I’ve tried a number of photography apps over the past three years of iPhone usage, but these three have come to be my stalwart accomplices. Crucially, they all allow me to be creative, and enhance my existing creativity, without getting in the way and making something which I don’t recognise as “my” work. I formula for a good photography app is: my skills + app = better result. So in an app I tend to be looking for something which doesn’t take over.

1. Autostitch

Unlike other panorama apps (like PhotoStitch for desktop, and the original version of Pano) which only allow you to construct a panorama from horizontally-connected image (perfect for panning around a horizon), Autostitch lets - no, encourages you to get creative with multiple overlapping images, in any direction at all. This can lead to some interesting - and sometimes quite unintended - effects.

I still boggle that this amount of intricate and elaborate processing power is packed into a tiny app on my phone. And available to anyone for less than $3. We truly live in the future.

2. Camerabag

I’m not crazy about apps that only exist to add retro effects to images, but there’s something about Camerabag’s filter settings that seem to be able to turn a lacklustre image into a much more rich and interesting one.

It’s telling that of the twelve filters available, I only use two with any regularity: Helga (which mimics Holga contrast & vignetting) and Magazine (which seems to flatten and punch things)

FWIW, I’ve also played with Hipstamatic and can see the appeal, but I’m not wild about it. For me, the fun is somewhat limited by the fact you have to take images through it, rather than being able to use it for post-processing, as well (as you can with Camerabag)

3. Diptych

Relatively new, this one allows you to quite simply combine multiple images according to a number of templates. Bosh.

I don’t use this one a lot, but it’s handy to have on the phone when I do (and a damned sight easier than downloading, opening and editing in photoshop).

—

I’d love to know which photography apps you use, and rate….

I’ve got the Here And There (HAT) map prints, and they absolutely deserve further scrutiny because they’re so detailed, plus it’s a really interesting, mind-bending (sorry) way to think about space, and the world.

Men on the northern line coming from the awards dinner I’ve just come from. I’m sober(ish), but they’re drooling on each other, discussing the best satellite porn channels and the acts they’re going to perform on their wives when they get home. It’s charming, in a ridiculous, pissed, shouty, colleaguey machismo bullshit obnoxious kind of way.

The bald northern one calls everything and everyone a cunt. The fat one apologises for him repeatedly, explaining “he’s from Leeds”, before leering at girls on adjacent seats and trying to persuade the other to stop off for a final pint at Charing Cross.

This, I feel, would be a bad move.

It seems that several pints, absinthe and champagne in (their words) “less time than it takes to have a wank” are a recipe for lurching, leering and idiocy.

“Have you got a mirror?” Baldy asks every female on the train. No-one has.

“Have I got bloodshot eyes?” he demands. He does, but no-one will tell him, because no-one wants to get involved. Wisely, it seems.

“You’re an ugly, fat cunt,” drools baldy.

“Yeah,” says fatty, “but at least I’ve still got hair”

Thank heaven for small mercies. And my stop.

Flow is important to web workers, because it’s hard to come by. As digital knowledge wranglers, just like the machines at our fingertips, we’re constantly context-switching, running multiple processes at once, streaming concurrent thoughts and projects and activities in real time, trying to devote sufficient time and attention to each, but usually failing because of unrealistic timescales, lack of data to complete the task in hand or multiple competing priorities.

Context switching is exhausting, especially if you’re doing it all day long. It takes effort to figure out the context when someone comes up to you and starts talking about that meeting or project, and you’re supposed to instantly know
a) who they are
b) what they’re referring to
c) all background knowledge about the context which may enable you to make a useful or insightful contribution.

I often find myself wishing people came with identifying headers, like email. Just a simple whois with a sensible subject line would do wonders for my ability to react reasonably and rapidly to a distraction, rather than staring blankly for a few moments while my brain variously clears to one side the other things I’ve been processing, then cycles through knowledge files to find pertinent entries, all of the while also trying to summon the person’s name and context based only on their appearance (I’m terrible with names) and the words “that thing we were talking about the other day.”

The phrase “continuous partial attention” was invented by Linda Stone in 1998, and it gets more true with every passing year, perfectly describing the constant infograzing state of the digital generation.

So for the most part, web workers need ways to signal to their colleagues that they are trying to crack on with something without distraction. For many, the universal symbol is ‘headphones on’ - even if you’re not listening to anything, it’s a way of visibly signalling to the world that your attention is in another place. Your body may remain in the room, at your desk, but your attention is in the task. This is what Bruce Sterling means when he wrote about “cyberspace” as the place your attention is when you’re focused on something else:

Cyberspace is the “place” where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person’s phone, in some other city. The place between the phones.
– Bruce Sterling, from the introduction to The Hacker Crackdown [PDF link to whole book]

So we work much of the time in cyberspace, trying to find focus and flow, trying to escape from constant distractions and demands on attention.

Of course, there are exceptional circumstances which mean it’s OK for someone to break into the attention zone. Indeed, we give certain people specific permission to breach the bulkhead. We switch on our “busy” signals on GTalk, but our loved ones know that it’s OK to ignore it. We set up our phones to divert all calls except those from the boss. We instruct our desk phones to deliver a voice message to all calls telling them to email instead. Then we sift through emails when time and attention allow.

We generally prefer forms of contact which can be skimmed, triaged and prioritised. We want to be in control of our time, in a world which makes it increasingly difficult to be so. We tend not to like interruptive, demanding contact like phone or face-to-face disruption, in which someone else takes control of the when, where and how much time the query will take - as well as what else we’ll be able to do during the contact.

Face to face interruptions can’t be compartmentalised, multi-tasked or pomadoroed: it seems rude, when in fact the imposition is on the part of the disturber, not the disturbee. But it’s hard to tell someone to IM instead when they’re looming over your desk. As a result, we digivores get a reputation for being anti-social; for preferring email to facetime; for conducting hour-long sporadic conversations via instant message rather than spending ten minutes on the phone.

So in a distracting and demanding world, we crave the perfect, all-too-fleeting feeling of flow, when dedicated attention combines with lack of distraction to form a productive, devoted, happy state. Nothing beats it: fingers flying, synapses firing: words (or code, or ideas, or photoshop actions, or whatever you do) spilling productively, consistently and cogently onto the screen almost as fast as you can process them.

That’s why dedicated attention time is important, and why geeks (technical, creative and otherwise) resent distraction. We’re not just grumpy sods: we need mental space to focus. Music through headphones helps. Switching off the IM and email clients helps. Making yourself unavailable to the world despite your continued presence in the office helps too, but can prove more problematic.

A year or so ago, in the face of a writing project which demanded lots of head-down time immersed in passages and focused on the screen, I made a little makeshift notice to put beside my desk. It said “Trying to concentrate, please don’t disturb”. I saw it as the physical equivalent of the notice on my GTalk status (”Trying to concentrate: email me instead”) or the voice message I’d set (”Hello, you can leave me a message if you want but I’d really prefer an email to…”).

It was small, and people didn’t notice it. I felt too much of a sourpuss to point it out to them, so it became pointless.

A week later, I came in one morning and discovered a new sign beside my desk, made (I think ) by a sneaky elf in the design team who sit not far from me. In brand-consistent font on a hot pink background, the giant-Toblerone-shaped sign said on each face: “Meg is trying to concentrate”. There could be no mistaking it from any angle. The message was clear.

I’ve tried to enforce a good routine with the sign over the last year. I only use it when I’m actually trying to concentrate on something specific (not multiple things which are distractable). I use it in combination with headphones as a double signal to the world of my unavailability. I take it down when I’m done focussing.

And yet.

Here are the interactions I tend to get, when the sign is up. Each of these is accompanied by hand waving designed to induce me to take off the massive headphones I am wearing when the sign is up:

1. Are you actually trying to concentrate?
2. I like your sign.
3. Hahaha. Meg is trying to concentrate! Very good! Does it work?
4. I know you’re trying to concentrate [waves dismissively at sign] but I’ve got a question about…
5. Are you interruptable?
6. Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to talk about…
7. Ooh, where did you get your sign from? Did you make it?

and perhaps most often:

8. Can we talk about….[no reference to sign at all]

Why do they do this?

I’m at a loss to know what to do next. Current favoured options include:

• A Lucy-style “The Doctor Is In/Out” sign
• Ignoring people if they ignore the sign when it’s up
• Teenage-style eye-rolling and deep sighing when interrupted
• Getting a bigger sign
• Amending the existing sign to include the words “Please do not disturb”
• A deli-counter take a number/now serving machine

If all else fails, I’m going to get a big piece of black cloth, and attach one end using velcro to the outer rim of my monitor, and drape the other end over my head, like a Victorian photographer’s light hood. This idea is, of course, based on the popular toddler belief that if I can’t see them, they can’t see me to interrupt. It also has the added bonus of shutting out all non-digital stimulus, which might help me to focus a bit better.

How do you find focus in a world of competing attention? Any suggestions?

“Wass wrong wiv ‘er sandals?”

“Dey Jesus sandals, innit?”

“Dey not even sandals, man! Dey flip-flops, innit?”

“Jesus flip-flops den. Cha!”

I mentioned this on Twitter, and various people responded, sharing their own versions of this little trick.

“My mum says ‘I’ll give you 3 rings’” (@a_williams)

“Brings back familiar sound of a trimphone ringing three times after grandparents got home safely” (@crouchingbadger)

“Even better, in italian, they have a proper word for it: ’squillino’ which means ‘miss call’ or ‘buzz’” (@dvydra)

“V standard in Italy…they call it giving someone ‘uno squillo’” (@ron_n)

“In Australia, we say ‘I’ll prank you’ referring to a prank call you’re not supposed to pick up” (@lukely78)

“Known as the ‘one-ring’ round my parts” (@genzaichi)

“When I was little, my mum would get ‘three rings’ when I was heading home from a neighbour’s house” (@philgyford)

I’ve known for a while that people in (especially) sub-saharan Africa have used the missed-call functionality - calling someone, letting it ring once, then hanging up before they answer, so they see a missed call from the original caller, and use their mobile credit or account to call back. They call this “Beeping” and there are established social rules for doing it.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, I’ve heard (but can’t find a reference for, sorry) about pirate radio stations using hangups as a way of collecting votes on a particular track (”If you like this track, beep me now….that last song got 87 beeps”)

Twenty years ago or so, when I was living abroad and travelling around a lot, I used a nifty way of checking in with my family periodically, without costing anyone anything.

The ruse was simple, and played out as follows:

1. Place a collect (reverse charges) call to your family back home via the operator
2. When the operator asks for a name, you tell them you’re called “Alice Oakey”
3. When someone answers the phone, the operator says “I’ve got a collect call for you from Alice Oakey. Will you accept the charges?”
4. The hapless family member says no.
5. The operator disconnects the call, but by this point - for free - your family knows Alice Oakey…or to put it another way, “All is OK” (A friend subsequently invented another version which involved the name “Amy Fine” and a male friend later created an alter ego of “Noel Probbs”)

This means that if you ever had to place a call that needed a response, or you were in trouble or anything, you could give your real name and your family would know to accept the charges. But at all other times, the message would get through, without cost.

I’ve no idea whether this still works, or if they’ve changed the way that collect calls are placed. But at the time, it was rather handy for periodic messageless checking in.

There was a photobooth. And champagne. Oops.

This Eurobingo PDF file contains ten player sheets filled with random Eurovision cliches and phenomena which may be observed during the show broadcast. Simply check off each as they appear - award spot prizes for completing a line, and the first person to complete a whole sheet wins the kitty (or another prize of your choice).

There are also three additional ways to win: before the show begins, add your best guess for each of the quant questions at the bottom of the sheet. Closest wins!

This game has been published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike license. Feel free to adapt, remix and share it, but please leave attribution intact.

Thanks and happy bing-a-bang-a-bingo!

We barely spent any time there, just dashing in to shower and change outfits in between the social engagements which cluster around a wedding for old friends. But we made a point of having a decent breakfast both mornings, because you never know when you’re going to be fed at someone else’s nuptials, do you?

On the first morning, we showed up at the high-ceilinged breakfast room at eight, and were shown to a table in the window. Unsurprisingly for a hotel at the seaside on the first weekend in August, there were plenty of guests in residence, most of whom were already seated, in even-numbered clumps at tables adorned with white cloths and posies of plastic flowers in unnatural colours.

As we perused the menu, a man with a slightly Fawlty-esque moustache walked in carrying a pot of coffee. He approached the table to the left of us, which held two slightly rotund and red-faced couples wearing floral blouses (shes) and pastel polo shirts (hes).

“Right then, who’s for coffee?” the man with the pot bellowed

“Me please,” said one of the men.

“And me, Frank,” said his floral other half.

“Tea for me, thanks,” said the other man.

“Oh aye, I might’ve known there’d be trouble,” said the proprietor, “there’s always one awkward one.”

“If it’s not too much bother, Frank…” said the man who’d asked for tea,

“Bother? Oh no. It’s no bother to go all the way back to the kitchen for the other pot. Not with my bad knee; don’t you worry about it, Geoff. I’ll be right.”

“Well, while you’re there, how about some more toast?” asked the second floral woman.

“Easy there Margaret,” said Frank, “you’ll never fit into your bikini down at the beach if you keep eating at this rate!”

The table guffawed, as Margaret patted her stomach in a contented way. Frank, the coffee wielding owner, limped off in an exaggerated way, to retrieve a teapot from the distant kitchen.

P and I nervously perused the breakfast menu and wondered if we were brave enough to ask for a hot beverage if asked.

It was a warm day; we settled for orange juice from the buffet, somewhat relieved.

Last year, we visited Wensleydale for a few days and stayed a couple of nights in a converted barn B&B in the western dale. It was a lovely place and the owners were considerate and gracious hosts during our stay.

On the first night we were there, we were the only guests, and breakfast the next morning was calm and quiet. On the second night of our visit, two other couples were in residence, and the breakfast that followed was somewhat different.

“Hello there,” said the owner to the one of the other couples at their table, as he brought them toast, “sorry to miss you last night when you got here. Did you have a good meal? Find somewhere good? Marvellous.”

He turned to us and topped up the coffee in our cups, “more toast for you, too? Righty-ho.”

He disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared with a toastrack, his wife behind him bearing warm croissants and pastries.

Just at that moment, the other couple entered the breakfast room.

“Oh no,” said Mrs Owner, “Not these two again.”

Mr Owner joined in “Can’t get rid of you, can we?”

As they took their seats, smiling, he turned to our table and said in a loud stage whisper, “We keep telling them we’ve moved in the hope that they’ll get the hint, but they keep coming back, the daft twats.”

This weekend, I had the good fortune to spend a night in a small village not far from Harrogate. When I arrived, the B&B hostess opened the door, looked me up and down, sniffed slightly and ushered me in. I went upstairs to the room she led me to, and she reeled off a list of rules and details which I didn’t really need to know given that I was only going to be there for less than twelve hours.

Aside from when I popped downstairs to return my what-I-want-for-breakfast form (really) and ask for the WiFi password (a request which, despite the generous gushings about its free and ample provision in the bound guest information folder upstairs, the proprietress greeted with the sort of face that implied I’d just asked if I could please poo on the bedspread) that was the limit of my conversation with her for the extend of my stay.

The next morning at breakfast, her husband brought me tea and toast monosyllabically as I sat alone in silence at a giant table set for three in the cavernous, beamed dining hall.

I sipped my tea and munched on toast and thought about the day I had ahead and the bossy little comic sans signs which peppered my guest bedroom urging me not to spill red wine on the bedspread (I don’t have any), not to smoke out of the window (I don’t), allow my children to make noise after 10pm (see my first point, above) or move the television from its position (move the table instead).

A couple of minutes later, the other guests came down the sweeping staircase and took their seats.

Mrs Owner came out of the kitchen as she heard their chairs scraping across the tiled floor.

“Oh good morning!” she gushed to the new arrivals, “how did you sleep?”

She fussed over to the welsh dresser and pressed play on a CD player, so a little light chamber music drifted out over the table.

“Now, for breakfast this morning we’ve got porridge if you like, and did you want a cooked breakfast? Don’t worry if you didn’t put it on the form last night. What’ll it be? Full Yorkshire? Or I could rustle you up some poached eggs if you’d prefer?”

I silently chewed my toast, and wondered what I had done wrong, to be treated with such disdain.

And on the train home, I realised that there’s a sort of universal northern theory of interpersonal relationships, which dictate the level of civility you can expect in line with the closeness of your relationship to someone.

It looks something like this:

If someone doesn’t know you or like you, you can expect them to be brusque (at best) and openly hostile (at worst). Once you become more familiar, this mellows into a studied indifference, and as soon as they get to know you and/or like you a bit, this turns into the genial chit-chat that you might expect to be the normal point of entry for social relationships.

And then, as your relationship deepens, there’s an uncomfortable bit of indifference again before it becomes open season on personal insults and the camaraderie of mutual abuse which indicates that you’re really good friends, in fact.

I’m sure this is true in various other bits of the country, but nowhere have I experienced it more than in Yorkshire and the environs, and specifically in B&Bs and hotels.

I suppose that the special relationships which come about from regular visits to a particular establishment must lead to a particular kind of bond, based on teasing, affront and mockery. But it’s bloody perplexing to figure out where you sit in the continuum and how to navigate its perilous course.

For as long as I’ve lived in London, I’ve lived under the flight path.

That’s not saying much, of course - most of central, west and south-west London is affected by plane noise, as they circle over the suburbs, make a languid turn over Tower bridge and then approach to Heathrow along the Thames.

I remember standing on the school playing fields (when I should undoubtedly have been chasing a hockey ball or hustling to class) and looking up at planes not so far overhead, trying to identify the airline from the tail fin design. Alitalia. BA. Pan Am. SAS. Lufthansa. Countries in the sky.

For most of the last decade, I’ve lived directly under the flight path, in Mortlake by the river, which is the point where the wheels come down on the landing approach.

When we first moved here, I was hyper-aware of the planes. I’d wake up as the first flight droned overhead around 04.30, before dropping off again. And then, throughout the day and evening, every thirty seconds, they’d rumble over on their way to landing: loud enough that you’d miss a few seconds of important dialogue in the film you were watching, or have to pause your conversation for a spell. Before Concorde stopped flying, the air would be thunderous for nearly a minute as it slid overhead.

Yet most of the time, I didn’t mind the planes. They reminded me that up above, people were about three minutes from landing - homecomings, holidays, greetings and meetings. Three minutes before landing, everything is put away and switched off. There’s nothing to do but look out of the window at the huge expanse of London below and anticipate the moment when you’ll touch down. It’s nice to sit in my study, or in the back garden, or lie in bed and think of people in a suspended, anticipatory, excited state above, just moments from an arrival.

And I’ve been in those planes, too. I purposefully sit by the window when returning to London, usually on the right of the plane, so I can drink in the sparkling city. And what a welcome home.

Greenwich. Tower bridge. Cannon Street. Waterloo. Green Park. Hyde Park and the Royal Albert Hall. The Empress building. Queen’s Club. Hammersmith bridge. Leg o’mutton nature reserve at Barnes. My house, by the bend in the river. Dukes Meadows driving range. Brentford. Hounslow. Heathrow. Home.

In the months after September 11, 2001, the sound of planes took on a different edge. More menacing. Despite the fact that they were still just tootling along toward the landing runway, sometimes the noise sounded surprisingly loud - Too loud? Too low?

And there were other concerns, too - we can’t shop in our local Sainsbury’s without thinking of the tragic tale of the man who fell to earth - a story that sounds apocryphal, but horrifyingly, happened. More than once. Knowing that certainly lends an edge to doing your weekly shop. We glance nervously at the passing planes sometimes, too.

I woke yesterday morning to the sound of birds in the trees outside the window, and wondered what was missing. It took a while to realise the absence of planes made this place feel different.

It’s been a strange combination of eerie and delightful these last few days having no plane noise at all.

No contrails. No regular rumble overhead. Because there are no planes.

The atmosphere over most of Europe, they tell us, is full of dangerous ash. And yet the skies seem so beautifully, strangely empty.

Lots of travel, lots of stuff happening at work, lots of really lousy things happening with regard to our housing situation (synopsis: After seven months dangling at the end of a property chain last year, we finally gave up on the place we were buying and found somewhere else with no chain. All progressed well until the owner of the house we were just about to exchange contracts on suddenly changed her mind about the sale which meant we, having given in our notice on current (rented) flat, were very nearly about to be homeless within weeks. We’ve sorted it out now, thankfully, and the hunt continues, though we are surrounded by boxes which I can’t bring myself to unpack just yet.)

So here’s something approaching content: I’ve been quietly making galleries on Flickr for a while. Here are some of my favourites…

(What big eyes you have)

(Lone tree in winter)

(Migraine-inducing carpet)

(Superheroes, villains and everything in between)

(Bisected)

(Welcome to...)

(Almost edible colour)

(Floating)

(Number off)

1. Never parted on the tube
2. Things you don’t see every day on the way to work
3. H&C line, morning
4. Bus sketch
5. At the arrivals gate
6. Three tube sketches
7. Sketches of France
8. Putting on
9. Honk
10. Three shirts

Oh alright, ten more, because I do this a lot:

1. London street, 7.15am, observed from the back of a taxi
2. Shhh!
3. Overseen
4. Lewk up, lewk up
5. The fellowship and the ring
6. Train serenade
7. Watch
8. The Eurotrouser phenomenon
9. In the queue
10. Space invaders

1. Reverse-chronological (unless I was Benjamin Button)
2. Permalink (I think Prolific invented or at least named these, didn’t she?)
3. Archives (unless I was a librarian)
4. Publish (unless I was Rupert Murdoch)
5. Blogroll (I don’t have one, though)
6. Blogring (remember them?)
7. Post (unless I worked for Royal Mail)
8. After the jump (unless I worked for the Samaritans)
9. Pingbacks (unless I was Brian Eno)
10. Plugins (unless I was an automaton sexbot)

Addendum: Things I do not say, even though I have a blog

1. Blogosphere, because it’s stupid
2. Blog when I mean blogpost because it’s just WRONG

Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive, and only really includes people who I’ve met or connected with through blogging rather than work or webbiness in general, though of course there are plenty of the latter who also blog. If you’re not on this particular list, please don’t be sad. It’s not that you’re not important too! And please note that everyone linked to here is still blogging…in some fashion.

1. Paul is (now) my wonderful, talented, funny, endlessly patient husband. But before he was my husband or even my boyfriend, he was blogging at digitaltrickery and made me laugh and intrigued in his blog, over IM and at early blogmeets. He thinks a lot of blogging is nonsense. He’s not wrong. But I can’t dismiss the entire medium which introduced me to him, can I?
2. Dan was present at the very first UK Blogmeet in June 2000 in Kings Cross (we must have a reunion later this summer, especially since I now work down the road from the place where it was held) and at the time, a student blogging under the name Daily Doozer. But Dan has gone on to amaze and impress me along with the rest of the world with his creative passion and insight about games and alternative ways of exploring worlds with the company he founded sixtostart.
3. Katy was also at the first Blogmeet (back then, Kitschbitch) and in the last decade has gone from schoolgirl to student to insightful and accomplished ad agency doyenne, without breaking a sweat. How does she do it? Energizer batteries?
4. Tom, another first Blogmeet attendee, but back then blogging at Barbelith. He probably needs no introduction to the majority of web-aware people. But in the decade I’ve known him, I’m glad to know there’s more to him than the web wunderkind legend many see. He’s playful, kind, creative and clever. Unfortunately, he lives thousands of bloody miles away now, the rotter.
5. Giles is a dark horse. He came to the first blogmeet too, then (as now) blogging under his own name, and as a long-time freelance writer creator he’s spent the last ten years being quietly, consistently brilliant both on his own site and hundreds of others, plus print and beyond. He’s funny and succinct and hugely astute. Giles is now, as much as then, an inspiration.
6. Pete is a polymath. I came across him blogging at first at Bugpowder, then mainly about zines, but his unfolding adventures through his mental state, unemployment, a fascinating glimpse into a stint as a contract worker brought him to Birmingham and his current life which includes living (not just talking about) social media, co-working, creative experiments with the city and amazing photography using the most convoluted contraption you’re likely to see. Pete seems to have a knack for anything he turns his hand to. He’s a creative whirlwind.
7. Darren’s been doing this since before you were even online, probably. If there’s a good/interesting/funny/geeky site on the internet, he’s linked to it. Hugely (and rightfully) respected by old school bloggers, Darren’s been plodding away steadily at his site for about the same amount of time I have. His quiet dedication is obvious. Less obvious to the casual blog browser (but I’m glad to know it now as a friend) is his gentle good humour and kindness.
8. Bobbie is one of the most talented writers I know. He’s bloody funny, brilliantly talented and vastly knowledgable in all sorts of expected (robots, technology) and unexpected (ukelele renditions of Radiohead) areas. Although he (until next month) works at The Guardian, I don’t know him through that context, though of course was aware of his name. No, our blog connection is a bit of a cheat, really. Not long after I started blogging, I helped my lovely sister hop on the bandwagon, and she became brilliant at it and through her general fabulousness eventually met BoJo, and now he’s my brother-out-law. So I like to think if I hadn’t had a blog in the first place, I might not have been lucky enough to know him as a friend and near-relation, not just a colleague.
9. Mike is probably the most prolific blogger I know, with an almost neverending capacity for themeblogging, fresh thinking, collaborative projects, and funny, poignant, well-written think pieces. I’d long been impressed and tickled by Mike’s online persona, and was chuffed to discover years ago that it’s no facade. That’s who he is. Erudite, witty, charming, well-turned out both verbally and sartorially. It’s been amazing to see Mike’s hobby (going to gigs and knowing loads about music) turn into a burgeoning side-career, as well as watching him grow in curiosity and confidence about hyperlocal blogging for the village he (sometimes) lives in.
10. Caroline is a true inspiration. She was, in fact, the reason that the first uk blogs mailing list formed in order to start discussing how to meet up when Prol came over in summer 2000. She didn’t make it that time, but we met up anyway (see above) and toasted her in absence. Caroline (who I’m afraid I still think of as Prol) is an inveterate, thoughtful, gifted web creator. Her personal blog is just the tip of a vast web iceberg which includes immensely successful community-driven fansites (though the word doesn’t do them justice) for U2 and Joss Whedon and accomplished artist site for her friend Gavin Friday. But she’s also managed to create incredible concert photography and thoughtful collaborative projects like the one which first introduced me to her - croon.org (now sadly gone, but not forgotten).

I’m lucky to have these people in my life, even if we’re not in each others’ everyday lives. And I’ve got blogging to thank for it.

Who have you met through blogging?

Originally started as a place to store and share links, this blog gradually became a place to playfully interact with the world, and over time that turned from introspection to exploration of the world, media, experiences and ideas. I don’t think I’m alone in that kind of journey with blogs.

I am immensely (unreasonably, perhaps even pathetically) proud of having been blogging for so long. I can say confidently that I was in at the beginning, when all this were fields. I was here before many of you young whippersnappers who have gone on to eclipse me, and blogging, and the web entirely in their success and influence. I don’t put my early involvement down to canny prescience about the way the web was turning so much as an inevitability given my proclivity for tinkering with web things, my early academic and personal interest in communicating online and my inability to shut up. Blogging and me; it was only a matter of time and technology before we found each other.

I was there. I remember the start, and the hype, popularisation, commercialisation and ubiquitisation which followed. I couldn’t possibly have known it at the time, but my blogging was to introduce me to dozens of interesting people, influence others to start doing it too, cause interesting opportunities (and worrying situations) to develop. Blogging has become part of what I am, what I do. I blog now for the same reasons I did in early 2000: because I can’t not tinker with and publish to the web.

Ten years ago, I was embarrassed to mention having a blog in polite company, because it was so difficult to understand - not just what but why. These days, even both my parents have blogs. It’s not a weird niche oddball geek thing anymore. It’s so normal it’s almost passé. Good.

Over the years (especially from around 2005) people have asked me again and again what this blog’s about, as if it needed to have a topic or specific theme in order to be consumed. I’ve said repeatedly that it’s a personal lens for consuming and considering the world (and the world wide web), but that rarely satisfies the asker (which I think says more about their requirement for classification than my experimental expression).

But now, a decade on, at least the next time someone says “…but what’s it about?” I can reply with absolute honesty “It’s about ten years old”

I’m pretty sure I started publishing to the web in a bloglike way (dated, reverse-chronological, monthly archives) in January 2000, but the earliest thing I can find on the interwebs is this handcoded beauty from February 2000. If memory serves, it was originally hosted on my AOL member space with my other homepage bits and bobs (which I’d had online at Geocities and Demon and then AOL since the mid 90s) before moving the whole lot over to my own - first - dedicated domain, notsosoft.com, sometime in early April 2000.

For the months of January (wherever that’s gone), February, March and some of April, it was handcoded, until in mid-April I got sick of editing html files by hand and uploading them by ftp every day and switched to Blogger which had recently launched and made everything much simpler.

Ten years of blogging. A decade feels like a long time in so many ways - when I look back at my early posts and think about what I was doing back then and where I was in life, I am amazed how far away it feels. But throughout those ten years there have been very few of the 3692 days (more or less) when I haven’t written something on the blog, or scribbled something in draft, or at very least thought about it and felt guilty for not having sufficient time to devote to doing it.

In celebration of the last ten years of blogging, over the coming days/weeks I’m going to publish a few special ten-related posts which draw on this blog, my experience of blogging and blogging in general. If you’d like to suggest a topic or something you’d like to hear more about, or even just recommend a favourite post from the archives, let me know in the comments below this post.

But in the meantime, raise a glass with me to the last ten, and (hopefully) many more to come.