graham’s blog

Architecture

I’ve been thinking for months about how to fit everything into my online presence. I am, like you I imagine, involved in many sites and get distracted everyday. It is sometimes difficult to know where to write a comment, a thought or an article in order to get these messages across. There is always that nagging thought that what I write could be lost or mislaid.

I actively resisted Facebook for months because I didn’t want to lose myself or distract potential readers away from here. I am now convinced that this is not the case and that if it (or other competing sites such as MySpace or Bebo) are used properly, it fits in quite nicely.

This grows rapidly when most of those you followed elsewhere and many family members and friends are also on Facebook. I realize that this is Facebook’s intention but it is nevertheless a fact that it is a formidable link pin between the immediacy of Twitter and the in-depth possibilities of a personal blog. It therefore has it’s place in the scheme of things or general architecture of an online presence.

I must admit that Facebook is also very good at aggregating content from Friendfeed, Twitter and Pownce and also a good place to point people to go for longer articles such as this one.

You just have to be very careful not to be drowned in the superficiality of a large percentage of the apps available. If you can manage to do this you are using it efficiently and in tandem with your other online activities.

This is why I encourage you to seek me out on Facebook to discover what I’m up to on a day to day basis and to continue to come here for appropriate, or at least I hope so, articles.

Now I’ve got that out of my system I’m hoping that the kitchen sink of my activities has been cleared and that I can get back to my normal programming.

So, how are things with you?

Yes?

I’ve just installed the Wordpress iPhone app from the app store and this is a test post. Please ignore (or not)!!

Wordle

Through twitter I discovered Wordle this morning and here is my very first wordle which was composed from my de.licio.us bookmarks. (thanks steph)

An interesting month

Looking at my last post earlier, I noticed that it’s been just over a month since I’ve added anything. It seems to be a regular occurence here on my blog.

I have cycles of activity and inactivity and while I have a lot to say everything goes smoothly and then suddenly I hit a black spot and dry up totally for a while.

I think the main problem is that I have never really decided what I want to do with this blog. Is it a personal blog where I tell you what’s happening in my life and in my family?

Is it full of commentary on local life?

Is it based around geekyness and technology?

Is it full of social commentary?

Looking back over the years it has been a little of everything and not very focused. There was a period a few years ago where I was part of a group of loosely held bloggers and we swapped stories and comments mutually. I sometimes look back fondly on that period.

Life goes on however and nothing remains the same.

In the end I think you blog in order to have some sort of presence, a kind of home on the web. It ultimately reflects on you and who you are.

It’s my birthday today and a birthday is commonly a time to reflect on where you’ve been and where you are going.

I don’t really feel that there is much point in continuing this blog. I’ve never managed to stimulate contributions from my own family or friends or turn it into a bilingual experience.

Social life on the web has evolved and much has shifted to sites such as Facebook or MySpace or to microblogging environments such as Twitter or Pownce.

Blogging has professionalized itself and many blog to live (or live to blog I suppose).

I keep asking myself why would anyone come here given the content I provide and I must humbly admit that there aren’t many reasons.

I do need a home on the web however and as my domain name is my name I will not be giving it up.

I will just mutate it into another form and move this blogging section and it’s history to another, quieter place.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll promote it to the front page in the future. We shall see.

In the meantime I would be more interested in some sort of lifeblogging and I’m eager to get my hands on one of these new iPhones.

I firmly believe that the future of the web is shifting to mobile devices. These are more suited to our lives as we live them and to being as spontaneous as we can.

By the time I get home in the evening the relevance of what has happened in the day has faded and invariably I move on, without having posted about it.

Thanks for reading and visiting me over the years. Don’t be a stranger. I’ll continue to visit you and to make sure you have ways of contacting me if you wish to. I’m not going away or leaving but am acknowledging the state of current affairs before moving on.

Sigh of relief

When I logged into this blog this morning I noticed that upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress was called for. As usual I went into my hosting’s control panel, chose Fantastico and clicked on the upgrade Wordpress to 2.5.1 button.

Up until now this has always gone smoothly but the law of averages reminded me that from time to time it will go wrong, and it did!

I spent the rest of the morning trying to get this blog back online and it proved a lot more trickier than I thought it would.

As you can see I managed, but at one point I thought I might even have to start anew with post number 1 again.

I was going to change the template (again) because although a magazine style is interesting it calls for more and not less work than a simple chronological template.

So here we are back to the last but one iteration and true to form I will be tweaking it over the next few days until I am happy again.

More bad weather

This is another one of those weather posts but it does emphasize the lack of any notable news here in Geneva. It has been rather wet these past two weeks and every time I leave home to go to work - or leave work to go home I have to see if it is raining enough to get out my umbrella.

Paradoxically I’m a Great Britain (slight pun intended) and always pack my umbrella but use it as little as possible. My jacket has a hood and I prefer using that to using an umbrella that i have to keep on my knees and avoid getting anything else wet during public transport.

Here is a tip I learnt from my Dad. Always carry a plastic bag with you and put the wet umbrella into it during transport. When you get home, or at work, dry the umbrella conventionally and turn the plastic bag inside out to dry for the next run.

Rien à signaler

Il n’y jamais “rien à signaler” mais je viens d’éplucher les journaux pour quelque chose à vous raconter et je n’ai rien trouvé de croustillant.

Je suis obliger alors de centrer l’article sur moi et ma famille et amis. Le weekend qui vient de passer j’ai reçu ma filleul et son mari pour une excellent soirée le vendredi et assisté avec grand plaisir au 50ans d’une amie le samedi.

Pour terminer le weekend en beauté j’ai écouté le Requiem de Verdi au Victoria Hall. C’était majestrale malgré quelques faiblesses parmi les solistes. J’adore l’ambiance dans les théâtres et salles de concert et de pouvoir écouter un grand choeur (deux en faite) et l’orchestre de plus de septante musiciens était grandiose. Merci à nos amis Christine et Louis d’avoir facilité la soirée en proposant de chercher les billets.

Music and me

When I was a kid my parents often played music around the house. My mother played piano and we often sat around and listened. My dad bought a record player and we listened to Petula Clark, Marlene Dietrich, Françoise Hardy and lots of classical music.

I played recorder and sang at school assembly. I also had the chance to have piano lessons but my piano teacher persuaded me to take up singing rather than piano so I sang a lot in music lessons and in school and local productions.

My musical education was therefore essentially classic although at school we studied The Beatles Sergeant Peppers and other mainstream pop music.

It wasn’t until I left home to work in Edinburgh that I broadened my musical tastes a lot under the influence of the aftermath of the summer of ‘68 and the hippy culture. My friends and girlfriends were also instrumental to me discovering much of what I still listen to today. It felt as if I had changed from Beethoven to the Grateful Dead in the space of a few weeks and I’m happy changing from Barefoot Jerry, Jefferson Airplane and Jethro Tull to Mozart, Richard Strauss or Bach from one pice to the next. It just depends on my mood.

This is the first post in a series devoted to my musical interests.

Social Networks: Relevance?

I don’t make a secret of my age so when I was looking at social networks I tried Orkut, MySpace and of course FaceBook. I can’t seem to get back into Orkut but that’s not a problem. I don’t check into Myspace very often and only a little less than Facebook. Facebook is harder to avoid as I have many friends and acquaintances over there.

Another social network I tried was TeeBeeDee because I thought that as it was a site geared for people over 40 it might have more relevance to me. It turns out however that it hasn’t impacted on my experience and that’s a shame as there are some really splendid people over on the site.

I decided to cancel my membership today and earlier the administrators took an interest in why I had left and I wrote them an email detailing my issues.

It sums up a lot of what I feel so I’m inserting portions here.

“There are a lot of awfully nice people on TeeBeeDee and none better than the
crew that runs it. I had a very warm welcome and it befits your service to
express concern on my departure.

I came to TeeBeeDee as a backlash of the FaceBook disaster. I’m 56 and
proud of that and I don’t really fit in with the FaceBook crowd although I’m
a confirmed geek and spend a *lot* of my time online.

[...]

In the end however TeeBeeDee is centered around the nice folks in the USA
and I’m an Englishman living in the French speaking part of Switzerland and
the cultural difference is uncomfortable.

My Mother’s day is on another day, there is no Father’s Day, we don’t really
celebrate Halloween and certainly not Thanksgiving or Labor Day (just some
examples).

So I don’t really feel that I “belong” in spite of everything.

The other reason is that I can’t devote as much time as I could/should being
spread out on the web and pulled in all webdirections at the same time.

I hope this helps to explain the reasons for my departure.”

Sushi