Mugs

We have too many mugs. We have two mug trees with six mugs on each. Then we have an overflow cupboard of them. I decided to go through them and get rid of any mugs that didn't have any emotional attachment. The trouble was that all of them did. They've been given as birthday or Christmas present, Mother's Day or Father's Day presents. They've been hand painted or given to mark some event.

So what can I do? Already, I'm worried that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Mugs will come round and inspect the conditions which I'm keeping our mugs in, and we'll get in trouble for keeping them in overcrowded conditions. I could give them away to charity, but each one has a story.

Any suggestions?

Sunday meanderings

On Sunday afternoons these days I settle down with a tablet rather than a newspaper. I start with my Google reader items and sometimes I find that I've gone quite a long way from the original article. Today I started here and I'm still following the paths on Nick Ryan’s site.

Sledging videos

I put these on Facebook, but so they can also live outside the walled garden, here are two videos of me sledging.

Headfirst down the hill in the park

Sledging in the woods

The thing that surprised me playing them back was just how quick the journey was. It felt a lot longer when I was doing it.

Looking through my twitter archives

I've downloaded my twitter archives. If you want to do it yourself go to your profile page and see if it mentions how to do that. They are gradually rolling out, so if you can't at the moment, try in a few days.

I started using twitter in July 2006 when it was called twttr. My first tweet was one of the first ten thousand. It wasn't very profound.

Test
— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) July 14, 2006

 My next tweet was in October 2007. Twitter asked me a question, I can't remember what and I responded:

working, what else?
— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) October 30, 2007

Then in November I tweeted daily for a while. Here are some highlights:

shining my shoes
— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) November 1, 2007

batting emails back and forth about Catalyst and XSLT.

— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) November 5, 2007

I tried haiku:

Watching kids football/our team losing by several/nice to be out though

— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) November 10, 2007

Walking to the bus, not our usual transport, boys most excited.

— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) November 20, 2007

Lovely mild dry day, kids playing in the garden, their homework can wait

— Paul Morriss (@paulmorriss) January 26, 2008

I expect you've falled asleep by now. I'm finding it interesting. Maybe I should tweet more, and use the archive as my diary.

Core business

The man in the red suit shuffled uncomfortably as I said the words "core business".

"I'm not core business?" he exclaimed.

"Yes," I said, "and we have to focus on our core business at the moment. Take Lego for example."

"I do take a lot of Lego," he said.

"No, that's not what I mean. The Lego company used to run Legoland. They made clothing and girls jewellery too. They discontinued those, they sold Legoland to the Madame Tussauds people. They decided to concentrate on their core business. Look at your suit, for example."

"What of it?" he asked.

"It's red. It used to be green."

"Coca cola branding initially. Now everyone thinks it's normal. It's just a colour. Anyway, what is core then?"

"A baby," I said. "For this occasion our core business is the baby."

"Do you know my other names?" he asked. "Saint Nicholas. Saint as in saint, as in something to do with the baby." With that he leaned back.

"Yes, putting money in stockings."

"Presents you see. As in wise men. There - you can't deny presents aren't core."

"Who got the presents though? Me, anyone else? No - the baby."

"You can't give presents to the baby these days though. So people give them to each other."

"Oh, so you aren't involved then? People give them to each other."

He looked worried now. "But..."

"If presents are core then you aren't even essential for presents."

"OK, what about fir trees then? They aren't core. Tinsel, crackers, mincemeat - all non-core. Are you thinking of getting rid of them?"

"Hmmm," I said, "now there's an idea..."

Someone drew a picture from my suggestion

On the blog of the company 37 signals an artist that they use, Sam Brown, asked for picture title suggestions. I said

How about: “all I ever wanted…”. It’s a lyric that pops up from time to time in songs.

 and he used it!

This blog is over 10 years old

I'm going to break Rule One and muse a little on the past 10 years.

I've just read someone else thinking how to celebrate their blogs 10th anniversary and I thought I'd check this blog, and lo and behold, it's over 10 years old. I started my first blog in 1999, but it was on editthispage.com which has since been taken down. I have all the content though, and if I had more time I'd put it back online.

This blog started when blogger.com wasn't part of Google. My first post was about The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams. Full marks to Bloomsbury for making a 10 year old link still do something useful. I can't remember if I ever did actually read it. I probably did.

I toyed for a bit with using it as a place to record comments that I'd put on other people's websites, so I could keep track of them, but I soon tired of that. 

Then, in order to make myself blog more often, I tried to blog just 10 words per day. Of course to think of exactly ten words that make sense takes a bit of time, but it was fun while I did it. I kept it up for a couple of years, but not every day by any means.

In Feb 2004 I started a blog for more technical things, leaving this one for random thoughts on books, music, photos and other stuff.

That is all.

The Olympic post

Opening Ceremony

Wow.

Just. Wow.

I thought it was one of the best things I'd seen. If the rest of the family hadn't been so entranced too they would have probably told me to stop saying wow all the time. I thought the highlight was when the fifth ring rose up and joined the others. Danny Boyle really pulled off a great show. When he took over after the previous person gave up there was some cynicism about whether he'd be able to do something memorable, but I think he confounded those critics.

When I was a teenager my favourite album was Tubular Bells, so I was very pleased to see Mike Oldfield given the stage. It was also good to see a geek - Tim Berners-Lee, get recognition too. The way the prerecorded video was linked in the live stuff worked really well for a TV audience. I liked the music so much I bought the album.

Russell Davies wrote a really interesting post about it:

I saw a generation realising that it was now Top at Culture. 30/40 somethings were suddenly seeing the stuff they liked, that they grew up with, was now the dominant cultural stuff. Their favourite things are now 'officially' mainstream, dominant culture.

Coming Top at Culture 

Eton Dornay

It was a very long walk to get to the standing area (why do people sit in the "stands"?) but once we got there and the event started the time was filled with racing and then the on-site "TV" show. Food and drink was supposed to be reasonable, but the prices of the Coca-Cola company's products was higher than I've seen anywhere. I hope the extra money they took in went to cover costs and not to Coca-Cola.

Wembley

The match (Gabon vs Korea) wasn't that exciting - the final result being a nil-nil draw. It was a good chance to go to Wembley for the first time and experience the atmosphere. The crowd control at the end was quite impressive as we shuffled towards the train station. It never felt too crowded.

Closing ceremony

Pink Floyd, Genesis (well someone from Genesis), Kate Bush, elbow, Beatles, Queen, ELO - that's my music. Plus other bands to be proud of - Madness, Blur, PSB, Fatboy Slim, Muse and Eric Idle. Fantastic.

Organisation

Overall the whole thing seems to have been really well organised. Many companies struggle to deliver a good "customer experience" but I think the Olympics had a few advantages over normal companies:

• The ability to dip into the taxpayers pocket.
• A time limited product, with no need to consider sustainability.
• Something excited to be involved in.

Reaction

We were on holiday for the whole fortnight, a week of it away from home, so there was no way of seeing if the exuberance and enthusiasm portrayed by the BBC was shared by everyone. A relative of my boss, Luke Arthur, wrote in the Huffington Post and described it as, "My generation's most pivotal cultural moment since 9/11".

Knitting

Yes, really. Knitting. For reasons I can't go into I found myself knitting a couple of weeks ago. I had done a bit when I was a kid. I was pleasantly surprised to find that once I'd cast on my motor memory took over and I was turning out stitches.

For more reasons I can't go into it got wider as I went along, but it wasn't a problem as I just turned it into little hat. I can highly recommend the multi-coloured wool for beginners as it means that there's a contrast between previous rows and the current stitches.

That's all.

Cardboard seven inch tablet stand

When I got a Playbook I wanted to use it to listen to BBC iPlayer while doing the washing up. So I made a cardboard tablet stand out of the cardboard you get with new shirts.

Recently I came across a video by Jude Pullen showing how to make a right angle joint with card and it inspired me to share what I'd done, via a PDF rather than a video though.

The PDF below is for a Playbook but I would have thought that any seven inch tablet, like the Kindle Fire or the Google Nexus 7 would fit. If in the unlikely event they are more chunky than the Playbook, you can just cut the slot wider. It's probably more sturdy if you make it out of a corrugated cardboard.

Seven inch tablet stand

"Just one thing" project at Utata

Those talented people at Utata have released their latest "big project" which I've taken part in this time. My photos were taken on our Norfolk Broads boating holiday.

New ways with books - unbound and unglue.it

I've been following a couple of websites recently that are doing things with books. They look similar, but I don't think bear direct comparison to each other.

Unbound

Unbound.co.uk lets you pledge money to help fund a book. Patronage is nothing new of course. A pledge of the smallest amount - mostly £10 - gets you a copy of an ebook version and your name printed in it. Higher amounts get you different things, like paper editions, invites to a launch party and so on. 

You also get access to the author's "shed". I gave £10 for Robert Llewellyn's book News From Gardenia. He's the guy from Scrapheap Challenge. I hoped to hear about the writing process, but he never put much in his shed, and I got the impression that the book was mostly completed anyway, and just needed money to publish. (Not that the process of publishing is trivial.)

I don't think I'll be pledging again. £10 is a lot for an ebook with your name in it. It's a good idea though, if you're an author who can get lots of fans and you can't convince publisher's that your book will do well. It's good too if an author you like shares good stuff in their shed.

Unglue.it

Unglue.it takes existing books and pays the author or publisher money to produce an ebook with a Creative Commons license. The first one that's had it's funding target met is the (not terribly exciting) Oral Literature in Africa. At the moment three other books are gathering pledges.

You can "wish" that any book be unglued, and at the moment the most wished book is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That won't get anywhere unless the publisher is willing to agree an amount though.

The pledges start lower than Unbound, at $1 for an ebook, but to get your name it's more.

So

I think both sites are worth watching to see if the ideas work out.

I'm now selling a Kindle case on etsy

I first came across etsy - a site for selling handmade or vintage stuff - when I came across a series of pictures of boyfriends wearing hand made hats their girlfriends had made (and not looking to pleased about having a hand-knitted hat on their head).

Then when I got a Kindle I went looking there to see what sort of cases were available. I was pleasantly surprised to see loads of good stuff.

When I got my Kindle I made a cardboard case for it. At Christmas I got a proper case and since then I've been meaning to offer my cardboard case for sale on etsy, purely for my own amusement. If I sell one, I'll make another. If it really takes off, I might we quite busy fulfilling orders. Unlikely.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

Crogs, goodies and mardy - childhood dialect

I was reading a book recently set in the world of the Arthurian legend. It described a cross as a "crog". That reminded me that as a child when we crossed our fingers to get away with lying we called it "crogs". So after you tricked someone you brought out your crossed fingers, said "crogs" and they couldn't complain that you were lying.

We had other dialect words that I haven't hear much elsewhere. I was visiting some people in Derbyshire as an adult and a mother called her child "mardy", which means in a cross mood. Down in Surrey where I lived by then I came across the word "strop" as in "to be in a strop" or "being stroppy".

Sweets were "goodies". If you had a ball bearing when you were playing marbles they were "bollies". When you greeted someone you'd say "n'en" which was short for "now then".

Today I just came across this map of words from the BBC website.

What words did you have in childhood that you don't hear?

Picture from discoodoni.

pwned

One of the interesting things about having children is the way that you see cultural artefacts coming out in their speech. One example is the word "pwned" or "pwnage" from the verb "to pwn". I've been aware of this for a while from the geeky world and then one of my children started using it.

Just this evening I heard it on the News Quiz on Radio 4. Many years ago I first heard the word "internet" on the same programme, and I knew that yet another geeky thing was beginning to come into public consciousness.

New years resolutions - John Lewis staffroom

I went to our local John Lewis a couple of days with a couple of the boys on our bikes. The bike rack is outside the staffroom and I could see the following written on the whiteboard:

Hope more
Chew more
Breathe more
Say more
Love more

The internets tell me this is half of a Swedish proverb:

Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.

"Content" is a horrible word

Various thoughts that rattle around in my head and in my draft posts list have coalesced as I've come across a new online magazine. (Did I manage to sidestep Rule 1? You judge.)

I clearly remember the first time that the word content made me mentally shudder. I was listening to Scot Mills who was doing a prank call to some of his colleagues in BBC Radio 1. The woman who answered the phone said to one of her colleagues when she'd worked out what was going on, "It's probably Scott because he needs more content for his show". What? I thought. All that stuff he does with interviews on Stupid Street and Becky's contest with that other guy and "What's Becky's forte", all that is just "content".

The trouble with hearing it described like that is that it made me think about how Scott, and Chris Moyles too, come up with all that, er, content. So they probably sit around in meetings and come up with ideas and send people off with tape recorders to do vox pops or edit all the times that Brian Cox says "millions" on his TV show. Well of course that's how it gets there, but are they doing it just because they want more content? Don't they want to entertain us?

For me, the word "content" makes me think of content farms. As I have technical oversight of a website content farms represent the enemy people who we want to do better than in search engine results. By getting people, by whatever means, to churn out content, to get high in search engines results and get clicks and adverts, they are filling up the results making it harder for the rest of us doing a more noble job to get seen.

I recently heard a clip of Eric Schmidt in the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh Media festival talking about content (I know it was a few months ago) to broadcasters. (It has to be said though, all credit to Google for trying to free the search engine results from content farms.) So you mean all that wonderful documentary and drama and comedy is just content? Shudder.

A couple of relevant references:
Craigmod says

"Content" is such a horrid word, but it's what we've got.

That magazine I referred to at the top

We must understand the complex relationship between “the content” and “the business.”

Computer games music - Kirby, Zelda, Blob and Goo

We borrowed Kirby's Epic Yarn for Wii over half-term. It's a delightfully inventive game and I'd recommend it for children of all ages. It's quite forgiving, but that doesn't make it easy. One of the things that struck me was the variety of music on the soundtrack.

Before I cover that though, some thoughts on computer games music generally. Because gaming doesn't occupy a high place in popular culture compared with its turnover, and because it's mostly background, I think it doesn't generally get thought about. Recently, though, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played a concert to mark 25 years of Legend of Zelda.

Mostly it seems like it's pretty generic stuff, see Exhibit A - the music to Da Blob. However even the music on that is cleverer than it appears as the melody only plays while you're painting, but cuts in and out at the right moments.


The World of Goo music is quite distinctive and I think it sounds like a film soundtrack. You can even download it.

Back to Kirby - someone's collected all the tracks up. I particularly like the sparse piano track on lava landing.

The two wheeler hierarchy

When I started riding a scooter 11 years ago I looked at a few scooter forums to see what people were talking about. Some of the people there looked down on those with "plastics" as they called the modern scooters that have become so popular. Then a bit later I got a motorbike and hung around on the Usenet group uk.rec.motorcycles. There everyone looks down on scooters, but the proper bikers look down on "power rangers" as they call those who wear one piece coloured suits and ride when the weather is nice. So we've got a hierarchy growing here.

Anyone with a motor powering their two wheels looks down on those who have unpowered two wheels. So I wonder what hierarchies there are amongst cyclists. I don't know but I imagine people with fixies look down on other cyclists as theirs is a purer form of cycling. Maybe the shiny road cyclists look down on the muddy mountain bikers. Or maybe the world of cyclists is tribe-free. Maybe not.

Who's at the bottom of the heap? Kids with stabilisers I should imagine...

Update: Here's the word from my brother on cyclists:

Money tree photo

My money tree photo got included in an article on thisiscolossal.com.

You can see some of my photos as part of the Utata Colour Story 2011. I chose a blue theme.

Barbican balcony window boxes

I was very impressed with these. Nearly every window box had flowers in it. Lots of people making an effort to keep things looking good, even to the tail end of August when gardens tend to look a bit tired and worn out.

Click the picture to see a couple more shots.

Creepers on a wall

Creepers on a wall, a photo by paulmorriss on Flickr.

Third picture on my way to work.

Worn stone wall 1

Worn stone wall 1, a photo by paulmorriss on Flickr.

Another picture taken on the way to work. For some reason I find the fact that these rows of bricks are worn away quite interesting. I've no idea what has worn them away.

No ghost vehicles

No ghost vehicles, a photo by paulmorriss on Flickr.

I've often passed this sign and though I ought to take a photo. Then I think "I'll do it another day". Over the next few weeks I'm trying to stop and take photos that day, rather than just leaving it.

Review of "Build a rocket boys" from elbow

(The lowercase e is mandatory.) Inspired by their nomination for the Mercury awards I thought I'd write the review of "Build a rocket boys" that's been rolling around in my head for a while now. Their previous album, Seldom Seen Kid, is currently my favourite album of all time, so this one had to do quite well to overtake that. It doesn't. However I'm glad I've got it.

This one is to SSK as Ommadawn is to Tubular Bells. (At one point I had an idea that I'd write series of semi-serious, semi-not-serious-hoping-to-be-funny reviews of albums, making sure in each one that I'd compare it to ELO's Mr Blue Sky. This idea came from the bit in the Brady Bunch film where Mr Brady designs a series of commercial buildings, all incorporating that crazy paving exterior wall and other features from his own home. If I write any more reviews they may contain references to Tubular Bells. Or not.) So it's not so commercially appealing. There are a number of parallels to the previous one - the title comes from a line from one of the tracks released as a single. (Can't be bothered to work out if it was the first one in each case.) Both albums have a track released which is like the sour sweet in the packet - Grounds for Divorce, Neat Little Rows. There are probably others. (Two is still a number.)

The first track is a long one and the second half sounds like a Peter Gabriel track. Which is a good thing. All through it though I'm wishing they'd thrown their integrity to the winds and included a singalong festival crowd pleasing song like "One Day Like This". Eventually something like that does come with "Open Arms".

As for the rest of the tracks I recommend you read the review of someone who does it for a living. Alex Petridis in the Guardian sums it up well:

"It may be that people drawn in by One Day Like This hung around because they found music that, while less straightforward, was warm and generous and inventive. If so, they'll find more of it here."

The Guardian in trouble

I heart The Guardian but it may be in trouble according to this piece on The Guardian burning platform. It's a very well written article, dragged down I feel by my comment with a smiley in it.

Please don't steal my photos

Regular readers of this blog will know that I post from time to time when my photos get used on other websites. I do this mostly as a way of noting it down somewhere, as well as because I find it slightly exciting.

Google are rolling out a new reverse image search which is available for some people using the Chrome browser. If you go to images.google.com and there's a camera icon in the search box, then you've got it.

I did a search for one of my popular pictures on flickr (below) and found 18 places which are using it. I started contacting the websites saying they were using it without permission, but gave up after a couple. You are allowed to use it so long as it's not for commercial purposes, and as long as I get credit. Those sites weren't. I'm not really that annoyed, as it's not as I make money out of my photos, but it's the principle of the thing. Most of the sites are visitors guides to Cadbury World, one of which looks a bit like an official one, but isn't.

Getting quotes for a new boiler

We recently had a new boiler installed. I got a quote from British Gas, because they put a leaflet through our door every so often with an offer on it. I then did some "research" and www.boilerguide.co.uk came up near the top of the search listings for "boiler replacement". Their advice was to go for a local firm.

"But how do I choose one?", I thought. A while later I came across an advert on some other website for boilerguide's "get you a quote" service. That's fortunate for them, because I didn't realise they offered it when I searched before. They tried to get me three quotes, but could only do two. One company didn't call me, but another did, a local man.

I also tried eon and nPower. The eon website was very unhelpful. It had a little chart saying what the steps were for getting a quote. The first step was "fill in the form at the bottom of this page". However there was no form at the bottom and you had in fact to fill in a form at the right. I did that and they said they'd ring me back within three days. They never did. Epic fail.

nPower and British Gas both let you choose a time for the visit for someone to quote - very good.

In the end I went for the local company: NBBEnergy which was £1000 cheaper than the highest quote from one of the other two. I'm very happy with the job that was done.

So when am I going to get round to sorting out the look of my website?

When I set up this website last year I had a bit of a steampunk vibe because of the new Doctor Who series, which lives on in my lab. I thought about updating the blogs to have the same look, but I didn't.

Then Tron came out and although I didn't go to see it I changed my Windows 7 desktop wallpaper to the one in the architecture set that was the Melbourne link gateway bridge at sunset as that had the same sort of neon feeling.

Then in spring I changed my wallpaper to the Selfridges building in Birmingham.


So to answer the question, probably never.

Photo from mar00ned.