Just links
A friend mentioned to me today that he was sorry I'd given up blogging.
"I haven't given up blogging," I spluttered, insofar as it's possible to splutter on IM. "I've just been busy."
He seemed even less impressed when I went on to add that, anyway, his assertion that Blogging and I had parted ways wasn't even true - my tumblelog, horreo.org, is anything but inactive.
"But that's just links..."
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This chat got me thinking about what had prompted me to start a blog in the first place, back when I hand-coded my very first post at this domain in September 2001.
I'd been a blog reader myself for a few months. Choice wasn't so wide in those days, but I did enjoy my regular visits to Sylloge, to kottke.org and to notsosoft (which is no longer online but whose writer now blogs at meish dot org). This seemed like a party I wanted to gatecrash, even I wasn't sure exactly why.
There was the writing, of course. The discipline involved in putting my thoughts into written words on a regular basis certainly appealed to me, as did the idea that I could write more creatively than I was able to do at work at the time.
There was also the community. In the dark ages, many sites didn't have a mechanism for leaving comments on individual posts, but that didn't stop us all from frantically linking to each other from a list of "Sites I like" in our sidebars, and we gradually built up our little communities that way. Many posts I (and others) wrote were often little more than, "I've found this new blog, it's really great: <INSERT LINK HERE>". When the person I linked to discovered my blog through her log files, she would undoubtedly come and see who was linking to her -- and often return the favour if she found we had something in common that she could share with her readers in turn.
And this leads me on to my final point, to what I have come to believe was and still is my main motivation for blogging: a desire to share. The web is home to many wondrous things, and having a blog seemed to be a way for me to point my friends towards some of those things that I considered worthy of their attention.
That's still the case today, really, both here - where I can be more wordy if I choose - and at horreo.org - where I simply point and say, "Go!"
At the end of the day, as my friend observed, it's just links.
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Rolling and tumbling
In case you were wondering why I haven't posted anything here in a while (and if you weren't, why not?), let it be known that I haven't been idle.
My tumblelog horreo.org is where I've been doing most of my blogging lately, however. Please take a look!
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My new tumblelog
I'm experimenting with the quick-and-dirty posting style of a tumblelog over at horreo.org.
I'll continue posting longer entries here if I ever have to anything to say that can't be summed up in a pithy sentence or two.
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Carnival of the Mobilists 64 at m-trends.org
It's been a while since I've linked to a Carnival of the Mobilists, but Rudy De Waele's done a great job this week hosting Carnival #64 at m-trends.org. I mean, he even manages to mention Jean Baudrillard for goodness sake!
(In a related post at Click Opera, Momus also has an interesting comparison of the difference between the French obituaries of Baudrillard and the Anglo-Saxon ones.)
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A beautiful revolution
I don't know what to say, other than that A beautiful revolution is the best blog I've stumbled across in a long time.
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Because links (and love) are what makes the world go round
Because it's good to share.
Because the web is not just about the English language.
Because you don't have to be a native speaker to have a thought-provoking blog in English.
Because links (and love) are what makes the world go round.
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MobileSunday Barcelona 2.0
Sign up now for MobileSunday Barcelona 2.0!
When I attended the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona last February, I thought it might be fun to get together with a few mobile bloggers beforehand and "have a chat about all things mobile". I put up a wiki page for the occasion (which I decided to call MobileSunday), invited along two or three friends, and sent out a couple of emails to set the word-of-blog wheels in motion.
Frankly, my only real goal for the evening was to have a beer or two with Rudy De Waele, who helped me find a suitable bar for our gathering since I'd moved away from Barcelona in 2001 - which meant that his knowledge of the nightlife in the Catalan capital was much more contemporary than mine. As it turned out, more than fifty of us ended up squeezing into Café Schilling on Carrer Ferran, where the fun lasted until well into the wee small hours.
And that was just the beginning of a great, great week.
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So, 3GSM is almost upon us again. While work commitments mean I won't be able to make it to Barcelona this time round, Rudy has convinced me that our little event was fun enough to be worth repeating.
If you want to kick off your week at 3GSM by attending "an unofficial, informal and generally cool and funky gathering of mobile bloggers and their chums", simply add your name to the MobileSunday Barcelona wiki and turn up on the night. Don't tell anyone, but I hear there may even be some free beer this time round - courtesy of MyStrands.
*
As I said, I won't be in Barcelona this year, but I still hope to participate on the night in a non-presential, 21st-century mobile kind of way. Stay tuned for more details.
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Top five Windows Vista resources
As Derek announces on our Unofficial Vista blog, "we're a top 5 Windows Vista resource", according to PC Magazine.
Nice!
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"Have a phenomenal Christmas"
If you know me at all well, you'll know that I'm never one to miss a chance to mention (or drink) Irn-Bru.
With that in mind, have "a phenomenal Christmas"!
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Via edublogs
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Unofficial Vista blog tour, day 5
Today our little tour is visiting Relaciones Públicas, the blog of Madrid-based PR blogger Octavio Rojas, where I've written a short post on how feedback received from the blogging community may or may not have helped shape the final version of Vista.
I wrote my post in Spanish - with a couple of corrections from Octavio - but I've provided an English translation as well in case any anglosajones happen to drop by.
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Bill Gates for president?
It seems Dilbert creator Scott Adams is not the only person who thinks this might be a good idea.
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The rules have changed, but...
The rules have changed, but some people still don't get it.
Weblogs SL is a Spanish company that publishes a series of topic-based blogs in the style of Gawker Media and Weblogs, Inc. One of Weblogs SL's titles is Vidaextra, a blog about video games.
Julio Alonso, the man behind Weblogs SL, writes an interesting post on his personal blog today about how Electronic Arts has blacklisted Weblogs SL for publishing bad reviews about its products, despite the fact that the blog in question receives more than 700,000 visits a month and that EA is objecting to four bad reviews over a period of two years, yet seems to have forgotten about the hundreds of positive articles Vidaextra has written about its games during that time.
Don't the people who work at Electronic Arts in Spain realise that the days when a company could control what the media - especially the online media - has to say about it are long gone (if indeed they ever existed)?
"If you don't say consistently nice things about us, we're not going to send you any more products for review." Frankly, that's just ridiculous.
Tell them where to stick it, Julio!
Update (1 December): Corrected Julio's name.
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Unofficial Vista blog tour, day 3
Today's stopping-off point on the Unofficial Vista blog tour is Naked Translations, where I discuss how IE7 uses Punycode to help protect users against domain spoofing. There's even a version française.
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Whose blog is it anyway?
My guest post at Petite Anglaise, written as part of the virtual blog tour I am currently undertaking with Derek Torres to promote our book The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista, has provoked some pretty strong reactions from her readers.
As I understand it, their main objection seems to be that I have taken advantage of Petite's audience to try to sell a product (did they notice the Sponsors section in her sidebar before accusing her of selling out by publishing my post?). Some commenters also seem to confuse Derek and me, two humble technical writers, with Microsoft, the company everyone loves to hate - a fact which clearly doesn't help matters, not least because it makes them think I'm promoting Vista itself rather than our book.
Surely it is up to Petite what she decides to publish on her blog, be it paid advertising, giving a helping hand to a friend or whatever else she chooses to write about.
Also, let me be clear about one thing. I am visiting five blogs on our tour, and I know each of the bloggers who are hosting me personally. Every single one of them, including Petite. That's what I'm taking advantage of - some of the many online and real world friendships that having a blog for over five years now has allowed me to form.
Finally, rather than clashing with the content that the readers of these blogs are used to finding (in the case of Petite, "a slice of life and a serving of self-indulgent navel gazing"), it was my intention to write posts that would link the topic of Windows Vista with whatever each host blogger normally writes about. Fortunately, at least some of Petite's readers seemed to find what I wrote worthwhile. One commenter even said she was going to forward the post to a friend, which, I hope you'll agree, more than makes up for being called "a cheap slime".
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Unofficial Vista blog tour, day 2
Today I'm visiting Neville Hobson's blog and trying to defend the indefensible in Does IE7 suck?
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Unofficial Vista blog tour, day 1
I'm flogging The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista over at Petite Anglaise today, where I've written a guest post to tell a fellow parent how we can use Parental Controls in Windows Vista to stop our kids doing naughty things with our PCs.
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I would like to share this with you
In the absence of any real blogging from me this past wee while, here are a few delights from my RSS reader that I'd like to share with you.
Enjoy!
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Top French blogs: Blethers just in at 95
I was tickled to see Blethers is at number 95 in Alianzo's list of what they consider to the Top 100 blogs in France, just four places behind Guillaume du Gardier's PR Thoughts and, surprisingly, one place above Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz.
Apparently this ranking is based on Technorati, Google and Yahoo! links, the blog's position in Alexa and the number of RSS subscribers it has in Bloglines. Like all such rankings, it should of course be taken with a pinch of salt. The true measure of a blog's quality is what its readers get out of reading it - nothing more, nothing less.
But still, I'm sure my mother will be very proud.
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Blogs. La conversación
For a couple of weeks now I've had an email sitting in my inbox from Octavio Rojas letting me know about the upcoming blogging event he's organizing in Madrid for 19 October, Blogs. La conversación.
I told Octavio I'd give the event a mention here but I've been too busy to translate his announcement, and now Guillaume Du Gardier has beaten me to it (more or less)!
Sorry Octavio :-)
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Did you check your typing speed lately?
I'm off to download WPM Tray so I can quantify my boasts about how nimble fingered I am.
Obsessed with your typing speed? Free, open source program WPM Tray sits in your system tray and keeps track of your words-per-minute in real time, graphing your speed over time.
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Got things done
As Mr Torres announces on our book blog, we have now completed our work on the Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista.
Phew!
And for my next trick...?
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Bloggin in Scots
Whar's aa the blogs in Scots?
(Matthew Fitt, ye up fir it? Mibbe yersel an ane or twa ithers?)
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A little bit of this and a little bit of that
I'm cleaning out my bookmarks.
- The Rise of Crowdsourcing: "Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D".
- Hello, world!: "A visual code for Google Earth"
- MyTunesRSS: "MyTunesRSS is an application for accessing your iTunes library from any computer connected through a network."
- Paris Inconnu: Walks through the parts of Paris tourists don't normally see
- "School in France is different"
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New feeds - please update
blethers.com/weblog can now be found at blethers.com.
This feed has moved to http://feeds.feedburner.com/blethers.
I hope you take the time to resubscribe.
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La rentrée
I've been asked by quite a few people whether I've given up blogging. In response to the most recent enquiry, I even replied that I wasn't sure myself. There's been a blog at this domain since September 2001, so surely after five years I was entitled to a short sabbatical, but still... it's been a while.
"I don't think it's over between me and blogs," I said defensively, but I couldn't contest the fact that the time since my last post was getting longer by the second, and the hiatus was starting to look less and less like the temporary break I had originally planned to take while I was "extremely busy with work".
Yes, I admit, even I was beginning to suspect that Blethers.com was about to become yet another dead blog clogging up the web. But here I am. The lure of the blog has proved too strong to resist, and I'm back with a new design and, hopefully, with something worthwhile to say.
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A drawing a day
Sculptor Stéphane Gantlet is selling a drawing a day on eBay, each with a starting price of just €1.50 and - best of all - drawn on Moleskine paper.
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Office hours in France
I had lunch yesterday with one of the guys behind LAC Media, a highly informative website about the ins and outs of setting up as an independent contractor in the United States. He wanted to know about freelance life here in France, and seemed to think I might know something about it.
One thing that came up during our conversation that particularly surprised him was the long hours people work in French offices. Like most of his compatriots, he had been led to believe that office life in France was based around the 35-hour week. And it is, in the sense that your salary is based on working 35 hours a week (or something close to that) and you do get time off every now and then to make up for the fact that your official working day may be slightly more than that.
What is not so well-known is that everyone - everyone - works longer hours as a matter of course. In any French office I've ever worked in, the only people who leave before 6pm are working mothers rushing home to collect their children from some form of child care. Leaving before 7pm is just about acceptable, as long as you know that it's not something you can do every day and you should stay longer in "emergencies". People regularly stay until much later than that - I've missed the last metro home on more than one occasion.
Could this be the reason that France is more productive than the United States?
I remember working in Switzerland for a few days and being amazed to look up from my desk at just after 5pm to find the open-plan office I was in was virtually deserted. I remember going to a job interview in Bristol in England one evening and nearly being trampled to death by the surge of people pouring out of their offices at 5.30pm. Indeed, in my European experience, only Spanish working hours can compete with the French in terms of I-can-stay-later-than-you bravado.
And at least in Spain they take a decent lunch break.
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Put your money where Kottke's mouth is
Jason Kottke is becoming a full-time blogger.
Anil Dash explains why he's supporting Jason's bold move with cold hard cash.
You should do the same, if you can.
As Anil says,
I want the people who get quoted about being professsional bloggers to be people who really love the web, not just people who love what the web can do for their careers, or their notoriety, or for their causes. I don't want people to start blogging merely so they can "graduate" to television or print, though I certainly am glad that there are people who do so. I just want to make sure that there's some representation for people who still get excited about what the web can be, and are still looking to find out what the web is becoming next.
Show him the money!
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The launch of Blogging Planet
Yesterday saw the launch of Blogging Planet, "a new consultancy dedicated to training organizations how to build new organizational communication networks" run by some of the people who are putting together the New Communications Forum , where I'll be leading a workshop on Writing For Blogs next month.
They're already raising some interesting questions.
The question of content is one of the major barriers to adoption for blogging and other new communications tools, as people ask:
- What shall I write about?
- What can't I write about?
- What are others writing about my company?
- How can I stop them?
We believe that this focus on content is preventing people from seeing the more important issue: the value derived through the creation, maintenance and use of a powerful network of ongoing conversations amongst the widest possible audience, all leading in one form or another back to your organization.
"How can I stop them?": excellent!
I'm not really adding much of value by reiterating that blogs are all about conversations - you know that already. But it bears repeating, especially in the world of corporate communications where far too many companies are locked in to the old top-down mentality of wanting to control everything being said about them. It's heartening to see new initiatives like this one working to change people's attitudes.
I wish Elizabeth, Christophe, Guillaume and Neville all the very best in their new endeavour!
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A business trip to London
I've been too busy to sit down and configure Flickr for posting to my moblog, so you'll just have to make do with this manually-uploaded cameraphone view of a business trip to London for now.
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Snowprint
And I thought it was cold yesterday.
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Snowleaf
A cold morning in Paris.
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Enlarge your bookmarks with BlogMarks
I'm too busy to blog, but not too busy to congratulate my neighbour Fran\'e7ois on the launch of BlogMarks, a new service in the del.icio.us vein where, as I described it in my own first BlogMark, "the bookmark meets the blog".
Right, back to work.
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Shrove
If you think shrove is a cool word, let me assure you that shrovetide is even better.
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OSN 2005
I just signed up for OSN 2005, the online social networks conference taking place from February 9-23 in a web browser near you.
That's right, the conference is actually taking place online - which I suppose makes perfect sense given its subject matter.
I'll be interested to see how important timezones are in determining what I get out of the whole thing - do we all need to join the Eastern Standard Tribe?
Still, ike Elizabeth, I too am a big Howard Rheingold fan, and I'm pretty confident his keynotes alone will be worth staying up late for.
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Blogs & street marketing (and a trip to outer space)
I got an email today from Rob Davis, who I doubt is a regular reader of this blog, about a promotional contest being organised by Volvo.
Stuart,
I thought your blog readers would go for this contest -- Volvo and Virgin Galactic are giving away a seat on Virgin's premier flight to space.
The contest will begin following Volvo's Super Bowl ad in the 3rd quarter of the Bowl on Sunday.
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2005Jan/gee20050204028993.htm
Regards,
Rob Davis
Minneapolis
Has Rob been reading what Laurent Bervas has to say about blogs & street marketing?
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RSS feeds for Scottish government press releases
The Scottish Executive website now features RSS feeds of all its latest press releases.
I wonder if this will get a mention at the conference Loïc Le Meur is organising on Blogs and Politics next week.
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Found via dwlt.net, the blog that is also home to Tapestry, a series of RSS feeds for online comics
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Why the Mac Mini is so cheap
In Mac Mini: The Emperor's New Computer, Jorge Lopez, MCSE explains how Apple have managed keep the price of their new mini computer so low.
Don\rquote t get me wrong, I am an admirer of Apple\rquote s iPod and I applaud the company for doing things right when it does. I am glad to see that they have found a way to cut corners where they can to bring the price of their computers out of the stratosphere and somewhat closer to the price of a Windows PC. By leaving out a USB keyboard and monitor, two things you may already have if you have an old Mac, Apple can shave some money off the price of its system components and the size and weight of its packaging. By using cheap Asian child labor to assemble the units, costs have been reduced even further. I would like to see them continue this trend, possibly strike a deal with China to use inmates to assemble the Mini for even less, like Lenovo does.
From the same site: Abu Ghraib and Other "Abuse" Photos: Why is the liberal media obsessed with torture?
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Found via Joi Ito
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The Moleskine blog
Got a Moleskine notebook? Got a blog? Why not combine the two to create a blog in your Moleskine?
If that sounds just a wee bit extreme, you may find this hack for keeping your pen with your Moleskine of slightly more practical use.
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Found via Moleskinerie
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Cada loco con su tema
Rising Slowly - the UK weather blog.
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Found via Heiko Hebig
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Writing For Blogs I: A blog is for life, not just for Christmas
I was looking for information about Swatch's Internet Time (don't ask!) and came across two amusing blog posts by Tom Coates (Internet Time (Part One) and Internet Time (Part Two)) on this very subject.
Nothing unusual about that, you may be thinking - except that the posts in question were written in January 2000.
That's right, five whole years ago!
In "Internet Time", that's almost prehistory. How many bloggers have been writing that long? Even Tom himself seems surprised by the mass of words he has generated on his blog.
Such longevity is something many bloggers would do well to bear in mind when composing their next post. Of course, your blog could disappear tomorrow, but what you're writing today may still be around online years from now (don't forget the Wayback Machine). Will you still be able to stand behind what you're saying? Your ideas may evolve in the meantime, but will you at least be able to say that what you're writing and publishing today is a valid representation of your ideas and opinions at this particular point in time?
I think it all comes down to something I've mentioned before - writing honestly and in your own voice. That's going be my core message in the Writing For Blogs workshop I'll be leading at the New Communications Forum in April, for which this post is the first in an-ongoing series where I'll be gathering my thoughts (and, hopefully, your comments) on how to write for blogs.
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Jacques Villeret - un sacré con
One of the first French films I found funny - real, laugh-out-loud, tears-in-your-eyes funny - was Le Dîner de Cons (called The Dinner Game in English). The star of this film, Jacques Villeret, died on Friday at the age of just 53.
Le Dîner de Cons was shown on French TV again tonight in tribute to Villeret and, if anything, I laughed even more than I did when I first saw it. The man was undoubtedly a comic genius.
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The Voice of the Blog: research project
I'm going to be meeting Jeffrey Hill in a few days to share my thoughts about blogging and how it relates to my work as an independent communications consultant, as part of his research project The Voice of the Blog.
The purpose of this weblog to act as a resource bank for the research project I am currently working on. The provisional title is "The Voice of the Blog: An Investigation into the Attitudes, Perceptions and Practices of Small Business Bloggers." I'm planning to interview a number of SBBs and would love to hear from anyone who would be interested in taking part.
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NewCommForum in Napa
Over at PR Thoughts, Guillaume du Gardier has a nice round-up of all the blog posts he has found about the New Communications Forum held in Napa, California this week.
Don't forget that I'll be leading the "Writing For Blogs" workshop at the European leg of the NewCommForum's Blog University, which will take place in Paris on 5-6 April 2005.
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Paris - Vigo
The ever-fascinating Jean-Michel Gobet (of 09h09 fame) has started yet another blog, this time a photoblog in which he swaps pictures of Paris and pictures of Vigo with a friend who lives in Galicia.
I especially like this one: Vigo - Magritte.
For more photos of Vigo, visit Vigo en fotos. For more photos of Paris, this is as good a place to start as any.
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American Music Club at the Café de la Danse
I saw American Music Club play at the Café de la Danse last night.
To tell you what it was like, all I really need to say is that I spent most of the evening standing between Karel Beer and a woman who was sketching singer Mark Eitzel in a moleskine notebook.
I could also add that the first song they played ground to a halt after little more than one verse, when Mark's concentration was broken by a photographer who came in too close for comfort ("I'm an ugly man, but I'm also a vain man - and that's a problem," he said with a nervous laugh), and the last song they played before the encores did likewise when he forgot the words and walked off in disgust. With himself, as usual.
Introducing "Patriot's Heart", Mark said: "Today is a special day for us Americans. For the first time ever, we have elected a fascist government. Sieg Heil, Mr Bush. I hope you die today."
His mind was obviously elsewhere, but that doesn't mean the concert was without its moments of beauty. They played "Another Morning", as I'd hoped - they played "Firefly" and it was like 1988.
The evening ended with me sitting outside the concert hall scribbling some notes for this post in my own moleskine notebook. Bass player Danny Pearson came out with a glass of wine in his hand, I made an expansive gesture and said, "Here are all your fans" (we were the only two people in the street), and he laughed and walked off into the night.
And, really, that is all I needed to say to tell you what it was like.
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Bloggers now as influential as journalists!
Don't worry, this isn't going to be yet another post about whether or not blogging is the new journalism (for the record, blogging isn't the new anything).
What I want to do is share an exciting discovery I've made over the last few days - for certain communications professionals, bloggers now seem to be as valid an target audience as journalists.
How do I know this? Because a computer security firm from Baton Rouge, Florida has started sending me its press releases.
I know for a fact that it's not random spam, as I've been receiving it at an address I've only ever used as my contact address here on my blog (I have other addresses for harvesting spam). So somebody somewhere must have visited this blog at least once and decided that I would be interested in hearing about the latest news from the world of corporate firewalls. Even more amazingly, this unknown person also decided that you, dear reader, would be interested in reading my thoughts on the latest news from the world of corporate firewalls. Are you really? (If you are, I hear that these guys know a lot about it.)
When even a minor league blog like mine (2,000-3,000 page views a month and rising!) starts being targetted by corporate press teams, this to me is as clear a validation of blogs as a communications channel as the fact that the vice-chairman of General Motors now has a blog.
And, needless to say, it also does wonders for my ego.
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The media-on-demand-and-when-allowed / sociability-by-prior-arrangement world we live in
Tom Dolan at Blatant Optimism has a cunning plan - he's going to start taking DVDs to work and watching them in his lunch hour, while his "missus" does the same.
You can explore all the films you've ever wanted to, two by two, without having to worry about how long it takes you to watch them, and then talk about them with other people, in a metaphor ideally suited to the media-on-demand-and-when-allowed / sociability-by-prior-arrangement world we seem to be moving towards as mid-30s parents.
I just love that phrase - media-on-demand-and-when-allowed / sociability-by-prior-arrangement. It speaks to my very soul.
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The return of the 18th century coffee house
David Galbraith points us to an interesting article in Wired on a startup that works out of a coffee shop.
After a false start with 'hot desking' in the 90's freely available wifi, laptops and cellphones really do mean that in some case you can work anywhere. In this case, history has come full circle with some of the biggest institutions in the world, such as Lloyd's insurance, having been started in 18th century coffee houses.
I spend half an hour in my local café most mornings, reading email on my mobile phone and planning the day ahead. I suppose taking my laptop with me and working all the way through to lunchtime is just the logical next step.
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Blogs in business
Loïc Le Meur, who I interviewed here on Blethers back in the days when he was still relatively new to the blogging world, is putting on a conference in Paris on the subject of "Blogs en entreprises" (or "Blogs in business", if you prefer).
The roll-call of speakers looks very impressive - including Mena Trott, co-founder of Six Apart; Michel de Guilhermier, CEO of online photo laboratory Photoways and committed blogger; and Fran\'e7ois Nonnenmacher, corporate webmaster at Capgemeni and "padawan learner" - and I'm looking forward to being one of the hundreds in attendance (285 signed-up at the time of writing!) at the H\'f4tel Royal Garden tomorrow evening.
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The artist's cottage
Would you like to spend a night in a cottage designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh?
It almost seems worth joining the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society to be able to do so.
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Found via Armin Grewe, who has a lot more information on Mackintosh for anyone who's interested.
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American Music Club in Paris
American Music Club are playing in Paris on Thursday 20 January, at the Caf\'e9 de la Danse.
Great!
I hope they play Another Morning, my favourite song from their latest album Love Songs For Patriots.
Nothing ever seems to make you happy.
Are you miserable, babe,
or are you just plain mean?
Is there no joy in you?
Well, come on, don't keep me waiting.
...
There must have been a short five minutes somewhere in your youth
when you laughed like water breaking over the broken land,
when you laughed like the wind burning the sun blind on your face,
when you laughed like water breaking over the broken dam,
when you laughed like the starting gun at the start of the race.
...
It's when you wake up and you're glad that you're breathing.
It's when you wake up and you're glad that you're living.
Well, that's another morning.
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Strawberries
Did you know that there's a Strawberry Museum in Plougastel, in the region of Finistère in Brittany? You do now.
Did you know that two students from Plougastel went on a journey to follow in the footsteps of Amédée-François Frézier, the sailor who, in the 18th century, brought the first strawberry to reach French shores all the way from Chile to Plougastel? You do now.
I guess that must be why strawberries are called fraises in French.
Now you know.
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Decisions
Hmm, they do look pretty.
Can I justify buying one?
Update (later the same day): As they did last year when the iPod mini was launched, Europeans are already complaining about price differences between Europe and the United States.
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Tartiflette
From time to time, my local cheese shop organises tasting events where selected producers are invited to let us sample their speciality cheeses.
Next week sees the return of Philippe, "The King of the Tartiflette", who will be coming all the way from "la region nantaise" to prepare for us this hearty dish of potatoes, reblochon cheese and cr\'e8me fraiche. He will be in the shop on Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20 January - and I know what I'll be having for lunch on those days.
Click the image for a larger version
For a professional communicator like me, it's also heartening to see small businesses like my local cheese shop making use of web-based marketing tools. They have a mailing-list that I subscribe to, and it was in the latest edition of their email newsletter that I heard about Philippe's upcoming visit.
The shop manager is also the driving force behind our local website Belleville-village.com, which I've written about before, and the next time I'm in buying a piece of stilton (which I do just to annoy the French), I must try to convince him to start a cheese blog.
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Fromagerie Beillevaire
140, rue de Belleville
75020 Paris
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DIY micro-payment
If your content is worth paying for, take a look at TKPal as a way of handling your own micro-payment using PayPal and TypeKey.
TKPal is a snippet of PHP code you can place in a PHP enabled page to restrict access to content to TypeKey users who have specifically paid to see that content.
Don't worry, I'm not going to suddenly start charging you $1,500 to read a single page.
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Found via the linklog at plasticbag.org
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This post is in Beta
The bastardization of beta contains some thoughtful insight on how the term "beta" has lost its meaning, at least on the web.
Once I started working with software companies myself, I not only became reluctant to pay for the "beta" version of any product, I even tended to shy away from 1.0 releases - or x.0 releases for that matter, since all major updates are risky. Most software undergoes a good few minor upgrades before it gets anywhere near stable.
(I have more to say on this topic, but am publishing a "beta" version of this post while I clarify my thoughts. Feel free to comment anyway - you usually talk more sense than I do.)
--
Found via the linklog at plasticbag.org
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Broadcast democracy at last?
Armin Grewe has an amusing view of podcasting.
Well, it made me laugh anyway.
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Beautiful music, beautiful images
Hidden away on the Craig Armstrong website is a trailer for a film by David Bernard that is described as "a hommage to Paris and Craig Armstrong".
I challenge you to watch it and fail to be moved by its beauty. I simply must find this film on DVD.
Sadly, I say it is "hidden away" because finding the trailer is a challenge in itself - a site with unlabelled buttons and no direct links is just being wilfully obscure. At the time of writing, the one you're looking for is the sixth button from the right, "Piano Works Film Trailer".
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Shepherd's delight
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Not waving but drowning!
I'm writing a book that goes to the printers next week.
Please bear with me if my blogging is a little thin on the ground between now and then.
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Know your audience
I just noticed that the number of people subscribing to my RSS feeds has shot up over the past few days - if you can call going from half a dozen subscribers in Bloglines to nearly twenty shooting up.
Who are these people?
Where did they come from?
When you're a writer, one of the first things you learn is to know your audience. I know I'd definitely be interested in finding out more about those crazy folks who have recently decided to join the Blethers family.
So, if that's you, firstly let me thank you for stopping by. And now that you're here, why not say hello and leave a link to your own blog so we can all come round to your place and carry on the party over there?
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Anders will donate a dollar on your behalf
Anders Jacobsen has pledged to donate one dollar to help the tsunami victims for every blogger who includes the following links on his or her blog.
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For immediate release
Could this be the excuse I need to look for an iPod in the January sales?
For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report is the weekly podcast of Neville Hobson, ABC, and Shel Holtz, ABC, a pair of communication professionals who think they have something to say.
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Itchy Coo
Waiting in my inbox when I got back from my holiday was an email from Matthew Fitt wishing me a "guid New Year".
Matthew Fitt, for those of you that don't know him,
... made his name with a science-fiction novel written in Scots and for the past two years he's been writing and publishing "braw books for bairns o aw ages" through his Itchycoo [sic] imprint.
Matthew and James Robertson, his partner at Itchy Coo, have cleverly realised that the best way to promote Scots is to encourage its use amongst children. And they do so by publishing books that are actually fun to read, rather than dry and dusty old poetry of the sort I had to read whenever my own teachers remembered their Scottish heritage (usually around the 25th of January).
They have a great collection of ghost stories, Gaberlunzie Joe's Pure Ghosters, that I even own myself (am I too old, Matthew?) and I note with pride that the latest collection of what the Itchycooers call their "manky mingin rhymes" is named, in what is obviously a nod to this site, Blethertoun Braes.
So, to mark this event, I've written a "manky mingin rhyme" myself, which you can read below.
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A MANNIE IN A BURNIE
A mannie in a burnie
catchin fishies in his mooth
gied a great big muckle sneeze
an - Wheech! - a puddock shot right oot!
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Skimpy clothes
For better or worse, I'm back after spending two weeks in wild West Wales.
And here's one I missed during the Christmas break: my name in Periodista Digital!
If you're willing to sign up at the site (and scroll all the way to the foot of the page), you can read the article in question yourself.
Alternatively, you can view this carefully cropped screenshot in which "Stuart Mudie" appears only inches away from pechos grandes, ropa corta ("big breasts, skimpy clothes") - although, if I'm not mistaken, that may be another article.
(If you don't speak Spanish, it's all to do with my upcoming participation at the New Communications Forum.)
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Footprints on the beach
Wiseman's Bridge, Pembrokeshire
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Boxing Day swim at Tenby
The sight of hundreds of crazed Tenbians rushing into the sea for the annual Boxing Day swim went a long way towards confirming what I've always thought about Pembrokeshire folk - they're mad!
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The finest drink in the world
Irn-Bru
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Christmas in Kilgetty
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Bladerunner
... or Charles de Gaulle airport?
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Tim Burton goes wonky
I hope my daughter's ready to start going to the cinema when this comes out - "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", remade by Tim Burton with Johnny Depp in the role of Willy Wonka.
It can only be magnificent!
--
Found via groc's bloggette
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A windy day in Paris: Video blogging comes to Blethers.com
This, my first experiment in video blogging, is a short, 11 second (95kb) clip taken from my living room window of a windy day in Paris.
It's a 3gp file, "the new mobile phone video format", and you may need a plug-in to play it on RealPlayer, Quicktime or your media player of preference.
For me, it launches automatically in Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox, so some research would still seem to be in order.
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Scots cuisine, and French school dinners
I've never eaten (or even seen) a deep-fried Mars Bar, that supposedly traditional Scots "delicacy", but I accept that the Scots diet is not exactly the healthiest in the world.
An article in today's Guardian reports, however, that English school dinners are even worse.
Turkey meals produced by Bernard Matthews are still being served up to English pupils - even though they fail healthy eating guidelines established for Scottish primary schools.
At least 12 Scottish local authorities have dropped the company's products - turkey Twizzlers, burgers and nuggets - from their school menus.
Living in France, I am pleased to say that my daughter, who is not yet two years old, already enjoys a wide range of cheeses (including roquefort, which she loves), often has veal for lunch at the cr\'e8che, and has never touched a chicken nugget in her life.
Read what Maciej Ceglowski had to say about the magnificence of French school dinners during the French week on his blog last year to get an idea of what French schoolchildren are fed. They eat better than I do!
I wonder if celebrity chef Jamie Oliver visited any French schools when he decided to take on the challenge of "tarting up school dinners" at a London comprehensive. Like many of the projects that Jamie gets involved in, the charge that it's as much about self-publicizing as anything else - which may well be true, but who cares? - doesn't take away from the fact that he is bringing some much needed attention to the debate.
However, when the schoolchildren who are presented with the meals he concocted make comments like "I think the new food is disgusting. I'd rather eat sausage and chips," you begin to get an idea just how far he has to go.
All the way over the Channel, perhaps.
--
Guardian article and coronary heart disease figures found via Complete Tosh
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Christmas comes to Rue de Belleville (II)
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Does modesty work well in PR?
I've been invited to participate in the New Communications Forum that's taking place in Paris in February next year.
[ Update, 11 January: The European leg of the Forum is now taking place in April (April 5-6, 2005) ]
I'm being modest, so I'll leave it to Guillaume to tell you all about it.
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An authentic blogging voice
I agree completely with what Neville Hobson has to say in response to the question "What if you're not the world's best writer but you still want to blog: what are your options?".
There's one thing that matters above all when writing a blog, and that's finding an "authentic" voice. Your voice.
I was talking to someone the other day about CEOs having a publicist ghost write their blogs for them. To my mind, that goes completely against the idea of what blogging is all about. Even blogging in a corporate context - in fact, especially blogging in a corporate context.
What you need to be a blogger are opinions, and lots of them.
As Neville Hobson says, "If you have thoughts, write them." Your voice will soon come through, and people will appreciate and trust it all the more for the very fact that you don't write like a press release.
--
This post is dedicated to all my friends and family who are tired of me going on at them to start a blog.
Just do it!
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Christmas comes to Rue de Belleville
It may not be much, but it's home.
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Flickr Zeitgeist
The graphic below shows a collection of some of the most recent photos taken by my group of contacts on Flickr. (Update: Despite the fact that I'm using the script to display only photos from my contacts, it seems to insist on showing everyone's photos - whatever, there are still some great images in there.)
I'm just playing around with it for now, but if I decide I like the result I may end up adding this to my sidebar as a free way of taking advantage of other people's hard work.
What do you think?
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First seen on Microcosmos
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MT-Blacklist makes a welcome return
The wonder of Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist Plugin is well documented. This tool for fighting comment spam in weblogs that run on Movable Type is so effective that Six Apart, the company that makes MT, even ended up hiring its author.
So ... if I know all this, why has it taken me until today to install an updated version of the plugin that works with MT 3.1?
Frankly, I have no idea, other than to say that I must be fool.
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One just in
It's not often I enjoy spam, but I have just received a particularly poetic message encouraging me to buy "brand new legal software at affordable prices" rather than the pirated software the writer of the email seems to assume my machine is filled with.
The subject of this email?
No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.
Beautiful! If somewhat ironic given the context.
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The secrets of the French language revealed!
I see that the proofreaders who work on the website of French newspaper Le Monde have a blog, Langue sauce piquante.
I have a neighbour who writes for Le Monde. We're supposed to be going out for dinner with her and her husband this weekend, so I must remember to ask if she knows the people behind this fascinating, exquisitely written (bien-sûr) new blog so she can tell them they have a fan - even if he is a Scot.
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Blogs and PR and how everything's changing
I had lunch today with Guillaume du Gardier of PR Planet, a Paris-based PR agency focusing on technology-based communication tools and new media such as blogs and RSS. Guillaume is also the man behind the CEO Bloggers' Club and is currently busy organizing the European leg of the upcoming New Communications Forum: Blog University.
We had a very interesting chat about blogs and their impact on PR, and how everything's changing and the press release is effectively dead.
I can see how Guillaume might have trouble convincing his French clients that blogs are the future of PR, however - or rather, that they are one of the futures of PR. My own experience of French companies - even in the hi-tech field - is that they often seem to be quite cautious and conservative. But Guillaume has a real passion for blogs, and if anyone can bring the ideas of the Cluetrain Manifesto and Gonzo Marketing to the French PR world, I'm sure he's the one to do it.
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The custard slice
... to end all custard slices.
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O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum
... wie treu sind deine Blätter!
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Garagardo bat, mesedez
My Basque doesn't go much beyond "Garagardo bat, mesedez", and the last time I tried to order a beer using that expression in a Basque bar here in Paris, the barman apologised for not speaking Basque - he was from the "French Basque Country" himself - and asked me if I was from Donostia.
I am reminded of this anecdote by a post on Transblawg about the website for the Association of Translators, Intrepreters and Correctors of the Basque language. As Margaret says, "It\rquote s good to see the letter Z getting the exercise it deserves."
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TypePad and MT powered moblogs
Never one to turn town free publicity, I have added my moblog to this list of TypePad and MT powered moblogs.
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The Parisian postal shrug
Live in Paris for more than a couple of months and you too will learn the Parisian postal shrug. It's the only way to surive!
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Last.FM
I know I'm late to the party, but here's what I'm listening to over at the "personalised online radio station" Last.FM.
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Christmas is coming, Stuart is getting fat
We bought a (plastic) Christmas tree today, the first I have ever owned, and I was seriously tempted to buy one of these very tasteful mobile phones to hang from it.
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Nice idea
David Galbraith has an idea so nice I can't believe that Apple isn't working on it already: the iPhone.
Update, 28 November 2004: Russell Beattie has some thoughts on Apple and mobile phones too. And a lot of comments in response to his post.
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O final de uma era
Mau has left the building!
Durante mais de três anos maltratei a língua portuguesa, a paciência de meia dúzia de infelizes leitores e, afinal, a minha paciência também. Não criei movimentos, não participei de passeatas, não tive idéias geniais. Minha opinião sobre qualquer assunto não vale um mísero segundo da atenção de quem quer que seja (e nem acho que valha, por sinal ? esta foi só uma constatação óbvia do exercício bloguístico).
As one of the dirty half dozen, I have but one thing to say - "Um abraçao, amigo".
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TreeHugger
TreeHugger is the definitive, modern yet green lifestyle filter. It will help you improve your course, yet still maintain your aesthetic.
I'm sure you will be hard pushed to find grass on the tram tracks in Barcelona and disolving underwear in such close proximity anywhere else.
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Like a Spanish cow
"Parler comme une vache espagnole" - speaking like a Spanish cow - is the charming phrase used by the French to describe anyone who mangles their glorious language.
I was reminded of this expression the other day when the cleaning lady at my daughter's cr\'e8che asked me if I was a Spaniard, since it seems my accent in French resembles that of one of her neighbours, who is Spanish.
While secretly feeling a kind of perverse pride that at least I didn't have a typically British accent, I was still surprised that she would take me for a Spaniard. Eight years living in Spain is a long time and must certainly have left some traces, but surely the twenty one years I spent growing up in Scotland must count for something as well - especially since it was in Scotland that I first studied French.
Frankly, what worries me most of all is that I will end up speaking Spanish like a Frenchman. Mon Dieu, anything but that!
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The broken tooth, or literature-loving CEOs
Via a post on the blog of Mihai Crasneanu, CEO of the online DVD rental firm Glowria, I have just discovered the work of Venezuelan writer Pedro Emilio Coll (1872-1947) - in particular, the wonderful short story El Diente Roto (The Broken Tooth).
Mihai has even gone to the trouble of translating El Diente Roto into French, for the hispanically-challenged among us. If you are both hispanically-challenged and gallically-challenged, I can only suggest you use the services of that fine French and Spanish to English translator, Mr Jeremy Smith - or Stuart Mudie Communications, of course.
Disclaimer: I too have a broken front tooth.
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The tech-support generation
We are the tech-support generation.
Next week, millions of college students and young professionals will head home for the Thanksgiving holidays. We\rquote ll sit with our families in warm, candle-lit dining rooms eating stuffed turkey, reminiscing over old photographs, preparing holiday shopping lists and \'85 Please. Let\rquote s be frank. We are going home to fix our parents' computers.
Fortunately for me, in this respect if not in others, my parents and I live in different countries. Even so, I still get the odd question over the phone, but most of the grunt work falls to my poor brother, to whom I am eternally grateful for shouldering this burden.
Of course, once either of them finds out about Remote Desktop, I'm done for.
--
Found via Oliver Thylmann
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Bait'n'Switch
You know it makes sense.
Kind of.
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Falling asleep at the back of the class
I have to pay more attention. Hugh Macleod has been in Paris and I missed him.
Had I known, I'd have tried to arrange to bump into him at one of those bars that "are open till 6 or 7 here". Maybe our paths will cross next time he's in town.
Hugh's
