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Sunday 30 March
Pat's birthday - we lounge on the grass in the sunshine, sip champagne and eat a hearty breakfast at 3pm.
Yesterday we were privileged to attend the wedding of Vicki (my niece) and Burkie in the old church at Oxborough in Norfolk. A very warm occasion. This is the beautiful invitation card cooked up by Martin and Vicki.
Friday 28 March
The war seems to have stalled for the moment with stretched supply lines and attacks from bands of Fedyeen being the main reasons for the hiatus. All over the world military analysts are raising their hands and saying "Hey - this is war - we don't necessarily know what will happen and how long it will last."
And that, at last, is the truth.
******* From the always consistently interesting Blog.org a link to some fascinating 18th and 19th century detailed maps of London.
******** Gary and Karina are moving to Newquay tomorrow. I shall miss them and the trance music wending its way down the stairs.
Thursday 27 March
The truth can now be told. I am (allegedly) John Oyster18. There are many other Oysters in the world so watch out for significant impacts in obscure undersea places.
An unexpectedly good programme on the writer Edward Gorey.
Our correspondent from Belgium offers me this thought by email
"I feel that there is a possibility that blogs will eventually lead to "got up, spent all days reading blogs, went to bed..." and when everybody does that on the same day the world will end. "
It's a possibility, of course, much as the evolution of a habitually swimming giraffe would also be a possibility....
Let's face it - somebody has to write what is being read.
********* Sunday 23 March
I came across a very interesting article by Beth on Mutated Monkeys where she gives her reasons for supporting the war. Her analysis of the situation is very similar to my own but there's a point that had not occurred to me
"Even if one accepts the premise that we should do what we can to pacify al Queda, the withdrawal of US troops from Saudi Arabia is one of their key demands. We have stationed troops in Saudi Arabia since the 1991 war with Iraq to protect Saudi Arabia, and to police the no-fly zone. When we have achieved our objectives in Iraq, we will leave our bases in Saudi Arabia, by a mutual agreement that has already been made between the two governments."
I had not considered the possibility of an under the counter deal with OBL's mob - or even an Olive Branch. I wonder if this side of things has a more prominent place in the decisions that have been made than is generally realised. If there was some "understanding" that attacks on the US mainland would cease if the bases were withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.....then this whole thing might make a bit more sense in terms of the resolve of the US to see it through.
******** It seems that I was just too late to use Blogpatrol - it seems that the author's resources were overloaded due to its popularity. I'm now trying out Free-Stats.com
Some people who use link referral logs will shortly see that I've linked to them by listing them on the home-rolled blogroll on the left. When I first started reading blogs I started with a small list of (I guess) first division blogs widely read throughout the blogosphere. This evening I'm going to sort them into a few categories so that I can more easily access different sorts of blog. Some I read in depth. others I like for a quick scan, some I read daily, some are worth checking out weekly. Given the huge lists that some blogs sport, mine will still be fairly modest. I'm not sure whether there's any sort of internet protocol where I should notify other people by email if I'm linking to their blog but if people think there is (and they spot this) perhaps someone can let me know either by email or via the Discussion board - and please accept my apologies if I've infringed someone's version of netiquette.
At the moment I'm accumulating blogs in my Favorites menu which have intelligent things to say about the war, or useful links to information. The plain fact is that my Favorites menu is next to useless - my "Blogs" entry has decided to split itself into different alphabetical lists of its own accord. It's much easier for me to have the links on my homepage - which is of course the weblog.
Saturday 22 March
There is a war on and....I can't finish this sentence. But I have. Somehow.
Sunshine breaks through. Winter is officially over. Daffodils trumpet their presence.
Is this the writing on the wall of my padded cell?
If you look closely you might see that the centre of this abstract photograph that I took recently has been changed, transformed and curiously blended to produce the background for this web page.
I just deleted yet another self deprecating comment. I'm really starting to feel in charge of my life. Oh yes.
I can hear what I'm saying in my head but could anyone guess the tones and inflections of the voice I hear? Or will they substitute the inflections that they might hear from their own internal voice?
I have nothing sensible to say about the war today. It goes on - and it will go on until it stops. And until it stops we won't know how (and if) the major players are going to pick up the pieces of international relations. There will be much to say on this subject when the bombs have finished dropping.
I've been up the stepladder again. Painting a wall and listening to rock music is far from the worst that life has to offer.
Friday 21 March
S&A day. Oh yes - even bigger bangs and flashes. And Saddam is either dead, wounded or possibly untouched. Three senior Iraqi commanders may also exist in this indeterminate state. Scuds were fired at Kuwait - but possibly they were not Scuds. The Turks may or may not be intending to be troublemakers in Northern Iraq as 1500 troops cross the border. Did someone fire a misssile at Iran earlier? Maybe, maybe not.
And so it goes on, disinformation piles on misinformation. And Raed's blog is showing an old page. I hope he's OK. Meanwhile the clichés rain down thicker and faster than the 300 cruise missiles that have already struck Baghdad. "Inevitably this is a war of two sides" all these newscasters seem to have an air of assumed gravitas judged by them to be just appropriate for the occasion but which makes me feel more than slightly offended by their patronising explanations andmind numbing repetitions. (I must have heard 300 separate reports about the helicopter crash by now).
It just carries on the atmosphere of deceptiveness that has surrounded this whole campaign from the time that the US turned its attention to Iraq again. Does anyone really know what this is all about? I've seen a variety of explanations but none are completely convincing.
Thursday 20 March
Could these two people be related? We are waiting to be told.
Boom boom. Bang bang. Forget the news on TV - read Salam from Baghdad posting in Where is Raed?
"Iraqi TV was showing patriotic songs and didn't even bother to inform viewers that we are under attack. at the moment they are re-airing yesterday's interview with the minister of interior affairs."
Wednesday 19 March
Attention to small things. Tidying, cleaning, transferring things from one place to another. In a reductionist mood I can think that the whole of life can be summed up thus.
Tuesday 18 March
I've just been having a go at installing Blogpatrol to give me some feedback on site visitors. The code is getting all over my WYSIWYG in Pagemill but I guess that that is because Pagemill is too long in the tooth to know about this stuff.
Monday 17 March
War report from the stepladder 2
Bush is using the term "the world" fairly promiscuously in his "Get stuffed Saddam" speech tonight in which SH has been given 48 hours to leave Iraq before the tanks roll in. "America needs to act now for the security of the world". OK so this an embryonic world policeman packing a gun. But is it a fair cop? Or is it a fundamentalist version of the Spanish Inquisition?
Meanwhile the UK Government clutches the fig leaf of French intransigence to its sensitive parts. Given that no-one likes our 2nd resolution we shall not table it and we didn't need it anyway (despite the huffing and puffing we were making about its necessity last week). The real culprit is the US though. They have been visibly playing the UN route with little concession to the compromises that are likely to have to be made in that arena. Blair has gone out on a limb to try to tie the US into the field of international agreements. Bush's isolationist tendencies seem to be re-asserting themselves even as the US troops prepare to go in.
Saddam will blow everyone's minds now if he decides to bugger off to Morocco with his sons and retire to a villa on the beach.
War report from the stepladder 1
The radio news drones on "Tonight Jack Straw will announce the breakdown of the diplomatic process..." The US has advised the UN inspectors to leave Iraq.
One truth about this affair - no-one knows how it's going to turn out. Also no-one knows whether it's a major turning point in international relations or a blip along the road to a lasting (relatively speaking) post cold war re-alignment.
There aren't many other simple truths. The buildup has been characterised by deceptiveness and an unseemly haste to an apparently pre-ordained outcome (due to be announced). The simple truth here is that a fog of misinformation and disinformation descended some time ago and we have all been clawing our way through it trying to distinguish the real landmarks from the chimeras.
I find it difficult either to wholeheartedly support the coming action or to condemn it. If the world was a body this would look like a reflex spasm to me - a response to an irritation which finally and irrevocably needs to be scratched.
Cool groups?..maybe
Sunday 16 March
This afternoon I was perched at the top of a ladder painting a cornice while chatting to a friend on the phone about PCs. Cordless phones are great - less than a year ago I would have had to confront a twisted mass of that self-twisty-mass producing coiled cable every other day when yatting on the phone. It seems an era away.
Text resizing revisited.
An exhausting time yesterday setting up my new discussion board. Attention to detail is important when installing scripts. Now I've got the Discus software set up (crosses fingers) it looks very impressive. Whether it's a good choice to use it as the discussion forum for this blog I shall find out.
Saturday 15 March
Better late than never...
"It's the Blimp Frank, it's the Blimp!"
A hilarious piece on Nigerian 419 scam emails. Quality prose.
Friday 14 March
Under the rules of the appropriate international federation it has been decided that the English SPS is equivalent to the American RPS. Read up on advanced techniques here.
I'm going to give this page a makeover. Ring the changes, signify the beginning of Spring, of new growth etc. Maybe I'll go a bit loony, start retailing the adventures of an imaginary dog, or maybe I'll get deeply weird in a cynical, misanthropic kind of way (Don't forget your monkeyhats). Or maybe I'll just carry on, trying to cover all the bases - a bit of me, a bit of it, a bit of you. (oh hell, that reminds me of an old Monkees hit.)
Billy Bragg on Any Questions makes me feel uncomfortable when he acquires the tones of "authentic solidarity". In an alternate universe I can see him as a Cadre leader who expects his comrades to exercise at 6am every morning, and is ruthless with revisionists and malcontents.
I have a feeling that I would become a malcontent.
Wednesday 12 March
Royby a good site for finding some reviews of obscure weblogging tools.
If no-one sees a website does it really exist?
I've been weblogging for well over a year now and I've had roughly a teaspoonful of feedback relating to this log and the associated web site. I find that discouraging in one way but the process is so self-evidently therapeutic that it's unlikely I'll give up. Possibly.
As with so many things in life there seem to be two obvious ways to look at this. The first is that my weblog is not well written enough, not interesting enough, unsightly, or simply that amongst thousands of others it has no USP. Well that, of course, could be changed. I could automate my blogrolling (and the whole blog come to that), spend more time finding up-to-the-minute links and....
A blog represents a one-to-many communication vehicle. It can also be a many-to-one vehicle if people email or use comments. A many-to-one model actually reduces to many one-to-one communications although linking opens up the potential field to encompass a mutuality between the commentees.
So I must think - What am I doing with this vehicle? It's a patchwork of experiences that happen to/around me, a record, a statement to myself (if no other) that, Hey, I've got a life - and here's the proof!
So how come I have a need to do this? Is it that submerged in the pressing mass of 6 billion humans on a modestly sized planet one feels the need to assert ones individual creative and original output in order not to feel like a badly manufactured clone?
Listening to (and getting my mind blown by) - Blues for Allah - Phil Lesh and friends
Tuesday 11 March
Bush in search of Pax Americana?
Charles Wheeler at eighty talks to Jeremy Paxman.
I started painting the ceiling yesterday meaning to take it at a leisurely pace. However I found that the paint tin was leaking and I had to transfer the entire contents to a bucket - which then meant I'd have to use it all up. A messy process altogether with the cat, inevitably, becoming involved at awkward moments but the ceiling looks OK now in a pastelly blue sort of way.
There are 2 cats and 2 squirrels in this picture.
Sunday 9 March
Didn't have any problem staying up to 5:30am to watch all of the Australian Grand Prix. The most exciting for a long time with many of the teams and drivers making strategic errors, as well as errors on the track. Consequently of course I'm not fit for a great deal today but I do find myself surprisingly able to watch the entire thing again in the afternoon.
Sunday is a good humoured day. The cat likes us both being around and there is a nice atmosphere of pointlessness to the day. Catlike one gets distracted by any passing thought or whimsy (such as to photograph the steam cleaner). It's too cold and windy to wander around too long outside but the sun and a few spindly daffodils signal change in the seasons. The trumpet shape reminds me of a daffodil that I once grew in a pot with the help of my Grandad. I was about 6 years old and the daffodil was entered in a competition at my primary school and won a First Class certifcate. I was proud of it - I could see it was a sturdy specimen with a rich colour.
Any passing thought or whimsy, see...
Saturday 8 March
I don't often get excited about football matches but I've just had a real treat watching an extremely competitive cup tie between Arsenal and Chelsea with an outstanding display of individual talent and athleticism from Thierry Henry.
Buried temporarily in technical issues. My Psion Wavefinder has stopped working and I've run into problems with the scanner, not to mention the problems I've had with weblog software....
Yippee! I've used a little program that switches off the power hungry (if attractive) LEDs on the Wavefinder, attached an ordinary FM aerial to the prongs and lo! it's working and with improved reception.
Wednesday 5 March
Tony Blair must be haunted by the tune of "The grand old Duke of York" - has he really marched all his men out to the middle east only to have to march them back again? And yet he has promised to fight only if there were a single "unreasonable" veto in the security council, nothing about fighting if the vote goes against the second resolution. And yet again, could he sit and watch the Americans go in alone (or with other allies) without looking like a prize prat?
Apparently there are lots of kids demonstrating for against a war. In other circumstances I might feel heart-warmed but I cannot feel that way about a demo to keep a disgusting and dangerous old dictator in power. Saddam has modelled himself on Stalin and it seems somehow significant that there is a strong pro-Stalin feeling in Russia. Do people have an underlying urge to be bossed about by surly old powermongers with dubious methods such as murder and torture?
I've resumed my struggle with weblog software. I'm trying pmachine again but having installed it I can't access the control panel.
The Barclaycard delivery saga continues with no end in sight - I found out after queuing for an hour that it wasn't at the bank as customer services had promised. It's now 5 weeks since the old one expired.
Tuesday 4 March
I had some more fun with the steam cleaner cleaning around the toilet today. Hey - it keeps me off the streets you know.
Apparently there was a period of a few months at the beginning of the World War II which was termed the phony war because, on the ground in Britain, not a lot seemed to be happening. It's a bit like that at the moment. The war won't take place until, at least, there has been some more discussion about a second resolution. So the media generally are discussing other affairs whilst the negotiations take place. A hardening of attitude by France and Russia may spell trouble for even getting a majority for military action in the security council.
So this time spanning the next week or so is like a quiet pool in which all sorts of things are charging around under the surface. We could see an entirely new global re-alignment come out of this space - one that sets the tone for the next few years. It's not at all certain where the UK would end up if such a re-alignment took place. My guess is that Blair would resign and the UK would move back into "Old Europe" but multiple outcomes are possible.
Insight into Dick Cheney from John Perry Barlow.
Monday 3 March
My upstairs neighbours Gary and Karina may be moving to Newquay soon apparently. Hmm. Complications. It sounds as if London has been getting on top of them. It hasn't been that way with me for a good while but then I think I've adapted myself to fit the place I have here. In a different environment I guess that different aspects of myself would come to the fore. Maybe I'd become a businessman, writer, a woodcutter or...a musician.
Trevor in Belgium points me to Kenneth Patchen as a source of good poetry.
I'm not too satisfied with myself. I've been setting myself tasks and then performing them slowly while constantly being sidetracked by the rest of the universe. Pat has a cold and is snuffling about me much of the day. How can I feel more energised?
Sunday 2 March
Lazy Sunday afternoon backup and archiving in a leisurely way. Gene Pitney on Desert Island Discs made a surprisingly interesting guest with a variety of unusual choices - Gillian Welch and Iz were two that I haven't heard of, Norah Jones is someone whose work I'll have to explore further.
If you thought the story of the plagiarised dossier was unbelievable take a look at this apology from the excellent Sound on Sound. I sort of reinforces my idea that no-one really reads the equipment reviews without their eyes glazing over. If not, why did it take so long to find out? An embarrassing situation for Future Music . It seems that a Mr Rick Snoman was into a bit of creative remixing using cut n'paste techniques familiar to Word users.
Saturday 1 March
Hey - it's a new month!
As part of my ongoing mission to evaluate all the niches in blogspace I've just opened a Pitas account. A nice simple way to get pages up on the web to be sure - just type into the browser. I don't suppose there will be anything up at Memester yet except for the odd bit of scribble.
Link of the day
The Nation - Leftist orientated articles from the US contains a piece called "Buying a Coalition" on the price haggling going on between the US and the various states who can provide security council votes and facilties for US troops.
Sunday 30 March
Pat's birthday - we lounge on the grass in the sunshine, sip champagne and eat a hearty breakfast at 3pm.
Yesterday we were privileged to attend the wedding of Vicki (my niece) and Burkie in the old church at Oxborough in Norfolk. A very warm occasion. This is the beautiful invitation card cooked up by Martin and Vicki.
Friday 28 March
The war seems to have stalled for the moment with stretched supply lines and attacks from bands of Fedyeen being the main reasons for the hiatus. All over the world military analysts are raising their hands and saying "Hey - this is war - we don't necessarily know what will happen and how long it will last."
And that, at last, is the truth.
******* From the always consistently interesting Blog.org a link to some fascinating 18th and 19th century detailed maps of London.
******** Gary and Karina are moving to Newquay tomorrow. I shall miss them and the trance music wending its way down the stairs.
Thursday 27 March
The truth can now be told. I am (allegedly) John Oyster18. There are many other Oysters in the world so watch out for significant impacts in obscure undersea places.
An unexpectedly good programme on the writer Edward Gorey.
Our correspondent from Belgium offers me this thought by email
"I feel that there is a possibility that blogs will eventually lead to "got up, spent all days reading blogs, went to bed..." and when everybody does that on the same day the world will end. "
It's a possibility, of course, much as the evolution of a habitually swimming giraffe would also be a possibility....
Let's face it - somebody has to write what is being read.
********* Sunday 23 March
I came across a very interesting article by Beth on Mutated Monkeys where she gives her reasons for supporting the war. Her analysis of the situation is very similar to my own but there's a point that had not occurred to me
"Even if one accepts the premise that we should do what we can to pacify al Queda, the withdrawal of US troops from Saudi Arabia is one of their key demands. We have stationed troops in Saudi Arabia since the 1991 war with Iraq to protect Saudi Arabia, and to police the no-fly zone. When we have achieved our objectives in Iraq, we will leave our bases in Saudi Arabia, by a mutual agreement that has already been made between the two governments."
I had not considered the possibility of an under the counter deal with OBL's mob - or even an Olive Branch. I wonder if this side of things has a more prominent place in the decisions that have been made than is generally realised. If there was some "understanding" that attacks on the US mainland would cease if the bases were withdrawn from Saudi Arabia.....then this whole thing might make a bit more sense in terms of the resolve of the US to see it through.
******** It seems that I was just too late to use Blogpatrol - it seems that the author's resources were overloaded due to its popularity. I'm now trying out Free-Stats.com
Some people who use link referral logs will shortly see that I've linked to them by listing them on the home-rolled blogroll on the left. When I first started reading blogs I started with a small list of (I guess) first division blogs widely read throughout the blogosphere. This evening I'm going to sort them into a few categories so that I can more easily access different sorts of blog. Some I read in depth. others I like for a quick scan, some I read daily, some are worth checking out weekly. Given the huge lists that some blogs sport, mine will still be fairly modest. I'm not sure whether there's any sort of internet protocol where I should notify other people by email if I'm linking to their blog but if people think there is (and they spot this) perhaps someone can let me know either by email or via the Discussion board - and please accept my apologies if I've infringed someone's version of netiquette.
At the moment I'm accumulating blogs in my Favorites menu which have intelligent things to say about the war, or useful links to information. The plain fact is that my Favorites menu is next to useless - my "Blogs" entry has decided to split itself into different alphabetical lists of its own accord. It's much easier for me to have the links on my homepage - which is of course the weblog.
Saturday 22 March
There is a war on and....I can't finish this sentence. But I have. Somehow.
Sunshine breaks through. Winter is officially over. Daffodils trumpet their presence.
Is this the writing on the wall of my padded cell?
I just deleted yet another self deprecating comment. I'm really starting to feel in charge of my life. Oh yes.
I can hear what I'm saying in my head but could anyone guess the tones and inflections of the voice I hear? Or will they substitute the inflections that they might hear from their own internal voice?
I have nothing sensible to say about the war today. It goes on - and it will go on until it stops. And until it stops we won't know how (and if) the major players are going to pick up the pieces of international relations. There will be much to say on this subject when the bombs have finished dropping.
I've been up the stepladder again. Painting a wall and listening to rock music is far from the worst that life has to offer.
Friday 21 March
S&A day. Oh yes - even bigger bangs and flashes. And Saddam is either dead, wounded or possibly untouched. Three senior Iraqi commanders may also exist in this indeterminate state. Scuds were fired at Kuwait - but possibly they were not Scuds. The Turks may or may not be intending to be troublemakers in Northern Iraq as 1500 troops cross the border. Did someone fire a misssile at Iran earlier? Maybe, maybe not.
And so it goes on, disinformation piles on misinformation. And Raed's blog is showing an old page. I hope he's OK. Meanwhile the clichés rain down thicker and faster than the 300 cruise missiles that have already struck Baghdad. "Inevitably this is a war of two sides" all these newscasters seem to have an air of assumed gravitas judged by them to be just appropriate for the occasion but which makes me feel more than slightly offended by their patronising explanations andmind numbing repetitions. (I must have heard 300 separate reports about the helicopter crash by now).
It just carries on the atmosphere of deceptiveness that has surrounded this whole campaign from the time that the US turned its attention to Iraq again. Does anyone really know what this is all about? I've seen a variety of explanations but none are completely convincing.
Thursday 20 March
Boom boom. Bang bang. Forget the news on TV - read Salam from Baghdad posting in Where is Raed?
"Iraqi TV was showing patriotic songs and didn't even bother to inform viewers that we are under attack. at the moment they are re-airing yesterday's interview with the minister of interior affairs."
Wednesday 19 March
Attention to small things. Tidying, cleaning, transferring things from one place to another. In a reductionist mood I can think that the whole of life can be summed up thus.
Tuesday 18 March
I've just been having a go at installing Blogpatrol to give me some feedback on site visitors. The code is getting all over my WYSIWYG in Pagemill but I guess that that is because Pagemill is too long in the tooth to know about this stuff.
Monday 17 March
War report from the stepladder 2
Bush is using the term "the world" fairly promiscuously in his "Get stuffed Saddam" speech tonight in which SH has been given 48 hours to leave Iraq before the tanks roll in. "America needs to act now for the security of the world". OK so this an embryonic world policeman packing a gun. But is it a fair cop? Or is it a fundamentalist version of the Spanish Inquisition?
Meanwhile the UK Government clutches the fig leaf of French intransigence to its sensitive parts. Given that no-one likes our 2nd resolution we shall not table it and we didn't need it anyway (despite the huffing and puffing we were making about its necessity last week). The real culprit is the US though. They have been visibly playing the UN route with little concession to the compromises that are likely to have to be made in that arena. Blair has gone out on a limb to try to tie the US into the field of international agreements. Bush's isolationist tendencies seem to be re-asserting themselves even as the US troops prepare to go in.
Saddam will blow everyone's minds now if he decides to bugger off to Morocco with his sons and retire to a villa on the beach.
War report from the stepladder 1
The radio news drones on "Tonight Jack Straw will announce the breakdown of the diplomatic process..." The US has advised the UN inspectors to leave Iraq.
One truth about this affair - no-one knows how it's going to turn out. Also no-one knows whether it's a major turning point in international relations or a blip along the road to a lasting (relatively speaking) post cold war re-alignment.
There aren't many other simple truths. The buildup has been characterised by deceptiveness and an unseemly haste to an apparently pre-ordained outcome (due to be announced). The simple truth here is that a fog of misinformation and disinformation descended some time ago and we have all been clawing our way through it trying to distinguish the real landmarks from the chimeras.
I find it difficult either to wholeheartedly support the coming action or to condemn it. If the world was a body this would look like a reflex spasm to me - a response to an irritation which finally and irrevocably needs to be scratched.
Cool groups?..maybe
Sunday 16 March
This afternoon I was perched at the top of a ladder painting a cornice while chatting to a friend on the phone about PCs. Cordless phones are great - less than a year ago I would have had to confront a twisted mass of that self-twisty-mass producing coiled cable every other day when yatting on the phone. It seems an era away.
Text resizing revisited.
An exhausting time yesterday setting up my new discussion board. Attention to detail is important when installing scripts. Now I've got the Discus software set up (crosses fingers) it looks very impressive. Whether it's a good choice to use it as the discussion forum for this blog I shall find out.
Saturday 15 March
Better late than never...
"It's the Blimp Frank, it's the Blimp!"
A hilarious piece on Nigerian 419 scam emails. Quality prose.
Friday 14 March
Under the rules of the appropriate international federation it has been decided that the English SPS is equivalent to the American RPS. Read up on advanced techniques here.
I'm going to give this page a makeover. Ring the changes, signify the beginning of Spring, of new growth etc. Maybe I'll go a bit loony, start retailing the adventures of an imaginary dog, or maybe I'll get deeply weird in a cynical, misanthropic kind of way (Don't forget your monkeyhats). Or maybe I'll just carry on, trying to cover all the bases - a bit of me, a bit of it, a bit of you. (oh hell, that reminds me of an old Monkees hit.)
Billy Bragg on Any Questions makes me feel uncomfortable when he acquires the tones of "authentic solidarity". In an alternate universe I can see him as a Cadre leader who expects his comrades to exercise at 6am every morning, and is ruthless with revisionists and malcontents.
I have a feeling that I would become a malcontent.
Wednesday 12 March
Royby a good site for finding some reviews of obscure weblogging tools.
If no-one sees a website does it really exist?
I've been weblogging for well over a year now and I've had roughly a teaspoonful of feedback relating to this log and the associated web site. I find that discouraging in one way but the process is so self-evidently therapeutic that it's unlikely I'll give up. Possibly.
As with so many things in life there seem to be two obvious ways to look at this. The first is that my weblog is not well written enough, not interesting enough, unsightly, or simply that amongst thousands of others it has no USP. Well that, of course, could be changed. I could automate my blogrolling (and the whole blog come to that), spend more time finding up-to-the-minute links and....
A blog represents a one-to-many communication vehicle. It can also be a many-to-one vehicle if people email or use comments. A many-to-one model actually reduces to many one-to-one communications although linking opens up the potential field to encompass a mutuality between the commentees.
So I must think - What am I doing with this vehicle? It's a patchwork of experiences that happen to/around me, a record, a statement to myself (if no other) that, Hey, I've got a life - and here's the proof!
So how come I have a need to do this? Is it that submerged in the pressing mass of 6 billion humans on a modestly sized planet one feels the need to assert ones individual creative and original output in order not to feel like a badly manufactured clone?
Listening to (and getting my mind blown by) - Blues for Allah - Phil Lesh and friends
Tuesday 11 March
Bush in search of Pax Americana?
Charles Wheeler at eighty talks to Jeremy Paxman.
I started painting the ceiling yesterday meaning to take it at a leisurely pace. However I found that the paint tin was leaking and I had to transfer the entire contents to a bucket - which then meant I'd have to use it all up. A messy process altogether with the cat, inevitably, becoming involved at awkward moments but the ceiling looks OK now in a pastelly blue sort of way.
There are 2 cats and 2 squirrels in this picture.
Sunday 9 March
Didn't have any problem staying up to 5:30am to watch all of the Australian Grand Prix. The most exciting for a long time with many of the teams and drivers making strategic errors, as well as errors on the track. Consequently of course I'm not fit for a great deal today but I do find myself surprisingly able to watch the entire thing again in the afternoon.
Sunday is a good humoured day. The cat likes us both being around and there is a nice atmosphere of pointlessness to the day. Catlike one gets distracted by any passing thought or whimsy (such as to photograph the steam cleaner). It's too cold and windy to wander around too long outside but the sun and a few spindly daffodils signal change in the seasons. The trumpet shape reminds me of a daffodil that I once grew in a pot with the help of my Grandad. I was about 6 years old and the daffodil was entered in a competition at my primary school and won a First Class certifcate. I was proud of it - I could see it was a sturdy specimen with a rich colour.
Any passing thought or whimsy, see...
Saturday 8 March
I don't often get excited about football matches but I've just had a real treat watching an extremely competitive cup tie between Arsenal and Chelsea with an outstanding display of individual talent and athleticism from Thierry Henry.
Buried temporarily in technical issues. My Psion Wavefinder has stopped working and I've run into problems with the scanner, not to mention the problems I've had with weblog software....
Yippee! I've used a little program that switches off the power hungry (if attractive) LEDs on the Wavefinder, attached an ordinary FM aerial to the prongs and lo! it's working and with improved reception.
Wednesday 5 March
Tony Blair must be haunted by the tune of "The grand old Duke of York" - has he really marched all his men out to the middle east only to have to march them back again? And yet he has promised to fight only if there were a single "unreasonable" veto in the security council, nothing about fighting if the vote goes against the second resolution. And yet again, could he sit and watch the Americans go in alone (or with other allies) without looking like a prize prat?
Apparently there are lots of kids demonstrating for against a war. In other circumstances I might feel heart-warmed but I cannot feel that way about a demo to keep a disgusting and dangerous old dictator in power. Saddam has modelled himself on Stalin and it seems somehow significant that there is a strong pro-Stalin feeling in Russia. Do people have an underlying urge to be bossed about by surly old powermongers with dubious methods such as murder and torture?
I've resumed my struggle with weblog software. I'm trying pmachine again but having installed it I can't access the control panel.
The Barclaycard delivery saga continues with no end in sight - I found out after queuing for an hour that it wasn't at the bank as customer services had promised. It's now 5 weeks since the old one expired.
Tuesday 4 March
I had some more fun with the steam cleaner cleaning around the toilet today. Hey - it keeps me off the streets you know.
Apparently there was a period of a few months at the beginning of the World War II which was termed the phony war because, on the ground in Britain, not a lot seemed to be happening. It's a bit like that at the moment. The war won't take place until, at least, there has been some more discussion about a second resolution. So the media generally are discussing other affairs whilst the negotiations take place. A hardening of attitude by France and Russia may spell trouble for even getting a majority for military action in the security council.
So this time spanning the next week or so is like a quiet pool in which all sorts of things are charging around under the surface. We could see an entirely new global re-alignment come out of this space - one that sets the tone for the next few years. It's not at all certain where the UK would end up if such a re-alignment took place. My guess is that Blair would resign and the UK would move back into "Old Europe" but multiple outcomes are possible.
Insight into Dick Cheney from John Perry Barlow.
Monday 3 March
My upstairs neighbours Gary and Karina may be moving to Newquay soon apparently. Hmm. Complications. It sounds as if London has been getting on top of them. It hasn't been that way with me for a good while but then I think I've adapted myself to fit the place I have here. In a different environment I guess that different aspects of myself would come to the fore. Maybe I'd become a businessman, writer, a woodcutter or...a musician.
Trevor in Belgium points me to Kenneth Patchen as a source of good poetry.
I'm not too satisfied with myself. I've been setting myself tasks and then performing them slowly while constantly being sidetracked by the rest of the universe. Pat has a cold and is snuffling about me much of the day. How can I feel more energised?
Sunday 2 March
Lazy Sunday afternoon backup and archiving in a leisurely way. Gene Pitney on Desert Island Discs made a surprisingly interesting guest with a variety of unusual choices - Gillian Welch and Iz were two that I haven't heard of, Norah Jones is someone whose work I'll have to explore further.
If you thought the story of the plagiarised dossier was unbelievable take a look at this apology from the excellent Sound on Sound. I sort of reinforces my idea that no-one really reads the equipment reviews without their eyes glazing over. If not, why did it take so long to find out? An embarrassing situation for Future Music . It seems that a Mr Rick Snoman was into a bit of creative remixing using cut n'paste techniques familiar to Word users.
Saturday 1 March
Hey - it's a new month!
As part of my ongoing mission to evaluate all the niches in blogspace I've just opened a Pitas account. A nice simple way to get pages up on the web to be sure - just type into the browser. I don't suppose there will be anything up at Memester yet except for the odd bit of scribble.
Link of the day
The Nation - Leftist orientated articles from the US contains a piece called "Buying a Coalition" on the price haggling going on between the US and the various states who can provide security council votes and facilties for US troops.
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