My parents have recently been writing to us with recollections of their youth, partly to help us understand them better and partly because my father at least seems to enjoy the exercise and mental discipline of cataloguing these things. It’s wonderful for us to get a sense of our parents beyond our every day experience of them.

And so I wonder whether I should put down my childhood memories for Emily. As lives go, mine is one of tremendous consequence to me and my loved ones, but little to the world at large, but can’t help but feel that attempting to capture some kind of narrative beyond this brain-hopping bloggery would be a useful thing to do.

Has anyone else had a go at a private autobiography / journal for future generations?

It’s a whole new world we live in where your plumber has a set of friends who are some kind of cyber-fiends, but that – evidently – is what living in suburban Hampshire is all about.

Anyway, would massively recommend him, and thanks to Shashank, Andrea, Pete and Louise for the recommendation.

1. Making quick notes on Evernote every time a post idea occurs – on a PC, Mac or iPhone
2. Capturing and clipping links in both Evernote and Google Reader
3. Blogging in plain text in Evernote (on a Mac), then publishing using Windows Live Writer, pulling shareable images from Flickr or elsewhere to illustrate the stories and adding additional links

Psych

1. Being more curious in conversations with colleagues, friends and strangers
2. Picking and choosing which posts I want to build out and research in full as I go
3. Forcing myself to write as often as I can so I don’t build up any kind of weird blogging self-consciousness

The readership of the blog has gone up substantially since last December – averaging just over 200 visits a day – and I’m enjoying the occasional interaction in the comments as well as the increased store of knowledge I’m getting on all things. Tony Buzan was right – adults aren’t curious enough – but having a blog to write seems to fuel that thirst for knowledge, and maybe I’ll be able to keep up with my daughter…

Well, maybe not entirely new, but ‘Baby Social Media Management’ seemed a concept worth exploring, so we checked if http://emi.ly was available (it wasn’t, already registered to some doting Bavarian dad, apparently) and considered other stratagems for maximising my 7-month-old daughter’s social graph. Knowem seems particularly well named for my daughter’s use…

As part of this discussion, Chris pointed me at this case study – which, needless to say, is dynamic, interactive, synergistic, integrated social media success.

My pipe dream? Commercialism-as-a-Service. It’s a bit like the Abel & Cole veg box but for, y’know, everything else. I will voluntarily give information about my needs and shopping requirements to whoever wants it (Google? Facebook? Duke it out amongst yourselves), and you can just sort it all out for me, preferably on some kind of sensible lease/upgrade cycle. Cash for CaaS. Good for the environment, good for me. We can have some kind of sensible iterative process to refine what you give me and we’ll negotiate a sensible rate for outgoings.

Where do I sign?

I mostly use it as a spam-catch these days but find it astonishing that I signed up for it that long ago. In times before that – I had a Hotmail account (which I still use for IM) – that’ll be going back 17 years.

Holy heck, I seem to be old. Does this mean I’m no longer a Digital Native? Or that there’s some kind of ghastly Digital Native 2.0 out there?

As edgy and down with the kids as I try to be perhaps I should accept the crushing inevitability of it all, get a pipe and smoking jacket and start being irate at young people these days…

It seems it’s partly due to the lack of expertise, equipment and manpower to clear the snow – but given that aeroplanes are overengineered to cope with adverse weather conditions (as you’d hope), there had to be another reason – and after all, Heathrow could learn its lesson and buy a few more snowploughs for next time!

One reason, it seems, is conservatism on behalf of BAA – with every airline in the world flying into LHR, it hardly matters what standards Boeing manufactures their planes to, or the quality of BA’s training. It’s the maintenance staff at Air Qumran and the risk posed by its hungover pilot who’s never even seen a snowstorm, much less landed a plane on an icy runway slick with a fresh dusting of powder.

I don’t blame them on that front. After all – we all learn defensive driving these day so we are prepared with other driver’s competence – why not manage an airport the same way?

1) Don’t allow anyone with ridiculous hair to cut your own

2) Don’t reference actors who you really haven’t seen on TV in 8 years (David Boreanaz / Angel was my reference point today)

3) Be wary of hairdressers that think you’re after good value in a haircut. I’m happy to come back in 3 weeks rather than have a “trim” take me down to my roots.

Thanks, “A Cut Above” and curse jetlag for having me half-asleep during the hour long ordeal. It was still cheaper than my local barber in Victoria, though… the wonders of developing nation labour costs.

So it has been a growing relief that I need to fumble less as I head out for work in the mornings, unlocking garage doors and making my way through the (semi) darkened corridors and the like… and amazingly, today I left work to birdsong and returned without having to wait for 10 minutes for the car to demist!

Bring on the sunshine and sandals – summer’s practically here!

If you think I read your blog and have forgotten to link to you, tell me. If you think I should read your blog but don’t, tell me also.

How To Make Roast Leg Of Lamb

The mustard crust makes for a really crispy, tasty outer shell and the rosemary and garlic to a wonderful job of flavouring the meat. Sheila also gained additional entertainment by considering the possibility of garlic overdose (missing an embedded piece of garlic in a mouthful of lamb… mmm).

God bless the Internets.

Oh, and Spurs won too. Tasty and triumphant.

When I was about 19 or 20 I had my first professional massage I think, a shiatsu treatment whilst on holiday in Bali. That hurt like hell, and didn’t do much to warm me to the practice. My most comic “massage” experience was a session with a native Chinese reflexologist who spoke barely any English (or Malay) in KL. He mostly communicated by poking me very hard in the foot, pointing at my genitals, and saying “this… that!” and occasionally asking if I wanted a Chinese wife. It was significantly bizarre.

Since then, and since acquiring shinsplints 3 or 4 years ago, I’ve only ever had massage for therapeutic purposes and it always hurts like the devil. Latest session completed today after two months of procrastination by the very capable folk at Urban Bliss. I’m in an appropriate amount of pain, relief and doziness now.

I do hate Portobello Road on a saturday, though.

It’s been a really busy few weeks – work has been manic, the flat hunt has been, well, manic, and pretty much everything relating to my personal life has been, erm, manic. I’ve not been through a period of this intense busy-ness for a long time, but am someone finding outlets for it all and feeling surprisingly calm about it all.

Tonight, the outlet has been listening to random music, quite loud. Right now it’s Faith no more’s ‘I’m easy.’ Earlier, for no apparent reason, it was ‘Orion’, as performed both by Metallica and Rodrigo y Gabriela. Before that, for even less reason, it was Iron Maiden’s ‘Fear of the Dark.’ Before that, it was some random French music.

Sitting here, letting the music wash over me, I feel a semblance of calm.

Eels’ ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ just came on. I think there’s a danger of slipping from calm to comatose. I hit ‘b’ and Winamp obliges. Powderfinger’s ‘Since you’ve been gone’. Result. A recommendation from Tony.

It’s been a very odd evening. I haven’t sat around and let myself get completely taken by music since I was at school (when I used to do it all the time). It feels good.

I’ve also had a spam email with the subject line lifted out of Robert Jordan’s ‘Wheel of Time’ series. Bizarre. But truly, the Darkfriend did indeed fall on his bottom and sit there standing at Rand.

Two random, vaguely interesting things that happened recently. The Internet is truly a wondrous place.

Substantive posts to follow. Maybe. Eventually.