I have tried many times, in many different places, to articluate the idea that micro-blogging reduces ones blogging output but Russell Beattie completely expresses my thoughts on the subject in this brilliant article. ‘Tweeting totally takes away that blogging urge from me… Once I tweet about something, it’s like it disappears from my mind completely.’ I can completely identify with this statement and another sentence also struck a resounding chord with me:...
‘This commercial free Bank Holiday Monday is brought to you by Magners.’ - Virgin Radio (25 August 2008) Well it may have fooled some of the listeners but it certainly didn’t fool me.
[ This post also had working titles of ‘Friends, bloggers and countrymen’ and ‘anti-social networking’. ] A few weeks ago, a gentleman called WaveyDavey001 was kind enough to invite me to participate in a Fantasy Football League. Rather rudely, I attempted to invite several of my friends into the same League so I only needed to manage one team. WaveyDavey001 politely agreed with the caveat; ‘I’d like to vaguely know most (of them)’....
Disqus recently released a update which includes the ability to export comments on a WordPress blog so I have just exported all historic comments left on this blog (when it was running WordPress) into Disqus. This operation was slightly complicated because this blog now uses Habari but the necessary steps were: Download and install the new Disqus 2.0 plugin for Wordpress. Delete all obvious spam so the export only processes genuine comments and runs faster....
Holidays are a time blissfully free of the modern distractions of computers, mobile phones, games consoles, televisions and a time for the family to spend some quality time together and eventually fall out. Inevitably, this leads to varied, interesting, thought provoking discussions. During the Brightside annual vacation in Venice, the following thorny questions were posed: If you immersed yourself in a foreign country, how long would it take for you to become proficient in the language ?...
Look for people with similar interests. Look at the friends of people you have just followed. Look out for people who have criteria for following others e.g. ‘I will only consider following you if you have ever replied to me (and made me laugh out loud)’. Satisfying the first is easy, the latter less so. Scan the Public time line. Occasionally, you will find a gem in the fast flowing river....
In my job, I am often summoned into very important, high powered meetings at short notice. It doesn’t matter what I am doing, who I am doing it with or where I am, I simply have to make my apologies and leave. Last week, a client took this approach to conducting business to extremes. I was standing at the urinals, fondly remembering previous posts on manners and officious, distracting and confusing corporate directives....
On Friday, Norman Junior III and myself loaded up our picnic hamper, packed the cool box with brightly coloured Bacardi Breezers and set off for SW19. We had been lucky enough to get tickets for Wimbledon tennis in the public ballot last year but, thanks to the English weather, we only saw grey skies and 63 minutes of play. It was scant consolation that we saw Maria Sharapova in the flesh....
Although it’s very cool to post on the corporate message board: ‘Hey - why don’t we save the company millions of dollars by using Linux, Gmail and OpenOffice ?’, there are obvious barriers (security and Excel Luddites to name but two) to large corporations adopting server based software. However, I always thought Google Mail would be an obvious fit for academic institutions to reduce the costs of software licenses and IT management....
Two weeks ago, I made my annual pilgrimage to the Surbiton Trophy where I enjoyed a day in the sun watching an excellent Men’s Final between Frank Dancevic and Kevin Anderson. Norman Junior III also plays tennis at Surbiton albeit not to such a high standard. In the lull between the main event and the Men’s Doubles Final, Norman Junior III and the juniors came on to entertain a handful of spectators on the two main courts, performing some standard drills with their coaches....