Author Archives: Jon

Review of 2003: March

By December 2003 unsolicited email would become illegal in the UK but the laws wouldn’t have helped me in March when my mailbox was full of ways to make my life better. In reality, it’s friends who help make life better, and it’s even better that I have known many of my friends for years and years.

March also saw me get involved in my first blogging debate as it was related to online advertising, a subject I am always interested in, and the integrity of the medium (and my second debate about the use of trackbacks). It also saw me lament the changes to the online world for those of us employed by it.

March also saw the first phone-picture, the first mentions of the demise of Clause/Scetion 28, the arrival of Freedom Fries and a politician with integrity who resigned because of the war in Iraq.

The full March archive can be found here.

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: February
2003: Review of 2003: January
2003: Listen To Musak in Review

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: February
2003: Review of 2003: January
2003: Listen To Musak in Review

Review of 2003: February

February 2003 began with the feeling of shock at the loss of the space shuttle and the inevitable why?

In my own life, Listen To Musak moved hosts because of a previous server failure. I notice that I didn’t name them on the site back then but after eleven months with DreamHost I can say that I have found their service to be reliable and excellent value for the use I make of them.

February also saw me change jobs (which was not really referenced) but did result in me travelling more and, therefore, noting my travels in my words. Yesterday, I mentioned the need to archive weblogs and referenced Kenneth Williams, whose diaries I read in February 2003.

It appears mentions of Ben Affleck in tight leather did wonders for my reader numbers but the film I was referring to, Daredevil, did a lot less for me. The Hours or Catch Me If you Can seem to have been my choices in February.

Finally, John Brady Kiesling’s resignation letter seemed to be a pointer to things to come.

The full February archive can be found here.

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: March
2003: Review of 2003: January
2003: Listen To Musak in Review

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: March
2003: Review of 2003: January
2003: Listen To Musak in Review

Review of 2003: January

The first thing that struck me was that January 2003 allowed me to write some pieces which are longer than those at the end of the year. The second thing that I noticed was that I quite enjoyed reading some of them – which was a surprise and a feeling only distance from the words can bring. And thirdly I noticed how many of those words were mis-spelled. I know that I write in a very conversational style but I hadn’t realised quite how poor my own proof reading is (not always, just sometimes).

2003 began with a cinema feast. It would seem that I preferred Bowling For Columbine and Eminem above all the other films I saw at the start of the year (and I didn’t rate Harry Potter or Jennifer Aniston). I also seemed to have a bee in my bonnet about transportation (a theme which I still come back to) at the start of 2003 – planners and commuters being a big pain.

Radio is a theme I constantly come back to and I am sure it will happen more this year. LBC was back on air and, despite some criticisms, I became hooked – although I must say it wore off as the year went by. I see they are making some schedule changes again next week so I may return to the same theme.

Some things have changed. While the Digital Music Debate may not have been settled, iTunes has shown the way and later in 2003 I would admit to buying my first online tracks via the MSN Music Club. And in music, I was quite impressed by my own music reviews at the beginning of last year.

The full January archive can be found here.

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: March
2003: Review of 2003: February
2003: Listen To Musak in Review

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: March
2003: Review of 2003: February
2003: Listen To Musak in Review

Listen To Musak in Review

I wrote yesterday about the need to keep online diaries/journals as part of our social history. In the light of that I decided to re-read the last year’s worth of entries to my web site. I started at January and went on from there. So, the next few entries will be my presentation of Listen To Musak’s Review of 2003.

Review of the Year: January – February – March – April – May – June – July – August – September – October – November – December

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: March
2003: Review of 2003: February
2003: Review of 2003: January

On this day…

2004: House Of Flying Daggers
2003: Review of 2003: April
2003: Review of 2003: March
2003: Review of 2003: February
2003: Review of 2003: January

At Home

One year ago, I was looking at the sunshine in Spain. This year I am looking a gloomy London suburb yet I really do feel content to be spending a few days at home. Still, it’s a shame that it’s not summer as the view is more interesting!

On this day…

2004: Napoleon Dynamite
2003: It Was A Good Read
2002: Denia

On this day…

2004: Napoleon Dynamite
2003: It Was A Good Read
2002: Denia

It Was A Good Read

I always feel it’s a little sad when a blog dies – particularly when all trace of it is removed. If it’s a blog I have been reading for some time then it feels as if a part of my history disappears. It is one of the strange things about the online experience – it’s very easy for things to disappear; things that were once inspirational, useful or entertaining.

One of my earliest online inspirations was Jase Wells. Although I’d been trying out building web pages for the company I worked for, Jase was the inspiration for my first home page (sadly long gone from the servers on which it resided and a great example of what I am talking about). Jase is still alive and well but the focus of his site has changed and, while it’s updated much more often now, the coming out story that was such a useful resource has gone (although it’s still available via archive.org).

Another Jase, now Snoboardr of OutEverywhere, had some personal pages once that were also fairly important in my use of the web.

Then there are the blogs that disappear. Mike of Troubled Diva fame (who I was introduced to via the excellent 40in40) put the blog on indefinite hold at the beginning of December. 8Legs went the same way a few weeks later. And now Chris has packed up. I don’t know Chris nor have I ever mailed or commented his site but I read it almost religiously. Why? Well, he has a talent for writing to the extent that almost everything he wrote was compelling. It was his writing style which was an inspiration because, by the time I discovered his site, I had been writing Listen to Musak a while.

At least Daniel’s said it’s unlikely that he will give up completely.

While I will miss the disappearances, they are – of course, just blips in the workings of the web. What I find sad is that, in time, it is likely that all this content will disappear from servers as the owners stop paying for the space that houses the sites. It would be like burning every copy of a book you had read – vanished. It’s part of a shared history that disappears.

Diary writers perform an unintentional function as social historians. If you go all the way back to Pepys or think more recently of somebody like Kenneth Williams, their diaries are read today and give us an insight into what the world was like. If Mike or Chris has written their blogs as paper-based diaries there may very well have been something for historians to use in the future. If they don’t keep some kind of record of what they wrote in an accessible form then it will be lost to the future and people trying to understand life in the 21st Century will be poorer.

So, to those who wrote content I enjoyed reading, a plea. Archive your content for future generations. Regardless of how you do it, keep it.

Oh, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I enjoyed them all.

On this day…

2004: Napoleon Dynamite
2003: At Home
2002: Denia

On this day…

2004: Napoleon Dynamite
2003: At Home
2002: Denia

Road Queue Hell

I have driven down from the north of England today. The traffic was chaos for much of the journey – it really is quite alarming that one of the backbones of transportation in the UK – the M6 motorway – was running no faster than 40mph for much of the journey today. The one relief in the journey was our use of the new M6 Toll motorway – which bypasses much of Birmingham – and certainly saved me some time today. I am not sure what I think of paying for road use when I already pay my road tax, but today I was more than happy to part with the money to speed my journey.

On this day…

No other posts on this day.

On this day…

No other posts on this day.

Central London at Christmas

Piccadilly Cicrus at Christmas 2003 I am starting to feel like it is Christmas. I took this picture in Piccadilly Circus earlier to try and capture the spirit of Christmas Eve in central London – but it didn’t really work. I do love the fact that everything gets covered up in preparation for the crowds at New Year. Happy Christmas!

I spent the afternoon in a quiet pub off Old Street – which is an area I’d not been to for a while. The pub was playing old vinyl albums (James Brown, Don Mclean, Shirley Bassey) which made an interesting atmosphere (when accompanied by the real fire) and also made a change from the Christmas tunes I’ve been hearing all week. Best of all, it still felt like Christmas.

On this day…

2004: Shrek and Johnny English

On this day…

2004: Shrek and Johnny English

Here Comes Christmas

Is the run up to Christmas always a mad panic for everybody? It usually is for me but – right now – things seem a little calmer than they usually do. I suspect something will happen out of the blue tomorrow.

I’ve been looking around this site a little bit today and it has stunned me how much I have really written – considering I think of this as something I do when I get a moment (maybe I just had a lot of moments). Interestingly, January has the highest number of posts this year – maybe I should try a beat that in 2004.

Whenever I spend a few moments looking around the site I tend to find some things that I had forgotten writing. Then I look at what other people are reading.

I see that the top three searches that brought people to this site so far (excluding the Man of the Moment project) are:

Paris photographs
Steve Strange
radio era

I am not really sure if that’s interesting or not!

Of course, Man of the Moment, drives most people to this site and this month Justin Timberlake is the top search term bringing people to my little site.

On this day…

2004: Music To Go
2002: Rip Away

On this day…

2004: Music To Go
2002: Rip Away

Armistead Maupin

When I was younger, Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series helped me understand a bigger world where gay people live and have fun but are, deep down, just like their straight counterparts. Accomplished British author, Patrick Gale, wrote a mini-biography of Maupin’s life to date. It’s an interesting story of where the Tales series came from and I just submitted my review to Amazon.

This is not a typically biography. Patrick Gale and Armistead Maupin are friends and this book grew from many long conversations they had about Armistead’s life. It’s an affectionate portrait of a man who not only said it’s OK to be gay but it’s wrong not to be up front about the fact.

The book is like a gentle stroll through a life taking gentle turns into different decades and looking at the subject’s Southern American childhood, life in the navy, settling in San Fransisco and starting to write the newspaper serial that would eventually make Armistead famous, Tales of the City. The inspirations for the characters come from the people around Maupin; the situations come from Maupin’s life. Universal subjects of love, sex and friendship are covered as well as celebrity, homophobia and the Hollywood closet.

If you’re a Armistead Maupin fan then you should read this book. If you’ve never read any of this novels then this will provide the background to many of them and you’ll want to read his work. Don’t expect detailed dissection of an author’s life but you will be drawn into the private conversation Gale has with his friend.

A warm biography of an author/activist which puts his work into context.

On this day…

2004: Links for 2004-12-21

On this day…

2004: Links for 2004-12-21