I do enjoy Tumblr's Cambridge Noir, yes; I've no doubt I shall be enjoying more content from Tumblr and Posterous, as I'll be enjoying content from some blogs that are on Blogger and some blogs that are on Wordpress. But I don't immediately get the differences between Tumblr and Posterous, or the differences between both Tumblr and Posterous and other sites. The post comparing them washed over me, and I don't feel any urge to experiment with Tumblr and Posterous at all.
Eurgh. My previous post showed how my use of Delicious and bit.ly has fallen by around 60% over the past year. I think I must be getting jaded. Goodnight.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Cam23 2.0: Week 7, thing 12: Bookmarking tools
Only this: a year ago I rejoiced in the Delicious cupcake logo, feeling that the utility of the site excused such hedonism. But now I compare Delicious with the URL-shortener bit.ly. Delicious has the things I will read if I get round to it; bit.ly has the things I have read and think worth passing on.
So now Delicious charges me not just with icing but also, even more than last year, with not having read. And I find myself using it less often, probably in consequence. The statistics are glum. In June-July 2010 I added 23 sites to Delicious (not the 23 Things); in the equivalent months of 2011 it was just 10.
Have you had a comparable experience?
Ah, there might be some such comparables in those 23things posts I missed while Clare & I were biking home from Chester last week. But that means more things I haven't read!
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
So now Delicious charges me not just with icing but also, even more than last year, with not having read. And I find myself using it less often, probably in consequence. The statistics are glum. In June-July 2010 I added 23 sites to Delicious (not the 23 Things); in the equivalent months of 2011 it was just 10.
Have you had a comparable experience?
Ah, there might be some such comparables in those 23things posts I missed while Clare & I were biking home from Chester last week. But that means more things I haven't read!
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Farewells to cars
I myself do not drive, and probably cannot be taught to. My reaction times are fast enough for cycling, but no more. However, I like the challenge of writing poems to order, and the order has occasionally included a request from a friend grieving for a car. Two such elegies were published in the church magazine Streetwise 16, October 1994, p.25.
TWO ELEGIES FOR CARS
(i) In memory of Amy Dolomite Triumph-Ettrick, died of rust, January 1993
A much-loved car may turn more pain,
passing away, than should be true:
it had the life it had from you,
and cannot give it back again.
The business of the parting (make
internment to interment, led
for Amy, long already dead)
is after Christmas, and grey ache.
Here is the yard where every state
of wreckage -- loss of faces, hearts --
waits rusting, gives up fewer parts,
continues to disintegrate.
Leave her poor corpse for fifteen pounds,
fifty of which will have to go
towards the new car's tyres, which blow
bathos in those appalling grounds,
and see the roads keep pumping life
mechanically through the town,
racing or jammed or slowing down,
stoppable, yes; not for this grief,
and kids notch pencil gates, five bars,
adults, parked oddly as the Ark,
click little counters as they mark
the passing of the vans and cars.
(ii) To Clare on the loss of her Metro
Awkward, you were, at the acquisition --
flushed, almost as for a dishwasher,
as much as for a man,
lots more than for a television --
high-minded to make a healthy
reduction in your use of the road:
by trains for cross-country travel,
buses in the city, or your bike,
and where the streets are steepest, walking,
paying to go green as the policy
insures drivers against driving and its embarrassment,
anxious to justify journeys, or excuse them,
ashamed of leadening the Leeds air.
Well, the stained air can be said to have won:
August, and work is all washed up,
beachedly dull like decaying boats,
and moist has crept through the car's metal,
rendered its body brittle with rust.
THANKS FOR THE JOURNEYS TO CHURCH AND STATION,
THANKS FOR PRAISING MY NAVIGATION,
BEARING MY MISTIMED SPECULATION
ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE'S ORIENTATION,
BIT OF A HARD AND KNOTTY CLUMP
TO PULL UP AND THROW AT YOU ALL OF A JUMP
SHORT OF A TRAFFIC-LIGHT, DRIVING THROUGH RAIN
AND LEEDS' ONE-WAY SYSTEM IN TIME FOR A TRAIN.
AND KNOWING THAT YOU AND I GO BACK AS FAR,
MORE OR LESS, AS YOUR Y-REGISTERED CAR,
I THANK GOD, HEARING SOME OF THE THINGS I HAVE SAID,
THAT ONLY THE CAR IS CORRODED AND DEAD.
A more recent elegy is for a car that was stolen from outside our house in the night of 27/28 April 2004, and discovered, even before we knew it had gone, in the grounds of Soham Village College. The poem was published in Orbis 135, Winter 2005, p. 61, and includes some amendments suggested by Orbis editor Carole Baldock.
OUR CAR, ABANDONED NEAR THE SCENE OF AN OLDER CRIME
(to Clare, again, on the loss of a Metro)
Deep in ancient embarrassments,
I did not see
that I'd put my bike through
where our car ought to be,
and I could not recall,
when you rang with the question,
if I'd seen the car then
or mere auto-suggestion.
But before you rang,
the car had been found,
fourteen miles away, early,
in a school ground.
So before I pushed bike
through car-space and mind's nettle,
the car was already
a wreck of burnt metal.
Perhaps, like a churchyard,
the grounds of that school
are marked for outrageous
breakings of rule.
I can’t tell if that’s so
from my tiny self-knowledge,
full of my idiocies
at school and college.
But after the breakings,
do the breakers find
they can silence the growth
of nettles in the mind?
The car's replacement is still with us, but we have for many years been following the advice in the book Cutting your car use by Anna Semlyen. In 2003, we drew up a pledge form for others who might wish to make a thing of cutting their car use. Feel free to download....
TWO ELEGIES FOR CARS
(i) In memory of Amy Dolomite Triumph-Ettrick, died of rust, January 1993
A much-loved car may turn more pain,
passing away, than should be true:
it had the life it had from you,
and cannot give it back again.
The business of the parting (make
internment to interment, led
for Amy, long already dead)
is after Christmas, and grey ache.
Here is the yard where every state
of wreckage -- loss of faces, hearts --
waits rusting, gives up fewer parts,
continues to disintegrate.
Leave her poor corpse for fifteen pounds,
fifty of which will have to go
towards the new car's tyres, which blow
bathos in those appalling grounds,
and see the roads keep pumping life
mechanically through the town,
racing or jammed or slowing down,
stoppable, yes; not for this grief,
and kids notch pencil gates, five bars,
adults, parked oddly as the Ark,
click little counters as they mark
the passing of the vans and cars.
(ii) To Clare on the loss of her Metro
Awkward, you were, at the acquisition --
flushed, almost as for a dishwasher,
as much as for a man,
lots more than for a television --
high-minded to make a healthy
reduction in your use of the road:
by trains for cross-country travel,
buses in the city, or your bike,
and where the streets are steepest, walking,
paying to go green as the policy
insures drivers against driving and its embarrassment,
anxious to justify journeys, or excuse them,
ashamed of leadening the Leeds air.
Well, the stained air can be said to have won:
August, and work is all washed up,
beachedly dull like decaying boats,
and moist has crept through the car's metal,
rendered its body brittle with rust.
THANKS FOR THE JOURNEYS TO CHURCH AND STATION,
THANKS FOR PRAISING MY NAVIGATION,
BEARING MY MISTIMED SPECULATION
ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE'S ORIENTATION,
BIT OF A HARD AND KNOTTY CLUMP
TO PULL UP AND THROW AT YOU ALL OF A JUMP
SHORT OF A TRAFFIC-LIGHT, DRIVING THROUGH RAIN
AND LEEDS' ONE-WAY SYSTEM IN TIME FOR A TRAIN.
AND KNOWING THAT YOU AND I GO BACK AS FAR,
MORE OR LESS, AS YOUR Y-REGISTERED CAR,
I THANK GOD, HEARING SOME OF THE THINGS I HAVE SAID,
THAT ONLY THE CAR IS CORRODED AND DEAD.
A more recent elegy is for a car that was stolen from outside our house in the night of 27/28 April 2004, and discovered, even before we knew it had gone, in the grounds of Soham Village College. The poem was published in Orbis 135, Winter 2005, p. 61, and includes some amendments suggested by Orbis editor Carole Baldock.
OUR CAR, ABANDONED NEAR THE SCENE OF AN OLDER CRIME
(to Clare, again, on the loss of a Metro)
Deep in ancient embarrassments,
I did not see
that I'd put my bike through
where our car ought to be,
and I could not recall,
when you rang with the question,
if I'd seen the car then
or mere auto-suggestion.
But before you rang,
the car had been found,
fourteen miles away, early,
in a school ground.
So before I pushed bike
through car-space and mind's nettle,
the car was already
a wreck of burnt metal.
Perhaps, like a churchyard,
the grounds of that school
are marked for outrageous
breakings of rule.
I can’t tell if that’s so
from my tiny self-knowledge,
full of my idiocies
at school and college.
But after the breakings,
do the breakers find
they can silence the growth
of nettles in the mind?
The car's replacement is still with us, but we have for many years been following the advice in the book Cutting your car use by Anna Semlyen. In 2003, we drew up a pledge form for others who might wish to make a thing of cutting their car use. Feel free to download....
Monday, 25 July 2011
Cam23 2.0 Week 6, Thing 11: Reflection
What have you learned that's new?
Blogger template change and Twitter display; Lightshot; Pushnote .
What have you enjoyed about '23 things' so far?
The discipline and regularity of getting to grips with at least one new thing a week; the challenge of explaining myself.
Which of the things do you love/hate?
I enjoy the Twitter display on my blog. Like the advanced Twitter search on my homepage, it lets me get a substitute for my Twitter fix at times when I'm too busy to get to Twitter itself.
Which ones will you carry on using?
The Twitter display on my blog carries on happening without further input from me, so I will carry on using it almost literally in my sleep. Lightshot I found useful in explaining a Google wheeze. I learned the basic screenshot trick in the 2010 23things; it was very useful when explaining to geeks in what way I had screwed up some application. My use of it fell off as my inertia and inherently unpictorial nature reasserted themselves. If the same thing happens in my use of Lightshot, which is screenshots + editing, I will have let a very valuable resource go to waste.
Can you incorporate the things you're learning on this programme into your (working) life?
Well, yes. The uses I have described are part of my working life. And I might additionally go back to the instructions for screencasting, which I read but didn't try or blog about, with view to helping users of the Haddon Library blog.
Blogger template change and Twitter display; Lightshot; Pushnote .
What have you enjoyed about '23 things' so far?
The discipline and regularity of getting to grips with at least one new thing a week; the challenge of explaining myself.
Which of the things do you love/hate?
I enjoy the Twitter display on my blog. Like the advanced Twitter search on my homepage, it lets me get a substitute for my Twitter fix at times when I'm too busy to get to Twitter itself.
Which ones will you carry on using?
The Twitter display on my blog carries on happening without further input from me, so I will carry on using it almost literally in my sleep. Lightshot I found useful in explaining a Google wheeze. I learned the basic screenshot trick in the 2010 23things; it was very useful when explaining to geeks in what way I had screwed up some application. My use of it fell off as my inertia and inherently unpictorial nature reasserted themselves. If the same thing happens in my use of Lightshot, which is screenshots + editing, I will have let a very valuable resource go to waste.
Can you incorporate the things you're learning on this programme into your (working) life?
Well, yes. The uses I have described are part of my working life. And I might additionally go back to the instructions for screencasting, which I read but didn't try or blog about, with view to helping users of the Haddon Library blog.
Monday, 18 July 2011
Cam23 2.0: Week 5, thing 10: Pushnote; Extra thing: Dropbox
This post will be nothing like as detailed as my last one, but I have tried Pushnote and Dropbox.
Dropbox I probably won't use, because other sites already fulfil its functions. I use ADrive to store files, Google Docs (thing 9) to let other people work on them, and YouSendIt to share them -- especially when that means sending hi-resolution files of nineteenth-century pictures from the Haddon Library to publishers for reproduction.
Pushnote I have given myself an account for, but I feel awkward already at the thought of using it. Its purpose is to let one express an opinion of a website. I have opinions of websites, yes, and often tweet these, with links, drawing attention to the sites; but Pushnote is to let you comment on sites that your readers can already see for themselves, and it's rare that I'll be able to think of a comment in that situation that won't be self-evident. Also, very few of the names I input into the box on Pushnote's 'Find Friends' page turned out to be followers of the service.
Pushnote has not got much for me to join in with yet. I might come back to it later, if I hear things are otherwise.
Dropbox I probably won't use, because other sites already fulfil its functions. I use ADrive to store files, Google Docs (thing 9) to let other people work on them, and YouSendIt to share them -- especially when that means sending hi-resolution files of nineteenth-century pictures from the Haddon Library to publishers for reproduction.
Pushnote I have given myself an account for, but I feel awkward already at the thought of using it. Its purpose is to let one express an opinion of a website. I have opinions of websites, yes, and often tweet these, with links, drawing attention to the sites; but Pushnote is to let you comment on sites that your readers can already see for themselves, and it's rare that I'll be able to think of a comment in that situation that won't be self-evident. Also, very few of the names I input into the box on Pushnote's 'Find Friends' page turned out to be followers of the service.
Pushnote has not got much for me to join in with yet. I might come back to it later, if I hear things are otherwise.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Cam23 2.0: Week 4, thing 8: Google calendar: an extra wheeze
Yes, I thought I'd have a bash at Thing 8 rather than the week's Extra Thing ("add library books feed to Google Reader and Google Calendar"). I installed the library widget into my i-Google page & Google calendar last year, and I don't have any adventures to report from its use.
On the other hand, I can pass on some Google Calendar information that not everyone knows: how to establish when an entry was posted to the calendar. Moreover, this gives me a chance to play with that LightShot that I last week made a hash of.
My source for the information was a contributor to Google Forum. What you do is this.
1. Click on the 'Settings' link at the left-hand side of the calendar screen (shown on the left-hand side of this blog an' all). The resulting page will include these options:
2. Click on 'Export calendars'. The click should call up a dialogue box looking something like this:
3. What's being downloaded is the ics file for the calendar, or, in the present example, the ics files of several calendars zipped together. I'm guessing that nobody who's followed me this far will need help with the next steps in opening the files. When you've opened the chosen file, you'll see miles of code looking like this:
The line "BEGIN:VEVENT" marks the start of a new calendar entry, and "END:VEVENT", unsurprisingly, marks the entry's end. What is visible between those lines is the code for the event itself. The line
CREATED:20110405T164502Zmeans that the entry was created on 5 April 2011 at 16:45:02. By my watch it was 17:45, but the 'Z' at the end of the line means that the time is being shown in UTC (GMT).
You never know, you might need this information some day. From that Google Forum page you will see that I was not the first.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
City poems
Here come three poems from 1996. All of them were written for a competition, organised jointly by the Times literary supplement and Poems on the Underground, for poems with an urban theme. They weren't placed in the competition, but they were accepted for publication within the year -- a pattern from which I drew perhaps too much encouragement.
CITY PLANNERS
Measuring our wants
straight as itemised phone bills
you can predict that
we go for straight streets also --
they show in red on your screen,
while violet means
streets choked by corners and kinks
and crook frightfulness,
those that are least travelled by
and therefore least travelled by.
It's called space syntax,
and, I've no doubt, yields some mileage;
more than from tracking
a friend's, a sister's random
crisscross of Damascus roads.
ELY
Should have been written in dactyls or anapaests,
but here it is at Ely's rubbish tips,
sober trochees of a legend:
ELY CITY SKIPS.
London swings, they used to say
(on a gibbet, someone quips);
AUSTRALIA SUCKS, a spraycan cried
(NEW ZEALAND 3, a wag replied);
but ELY CITY SKIPS.
Jerusalem will come down from heaven,
a bride adorned for her husband; Ely's lips
are pursed, she rises purposively, strides
over the trains, over the river,
years fall away with Bury St Edmunds,
and on the Suffolk coast, at Southwold, ELY CITY SKIPS.
SKYSCAPE
Not the great cloud-gorge that a flying lesson
revealed to two men, and them only, moving;
not the moon's shadow crossing India,
a sight for gods, and millions looked on;
but still a sight -- the A1 in December,
sun-cold, a sky-green-freezing winter day,
we travelled northwards, and we saw the steam
of cooling-towers bunched -- dense golden mounds --
churning themselves intact, and never spreading --
a sight for passengers, a sight, not more,
not metaphor or symbol or instruction,
only the weight of townage, living weight
of townage that requires such clouds and towers
to stand cooling for light and power and warmth;
and, using them, something you'd hardly see.
All of the poems were published in the magazine Orbis: 'City planners' in #121, spring 2002, p. 58; 'Ely' in #106, autumn 1997, p. 59; 'Skyscape' in #106, autumn 1997, p. 14, and again, to my great joy, in #115, winter 1999, being a personal selection by the then editor Mike Shields of poems from the magazine's first 30 years.
For drawing my attention to Ely City Skips, I thank Peter Hocking.
CITY PLANNERS
Measuring our wants
straight as itemised phone bills
you can predict that
we go for straight streets also --
they show in red on your screen,
while violet means
streets choked by corners and kinks
and crook frightfulness,
those that are least travelled by
and therefore least travelled by.
It's called space syntax,
and, I've no doubt, yields some mileage;
more than from tracking
a friend's, a sister's random
crisscross of Damascus roads.
ELY
Should have been written in dactyls or anapaests,
but here it is at Ely's rubbish tips,
sober trochees of a legend:
ELY CITY SKIPS.
London swings, they used to say
(on a gibbet, someone quips);
AUSTRALIA SUCKS, a spraycan cried
(NEW ZEALAND 3, a wag replied);
but ELY CITY SKIPS.
Jerusalem will come down from heaven,
a bride adorned for her husband; Ely's lips
are pursed, she rises purposively, strides
over the trains, over the river,
years fall away with Bury St Edmunds,
and on the Suffolk coast, at Southwold, ELY CITY SKIPS.
SKYSCAPE
Not the great cloud-gorge that a flying lesson
revealed to two men, and them only, moving;
not the moon's shadow crossing India,
a sight for gods, and millions looked on;
but still a sight -- the A1 in December,
sun-cold, a sky-green-freezing winter day,
we travelled northwards, and we saw the steam
of cooling-towers bunched -- dense golden mounds --
churning themselves intact, and never spreading --
a sight for passengers, a sight, not more,
not metaphor or symbol or instruction,
only the weight of townage, living weight
of townage that requires such clouds and towers
to stand cooling for light and power and warmth;
and, using them, something you'd hardly see.
All of the poems were published in the magazine Orbis: 'City planners' in #121, spring 2002, p. 58; 'Ely' in #106, autumn 1997, p. 59; 'Skyscape' in #106, autumn 1997, p. 14, and again, to my great joy, in #115, winter 1999, being a personal selection by the then editor Mike Shields of poems from the magazine's first 30 years.
For drawing my attention to Ely City Skips, I thank Peter Hocking.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)