

I didn’t manage to apply the same philosophy to the Matrix video though, no matter how much I hate the things. I mean, with all that annoying tape that goes all frilly and unwatchable as soon as you put them in the player. Horrid things.

But my need for a fix of Neo overcame my distaste and impecuniousness and I bought the video anyway. Once I’ve had my fill (i.e. when I have a DVD player and the Matrix DVD), I will take the poor wee thing, tuck a little note in the cover and set it free on a train somewhere, a la Book Crossing.

In other news today, I had a phone call from Radio Cymru (that’s a Welsh language radio station, in case you were wondering) and they want to interview me, in Welsh, about the competition for Welsh writers that I’m running along with Academi. My initial reaction was to immediately start cachu planciau, but I agreed to do it anyway, despite worrying that my Welsh isn’t up to it.

They’re going to call me at 1pm on Thursday and we’ll pre-record it on the phone. Which is fine by me - they’ll be able to edit out my long and painful pauses, and I’ll get the chance to think about what I want to say before I say it. I shall have to put together crib sheets so that if I freeze up I’ll still have something to say.

Mind you, I did a TV interview in Welsh last year, and that was fine, so I guess this will be too.

Right, I’m done here for the night. I’ve cracked open a bottle of white, and I’m going to sit down and spend a happy 130 minutes in the company of Neo.

Ta ra.
posted by Suw | 5/27/2003 01:06:00 PM



Monday, May 26, 2003  
IOC gets head stuck irreversibly up arse
It seems that the International Olympic Committee has finally lost its collective head somewhere in its collective lower intestine, and has decided to ban wild card entries into the Olympics. This means no more Eddie the Eagle, soaring gracelessly through our skies as we all hold our breath, hoping ferverently that he doesn't break anything when he lands. No more Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, struggling not only to complete the 100m swim, but also to keep himself from drowning.

This is a sad day for the Olympics - most of us will never be an Olympic athlete, or even an athlete of any sort. Unless sitting at a computer for 18 hours a day suddenly becomes an Olympic sport, in which case I may be in with a chance. But people like Eddie and Eric, somewhat patronisingly called 'characters', were our representatives there. We'll never know what it's like to compete on that kind of stage, but they did, and they did it for us. They had guts, they had nerves of steel, they didn't mind making prats out of themselves for our entertainment, and their triumphs (of not breaking their spines or drowning) were far greater than that of winning a gold medal, because they started the competition knowing that they could never, ever win, yet they competed anyway. That, as far as I'm concerned, is true Olympic spirit.
posted by Suw | 5/26/2003 11:45:00 PM

 
Computer Hell or How I Came to Hate My PC Even More Than I Used To
I’d become quite used to my computer rebooting itself, without a by-your-leave from me. The monitor would just go black with a faint click, then up would fade the green energy saving logo and the white text of the computer doing its start up thing. It was irritating, sure. Inconvenient, yes. But I’d got used to it in much the same way as you get used to a bed with lumps in.

I’d also become used to seeing the Blue Screen of Death which would make its presence felt at least once every couple of days. In fact, I’d become so used to restarting my machine when programmes hung or crashed, or when some fatal exception had occurred, that it was almost second nature to hit the reboot button. Or, more accurately, find a pointy object with which to poke the tiny reboot buttonette into submission.

Usually it would go click, hum, whirr and we’d be off again on that rollercoaster of manic saving and praying that the damn thing doesn’t crash at a critical juncture. How I love Microsoft. No, really, with all my heart. Pure, unadulterated adoration.

I sense you don’t believe me. You might have a point.

Despite all this, however, I was not prepared for the Flashing Blue, Green and Red Screen of Death, the one that complains of no signal and which can’t be cured by a good poke with a sharp implement.

Typically, my computer’s death throes happened shortly before I was due to leave the house to catch the train up to London to go see Hot Hot Heat, a band with a singer whose hair is a spectacle in itself. Like a great big copper soufflé that quietly deflates as the gig proceeds.

A couple of vodkas in to the evening and my woes were, if not forgotten then certainly relegated to the back of my mind. Instead, I enjoyed singing ‘Bandages’ very loudly and having a good dance, even when those about me seemed determined to be miserable as fuck.

I don’t know what it is about a London crowd that makes them so stand-offish, but they just mope about like a bunch of prunes, arms crossed, daring the band to impress them as if it’s beneath them to boogie on down and visibly have fun.

I never understood that attitude myself. I mean, have they come out to enjoy themselves or what? And if it’s an ‘or what’, then why don’t they just bugger off home and stop clogging up the bar, so that those of us there to have a good night out can do just that without their wanky London cool getting in the way.

Anyway, their wanky London cool didn’t get in my way. Svetla and I got a good vantage point on the balcony (it was at the Electric Ballroom, in case you were wondering) and I marvelled at the way that the singer’s voice sounded just like it does on the record. Very… unique, shall we say. Damn fine gig. I haven’t seen a mic swung with quite that much insouciance since I last saw Jarvis Cocker play live, strutting his stuff like a peacock with an eating disorder.

So, Friday was spent feeling pretty knackered – not so much from the late night, but more from the fact that I got precisely no sleep whatsoever as Svetla’s sofabed is the most uncomfortable known to man. I would have been better off on the floorboards, frankly, and next time I stay there I might just suggest that as the preferable alternative.

Once home, I got precisely nowhere in terms of diagnosing the problem with my computer. I spoke to a number of IT spods, who between them suggested that it could be the video card, the chip or the motherboard. Or possibly something else entirely. They couldn’t really say over the phone and it would be anything up to £750 to get it diagnosed and fixed. And I’m guessing that’s without parts.

So, I did what any self-respecting businesswoman does in times of dire need, I rang my Dad and begged. Of course, it worked. Saturday he drove up from Dorset with my Mum’s computer, the sacrificial lamb, and transferred my c: over to her box, fixing all that needed to be fixed in order to make the blasted thing work.

By the time he left, it was running like a three legged dog, but it was at least running. I had a dll problem, which prevented me getting at my email, MSN or having a firewall, but that seemed like a small price to pay for at least having a functional computer.

Yesterday I did what anyone would do, and tried to fix the dll issue. I looked up a few articles on the internet, couldn’t really make much sense of them, so did what seemed sensible.

No, really, it did seem sensible. Looking back, I should have known that it wasn’t sensible, but it’s not such a stupid mistake to make. After all, the broken dll is a windows system file. Evesham, in their wisdom, decided not to give me the windows disk when I bought the computer, which frankly shouldn’t be allowed. After all, I’ve bought the bloody software, no matter how shite it is, and I should have the proper cd. So, no Win 98 disk, but I did have some Evesham ‘emergency’ disk.

Well, I thought, this is an emergency. I’ll shove it in and see what happens.

What happened was that it gave me the option of restoring my windows files. And that seemed sensible. It seemed very simple to me – a windows file is broken, therefore why not restore it?

Needless to say, restoring the windows files killed the computer very nearly stone dead. All the hard work my Dad had put in to fixing up this computer to that it was at least 90% functional, and I managed in one fell swoop to reduce that to 10%.

I could have kicked myself. I could have cried. Instead there were several frantic phone calls to various assorted people in an attempt to find a fix, until eventually I bit the bullet, rang Dad and confessed that I’d undone all his hard work.

It took us an hour to fix it, but we did get it done eventually. And this morning I did manage to get the dll issue sorted, so now I have a fully (I think… I hope!) functional computer again.

Although it still runs like a three legged dog. Oh yes, I can download the spanky new trailer for Matrix Reloaded, but I can’t really watch it… not without Keanu looking like someone’s got him on strings. Although that may possibly be because they actually did.

I’m going to leave my Matrix rant til after I’ve seen Reloaded, I think. I only saw The Matrix last week for the first time (having been comatose in Dorset at the time that it came out, I think). I loved it. I loved it to bits. Hugely. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting, and I think my timing was pretty good for a change as I’m hopefully going to go see Reloaded on Friday, so I get the full wham and bam, and only have to wait til September for the thank you ma’am.

But I won’t get into what I think of it right now, suffice to say that Keanu Reeves in skintight black really is a nice sight. Oh yes. Start spelling hot with a w and several ts...

Right, I’ll leave it there then, shall I?



Endnote: I really want a Mac.

posted by Suw | 5/26/2003 02:56:00 PM

 
My computer runs like a three legged dog
Well, the last few days have been a particular brand of not fun, due to my computer dying last Thursday, just as I was about to leave the house for the Hot Hot Heat gig. It’s likely to be the video card, motherboard or chip. I’m not sure which, because I can’t afford to get it fixed. Instead, my Dad came up with my Mum’s computer and we put my HD in her box and that seems to work almost ok. I would say I have 90% functionality, which means that business is not about to go into meltdown (although my brain is). I just have to fix this keyboard (which is all weird and jerky and ruining my typing), and some dll problems.

Anyway, I’ll blog in more detail later.
posted by Suw | 5/26/2003 02:32:00 AM



Tuesday, May 20, 2003  
Green mammals
I was complaining today about the lack of green mammals in the world. I mean, green's a common colour, right? Grass is green. Trees are green. Shrubbery is green. So why no green mammals? Surely it'd make great camouflage?

Now, I know there's a sloth that has green algae growing on it, but that doesn't really count. And there was that green kitten a while back, but to be honest it looked more kinda yellow than green to me.

But now there is a green rabbit. Well, it's white in white light but under ultraviolet it fluoresces green. How cool is that? Ok, so they've done a little manipulation by adding in a jellyfish gene to create the glowing green effect, but still, it's green! Gets my thumbs up!
posted by Suw | 5/20/2003 02:31:00 PM



Sunday, May 18, 2003  
Sleep and The Ice Storm
Sleep. That was my mission this weekend. Sleep and the forcible removal of work from the agenda. I think I’ve succeeded on both counts. I’ve spent 21 of the last 48 hours asleep, and fully intend to squeeze in another nine hours before Monday starts back with the tedium. I’ve managed to actually not do anything too remotely worklike as well. I had planned to do some stuff today, but I’d rather get up at 6am tomorrow to do it instead.

Trouble is, I have become somewhat institutionalised over the 14 months. I’m used to either working or thinking about work. When I’m not working, I tend to be waiting. I wait for a variety of things - people to come online, answers to email, something half decent to come on TV.

I really don’t much like waiting - it disengages you from your own life. You become a spectator, standing on the fringes of the crowd and wondering what’s going on, and whether that man with the large flaming brand is really going to shove it halfway down his own throat in the name of entertainment. You become an observer, instead of a participant.

So, to stave off the waiting today, and to satisfy both my need to do nothing whatsoever and my urge to watch something really bloody miserable, I put the Ice Storm DVD on.

Dysfunction. Denial. Death. I’m still not sure if I actually like this film or not. This was one of the films where I read the script first and tried to get to grips with the idea of the film before seeing it. I tried to bring the whole thing to life in my head before it was brought to life on screen.

When I’d finished reading the script, which I did in one hit, I really had a few problems getting my head round it. I was left with that kinda mildly confused feeling the comes very shortly before the word ‘What?’. Then I watched the film, and things became no clearer at all.

Second time round, I think I’m a bit more aware of the subtle relationships and the stuff that’s communicated by body language and background movements alone. There’s so much in this film that isn’t stated, and it’s so open to interpretation that it’s verging on Daoist.

The obvious theme is one of sexual dysfunction. Ben is fucking his neighbour Janey, because his wife Elena’s not interested any more. Janey’s fucking anything that stops moving long enough, but hating herself for it. Elena’s fucking Janey’s husband Jim but only very briefly (and call me lucky but I didn’t know sex could be quite *that* brief) in the car.

Even the kids are trying to get it on, except Paul can’t figure out how - in an attempt to keep his lecherous friend Francis away from Libbets, the object of his affections, he ends up drugging them both into a coma. And Wendy isn’t quite sure what sex is exactly yet. If she knew a bit more about what went where, she’s have had her leg over a while back, but instead she settles for dry humping with the not quite all there Mikey, and snuggling with his younger brother Sandy.

Really though, the film’s more about communication, and the lack thereof. Ben and Elena aren’t communicating, and frankly with the amount of shit he talks that’s no great surprise. Janey and Jim aren’t talking because he’s never there. Wendy and Mikey/Sandy do nothing more than grunt at each other and hope for the best.

In fact, there’s only one sound relationship in the whole film and that’s the brother-sister bond between Wendy and Paul, or Charles and Charles as they call each other. They are the only two in the whole film to actually communicate at all. And, about normal stuff too.

PAUL
Charles. Have you been keeping out of my shit? Have you refrained from entering the sacred precincts of my room?

WENDY
I have not touched your sh--
(looks at father)
Stuff.


One thing that The Ice Storm does really, really well is make me thankful that my life’s not that fucked up. I think that’s why I watch it. I’m pretty sure that it’s not for any other reason. The acting is a little ropy in places. The gamelan score is ok but a little grating after a while. And you do tend to lose sympathy for the characters as the film progresses and they become irritatingly more and more self-centred.

But at least when it gets to the end you can sigh, and think ‘Thank fuck that’s not me.’

And then go watch Wonder Boys, which is a truly great film.

posted by Suw | 5/18/2003 01:46:00 PM



Friday, May 16, 2003  
Lunar eclipses, kevlar knickers and who am I?
At some point last night, the moon turned a bloody red as the shadow of the earth fell across its face, plunging it eventually into the full darkness of eclipse. I woke at 4am, quite coincidentally after a strange dream about shopping in the rain, and thought I’d get up and have a look. I hauled my sorry arse out of bed and up the stairs and stuck my head out the front door, only to discover that it was raining in reality too.

That’s about typical for the UK. Any sort of heavenly display is traditionally greeted by clouds and pissing rain.

I had some discussions with my Dad about de-training Fflwff yesterday and have now formulated a new strategy.

Firstly, I want to tackle the carpet scratching. I do have a thing for misting plants which I have set to squirt. Previously when Fflwff scratched at the carpet it resulted in her getting a faceful of water. That worked to start with, but then she got canny and started scratching out of squirting range, but within earshot. She’s not stupid, that cat.

I now have a new tactic. Apparently cats don’t like pepper, so the idea is to sprinkle a little on the carpet where she’s been scratching and that will put her off. Cayenne pepper should do the trick, I'm told.

Unfortunately, I don’t like pepper either and refuse to have it in the house, so this means I’ll actually have to go out and buy some. And that I also won’t be going anywhere near the bits of carpet she scratches at. I guess the chances are that both of us will be afflicted for a while with watery eyes and an urge to sneeze, but at least I’ll be a good five feet further away from it than her.

Secondly, that claw-on-door thing. That’s kinda tougher to deal with because she’s outside when she does it, and the only way to get at her to try to get the ‘don’t scratch’ message across is to open the door, which is exactly what she wants you to do, thus reinforcing the behaviour every time.

The only think I can think of is to glue strips of the furry side of velcro horizontally across the door. She scratches, gets her claws caught up the velcro, and soon gives it up as a bad idea. I guess I’ll have to go out and buy some velcro too. Let’s hope that the landlord doesn’t mind having a temporarily fuzzy front door.

Finally, I have to stop asking ‘How high?’ every time Fflwff wants me to jump to attention. Now, that’s easier said than done when you’ve got the entire cosmos tattooed on your butt in tiny puncture wounds, but I’ve figured a way to deal with that. It may seem extreme, and they may be hard to come by, but they’ve got to be worth a try.

Kevlar knickers. That’s what I’m going for. She can try to sink her claws in my arse as much as she likes then, but if kevlar can stop bullets it can damn well stop cat claws.

I do worry about the chaffing though.

On a different note, thanks to Anton at LastManDancing for reciprocating my link and saying nice things about my blog. Sorry about the archives, Anton. I’ve republished them and hopefully you can get at them now, if you really feel the need, although I can’t promise that you’ll find anything interesting in them.

Now, I feel somewhat ingenuous writing synopses of who I am, but one of Anton’s comments was that he couldn’t find out much about me. I guess that’s the strange thing about blogs - it’s a window into someone’s life, but you only get to see a wee fraction of what’s going on. Possibly this particular blog is less of a window, and more of a letterbox. And at that, one of those letterboxes with the funny little brushes that make it almost impossible to push through anything as flimsy and insubstantial as a letter.

Anyway, here goes. My name (not initials) is Suw, I’m owned by cat called Fflwff and I work for myself running an e-learning start-up called Get Fluent which helps people learning Welsh and French. The kindly call it a micro-business, which really just means that I get to do everything. Except make the tea, but that’s only because I don’t drink the stuff.

I am perpetually giving up caffeine, and perpetually falling off the caffeine wagon. I prefer Stolichnaya but will drink any vodka that’s still liquid. (If it’s not liquid, then technically that’s eating.) Lately I’ve been on a Pimms tip though because that’s more of a summery drink and I like to fool myself that July is nearly here.

I live in an upside-down maisonette (bedrooms are downstairs), on the banks of the Kennet River in Berkshire. It sounds more salubrious than it is - the gasometers, alci neighbour and drug dealers up the road give the lie to that. My lounge slopes towards the river, but so far no flooding. Hurrah!

Concorde goes overhead every day, but they recently changed the timetable. It used to be at 11am but now it’s more like 9.30pm. I will miss Concorde when it’s gone. For years, catching a glimpse of it roaring through the skies like a demented swan with swept back wings was deemed lucky in my mind. I was in heaven when I moved to Hounslow. Well, for the few seconds every day that Concorde carved its way across the capital to Heathrow, at least. Most of the rest of my time in Hounslow was hell on toast, but that’s another blog.

I have $3.85 US, and my mobile won’t work when I get to San Francisco.

I don’t know if any of that was pertinent, but the floor is open to questions by comment or email.
posted by Suw | 5/16/2003 01:27:00 PM



Thursday, May 15, 2003  
And now it's gone...
What was that all about? Ad's gone now... this is like poltergeist advertising or maybe they're just fucking with my head for the fun of it. Now you see it. Now you don't?

I'm too tired to know. I know on the grand scheme of things working 11 straight days (it'll be 12 tomorrow. A round dozen. How nice.) isn't all that major. But I'm utterly shagged anyway. All I wanna do is curl up in a small ball and let the next 62 days flow past. Two calendar months. Please gods, let me wake up tomorrow and it be July.

Tomorrow I have to really start promoting the new French service. I was gonna do it today, but I had the little matter of the Welsh worksheet to finish off, and it turned any remaining braincells to mush. Oh, that and the 6.30am routine. I can't believe I was working by 7.30am. Probably good that I was because I'd had it by lunchtime.

Ah, enough, enough already. The next entry, I promise, will be coherant, so long as these strange little guerilla ads fuck of and stay fucked off.
posted by Suw | 5/15/2003 01:26:00 PM

 
Where the fuck did that ad come from?
I just checked my own blog, cos I have links here I've not bookmarked yet, and suddenly there's this damn ad, right in the middle of my text! I mean, I don't mind ads at the top of the page, where they can be ignored, but this damn ad looks suddenly like it's part of my blog, something I personally put there or endorse. Bah, bloody advertisers! They just get more and more intrusive.
posted by Suw | 5/15/2003 01:17:00 PM



Wednesday, May 14, 2003  
Downloading mp3s is good for the music industry
I love it when I'm proved right. This from the Guardian:

A new survey confirms what many of us guessed all along, that those evil music fans stealing pirated music from the web are more, not less, likely to go out and buy CDs. The research, from Nielsen NetRatings, showed that nearly 31 million active internet users aged 18 or older downloaded music in the past 30 days, and 71% bought music in the past three months. That figure is way above the average.

posted by Suw | 5/14/2003 11:22:00 PM

 
On commenting, Fflwff's claws in my arse and dream blogs
I have the option of either finishing off today’s work now and not having to do it in the morning, or procrastinating by reading some blogs and writing my own. Difficult choice. I think you can tell which path I’m taking.

I couldn’t resist commenting Joho The Blog’s blog. (Is he like Jones the Coal?) It seems that the American government, its collective IQ having been flushed down the pan a long time ago by Bush’s fanaticism, gave the FBI the power to "the power to search your library and book-buying records without probable cause of any crime or intent to commit a crime" in the Patriot Act.

Now the American Civil Liberties Union is fighting back with a campaign to restore American’s right to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover in private without hoards of agents descending upon them and accusing them of commie pinko leanings. Oops, sorry, wrong decade. But you get the point.

I remember reading a while back, when our very own Quasident (like a president but with a browner nose and less spine) was hoping to push through similar legislation to allow any ol’ Dick, Dickwit or Dickless Idiot civil servant to plough through our emails in search of incriminating evidence, that it is in practice impossible to gain any useful information out of such a large amount of data.

It doesn’t matter how swanky you think your algorithms are, we send so much shite by email every second that there just isn’t the processing power available to sieve it all for useful information, even if it was possibly to identify which information would be useful, which it isn’t. The chances of the government finding out anything crucial via data mining are about as good as the chances of NASA ever being able to tell the difference between centimeters and inches.

I can’t help but assume the same is true of trying to data-mine America’s reading list.

The Patriot Act, like so much of Bush’s policy these days, seems less to do with what’s good for the country, and everything to do with him trying to prove that his bollocks are bigger than anyone else’s. Why the fuck can’t someone neuter him? Please? You’ll be doing us all a favour. Maybe if someone snuck up on him during the night and gave him a hefty dose of oestrogen that might do a similar trick.

Anyway, a blog I found at random today was LastManDancing, which is well worth reading, and not only for the tasty cat.

Talking of cats, is there anyway to untrain a cat? Fflwff has developed some very bad habits over the last year and I have no idea how to persuade her to cease her activities. I think it’s because I’m permanently here and therefore permanently available for harassment. I think I’ve mentioned that when she wants me to do something, she creeps up behind me and sinks her claws in my arse in order to get my attention. And I think I’ve mentioned that it works every fucking time.

She’s also now perfected the ‘claw scraping down blackboard’ tactic, substituting the front door for the blackboard but pretty much capturing that teeth-jarringly painful sound quite accurately. Again, I leap to attention because it’s less painful than trying to make her wait.

Finally, as a way of asking to go out she’s started scratching at the carpet by the front door. That’s only if she can’t be arsed to come and puncture mine, of course. I am trying really hard to deal with that one. I can cope with the scars on my butt, and having my entire jaw set on edge by nasty squeaks, but I have £1200 tied up in bond on this place and I do not want my landlord docking cash for a ruined carpet when it comes time to move out.

I should nail something over the offensively frayed section of carpet. I suspect that something should be Fflwff.

Finally, I’ve been thinking a bit recently about people that I wished would blog. Top of my list would be Steven Pinker. I think he’d write a great blog. I really liked Words and Rules and The Language Instinct, both of which have really given me a useful insight into the learning of languages and the way in which our minds work when processing language. Indeed, I’ve been intending for the last year or so to plough through them both and pull out some of the more practical points, and apply them to Get Fluent, but I’ve not had the chance. Another task to go on the end of a frighteningly long list.

I’d also like to see Elliott Smith blog, but I would guess that he's too self-effacing to blog. I suspect that if the idea were ever suggested to him he'd look slightly agog and then explain that he didn’t have anything remotely interesting to say. If only he’d just blog and let us be the judge of that!

(Actually, I’m convinced I have nothing remotely interesting to say either, but I don’t let a little niggle like that stop me. I figure all writing is good practice, and besides, I’m really getting into my stride with this blog thing now.)

Finally, it would have been amazing if Douglas Adams had ever blogged. Such an amazing talent, such wit and perspicacity. A huge loss, even now. There’s no doubt his blog would have been a work of wonder, awe and the kind of immense, cavernous, belly-rippling laughter that results in pulled muscles and gasping for breath.

posted by Suw | 5/14/2003 02:33:00 PM



Tuesday, May 13, 2003  
What if?
They dropped two planes on Hounslow tonight. I wonder if any of the three houses I used to live in there were hit.

I know Hounslow pretty well and remember only too clearly the howling whine of the jumbos as they’d hurtle right over my house, seeming scarily low some times. You could often smell the aviation fuel, when planes jettisoned it in a dark smudge scraped out across the sky behind them. The planes were a permanent presence, there in your subconscious all the time whether you realised it or not.

I know Heathrow pretty well too - I worked at briefly BAA and spent a lot of lunchtimes over in Terminals, soaking up the atmosphere and excitement - people going on holiday, travelling on business, coming back from the trip of a lifetime maybe.

I have a soft-spot for Heathrow and I hate to say it, but I retain some small fondness for Hounslow too, in a strangely masochistic way. So the docu-drama The Day Britain Stopped held particular interest for me.

The premise is this - a rail and tube strike, combined with heavy pre-Christmas traffic and a couple of accidents on the M25 result in gridlock affecting the majority of the country. (You don’t need to stretch the imagination to see how that might happen. Two inches of snow in January left people trapped in their cars overnight, remember, and all because some idiot couldn’t manage to send the gritters out in time.)

The knock on effects of this kind of travel mayhem could easily cause air traffic control staff to be late, and tired, overworked controllers working an already overloaded and flawed system end up as scapegoats for a mid-air collision over Hounslow.

There was nothing in the programme I’ve just watched that I couldn’t see happening. There were no fantastical leaps of faith that needed to be made, no moments of ‘Oh, that would never happen’, no need to suspend my disbelief. All of it looked far to close to the truth to be comfortable.

But despite the fact that the programme makers did their research and came up with an utterly plausible scenario in order to highlight the pathetic state of the UK’s travel network, will anyone who needs to listen actually take any note? I doubt it.

‘What if?’ is becoming an oft-asked question these days. I’ve mentioned Flood before, the ‘what if’ book that sends a high tide and storm surge up the Thames estuary together to overwhelm the Thames barrier and flood central London up to the 10m mark, and then follows that closely with a major conflagration.

I’m fond of London too, and I know for a fact that the flat I used to inhabit in Rotherhithe would have been flooded. I would certainly have had to have evacuated but, with little or no high ground nearby, I probably would have drowned. Several of the offices I used to work in would also have been deathtraps. At least one of my friends would have been flooded out badly - and I’m not talking just a bit of seepage here but a raging wall of water sweeping aside everything in its path.

Plus there was the smallpox ‘what if’ docu-drama last year, the weak reflections of which we are seeing now with SARS as life thankfully fails to imitate art. In ‘Smallpox 2002’ 60 million people die worldwide, but SARS is nowhere near that potent.

That’s luck, though. No judgement involved. We should be thankful that SARS isn’t more contagious because bad as it has been, it could have been a lot worse. Still, it has seriously put the wind up a lot of people who needed their butts kicking into line a long time ago so maybe the next novel disease might be contained long before it spreads worldwide.

Yet the one thing that runs through all three fictional scenarios as drawn out by programme makers and authors alike is the same thing that is at the core of the SARS problem - the ugly echoes of governmental incompetence when faced with a looming major disaster.

The warning signs are out there. Sometimes they come in the form of real events, sometimes they are from people from whose research can be drawn some frightening conclusions. But how seriously will anyone in government take these warnings? Will anyone bother to sit down and assess the evidence and draw up some sort of contingency plan, just in case?

We all know the transport in the UK is shot to shit because we suffer from it daily. Well, ok, I don’t because my daily commute is about 30s up the stairs, but I did. Two hours to get from here to Farringdon at one point, just after Hatfield. Work then til 7.30pm, say, and another two hours to get home. Or maybe an hour and a half if I was lucky.

The examples of travel mayhem are endless, pretty much like the government’s ability to weasel their way out of any kind of worthwhile commitment to doing what needs to be done, and what needs to be done is a serious amount of investment not only in the pathetic public transport system, but also in roads. I’m as green as the next person, but an efficient and effective road network is a lot more ‘green’ than people sitting in traffic jams for hours.

As for the ineffectiveness of the Thames barrier, the figures given by author Richard Doyle are nothing short of terrifying:

The Thames Barrier was built to a risk level of 1 in 1000. Slightly worse odds than contracting fatal cancer (1 in 3000) and much worse odds than of dying in a traffic accident (1 in 10,000).

Of course, one can always say that this is all nothing more than scaremongering, but surely if there’s a serious risk (and I think 1 in 1000 is serious) then someone really ought to be looking into the situation.

I suspect, however, that the civil servants (who don’t seem to be much in the line of serving anyone these days, if indeed they ever did, nor of being overly civil) with their cushty little numbers will be too busy discussing Eastenders to think beyond the ends of their snotty little noses.
posted by Suw | 5/13/2003 03:40:00 PM



Monday, May 12, 2003  
And after the colossal squid
Continuing the seafood theme, last night I dreamt of giant crabs, three foot across with pincers that could crush bricks. They were scuttling up the lane my parents live on, although no explanation as to what they were doing so far from the sea was forthcoming. At least one of them ended up on the barbeque. The other died in a ditch.

I have absolutely no idea what this means, but if anyone understands crab symbolism in dreams, please do let me know.
posted by Suw | 5/12/2003 01:25:00 PM



Sunday, May 11, 2003  
Oh I forgot...
I quite often say 'Oi' to the cat as well.
posted by Suw | 5/11/2003 03:22:00 PM

 
Wikis, squids and MSN
By the time July comes, I will be long overdue for a holiday. When I woke this morning it felt as if I’d spent most of last night dreaming about wikis. In case you don’t know, a wiki is a web page which is updatable by any member of the public.

At their best wikis are a great tool for sharing information without requiring everyone to join up to some centralised service provider. Sorting out a blog team for 30-something people would be tedious in the extreme, but with a wiki you can just post the page and hope for the best.

Of course, at their worst wikis are unintelligible gobbledegook of no discernible interest to anyone.

I’ve been thinking of starting a wiki at SeedWiki.com for the people over at Sweet Addy so that we can keep our info, such as SoulSeek user names, updated. There’s a thread for this on the noticeboard, but it sinks to the bottom every now and again and whenever someone wants to add a comment they have to trawl through pages and pages of dead threads to find it.

That’s the trouble with noticeboards. Sometimes someone posts something interesting but unless you keep bumping it, it gets lost in the murk.

Anyway, last night I spent all night dreaming about sitting in front of a computer setting up a wiki. So, just for a change, today I spent all day sitting in front of a computer typesetting. Again. I was going to work on the new version of the Get Fluent web site, but I really didn’t have the wherewithal so I spent a mindlessly happy day turning perfectly acceptable black text in to slightly snazzier orange text.

It was fun.

That said, although I’ve worked both yesterday and today, I’ve had frequent breaks which, very wisely I think, I’ve spent sitting in front of my computer staring at really very interesting black text on other people’s blogs. Or installing SquidCam.

I have no idea what the relationship is between SquidCam and those weird and overly rubbery denizens of the deep, but I do sincerely hope that the surviving relatives of the colossal squid found not so long ago don’t take exception and come round demanding money. Considering that the giant squid is much smaller than the colossal squid, I foresee scientists running frantically to their thesauri to find a suitable superlative if they ever catch a bigger one.

Just so long as they don’t start calling it ‘dinner’.

So, yes, SquidCam. Video conferencing for those of us foolish enough to consort at a distance with Mac users. MSN, in its wisdom, has produced a Mac version which not only appears to be less than stable, but which is also missing the most useful thing about it - voice chat.

(How confusing is it that chat, which used to be something you did on the phone or face-to-face, has now become something that you do on computers by typing and if you want to discuss chat that doesn’t involve typing but does involve speaking and computers and the internet you now have to prepend the word ‘voice’ otherwise people think you mean the typing type of chat and wonder what on earth the problem is because MSN does that perfectly adequately, surely? *takes deep breath*

As an aside to that, I just looked up ‘prepend’ in my Concise OED, and it wasn’t in there, so I got kinda curious as to whether it’s a real word or not. Did a quick search on Google (where else? My reliance on Google is starting to scare me - do I see the world only through googlegoggles? I think that’s a whole nother blog), and sure enough, ‘prepend’ is a word used by programmers to mean ‘add in front of’ which is pretty much what you would think it would be used to mean.

However, the second page I looked at featured an ill-conceived rant by one Clarke F. Echols who has a real bee in his bonnet about the usage of the word ‘prepend’ as an opposite to ‘append’. It is a word, he righteously tells us, that already has a meaning and that meaning is ‘premeditate’. Apparently words aren’t allowed to have more than one meaning.

Right.

We’d better go through the English language with a fine-toothed comb and start thinking up an awful lot of alternatives, then. I mean, I don’t want to start a row (that’s an argument, not a line of something), but I think the precedent has already been set (that is, determined or decided, not a group of objects that belong together) that words can have more than one meaning without confusing everyone. Context is a wonderful thing.

You know, I really can’t stand people who believe that the English language is incapable of evolving and that new words and meanings mustn’t be added to our already richly varied tongue.

I’m such a Pinkerite.)

Now, where was I before I started that little aside? Oh, yes, MSN, and how shit it is if you’re trying to talk to someone on a Mac.

See, the only reason I even use MSN is because all my friends use it. Isn't peer pressure is terrible? But, since becoming an MSN addict, I have been forced to admit that it has its uses, and one of those is saving you lots of money if you want to call abroad. If you have MSN and the person you want to talk to has MSN (plus mic and speakers of course) then you can just use the voice chat option and talk for as long as you like, for free. Good for the phone bill; bad, oh so very, very bad for productivity.

Unless, of course, the person you are trying to talk to has a Mac, in which case you’ll be lucky to get two (typed) words out of them before MSN crashes and obscenities the like of which you can only imagine are growled in the direction of Microbunchofarseholessoft.

Of course, there never can be enough obscenities growled at MS, although it’s a pity that they have no effect.

In an attempt to find a programme that would allow me to voice chat with my Mac-using friend, I downloaded SquidCam, set it up, and tried to get it to work. Which it did after a fashion. I could hear my friend in Australia, he couldn’t hear me. We fiddled with settings. SquidCam cut us off because until you buy the full version you can only use it for a few minutes at a time.

So we reconnected, fiddled with more settings, but still not a peep out of my mic.

"Is it turned on?" J asks.

"Course it is. It doesn’t have an off button," I type into MSN. Truth be told, the one way conversation kinda suits me - I type more coherently than I talk these days, being so cut off from the world as I am. Most of the time the only words I actually utter are ‘Ow’ and ‘Tisha bwyd/mynd allan/rhywbeth i yfed?’ (Do you want something to eat/to go out/something to drink?), all directed at the cat as she sinks her claws in my butt yet again, seeking attention. (And using that tactic, she usually gets it.)

We fiddle with more settings. SquidCam cuts us off again. We resort to MSN for communication and try to figure out what the problem is. I start clicking things at random in the hope that something will work. Eventually I find this little tickbox… It’s under a heading called ‘microphone’ in my volume settings panel...

It says ‘mute’ and it’s ticked.

Oops. Sorry J. Seems you can turn my mic off after all…
posted by Suw | 5/11/2003 03:18:00 PM



Saturday, May 10, 2003  
Going for a swim in the memepool
I’m just taking a break from the typesetting to read some stuff online. Yes, I know it’s Saturday, but time waits for no man, or woman for that matter. I must get my new version of the Get Fluent web site finished this weekend so that it’s ready to go live next week when the French worksheet’s been proofed.

Anyway, for ages now I’ve been thinking that this blogging phenomenon is actually quite limited in scope, and that a lot of the main blogs are just all recirculating the same news. Not to criticise them, because I’ve been just as guilty I think, but today my regular online reading matter became very circular.

A couple of days ago Neil Gaiman mentioned that Salam Pax, the now well known blogger from Iraq whose descriptions of Baghdad really make you stop and think very hard indeed, had resumed blogging after having to break because of the war. Preoccupied with my own life as always, this was actually the first I’d heard of Salam, and I went off to check his blog.

If you haven’t read it (which I’m sure you have) then you really must. Salam has an articulate, informed and wry way of writing that is a delight to read. He’s also in a position to tell us stuff about how the invasion of Iraq has affected the lives of everyday people that the media and government would prefer us not to know - they don’t want the Iraqi’s humanised, they want them to be either ‘the enemy’ or ‘pitiful peasants unable to do anything for themselves’.

Anyway, all that aside, Gaiman also mentioned, as I have said previously here, William Gibson (although he didn’t post a link) whose blog I then independently came across after doing a Google search on the phrase ‘why blog’. Later on, the Guardian mentioned Gibson’s blog too. Then Salam Pax’s. Then the BBC mentioned Salam, as does my mate Andy in his blog. Reading Salam’s blog today he mentions William Gibson in passing. Now I’ve just gone to Gibson’s blog and he’s talking about Salam’s blog and what a good writer he is. (Salam that is, not Gibson, although Gibson didn't get to be Gibson without also being a good writer.)

My head is starting to spin.

For ages I’ve noticed how links propagate through the internet, although I’ve never really taken much notice of it. The idea of memes is not new, nor am I particularly well read about it so I can’t really start throwing up insightful comments on the whole thing, but it seems that these memes seem to either be circulating faster, or that there are pools of memes within which the same people constantly paddle.

I find it quite comforting, in a sense, that I am paddling in the same memepool as people that I either already admire or whom I am coming to. I’m not the best connected of people - I do not have enough time to do what needs to be done, let alone trawl the net for juicy tidbits to pass on to you, but it feels good to be getting my ankles wet the same way Gaiman does.
posted by Suw | 5/10/2003 06:27:00 AM



Friday, May 09, 2003  
Oh, but before I go...
I write my blogs in Word (oh gods, please forgive me my sins). I spellcheck them. I read them over several times. Then I cut and paste and post.

Why do I never spot the typos until I've published them to Blog*Spot?
posted by Suw | 5/09/2003 02:26:00 PM

 
I give up on deep and meaningful posts
I don’t know whether it’s something to do with Mercury being retrograde at the moment. Or maybe the internet’s feng shui is bad - possibly someone put an NT server in the communications corner and screwed it up. Perhaps it’s that I haven’t performed the correct ritual sacrifice of a sweet, innocent virgin cable modem recently. But whenever I have come to write my blog recently, I seem to have been incapable of actually finishing any thoughts.

I have lots of them when I'm busy doing other stuff, but when I sit down to write something, they all scarper like fleet-footed thieves through the alleyways of Manchester that the city council so desperately want to close off.

I still don't understand why the ramblers are so against the gating of these dark, dingy, litter-strewn passageways that lead to precisely nowhere that the road wouldn't also take you if you walked just that little bit further. It's hardly a right of way issue, and much more of a cutting down on people's houses getting broken into from the back by a surreptitious beshellsuited tosser with a ladder issue.

I remember reading once that your iq increases if you stand on one foot. There's something about the way your brain reacts to balancing that seems to wake up your synapses and makes them work more efficiently. (Frankly, in my case, if they worked at all it would be a miracle.)

When I found out about this, I wondered if this was why I am always more creative when I'm walking. On any random stroll to Tescos up the river I will likely have more coherent thoughts than I would spending double the amount of time sitting here staring at this monitor. I have, therefore, been considering for some time now the idea of rigging up a computer in front of a treadmill so that I can both be more creative and get more exercise. Two birds, one stone - genius.

I know I've mentioned this before on this blog, but I am also far more creative shortly after I've gone to bed. You know that time, in between your head hitting the pillow and you actually falling asleep, that's when I have my ideas. I'm not sure if it's something to do with the way your brain starts to prepare for entry into the hypnogogic state which presages sleep that it naturally kinda kicks into imaginative mode.

I'm forever having thoughts, then having to turn the light on and write them down before they escape me. How much better would it be if there was some way to capture that more efficiently. I considered rigging up a wee little laptop or palmtop with a keyboard on a swivelling tilting platform thingie so that I could just kinda pull it down, type stuff in, and push it back out the way again, thus saving the need to actually either a) turn the light on or b) wake up.

I have long since learnt to get up to let the cat in at 2am without appreciably waking up so if I could only learn to write in my sleep then my novel would get done an awful lot faster. (Mind you, ‘faster’ would not be difficult to achieve, since my current output on that front has been a big fat zilch recently. Stress and having your own business are real killers insofar as novels go.)

Yes, so here I am again, towards the end of an entry, desperately searching for some sort of conclusion to wrap things up with and so very definitely not finding one. Maybe it’s the scientist in me that insists on having some nice, tidy end to everything I ever write, something to just round it all off. Something that will stick in your mind, as reader, and make you feel that this was a blog well blogged.

Ah fuck it. I’m off to watch Buffy.
posted by Suw | 5/09/2003 02:18:00 PM

 
Comments
I've added the facility to post comments now. I don't expect to get any, but the option's there if you want it.
posted by Suw | 5/09/2003 09:33:00 AM

 
Ahh, Friday afternoons...
A Pimms and lemonade in my hand, perfectly complementing the summery blue sky outside... the phutphutphut of narrow boats chugging somnolently up the Kennet... the soft swish of my brain cells as they drain out through my ears whilst I contemplate a weekend spent chained to my darling computer... and the gentle yearning for a leisurely punt on (or near, I'm not fussy) the Thames with my dearly beloved (who is busy living it up on the other side of the world as I type)...
posted by Suw | 5/09/2003 07:25:00 AM



Thursday, May 08, 2003  
What's going on?
I've never been a morning person, so I'd dearly like to know why I keep waking up at 6am and, (and this is the freaky bit) actually getting up. When I first started on this self-unemployment thing about six years ago, you'd be lucky to see me out of bed during the hours of daylight at all, but recently I've been up with the larks and actually enjoying it.

I wonder if there's some sort of gene that doesn't get expressed until you hit 30, but which eventually results in your pineal gland going into overdrive at even the slightest chink of light. I'm also suffering from a bizarre feeling of smugness every time I prise my sorry arse from the bedsheets before 7am, as if I have somehow managed to achieve something worthwhile.

On the other hand, (no pun intended, honestly) I'm very glad that I'm not in the position of having to cut my own arm off in order to cheat death as did Aron Ralston when he was pinned down by a boulder in a climbing accident. I can't imagine (especially at this hour) how horrendous that must be, although to be honest, I'm not really trying that hard.
posted by Suw | 5/08/2003 11:15:00 PM

 
The weblit bonanza
Well, The Guardian is busy keeping up its journalistic standards by telling us that the web has not, contrary to earlier rumours, taken literature off into the woods and wrung its scrawny neck but is, in fact, helping the dying art form cling to life by providing us rich middleclass westerners with computers the opportunity to access an amazingly large corpus of free stuff to read which we could obviously never have afforded to buy for ourselves.

There appears to be an underlying assumption that more is better. That the mere availability of lots of words on the internet is a Good Thing and should be Encouraged:

Sites such as Zoetrope, the Short Story Group and, while offering no critique, sites such as ABCTales, will publish anyone who wants to show their work to the world.

But is everyone who has work to show of to the world producing something that the world wants to read? I would hazard, perhaps not. The publishing process may be full of holes you could fit the Titanic through, relying as it does on people’s occasionally iffy opinions, but at least there is someone else other than the author in the loop. Someone else to give feedback and suggest improvements and amendments. I don’t personally believe that there is an author on this planet who would not benefit from the assistance of a good editor.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that every book being published now has had the benefit of a good editor. Take Flood, by Richard Doyle. Now there’s a book that’s a compelling read, a real page-turner, positively gripping. It manages to be all these things, however, despite being really very badly written in places. And way, way too long.

Flood’s strength is that we all love a good disaster, and Doyle has obviously put a huge amount of work into researching the scenario of a major London flood. You just know when you read about the way that the Thames Barrier works, that it really does work like that. The book creates a cohesive reality in which you can immerse yourself without having your bubble pricked by contradictory information.

Instead your bubble is pricked by some really godawful prose that frankly should never have made it into print. If Flood had been given a really good going over by someone willing to question why certain scenes were included and to chop say, oh, about a quarter of the text (or failing that, every fourth word), maybe it would have been a bloody great book, instead of just a ‘gripping’ book.

I’ve not been in the publishing industry for a good few years now, but I’ve been getting the feeling that there is less and less good editing going on, and more and more of a demand for camera ready copy (although I bet it’s not called that anymore!) direct from the author. Add that trend to the immediacy and availability of web publishing and you have great potential for quality to go into freefall.

This is not to say that I think that all literature or literary endeavours on the net are steaming piles of rancid dog poo. I love Neil Gaiman’s blog and (this name I stumbled across for the third time in two days in that Guardian piece… someone’s trying to tell me something) William Gibson’s blog, to mention just two. I’m also sure that there are some fantastic undiscovered authors *coughcough* out there, publishing on the net in e-book, blog or other form, some excellent work. But I just can’t handle wading through the ankledeep shite to find it.

Perversely - of course, because I am the Electric Monk incarnate - these concerns do not mean that I hold anything against the flourishing weblit phenomenon. I see it in much the same way as I see the swapping of mp3s on SoulSeek or any other p2p network - if people get a taster of Gaiman’s abilities from his blog, and that makes them pop out to pick up a copy of Coraline that they would not otherwise have bought, then that has to be a good thing. I just wish that there were a literary version of SoulSeek to facilitate this process.

You’re probably wondering why I don’t find myself some reliable litcrit rag and go by that, but I’ve always hated reviews and reviewers - I have never found one that I agree with, so I just don’t trust their judgement. Which leaves me with two options - personal recommendation or accidentally stumbling over something good whilst looking for something completely different. And I suspect I’m not alone in that. Theoretically this would be where litblogs come in, but then you have that whole trust issue coming up again.

I’d love to have a conclusion to this, but I disconcertingly find that I don’t. I also am not now going to go on about how I’m not convinced that making more literature available for free to people with computers is actually going to result in the people who could really benefit from free literature getting anything out of it at all. There’s a whole discussion there about demographics and the lack of overlap between certain sections of our society that is a whole nother hour’s worth of thought.

However, as an end note I would like to tell you that I have made progress today on the internet detox. I have taken a whole new tactic: instead of trying to purge myself of the desire to post on SA, I’m trying to purge myself of the guilt of posting on SA. So far, this is working particularly well. I posted for several hours this morning and felt no guilt whatsoever.
posted by Suw | 5/08/2003 02:49:00 PM



Wednesday, May 07, 2003  
I'll never be clean
Ah, you can trust a truly shitty day to drive you back to the comfort and warmth of the internet. I guess once an addict, always an addict.

I just stuck ‘why blog’ into Google and it came up with William Gibson’s blog, notable because only today did I see Gibson’s name mentioned in Neil Gaiman’s blog. I’d never heard of Gibson before (oh, mea culpa, I’m so uninformed), so I was tempted enough by this coincidence to check it out. It makes good reading. I think his blog might even become a daily destination for me.

I also found Joho the blog, which endeared itself to me immediately upon the discovery of this passage, actually quoted from Jonathan Peterson. (I can’t find the exact words myself, but they are allegedly in there somewhere.)

[there are] tremendous isolationist pressures on individuals, anything that can lessen those pressures by enabling real, emotional, human, re-connection will thrive.

Hey, now I don’t feel so bad about running back to Sweet Addy at the first sign of stress.
posted by Suw | 5/07/2003 02:14:00 PM



Monday, May 05, 2003  
Cold turkey
My head is a seething morass of thoughts today, each one writhing against the next like a ball of herring desperately trying to escape the tuna fish herding them up to the surface of the sea to ensure that each and every one becomes lunch.

I’m going cold turkey. That’s it. My addiction (or should that be, addyction) to Sweet Addy and MSN has got way too out of hand, and I appear to be absolutely incapable of simply cutting back. It’s like that idea that you can quit smoking or drinking by ‘just cutting down’ - it’s all very well in theory but in practice it’s very difficult to draw the line between ‘enough’ and ‘too much’.

So it is with my pals online - there’s no such thing as a ‘quick chat’ online. I have been known in recent days to have MSN conversations that have gone on for six or eight hours. Admittedly MSN chats tend to be a lot slower than normal ones - we probably could have said the same in half an hour on the phone. But I can touch type, which means that the limiting factor in the speed of the conversation is the typing speed of the other party. If they type slowly, then I can pretend to myself that I’m getting work done in between my contributions. If they type as fast as I do, then that pretence becomes less and less believable.

I’ve been online since 1994, one way or another. I remember when Yahoo chat was full of adults discussing books and literature, rather than 13 year olds pretending to cyber. I remember when a 28k connection seemed to be going like shit off a stick. I remember when web sites never had graphics.

I’ve used the internet for communication, research, work and fun for eight or nine years. I’ve depended on it for work for the last five. But this is the worst my addiction has become, because only now is it interfering with my life in a negative way (i.e. I’m playing online when I should be working). The internet has variously been my mentor, my saviour and my reliable ol’ mate throughout that time, but now it’s really doing my head in.

Faced with this question now, of whether I really am an internet addict, I did what any sensible person would do. I went to Google and searched for information. (Strike one…)

This means that I’m not in bed when told myself I would be (strike two…), and that my intention to get an early night so that I could get an early morning so that I can catch up on all the things that I should have done today but didn’t do because I was too busy chatting to my Australian friends has really bitten the dust. (Strike two-and-a-half…)

It’s clear that the internet is not addictive in the way that, say, heroin is addictive. If it is addictive, then it’s a behavioural addiction, not physiological, but many psychologists just don’t believe it’s real at all. But if in fact addicts "use the Internet excessively as a medium to fuel other addictions... The Internet is just the place where they engage in their behaviour" (Griffths, 2000), then what the hell am I addicted to? Talking?

Actually, that’s not so far from the truth really. I’m a compulsive communicator. I’m afraid that I have the confessional gene, and talking is something I’m rather well known for in the real world. Or should I say, talking too much. But you know, that’s not my fault - if you’d been brought up with my Mum you’d also have learnt that the only way to say everything you needed to say is to not draw breath between paragraphs. And never pause. A pause in our household was always fatal.

It’s a miracle that I ever learnt to punctuate.

However, much of the stuff on internet addiction that I’ve been reading whilst writing this blog seems to be somewhat concerned with cybering, rather than taking an overall look at how excessive internet usage affects people’s lives. Yet there’s a lot more to internet usage than cybering.

And this brings me onto a tangential bugbear that I can’t let pass.

What is wrong with the good old fashioned epistolary relationship, as was once common, facilitated by email and MSN? Huh? Not every friendship or relationship formed online is fake, shallow and lacking in merit. I met a couple of my very dear friends online and our relationships offline are no different to the ones we have online. I also know many couples who have met online and are living perfectly well together offline.

Yet so many people who have no experience of what could tongue-twistingly be called an e-epistolary relationship will immediately dismiss them as ‘unreal’, as if the internet itself is in some way fake. It’s not. There are real people out there, and they are no more likely to be a mad axe murderer than any guy who’s ever chatted me up in a pub. In fact, I would rather get to know someone slowly over a number of months via the internet than get utterly shitfaced in some skanky London bar and hope that my judgement’s not so clouded that I’ll have to gnaw my own arm off in the morning in order to effect an escape. (Don’t laugh. I’m typing one-handed right now, you know.)

Anyway, back to the point. Internet addiction. I’m not going to list the various signs and signals listed on the sites I’ve looked at, nor am I going to link to them, mainly because I happen to tick ‘yes’ to a rather scary proportion of them. (Secrecy regarding online activities? Strike two-and-three-quarters…)

But I have concluded that I’m not actually addicted. Not really. I just need a break and to concentrate on the important things in life, like making sure my business flourishes. (Or at least goes out with a flourish, if nothing else…)

Denial? Strike three! You’re out!
posted by Suw | 5/05/2003 02:50:00 PM



Friday, May 02, 2003  
The City, here I come!
I would like to know if anyone’s got a formula for calculating the Doppler shift on fast receding deadlines. I’m pretty sure that there must be one, as you can hear that kinda funny pitch-shifting whining sound they make as they go past.

Equally, there must be a formula for the apparent speed with which holidays fail to approach.

Yesterday, I booked a return ticket to San Francisco (a place that I frequently have difficulty spelling) for July. Now, the momentousness of this event is something which I don’t think many people reading this will be able to appreciate. This isn’t just a holiday. This isn’t just an opportunity to go to new places, meet up with new people and generally have a spiffing good time. This isn’t just a chance to get away from the dreariness of Reading, or for two weeks to put aside my stresses and worries about my beautiful business.

No.

This is much, much more important than that.

This is my first holiday, my first actual leaving the country holiday involving fun and relaxing and sunshine and generally having a good time, for some 13 years. Yup. Thirteen. Count ‘em. Last time I went a-gallivanting was in 1990 when I spent a deliriously fabulous nine months in Australia, delighting in the discovery that one could earn money and then actually spend it!!

When I was up at the Groucho Club in March for the St David’s Day SWS party, I was accused by a complete stranger of being a workaholic, a charge I hotly (but somewhat ineffectively) denied. However, in having to defend myself against these charges I was forced to examine exactly why I haven’t been on holiday for 13 years. I mean, it’s not like my nose has been chained to its inner grindstone for all that time.

Strictly speaking, I actually have had holidays, i.e. I’ve had time off work. (When I’ve had that kind of work, that is. Being self-unemployed as I have been for the last six years does not really lend itself to holidays, just periods of inactivity and brokeness followed by flurries of work and the paying off of the credit cards you lived off when you were broke. My life has been one constant cashflow crisis - I haven’t had any, and it hasn’t.) I just seem to have spent that time off either faffing about my house/flat/small cardboard box, or going back to Dorset and putting in kitchens. Or bathrooms. Or windows.

I suppose I could easily have just booked myself a holiday, but I’ve always found other things to spend my money on. New computers. New guitars. New amps. More new guitars. Another new amp…

I see pattern emerging there.

Thing is, it’s not like I’m exactly flush with cash right now. In fact, I’m contemplating flogging some of the spare guitars and amps that I have littered around the place as they do nothing bit sit about and gather dust. Two of the basses I can’t play because they’re too heavy - the Precision and the Aria. The Hohner acoustic I can’t play because it’s right-handed and I play left-handed these days. The Bass State B65 I no longer use as I don’t play in a band any more and, frankly, I can’t see myself playing in a band again any time soon. So I may as well flog them and, given the state of my bank account, the sooner the better.

Anyway, so yes, holidays. And the speed with which they fail to approach. I remember that only a week ago, my holiday was 82 days away. Now it’s… :consults calendar: 75 days away. Yet it doesn’t appear to be appreciably closer. I mean, a whole week went past and nothing happened.

It’s like standing on the platform at Reading station waiting for the next fast to London, and you can see the headlights in the distance, but you stand and stare and stand and stare and they don’t get any bigger and so you stand and stare for a bit longer.

Then they tell you that there’s a signal failure outside the station and that you’ll have to wait at least another half an hour, and you realise that the reason that the train never got any bigger was because it was stopped.

I hope I don’t have that problem with my holiday. With any luck, it will be just like those spanky new Virgin trains. You can hear the track singing with anticipation, making that whispery metallic whipping sound as the train gets closer and you look up and suddenly what was only moments ago a little red speck in the distance is pulling in at the platform in front of you, ready to whisk you off to somewhere new and exciting.

Or Crewe.

Hopefully, though, my holiday will have a bit more legroom.
posted by Suw | 5/02/2003 02:28:00 PM

 
Organica
Here's that Organica page that wasn't working the other day. I notice that neither Organica nor Ecosystems are 100% accurate, though. I actually have four links into this blog, not three. And when you're talking about such small numbers, a difference of one is important!
posted by Suw | 5/02/2003 01:25:00 PM



Thursday, May 01, 2003  
Ha ha ha!! Fame at last!
I've just had a bit of an influx of emails after PopBitch included the CMC swearing in Welsh cheat sheet in its weekly email. If you get it, scroll right down to the very, very bottom to find:

Still bored?
Learn how to swear in Welsh:
http://www.clwbmalucachu.co.uk/cheat/cheat_swearing.htm

Fame! Fame at last! Ffycin ffantastig! Ah, I feel like all these years of effort and slogging away over a hot dictionary are finally paying off.

Hmm... spose I better subscribe to PopBitch now really, hadn't I?
posted by Suw | 5/01/2003 01:44:00 AM
archives
links
my sites
clwb malu cachu
get fluent!


welsh blogs
my cmc blog
morfa blog
ynyr
bratiaith
rwdls nwdls

english blogs
neil gaiman
musicandchips
pethau

email me if you must
lil ol' me

elliott smith stuff
sweet adeline
sweet addy board

other stuff


Blogroll Me!