Protected: On Pastures
Ubuntastic
A while back I flirted with the idea of completely junking Windows from my computer and replacing it with Ubuntu, the freeware Linux system, on the sage-like advice of Mr Jonic. I got pretty close to doing it too, even bought a magazine with the boot disk, but then it didn't work and I got frustrated and the whole idea fell by the wayside. But recently the old computron has become more and more laboured and tired from having to run Vista, and I have to say I can't blame it, it must be like being a paper-boy with arthritis, having to labour on when the kit you've got just doesn’t cut the mustard any more.
Last night was especially bad, and trying to do more than one thing at a time has become night on impossible, and so I downloaded the Ubuntu software and burnt it to disk and thought I would give it a go. And my dear Creamy Jesus is it nice. Firstly, it looks so pretty. It shares a fair bit of both Mac and Windows sensibilities, so basically it looks really nice but doesn't have the navigation issues that I always seemed to have on Macs (to be fair I haven't used a Mac in years so this is probably not the case any more) that prevented me from ever buying into the cult of Steve Jobs. Not only that but the responsiveness of the computer improved exponentially, and that was just from using the CD to boot. I gather it will improve even more once I install it to my hard drive. I love it. It is a bit alien still, and I seem to get requests to download software every time I want to do anything, but I imagine that'll calm down pretty quickly.*
So tonight I'm going to take the plunge and install it, probably only on partition for now in case I change my mind and go back to windows, but I'm quite excited. Before I do I still have a few things I want to test, like playing movies (can't see any issues there) playing with the word processor, and make sure I can still stick music on my phone without any issues, but if it passes these tests then by the end of the weekend I will hopefully be free from the shackles of Windows.
It does feel strange though, to be saying goodbye to it (not completely, work computers will apparently soon be upgrading from XP to Vista, deep joy) as it's the only operating system I've ever known. I still remember using a computer for the first time in a classroom back in about 1991, and getting told off for moving the mouse before I was told to. Since then my world, like pretty much everyone else, has become more and more reliant on the world of computers, and although I haven't always been on the Internet, I've consistently owned a PC of some kind since about 1995, and seen them grown from glorified calculators with basic word processors, into the super-whizz computrons we have today. And all of them, run on Windows.
And while we're looking back, I was reminded today by Joe in the comment thread of my last post that come October of this year I will have been blogging for seven years, since my first ever post on Livejournal (again, at the instigation of Mr Jonic, I really should buy him a beer at some point to say thanks) started with some vague grumbling of my then job. Madness. Also, in the same comment thread, it has been pointed out to me that my favoured shortened name for Blood On The Motorway is liable to cause giggles. So from now on I shall try to refrain from using it again. Cheers Jen.
*I actually wrote all of this earlier on, but the install has gone ahead and this is coming to you live from Ubuntu-land. I'll post more on this later, but by golly-gosh it is marvellous, so much quicker, more responsive.
On Doctors, Housewives, Bad Cops, Atticus Finch and Damn Statistics
You may have noticed that things look all shiny and new around here, as promised I have a new theme until the site gets a full overhaul for the launch of BOTM. One downside, however, is that the change seems to have borked my analytics right up, so I can't see if anyone is actually reading any of this. Any other bloggers will know that there's little worse than not being able to obsess over your stats, but hopefully this will all resolve itself in the next few days. Today I've managed to get a bit more writing done for Blood as well, so I'm now six issues in. For those of you who are interested, I will be aiming for two posts of 1000 (or so) words a week, so this will take care of the first three weeks while I'm getting set up. Ideally though I want more of a cushion, something around the 10 issue mark, so I can make sure I'm not putting anything out without adequate revision. One of the real threats with doing online fiction is that I'll end up putting up stuff that's not quite good enough, so I want to try and keep a buffer as much as I can so that things are getting a few revisions before they go up, unlike this blog, which tends to fall out of my head via my hands, and get whacked straight up.
But anyway, I promised you some thoughts on the good and bad of what I've been watching of late, so here goes:
1. Doctor Who. I mentioned before how much I thoroughly loved this whole season of the Doctor. I can't claim to have been the biggest fan in the past, I never really watched it as a kid and while I liked the Ecclestone series and parts of the Tennant stuff (although I never really liked Tennant himself) I now feel as though I have 'my' Doctor in matt Smith, and together with Karen Gillan (be still my heart) and Stephen Moffat they have finally created something that stands up as well as anything produced by the Godlike genius of Sci-Fi, Joss Whedon. Smartly scripted, emotionally engaging, brilliantly performed, this was children's TV that remembered that kids are smart, and they are people. Wonderful stuff, and the double-finale was about the best I've seen a series wrapped up, and the episode Vincent and the Doctor (Richard Curtis, where the bloody hell did that come from?) is easily the best thing I've seen so far this year. The scene in the Museum had tears streaming down my face, and Ellen's too.
2. Desperate Housewives. Ellen managed to hook me into this a few years back, and I have been a fan ever since. Again, taking what is essentially whimsical melodrama and marrying it to taut storytelling, good performances and wry humour all combine to make this a show I look forward to more than most, and this season has been excellent, right up until the last episode, which aired on Channel 4 last night. How on earth did they misjudge it so badly. All the various strands and interweaving plotlines were left vaguely resolved, but without any emotional payoff. I mean, there was a serial killer arrested, and a car blew up in the middle of the suburbs with a wanted terrorist inside, but by the very next scene these individual plots were completely ignored. It was lazy storytelling, plain and simple, with the writers too eager to shoehorn clues about next year's plots to bother resolving this years. Disappointing to say the least, and it makes me wonder if the show's days are numbered when the writing staff have clearly disengaged.
3. Southland. Ellen and I managed to sit through about twenty minutes of this distincly average Shield clone, before I realised that it was actually nicking the plot from the pilot of the Shield wholesale. Terrible, and the acting was pretty substandard, and the characters should have been walking around wearing their cliches on a billboard rather than cop uniforms. Woeful. Although still not as bad as the Idris Elba vehicle on BBC1, Luther, which was so bad that I've tried my utmost to forget it even exists.
4. The IT Crowd. OK so we're only a couple of episodes in but once again Graham Linehan's sticom is better than everything. Fact. And I want most of Roy's T-Shirts, and the pictures he has in his new flat. Hell, I'd even take the bicycle off his hands.
5. Films. Not all of them, obviously, but one of the big pluses to having a V+ box is that I no longer have to miss those cool films that they inevitably stick on at one o clock on a Wednesday morning because I have to go to work the next day. Last night we watched To Kill A Mockingbird, which I was sure I'd seen before but I'm now not sure I had. Needless to say it was brilliant and moving and I now want to use Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch as a template for how to be a good dad. Oh, and I finally got round to watching both Zombieland and An Education, both of which I highly recommend, although obviously for completely different reasons.
Anyway, that'll do for now, back to the apocalypse, goodbye.
When is an office not an office?
Firstly, a quick note to say that those of you who have come to the site directly and not just looked at the shiny RSS feed will notice that the site looks awful. Turns out updates are not such a good idea, and I shall be looking at a new theme soon, but in the meantime, please do stay.* Now that's out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about my office. No, please do stay.
One of the strangest things about our move into the new and shiny new house has been the realisation that getting what you want isn't always the best of ideas. The main reason for deciding on a three bedroom house (aside from the obvious fact that a three bedroom house is always going to be bigger than a two bedroom) was that finally, I could have an office to do all my writing in. In the old house we had the computer set up in the mockery that was the dining room, but in reality was more of a big space that connected the lounge to the kitchen. As such, it was bloody hard to concentrate sometimes, with Rosie back and forth all the time, and the general cooking time ruled out for actual work. In the new house, however, we now have a spacious office room, with a proper computer desk, a filing cabinet (well, of sorts) and even a nice plush leather sofa bed that enables us to use the room as a guest bedroom. It's perfect, and should now enable your dear author here to get some serious work done. All except for one thing.
It's upstairs. Now, what with me not being a Dalek, you wouldn't imagine that this would be a huge issue for me. But Rosie is a bit young for me to leave her downstairs on her own during the day, so writing when on my own is out. Also, the office is right next to her room, and the hot weather and new room have meant that Rosie rarely settles when we put her to bed as it is, so the notion of sitting and tapping out an opus once she's gone to bed is also out of the window. And Ellen and I see each other so infrequently that when we do get an evening in together, I rarely want to remove myself from the lounge. So we now have a nice office that never really gets used for any great period of time. Which renders it essentially useless.
All of which is really just excuses. What I need to do is either bite the bullet and admit my mistake and move the computer downstairs, or stop spending my evenings sat in front of the telly, and instead get writing. But as well as the logistical difficulty of using my own computer, I have to admit that the V+ box, which I believe I may have already mentioned once or twice, is making it very hard to get anything done at all. By freeing me of the constraints of having to sit down at a specific time to watch a show, it now allows me to record anything that I think may be of interest to me. Which is a hell of a lot of stuff, it turns out. So now, as unshackled as I am to regular programming, I am having to spend all my time watching telly just to stay on top of it all.
So in other words, I need to stop being a lazy arse. In that spirit, I have once again started working on Blood On The Motorway, which for those of you who don't know, is the mythical online novel whose existence I have been threatening for a year now. I actually registered this domain a year ago, and the blog was moved to a sub domain, but this whole year it's been nothing more than a holding page, and I have been putting off its launch for some time. But today I talked to the mighty Jonic about getting the site itself designed and took another pass at the first four episodes/issues so that they will be ready to launch with the site. I'm not going to promise that it will be tomorrow, but it should be soon. I am actually quite excited about it, but I need to get a bit further ahead than I am at the moment before I launch, as if launching Demon Pigeon has taught me anything, it's that it's generally a good idea to keep your updates regular. Something we have become a bit shameful at lately, which I shall add to my list of 'stuff that I need to sort out once I summon the courage to use my computer more.
But enough introspection. Tomorrow I shall return with some thoughts on some of the many TV shows I have been watching, including the terrible end to the otherwise excellent recent series of Desperate Housewives. Yeah, that's right, I'm in touch with my feminine side, and my feminine side gets pissed off when shows are wrapped up in a ham fisted and illogical way.
*Facelift achieved, shiny new theme installed. I hope that once Blood On The Motorway is done properly that I'll get the theme for the blog to match it, but this will do in the meantime.
There is no other word than Fail.
Ok, I admit it. I bit off more than I could chew. I had too much on my plate. I must now eat humble pie. Choke on my words. Hang on, enough with the food metaphors. I must be hungry. I'm always hungry, but that's the price you pay for being on a diet. But I digress. Today I have had to call time on one of the many many things that I have taken on. I decided to drop out of my Open University course.
Yep, I made it to one and a half modules, although in real terms that is pretty much a full year and a half. The reasons are multiple, but in the end it comes down to a lack of resources. Not enough time, not enough energy, not enough willpower, and crucially, not enough interest. When I started the course the idea was to train for a career in IT, but strangely enough it seems as though a computing degree is not really what you want to be doing. At no point in my course would I ever learn how to build a PC, or make one work better. I can get this information a lot easier and more cheaply than I was from the OU. Also, when I started, the main thrust was to learn web design, but the truth is that I have now launched three websites, albeit with help, but I realised it's the running and maintaining of websites that interests me, not their design. There are places like WordPress that take all the pain out of it, and good friends and people I have met on Twitter who can do the rest.
And having launched Demon Pigeon, Year of Health, here, and eventually BOTM, it's there that I feel I need to focus my energies. I am not posting enough to any of these sites, and a lot of that is down to the fact that I have spent a lot of time thinking that there is a load of Uni work to be done, and if I am going to sit at the computer then it's that which should get my attention. And so I avoid the computer altogether, doing neither.
Truth be told I now feel like a weight has been lifted from my back, and that I am now free to blog, in its many guises. But in order to justify this to myself, I'm going to make a promise. A grand total of 8 posts a week. For Demon Pigeon (where at the very least I have other people to pick up the slack) three here, and three for YOH. I can only justify this decision if I am honestly going to knuckle down more. I've already spoken to Ellen about setting aside an hour a night. I want to be better at this, I want my prose to reach the heights of the wonderful bloggers whose work pulls me in every single day. The only way I can see to do that is to write. Today I read a great post by Jay over at Do Some Damage about how writers make the time to write, no matter what. I've been all too guilty of not doing this. I must do better, and now I don't have any excuses for not doing so.
Potentially Stupid
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.
Blood Update
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.
Thanks, Birthdays, Comedy and The Mail.
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.
Abnormal Service Resumed
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.
Blood on the motorway
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.
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