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The etiquette of reading weblogs

Rands just had what he described as a “Holy Duh” moment with regard to weblogging, and what weblogs are:

The painfully simple question is, “What is a weblog?” The painfully simple answer is, “A weblog is the representation of a person on the Internet.”

…

Weblogs are Net_People. Just like your circle of friends, some are particularly good at original content, some are just great at relaying links to other information. Some say too much, some say too little, but a weblog is the singular voice of a person.

Every now and then the obvious is worth stating. Sometimes it can clarify a picture nicely. For me, this ties into something I’ve been wondering about lately. Namely, what is the appropriate etiquette for reading weblogs?

Continue reading “The etiquette of reading weblogs”

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Phone still gone

Nope, I didn’t leave my phone at work. I called the lost property section of Lothian Buses, but none of their drivers have handed in a mobile phone today yet. They suggested I call back on Monday to check again. (The lost property department isn’t open at the weekend. They aren’t even open much on weekdays. 10:00 to 13:30, Monday to Friday only. Why stop there, I wonder? why not make the opening hours completely random? 07:45 – 09:50 on Mondays, 13:45 – 15:10 on Tuesdays, etc. People should pay more attention and not lose their damn stuff in the first place.)

I called T-Mobile last night and got them to put a block on the line, so that no calls can be made on my account. If Lothian Buses don’t have it on Monday, I’ll get the phone unit itself blacklisted, so that it can’t be used at all, even with a new SIM card. (Yeah, right…like hackers haven’t found a way around that yet.)

I’m not having much luck with mobile phones. My last one got destroyed by orange juice in Rome just last year. If it turns out that this one is gone, I’m not sure if I even want to get another one. Maybe it’s time to be disconnected for a while.

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Up-cheering needed

To cheer myself up this evening, I’m catching up on some of the non-important tasks on my to-do list. So far, I’ve added images to my “quick reviews” section, that take you to Amazon.co.uk. It’s useful not just for buying the book (should you want to), but it also gives you quick access to other people’s reviews on Amazon.

Also on the menu for this evening are some new quick reviews, some more tweaking of Paint Shop Pro scripts. I might even make a start on my “favourite music” list…

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Phone gone

Crap, I think I’ve lost my mobile phone. It’s possible that I left it at work, but I’m fairly sure I put it in my pocket. The more likely explanation is that it fell out of my pocket while I was on the bus home. I’ve grown so used to wearing cargo trousers with large side pockets, that I’ve forgotten how shallow the pockets in my summer chinos are.

What a crap end to a crap day.

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Rome photos…not quite yet

One of the many, many things on my ever-growing to-do list is to process all of our photos from Rome this year. (By “process” I mean digital processing. We have a number of manual steps and Photoshop batch jobs we use on all our digital images to generate medium-sized images and thumbnails, and to sort them into date-indexed folders.) But in the meantime, here’s a quick glimpse of one of my favourites…

Martin and sleepy Alex

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New scanner

Epson Perfection 1660 scannerWe bought a new scanner today, an Epson Perfection 1660. We got it from PC World for £119, which is actually less than you would pay at most web shops. Not that I knew that before I went in to the shop. I went along to PC without having done my on-line reasearch to find out what the state of the scanner market is. A foolish move.

But on the other hand, I’m not a professional photographer or a graphic artist, so my needs are pretty basic. In the end, I chose the Epson for the following reasons:

  • It has a USB2 interface, so it should be nicely fast. I don’t have USB2 on my PC yet (old-style USB only), but I will eventually.
  • It has a built-in transparency adapter, so it can scan 35mm photo negatives and positives (slides). That’s cool. I didn’t know that this is now a common option on mid-priced scanners.
  • It’s from a well-known brand. I think this is the fourth scanner we’ve had since 1995, and it’s the first one we’ve bought that wasn’t the cheapest unbranded thing we could find. Considering I’m not clued up about scanners in general, I figured that I couldn’t go too far wrong with an Epson.

As expected, the software that comes bundled with the scanner is rubbish, but that’s okay because all I need is the basic drivers. I’ll be using Paint Shop Pro 8 for everything else. (More about PSP 8 some other time. I’ve only started working with it, but already I can tell I’m going to love it. It’s slower than 7, and it’s a bit of a resource hog, but being able to write scripts for it makes up for a lot.)