2009 February | The Adventures of Scribbleboy

Archive for February, 2009

Feb

Blogging the Twitter

By Scribbleboy 3 Comments

Categories: Technology

A little bird told me...

We’re busy doing nothing, working the whole day through,
Trying to find lots of things not to do.

Johnny Burke

I love Facebook and you probably do too (more than likely you’re reading this on Facebook or you’ve followed a link from there). One of my favourite Facebook tasks is updating my status. It’s a line of text after my name that I can use to tell the world whatever I want.

Back in the day it used to be preceded by the word “is”, which could lead to some rather philosophical statements.

Man is. Man is or isn’t he? Man isn’t.

Thankfully these dark days are long gone and I can now start with whatever word I choose. I can say what I’m doing, share my wisdom, whore out links and, now with the ability to comment on statuses, cast questions out into the ether.

Unfortunately some days “Jonathan is restless” and everyone else’s status is equally uninteresting. The reason you’re friends with these people is because you’ve got stuff in common and when that stuff includes going to the same uni, drinking in the same bars and seeing each other on an almost daily basis suddenly their statuses can get really boring; 200 odd echoes of “I’m bored, broke, hungover and I have problems with my man.”

Enter Twitter.

You’ve probably heard of Twitter. Twitter is a place loved by Stephen Fry where Perez Hilton and Lily Allen go to fight. Twitter makes Jonathan Ross say salad and found Lance Armstrong’s missing bike.

Closer to home though someone else has been nagging you to join Twitter. It’s the person who told you to join MySpace, it’s the person who told you to switch to Facebook, it’s the person who’s always ahead of the technology trends that you always ignore (stop ignoring them, they’re right).

Go to Twitter.com, sign up in seconds and befriend your favourite celebrities, musicians, politicians and magazines and be privy to their thoughts as soon as they think them.

Happy tweeting,

@scribbleboy

PS. if you see a Facebook status that reads “Damian ~操你妈~.” do not think “I can’t read Chinese so typing a random response would be quite amusing.” because then you’ll type “Yes, at least twice daily.” and half of Asia will be laughing at the fact you’ve confessed to regular incestuous activity with your mother.

PPS. I remember a time long ago when this blog was about completing challenges, one day we’ll go back there and I’ll try and use Twitter to help me complete them.

Feb

R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson

By Scribbleboy 1 Comment

Categories: Life and Writing

Four years ago today Hunter S. Thompson stuck a gun barrel in his mouth, sucked out the air and pulled the trigger. And with that one of the most important journalists of our generation checked out from planet earth.

It seems in recent years that writers cut their teeth on dismissing the Good Doctor’s work as the deluded ranting of a violent junkie and yet when the twin towers fell, and the news channels were feverishly looping the attack footage, a disease-riddled, wheelchair-bound elderly man wrote;

We are going to punish someone for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed – for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started a war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everyone, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job – armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses, and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.

September 11, 2001

Happy Birthday Jack Nicholson, Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter’s writing was not only insightful, it was sharp, dark and funny as hell. Not only was what he wrote unique but what he did was unique too; no other journalists rode with the Hell’s Angels, no other writer thought to stay on the campaign trail for a year and no war correspondent, before or after him, has ever donned Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and accessorised with a cooler of beer before getting to work.

Reading his work made me realise that you could report what was happening in the world in a way that would still capture people’s imagination years after the events had taken place.

His writing is what got me on a journalism degree and one of the many things that got me thrown off (if it’s a choice between doing coursework and reading Gonzo Papers volumes one, two and three I would recommend you pick the former). Maybe I should invest in a doctorate in divinity like he did.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Scribs

Feb

Laughing in the Face of Brevity and Relevance

By Scribbleboy 3 Comments

Categories: Life

Life Through God’s Sunglasses is my housemate’s blog and is everything a blog should be. It’s updated regularly with short structured, sometimes topical, posts that share a common theme. Unfortunately you’re not reading that, you’re reading scribbleboy.co.uk where we laugh in the face of brevity and relevance.

The following post is collection of the things cluttering my head that I’m throwing up here because the blog is hungry.

Birmingham

This weekend I went to Birmingham for an extended family bonding session. I got my sister Breaking Dawn as a birthday present (she’s already read the other three so it was too late to save her) and she got me Dylan on Dylan, a collection of interviews with the man himself prefaced by a very wordy introduction. A picture of Bob smoking a cigarette and looking like a melancholy raven stares back at you from the cover.

I spent two days following my sister around clothes shops in search of a pair of pants we never found.

Skins Series Three

Skins series one and two were impressive. They captured the lifestyle, styling and philosophy of a generation using witty dialogue, an attention to detail and an eclectic soundtrack. Skins series three has replaced the cast we loved with an obnoxious bunch of runts. Cook is a psychopath, Freddie is wet and JJ is like Hugh Grant but without the looks or charisma.

On the girls’ team we have stuck-up Naomi, the boring twins and Pandora, who obviously landed on her head when she fell out of her Enid Blyton novel.

In the eye of this storm stands the omniscient and ineffable Effy Stonem proving that, no matter how much the government try, smoking is still cool. I might even write a review when I’ve watched more than two episodes.

Religion

My Athiest Bible Study has come to a grinding halt as I realise that to summarise even the first two pages I’ll need to do further reading on creationism, the big bang, dinosaurs, evolution, the fall of Satan and the chronology of the Bible. If anyone wants to suggest books for my reading list you are more than welcome.

I cannot understand why God (who is everything) would create the world (something else), to me this suggests that something is lacking in his character. He then creates man in his own image, which seems rather vain, and gives him a very limited choice; follow me or die.

Going to wrap this section up with something my sister said the other day (otherwise it will just grow ranty and offensive); “It’s not that I dislike God, it’s just that he doesn’t speak to me.”

Life

Looking back over the past few years I see that I flourish in a particular environment; it is a highly structured, high pressure environment with clear deadlines. The deadlines are near and the rewards are short term. (Notice how I described the complete opposite of university there).

With this in mind, from next week I will be commuting daily to the Totem Film offices to write the emails I’ve been promising them. Forcing structure into my life will hopefully lead to productivity; more emails written, more jobs applied for, more challenges completed, more sentences for Deadline.

Deadline

Antonio’s blog entry, Deadline Explained, might help you understand the project better. He descibes it as “something that isn’t as fast-paced, where there’s no rush to get it all done, just to sit back and let it happen.” which is funny when you’re being harassed on a daily basis for more words :P

Government Advertisements

Hunter S. Thompson once said;

What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation.

I would add as an amendment to this that nowadays television probably isn’t a good idea either. The anti-drugs propaganda has become so trippy that only by taking drugs could you understand it (The Talk to Frank advert is one of the more bizarre adverts I’ve seen) and other adverts, supposedly put together for my benefit, are little better.

Speeding drivers wander through worlds populated by the corpses of dead children; children live in fear, not of clowns or spiders, but of their parents dying of lung cancer and eating anything from the fridge will kill you dead.

The government should reprint the Keep Calm and Carry On poster (thanks Gingell) and use the saved money to tackle the reason everyone is bingeing on pints, pills and pies, namely that we are speeding towards a future in which there is no money and no jobs.

Feb

Blog Hits Puberty

By Scribbleboy 0 Comments

Categories: Site

[EDIT: (Thursday 19th February) Installed the WordPress Mobile plugin and now my code is all broken. Have removed the buttons that proclaim my xhmtl and CSS to be standards compliant until I figure it out.]

People read this blog in some weird and wonderful ways (Facebook notes and news feed I’m looking at you) but unless you’re reading this post at scribbleboy.co.uk it’s not going to make any sense (it’s okay, just click the link).

There haven’t been many posts recently and I haven’t made much progress with the challenges, however, there have been a lot of changes, some of them you will have spotted and others that are more subtle.

The most obvious is the giant header at the top of the page that Antonio Roberts created, thanks, I promise to finish writing Deadline for you. Have a look at his website HelloCatFood.com. (If you have a WordPress blog, have Redoable 1.2 as your theme and want a large header then the fourth comment on this page explains how).

Running parallel to the header are half a dozen links that are now the primary way of navigating this website.

Home - Just in case you hadn’t realised you could return home at any time by clicking the header, or your heels together three times, I’ve created this helpful link. (If you want to do the same on your WordPress page you’re going to need the Template Redirect plugin because nothing is as simple as it seems. Make sure you deactivate the ShareThis plugin if you have it because these two seem to be incompatible).

Archive – There used to be an ugly calendar in the sidebar and everytime I made a post the date would turn red. This meant that each month either looked like an acne riddled teen or drew attention to my lack of posts. This has been replaced by the much more attractive archive page. (If you want to do the same on your WordPress blog I recommend the DateArchives plugin). As well as being sorted by date my posts are also sorted by category and these can be seen in the sidebar to your right under the heading Challenges.

Author - According to Jakob Nielsen’s Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes most blogs lack an author biography and photo. Soon that won’t be the case at scribbleboy.co.uk. Click the author page in the next week and you’ll learn a bit more about me, my favourite parts of this blog and see my not-so-photogenic face. Four of Jakob’s top ten have never been met on this blog and probably never will be.

Links - Visit the links page to see a small list of my friends’ websites and blogs. Over the coming months I shall be expanding this page, so if you think your link should be there let me know.

Feed - This gives you the chance to subscribe to my RSS Feed and read all my posts somewhere you feel more comfortable, whether that be on Google, Yahoo or your own feedreader. This is complemented by the orange feed button in the sidebar that is (metaphorically) screaming “Click me! Click me!” (All handled by the good people at FeedBurner, which like most things on this earth is now owned by Google).

Contact – This pretty little form was generated using the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form plugin which does exactly what it says on the tin; lets you email me and keeps my inbox free from spam. Eddie Izzard fans might appreciate the question I’ve chosen to make sure you’re human and not some kind of evil spambot.

There have also been some changes in the sidebar. Out with the standard issue search, in with the customised Google search. If you can’t find a post on the archive page or in the challenges section this should help.

In the challenges section you’ll notice two shiny new buttons. Clicking these will prove that all the code on my blog is correct and standards compliant. This means that if my blog looks broken to you it’s not my fault, upgrade your browser (unless you’re using Internet Explorer in which case upgrading could actually make it worse, don’t ask).

Right at the bottom of the sidebar are my Google ads. This post summarises some of the key things you’re not allowed to do with them, although the Terms of Service are strict I think I’m still allowed to mention them. So far they’ve been content to puke some of the weirdest little adverts onto the bottom of my page and raise me 64 American cents (when that figure reaches US $100 Google AdSense will pop the cheque in the post).

This concludes a fairly comprehensive list of changes to my blog (I also have drop caps and a customised 404 page, though linking to it would defeat its purpose). If you’ve made it this far you either have your own WordPress blog and are looking for tips or are really bored. Either way here’s a cartoon about a serial killer.

Feb

Two’s Company, Three’s a Frackle

By Scribbleboy 0 Comments

Categories: Breakfast and Life List

This blog is a rabid dog. It sits in the corner and stares at me with its pathetic eyes. It constantly demands food no matter how much I try to reason with it (“I gave you a post yesterday, I just haven’t got any words left and I need to go to sleep. I’ve made you IE8 compatible and validated your xhtml, isn’t that enough for you?) The silence suggests it probably isn’t.

So here’s a picture of my bacon and Philadelphia bagels from last week that I was too lazy to post. It shows that I am at least making an effort with the breakfast challenge (it’s still not a daily occurrence but it’s closer than it’s been in a long time).

Two's Company, Three's a Frackle

Bagels are a breakfast time essential popular with Jews (but you knew that). What you probably didn’t know is that they’re traditionally sold in sets of three which are referred to as a prial, a prangle or a frackle of bagels (thanks Wikipedia). Frackle is the least commonly used word but it seemed the most fun to say.

Bagel is also a Yeshivish word (Yeshivish, as far as I can tell, is the linguistic lovechild of English and Yiddish) meaning someone like me who can sleep for 12 hours straight. This is a reference to the 12 hours that the bagel dough is rested between mixing and cooking (I owe you big time Wiki).

One last thing, before I go and rest, a blogging tip. Creating a post entitled Ukrainians do it Naked, which then goes on to link to three photo shoots of a scantily clad Bond girl, will see your visitor count rise like an throbbing penis substantially. Now all you have to do is figure out how to maintain the erection interest.

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About

Born in Paignton, somewhat educated in Stoke-on-Trent and living in Peterborough. I am a footsoldier in the army of the unemployed and an occasional blogger. I spend my days applying for jobs and watching Glee.

I survive on caffeine, willpower and savings alone. This blog is a record of my successes and failures as I try and complete life-improving challenges suggested to me by readers.