Farmer versus Fox

Since I’m updating a little more than usual, I thought my world-worn and harried readers may benefit from the benefits of a web reader*. This is an “inbox for the web”, meaning that sites you are interested in have their new information plonked into one location for you to check out, much like emails all pour into one location for you to read them (instead of having to check different locations for each person who might send you something). This technology has been around for donkey’s years, or at least blog years; Bloglines is a well-known and established provider. I’ve never quite got my head around it, but recently with Google reloading their version, I thought I’d give it a go. And really, it’s dead easy.

Step 1. Go to Google Reader, or a preferred alternative, if you know better. I’ll just talk about the Google one, as it’s what I know.

Step 2. Get a google account. If you have a gmail email account then I think you already have one; if not, you just give an email and password and you’re away.

Step 3. Add subscriptions; that is, the sites you want updates from. You do it by putting information in the text box opened by the add subscription button (genius!). Obvious candidates are news sites – BBC news has a list of their news feeds here, for example – or blogs. I did have a lengthy thing about how to find the right address for the feeds (all blogger blogs are the webaddress plus /atom.xml) but it’s even easier than I thought. Just put the basic web address in and in most cases, it’ll just find the feed for you.

Step 4. View at leisure. When you come back to your Google Reader page, you can see all the new content that’s been added to your favorite sites (not always new comments on posts though, depending on the feed), and as you scroll through to find something enticing, the nice front-end automatically marks everything you pass over as old. You don’t get a big inbox to manage, just a quick scroll-through and next time it’s all gone.

Step 5. Sharing? Too early a stage to say how useful this is, but one feature is a no-bones proto-blogging feature, in that things you see and find interesting enough to share can be sent to a shared page just by clicking on the share button. Then others can see it and marvel at your powers of discovery and superior (or gloriously bad) taste. I threw a few things on today, and you can peek it. Blogging for people who don’t see the point in putting “as the incomparable William T. puts it” before an excerpt, and “indeed.” after it.

That’s it. Do it and put me on top, and keep on top of the quality.
EDIT: I wanted to say – and make clear that it’s not all about me – that thanks to having this in place I know immediately when something internet-worthy has happened to any of my pals. I just got a nudge that Tom has had a bad day, for example. I also have everyone from my friends list on the right in, so when Akin has more baby news, I know it. This is especially handy for keeping up with people who update only occasionally; I have great respect for people who’ve kept up with my blog given that there have been months where I haven’t said a peep, and they’ve presumably been fruitlessly checking back over that whole time. No more, people, no more!

*that is, RSS. But ignore the acronyms if you, like me, find them full of dangerous magic.

Not profound ones, mind, just things that have atruck me recently.

1. From the top floor of the number 59 on my way from work I witnessed a homeless guy grudgingly empty his can of superlager into a drain under the impassive eye of a policeman/community support officer.
Why?
Granted, I didn’t catch the whole scene – the guy might have been spraying the pinstriped backs of London’s great and good with frothy brew – but assuming he was doing what most people do with alcohol, drinking it, for whose purpose is he prevented from doing so? Mine? I’m definitely aware of the impact that large-scale vagrancy has on a local environment, living in King’s Cross, but I hardly think confiscating cans of lager gets us anywhere better. For the homeless fellow? Now, I’m under no illusion that life on the streets is fun and games and bonhomie, but surely we’re not in the position of making decisions about responsible drinking and leisure activities for someone with a bagfull of possessions and a dearth of options?

2. On another day, at the end of my route, I passed yet another London Lite/London paper vendor (for those who don’t know, these are free evening papers which are being agressively shifted off to punters in a war for control of the market). I almost didn’t realise that’s who it was, as they were almost exactly in the spot of the local big issue seller, who, sure enough, was standing plaintively opposite offering his charity paper you have to pay for to folk who were having free papers thrust upon them. Now, this comparison was particularly acute, but it’s got to symbolise a wider trend. I’m not a big fan of the Issue – it can have some pretty good content but I tend to pick up my magaziney info (reviews, news pieces) online – but I would make an impulse buy if I was in a good mood and I had a journey ahead of me to fill. I imagine I’m not alone. With the agressive hawking of free (if utterly banal) content, I neither need more reading material nor desire another street transaction. I imagine I’m not alone in that either. The Issue is going to be squeezed by this. This seems to point at a problem with market solutions to social problems – the market is intrinsically callous, and indifferent to whether innocent bystanders get shot in a turf war. And whereas a failed venture isn’t the end of the world for a larger company, pushing the disadvantaged beyond a viable honest living is going to see them make other choices right now, rather than waiting to voice their displeasure at a stakeholders’ meeting.

3. As an addendum (this post was sitting in blorgatory the last few days) today I got approached by a homeless guy who asked to speak to me and then said “don’t run away! Why is everyone scared of me!”
Which, in my opinion, is quite an affective way of getting someone to be a little scared of them.
I did immediately, and fluidly, say “I’m not scared of you, mate” with a incredulous chuckle in my voice… but after I chucked him some scrilla and walked off I did get the sense of a bit of a near miss.

Went to see Neko Case on Wednesday. Neko does what I hesitate to call alt.country – because I got a glimpse of her contract rider sitting on the sound stage, and it made it clear that under no circumstances should the words alt.country appear on any promotional material – but hey, that’s what it is, country/folk steeped music with a particularly modern compositional bent and idiosyncratic subject matter. Oh, she has a tremendous voice, and puts it to use. Check out Hold on Hold on, playing here, or Deep Red Bells, here; I highly rate both albums that birthed them. It was certainly a good show, although I think the set was stronger when I saw them back at the Shepherds Bush Empire.

M Ward supported, and I need to urgently recommend this guy. I got my hands on Transfiguration of Vincent recently but only allowed it to dent my consciousness, but seeing him live was an electric experience. Part eccentric showman, part troubadour, and part wounded artist, his songs are recklessly inventive but allow the music of ages to breathe through them. Tremendous stuff and I have indeed suscribed to his newsletter!

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AllMusic review of M Ward.
AllMusic review of Neko Case, and reviews of albums Fox Confessor…. and Blacklisted at trendier-than-thou music portal Pitchfork.

Whoops! Looks like National Write a Novel Month has begun, and I didn’t tell anyone! (Well, I didn’t know.)

It’s a nice idea, and although I have no intention of doing it myself, it’s spurred me to try and write a little more on this little blog. For this post, my purpose is simple – everyone who reads this should think about a creative aim that they’ve been putting off: knit that hat for little nephew, make that list of greatest songs, write that letter to the editors, redraft your story, write a story, update your blog, draw something.

Now do it.

Seriously, this coming week, starting with the heaps of free minutes the weekend offers, get it done. Then, if it’s done, do something else. In this little microcosm of the world, November is get something creative done month. I will keep you posted of my attempts; promise.

EDIT: Bloody Hell! So my decree goes double now. Get something creative done in the next 3 days, and then give the month a good going over.

Big evil threatening to ruin the world as we know it?
A trio of misfit schoolkids – wisacring girl leader, goofy guy spilling popculture references and a redhead – are the only ones who can stop em?
The crew helped out by a plummy-voiced school teacher, who takes off and on her specs at plot-significant moments, is flummoxed by their youthful decisions and carries an air of “I don’t know why I bother”?
The school- built on top of an older evil – as the focal point for bad things to happen?
Comic dialogue and outlandish schemes supporting a story about vigilance and personal responsibility?
Reoccuring bad-ass with bleach-blond hair?
The Chosen One?

Yup, it’s early 90’s CBBC show Dark Season , penned by Queer as Folk / Dr Who scribe Russell T Davies. What did you think I was talking about?

Spooky Buffy parallels aside (and DS predates even the Slayer movie by a year), this is a pretty cracking series. It’s incredibly pulpy, with Nazi plots and desperate professors, with science being both the problem and the answer. It foreshadows Davies’ Who work, as Marcie, the shows nicely paranoid voice of reason, is very much a Doctor. It really strips away the fluff and gets straight to the action – the first plot arc is resolved in 3 twenty-five minute episodes; shame there’s only 6 in all.

Neo-Liberal You scored 54% Personal Liberty and 27% Economic Liberty!

A neo-liberal believes in moderate government intervention on personal matters and moderate to high government intervention on economic matters. They believe in a social safety net or welfare state and try to balance personal liberty with safety or security. Some neo-liberals believe in more foreign intervention or war then most other leftists. Others are more like Centrist Democrats. More authoritarian- leaning Neo-liberals (such as personal 40/economic 30) are the result of a “fusion” between “old left” and “new right” tendencies.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 33% on Personal You scored higher than 1% on Economic

Take the test here (NB you will have to sign up to a random site at the end of the questionnaire).

I like the fact that they call it economic and personal liberty – that is, you’re maximum “for liberty” if you reject any societal obligations.

Weather. Weather. Weather. Blooming weather.

That weather.

The weather thing.

Everywhere I go, weather.

(Weather weather – watch the meaning bleed from the word as it becomes overused, weather, weather. It’s what Chris Moulin calls jamais vu, the subjective experience of lack of recognition for a familiar item, that resembles but may not be equivalent to semantic satiation, an objective decrease in the ability to judge as meaningful a repeatedly presented word.)

I’ve been to 3 countries on 3 continents in the last 3 weeks. On every one, weather.

China: Very hot. Very sticky. And lots of rain. Had to spend days ducking into and out of the heat into air conditioned shops + museums, or when desperate climb into icecream freezers or the path of a disapproving gaze from a distinguished posh lady. Freezes the blood that.
Australia: Damp. Very very wet, and damp and dank, and damp. Spent the time hiding from thunderstorms or tumbledrying my drenched trousers, shivering in an unheated bedroom and drinking to keep the heat in. Come back China, all is forgiven! Heat is great.
UK: Hot and sticky, close and windless. Stuck in the office feeding moisture into the padding of my chair via the conduit of my glistening shirt. How I long for the cool tempuratures of Sydney. That was idyllic, no?

In other news of my trip…gah, no, weather, phew, cor, weather, end.

PS Chris does a lot more stuff on deja vu/deja vecu, and there’s a nice article about it here.