Having finally been forced to join tribe.net by a friend, I swiftly started to build up my personal network. That is until I realised that the connections it helped maintain between people were rather more alarming and invasive than I had initially thought:
I should point out (I have been forced to point out) that Stewart wasn’t the friend I was initially talking about. That was someone quite quite different.
I’m pretty much promoting this one to death at the moment, but just in case someone using RSS feeds to read my site has missed the enormous plug I’m giving this event on my site at the moment, there’s a UK Webloggers Christmas Party to be held in London’s fashionable Farringdon district this coming weekend. Details follow:
→ Venue: Downstairs at the Well
→ When: This coming Saturday 29th November from 7.00pm
→ How do you find it? There’s a helpful map!
→ Organised by: That lovely chap from Funjunkie.co.uk
I think the most upsetting part of having a week-long holiday ‘to get things done’ is that when it’s over and you look back at what you’ve accomplished, you’re inevitably disappointed. When you look at sites that you’d planned to update every day and haven’t updated for weeks even when you had nothing obviously else to do, then that’s just got to be gutting – you’ve got to be failing somehow. I might have to be honest with the world and state that Everything in Moderation is likely to be a highly sporadic venture – a name under which I can put up articles or posts as and when the mood strikes me, rather than something that I can legitimately maintain on a daily basis.
It’s very depressing and I think it’s wrapped up in a whole range of other things that are drifting around in my head at the moment about how people justify less-than-immediately-easy-to-organise social events, plans, schemes, hobbies and the like. Don’t they feel guity about not trying to make / build / write / achieve something? I know that I do – profoundly guilty – which unfortunately is beginning to have the effect of causing me to become effectively totally blocked. My head is teeming with stuff I want to do pretty much all the time – teeming so much that it’s beginning to feed upon itself. Achieving non-work-related mental clarity and useful working states is also becoming harder as the stuff gets backed up, because now every thing I do takes too long when put against the other five things I should be doing at the same moment. I’m perpetually distracted. It’s getting aggravating.
I’m off to Norfolk for a few days to visit my family and celebrate my little brother’s eighteenth birthday. Updates are likely to be vaguely sporadic until Sunday, but hopefully I’ll spend some of the time writing up some of the stuff that’s coursing around my head for posting upon my return. In the meantime, here’s some snippets of Norfolk-related plastic-baggery:
And just to set the mood a bit more, here are some pictures from around my village, taken this summer (around the time of my birthday):
I had the opportunity yesterday to go to Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn Meet the BBC at RIBA in London. I took comprehensive notes of the event, if anyone’s interested. The part that got me most excited was the work that Vint is doing to extend the internet across the rest of the solar system – starting with Mars. More on that story:
You know, the reason why you’ll be seeing odds and sods turning up in the linklog that have been all around the interhighweb three or four times is that it’s very uncommon for me to post something until I’ve read it properly. That’s why I’m linking to Why tables for layout is stupid now even though – you know – you’ve all bloody read it already. My long-established stash of links is gradually being sorted out and worked through and you can expect more blasts from the extremely recent past to be clogging up the old P.B. before the end of the weekend…
I’ve just caught up on my Dreamspaces and been confronted with a conundrum. In a piece about brutalist architecture, they featured the Tricorn centre in Portsmouth. Here’s a picture of the building in question:
Now, this building hasn’t had the most illustrious of histories. It was built in 1966, given an award in 1967 and voted Britain’s fourth ugliest building in 1968. It is generally reviled by the public and will not be protected by government by being listed. But when the architect – Rodney Gordon – is asked about the general distaste towards his building, he replies:
“Well I’m very surprised. A lot of people liked the building. One thing I do find is that any piece of architecture worth being called architecture is usually both hated and loved. If people don’t notice it, it’s not architecture.”
That last phrase seems extraordinary to me – stunning in its arrogance and audacity and completely in opposition to most of the understandings of design and architecture that I’ve accumulated over the last ten years. That kind of ostentatious statement of impact above function was given up within the first ten years of web design. What Gordon is talking about is the construction of follies – buildings with little or no function but to inspire and awe. Unworkable spaces, unusable spaces. We have them on the web too – sometimes even intentionally – either as art or design showcases or as image-based impactful press prelease or advertising spaces. But this is different. This is a site – a space – designed for shopping and socialising that wants desperately to be innovative and impressive – the architect all the while dismissing the subtle and less overt arts of flows and usability, building things that are not scaled for humans or comprehensible to them. All the things that allow a place to be understood by people are dismissed as unworthy of the name of architecture. And why – because the building must be noticed… It’s stunning. It’s terrible. And I’m fairly sure it’s wrong.
If you’re interested in the Tricorn:
Did anyone read a book when they were a kid that had two teenagers running through a forest, touching a piece of ball lightning and being transported to Ancient Rome? I remember one bit distinctly – the two boys being surprised when they realise they’re in Rome because where they come from it’s called “Reme” after the brother Remus rather than Romulus. I’m only asking because I stumbled upon a post on Fiona’s site which suggested using Amazon to find the name of dimly-remembered books. Only I can’t find it. If no one has any idea, could you someone please pop into Wroxham library and see if it’s still in the kids book section after twenty years. Thanks!
Oh my god! I’ve got a whole week off. What on earth am I going to do with myself? I mean I’ve got lots of forms and bills to sort out, and no clean clothes and a flat like a pig-sty and I actually still have some work hanging over my head which I’m going to try and get done tomorrow morning so I don’t have to think about it any more (although I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll still be with me at the end of the week). I’m also going to Norfolk for my brother’s eighteenth birthday (which is so weird and exciting and strange) and four hours after work has ended, I’ve already got things tumbling out of my head almost uncontrollably. Two site sketches down on paper, plans for redesigns, bits of jottings taking shape, social software things. And I even have this urge to go out and get drunk and maybe go dancing or something. I never feel like that. I wonder where I can find nice fun people to play with…
One thing that I probably won’t have time to do is to think around the landmark east project. It seems to me that those of us with insane creative web-building urges should be able to contribute to something like that in some way. Maybe something using ubiquitous computing, or feeding in contributions to the public and turning into something physical and manifest automatically. Or maybe some kind of collaborative architecture experience – like that font project that was around a few years back, where individuals came to a page and turned one pixel on or off, trying gradually to assemble some kind of alphabetic glyph. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could create a structure, a landmark, a monument like that? Chunk by chunk, brick by brick, curve by curve… Together. The manifestation of a people.
Weblogger south, Weblogger north!
Come hear my tale of Christmas glee…
Which this year shall be much in rhyme
(I’m sorry and please bear with me…)A mount so high it touches space;
Within: a massive darkened cave,
Wherein a sharp and pointy race
Of tiny elves has been enslaved…And in the centre, Mrs Claus –
A tower of computer might
(And built for no apparent cause)
Stands passive in the candlelight.Beside her there’s a silhouette
A disconnected robot form
Who waits each year for holidays
The chance to serve and be reborn.But then, what’s this? The Yule alarm!?
A klaxxon sounds throughout the lair
And with a twitch, the robot’s arm
Thrusts holly fistfuls in the air!He stands, a monster, next the flames
That every year before hath burned.
And lo! His robot voice proclaims
That SECRET SANTA HAS RETURNED!