Why I love Brighton

I saw the sign below while walking home on Monday:

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I missed all of the Halloween festivities this year, but it's good to know they're going on.  The same evening I also saw a poster for Brighton Wok (click for a larger version):

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I was amused to see the poster quoting this weblog.  I stand by that comment – I have no desire to watch Iron Man a second time but I will be at the Duke Of York's on Saturday for the Brighton Wok screening, even though I have it here on DVD.  Iron Man may have starred Robert Downey Jr. but Brighton Wok's Ninja Flakes were more creative than anything I saw in Iron Man.

Also this week, I've noticed one of those little signs of aging.  I no longer have to say no to the flier touts near the HSBC on North Street.  They don't even offer me their fliers now.  Guess I'm too unhip for dance clubs now.

‘Making Presentations’ workshop with Ellen de Vries

On Thursday night I went to a Making Presentations workshop at the Werks, run by the copywriter and poet Ellen de Vries.  I wanted to go because my recent Barcamp presentation didn't work as well as I'd hoped.  I figured it would be good to learn what I might be missing.

Nine people attended the workshop, split into two groups.  We were asked to introduce ourselves with just our name and job titles to see what conclusions people drew from them.  This was a little weird for me, since I'm still on sabbatical and had to invent a title.  Everyone else sounded very fancy.

The course covered a lot of material in two and a half hours, including defining objectives, understanding the audience, not presenting after lunch and the use of adult education theories.  The workshop format worked well, allowing people to share their own experiences and tips.  Hopefully it won't be too long before I have a chance to present again – I'm looking forward to putting what I learned into action.

Sadly I'm going busy when Ellen's doing her next course on DIY Copywriting, but would be going if I was free. 

Vodafone proxy breaks some Javascript

I've been generally very happy with my vodafone USB modem, particularly after the unpleasant problems with Tiscali.  The Vodafone modem even works on Ubuntu, despite not being officially supported.  However, I have had problems with Javascript on a couple of sites.  They would work fine through non-Vodafone connections but break when used through Vodafone.

Thanks to David Pashley, I've now learned the problem.  Vodafone transform some of the content they deliver over the web.  One effect is degraded image quality (discussion of the problem and its solution in Germany is here and here).  The other problem is their use of minify, which is breaking some sites.  This was breaking the JQuery library included in a site of David's I use.

We resorted to loading the libraries over HTTPS, which is not a good general solution but works in this case.  Meanwhile I thought I'd make this entry in case it provides a pointer for anyone facing similar problems.

(Aplogies for the technical post.  If you've read this far and are disappointed, here a link to a kitten video —>  kittens )

Some short stories from the web

I've recently found some excellent short stories on the web.  The list was somehow lost in draft status but it's all fixed now.  I've also added approximate wordcounts for each piece – none are long, and all are worth reading:

Some odds and ends

  • The poet Rosy Carrick, a good friend of mine, now has a weblog at http://rosycarrick.blogspot.com/.  Her latest post includes a poem and gossip about our poet laureate.
  • I'm going to be reading at the next Sparks night, which is now on December 7th.  Some of the previous readings are available on video via this page.  I'll give more details nearer the time.
  • I've still not manage to memorise any of my pieces, but I have been running more lately.  The wind was bitterly cold this morning.

Playing darts in Antarctica

"In the winter [the base] held radio darts contests with other bases.  After a couple of years of competition someone went to Bird Island and discovered that the small scientific station there, its occupants always keen participants, had never had a dartboard there."

from Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler

(Terra Incognito was one of the books I used last year in my dissertation.  It's one of my favourite books on Antarctia, along with Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the world.)

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Last week I finished reading Neal Stephenson's new 900 word page novel, Anathem.  I generally prefer short novels but I made an exception here because of the book's ambitious scope – the novel includes an invented vocabulary, echoing Ridley Walker, and is inspired by the Clock of the Long Now.

I found the book literally heavy and slow to start, but ultimately rewarding although I'm convinced it could have shed 300 pages.  Interestingly, some things that appear to be bad writing in the early part of the book are later revealed as subtle foreshadowing (it's hard to go into much detail without ruining the effect of the second half of the book).

I think Anathem was interesting, describing a complex world and playing some interesting games with science and philosophy.   But I'm not convinced it worked as a novel.  The world building and philosophical dialogues killed the story's flow, despite being fascinating.  The characterisation was scant, and the adventure-story style sections seemed out of place.

Nearing the end of the book I found myself thinking it would have worked better as a computer game or website.  The different type of content would have fitted together more naturally.  You could explore the areas that interest you, and even have more detail than the book allowed (I suspect Stephenson has piles of notes that wouldn't fit into Anathem as a novel, in addition to the audio material that is available separately).  It's interesting to see how Anathem failed as a novel – it simply didn't fit the medium. 

(Michael Dirda's review of Anathem is well worth reading.  I don't think I'll be keeping my copy of Anathem so if anyone from Brighton wants my copy leave me a comment).

On (not) being able to run

One of the things I looked forward to in the new house was going running.  We're only a short distance from the seafront, which is a lovely flat route.  But it's not working out quite as well as I planned.

The problem is the wind.  One direction you can run happily, but than coming back is hard work.  Rain I don't mind, cold I don't mind, but I hate running into the wind – which means I've been slacking off rather a lot in the last month.  I've occasionally gone a few days without putting on my running shoes.

Thing is, most of the time the wind is not as bad as I expect (and certainly less testing than the Morecambe run in August).  I'm not sure how best to get my motivation going again.  I think what I'll do next week is go out every day, even if it's only for 5K, and simply get over it.  I can work on my distance again when my motivation is fixed.

Short Fuse and Material Launch

I had hoped to memorise my story for last night's Short Fuse, but that didn't happen in the end.  Learning things by heart is much more difficult than I remembered.  I am, however, going to try again with something shorter as I want to see how not having pages in front of me affects the reading. 

I've been a little ill this week so I wasn't as enthusiastic about reading as I normally am, but the story seemed to go across well.  I didn't know how well spooky stories would work in a live environment but I found myself quite spooked during Tara's story.  At one point I turned round from where we were sitting to see the whole audience listening with total rapt attention.  I also loved Tanya Murray's story 'Lamia, dressed in all of Mary' (available in pdf here) which had a brilliant sense of impending doom.

The only downside of Short Fuse last night was that it clashed with the launch of Ros Barber's new collection, Material.  I dropped by to buy a copy but left before the readings, rather than disturb everything by sneaking out early.  Having read some of the poems, I'm very excited about this collection, but it probably deserves a post of its own.