Posts Tagged ‘blog’

Gum, snack, meal

// June 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // diary

A Twitterer described their various online presences as so: Twitter was like chewing gum, Tumblr was a snack, and their blog was a meal.

Twitter is for short messages. Less than 140 characters, little mini brain freeps. Or, you, know, bringing down the Iranian government.

Tumblr, or the service I use, Posterous, is a middleweight tool for quick posting of sundry items. Pictures and stuff an ting.

This is my blog. I also use Twitter. And I use Posterous.

This is why I have no life, but I’m right on top of the latest memes.

It’s a Big Wide World

// February 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // diary

I have set up a new blog called Big Wide World. Unlike this blog, which is a completely unfocussed compendium of my random brainfarts and rants, Big Wide World is about the environment, sustainability, technology and development. These are four separate but interrelated themes, central to my International Studies degree, topical, relevant, big, important, confusing, emotive, hyped, misinterpreted, and lots of other heavy words like that.

A particularly interesting piece I read yesterday after a Twitter contact linked to it was a speech given by Ivan Illich at the 1968 Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects, found on the website of Adam Fletcher, an expert on youth engagement. The speech, though given over forty years ago and related to US students volunteering in Mexico, is just as relevant now as it was then, and relates to the motives (be they naive idealism or vanity) of young people who volunteer in poor countries. This article by Tanya Gold echoes Illich’s sentiments forty years later.

So, I hope to discuss issues like this as well as the themes of environmental contest, change and response that are central to the OU’s Environment course, sustainability, the role of technology, and other issues around development and human geography. This blog might quieten down a bit, because all that is a hell of a lot to think about, after all.

I heart Wordpress

// December 11th, 2008 // No Comments » // diary

Wordpress 2.7 is now available, and it is beautiful. What you’re reading now doesn’t look any different (well, for the time being), but the dashboard at the back end, what lets me write all this inconsequential drivel, has been radically altered. It looks more compact, softer, just beautiful, but also seems to look more like what you’d expect in a full-on content management system, not just a blogging platform. Sad it may sound, but it makes me want to write a better blog. I used Blogger for ages and that was fine, still log in to it every so often, but it is clunky beyond belief compared to this. Wordpress is my favourite web application by a long way. Thank you Wordpress.

Oversharing

// October 19th, 2008 // No Comments » // diary

Every so often I write a blog entry so loaded with bile that I come back to it fifteen minutes later and delete it, feeling foolish that I wrote it. Sometimes, I write something harsh or sweary or just plain unfunny and I’m tempted to do the same, even get rid of the whole blog, but I don’t because one point of keeping a blog is, I suppose, that you should be honest. Sometimes I’ll have deleted something and maybe someone has already read it, and I just have to hope that the fact it has gone the next time someone looks for it is a signal that it was best forgotten. Forget I said it, sorry, I was being stupid. There’s honesty and there’s oversharing – and I always try not to do that. There’s stuff on my mind that I can’t write about because, well, it’s nobody’s business, or I haven’t figured it out myself.

One luxury of blogging is being able to delete anything really stupid. I’ve written letters or sent text messages or emails I really wish I could take back. Once in a previous job a colleague read the first few lines of an email giving amusing definitions to common words, a bit like those found in Douglas Adams and John Lloyd’s The Meaning of Liff. After forwarding the message and hearing the ping of his new mail echoing round the office, he continued to read, and his face fell. A definition came up of the phrase ‘double bassing’ – it was when you’re having sex with a woman from behind and you’re also pleasuring her round the front. He’d sent it to the whole team including the IT director. This being before message recall he had to send another message saying ‘don’t read my first message’, but this was possibly the epitome of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. He never did it again.

Anyway – there’s a hell of a lot I haven’t figured out, and the older I get it just seems like the more there is.

Before this diatribe of self-indulgent tripe carries on any further, I’m just apologising if it sounds like I feel sorry for myself, or I’m being unreasonable, or arrogant, or rude. I am extremely lucky to be where I am and to have the friends I have, to have seen the things I have and met the people I have. If you are one of those people, thank you. Thank you very, very much. And don’t take any offence.

New look, same tripe!

// August 12th, 2008 // No Comments » // diary

Because I’m not travelling at the moment, and because I had something else I should have been doing, I changed the name of the blog back to it’s pre-Carry On Up The Mekong name and gave it a new look. All the ill-informed rants, casual insults of religion, highly amusing videos of cats and the diary of my year in Cambodia are still here.

Wow, most pointless blog entry yet.