A clean, crisp page in my notebook, and my favourite fountain pen. Perfect for new ventures.
Soundcloud is all sorts of awesome, but I want it to scrobble, dammit. I love Spotify, but sometimes you don’t want established music, you want to see what people are doing on their own. And last.fm joins it all together beautifully. Gah.
BTW, Fakir, where is the MC Dad page?
I’m at work, and was in the process of creating a new document, when it asked me if I wanted to post on my blog. “That’ll never work” I thought. It’s slightly scary that it does. Genuinely not sure about this joined up computing lark, the distinction between private and public, official and unofficial is just getting too blurred.
Or, if I embrace the joined up, look! It even has my categories! But where are my tags, eh? At least do it properly.
So I’ve taken down the old blog, and now I’ve just got to move over the pictures and sort out some file locations. Easy.
Remind me why I do this again? Wouldn’t giving up and using a hosted service be more modern and about 50 times easier?
the more I want to stay inside and play with geekery. Nearly ready to replace the old blogger blog now, just want to check some new bells and whistles actually work. Today, I am mainly checking my facebook widget.
and everything seems OK doesn’t it? Got myself a nice template that I’ll be able to tweak over the coming weeks. Nerd fun or what.
I’ve been wondering whether to get my finger out and blog more for ages, but now it looks like my hand has been forced.
I like running my own domain, rather than handing over the controls to my blog tool, but the choices are limited. Blogger has been OK, but they stopped adding cool stuff unless you go with their solution. I’ve been researching alternatives, and it looks like a full solution is the way to go if I want to continue having control.
And now, I get an email from blogger saying they’re withdrawing the service I use anyway. NO! Now I have to stop talking about it, and actually get it done.
Of course, given the vast number of posts I’ve made over the past year, I do wonder if it’s worth it at all. My micro-updates tend to be on Facebook, and by the time I’ve thought of something that’s actually worth writing about on here, I’ve forgotten or the moment has passed.
This is where I admire the Fakir – he still handrolls his own site, but more importantly he still bothers to update it, even if it is all about the odd films he’s watching.
So, watch this space for a nice sparkly new look, coming soon.
I’m probably stealing the Wife’s thunder here as it’s she who wants to start blogging again. However, as she’s ironing I thought I’d drop a note about the X Mini IIs we’ve just bought for going on holiday with.
You’ll find lots of other reviews out there singing the praises of these and they really do deserve it. Little speaker, well made, modular, expandable and good at what it does.
We’ve bought a cable to split the connection out so we can get stereo with the pair of these that we bought (rather than just mono, but twice as loud). Once we’re on holiday we may have to join forces with one of our friends who also has a pair of these. That way we end up with stereo, twice as loud again.
So many places to put updates. I’ve found that sometimes it’s easier to just dump something onto my Facebook status, when once I would take the time to come and update the blog. And then Twitter came along which confused things even more.
I got a bike!
OK, it’s not a very big bike, and it isn’t exactly flash (a made in India budget special), but it’s bike enough for me. I’ve bought the new Honda CBF125 because it’s new, extraordinarily economical (about 350 miles to a £9 tank!) and cheap. The reviews are making nice noises about it, and I liked the colour when I saw one at a bike show. What more can a girl ask for?
We picked it up yesterday and Stuart drove it to a big carpark for me. I did my clutch and gears CBT about 8 or 9 years ago so I wasn’t convinced I’d remember the single day’s training. But you’ve got to wonder about the quality of everyone else on the road – for some reason loads of drivers chose to exit via our furthest most remote corner, some of them even managing to mount the kerbs of the planter beds. Yes. In an empty car park.
After variously mixing up the clutch, accelerator, rear brake, front brake and gear lever, I decided I’d had enough. I could remember how to go in a straight line in first (and stop again) and that was enough for me.
This morning I decided that the only way to get up to speed was to get out there, so we got the radios up and running and Stuart gave me a mini lesson. My brain was full of the mechanics of the bike, so I wasn’t really driving properly. Thank goodness for the big guy in the BRIGHT YELLOW jacket hanging behind me. It was like being a driving school duckling all over again. By the end of the 18 miles into London and back, I wasn’t stalling nearly as much, and when I did I was able to recover from it without too much fuss. At this rate, I’ll be thinking about the journey rather than the mechanics in no time.
I know it sounds silly, but doing this has helped me feel a lot more London. Partly because it’s a pain in the arse to get anywhere in a car, so I’ve started to combat that, but more because I now feel like it’s going to be possible to just pop over to visit friends – and that I have friends I actually have friends I want to pop over to go and see.
But right now, I’m sitting at home drinking tea and aching from using new muscles. Ace.
