Homeward Bound
Friday, November 23, 2007 ~ 6 comments so far
The sun slinks away across the fields, the soft faded glow trailing in its wake as the hills become mountains again.
He is heading home.
As the train rattles and rushes onwards a solitary face stares past the reflections to the distant hills. The remnants of daylight pick out a cottage on the hillside, lights flickering inside, idyllic, remote, and surreal. Too picture perfect to exist, he must have imagined it.
Past fields of livestock, sheep glow in the sunset, pools of water emit an eerie glow, now is the time of spirits and stories. He pictures the scene, farmers, warriors or travellers, huddled around the fire sharing tales of mysterious times. The wind whipping round them, ashes and sparks swirling above them as they weave their stories, embellishing wildly, bringing monsters to life.
He ponders the story tellers of today, sitting huddled to tell their tales, the glow of fire long gone but bathed in light nonetheless. Are they worse for it? It is a folly regardless, all he wants is to get home.
He turns to the sunset, pale orange over silouhette, trees form the backdrop, wayang golek that is missing the rod puppets.
Headlights dip and roll on a remote road, blazing signs into view, breaking the gloom. They don’t last long and soon the dark descends further. Items are lost in the dark, towns only exist in streetlight, points of orange on black.
The last wisps of dusk wink out leaving the train as the only energy, moving at a blur, pulling stations from nowhere before discarding them to darkness once more. And then the false dawn begins, the dull glow of sodium and neon bouncing to the heavens to mark the city. Faster, he thinks, faster, almost there, almost home.
Flashes of pale white light pick out hillsides and roads, villages and towns but soon even they vanish as the clouds swallow the moon.
Can’t be long now? Can’t be far from home.
He is always the same, enjoying the journey until it is almost at an end, then willing, wishing and dreaming it was over. Anxiously and silently urging the movement on, hoping others are doing the same. The power of the mind, can we will the train home? Closing his eyes to draw the lights closer, he is almost there.
The final rattle, the lurch as momentum is lost and a new light enters the carriage.
So close now. Almost home.
Heading home
Thursday, November 22, 2007 ~ Comments Off
Almost packed, but I think I can get this flaky wireless connection to stay online for long enough to post some quick thoughts.
The conference was very informative, and it was good to meet other TechPubs Managers and chat about the variety of responsibilities and “challenges” we all face. My presentation went well, although I did finish 5 minutes earlier. I had planned a short live demo but concerns over time and internet connections made me reconsidered. Next time (presuming there is one!) I’ll plan in more content.
It was a buzz though, and I can understand why people enjoy doing it and why, despite the nerves, people keep doing it. I enjoyed standing on the stage and talking about something I have a passion for, and watching and feeding off the reactions of the audience. I had a few humorous observations which got just the reaction I’d hoped and I could feel my confidence soaring with every passing minute. I even abandoned my notes, a stack of index cards on which I’d written key points, and managed to wing my way through the last few slides without missing a beat. I even remembered to pause, to move around the stage, to raise and lower my voice, to make eye contact and all those other things that make a difference. I THINK it went down well, feedback may tell me otherwise.
So overall, it was fun and I learnt some stuff. That’s all for the other blog though.
I am a bit tired this morning though but I do want to take a moment to thank the couple in the room next to me for a very educational evening. I’m in a Club room and the adjoining door, whilst firmly locked, does leave a little to be desired when it comes to sound-proofing. This was to my benefit though as I now know that a Romanian woman (I think, certainly from that neck of the woods) makes the same noises and cries out “OH God!” whilst reaching the climax of her orgasm. The couple very generously made sure I fully understood this by repeating the lesson three times. The third lesson finished around 1am, and I think if a fourth had been started I may well have knocked on the adjoining door to thank them for such an informative evening.
Speaking of which, I did catch Charlie Brooker on TV talking about the trend in TV Reporting, which is particularly poignant given the BREAKING NEWS being splashed all over Sky News this morning. Yes, apparently England lost a game of football.
Ohh come on, you didn’t think I WOULDN’T mention it, did you?
I did watch the game, and will admit to cheering rather loudly at every goal. All three of them.
Hmmmm, maybe the couple in the next room were just getting me back…
There’s a kind of hush
Monday, November 19, 2007 ~ 1 comment so far
We will not be mentioning the football.
Apart from saying well done as, to be honest, to even get to the last game with a chance of qualification and then giving the World Champions a bloody good run for their money was far more than anyone dared to hope (and this is where I DON’T mention the ball that McFadden should’ve squared across the area, nor the opportunity he missed, and I’m not even going to touch on the freekick that led to the Italian winner as it’s not even worthy of the name “freekick”…).
The rest of the evening was merry, and we even managed to get a Greek waiter at our Italian restaurant. The meal was OK, although I’ve never really understood why Italian restaurants are so expensive (pasta, chicken, spinach, onion, cream, white wine… £12.95?!), and the company was excellent. Alas the torrential rain put the dampers on proceedings, although given the state of my hangover yesterday that is probably no bad thing.
It did mean I got to watch a few old movies as the TV channels seem to have started their Christmas broadcasting early. My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Matilda, See No Evil Hear No Evil, Spiderman, The Usual Suspects. The quality improved throughout the day, and it’s always a pleasure to watch Kevin Spacey in action (twice as it happened, couldn’t have told you he was in the other movie…).
I travel to Warwick tomorrow, then back on Thursday, so bloggage will be light. I will try and do something exciting whilst I’m there though, just to keep you all amused. Although there are limits to how much excitement you can generate in a room full of Technical Writers..
Spaghetti blognese*
Friday, November 16, 2007 ~ 6 comments so far
Furtling around for inspiration I ran a few standard blogging fallbacks through some mental checks.
- Too busy because – nope, did one of those recently.
- Interesting referrers – my stats are way down as it is so I’ve been avoiding looking at my stats at all. Ohhh, actually that might be a topic I could tackle, finding out reader stats across website hits and RSS feed subscriptions… but others have done that one so.. moving on…
- Spam comments – nope, didn’t that one recently too.
- What do I have in draft – “How to grab TV episodes using torrents” – yeah started that one but need to be at home to finish it.
I guess all I have left is to ask for music/book recommendations, after all I have a “Dear Santa” list to fill and it’s only really got some camera stuff on it at the moment (and my groovy, self-designed Reebok trainers of course. And yes, that IS the longest URL in the world…). Suggestions welcomed..
Other than that, little of note has happened to me recently as my day is largely a set of predictable and repeated steps.
(intrepid bloggers will by now have realised that I’m falling back on the ultimate of all fall backs by posting about not being able to post and why I don’t have anything to write about, thus giving me something to write about in this post. Wise is the experienced blogger…)
Get up at 6.30am, go to work, try and not get interrupted (I’m failing at this one but that seems to be the way of things), go home, chill out for an hour or so, do stuff that needs done, then get some more work done and try to get to bed before 1am (just). Boring. Not really stuff wot people will find interesting.
(great, now this is turning into an “I’m too busy to post” post.. dammit)
Next week will be different as I’m off to exotic Warwick and will be delivering a presentation to a room full of my peers. Yes I am starting to crap myself a little but I know the topic well enough (Wikis) and will get a couple more rehearsals in before Wednesday.
Other than that, the main topic in this neck of the woods is football.
For those of you not au fait with such things if Scotland beat Italy on Saturday, we will have qualified for the European Championships. We haven’t qualified for a big tournament for 10 years so this is a very big thing especially when you consider that, really, we shouldn’t even be in with a shout of qualifying at all, having been drawn in a qualifying group with the two World Cup finalists from last year and with only two teams going through.
Two shock wins against France, and some good performances at home, have put us in this position and the nation (well the bit that cares about this stuff) is rallying. One of my co-workers has come to work in his kilt.
Which is odd as the game is tomorrow but I admire his spirit nonetheless.
We are watching the game with friends, and in my heart I hope we manage it. Our national team was a joke one year ago, and whilst I think it’s fair to say we are hitting above our weight at the moment, it’s reminiscent of the Scotland teams I grew up with.
After the game we are all off out to a highly reputed local restaurant. So if the worst happens, and we concede an injury equaliser (thus almost rendering it impossible for us to qualify (there are permutations beyond tomorrow but they involve the Faroe Islands beating current World Champions Italy… hmmm)) which given the precarious nature with which the national football team seems to operate is the most likely scenario, we will at least eat well and enjoy good company, lively banter and large amounts of alcohol.
Although part of me is wishing we hadn’t booked an Italian restaurant.
* SORRY!!
You sound funny
Wednesday, November 14, 2007 ~ 6 comments so far
Since moving jobs, Louise now has her own email address. We ping the occasional email back and forth, usually to confirm plans for the evening. A couple of recent emails were a bit longer and I found myself a little puzzled. My wife sounds very different in text. That is, whilst I can hear her voice, the phrasing and tone implied when she writes is quite different from her everyday voice.
Of course that is only to be expected, and frankly I’m a little embarassed to only really be considering such a thing after having spent a fair chunk of the last few years online. I’ve met a few bloggers and none have “sounded” the same as the way they write. Does that even make sense? Well, regardless of my ham-fisted attempt to grasp this topic, I’m sure most of you have an idea of what I’m waffling on about (that’s makes a change, eh!).
This, to me, marks the great writer from the good, the skilled wordsmith from the mediocre keyboard basher. The ability to capture nuances of the spoken word and display them in written form is an art, and I’m lucky to have been reading some wonderful proponents of such skill for a few years now. Some of them have, deservedly, gained book deals, others have moved into writing full-time, and one or two remain somewhat secret from the rest of the mainstream, all of them make me laugh, make me cry and generally remind me just how powerful the written word can be.
I wonder if they would have the same impact if I’d met them and spoken to them?
Nice! Cool!
Tuesday, November 13, 2007 ~ 4 comments so far
I miss spam comments. Running WordPress with Askismet means I see little to no spam here which is a shame because I received some real belters in my time.
I’m not talking about the large list of links to various shady corners of the internet, I’m talking about the somewhat random poetry-esque spam that would crop up about once a week. A random sampling of text from Byron and Keats or somesuch, it made checking my spam lists all the more fun.
These days there seems to be only 3 types of spam comment:
- The Fast Show Jazz Man spam – Usually “Nice!” or “Cool!”. The most boring of the bunch, saved only by the image in my head of John Thomson in a smoky club.
- The Honest I read every word! spam – “Wow, that’s fascinating. I’m sure you’d like to visit our blog too.”
- The Feed Scraper Pingback spam – There appears to be an endless parade of feed scraping sites that list part of my posts with a link back to the original (which spawn a pingback). These are odd because they ARE usually targetted, my recent wine rack photo was listed alongside a page full of other, genuine, posts about wine racks.
Not entirely sure about the third one. Yes I still consider it spam but it is a bit smarter than most. I don’t see any traffic from these links though and as they are taking scraps of content from here then they are definitely being naughty… but as I publish a full RSS feed anyway, what do I care? Do I care that people are making money off of my content? Yes, I do. But do I care enough to do much about it?
So, fellow blog readers, what’s in your spam list?
It’s time to stop when…
Monday, November 12, 2007 ~ Comments Off
You take a break from work, fire up Google Reader and idly flick through a few feeds. Your eyes alight on a delicious link and you think, ohh must check that out.
Only then do you realise that you are reading your OWN RSS feed, and you’ve already bookmarked said link in delicious so you’ll check it out.
Sometimes the internets really is confussing, round and round it goes.