Find An Easier Way

Observation #1: I don't outright hate the Leona Lewis cover of "Run" (youtube link) although I still prefer the the Snow Patrol original (youtube link). I am mildly disturbed and am now going to listen to ironic hipster music. Observation #2: I recently decided that I was spreading myself thin in social networking and blogging ventures. In real terms, this meant I took a long, hard look at my networking efforts, where I was spending my energy and creativity and what sort of return I got on my investments. My conclusions were interesting, to say the least. I shut down profiles, merged accounts and am now limiting myself to very few outlets. It feels a lot more streamlined, easy to manage and has energised me. I am also surprised/entertained to see how I think of this new structure in corporate terms: efficiency, venture, restructure, investment, and management. Hmm.

Observation #2.1: While I have been pleasantly surprised by my new networking structure, others have apparently been mildly upset by my actions. What I find "better organised", some online friends think of as "shutting out". Is it a sign of how fragile online friendships are (I don't think so) or a sign of how online friendships dependent upon a given context (I don't think so either)? Whatever it signifies, I just want to clarify that I am just as accessible as ever. I have just limited the number of places where people can interact with me. Of course people can also email me, but I warn you: I'm notoriously bad at getting back to mails. Just ask my mother ..

Observation #3: I spent some quality time with my nephew (who's almost three now!) this weekend. I was amused to note that I'm the cool, slightly wacky aunt who dares her nephew to jump into mud pools and who tells stories about gnomes and elves. Oh, and who is really good at Pooh-sticks.

PS. Blur reunion?!.

Never See the End of the Road

And so on the last day of my NaBloPoMoing, some sad news. Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House, has died. The Opera House is arguably one of the most iconic 20th century building and yet Utzon never visited it himself after falling out with its money men. He continued to design beautiful, extraordinary buildings which both incorporated and distanced themselves from Modernism (and its horrible offspring, Brutalism). Most of these buildings were never built; they proved too expensive or perhaps too startling to imagine in real life. Utzon retired from architecture in the late 1970s and became a recluse.

I cannot resist posting this youtube clip, filmed on the steps to Utzon's Opera House: "There's a battle ahead, many battles are lost / But you'll never see the end of the road / While you're travelling with me".

As for my own folly, my own indulgence of NaBloPoMo? It has been a pleasure rather than a chore to post every day. As the holiday season approaches, I will be unable to keep up my work blog ethic, but I do hope to maintain a certain sense of regularity. Thank you all for reading.

And Then We Came To This

We have the dreaded November lurgee in Casa Bookish. I have also found myself embroiled in an unexpected and uncalled-for family drama (it's double the fun when you're in another country). So, this is all the blogging you'll get out of me today. This little animated video will have to do:

Peace out, dudes and dudettes. Although anybody with a great flu remedy should leave a comment.

Dudes!

Where on earth do you guys come from? Fourth Edition was started last year after a six-month-ish blog hiatus. Earlier the same year my then blog, Bookish, had been deleted by my then web host (others had similar problems with the company and were far more vocal than me - good on ya, Ras). I was reluctant to start all over with a new blog seeing as I had spent a lot of time building up my 'literary blog' brand courting publishers, readers and other literary blogs. However, I have been blogging since 2001 and enjoy the networking and knowledge-generating aspects of it. A new blog was bound to happen.

I decided that I didn't want to make a huge fuss. Bookish had been outgoing and had a definite target audience. I wanted my new blog to be far more low-key and more personal. Until last night I have not had a stat-meter keeping track of how many visitors I have or even what search-words this blog attracts. I had reckoned maybe ten or twelve unique visitors per day (for comparison's sake. Bookish had a daily tally of around 500-700 regular readers plus spikes when linked on popular sites) but I was very surprised this morning to see around five times as many unique visitors as I had anticipated.

Where on earth do you guys come from?

PS. Don't think I'm not appreciative - I'd be weird if I weren't pleased people stopped by - but I'm just going "but why? right now because I didn't plan this.

Loot!

We went to the 3D/2D Craft Fair today. Having recently visited survived the Crafts For Scotland/Hobbycrafts, I was wary of visiting today's fair but came away quite impressed. Not only does this craft fair have superior quality control, they are also far more diverse whilst remaining local. Unlike Hobbycrafts you don't have navigate around bowls filled with glitters or squeeze through packs of people fighting over grossly overpriced novelty yarn. I greatly appreciate that. Anyway, excuse my crap photos.

I like owls a great deal - both because of their association with Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom and knowledge) and the far more contemporary piece of pop culture that is "Twin Peaks". The owls are not what they seem, you know. So I spotted this pin and loved it on sight.

Sadly I didn't get the vendor's details. He had some ace ceramic flying ducks with rather wonderfully quirky expressions.

My loot also bears testament to my continuing button obsession: these are handmade by Pat Longmuir of 'Paraphernalia' who does commissions too.

I recently bought some über-lovely Berocco Ultra Alpaca in the "Moonshadow" shade. I once said that I wasn't overly concerned with yarn I couldn't buy in this country because I'd always be able to find suitable substitutions. I was clearly wrong because I'm now deeply in love with the Ultra Alpaca and the only substitution I can find is twice the price for yard yardage - and in limited colourways too. Le sigh. Anyway. Pat's buttons might just be earmarked for that yarn..

PS. I'm doing NaBloPoMo in case you're wondering. That means the 'self-indulgent knitting plus random linkage' to 'brainy stuff, you know' ratio is going to be horribly skewed. Just warning you.

Crossing The Line

Yesterday someone I knew roughly fifteen years ago wrote to me via Facebook. She asked me if I were dying because she had noticed my status updates on Facebook (and quite possibly this blog) and was, I quote, sooo worried about me!!!!!!!!! One thing which absolutely fascinates me about blogging and, by extension, social networking on the web, is the idea that you "know" the blogger or the person you follow on a social website. Where does that idea of "knowledge" comes from?

I don't know about you, but I moderate my online persona and I have done so ever since I first started blogging almost eight years ago. I used to be almost obsessively private about my identity, but when one of my blog readers began stalking me obsessively in my then-hometown, I realised that anybody would be able to find out who I was no matter how hard I tried to mask my identity. It was just a matter of how net-savvy you were. These days I link my real name to this blog and use a somewhat transparent web 'handle'. I continue to be very aware what I share online.

Do you know me if you read this blog? Of course not, although you will have a good idea of what to expect if we were to have a conversation offline. Can you deduce anything significant from my Facebook-updates? Quite apart from my having a semi-severe PathWords obsession, no.

I'm slightly amazed that anybody would consider asking me about dying via a casual Facebook message or think I would disclose terminal illness via one-sentence updates on a silly social networking site. I think this proves the divide between illusory 'knowledge' generated by virtual interaction and actual knowledge of the person writing all of this.