Come On Up To The House

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.

Well gosh, very little time here to post! Work sets in, lots of course materials to faff about with, a ton of online VLE stuff hanging over our heads, and a bunch of crazy enquiries, like all the time. Work too hard for blogging!

It doesn’t distract me quite enough to prevent me from dipping that all-important wrist into Web 2.0 and creating a Flickr group. A small step, you might cry, and rightly so, but for me it’s a step into a geek zone that I’ve not quite crossed before. I blame Neal Stephenson, and certain others. Forums (forae?) are one thing, and I think I’ve had quite enough of them, and even Facebook is a little bit lowest-common-denominator, but the world at large, cyberspace, the Intarweb, this is all starting to take off in my head. The net has become something indispensable and integral to most peoples’ lives, and as such is rapidly losing stigma. There’s a multitude of tools on it that make the most of free-conomics: Wikipedia, flickr, google of course, but so many more. You want teaching tools? You got ‘em. You want images? Got ‘em. And so on.

I like it, I like where it’s headed and that the internet is moving away from its seamy, bodge-it-together beginnings to something fluid and useful and fun. Better than the telly, anyway.

You can find my flickr group here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/woodgreen/. As the URL suggests, it’s London’s best Wood Green-themed, so do contribute, if you can.

I have finally become a man. I have just last evening completed my first ever wet shave. That’s right: six and twenty years old, and I’ve never used a proper razor on my own face.

But, you see, I’ve just exited the world of facial hair. For four years (minus a couple of moustache-related ventures), I’ve been clad in a downy coat of human hair around my jowels, hiding a multitude of tiny moles, occasional post-adolescent acne, pale, sunstarved skin, etc. Combined with my chunky glasses, you’d have been well within your rights to suspect that I was hiding something. That wasn’t the case (or was it…?), particularly, but there is a kind of security in facial hair that fends off the outside world, just a little bit.

There is, however, lots of reasons why clean-shaven is the way to go right now:

• the classic British unpredictable summer
• the propensity for the likes of milk to get stuck in the beard
• the multitude of dirty indie types that consider the unkempt, Guevara-esque chinbeard to be the height of musical respectability
• the opportunity to look like a young Simon Pegg
• and so forth

So the experiment begins. The last times I’ve done this, I’ve panicked and grown the beard straight back, but this time I’ll be strong and hold out, to see if it grows on me. Also to be considered: whether I can be bothered with this new-fangled shaving pollaver. What’s that all about? Seems like a lot of work to me, although I am officially baby’s butt smooth now.

Further updates as events warrant.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I don’t understand fashion. Why is it that people have to have different clothes each year? Why does something from last year look funny now? I get affected by it even, although I’ve no idea how - jeans tucked into boots does look a little funny, although it was accepted practice not that long ago.

I mention this because summer has hit London, and out come the party frocks, and they’re all this kind of 50’s styled, flouncy Kate Nash-looking business. Here’s the dilemma: is this fashionable? I’ve seen these around for ages, so is this still hip or are all the people I’m seeing behind the times? I wonder if there’s a specific age when one turns into a dad, even without children. I don’t know. Having assessed my own appearance, I’m a leather jacket and an unseasonal hat away from Indiana Jones, so I’m approximately 70 years behind the times. Nice.

More of what I mean at Annie Mole’s excellent LU Fashion Victims set, from whence came today’s fashion icon.

Today, I lack motivation. For anything at all. I don’t want to work, to move around, to sit around, nothing. And yet, here I am blogging away like a buffoon. I don’t understand me.

Nothing on my mind today, either, in particular. Well, that’s not true. But nothing for a public blog to be discussing, that’s for sure. I’m not in this to bear all in some kind of ultra-confessional anonymous, Gossip Girl-esque fashion.

I so rarely post about music anymore. Despite what you may believe from browsing recent posts, I’m not a political animal, I don’t like it. It’s just that I find that I find out what I myself believe through writing, often. Not about the truly essential stuff of life: but about political stances (and sorry, I don’t consider that to be indispensable), reading, food, my own education, all these things. I don’t tend to read back what I blog before I post, whether it’s a quick note, a link, or full-blown, clever-sounding essay of a post, and so my writing is a little bit of self-exploration. Or rather, it is here - elsewhere, when I write, my thoughts are distinctly more carefully considered. But I like this style of blogging, it means I keep track on the development of my own ideas over time, and as i’ve never kept anything resembling a journal, it’s quite nice.

But I don’t often post about music anymore. In many ways, it’s a better thing than politics, than the hack and slash of left vs. right, the ideologies and the theories and the conjectures. I’ve never found a single political ideology or philosophy that adequately covers this human sphere quite as completely and satisfactorily as my own christian faith, and therefore while these things are interesting, I consider myself a little removed from them, like they’re separate things, outside of my immediate vicinity.

But music. Art and creativity and emotion and soul, that which separates us from the animals. This cuts across political boundaries (or should), all divides, all barriers. Even if it’s just the Four Tet EP that was on my mind at the beginning of the post, a bounteous morass of techno, Glass-esque minimalism and outlandish drum loops. This is a far better thing than the ructions of fractious mankind and the squabbly, myopic attempts to resolve things, far better than most things, you know.

Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum

In a rare outbreak of good taste, a regular contender in Facebook’s Top Five London Books is Harper Lee’s wonderfully evocative To Kill A Mockingbird. And no moment of the book is more evocative than this depiction of the Deep Southern heat.

As I write, London is baking in its fifth successive day of sunshine, cloudless skies and mid 20’s heat. While the debate will rage over whether this is BoJo’s doing, or whether the weather is playing a cruel trick at our expense, it’s unseasonably hot here, and collars are indeed melting. I’ve become accustomed to a certain degree of stickiness in every bit of me, and in everything I touch. Unusually, it has more to do with the heat than with residue of belgian buns.

So I’m in the comparative cool of the office, not relishing leaving for once. I’ve been drinking all day (water, you understand) and I feel ready to face the world but… everything’s so much effort, isn’t it? Work’s too much effort, not working is too much effort. Accursed lethargy.

So is this to do with global warming? I like to run with a sensationalist over-dramatisation every now and then, so I’m going to assume: yes. I have to confess, there are times when global warming seems a little bit distant to my life, and easily pretendable that it’s just not there. But I can’t deny that the summers are hotter these days, the winters are milder, the bananas are growing in Tottenham, soon cactus will be outdoor plants… It’s inevitable, and all our fault. It’s also easy to pass climate change off as a little irrelevant - I live on high ground, I’m not going to suffer - but in actual fact, living in this western, affluent apathy is probably going to ruin the lives of the world’s most vulnerable: those in Bangladesh, Norfolk, etc.

So I have my compost bin, I have the recycling box, I don’t use the ‘extra spin’ button on the washing machine… But surely there’s more I can do? Could I give up my car? Could I offset my carbon emissions (whatever that means)? Do I have to be vegetarian? I hope not. I’m sure I can do something though - if this keeps up I’m going to have to don the Colonel’s white suit and start mopping my brow out of habit.

Via the ever-reliable kottke.org - timelapse photography of a man trapped in a lift for no less than 41 hours. It’s almost painful to watch, but watch it you can: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/2008/04/21/080421_elevators

It’s been some little time since my last update, a good few days. Weekends are never the ideal time for this - there’s so many better things to do than to blog. But, back at work, and blogging is Go.

The job description for my immediate manager’s job is now available to apply for. I’m tossing it up as to whether to apply, although I almost certainly will. I have to decide whether to stay here and go up a notch, or to move departments/places of work after the summer. Not sure yet. I need, as usual, someone else to tell me what to do. As with my car, which has just this moment been broken into. Accursed teefs of North London.

The most pressing thought on my mind over the last weekend though, atypically, is morbid, and sad, and not a little confusing, and not a little beyond the scope of mere words. I ended up with friends from the internet - some I’ve met, some i’ve not. I met one in New York, I’ve met a pile from this country, I met a Canadian, I met my best friend. It was never my intention. I also know people that I wouldn’t consciously call my friends, but I hold a deep-seated affection for them despite never having met, face to face. A Strange New World, to be sure, this web lark.

Over the weekend, an internet acquaintance - one whom I often disagree with but whom I respect greatly - died. More to the point, he took his own life. The thought crosses: how would anyone outside of regular societal contact know? This complex, individual man took the time to send out packages of possessions - cd’s, posters, etc. - to those with whom he’d become acquainted, at least online. I haven’t received one. I don’t know if I will, I’m waiting to see. The thought, and planning, and interest this man had in his own death is a sight to behold, and perpetuates his own, enigmatic persona. I’m using long words in honour.

More than this though, it’s sad. It’s good to know that a bunch of people he met, with whom he shared just one tiny facet of his life, had some sort of effect on him enough to inspire a reaction. But I’ll never understand what he did, or respect that, I don’t think, and although I still don’t understand it all - least of all my own reaction to the whole bizarre affair - I have a feeling this whole concept will float uncomfortably before me for a few days yet.

How well can we know people whom we’ve never even looked in the eye? Not well, it would seem.