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Forgive me for indulging the pathetic fallacy for a moment here, but I've just spent half the evening in an unheated chapel which reeked of frankincense, watching my fingers gradually turning white from cold and lack of circulation, before cycling home through the dark and the glasses-misting, lung-rotting, half-frozen miasma of leafy autumn wetness, and — to cut a long story short — I'm feeling a little bit sorry for myself. It doesn't help that I've coughed so much that my stomach hurts, and my tonsils seem to have swollen to the size of golf balls. I'm not sure how that would translate into weather; hailstones the size of tonsils, maybe. Let's hope the weather isn't listening.

The unheated chapel was Hertford Orchestra's fault, or rather the fault of the other orchestra which had stolen their usual rehearsal room; actually, I think they were trying to heat it (occasional smells of burning competing with the incense suggested a fan-heater somewhere in a corner), but the attempt at heating was almost as hopeless as the attempt at lighting (a couple of desk-lamps trying to provide enough light for about 10 string players), and the overwhelming impression was of a group of survivors of some nameless horror, huddled around their last candle, trying to play loud music to keep the wild beasts at bay before resorting to burning their instruments to keep warm (sadly there were no violas there tonight so we'd have had to start with 'cellos). The fact that the music was Mussorgsky's "Night on a Bare Mountain" probably helped to complete the picture.

( orchestral manoeuvres )

Aberdeen

Dismissed as grey, cold-shouldered, distant, stern,
and harsh -- until I saw it in the light,
suddenly shining silver, every stone
soaking up the warmth of summer. Bright
sun gleams on every edge and corner, lingers
on lines lead-pencilled by an architect's long fingers.

The Town House turrets steeple to the sky.

You sit in silence on the long low wall
beside the quad; a way apart, I lie
balanced, hard stone between my shoulderblades,
hard stone along my spine. Not far to fall,
but far enough. The light begins to fade.
Your fingers curl around a cigarette;
I catch my breath. Your eyes stay distant, cool as granite.

It feels like cheating, meeting blogging targets by posting backlogged material (even though that still satisfies the point of the exercise, the unblocking), so I'll try to add some value to a seventh-rate sonnet by picking apart the process.

( On writing and rewriting towards (or away from) some truth or another )

As I twittered yesterday, there's now an LJ app for the iPhone. This test of its capabilities doesn't count towards the post-a-day, but may make it easier to keep up while I'm away at a conference next week.

( Let's see what it can do... )

In summary: quite usable, a bit buggy, but since it's free and this is only the first release I will persevere with it and see how it develops.

PS: I should point out that this is the first LJ client I've tried at all. I did look (back in the early days) to see if there was a command-line LJ client, and there wasn't, so I stuck with the web interface. 8-)

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Current Location: United Kingdom, England, Oxfordshire

What a horrible name, despite (or because of) the echo of "pomo" and the crumb of "NaBisCo"; however, I have swallowed my objections and joined NaBloPoMo, the National Blog-Posting Month thing. (Is it a movement? An event? An experiment? A club? All/none of the above?) The idea is to make a blog post a day, every day, for a month. No minimum (or maximum) wordcount, no prescribed (or proscribed) topics; just write something, anything.

I did this last year in November; I don't remember being aware that it was part of a national initiative, and I certainly didn't join in by signing up for any social networking sites. Part of this was because if I failed, I didn't want anybody but me (and, as the month went on, my readers) to know I'd failed. I more or less succeeded (though I do remember a couple of eleventh-hour typing sprints to try to sneak the post in before midnight, rather like this one) and it did have the effect of clearing a mental backlog. That's really all I'm aiming for this time: 30 (or more!) posts and a bit of mental decongestion. (I could do with a bit of physical decongestion while we're about it, having had a stinking cold for the last few days.) I promise it won't all be meta-content, blogging about blogging -- there can't be many more dull things to read, and there are certainly lots more interesting things to write! -- but I don't promise much more than that.

If there's something you want me to write about, please suggest it here; but I'm afraid this is an old-fashioned writerly text (this particular author "aten't dead", PoMo notwithstanding) so that's about as interactive as things are going to get. If you're not interested... remember those links you used to get on people's "home pages" when we had those instead of blogs, the ones saying something to the effect of "If you don't like this page, go somewhere else" with the link taking you to a random page? Imagine there's one of those. You're feeling lucky. Click here.

Shameless admin post, because I fail at address book:

The following LJers are in my address book or on one of my many contacts lists but I don't have addresses for them, or am insufficiently sure that the address I have for them is the correct one:

aardvark179

damerell

daneel_olivaw

emperor

ghoti

hairyears

julietk

kaet

martling

mobbsy

nja

pseudomonas

rgl

simont

spyinthehaus

scat0324

vinaigrettegirl

If you are on that list and you don't mind me having your address, please could you email it to me?

If you are on that list and are thinking "goddamnit j4 you totally haven't commented on my LJ or anything for YEARS, why do you want my address now?" please accept my apologies :-/ and use this as an opportunity to email me anyway and say hello, or rant, or whatever.

I know I have been neglecting my friends (and non-LJ friends too) a lot recently, and I'm sorry. I have been busy and ill and stressed ... but this isn't a cry for help, just an admission that I have been weary and not prioritising/work-life-balancing very well. A kick up the backside would probably do more good than sympathy, to be honest. Though badgers also gratefully accepted.

ETA: Oh yes -- if you're not on the list and you think I don't have your address and you'd like me to have it, or think I should, please email me anyway! Or, y'know, anything, really. OH HAI. SHOULDENT POST TODAY I HAV TEH CONFUSED.

ETA2: If you are on the list and I do have your address and have even actually managed to send you something, like, two weeks ago, see above re HAVIN TEH CONFUSED. *looks sheepish*

No, I'm not moving house again, but people in the Cambridge area may be interested to go and see the Walking House at Wysing Arts Centre. Though as

addedentry says, if it can walk, why can't it come to us?

One of these days I will get round to posting something contentful again, honest.

Frankly, good riddance.

So despite the Current Financial Climate, one 'Stockbroker'[*] will be happy...

[*] completely unnecessary tenuous link

A thread on ox.general (no, really, some people still use netnews) about Christian formulas in degree ceremonies prompted

addedentry to suggest I make this image (SFW LOL HTH). So I did.

Four jobs going here at the moment, if anybody's looking...

ION, I know, I haven't posted properly for about a hundred years. Busy, stressed, & persistently not-entirely-well, but basically okay underneath it all.

Apple unveils largest iPod yet, one hundred times the size of Steve Jobs. [BBC News]

In other news, approx 12,800 people already thought of my joke. Which probably makes it not actually my joke.

If tomorrow is the end of the world, let it be said... by, er, nobody... that I was frivolous to the end.

Before I start rambling about SPAM, thanks to everybody who's given me such useful answers to my questions about databases -- especially

rysmiel who sent some really detailed information about actual real databases in the wild, and Lou who pointed me in the direction of lots of interesting reading-matter (much of which he wrote). I haven't really had time to digest it all yet (that's "digest" in the sense of "assimilate and extract useful stuff from", not in the sense of "bundle into one long email which can be shelved as a whole rather than accruing a little bit of guilt for each individual component") but I'm slowly chewing my way through things.

*

Today I got a spam with the subject line "September". I was hungoverly thinking about time-management so I absent-mindedly read it, and it took me two reads to realise it wasn't a plan or a horoscope:

Second month you will notice an increase in size of up to 1 inches, plus an increase in Girth (Width) of 5%, plus all the benefits of the first month.

An increase in size of up to 1 inches? Could that tall dark stranger be a grande mocha latte with chocolate on top?

But that's not the spam I intended to write about when I thought 'oh yes I should write about this' like two months ago. ( spam, spam, spam, spam )

( things I have eaten, things I haven't eaten )

So I make that 55 out of 100 -- over half, but still plenty of things to try! -- and it appears that most of my eating exploration has happened in the far-off land of, er, Cambridge. And I can't think of anything that I wouldn't consider eating, except things you really can't eat unless you're a crazy Frenchman, like glass or hair or unicycles or tambourines.

Crowdsourcing my brain....

I am looking for a good introduction to sensible relational database design.

( where I'm starting from... )

Any suggestions, comments, constructive ridicule etc gratefully received.

From Bilateral thinking puzzles:

Q: Deep in the forest was found the body of a man who was wearing only swimming trunks, snorkel and facemask. The nearest lake was 8 miles away and the sea was 100 miles away. What happened?

A: The man is a priest.

Also, if you haven't seen Michael Kelly's lateral thinking puzzles yet, you should.

Things I still haven't posted about which I really did mean to (and may yet) post about:

• my iPhone!
• Institutional Web Management Workshop 2008 / Aberdeen
• The Wizard of Oz (on at the Southbank Centre now; we saw it on Sunday)
• Chess (the musical)
• all the other gigs, films, etc we've been to recently
• not going to Truck

There are 115 things in my "lj_temp" directory where I keep half-written posts and notes of things I might post one day. Jesus wept.

Things I still haven't done which I really did mean to / do need to: really, too many to list.

I want to take a three-week holiday from time, to catch up on everything.

The iPhone 3G comes out tomorrow.

The O2 shop in the Clarendon Centre will have "lots" in stock. It opens at 9am.
The Carphone Warehouse on Cornmarket will have 50 in stock (though you can put your name down today and sort of reserve one). It opens at 8am.
The Carphone Warehouse on Botley Road (on my way into work) is uncontactable by phone, ironically, so I have no idea when they open or how many iPhones they will have in stock.

[Poll #1220935]

ETA: the NOT AN OPTION bit was meant to appear at the end of the poll but LJ-poll-maker cocked it up! FAIL!

I know I shouldn't find this cute, but:

"Your password reset request has been mailed. It should arrive in your mailbox momentarily."

Er, well, I hope it stays there for long enough that I can read it, at any rate...

It used to come so easily, this sort of thing.

A half-empty house, glowing light in the middle but dark around the edges, like the slow sodium sunset that sets the car park on fire every night. Sometimes we watch it from the balcony, standing in the shadows, raising a glass; I think of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, of late-night heat, the windows of continental hotel rooms.

The sun has long since set. I feel like the sky before the storm, airless and restless; opening windows and doors, playing half a song and knowing the ending before it's begun, moving things from place to place like the wind kicks a can along the kerbside. My skin feels salty, scratchy, too small.

Nights like this I miss everything, everyone and everything ever touched and lost: boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends, new friends, rivers crossed and re-crossed, fire in open fields, a tiny kitchen with a skylight, a red carnation, a bench in the park on a stolen afternoon, two painted numbers, still water full of stars, 'sorry' scrawled on stone with stone, leather jackets many and various, poems published anonymously, a silver earring somewhere on the streets of Paris, kisses in alleyways, messages in bottles, names on pencil-cases, shells saved in pockets, green reeds strewn on the floor of a shed in the woods to dry and fade, sixteen-pointed stars made of paper, right the way back to the apple tree by the swing at the end of the long garden.

Lists are too easy, they swell like damp wood: I am crossing off items, I am tearing off the days, and there is nothing underneath except more days.

I am carrying a bag full of sand, with a hole in the bottom.

I am rattling around in a box full of bones.

How can you have so much, and lose so much, and still have so much to lose?

I'm back from Glastonbury. No, I didn't wuss out because of the rain: ( mostly non-rain-related stress )

Anyway, all this is really just to explain why I'm here & not there, so, y'know.... as you were. Hope you're not getting too rained on whatever you're up to at the moment.

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shadows of echoes of memories of songs

Recent Entries

Season of mists

All points North

iPost

NaBloPoMo IntroPo

A post: post; posts.

Moving house

I read the news today

Communi-yum

Group where?

Big Jobs

Junk in the box

The eat is on

Working on the SQL

Thinking outside the goldfish bowl

Backblog

iWant

Love Tory

Moment to moment

I am a part of all that I have met

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