graham’s blog

Architecture

I’ve been thinking for months about how to fit everything into my online presence. I am, like you I imagine, involved in many sites and get distracted everyday. It is sometimes difficult to know where to write a comment, a thought or an article in order to get these messages across. There is always that nagging thought that what I write could be lost or mislaid.

I actively resisted Facebook for months because I didn’t want to lose myself or distract potential readers away from here. I am now convinced that this is not the case and that if it (or other competing sites such as MySpace or Bebo) are used properly, it fits in quite nicely.

This grows rapidly when most of those you followed elsewhere and many family members and friends are also on Facebook. I realize that this is Facebook’s intention but it is nevertheless a fact that it is a formidable link pin between the immediacy of Twitter and the in-depth possibilities of a personal blog. It therefore has it’s place in the scheme of things or general architecture of an online presence.

I must admit that Facebook is also very good at aggregating content from Friendfeed, Twitter and Pownce and also a good place to point people to go for longer articles such as this one.

You just have to be very careful not to be drowned in the superficiality of a large percentage of the apps available. If you can manage to do this you are using it efficiently and in tandem with your other online activities.

This is why I encourage you to seek me out on Facebook to discover what I’m up to on a day to day basis and to continue to come here for appropriate, or at least I hope so, articles.

Now I’ve got that out of my system I’m hoping that the kitchen sink of my activities has been cleared and that I can get back to my normal programming.

So, how are things with you?

Wordle

Through twitter I discovered Wordle this morning and here is my very first wordle which was composed from my de.licio.us bookmarks. (thanks steph)

An interesting month

Looking at my last post earlier, I noticed that it’s been just over a month since I’ve added anything. It seems to be a regular occurence here on my blog.

I have cycles of activity and inactivity and while I have a lot to say everything goes smoothly and then suddenly I hit a black spot and dry up totally for a while.

I think the main problem is that I have never really decided what I want to do with this blog. Is it a personal blog where I tell you what’s happening in my life and in my family?

Is it full of commentary on local life?

Is it based around geekyness and technology?

Is it full of social commentary?

Looking back over the years it has been a little of everything and not very focused. There was a period a few years ago where I was part of a group of loosely held bloggers and we swapped stories and comments mutually. I sometimes look back fondly on that period.

Life goes on however and nothing remains the same.

In the end I think you blog in order to have some sort of presence, a kind of home on the web. It ultimately reflects on you and who you are.

It’s my birthday today and a birthday is commonly a time to reflect on where you’ve been and where you are going.

I don’t really feel that there is much point in continuing this blog. I’ve never managed to stimulate contributions from my own family or friends or turn it into a bilingual experience.

Social life on the web has evolved and much has shifted to sites such as Facebook or MySpace or to microblogging environments such as Twitter or Pownce.

Blogging has professionalized itself and many blog to live (or live to blog I suppose).

I keep asking myself why would anyone come here given the content I provide and I must humbly admit that there aren’t many reasons.

I do need a home on the web however and as my domain name is my name I will not be giving it up.

I will just mutate it into another form and move this blogging section and it’s history to another, quieter place.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll promote it to the front page in the future. We shall see.

In the meantime I would be more interested in some sort of lifeblogging and I’m eager to get my hands on one of these new iPhones.

I firmly believe that the future of the web is shifting to mobile devices. These are more suited to our lives as we live them and to being as spontaneous as we can.

By the time I get home in the evening the relevance of what has happened in the day has faded and invariably I move on, without having posted about it.

Thanks for reading and visiting me over the years. Don’t be a stranger. I’ll continue to visit you and to make sure you have ways of contacting me if you wish to. I’m not going away or leaving but am acknowledging the state of current affairs before moving on.

Tuesday’s shorts

• An article on the BBC News pages remarks that : After 30 years of unprecedented economic growth, the British are richer, healthier - but no happier than in 1973.
• Read in my feeds : How to take better photos for selling articles on Etsy-Ebay etc.
• Je viens de recevoir un e-mail me conseillant de voir le nouveau portail Bluewin.ch. Ce n’est pas très beau et plutot chargé et confus… Je ne l’aime pas et vous?

I’ve been “had” by my choice of template (or rather by my use of it).

My idea here was to just jot a few notes of what I’ve been reading and drop them off for your reading pleasure. I have two badges in the left hand sidebar that take up space and if my article has only a few lines I’m left with a blank space between the latest article and the preceding article.

I’m having to write these lines - usefully I hope to explain the situation - to fill in the gap for a balanced entry.

I’m in the market for a new template. I’d like this one to have three categories as lead articles to their respective categories and older posts to fill the front page. A lot like the leaders in newspapers. That way you can go straight to the main articles of life in Geneva, to articles written in French and to others on more technical subjects. I’d also like to use the WordPress pages more efficiently for longer illustrated articles that you can get to via the front page. Any ideas?

I just couldn’t wait

I’ve quite a few friends who have bought Nokia N95 8Gb mobile phones these past few weeks. This in addition to a good friend who visited last weekend from the States and had two iPhones led me to make an impulse purchase the day before yesterday.

This is the result. I was putting it through it’s paces yesterday and it’s really cool. The internal GPS works a lot better than I thought and the downloaded maps of Europe resulted in zero data being transmitted

How is your phone shaping up?

Intruder alert

I don’t know why, but this blog has been experiencing a fair amount of sp*m lately and I’ve been having to clean it by hand. I don’t know about you, but sp*m in my blog upsets me more than it should as it is an unwanted intrusion.

I tried tweeking the controls of my sp*m killing tools but that hasn’t made a lot of difference. In the end I’ve taken the decision to approve comments myself, for the time being, before they appear so please be patient if your comment doesn’t pop up swiftly.

Nothing fancy

Just a quick word before the hotel wifi disappears again!
Here I am in Edinburgh. The EasyJet flight was delayed due to fog in the uk. The suitcase was damaged in the baggage hold and the rental car had to be changed (They gave us an automatic that wasn’t)
Other than that the Hotel is great but the wifi isn’t. I hope once I click on publish … that it will.
It’s late. I’m off to bed.

Another new day!

Today is the start of my working week although in some ways I started yesterday.

Yesterday evening I spent the whole evening working on my new website and I’m pleased to say that it is more or less up-to-date and I’m quite happy with it.

I do live in the French speaking part of Switzerland however and work and play in French everyday.

As my potential clients are either French speaking or English speaking I have to have a website that “speaks” both languages in order to attract and retain them.

I installed a second French only site yesterday evening and copied everything over. I now have to find time to translate all the contents.

This evening however I am eating out with my wife and her brother and before that I am finalising my vacation plans for this coming September. More of that later. Tomorrow it’s a night at the Opera as I am going to see Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” at our local Opera House. I’m looking forward to that a lot although a bit sad to be going alone.

Graham jumps in at the deep end

Last year I decided to work less and profit from life more. I reduced my time to 90% but worked that 90% over 4 days instead of five. It was a good arrangement because my wife, who works at 90% anyway, synchronized her working week with mine and we shared long weekends for most of 2007.

She is changing employers at the end of the month however and her new bosses prefer her to be present each day of the week. The long weekend idyll is almost over.

Change is good. Resisting change is futile. I’m embracing this opportunity to restructure.

For a while now I’ve been active professionally outside of my day job, mainly to assist NGOs and friends in their web activities and have often turned away opportunities.

I’ve decided to change that and to freelance part-time and this post marks the change from then to now and beyond.

I’m currently working on an identity for my new status and leading up to a launch. I’m very excited about having two jobs and the synergies I will be enjoying between my various activities. I think there is a niche for what I can offer and my business and management studies are going to come in very useful indeed (at last). I will probably learn as much about building a business as doing the business itself but I’m going to have fun and it will be recreational rather than essential. That is a good place to be. Don’t you agree?

New plugin

I’m testing a new plugin this morning from AdaptiveBlue called Smartlinks. I’m afraid that if it slows down the page load I might swiftly take it off but the idea as seen in the video found on site might make your reading more interesting. The idea is that it expands the links I make (probably with links to vendor sites for products such as music, films and books) but I’ll test out various links to see what happens.

As I am on the subject I am currently reading a book by Marisha Pessl called “Special Topics in Calamity Physics” which is a good read. The chapters are a lot longer than the latest books I have read. Specially “A spot of Bother” by Mark Hammond which sometimes has a page a chapter.

I think that should be enough links to see what Adaptive Blue has to add (and of course to check I’ve installed it correctly.