Whales

Long-time readers will remember I used to write a lot about Whales about 18 months ago, well I wrote about them a few times.

This was due to my reading the brilliant Leviathan by Phillip Hoare, being inspired to read Moby-Dick there after.

Anyway, this obsession led me to pitch a clip joint article for the Guardian's weekly online blog of the same name – which was duly published a few weeks ago. I just hadn't got around to writing obligatory post to give it another link in Google's massive search engine.

Anyway, click the link and enjoy.

Creeking

I've always liked Jonathan Creek, not entirely sure why, but I suppose it must be mainly due to the intricacies of the plot and the infuriating plots that are unravelled by the end.

Writing a JC must be a case of plotting backwards from the ridiculous explanation to the set up at the beginning but this does mean that the story (as most mysteries do) lives and dies by its explanation.

Last night's had all the hallmarks of a good solid, spooky mystery but had to be explained with sudden last minute bits of information the audience had no access to until we were merely told about them. Other, better JC's involve the possibility of solving the mystery yourself, although of course you rarely do.

In other plotting news, I finished Midnight's Children yesterday and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I seem to have read a lot of long books this year so far, which takes up more time in the way I do enjoy 'ploughing' through novels, but there is something very enjoyable about spending a long time really getting involved in a story, and satisfying about finishing it.

And, in a nice finish to a blog all about writing, this is my 500th blog post (500!). All these words, thoughts, ideas, ridiculousness, and not a penny to show for it! Ho hum.

The void

Sadly, as you can tell, I have little time for this thing anymore, which is a shame as I muchly enjoyed writing it with my meandering thoughts on anything I thought about. Snow. There is something I could have talked about. Or New Years Day, there is something else I have thoughts on. But time does not allow, so you cannot read of these things.

Go, go forth, find others to read, they may desert you in time, but for now, they are bloggers, and you shall seek them out.

----

An update:

This blog will remain active, it's just far more random. If you can handle that please leave me on your blog rolls (mmmm, blog rolls) and link panels, if you only like having constantly updated blogs linked, I understand. I just thought I should clarify that the blog in its old state will not exist again for some time (I imagine).

Ta.

A is for...

It could have been aardvarks, it could have been Anne of Cleves, it could even have been Accrington Stanley, but no. My Great Twitter / Blog Crossover experiment (i.e. asking for people to suggest things beginning with A) resulted in anti-protons. So here are some words about a subject I know nothing about:

Anti-protons. Well, actually I am ProProtons. Or just Protons I suppose. I am also in favour of the unit of measurement known as a tonne. So I am Pro-tonne too. But I am no expert on this and so not a Tonne-pro.

Anti-protons are, actually, the opposite of protons. Obviously. If you wish to make them it's quite simple. Like any good journalist, I have taken the following from Wikipedia:

Their formation requires energy equivalent to a temperature of 10 trillion K (10¹³K). At CERN, protons are accelerated in the Proton Synchrotron (PS) to an energy of 26 GeV, and then smashed into an iridium rod. The protons bounce off the iridium nuclei with enough energy for matter to be created. A range of particles and antiparticles are formed, and the anti-protons are separated off using magnets in vacuum.

So you need a hoover, a fire and some iridium nuclei (most hardware stores stock this).

Now, before you go off to look for anti-protons you need to know they are really small. Think of a small bird - smaller than that. A grain of sand. Smaller than that. I mean they are really tiny. But if you stare long enough you'll see them dancing around with their little faces smiling up at you. Cute little things they are. In fact it's a little known piece of trivia but the Smiley Face is the exact anatomical structure of the face of an antiproton.

Perhaps I'll do B tomorrow - so if you want to suggest a topic, comment away...

400 posts

What have I learned from writing 400 blog posts? Not much. Well, a little...

You can't make any money from this, unless you bombard it with Google ads, and you probably need to specalise your subject matter too, while regular readers of this blog will know I write about pretty much anything. This blog was started as part of a course requirement at Cardiff University. Everyone else seemed to think it was a chore, but I really enjoyed it. There are only a few of us going now; myself, Mr Severs, and Mr Dando (sometimes). There may be more but I don't know of them. Apologies to my old course mates if so.

When I tried to focus it around media and entertainment issues I would often leave it untouched for days. Now though, I just write about whatever the hell I want and it's far more enjoyable. And it seems to generate more followers and higher hit rates than previously. I'd like to think the unknown (the unknown unknowns and known unknowns etc) of what's coming next keeps people coming back. I should credit Mr Five Centres for this somewhat as his blog is so hard to predict what's coming next - yesterday it was cereals - that it keeps you coming back and is very engaging And so I started to imitate this, but in my own way too.

Check back tomorrow when I'll tell you why I am sick of every magazine that thinks it's funny putting 'hilarious' captions on every single picture.

Was this profound or was it banal - or somewhere in between?

Image: Britain in the year 400.

Cover judging

Another Guardian blog, this time about album covers and some jokes included too.

Read here and enjoy!

13 minutes to go

I usually blog during lunch - it's less frowned upon you see; but some days I read the paper, or a book, or go for a wander. Today, I have done none of these things and yet haven't blogged (yet). I have just 13 official minutes left to write about something and I can sense these parcels of time slipping through my fingers.

Time is a funny thing isn't it? This time last week I was back at home in Cornwall enjoying a nice pasty lunch with my brother and mother; all the time I was at home, eking out the last days of my obligatory two weeks off, I was conscious of trying to really appreciate the lack of work, of being able to wake up when I chose and generally just being at home in the countryside, miles from the reality of everything else; yet I knew it was futile, knowing time was on it's way, in its 'winged chariot, hurrying near'.

That's the thing isn't it - when time is precious it seems to hurtle by, when it's not, it just plods dutifully on; the time between each snooze alarm is surely the shortest time in the world? Yet to a night-worker waiting for that last 10 minutes to pass, it must be the longest. Einstein was more of a philosopher than he realised (or perhaps he did realise).

How can you stop time doing this to you? Accept it or ignore it? Come to enjoy the dull ache of dragging yourself from your bed as just another sequence of seconds to be lived through? Or should you just make your millions as quickly as possible in order to retire and spend your time getting up at whenever-the-hell-you-like o' clock?

And yet...when you do have unending time on your hands, you become restless, tired, lethargic, frustrated, all for the want of something to do; a reason to wake and rise and head out - feeling your own time is being wasted through inactivity; the very flip side of that feeling of being forced to wake everyday with regularity at 7:20am. Why fight time?

Time though is not real. We have invented it. Terms like 'noon' and 'quarter past six' are words imposed on the positions of planets and stars. That's all it is. A way to agree upon the position of the Earth in relation to the Sun so we can make sure we are at the correct place at the correct time. We need to know when to meet trains so we had to invent these terms sooner or later I suppose.

And that was my 13 minutes of blogging; you can write a lot in 13 minutes - a blog that talks about time and Einstein and trains (how relatively relevant) - but time ticks on and so even as I wrote it passed on to 13:59. Soon it will be 17:30, then 22:59, then 13:00 once again and then Christmas, then the Olympics om 2012, and then...and on it goes.

Days

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin

Finishing touches

I've just noticed how image light the top of my blog is; it looks a touch drab. I don't want to go OTT but something for the banner on which the text could rest would be good. Any suggestions?

Utterly shameless, completely Worthwhile

You knew this day was coming - the signs have been there for a while now, the way little images have gone up on the side of the page, then the widgit showing my progress, the occassional post asking quietly at the bottom, but now the stealth is over. Yes, like one of those infuriating ad campaigns that spend weeks causing you to ask, 'what the hell is this about?', I can now confirm this is the begging blog post, asking for donantions to my marathon fundraising page.

I've seen you visiting this page - through my statcounter - coming from your netvibe accounts, googling my name, wondering what random thoughts have fluttered through my brain and onto this page - and now I'm calling a favour. I want you(!) for Marathon Donations.

It's easy - you go here, you fill in some forms, you pick a random amount to sponsor me, and you feel warm and fuzzy inside, while on the big day itself, know you've done your bit, as I pound the streets of London. We all win.

This weekend I'm off to Silverstone (nnnnnnnneeeeeeeeoung....(( the sound of F1 car going past really fast, obviously)) - so any donations received before then will give me that extra push to get me around sub 1.45!

There's plenty more information on the JustGiving page about my training, why you should sponsor me, and so forth - but if you are a regular reader of this blog, or a random who has a couple of quid burning a hole in their (online) pocket, please, spend two minutes clicking and typing to donate to my page.

Above, finishing a 10K in Cornwall in 47m 14 seconds, in 42 from 217.

The power of Twitter

Twitter once again showed what it can do as a news gathering source today, and proved it's not just a 'celebrity' application. Following 'tweets' about the plane crash in Holland helped me find not only someone at the scene @nipp, but also photos being taken and uploaded to the site, almost 10 to 15 minutes before they were uploaded on to the BBC website, usually one of the first sites to have images.

Not only this but following @nipp provided a series of updates, on what was happening on the scene live, before anything else was on a major news website, like these two updates: "I'm seeing a lot of ambulances and emergency heli's. It looks like the situation is under control, relatively" and "Again, the planes lookes like its in multiple pieces. With over a hundred people on board, that can't be good." (sic).

Furthermore both the BBC (via @ruskin147) and Channel 4 (via @channel4news), were messaging @nipp and asking him if he would contact them so they could speak to him. Indeed, C4's Twitterer simply asked its followers if they knew of someone on the scene and no doubt was directed to @nipp. He was then interviewed and it's on their website now. The Mumbai terrorist attacks, the plane crash in the Hudson and now this event, have all been covered by Twitter, with images coming in more quickly to an application site, TwitPic, faster than major media outlets.

When I was on my course blogging and so forth was consistently mentioned as the future of journalism, and most often as the 'death of the journalist', but it isn't/wasn't. It's a new writing outlet (not even new now), one that is open to everyone, and one that journalists need to engage with and use, and now do on almost every site of note, but not the end of journalism, just a new branch.

If I was coming into the media, giving talks on it, looking to the future etc, the impact of Twitter, especially its potential as a news gathering source for quotes, pictures and news, would be the thing I would focus on as the latest media development, and a far more interesting one too.

Blogging made easier

I've just read this article: 10 Tools to Make Your Blog Smarter, Faster, Better | Hack Your Life | Fast Company and as a result installed this which is a nifty direct publisher that lets you blog direct from any page you find you want to blog about. Like this. Nifty.

Twittering away

I joined the micro-blogging world of Twitter a while back and have started to sort it out. You can follow me if you want by clicking here.

So far my favourite thing is reading the updates from famous people which is quite funny. Jonathan Ross has been in the headlines recently for outing a series of fake famous people on Twitter by simply ringing / texting the people and asking if it's them. A weird 21st centuryness to all that. See this recent update from Jonathan Ross 25 minutes ago:

Wossy I'll call Frankie Boyle and ask him to twitter for real. He came round before xmas to look at comics and I thrashed him at pool !

Out of office

Christmas = no blogging.

The past as the present

If you want to you can read Samuel Pepy's diary and George Orwell's diary updated daily, in the form of blogs complete with links to subjects they mention so that additional information is added. An interesting modernisation of information from the past. You can also comment on them too, thus building a community of people interacting through the writings of eminent writers, even if they are only telling us they only got one egg today. But of course they weren't writing it for us, it was for themselves, in a private diary. All of which is great isn't it?

Ship's blog

Pete Goss is currently sailing, with three other crewmen, from Newlyn in north Cornwall, to Melbourne in Australia, via Cape Town in South Africa. It's being done in honour of the same journey taken by seven Cornishmen 154 years ago. They are sailing in a 37ft boat built from scratch named the 'Spirit of Mystery' in honour of the original boat called 'Mystery'. An interview with Pete Goss here goes into far more detail on all this.

This is all well and good. The interesting point, for this blog at least, is that Pete and his crew are keeping a thorough, interesting and amusing blog of their trip as they go. It's a great example of the power of blogging, that four men alone at sea, miles from land and travelling half way around the world can keep friends, family and strangers entertained by using the internet and specifically a blog, to upload entries of their latest sights and sounds and adventures that people can read almost instantly from where they are based - which you can also follow via a satellite tracker. Entries which in the past would have been confined to a ship's log are now in the ship's blog. Har har.

Furthermore there are many references throughout the blog of the crew asking questions about certain things - 'What do Turtles eat?' - and the readers of the blog emailing back with answers to inform them. They could Google it of course but where would be the fun in that?

Media darrhhliinggs

Peaches Geldof – who should form a salad with Apple Martin when she grows up (both of them grow up) - has done a Max Gogarty, and written one of the worst blogs in the world. And there are 112 million out there so that’s saying something.

Marina Hyde wrote a withering and quite brilliant rant (in the best possible sense) on Friday attacking the piece that is better to read first, before reading the blog itself afterwards.

Among the many comments, many of which are signed off with 'funny' user names, is one from someone called 'A A Gill' (about 10-15 comments down) and it does read as if it’s by A A Gill, so perhaps it really as him, which is an interesting thing if so. Either way, the comment from this person is also a very savage and incisive cutting down of such a vacuous, hollow and needless piece of writing.

Working through lunch

The BBC's Working Lunch had a little bit on blogging yesterday (video), and even had on blogger Annie Mole from London-Underground blog, one of my Netvibes favourites, so maybe you want to watch it? Who knows.

The blog eats itself (or doesn't pay its way)

A very interesting article here on why blogging hasn't taken off in the UK with regards lucrative money making. Point six, regarding the BBC, and how it swallows up huge amounts of internet traffic because of its position, coupled with its reluctance to link to any other media sites, small or large, would certainly hamper growth of UK blogging, as a professional, money-making tool. Of course in the US (where blogging can make money) there is no 'one' media outlet that has such a control. Certainly if you're paying £139.50 for your license fee you might as well get your moneys worth and use the BBC.

Secondly the BBC's own technology blog has commented on the story and referenced point six as well which is an nice piece of naval gazing within the world of blogging.

A final, pertinent, point comes from a Patrick Altoft, who runs a 'blogging consultancy' (that wouldn't even have existed 10 years ago) who says, quoted on the BBC blog, "You have to develop your own niche, you need to break news, you need to write stuff that nobody else is writing."

That is if you want to make money though. This raises then, some questions. If you need to do that to make money, which many don't (me for one), then why do people blog, and blog endlessly? For fun? Because it's an outlet for your voice and opinions?

The blog is so new everyone asks, 'why do people blog?' and so on. But perhaps the point is people have always wanted to 'blog' (i.e. have an outlet for their voices), but it is only now with Web 2.0 and broadband internet, that millions of people across the planet can do just that, where before they were limited to writing letters to newspapers and magazines, at best.

It's up to you, your content, and probably a little dumb luck, as to whether you'll make any money from it. Ultimately though, it doesn't bother me, and it clearly doesn't both the millions out there doing the same. It would be nice, but it's not why any of us do it.

The Great Blog In The Sky

So the 'oldest blogger' has died. The idea that she was born in 1899, lived through two World Wars and the rest of the 20th Century and into an age where you can upload words to be read by people from as far apart as Russia or America (which for a great deal of her life were polar opposites), is somehow both sobering and uplifting.

The best technology assimilates itself into life so seamlessly you soon forgot how you lived without it, (mobiles, the internet, Ipods, toasters...), and it's easy to overlook the humble blog. But their power to entertain - both the writer and the reader, (when done well) - means that a 108-year-old woman was able to communicate to people across the globe how they used to wash clothes before washing machines in 1908- another invention those of a certain age can't imagine living without.