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A Bit of a BlogSplutterings and shutterings...Thursday, November 12, 2009. 10.30pm.
Up until yesterday I thought I'd abandoned poetry and writing because I no longer needed them. For the past 18 months I've been putting creative energy into photography and anyone who has tried to make serious use of an SLR camera will know that means a great deal of work and time learning to use its controls properly and then applying these skills to composing interesting pictures. I thought for a while that picture making had put a complete end to writing and poetry but a conversation with a taxi driver made me think again.
The driver saw I was carrying a camera tripod and told me he enjoyed taking pictures as well. He then described an incident when he saw a hawk swoop down to attack a pigeon and the struggle which ensued. He had no opportunity to grab a camera - the time was wrong and I commented that there seem to be these moments in life which we don't get the chance to capture on camera, all we can do is watch and marvel at them and try to retain them in our memories as best we can - and the best way to preserve our memories is to write them down.
This thought has given me a bit of a mental nudge... there is still a very strong need to record things in writing - even in poetry. No photograph can ever capture the warmth and wonder of a passionate kiss. We may have photos of the place where we were and each other there but it doesn't capture the warmth and the joy we feel. A poem, however, can try to capture that - or at least provide another dimension at any rate.
So the work with words has to be resumed... now there are two sets of duties - the photographs and the poems. It looks like I've got a heck of a lot more work than I'd bargained for...
Wednesday, February 11, 2009. 1.30pm.
I'm writing this bit on a train heading up to the north east of England... Outside the countryside is littered with melting snow or drowning in flash floods. It's not a good time to be in England... Recession biting, people scared for the future and there are times when it feels as if England has become a country populated by increasingly hostile and anti-social people ruled over by incompetent officials at every level.
Now I'm writing at 5pm in a hotel room in Darlington. I have spent just over an hour wandering about the town centre and I have had two real conversations with complete strangers. One was a taxi driver who told me a joke about how copper wire was created by a Scotsman and a Yorkshireman who were fighting over a penny and neither would let go... The other was a woman working in a deserted cafe who said how scary London seemed to her when she first visited.
Maybe I needed to get away for a bit, maybe people are more talkative in the north, maybe I'm good at getting people to talk... I don't know...
Sunday, June 1, 2008. 2.45pm.
I made a curious discovery when I ran a search of my own name on Google the other day. I discovered a poem I wrote about magpies which was on the old-look site had been reproduced on two completely separate blogs - Sequindaisy and Downhiller. I was pleased to see that I'm fully credited as the author. Anyway, it surprised me because I've moved rather a long way from poetry in the past few years and I don't think I wrote any poems that I was happy with last year and I've certainly written nothing in the way of poetry this year... It's odd to find that people sometimes do go for a piece which I've completely forgotten about and would never consider including in a live performance - and it's a few years since I did one of those!
Anyway, I'd better put that poem back on The Lone Magpie Page since it's proved popular...
Saturday, May 24, 2008. 6.55pm.
Well, The Hunt For The Lost Podcaster is up and running and waiting for you to listen to it... It's actually been ready for three days but I didn't get round to writing about it in here. I also managed to soup up the RSS feed so that the grey RSS icon in IE goes to orange on certain pages and Safari shows a blue RSS icon... I was very proud of that!
I came across an interesting article about comedians and podcasting on the BBC website this week. Although it basically points out the blatently obvious - ie that comedy podcasts lead the field - it has some useful comments from established comedians on the podcast medium.
Personally, I feel there are several reasons why the podcast lends itself very well to comedy. Technically, it's very simple to record - at the most basic level you just need to talk into a computer with a built-in microphone and capture and mix it with simple software which can be downloaded for free. It's a lot easier than recording music. Then you've got relative freedom with the content - ok, there are the libel and defamation issues to consider but at least you havn't got to pitch material to a producer or commissioning editor or keep on the right side of any promoters or programmers. You don't have any set lengths to work to - one episode can be four minutes, the next one 40 minutes - although I think you do have to consider if the downloader is going to be willing to listen to a lengthy podcast.
The thing I've enjoyed about podcasting is that I've been able to experiment with creating miniature dramas and soundscapes using GarageBand, a brilliant programme which came with my MacBook. In many ways I've been able to borrow from the golden age of radio comedy when you could say "Let's fly to the seaside", play an aircraft noise followed by the sound of waves and there you would be at the seaside. Ultimately, I do it for my own amusement and if others like it then that's good.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008. 11.25pm.
It's getting late and that means it's blogging time... I've been reading up on RSS feeds trying to understand more about how they work and what you can use them for. There's been one for the podcast for over a year (to subscribe you put http://www.wulfie.co.uk/feed.xml into your catcher, by the way) but I've realised it might be a good idea to have one for the Parmesan Collection since that's going to be updated periodically and could generate some interest. I could have one for this blog but I think that would be a bit too big-headed and I put out enough self indulgent with the podcast already... OK, ok, so you need a load of fancy buttons enabling people to subscribe in whichever feed catcher they happen to be using but I have yet to find the "Flashy Feed Buttons Made Easy" site... I wonder what happens if you Google those words? Hang on... Hmmm, it took me here (I did "I'm feeling lucky" since I only fancied seeing one page)... Now he's got the RSS feed buttons - maybe I'll drop him a polite note and ask him nicely where he learned to do it. Anyway, this week I have working on the new podcast. This is going to be The Hunt For The Lost Podcaster and features The Choir of Deep Sea Fishermen of Tiddington who were invented for the Christmascast and then proved to be a lot of fun when I revived them in the Valentine Podcast. Anyway, it should be up and running by the end of the week if all goes well - maybe you'd like to subscribe to it now so that you can hear it as soon as its ready? It's getting late and it's hell day at work tomorrow... zzzzzzzzz
Thursday, May 15, 2008. 11.40pm.
Why do I always seem to be blogging around this time?! Probably because I've been too busy doing things to write about earlier in the evening... Well, on this particular evening I've been working on some material for the next podcast... the first one since February 2007 to be exact - ahem. It's not that I havn't done anything about making a podcast - I have. Twice! Both efforts got dull and I dumped them because I didn't like the way they were going. I find it's best to just get a podcast done and out there and forgotten about, otherwise I spend ages tinkering and tweaking and changing and finally rejecting it all - not a very constructive approach really... Anyway, the next one is now safely in production and, for those who heard the Valentine and Christmas podcasts, the Choir of Deep Sea Fishermen of Tiddington make another appearance... Many thanks to everyone who has stopped by to look at the new site since its relaunch on Tuesday - I'm still spotting odd glitches and rough edges and I've already decided it's got to be smartened up even more although I'm not quite sure exactly what I want to change yet...
Monday, May 12, 2008. 11.46pm.
Well, after spending the evening putting some finishing touches to a couple of sections I figured it was time to get the new site uploaded. I get a quarter of the way through and the internet connection falls over - AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH.
Apologies to anyone who was trying to get onto this site and got an error message...
Sunday, May 11, 2008. 11.49pm.
Another weekend draws to a close - boo hiss - and I'm very close to completing the rebuild of this site. The last pictures got taken today and the only sections left to complete are the credits page and the podcast pages. I've got to get a new podcast made in double quick time as well since the existing "most recent" episode is rather old and starting to smell... Went into central London yesterday and dropped into the London Graphics Centre in Covent Garden which I always enjoy. Heard a very interesting account of the new Pantone system which has had its first update in 45 years bringing it into the digital age from a very enthusiastic assistant. He said they'd all received training in it so he was telling everyone who would stand still long enough about it. That was interesting but my big find was a special colour wheel with all the web-safe colours and their Hex codes. A very handy new reference tool...
Tuesday, May 6, 2008. 10.40pm.
Tired out again... the knock-on effect of a bank holiday is hell in a deadline-driven business - you lose a working day and you're faced with the same deadline but less time to meet it in. It's rather sad to be looking at bank holidays with a groan but that's the way it often feels. Got more work done on here. More photos ready, some progress on the Sounds section - the last section remaining to be built. With a bit of luck I'll be able to get this site relaunched by the middle of May. I need to put some more photos in the margin...
Tuesday, April 30, 2008. About 9.15pm.
Knackered out after hell day at work and now a bit coded-out after updating the navigation on every page on here. I had planned to have a photo gallery on this site but decided it would be too much work to maintain right now and there are plenty of opportunities to use photos imaginatively already. The great thing is that it's all getting to the "soon be ready" stage after weeks in the "never get this done" phase. I'm feeling pleased with it - the The Search Engine Of self Knowledge and The Lonesome Blues Identikit are running and configured in a way I'm pretty happy with. Strange to think it's seven years since I pieced the basic script for those together and I still feel proud of it.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008. A bit after 10pm.
Well, the rebuild is going on. I decided to re-do the top navigation completely using a more effective script and ended up having to alter every page. Going to have to alter them all again pretty soon as there a few more pages to add. Think I'll wait until I can do a big batch of them and blitz it. Still going to be some time before I can go live since there are some photos that need to be taken. Here's hoping for a sunny weekend!
Friday, April 18, 2008. Night time
I was thinking what I was going to do with the left hand panel on this page - I hadn't thought ahead on what I'd do when the text got deep and on this one it's going to be a real deepie... The solution? Simple - a picture gallery of things that caught my eye totally unrelated to the words... two blogs for the price of one and you don't even have to pay to view this site... how good is that?
Thursday, April 17, 2008. Night time
Well here goes, the first entry in a new blog... Hello world and all that... This is being written on a break between building pages for the relaunch of this site. It's strange to think it's nearly nine years since I bought my first book on HTML - one of the big expensive O'Reilley ones - and set up the first version of this site on the old Yahoo GeoCities network... I wonder if the bastard who strolled off with my first HTML book some months later found it useful? I hope not.
Anyway, this is the fourth rebuild I've done on this site and it's presented me with some interesting issues - the most interesting being what the heck am I doing going to all this trouble building a site when I could go along to MySpace or Blogspot and get straight down to ranting?
Well, that bit started me thinking... Remember the days way back in the 1990s when the web was filled with thousands of personal sites at places like GeoCities and Tripod? All you needed was access to the web, a smattering of HTML and the willingness to sit down a put a bit of effort into creating your own little corner of Cyberspace... It wasn't so difficult to do, it put you on the cyber map and you were part of the web revolution.
Ten years on from that initial explosion and where are all those pioneering webmasters? I'm prepared to bet they've all resorted to throwing sheep at each other on Facebook. you don't need to know anything about HTML there, all you do is check the boxes and there's your all-singing, all dancing page and all your mates are in there as well - one big happy band of friends all password protected and tagged...
OK, so has anything really changed? Ten years ago people were all in bunches on Geocities or Tripod, putting sites together with page templates. It's so much easier now and many more people are involved but is it really any more fun? Where is the satisfaction and pride of putting together something for yourself? That's probably the reason why I've come full circle - I've done Geocities, I've been a member of countless forums and forgot the passwords long ago, I've done MySpace, I've done Facebook, I've done YouTube and Flickr... Now I'm back doing my own thing. I wonder if anyone else is doing the same?
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