Day: 3 July 2022

Weeknotes #9

Week commencing Monday, 27 June 2022

  • I keep reading that writing is good for you. Even though my last attempt at weeknotes lasted only 8 entries I continue to read other people’s notes; although not always at the point they were written. Alice Bartlett inspired me this time around. Let’s see how long it lasts.
  • After a week of staying in the house, Monday I tested negative for COVID and had full plans to head to the office on Tuesday. The next day, before heading out, I tested positive again and stayed at home. A little bit frustrating. All clear by Thursday.
  • I made it into the office on Thursday. Later in the day the Pride network had drinks. It was nice to socialise in the building again.
  • On Friday it was announced that Steve Wright is leaving his afternoon show on BBC Radio 2. One commenter quoted that it’s not often changes to radio station line-ups make the evening news.

Not often a radio show changing presenter makes the main evening news! Includes a Wogan House doorstep with the Big Show host himself! pic.twitter.com/rJHhG6Fj09— Stuart Clarkson (@stuartclarkson) July 1, 2022

  • Nobody in that BBC piece talked about the period from 1993 to 1999 when Steve didn’t present the afternoon show. My memory recalls that, for a while, he had a networked commercial radio show before coming back to the BBC. I can’t remember if the company I worked for distributed it or not. The UK Radio groups of Facebook were full of split opinions, which I guess is only natural after somebody has been doing a popular thing for 40 or so years.
  • On Friday evening I headed into town for drinks with a colleague and was reasonably surprised how early some of the places along the Southbank closed. That seems to have changed in the post-lockdown reopening.

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here.

Memories

I wonder how much more I will recall of the turn of the century than I will of my years at the end of the last simply because of this site?

Last week (or was it this week, time flies, you see) Tom wrote about: Supernova ’05: “Apps. for a Mobile, Connected World”, in which he noted Mena– of Six Apart fame – talking about memories,

Mena really brought memories to the fore. She stated that she wished she had a record of everything that had happened in the first twenty-seven years of her life, like she has since she first started weblogging

(source)

Occasionally, I realise that this site has a similar effect on me. I wonder how much more I will recall of the turn of the century than I will of my years at the end of the last century simply because of this site? The On This Day link for 26 June sent me back to watching the Olympic Torch cross south London on its way to Athens. I’d totally forgotten that. What’s more, I don’t recall Flickr’s pictures, so I haven’t seen them in a long time; I’m not too sure where I filed them. Flickr needs an On This Day app so you can see pictures taken on this day in history. It would really help the memory!

And while I am on the subject of Flickr, does anybody else find it annoying that the default sort and ordering is by upload date rather than by taken? You often upload when you get back from a trip, like I did last Monday after my trip to Zaragoza. All the pictures had the correct timestamps, but they were uploaded in a slightly different order, so I had to adjust them to display correctly. Am I missing something?

Scooby Thoughts

Despite differing opinions, “Scooby Doo” is successful in entertaining

Scooby Doo Movie Poster, 2002
Scooby Doo Movie, 2002

Looking back, I do have to say Scooby Doo was a great film. If one of the goals of cinema is to entertain, then this was a successful film. If another of the goals of cinema is to provide escapism, then, again, this was a successful film. I believe I am the only person I know who thinks this. That, of course, makes me right and everybody else wrong (kind of).

Reasons

There are many reasons why I am happy to have a web presence. Some of them are simple and to do with how I first came across the internet. You can read about that, and my opinions on browser standards, in colophon.

However, I do believe in some of the underlying principles on which the Internet, as we know it, was founded. The ideals of a less censored form of communication, open and available to all, appeal to some deep belief I have in the basics of human community. A medium that is not owned or controlled by any one individual seems to make sense to me.

I believe in the power of connected networks to allow better communication and empower people who would not otherwise have a voice. The world is better for open and free expression of opinions and thoughts even if, sometimes, we disagree with those opinions or find them, somehow, unpleasant. I would rather thoughts and feelings were on the web than contained within and ready to erupt into violence (when thoughts turn to violence we all lose).

While I am in the spirit of the net, don’t forget to check out The Open Directory Project and play your part in creating the greatest web directory of them all!

Of course, this all sounds very grand but many years ago I just wanted to play with HTML and see what I could do. I’ve moved on a lot from those early experiments with the Mosaic Browser (yes, Netscape and Internet Explorer were some way off) but wish I’d held onto some of those early efforts. Where is the archive of the way the web looked in 1993? I wish I had the screenshots!

Digital networks may have changed our lives, but I do not think they should take over our lives, and that’s probably why there isn’t much here yet! Still, if you have anything to say, or more especially if you are a Curnow, why not drop me a note?