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Random

Unexpected bills…

Today is one of those weird days where you blog after midnight (ouch – how Gremlins is that?) and you don’t feel like it is really Saturday at all because you haven’t slept yet, but it is, and you know that your blog will show it to be Saturday. So you can’t say things like “Today I went to see American Psycho with Rhonda and John” nor can you say “Today I travelled up to Norfolk to see my parents and my brother” or even “Tomorrow Gideon is arriving from Mexico by way of Israel, and that I am really looking forward to it because I hardly ever get to see him”, because really it wasn’t today and it isn’t tomorrow, it was yesterday and today. But then you don’t want to confuse people…

My web-hosting weirdness continues unabated. After having been charged roughly $400 for excess bandwidth (and me sending them a stroppy e-mail saying that there was no reason that they couldn’t have automatically bumped me up to a higher level of package (costing me 0.25% of the money I was charged) when I reached the limits of the current one), I have just been sent a concilatory letter offering me an extra Gb of traffic a month, plus doubled server space and 10 more POP3 accounts. It would be tempting if I wasn’t still going to spiral over their bandwidth allowance. Honestly – Netnation are still not in my good books…

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Random

I’m a bit perturbed by riothero…

I’m a bit perturbed by riothero. I mean his “Top 10 Things That Would Be Different If The 12 Apostles Had Been Gay” is clearly well meaning and occasionally very funny (“The water at the Wedding Feast of Cana would have turned into dry martinis with just a splash of Curacao for color”) but also strays close on a couple of occasions to dubiousness. I think it’s one of those things where you can make the jokes if you’re part of the club, but if you’re not… I know Mark of old, and know him to be a decent and fun chap, and I am certainly not suggesting any impropriety on his part. It’s just his words sound… odd…

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Random

Pity Barbelith…

Ah… Those scamps on the Nexus – look what they’ve come up with now! A way to pity barbelith

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Random

In which I get my ego stroked…

How many times do I have to tell you? The Web is all about ME. Seriously, though, about a year ago I got really pissed off because a friend of mine said out of the blue: “You do realise I don’t fancy you right?”. I was furious – I mean, it’s not like I don’t have enough to deal with without people spontaneously telling me I’m unattractive. One of the wonders of the web helps compensate this behaviour: people you’ve never even met before say that they think you don’t look like the back end of a bus. That’s got to prop up a beleaguered ego!

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Random

No good idea goes unexploited…

No good idea goes unexploited, they say, but there are worse people to do it than the Guardian, who have just launched their own weblog. Quite how much it has in common with the kind of things that I do (or the other thousands of bloggers) is debatable, of course. [via linkmachinego]

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Random

Late in the office…

It’s been a difficult day – exhausting, stressful, and for a little while more at least, I don’t have my own home, or my own bed, to look forward to. So that must explain why it is 9pm and I am still at work. I got everything done that I realistically expected to about an hour and a half ago…

I’ve not been particularly inspired to write today (except about the war between city people and country people, which for the sake of diplomacy I have decided to pass swiftly over). So I decided to do my duty and blog a couple of stories for Web Queeries. I was surprised how tricky it was to write for – it’s really difficult to tell whether or not you can write in a flighty fashion or whether one should be more news-conscious. Judge for yourself whether or not I did a good job.

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Random

Hi, my name’s Tom…

“Hi, my name’s Tom. I’m ringing … this is quite hard for me … ok … right … I’m ringing because … I have a sad … ridiculous … teenage crush on … Wes Bentley. Can you help? … um … hello?”

I’ll admit it. I loved The Matrix as much as any other red-blooded gentleman, and I am excited about the prospect of another two films. Otherwise why would I have invested so much imaginary money into them at hsx.com. Over the last couple of months, my fascination has waned a little however, only to be rediscovered when I stumbled upon an article which confirms that Carrie Anne Moss is going to be in the new films as well. She’s the last of the mainstays of the first film to sign on. And that is just the first part of the rumourfest… God, I’m such a nerd.

Someone should start a site about dead blogs. I mean – once they’re out of date, they are mostly pretty pointless things. And there are a great many dead blogs. The scariest fact? That a blog can be dead after as little as two weeks without an update. Cases in point: Carpe Diem [ironic name], Vision Thing [brought to you by the number 3] and Commblog [it’s all about Marketing].

Categories
Personal Publishing

On writing about one's partners…

So I am sitting in my new office, everyone else has gone home and I have a few things to get done before I can go drinking with Nick and friends. I’ve got the Sex Pistols playing on the G4 as compensation for the Drum and Bass that has been in the background for much of the day. I’ve been thinking a lot today, between bouts of savage work, about what limits a weblogger must set on themselves.

I remember reading an article a few months ago about how a guy kept an incredibly personal and detailed online diary. All his friends knew about it, as did his girlfriend. She made the astonishing statement that she actually checked his diary to find out the state of their relationship. It sounds horrific, but it seemed to work for them.

Other webloggers, while accepting that there will always be things which they don’t feel comfortable talking about publicly, are less certain about where these limits lie.

A few weeks ago, Jason Kottke said that there was something happening in his life that he really wanted to talk about, but didn’t feel able. Meanwhile, Riothero keeps his relationship with Lyda very much in the foreground of his log. Of course, this hasn’t been without its difficulties.

I’m very interested in hearing about how people reconcile this difficulty (although the question I perhaps should be asking is “Why would anyone want to talk about their relationships publicly on the web anyway?”), but I suppose at the end of the day it comes down to this – the only appropriate public comment about a partner is one that they are happy with.

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Random

The Web is All About Me

The Web is All About Me – or so you might think from looking around this morning. But before I even get around to that, I have to make it clear that riothero has just stepped his design up one substantial gear. It’s the cleanest, most elegant design he has ever produced. Mark, please, leave it like this for a little while!

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Random

I’m one of rumpus.net’s Cute Boys on the Web!

I’m one of rumpus.net‘s Cute Boys on the Web!