Blogging along

Why blog? It's sort of impersonal while shouting out to the world, "notice me!! me!! yes, me, the one saying nothing much over here!"

The impersonal bit:

People are mostly busy. So if you send an email of the inane thoughts you have had of a day, they quite probably won't have time/energy/inclination to reply with same. And if it's something bigger, then by emailing you are saying "You. Yes you, recipient of this email. Here is my problem. Please think on it and send me a response. I am relying on you to say the right thing and will be mortally offended if you do not". And then they are genuinely too busy or unable to say the right thing, or worried about your reaction, or some other reason, yet you assume they either don't care or that they have decided you unworthy of any further communication.

If you blog it, then you're not usually aiming it at anyone in particular, contrary to the belief of those reading it. Anyone that wants to read and respond can, but if one particular person can't or doesn't want to, there's nothing personal about that. It's safe, even if you have to be generic to remain safe.


The notice-me bit:
Being noticed for what you've written is rather good. It's damned nice when someone who thinks like you or shares an interest contacts you to say so. Blogging allows both, as well as the slim possibility that someone you'd want to read it stumbles on your blog. Of course, there's the other 99.9% of the time when you are entirely insignificant. But still. There's moments that wouldn't happen otherwise.


Other immensely shallow reasons for blogging:

it's nice to see your own words written down
it's nice to talk incessantly
every post is about something you at least cared about at that moment
when you forget things, you can look back at what you blogged about them


That was me learning about traffic volumes and forecasting.

Snippets of airy nothing

3am, 750 words of 2000-3000. Decision taken to invoke the "5pm Friday is the same as 9am Monday" rule.
9am, approximately 700 of those words discovered to be irrelevant.
Dammit.

I am so disorganised. I should have just watched Buzzcocks last night. Mark Watson was on it! I love him, even if he is but a child.

I *need* to sleep. Not write. Not amuse hyper people.

Is it wrong to have pistachio ice cream for breakfast? I have some and it's divine. Pistachio. The elusivest and tastiest of ice creams. With bings of pistachios in. If you want chocolate ice cream, you just go to a shop and buy chocolate ice cream. Not true with pistachio, and there it was just sitting in Tesco's freezer looking all pistachio-y.

It's just a nut thing. I may continue with the daily nut related supermarket news. I may not.

No. I'll have a muffin. Not healthy, but at least it's sort of breakfast fayre.

Genius is in fact genius.
It's marvellous.
Get it now. You just turn on Genius in iTunes, wait several years for it to check all your dodgy downloads and sometime in another lifetime it will be done and you simply click on a song, click the genius button and tada! A playlist of joy. You have to go back to iTunes to delete the ones that it gets a bit wrong, but so far out of 50 songs, I've had to delete 3.

I did another playlist, this time from Human by The Killers, which I still love, and the playlist is spectacular (mostly). For one, it includes Intervention by Arcade Fire which is exactly spot on, and again, it's included stuff I thought I didn't like (Beck? White Stripes?) and yet I do. Except for two hideous errors, Celine Dion and the Spice Girls, but that's my own fault for not deleting their albums when we accidentally got the entire Top 40 a few months ago. Genius probably thinks I like all that cack, Connie Talbot and other people I had to Google to find out who they were. Anyway, Genius is fab. I am very lazy when it comes to listening to music, especially with the ease of playlists, I tend to listen to the songs I like and rarely "discover" new ones. The radio is my only salvation usually. I went through and copied the songs I like off the server onto my beloved the other day, and now Genius is picking the Other Songs for me. It's a revelation in toons.

I'm liking this cheapness thing. Every time I open my email there's a pile of messages telling me things are reduced, free delivery, 20% off, free stuff, more free stuff, please please buy stuff. I've dispatched a spy to go and see if Woolworths are giving away their stock yet. I'm noticing a lot of "2 for the price of less than 1!" offers. It's good, even if we have to ignore the fiscal implications. We all HAVE to buy stuff, our economy depends on you buying some stuff. Yes you, go buy that thing you reckon you shouldn't. It's not extravagance, it's survival.

Tomorrow: a blog entry where one paragraph has anything remotely to do with the following one.

How to Procrastinate

it's exactly midnight. oooh.

So, I've had some smashing news tonight. Apparently in order to be flat tummed one needs to not have had twins. No. That's not what it said. In order to be flat tummed one should eat olives, olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds and dark chocolate. They're all supposed to be bad, but they're good. Virtuous. Marvellous.
(procrastination by means of reading a magazine)

More smashing news: I've lost 3lb. Hurrah. It's nice when that happens by accident. And my Wii Fit age today is 27.
(procrastination by "exercise")

iTunes is now processing 2365 of 2754 album artworks. Almost done.
(pure procrastination)

Traffic Policy and Road Pricing: motorists paid £32bn in road related taxes in 2006, of which £8bn was used on the roads, almost exclusively for repairs and anti traffic measures.

“The United Kingdom ranks poorly in
international comparison both on survey
based measures regarding the quality of
transport infrastructure and on measures
of congestion.”

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz

Sainsburys have cashew nuts in their basics range! I have no idea how much they are, I may have paid £17.50 for some cashew nuts, but still. Cheap nuts!
(procrastination by shopping)

EDIT: They're £1.45 for 200g. A saving of 54p over the non basic ones. I feel cheated.

The staff of Sainsburys all say hello to me. I can't decide if this is mortifyingly embarrassing at my frequency of visits (most days) or if it's a compliment to my sunny disposition and general willingness to chat to anyone that stands still long enough.
(procrastination by pondering)

Traffic Policy.

There's no motorway direct link between Manchester and Sheffield? How appalling. Really I think I want to move to Germany.

Can it take 2000-3000 words to say: "Traffic Policy in this country sucks, we should all move to Germany"?

No.

Is ok. Have found report that says pretty much what I want to. So creative stealing required of references and general ideas, which is quite definitely not plagiarism, it's research, that's all.

I might sleep. It'll write itself in the morning. A very wise person said quite recently "that's what the night before handing in day is for, right".
And that's not tonight.
(procrastination by denial)

Nytol.