Blogday at Charity Shop Tourism

I’ve just noticed that Charity Shop Tourism is celebrating its first blogday this week. To celebrate, I’ve posted a top ten of the best charity shops I’ve visited this year, and tomorrow I’ll do a top ten of the best towns I’ve been to: that covers the Charity Shop and the Tourism bit, then. Do read, stop by and say hello, add your own recommendations and the like.

Charity Shop Tourism: Top Ten Charity Shops Of The Year

Blogroll

Added a few sites this morning. Possibly of interest to you good folks, in which case do click through and say hello.

Minor Delays – a short story for each tube station? Delightful

Fresh Eyes On London – sometimes it’s nice to have a noobie to refresh ones wonderment with the capital. Or a snow day.

London Reconnections – transport geekery.

Urban Velo – this sort of thing now applies to me, city-cycling guru that I now am. Weird.

Harringay Online – a little local flavr.

Interim

I’ve vented my spleen at a different location today – I’ve had a whinge about the ‘get Jeff Buckley to number one campaign’ at No Ripcord. I think I’m getting old – I’m losing my black-and-white view of the world and starting to see some sort of multi-hued version. Maybe I’m just evolving into a postmodernist nightmare, who can tell.

Anyway, instead of posting anything substantial today, I’ve had a fiddle with the site template, and you’re now looking at my new, three-column-based site. On your left is me around the web, so we’ve got me on Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, and my Google Library, then on your right there’s the blogroll and some internal links. Just so as you know.

That’s all!

Updates

Just FYI y’all… I’ve updated the blogroll with a couple of new comics, and some more…

1) Celebrations: new toaster at work, this is going to revolutionise my life.

2) I’m keeping track and maps of my cycling on my Tumblr, so you can see how slowly I’m progressing – come along and buck me up.

3) I added Pictures For Sad Children and Alien Loves Predator and Sky First Then Shoes and Kottke and Boing Boing to the blogroll.

4) New Used Adventures In Hi-Fi over at No Ripcord.

Blogroll

 

Blogroll

I’ve added some more links on the right there, I suggest you go a-roaming.

 

 

• Faith & Theology – quite a lot more than its title suggests, Ben Myers also has an excellent taste in music (think Tom Waits, whom we all love)
• Futility Closet – full of random facts, quotes, games and puzzles. Is therefore a fantastic way to start a day.
• OnionBagBlog – London things and all sorts of great photos, particularly (although I kind of wish his RSS feed was a full post…)
• Noel Park North Area Residents Association – not updated much, but an intro to life on The Greatest Estate In The World. If I’m right, one of the chaps from the Big Green Bookshop is on the board (although I may be confused with school governorship, I’m not really sure), so *subtle cough* great potential here.
• TheManWhoFellAsleep – his website’s a wonderful way of wasting time on surreality, as is his book. Therefore, his blog is bound to be fun.
• Scary Duck – mostly a collection of rants, literary adaptations and other blog things, as far as I can see, albeit presented in a very nice manner.

How many blogs would a weblog blog if a weblog could blog blogs?

from dullhunk's photostream

 

I’ve been writing this blog now for several years, and was doing a different one before that, and for reasons previously discussed, have retained that mild dose of social misanthropy when it comes to internet correspondence. For that reason, I rarely comment on others’ blogs, and I rarely cross-link in the same way that others do. For this reason, my visitors average out at about 50 random guests each day – I tend not to try and work out repeat offenders: I know of two or three at most that read COUTTH regularly, and that’s probably about accurate.

But I wonder if going down this self-imposed isolationist route is causing me to miss part of the joy of the Web 2.0 experience? I certainly read lots of blogs (currently 147 subscriptions on my Google Reader) but I always feel a bit silly talking to random interweb people. I went through a years-long phase of visiting music-based forums and I think I’ve got that out of my system now, but my own experience is that people from the internet are actually quite nice. 

So to link to some articles/posts I have enjoyed recently: 

• And It Feels Like Home visits Edmonton – the view from the Ikea window is my favourite one in London (similar to this via acb’s photostream.
• Ten Blogging Commandments via Faith & Theology (who (kudos) I first found when looking up Tom Waits) 
• A rather genteel and pleasant way of introducing people to new blogs via Scott Pack’s Me & My Big Mouth. Scott promised visit everyone that commented, so I am currently awaiting discussion on the confluence between Wagner and Bukowski through the medium of Tom Waits (him again).
• Fashionable Wood Green’s Big Green Bookshop go burlesque. That looked like fun, depending on how afraid of nuns you are… 
• Owen Hatherley posted about modernist petrol stations.
• Nothing To See Here is always lovely, and (just as a few weeks ago) I’m now totally fascinated with that caf near Waterloo.

I’m also adding: Unmitigated England; Ornamental Passions; Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science; and Ghost Signs to the blogroll.

Charity shop tourism

Generally speaking, if i fin something interesting my automatic response is to start a new blog about it. Music? I’m interested. I got a pedometer: I’m interested. Everything else? I’m interested. And so it is today.

My new best hobby is charity shop tourism, and if you want to know what I did over the weekend (although why you would…), you could do much worse than to relive Leamington Spa in the rain with me at my new blog, Charity Shop Tourism. Say hi!

Twittr

I’m trying out Twittr, as can be ascertained by the distinctly failed widget on the right. Hopefully by the time you read this, that’ll be sorted. I wouldn’t bother much with the del.icio.us link though, I’m not using much of that. In the meantime, check me oot.

I think I kind of like Twittr. It is what it is, it’s unpretentious, and for a purpose, and as such is much better, and much less annoying than a stack of annoying Facebook updates. All the controls are in the right place, I can track who I want easily, it can search my address book – it’s pretty sound, if a little unstable. I also like Remember The Milk, which seems solid and useful and nicely designed as a tasks/to do/calendar app. These things I’m exploring are from a Top 100 Tools For Learning list (I’ve tried digging it, furling it, delicious-ing it, we’ll see if there’s any point), which has proved interesting – things have changed since I was at school and the height of sophistication was a world map printed onto a blackboard.

I’ll be adding Infinite Thought, who’s excellent article on universities inspired yesterday’s post, to the Blogroll.

Blogroll

Just some updates:

Celebrities (ish)

Why, That’s Delightful!
Graham Lineham of Father Ted, Black Books, etc. fame – noted writer of drunk of Irishmen. His blog is where I saw the great pictures of the Anonymous scientology protest…

Lynne Featherstone: the Commons’ 5th sexiest MP.

Me And My Big Mouth: Scott Pack of The Friday Project (the indie publishing company, not the hideous Justin Lee Collins vehicle. When I say hideous, am I referring to the show? Or to Justin Lee Collins? You decide). COUTTH‘s (great acronym! I never noticed) first book blog link, I think.

Art

Sky First Then Shoes: as the author states: “every day the sky, with some writing on.”

Achewood is one of the Interweb greats in terms of comics. I am very disappointed that Ray Smuckles never made it as president.

Dinosaur Comics – it is what it is.

Hark! A Vagrant. Home of the infamous Tesla strip.

That’s it!

Blogroll

Just adding some old mp3-blogging chums…

Fil at Pogo a-gogo is a former Anglophile, now Canadophile (is that even a thing?). He has fine taste in olde-worlde punk, if nothing else.

Fancy some Field Mice and related sad indie? Then Colin has been your man for years: currently he resides at And Before The First Kiss.

Dalston Oxfam Shop has possibly the best premise ever.

Music Like Dirt is just classy.

To Die By Your Side: named after the perfect Smiths song; from Birmingham direction; prone to Britpop moments. Awesome.

You should already be familiar with The Daily Growl; The White Noise Revisited; Dusty Sevens; these are great ones.

More on this later.