Blog On The Motorway

It’s been a pretty big year so far, all told.  I don’t really need to go into it, I’m sure you’re well aware.  However, Year of Health has recently lost Ellen as a contributor, and to be honest has not been updated nearly enough.  One of the issues is that it’s not the most wildly exciting topic to write about, and now that Ellen’s not doing it any more, I am now left with the prospect of having two entirely seperate blogs.  And since Demon Pigeon started, I already have less to write about here, with all the music and film talk migrating over there.

So, one of the things I really need to do if redefine this place.  And one of the first things I am going to do is ask you, my loyal readership, for your opinion.  Firstly, what do you think I should do with this place?  I have had a blog far too long to get rid of it now, and yet I find it very hard to find things that would be interesting enough to share with you, my dewar and loyal readers, who are far too discerning and intelligent a breed to fob off with half formed thoughts and gibberish.  See what I did there? I paid you a compliment, now answer my question.

But before you do, I do have a second question, and this one is much more important. I am debating with myself the merits of taking on a further stupid project (not another website, don’t worry) this time in relation to Year of Health.  It’s something that ties in really well with what I am already doing, and will give me added impetus now that the initial stages are complete (I think it’s safe to say I am a non-smoker now.)  But what I have in mind will also require the selection of a charity to do it for.

But which one?  I do have a few favourite causes that I could do it for, NSPCC, Oxfam, Amnesty etc.  But to be honest the money I raise will probably be not very high, and certainly for these sorts of organisations nothing to write home about.  If I am going to do this (and I must stress I haven’t decided to do it yet) I would like it to be for a smaller organisation that would really benefit from the tawdry and pitiful amount that I will be raising.  I was really inspired by what Gray did with Twitterthon, doing it all for a small organisation that most of the people who donated had never had any cause to donate to.  The problem is that I have no real personal ties to any such organisation.

So here’s what I would like.  If you could recommend a charity to me, along with the reason that you think it’s worthy of support, and whoever does the best job of convincing me will be the winner.  Not particularly democratic, maybe, but that’s how I roll baby.  Ideally I am looking for something small, and maybe a bit out there.  But I leave it in your capable hands.

For all of the ‘big ideas’ that I have on a regular basis, I have a terrible knack of letting the dust settle on them for long enough that I move on from them.  You may have noticed that there has not been a lot of movement on the Blood On The Motorway front recently, so I thought I’d make some promises on here that might spur me into action.

So here goes.  Blood On The Motorway will be launching in January 2010. There, I’ve said it now. Have to live up to it. Can’t go disappointing you now. 

In this spirit I’ve also tried to kick-start some action on my other ‘Untitled Online Project’ that I am doing with some chaps I met on Twitter.  This one seems pretty exciting actually, so hopefully by the end of month one of next year I should have more than enough on my plate.

Around here I’ve decided to make my ‘Letters to Rosie’ a more permanent feature, since they seem to go over pretty well and they are a nice thing for me to do. Hopefully one day she will read them all and decide I’m not such a bad Dad after all.  I’m going to keep it to one a month to start with, but we shall see from there. Cross Blogination is going pretty well, and if anyone else has any ideas for things they would like me to do more of, then let me know.

Just a quick one today, work has been hella busy today. It seems that the nation’s worst newspaper did a small feature on us over the weekend, leading to a ton of orders.  I’ve been processing the Internet orders all morning.  On the upside I get to stick my headphones in and listen to the new Coalesce album, downside, every time I enter someones details I know that they are a Daily Mail reader and I find myself wondering what they made of the Jan Moir article.  Oh well.

It’s Ellen’s birthday today, so this morning was the presents giving event, with Rosie trying to unwrap them all before Ellen could. Frankly though, she’s rubbish at it, so Ellen managed to unwrap most of them and Rosie just played with the paper.

Tonight we’re off to the theatre. Well, a theatre, to go and see Simon Amstell.  Despite me being a huge fan of stand up, I’ve not been to see any stand up outside of a festival comedy tent since I did my work experience at Jongleurs comedy club in London in the mid 90’s, so I’m really excited.

Also, I’ve realised that if this week goes as well as recent weeks around here, I will have passed 1000 visitors by the end of this week, which is not bad since I only launched in August.  It took a year and a half to reach this sort of total on the old site, and while I am under no illusions that these numbers make me a rival to any of the blogs I read, it’s lovely to know that there are people out there reading. So I just wanted to say a big thank you to you for stopping by, and I’ll try to keep up some semblance of quality for you.

So that was interesting.  The whole 7 days experiment was, I think it’s safe to say, pretty successful, although I will admit defeat on the timescale. I forgot how little I am on the computer over the weekend, and the fact that I had an OU assignment due in at the same time. But overall it’s been lovely to get the feedback that I have, and nice to see the rise in visitors too, but most of all it’s been good to do some writing that has stretched me a little bit.  Some of the topics were quite hard to wrap my head around, so thanks to everyone who left a suggestion, and I hope that you all liked it.

One thing this week has shown me is the potential of this blog, so over the next few weeks I’m going to try some other interesting things. I already have something in the pipeline for a collaboration with a fellow twitterer, which should be up and running in the next week.  In the meantime, as ever, any thoughts on stuff you’d like me to write about are always welcome.  The first issue of Blood On The Motorway is done, second issue is being written, so it wont be long before that starts.

Other than that, the big news for me is that I’m about to say goodbye to Microsoft completely at home. Unfortunately work is another matter, but tonight (or over the weekend) I will be installing Ubuntu on my PC at home, and saying goodbye to the steaming pile of excrement that is Vista.

It’s been a long and slow decline in my relationship with Microsoft.  Like most people like me, who aren’t particularly techie, Windows and its products were always just easier. As the default setting on every PC I’ve ever used (I used a Mac once. Didn’t like it) I learnt the Internet through Explorer, used Media Player to play music, even had a hotmail account, and ‘made do’ with the tools at hand.

It wasn’t until I met Jonic that I realised that there was more out there. I mean I had always known that there were alternatives, but I figured they would be so impossible to use that there wasn’t any point. This is the mythology that Microsoft have perpetuated throughout their history.  But then Jonic showed me Firefox.  It was a joy. Even in its infancy it was smoother and easier to use, and came with an added sense of freedom.

Next up was Gmail, and again a whole new world of usability. I still love Gmail, and am now a bit of a slave to the Google machine. I don’t know what I would do without iGoogle. (Clue: I may get more work done.) But now I’ve decided to take the next step away from the hideous chud of an operating system that is Vista.  I’m sure I don’t need to list its faults here, you will all have heard or seen for yourself.

For someone moving very slowly into the world of tech geekery, the move to a Linux based OS is quite a large step, but I’m determined to do it, and do it on my own.  Wish me luck.

A few years ago I started to publish a serialised piece of fiction through an Australian website called Plasma Rag. I only managed a few pieces through before I lost all Internet access for a year, and never followed it up.

I’ve been looking online for it, but it seems that the website no longer exists. The writing itself was something I am quite proud of, a serialisation called ‘Blood on the Motorway’ and I think that since the website no longer exists they probably wont have any problem with me starting it again somewhere else.

But since that time, I’ve lost touch with a lot of the fiction sites out there, preferring as I do to stare at my blog feeds on google reader or desperately hit my twitter refresh button every few minutes. Does anyone know of any good places to get published these days, ideally somewhere that it will actually get read?  The other opportunity would be to start a separate blog and do it under that, but ideally i would like somewhere with a bit of a built in audience.

Anyway, any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hey all, this here be a test message, you know, just to see if everything is working well. Is it? Time will tell.