Have spent a little time playing with a couple of Google products which have changed since I last used them – both for the better. Firstly, Google Reader, which was rubbish before, and now is a lot better. As is probably obvious, it’s an online RSS aggregator, like BlogLines (only a bit worse). It’s had a pretty thorough makeover, all of which makes it quicker and more user friendly. It won’t become my regular feed reader (FeedDemon at home and BlogLines on the move) but I’ll keep an eye on it. It has another use though, which I mention below…

The other thing I played with was the personalised home page. You can now have more than one page of stuff, which is nice, not least because the range of things you can do now has increased. I have set mine to to have one page with my Gmail, Calendar, BBC News headlines, del.icio.us bookmarks, and some useful searches:

Then a second page with some feeds that I regularly scan, along with a Google Reader summary of all my feeds, so I can quickly check what’s new.

The third and last page has a few games on it that have become available. Plenty of oppotunities for wasted minutes there…

I’ve added the personalised homepage to my FireFox startup pages – it’s pretty useful.

Note: I wrote this post, as I do all of mine these days, using the BlogJet editor. It automatically generated the thumbnails shown above, which is pretty cool, and makes my life easier…

I recently did what I have been meaning to do for a while, and created a Flickr set of my favourite photos (that I’ve taken). It’s a bit annoying that Flickr doesn’t give the set URLs a more human look, but there we go.

I’ll start posting photos from this set on here now and again – probably when other stuff is a bit slow. Here’s the first one, a view of the gardens at Powys Castle, and beyond:

We spent our honeymoon in Fuerteventura. I say honeymoon, but B came along too. We stayed at The Occidental Grand, a huge hotel in the middle of nowhere. A real turn-up and flop-out sort of place: just what we wanted. All the photos are on Flickr.

My first all-inclusive holiday, and I quickly learned the error of my ways when it came to the buffet meals. A couple of times to start with I indulged in my usual pile-it-high method, and came away pretty disappointed. It was then I realised that, even though there is tonnes of food about, you are actually really only meant to eat one meal at a time. Once I figured that out, it was fine.

I managed to get well covered in sunburn on the first day, and indeed my tummy was a particularly excrutiating shade of pink for most of the week.

The sea wasn’t far away, and I spent many a happy hour bobbing about, rolling around on the waves. Had a little fun allowing myself to be submerged by some of the bigger ones, but then it started hurting and wasn’t so much fun after all.

The week went far too quickly, of course, but we all had a fabulous time. Roll on the next one.

Read Alan Bennett’s Writing Home over my holiday – probably, in terms of pages, more than I have read for the entire year previously – and of course it is superb. It’s actually my second reading, the first not really counting because I was about 17, and while I enjoyed it then, it was much, much better coming at it ten years later.

This time I didn’t read it sequentially, rather I dipped in and out choosing the bits I thought most interesting first. I was usually right in my judgment, especially in leaving the bits about growing up in Leeds until last. I liked the diaries much more than I was expecting too – I think I found them long and dull as a youth – and the sections about Miss Shepherd are superb, of course.

Some thoughts:

• He mentions Kafka and Auden a lot. Larkin too – those three keep cropping up. I’ve read the latter, and will pick it up again (Bennett’s review of Andrew Motion’s Life excellent and a useful companion piece to Amis’ from The War Against Cliche), maybe I should give the others a go.
• Sometimes you can be too self-deprecating. I felt the need to beat the book and scream “You’re a success Bennett!” If he is moaning about how terribly he is doing, where the hell does that leave us?
• It made me want to hunt out his other work. I’m reading Talking Heads now and will look at getting his other plays, both stage and screen, from the library or something. Has anyone seen and have thoughts on his television stuff, pre-Talking Heads? Stuff about spies and Kafka. I don’t remember any of it. I guess I was too young.
• C is reading Untold Stories at the moment, and I’ll grab it as soon as she has finished.
• Writing Home is a good title for a blog. I’ll take it.

Things have changed quite a bit on here, largely because of the change in nature of my blog, and the sort of stuff I’m writing about, as well as the fact that I am not adding as much content as I used to.

I have switched theme from my pretty heavily modded Contempt – which was a shame in a way, because I especially liked my rotating header images – to Hemingway, which displays stuff in a quite different way. It’s also cool because we are having a reading from A Farewell to Arms at the wedding! I like it, but it is going to take a bit of tweaking here and there to get it looking just how I want it. I’ve also personalised the title of the site a bit, and used one of my favourite quotes as the sub-header. It’s from Gore Vidal, by the way.

While I am talking about themes and stuff, I must pass on the Firefox theme Mostly Crystal, which is excellent!

Really looking forward to Armando Iannucci’s new show, Time Trumpet. Here’s an interview from The Independent, which is worth preserving:

Armando Iannucci: Keeper of the satirical flame

With I’m Alan Partridge and The Day Today, Armando Iannucci pioneered a brand of comedy in which TV itself was the butt of the joke. And the medium is in the firing line once more in his new show, Time Trumpet. He talked to James Rampton

Published: 31 July 2006

Armando Iannucci claims to be annoyed – although a tell-tale smile is playing across his lips. The mastermind behind such multi-award-winning comedy shows as The Thick of It, I’m Alan Partridge, Knowing Me, Knowing You, and The Day Today has just returned from a two-week holiday and is now horrified to discover that, as part of the BBC’s latest reorganisation, he appears to have been “restructured”.

“I go away for two weeks and the managers say, ‘change everything’,” splutters the leading comedy producer of his generation in mock outrage. “I now appear to be part of something called BBC Vision. What does that mean? I thought I was supposed to be making comedy shows. Still, at least we’re not part of BBC People. I understand they’re very nasty pieces of work.” Warming to his theme, he storms to his computer and calls up an incomprehensible Venn diagram “explaining” the new BBC set-up. “When you see something like this, you think, ‘I can’t cope anymore!'”

Pointing at the baffling molecular structure on his screen, the producer continues: “I have no idea what those four helicopter-landing pads mean. Why do things like this happen? Does it give some people a way of filling in their days? By the way,” he carries on, “do you think the consultants who drew these charts also draw charts about the structure of their own company, or do they get in consultants, too?
“In the end, of course,” Iannucci deadpans, “this restructuring at the BBC will lead to a far stronger raft of programming across the digital map.” Unable to keep a straight face any longer, he erupts with laughter.
This riff is typical of Iannucci – a naturally funny and irreverent man who is capable of locating comedy in the most seemingly banal areas. And yet, if truth be told, he actually has very little to complain about right now. After all, it is not every producer who is given an entire department to oversee, but here we are chatting in his spacious office, the nerve centre of “Arm’s Arm”, a wing of BBC Television Centre that is given over to the new comedy unit run by Iannucci. (You can tell it’s his domain because all the walls in the surrounding corridors are plastered with stills from The Thick Of It).

Continue reading “Time Trumpet”

The current situation in the Middle East is unbelievably depressing. Stuff like this from Melanie Phillips hardly makes one more sympathetic to the Israelis.

Hadn’t come across this before, but the children’s charity SOS Children’s Villages UK has produced a downloadable .zip of Wikipedia entries they think would be useful to children in terms of subject and quality, that people can distribute via CD.

SOS Children have released a free encyclopaedia (with 8000 images and 4000 pages worth of text) made up of articles cleaned up and selected from Wikipedia, and aimed at improving awareness of the world around us amongst 8-15 year olds. They include articles of particular interest to children (dinosaurs, space travel, the Solar System, plants and animals) and a wide variety of other scientific and geographical topics. The 2006 articles have been hand-picked from Wikipedia, tidied up (by deletion only, not alteration), checked for plausibility and suitability (by volunteers, whom we gratefully acknowledge) and put together in a form suitable for publication on a CD. We judge the content to be child friendly and allows a “surfing” experience with many cross-linked articles within a safe offline environment. The encyclopaedia can be downloaded as a zip file together with a copy of the SOS Children UK website with some details of our work in 125 countries.

What a brilliant idea.

From the BBC:

Users of the Yahoo and Microsoft instant messaging programs can now contact each other directly.

The two firms have released software that ties the two networks into a huge community of 350 million users.

The trial software allows people to swap text messages but will eventually let people talk to each other too.

The move marks a break with the past when operators of the big instant message systems resisted calls to open up their networks.

Chat channel

AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo operate the largest instant messaging networks and, until recently, anyone wanting to talk to friends using different text chat systems had to maintain several separate accounts.

Users can sign up for the test software via the Yahoo and Microsoft messaging sites. Only those using the latest versions of the IM software will be able to join the trial. Eventually the software will be made available to every user.

The software uniting the two networks will use icons next to people’s names to denote whether that person is on the Yahoo or Microsoft system.

“It does make it easier for many consumers who will need to keep one less instant messaging system up and running now,” said Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg.

The tie-up makes good on a promise the two companies made in late 2005 to get their networks linked.

The trial version of the software is being made available to users of the two networks in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK and US.

While AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have the most users of IM, there are many other operators of these text chat systems. Some of those operating IM networks, such as Google, or developing the software, are pushing systems that use more open ways of letting users chat.

So, England’s World Cup campaign has come to an end, through the usual medium, the penalty shoot out. A few things came out of the tournament for me:

• England were nowhere near as bad as their critics have made out
• England have to play with two strikers. I don’t think they necessarily have to stick to 4–4–2 (after all, Bobby Robson was successful in 1990 with 3–5–2), but two up front is a necessity for me. Other countries who play successfully with 1 up, like France against Brazil, last night, have a midfielder with a spark of creative genius. In France’s case it is Zidane, in Portugal’s it’s Deco. With one up and no Deco, Portugal looked ordinary against England. England’s creative urge is with the strikers, currently Rooney. He needs a partner to feed to take advantage of his good work. Gerrard is a wonderful player, but he isn’t a playmaker.
• Frank Lampard really shouldn’t play for England again, unless some sort of dramatic improvement occurs. What is it that he does that Gerrard doesn’t? The two, for me, are too similar when played in the middle of the park. One option might be that if Beckham stops being a #1 choice, Gerrard could play wide right and that might give Lampard the room he might need – but the emergence of Aaron Lennon as Beckham’s replacement precludes that.
• Taking four strikers, when two are unfit and one you have no intention of playing, just isn’t enough for a major tournament
• Pinning all your hopes on an emotionally combustible 20–year old is probably not a good idea
• England are almost certainly a better side than Portugal, or at least a better side than Portugal without Deco

As for Eriksson’s reign, well, I think he did alright. People are quick to forget the total mess England were in when he took over; after a clueless defeat to Germany and a draw with Finland that was considered a good result. He deserves credit for creating a relatively settled side, and passes on a good squad to McClaren. What McClaren will hopefully bring to the job will be a little more creativity in squad selections and bravery in terms of picking the best players to fit a settled system, rather than trying to play the best XI regardless of how they fit together.

My England side for the Euro 2008 qualifiers:

Robinson
Neville, Ferdinand, Terry, Cole
Lennon, Hargreaves, Gerrard, Cole
Owen, Rooney

I think Hargreaves emerged during the Portugal game as a quality holding midfielder – he might not have Carrick’s ability to pass, but his all-action style would give Gerrard the freedom to bomb forward at will.

Originally posted on Palimpsest:

Well, I have now finished two books consecutively for the first time in ages, and at last my Palimplist is making some movement. I think I should thank Patrick McGrath for that. Port Mungo is every bit as good as everyone has said it is.

It is a remarkable book – superbly written yet easy to read, gripping yet horrifying too. I read it with an ever increasing sense of dread, the slow drip feed of what might be the truth opening more avenues rather than pushing you down one path. His characters are superbly drawn, and mostly vile, every one of them deeply flawed in some way, though some deeper than others, of course.

I gave it 5 stars, which it fully deserved, though it doesn’t get the red treatment because I didn’t love the book like I did Owen Meany say, or Gatsby. It’s a remarkable achievement, though, a brilliant book and I will certainly read more McGrath in the near future.

After the purchase of Writely giving them onine word processing, it appears that Google will shortly be offering a spreadsheet too.

These, with Gmail and Calendar effectively provide a free to use Google Office suite. For home users with a swift broadband connection and no objection to using Google, why would they bother with anything else?

I’ve had to have a bit of a review of my online life since I started my new job. I simply haven’t got the time that I used to for administering all the sites I have managed to become involved with – at least to the extent that I used to.

So, I am going to cut down on my blogs. This one is going to have to have the non-tech life stuff in again, rather like davebriggs.net did. The problem is really that coming up with tech stuff takes time – time spent reading hundreds of blogs, often checking in several times a day to see if anything new is in, following up links and stories, testing software and services. I just don’t have the time to do that anymore, and the lifeblogging will at least be a quicker and more readily available source of content. This means that World of Dave will be dying soon, though I might look at importing the posts into this blog.

I’m also coming across some interesting stuff in my new job, and so I might like to post about that.

This should mean I have the time to start looking at Palimpsest more regularly again, which is important to me as it is a great site, and easily my most successful. I might look into spending a bit more time developing Goal Mouths with Stewart, and Impnet with Chris.

I also had the idea for an interesting photoblogging project, but that will take up a fair bit of time to set up and I’m not sure how much interest there will be in it. Then there is all made up, which is all set and raring to go, but for which I need to get a back log of stories for before I go live.

Gah! So much to do, so little time!