The show was brilliant! You looked amazing! The honesty of your art inspires me like nothing else! Thank you for signing my wallet! (I am not a crazyperson!!!)
Category: personal
A friend of mine asked on Facebook for our favourite children’s book. I couldn’t think of just one, so here’s my list of fondly remembered favourites, in no particular order. Massive thanks to Kieron Smith, MD of my favourite online bookseller, The Book Depository, where a lot of these illustrations and descriptions link back to.
I’m not sure what age range my friend had in mind, but to give you an idea, I read these between the ages of 8 and 12.* As soon as I was old enough to have my own library card, my weekly ritual became going to Laudium’s only library on a Saturday morning, borrowing 4 or so books and working my way through them through the following week. These are some of the wonders I discovered there.
One of my favourite blogs is Oh Dear!. I adore Jelena’s visual style of blogging, and given her impeccable eye for detail, I always know I’ll find something cheering and uplifting when I drop by. My new favourite iPhone app is Hipstamatic. Here’s a post inspired by both.
When on the Underground, I like to take pics of the platform just as the train is pulling in. The motion blur is different every time.
Last Saturday, a few of us celebrated Alfie‘s birthday with a visit to Decode at the V&A. One of my favourite exhibits was a UGC video wall.
Yesterday we went longboarding at Acton Park. This is the picture I didn’t take of me learning how to get on, get off, turn left and right, and keep going in a mostly straight line. Haven’t quite yet worked out how to stop, though….
Today I meandered across London with a longboard and a brolly, playing with Hipstamatic pics on the way.
I decided to retire from journalism on a fine Saturday in August last year.
It was at UXCampLondon, a BarCamp focused on user experience design, interaction design, information architecture and usability. I was surrounded by people talking with passion and enthusiasm about ways to improve our experience of the world and its many interfaces.
There were charts. Graphs. Diagrams. It was heaven.
I found the courage to run my own session (a discussion around designing more enjoyable and effective embedded feedback channels within websites or apps, if you must know). To my surprise, more than one person turned up. To my greater amazement, those who came enjoyed the discussion and left with something to chew over.
Afterwards, enjoying riverside drinks in the summertime haze, I said to Dees: “This time next year, I’ll be working in UX.”
I scaled back my editorial commitments, starting with TechCrunch Europe. Mike Butcher gave me a fantastic pep talk and an awesome sending off in October. In December, my Telegraph tech blog reached the end of its span, leaving me with time enough to focus on my copy-writing projects and the UX transition.
Six months later, I am pretty much there. 
(More on that in subsequent posts).
I have to say, it is very strange to consider myself as something other than a journalist. The job is so involving that it can be all too easy to self-identify with the role, and it’s interesting to observe the detachment (or lack thereof) in day-to-day situations.
Case in point: it has taken me for-freakin-ever to write this post, because it has been so psychologically hard to draw the line under my journalism career and set forth into the bright unknown.
Guess it’s drawn now.
So. This is me officially announcing that I am no longer working as a journalist. I have one last gig lined up — reporting back from SXSWi for ComputerWeekly. After that… well, as Semisonic says: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.“
Sadly, the chaps who yesterday helped me fall victim to a classic scam as they liberated me of my iPhone probably don't listen to Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip.
Sitting in Starbucks on Southampton Row, using my laptop and phone trying very hard to get online to meet a deadline (I'll save my BT Openzone nightmare for another post), I was approached first by a homeless man begging for change and in his wake by two guys carrying Oystercard forms which they thrust under my nose, jabbing and pointing and demanding something in a foreign language.
It was quite disconcerting and I first mimed not being able to understand and then, as their yammering became more insistent, I couldn't take it anymore and responded by miming complete disinterest in their 'problem'. They reached a climax in the harassment of stressed out journalist on deadline and then suddenly shut up and left. I locked eyes with one of them through the window as they walked up the street, shooting him a look of what I hoped was 'look, I'm sorry but I really didn't know what to do for you' as he shot me a look of what in retrospect must have been 'well yeah but screw you anyway'. It was only a few minutes later that I realised that yes, those thieving miscreants had lifted my iPhone from my table under cover of Oystercard form.
Bastards.
I heard back from The National Archives a few days ago; I didn't make the cut for the second round of interviews for the three positions of sub-editor they're looking to fill. I suspect it was the subbing test that was my downfall; the text I was given to edit focused on Britain and Europe rebuilding their respective economies post World War II and I wasn't at all certain of which facts were true and which red herrings. No internet connection, so no opportunity to fact-check with Google, either.
I can't say I'm all that disappointed; the job seemed interesting at the time I applied for it, but when I got to the interview stage, I knew instantly that it was not for me. The atmosphere, the energy, the vibe was all wrong; very public sector, surprise, surprise. And I know for a certainty that I want the thrill, the rush that comes from working in a fast-paced newsroom. So here's hoping that my other hot prospect pans out the way I want it to.
Hello everyone. I suppose you think that nothing much is happening at the moment. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha. Well, that’s what I want to talk to you all about; endings. Now, endings normally happen at the end. But as we all know, endings are just beginnings. You know, once these things really get started, it’s jolly hard to stop them again. However, as we have all come this far, I think, under the circumstances the best solution is that we all just keep going. Let’s keep this going in sight, never an ending. Let’s remember that this world wants fresh beginnings. I feel here, in this country, and throughout the world, we are crying out for beginnings, beginnings. We never want to hear this word “endings”.
The wonderfully modulated tones of Janet Brown as Margaret Thatcher in Mike Oldfield’s gorgeous Amarok, summing up my life’s events over the past six months. And gosh, how it has changed!
I guess we could start with the smallest change first; I’ve decided to migrate from WordPress to TypePad for all my bloggery needs, the reason for which segues quite neatly to the largest change. After four years of marriage, Andy – my darling husband, my BFF and (here comes the techie link) my tireless sysadmin – and I have decided to part ways in the most graceful, respectful, compassionate and amicable parting of ways I have ever experienced. I think it’s fair to say on this basis that I will probably never marry again, purely to preserve the memory of this parting. 
The second biggest change, in the wake of the first biggest change, is that I will be leaving Swansea for the Big Smoke at the earliest opportunity. And when I say earliest opportunity, I mean, as soon as I can find a job to go to. While I’ve enjoyed the perks of a freelance career since the death of Ping Wales last year, I am going to need a lot more financial stability when I move to the world’s most expensive city. If I had even the smallest buffer to tide me over I would continue freelancing, but it’s fair to say that the Ping Wales experience has ruined me financially. There’s nothing like the sweet, sweet predictability of a monthly pay-cheque to help in the effort to rebuild from the ground up.
I will be sad to leave Swansea. Though I didn’t intend this is my destination when I left South Africa in 2001, I’ve ended up spending the better part of my adult life here. I’ve grown so much here that in some sense, it’s almost like leaving home (again).
Having announced my intention to stop blogging for a bit, lo! my mojo returneth. Well, if not ‘mojo’, per se, then at least, ‘desire to post lots of linky things’. Et voilá: the Young@Heart Chorus.
Sound’s a bit muted, but the video’s all sorts of amazing:
And this, which just makes me weep every time I see it. It features Fred Knittle, born 1925.
[Fred] facetiously says that, as a member of the Chorus, he went with them from continent to continent until he became incontinent, and then had to retire. While no longer traveling with the Chorus because of his breathing problems, he will accept an occasional opportunity to sing with the group at a special event. He and his wife, Barbara, have been married for over 55 years. He says that their marriage is based on faith and trust. She has no faith in him and he doesn’t trust her.
I really hope I’m rocking life this hard when I’m this old.
Yay, it’s a new year. It’s strange, it just doesn’t feel like the beginning of the year, here, because everything either ‘starts’ in the new financial year, or the new academic year. Starting a new calendar/diary here doesn’t have the same sense of gravitas and promise that it does in a country where the academic year co-incides with the calendar year, as it does back home. I’m not sure how much of the way I feel is due to my changing life circumstances, and how much due to the sense of displacement and disorientation that one just expects to feel as an ex-pat. I’ve acclimatised to many things since I first arrived in the UK (way back when in 2001), but this feels like one of those things to which I may never grow accustomed — like celebrating my birthday in the summer rather than the winter. Anyway. Life has been topsy turvy since November last year, and seemed to just get worse as the end of the year loomed. Now it sort of feels like I’ve turned a corner, though it may or may not turn out to be into one of those little streets that looks like it will get you where you want to go, but mysteriously leads you to a point which is miles from anywhere you want to be. Having milked that ponderous metaphor, I can finally get to the point and say: I’m taking a break from updating this site, until I know what’s what. Catch you on the flip side.
Soft cover Moleskine notebooks. Gift-givers, take note.
