Archive of September 2008

September 29

Blogging bookshelves and employment

I'm thinking of the Kevin Costner movie "Field of Dreams" at the moment, maybe every blogger has that feeling, it is like "build it and they will come" but I know I shall not always make a post that especially entertains with a particular attitude.  At least not so far as I can tell, but then I probably get easily bored by myself.

I've wondered idly from time to time if a blog could be any aid to my finding employment.  But when I tried googling to find any evidence for that it seems far more likely that a blog will result in you being fired than it will in you being hired!  One of the top hits seems to be the M$ employee who took pictures of Apple G5's being shipped into M$ buildings and posted them to his blog (he was fired).

The other thing I've already mentioned toying with is adding to the blog something indicating the book I am reading.  Once I looked a little further into that it seems it is a heavily mined area of blogging already.  It is one instance of a "social cataloging application" apparently, and as Wikipedia will show you, there are several widespread already in this area, like Shelfari, Goodreads, Books iRead, and Anobii.  I'm tempted to look into that last one a little further, I certainly have no intention of paying anything for the service!  I think really I ought to try coding something to make the books I am reading site throw up a page - it should not be that hard really.... certainly not if I make it a link from this page, but I guess most people would prefer to see it right away on the home page and are less likely to click away to a sub page.  Comments from any passing bloggers on this are of course most welcome!

10:07 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: , , , , , ,
September 28

A celebrity of sorts

I know that a post or two back I said I would be mentioning celebrity, so I'd better elaborate.  I can remember a classmate from school who was always making jokes and generally being something of a comedian.  So somehow it came as no surprise when I more recently started to hear him on the radio.  At school he had a longer name than the one he uses now that he has achieved minor celebrity status.  Anyway he now goes by the name of "Tony Hawks" and what surprises me is that he seems pretty much just the same as I remember him from schooldays all those years ago.  I wonder how common that experience is?  I have to admit to finding it a little depressing sometimes, it makes me think we are to a very large extent defined in our early years and from then onwards we only expand in other areas somehow.  But perhaps it is not necessarily so?

I have of course been fiddling with things I can do on this blog, and as well as video links I can upload audio and pictures up to 2MB in size, so I'll try to keep an eye out for anything entertaining or instructional, in keeping with my blog title.  I'm working on adding a sidebar entry for the book I am currently reading too - but I want to give that a little thought and keep away from the more commercial sites.

09:58 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: ,
September 25

Things to Blog about from 2009 on;

Equality - spiritual and book choices?  Vocab?)

The Princess Bride

Mount TBR (list and/or count)

Tale of Two cities (Urban17 and new book groups)

Libraries (27th Jan, user group?)

Hamish Henderson (poet)

Write about the Robber Bride (Atwood) and mention cited for "man hating" in OED - "1993 M. ATWOOD Robber Bride xlv. 348 He thinks they're a bunch of man-hating hairy-legged whip-toting feminists."

09:02 AM | 1 Comment | Tags: , ,
September 22

So, here I am, maybe....

This posted despite;

Fatal error: Call to a member function title() on a non-object in /home/wrighton/public_html/didactic.me/chyrp_2.0rc1/includes/helpers.php on line 656

So it seems I have (maybe?!) set up the necessaries to blog. I always feel like writing "Trent settled nervously into his seat..." at moments like this, but I am not sure many people will necessarily "get" the reference, nor am I prepared just yet to go off hunting out the relevant Youtube clip assuming it can even be found.

I hope my blog will hit moments of being truly interesting or entertaining, but as to whether any entry is likely to be truly Didactic I have my doubts. So the domain name I purchased was largely tongue in cheek - I spent several days mulling over what might make sense for a Blog domain name, and when I saw this was free I sort of jumped on it. No doubt that says something about me, but what I am not sure. I suspect a more suitable name could have been "eclectic.me", but it does not have the same ring to it for me and would implie my blog could shoot off in any direction without any unifying theme or purpose.

After purchasing the domain name I was, of course, committed. Money had changed hands. Not exactly Faustian, but it was enough to spur me onwards to enquire with my good friends over at OSNN and rapidly narrow down the choice of tools to either Wordpress or Chyrp!. I decided to go with Chyrp on a particular recommendation, because it was younger, because it aims to be lighter and more nimble, and because so far it seems to do just what it says on the tin!

I'll later work around sorting out how I add blogrolling and links and when I do I shall have to revisit my "home" domain and update the "about me" sort of information. But if anyone does just wander across me here in cyberspace be patient and you should see this blog become more "worthy" with the passage of time and growth of my networking.

Perhaps one of my first trackbacks or whatever will be the one I have added here - a friend I am hoping to meet for the first time on Wednesday for lunch to chew the cud and no doubt blogging will be a large part of what we chat about. Just learnt this is not a trackback - have to work harder...

Other things you may hear about soon are:-

My participation in a possible "human piano" on BBC2.

rehearsals of/performance of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius (I sing first bass with a choral society).

And last but not least the upcoming "NaNoWriMo" in November. This was a driving motivation in the background for me to start blogging - I wanted to loosen up my "literary voice" and get comfortable here so that I can blog my progress and revert to bouncing ideas around should I suffer any temporary blockage in the process of attempting to splurge out a novel in a month. Of course, if all goes terribly well that could also mean you simply see no Blog entries for November because all my keystrokes are devoted to the effort.

Anyway, let's see how it goes.

Whether I know you or not, all comments are welcome and for the moment only Spam will be filtered out and deleted (more on that subject to follow also!).

09:57 PM | 1 Comment | Tags: , ,
September 19

For my definition of Didactic at Wordia click here!

11:58 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: , ,
September 17

A word cloud from a profile of mine...

with more info on how to create your own here wordle

01:29 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: ,