Darwin's tortoise

Boing Boing: Darwin’s tortoise dead at 176

Just in case you haven’t seen this. Extraordinary, particularly to those of us who had forgotten about the lifespan of tortoises. The first ’scientific’ post on this blog. Hooray!

Blogged with Flock

My Lesson No 1

Is don't postulate pretentious theories.No sooner do I comment portentously about being lost in a forest of bloggers and feel safely hidden so I needn't worry about people wincing over my ludicrously untalented prose style and make a flippant comment on an entry on Robert Scoble's consistently excellent technical blog than I receive an extremely gracious comment from Scoble himself. It was very nice of him in the circumstances and made me feel suitably humbled.
Scoble rivals Neil Gaiman as my absolute favourite blog on the web. Both in their different ways are a model of how well the medium can be used. Now perhaps if I make a light hearted comment about Neil's site…

Anonymity

Anyone coming to blogging now is faced with a wealth of tools and options and the growth of the medium has been endlessly documented. It's extraordinary to note that it's absolutely possible to put up web pages like this and never be noticed because of the density of the forest. As for the quality, never can so much technical expertise have been put to such disappointing use. Even the primarily excellent technical blogs are notable for their lack of consistent quality control. Just look for example at this.

I love Scoble's site actually (like millions of others). His Channel 9 videos too are oddly compelling. My favourites are where he sits with MS staff talking about a new product asking if it can do XYZ and watching the reaction as they (generally) explain no, it can't. Here's a classic one about Outlook 2007. Scoble has actually said on his blog he finds this an improvement on Outlook 2003. Admittedly this wouldn't be hard, but my own experience is that it if anything slower. Just me I'm sure.

From this he had once half hoped some measure of relief might flow

For me for the moment because this is largely about therapy. Creating something, even something primarily derivational, will be unfamiliar and I half-hope, helpful.

 A sample of projects thought about with varying degrees of seriousness over the past year:

 

• A book on Lawrence (bad idea for a number of reasons)
• A book on Beckett (better idea for a number of reasons, although not without possible setbacks and calamities)
• A poetry analysis website
• A monthly literary essay website (both this and the poetry site would be based on a new critical theory which would become gradually discernible to the reader)
• Three ideas for creative prose works
• Poetry
• Two ideas for short pieces of music

 
Progress?

 
Variously abandoned. Most have nothing to show at all. Some have a few notebook outlines. A few of the poetry analysis pieces made it to a first draft. There are poems which are clearly some way before they could be called a first draft (think version 0.01). I do have a 12 tone scale I am proud of though.

 

Why a pretty complete failure to produce anything? Many reasons probably but the most overwhelming I feel with the benefit of hindsight is that I comparatively little experience of sustained and even vaguely disciplined writing (outside of my work where, frustratingly, I have written a great deal which is dry, technical and most ephemeral).

 
So this is an attempt to write regularly. That’s all. And I would really prefer you not to dwell on it too much for now, because to say I posses a half hope about its success is probably an overstatement.

Write Post

Something. Every day. For me. Absolutely not for you.