Moved house… no broadband… so bored of assembling Ikea furniture… My new street… so… awesome… Back soon… don’t… have… a… cow, man…
Archive for the 'Blog' Category
I said I’d be there for you and I haven’t been. But you wanted me to listen more, and I have been. I’ve been listening carefully, but I just haven’t wanted to argue. Sometimes its best to sit back and let other people talk when you don’t really have anything to say, don’t you think? Isn’t that what we agreed?
No? You disagree?
Well, I’m sorry. That’s the way I feel, and I’m going now, to camp in the mud and the filth and the loud music and the fields of Glastonbury, and if you want to we can talk about this when I get back.
Good bye. Oh, please don’t cry, Blogosphere… I hate it when you cry. I promise I’ll try harder.
I’ve been too busy / distracted to post lately. And, of course, within 6 hours of Wordpress 2.2 dropping, I’ve managed to find the time to upgrade. /kicksself for procrastination.
I will be better to you, beloved reader, soon. I promise.
Drew B, a PR blogger, asked his Twitter contacts (including myself) for our thoughts on how to keep people enthused about blogging for an interview he was doing with the Guardian (not found the article as yet - possibly still in development here’s the story). I responded (full list of responses nicely summarised here) and the BBC Radio 5 Live blog has picked up on it (although no link love / and my real name not used)…
Still… Twice on the BBC in a week! My advice, FWIW, is to get blogging buddies - you can be spurred on by a few incoming links from friends asking your thoughts on things.
If you want to add me on Twitter, I’m over here.
…and apologies to my regular readers. Normal service will resume shortly.
Had a fun interview with CNN’s Jim Boulden just now, about the same Viadeo research I wrote about yesterday. We covered much the same ground and he interviewed our HR manager as well, so will be an interesting piece when it airs, on one of their business programmes today or tomorrow. They did a close up shot of me accessing this site, though, so am curious as to whether I’ll get a flood of visitors tomorrow…
Had a nice chat with Jim whilst the lights, etc., were being set up — we talked about codeswitching, something my mother looks at as part of her socio-linguistic research. I adapt to accents - particularly American accents - much to the chagrin of my more English friends. I think I managed to sustain a consistent British-ish accent for the interview, but let me know what you think if you see it. Jim has lived in the UK for 17 years (he’s American), but his kids speak with fully British accents. Must be an interesting house!
Just installed and got Akismet working on the blog: spam is down about 90%. Amazing. I never felt the need for it because Wordpress’ built-in spam filter was so effective, but its a definite time-saver.
This month has also seen the highest traffic ever on this blog - up to 3.8GB of traffic (about triple what I normally get), despite a bandwidth saving blog reskinning. I hope you’re all enjoying it!
I’ve also climbed up Google’s PageRank and broken the top 200,000 in Technorati.
I’m not sure why any of this matters, but it seems that when you have access to statistics about yourself, you start to find them compelling…
I’m ill. Again. Hence scarcity of posting this weekend. I’ll write something good soon. In the meantime, tell me if there’s anything you’d like me to write about in the comments and I’ll do the first five things, as long as they are SFW.
…for a week. I’m leaving my blog in the hands of Chris and James, two very good friends of mine, whilst I’m on vacation.
Chris is friend from University who worked on the student paper with us. He’s the man who got me into blogging - he blogs more seriously and more thoroughly than I do over on his own site, and talks about lots of issues I steer well clear of. That said, he has told me that he looks forward to blogging “Armand style” for a bit, so I’m vaguely worried about what that means. Chris is an Arsenal fan.
James was at college with me and has, over the years, introduced me to a disturbing number of genres of bizarre Japanese film. He’s a deeply funny man, but hasn’t blogged before so be especially nice. He’s a fellow Spurs fan, so I expect him to stand up to Chris if necessary.
All I’ve asked them to be wary of is language and NSFW content, as, amongst others, my parents occasionally visit here… so I think you’ll be in for an interesting week, and I look forward to catching up on my return.
Off to pack now… catch y’all soon!
Tell me what you think! I am definitely not sure.
Thanks, Armand
Update: And we’re back. Well, what are experiments for?
Has anyone tried Blogsitter? I’m away next week and wondering if I can get someone to write interesting things here for a week… Sheila has done it in the past but doesn’t have time at the moment.
If you’d be interested in the job, leave me a comment telling me why, or email me via the usual means (deets in the sidebar). I’d appreciate it and pay you in Mars bars!
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