Freelance Senior Web Developer & Technical Architect
I can’t do it, I can’t take Ricky Gervais seriously. I’m watching old episodes of Alias at the moment (inspired by Lost, and by brother and his fiance’s persistent praise of the show).
Season 3, episode 5 – Gervais makes an appearance – and any minute now, I’m certain he’ll turn to the camera with a joke about disabilities, or pick up a guitar…
Been meaning to take a photo, and write about this for a while. St Pauls Cathedral is being cleaned, washed, painted or something at the moment. They’ve been doing this for quite a while now, and the sheets went up to cover the work that’s being done. More recently, they did this ….
My favourite moment about the entire construction process was walking across Millenium bridge a week or two back and listening to a 16/17 year old chav tell his family “It almost doesn’t look real, does it? St Pauls over there.”. “No” replied his mum, “that’s because it’s not”.
I’m glad we spend so much on education. Really, really grateful 🙂
We got a leaflet through the door this morning.
“SEX SHOP? WITHIN THIS COMMUNITY?”
Yep, the heathens in our area want to open a sex shop, on St Albans road. How could they even dare to think of it? Luckily the locals are rallying round with a vigorous leaflet campaign. I’m sure they’ll follow it up with a violent sit in down the local council offices.
Thank god.
Of course, if you can’t think of any reasons to lend your support and write a letter, there’s a helpful list on the back.
The last one is a very good point. Wouldn’t want to take away business from Anne Summers in the Harlequin. Or the sex shop next to the wedding store on the high street. Two’s company, three’s a crowd and all that.
C’mon people, grow up!
From the first explorers, to ships and aircraft crossing continents, the telephone, and the all-encompassing network of the Internet. All have contributed to decreasing the size of our planet. As far as I know, we’re not talking directly here, but rather our perception of the “small world” that we live in today.
People increasingly talk about location as though it’s not important. From the business community, we can get all the work done we need, wherever the skills are available, and it’s most economic to do so. Knowledge can be shared between communities no matter how remote, or central. Families can stay in touch, and new friends can be made whether you’re meeting for drinks in a bar, or sitting on your new wireless network connection halfway up a mountain.
And maybe they’re right, maybe location isn’t important. On the other hand, where you might be at any one point in time could be extremely important. Blogging often relies on location. The most popular writing on this blog so far, is the entries I made while “not here”. The news reports that highlight what an exciting area blogging can be all talk about people writing news from within disaster areas. I can talk about tornado in North America quite comfortably from my living room here in England. But nobody really sits up and takes any notice until I’m actually in the eye of the storm. So location can be important. It gives a unique context to a story that can’t be given in any other way.
And that’s why I’ve just installed the Geo plugin for this particular blog. Fuelled by the success of my travel map for my photos, I don’t see why I shouldn’t give location to my blog entries as well. Especially as a large part of them will be made up with travelling.
So imagine; a map of photos and blog entries. Being able to search for all entries that are 20, 50, 100 miles away from the current entry. Find all the photos that were taken nearby. Find other blogs or pictures from same area, by any number of photographers or bloggers.
There are cameras on the market that have built in GPS, so longitude and latitude can be stored alongside the photos. Hopefully this will become more of the norm in later cameras, and I can get one 🙂
Okay, so I’m not introducing anything new here. And similar functionality to that I’ve described is already available. There is a blogging community with plentiful location support, and it’s searchable by location. Highly useful for holiday ideas. But I forget the name of it now 🙂
But it’s my plan for this particular blog, and gives me something to do / write. Whether or not I will, being a professional procrastinator – that’s a different matter and one to leave to the future to decide 🙂
Good night, all!
I like Halloween. It’s not a love of Halloween that people across the ocean in America have. But maybe the influences of living there for a year have rubbed off on me a little here. Or maybe it’s the same old feelings for Halloween I had all along, since we’re not exactly immune to it in the UK either.
The best thing about Halloween for me, is the pumpkin carving. I love it, I wish supermarkets filled their storefronts with pumpkins all year round. Next year I plan on buying the battery operated pumpkin carving kit, to make things a bit easier. But for now, I’ve settled for the slightly cheaper standard walmart carving kit with mini knives (thanks trippy!).
Some people have called this years pumpkin a bit sick. But I think it’s really cool, and has turned out pretty well 🙂
Pumpkins are indigenous to the western hemisphere, and weren’t even known in Europe until after Columbus. Originally the Celts, witches, and other nature based religions used to celebrate Halloween as the ancient Celtic holiday Samhain (meaning Summers End). Traditionally, the lanterns were made out of gourds, turnips, or presumeably whatever else was at hand. Hot coal was added inside, to give the glow – and these lanterns were placed on the doorstep to welcome spirits of deceased loved ones, as well as to ward off evil spirits.
Since then, we’ve long forgotten the original holiday, and adopted the pumpkin as our lantern of choice, also placing candles inside instead of hot coal. Except for the fact we haven’t forgotten. Since I just told you. Aren’t these history lessons great?
So anyway, finishing up – Halloween is also a time for dressing up. The kids can go trick or treating, and fill huge buckets full of sweets. Though my journey home this evening leads me to suspect it’s getting abit too violent nowadays.
“Trick or treat or die” , screamed the army of children to the couple standing in the doorway.
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but “or die” was never the end of the chant when I was growing up. And I think that’s a bit of a huge leap from the previous options.
“Trick?”
“No thank you, I wouldn’t want to be tricked.”
“Treat?”
“Oh I’m so sorry, I’m all out of treats. Great costumes though.”
“Then you must die.”
“What were the first two again?”
First person to post comments about Eddie’s cake or death sketch wins a Lion bar. Ali, I’m looking at you here.
So with that, a Happy Halloween to you all! I hope you all have, or had a safe and enjoyable evening … Preferably without the kind of Trick or Treaters from Watford, that take things a little too seriously! 🙂