Washing the Brain

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to an interview with Doris Lessing on Radio 4, about her Nobel Prize. She was deliciously dismissive of the whole thing (unsurprising when you hear the background), and then somehow the subject of blogging arose. When asked, Ms Lessing conceded that she didn’t know too much about it [blogging], but that she thought it must be like ‘washing the brain’. Is that what I’m doing? And if it is, is it really such a bad thing?

Tiscali - Taking the Service out of Service Provider

In this time of economic turbulence and daily news of impending doom, it seems to me that your average, law-abiding, bill-paying-on-time consumer is totally screwed when it comes to fighting for what’s right with the big companies. In essence, you CAN’T fight because they hold the trump card - they can lay a non payment order on you and bang goes your credit rating. And now, of all times, we all need to hang on to clean credit ratings if we possibly can.

I am not here to gratuitously slag off Tiscali; I’m just posting my experience in the small hope that anyone trying to decide on a broadband provider might stumble across this post and think better of a vote for Tiscali. And I can do this because I am saying nothing that isn’t true - and this is my one little area of control. This is my blog. I say what I like.

I don’t remember how long I was a Tiscali customer - a good couple of years before everyone else jumped on the happy ship and connection speeds began to dwindle. But I stuck with it because I’m not overly bothered about connection statistics, as long as I can get on the Web and do what I need to do. Then came the day that I could no longer do what I needed to do; my connection speed was worse than dial up, with websites taking stupid lengths of time to load.

I spent hours on the telephone with ‘Customer Support’ somewhere in deepest India. Well, when I say with them, I do of course mean waiting for them. After half an hour on hold, I would get through to a script reader support person who would listen to my description of the problem and then run through their get-the-customer-off-the-phone-as-fast-as-you-can things-to-try list. This is a one size fits all list. Reset your computer, reset the router, run a speed check (which couldn’t run because the speed was so rubbish), run a virus check blah blah blah. Finally, on about my sixth call, someone actually registered the fact that there was a problem, advising that they needed to switch on refresh my connection. This worked - for one day - and then the problem was back and I’m on the telephone again. This time, they are in denial. No Ma’am, we never refreshed your connection, there is a problem with your telephone line and we need to speak to BT. We will call you back within 48 hours. 48 hours - another two days with no connection.

OBVIOUSLY, nobody at Tiscali called me back 48 hours later and I called them. Again, they are in denial. No Ma’am, there is no problem with your BT line, we don’t need to contact them. By this time, my connection had been down for at least a fortnight. I gave up on Tiscali and moved to another provider.

Six months later, I receive a bill from Tiscali for a final payment of £19. If I were to invoice the hours of wasted time I spent on their so-called service, I reckon they owe me about £700, so I tear up the bill and let them whistle. Three months later, and they have called in the heavies; I have a collection agency on the telephone and as much as it pains me, I have to pay the damned bill or risk having a black mark on my credit record for the sake of £19.  I feel like I’ve been mugged.

Trials & Tribulations Installing Leopard

<rant>

OK, so with the benefit of hindsight, I am a fool and a sucker for new ’stuff’, but I was excited by the release of Apple’s new operating system, and pre-ordered so that it would be delivered on Friday, release day in the UK. It arrived and I loaded it today. Well, when I say ‘loaded’, I mean that I have spent the entire day trying to get it installed on my beautiful 24″ iMac, and now at 8.30pm, I have finally succeeded.

I was complacent. With all-things-Apple, I am used to opening the box and for it to just work. It always does. Well, Leopard was my wake up call! Judging from the forums, there is a real problem with the Leopard install procedure and Apple should be ashamed of themselves for releasing it with such significant problems. Apple discussion forums have been on fire with problems today and, thank God for people taking the time to post their experiences and solutions.

For me, and most others it seems, the solution is to run an ‘archive and install’ rather than the straightforward update. For sure, this is the last operating system that I buy on release day - I totally advocate waiting a few weeks for it to bed in and inevitable patches to be released. But when you’ve got to have it, you’ve got to have it. Now that it’s running, it is very lovely - but there is a distinctly sour taste in my mouth from the fiasco that I went through to get it working. It just shouldn’t happen with Apple and I hope that they wake up and apologise publicly to their loyal user base for what seems to be a shoddy upgrade procedure.

</rant>

Notes on a Spillage

Tonight I knocked an empty saucepan into the cat’s water bowl and the result was Lake fu*king Windermere in my kitchen. How can one little bowl of water create THAT much water?

Now, some three and half hours later as I sat all mellow and relaxed watching Question Time, sipping a large mug of Darjeeling tea and idly browsing the rather splendid barleyhut.com, I knocked said mug of tea and have spent the last fifteen minutes tending to a mini tsunami in my sitting room. I am relieved to report that no Macbooks were harmed during this disaster and that Darjeeling tea appears to have remarkable cleansing properties for oak floors.

Someone is sending me a sign. Someone is telling me to go to bed and avoid the bath at all costs.

Written Into a Corner

My two main characters have been stuck in the kitchen for almost four months now. I wrote them there and now I can’t write them out. It’s a nice kitchen but you wouldn’t want to spend a whole novel there. Especially since they drank the last of the Jack Daniels the night before and there’s nothing stronger than Darjeeling in the cupboard. I should be writing them out now, but here I am writing this instead. I am a bad person. OK, I’ll have a go.

Wake Up Call

This video is doing the arounds at the moment. Any cat owners will relate immediately, it’s hilarious and well observed:

Twisty Writing

I think it’s fairly safe to say that I’m blocked and no - it’s nothing that Fibrogel can fix (as far as I’m aware). I have writer’s block, this thing we read of in every single book about writing that only people with writers block ever read. However, I am fighting the block - I have new techniques. Technique number 1 is called Twisty Writing - see example below:

The idea, as the more observant of you will have gathered, is to write in a twisty line. Write anything, just keep writing and don’t stop until you reach the end of the line. It’s a variation on freewriting, except you aren’t confronted with the dreaded blank page - your only target is a line, and any fool can fill up a twisty line with random gibberish. Genius!

There is one drawback. It works really, really, really well if you have a swanky DTP application like Adobe Indesign - but I don’t know any other way of doing it on a computer - though I bet there are many. I haven’t tried it on paper, but I imagine it would be pretty cool.

Anyway, this is my first technique in the fight against writer’s block. You saw it here first.

No writing, but a squirrel on my fence

Feeling Guilty

It’s been a little while since I last had anything to say, so I’m obviously feeling guilty about that; and as of now I am officially ‘bunking off’ from my writer’s group because… well because I haven’t done any writing but also because it can all get a bit, ummm, frantic.

Now, regular readers (who am I kidding?!) may be reeling in their chairs and exclaiming - “Writer’s group? She’s never mentioned a writer’s group before!” and yes Dear Reader, you are correct. I have not mentioned it before. I have tussled with the thought of telling you all about, but have always refrained for fear of offending the innocent. You see, my particular writer’s group is so full of idiosyncratic people, that in the unlikely event of one of them stumbling across this blog, they would recognise themselves in an instant. However, all I will say is that my writer’s group is currently in the throes of trying to organise a ‘poetry reading’ evening at a local cafe, and all is not well in paradise. No sireee. The lady at the cafe was very enthusiastic at the start, but has now decreed that there is to be no music, no microphones, and no swearing or suggestive language of any kind. Hmmm. Anyone know any good nursery rhymes?

So anyhow, tonight I predict much wringing of hands and wailing about artistic integrity at the group, so I have chosen to hide at home and eat chocolate.

You Tube - Yay!

Bloody hell, who’d have thought it would be so difficult to embed a You Tube video into a self hosted blog? I’ve spent HOURS looking at various sites and hacks and was about to give up and binge on chocolate digestives by way of consolation, when I happened upon viper’s video quick tags and, oh blessed relief, it’s now a simple task! The only gotcha, is you must clear your cache after activating the plug-in, otherwise your ‘write post’ interface doesn’t change. Anyway, now that the tekkie bit is out of the way, there are a couple of videos that I wanted to post. One is music, the other is funny:

Music: Terra Naomi, Say It’s Possible - great song and a really cool video:

And now for the funny - you must watch this to the end:

Incidentally, the music on this video is Robbie Williams, Burslem Normals. Oh, and yes, of course, my fight with technical issues means that I have not written a single word, despite being at my computer for over three hours.