Well, this looked like it was going to be a big story today. Apparently, some minor Royals are living in London Palaces at rents significantly less than you or I would be paying for something much smaller.
But then it went away.
My favourite of today, however, is the shock revelations that Starbucks has finally given up on plans to open up shop in a leafy north London suburb following a fierce campaign by residents.
And now they say go. My website has been online for a number of years (in fact, my first website was in late 1993 on the backend of the web servers of the company I was working for). Over the years I have kept up various parts of the site, taken others down and generally tended it like you would a garden that you let go “back to nature”. To be honest, I left it alone. Some of the more cringe-worthy stuff may be moved into this new look (but I doubt it) and my site devoted to pictures of satellite dishes has been, forever, lost (and, honestly, I am sad about that).
So it was time for a re-vamp. Time to do something different with my site and that’s when I decided that maintaining a site was hard work and there must have been an easier way. I had been experimenting with various Blogging tools for a year or so and never settled on anything I felt wholly comfortable with. Then, taking a walk down one of the web’s odder byways, I stumbled across Movable Type and decided that, if I was serious about making it easier to maintain my site more often, then this was the tool I was going to use. And so here we are Â…
I have now given myself the power to do this stuff quickly and efficiently. At last, I can update my site easily. But when it comes to the moment of truth I expect the next few entries to be pointless links to (vaguely) interesting stuff until such time as I find my voice again.
2003: Leave Fed Alone
2003: Employment Law: Update
I wrote these words about why I have a web presence sometime back in around 2000. At the time as I running an incarnation of my web site that has long since vanished. I started building a personal site for myself at the back-end of 1993 when HTML mark-up first hit the scene and I had very little to do while working the night shift.
Over time, of course, many things have changed. A couple of years ago the craze we know as blogging planted small roots but grew quickly. Drowning, as I was at the time, at an internet advertising company I toyed with, but never fully developed, the concept of my blog. I played with blogger and thought of all the great site management uses it had (at one time I worked for a company that built a large, complex site with almost no concept of a content management system). Still, I kept a small site and thought nothing more of it.
When the internet business went into free-fall and I, fortunately, remained in gainful employment I once again investigated a blog. I thought that the hard times that faced the industry were worth documenting and I tried but soon tired of the project. So I turned the blog into a personal journal (rather, weblog) and updated it daily. Daily updates, of course, are beyond many of us and, again, I gave up.
Of course, the logical progressions is to what it has become today – an oft-updated collection of thoughts and ramblings (akin to drunken conversations in a pub, but without the sickening “what did I say” feeling the next morning). Without the self-imposed pressures of trying to do something daily, it’s a much better experience (from the author’s side).
It is, of course, a personal site. These are my ramblings and I can’t blame anybody else for the lack of interesting, entertaining or useful content. Still, it’s much more fulfilling than the static site with a few pictures of friends on it. It’s a place to vent, a place to keep things that I want to be reminded of in the future (or remember to do tomorrow). In my head it is some kind of journey that I have embarked on and don’t know where it will finish (but that’s what life is). In the grand scheme of things, however, it is an utterly pointless exercise.
It is a weblog (rather than a journal) for I comment on things that interest me. Some of those things, obviously, are directly to do with my life but, most content, is not a diarised version of my life. I have seen journals and web logs referred to a mini-soap operas before. You can see into somebody else’s life. Well, I don’t think this site will do that for you. It may give you an idea of what is in my mind right now, but then there are many things that I don’t comment on, so I suspect anybody reading this will get a wholly unrealistic picture of me. My favorite journals and weblogs are listed in the Give Us Our Daily Blog entry.
Despite what I said above – not really. If you didn’t read the link at the top of the page, do so now (I’m to lazy to copy the text and my impression count goes up). I think there is a great power in personal publishing. This is my little contribution.
2006: Here We Go
2005: 2004 In Review
2005: Bruce Almighty
2004: Love Actually
2004: Review of 2003: December
2004: Review of 2003: November
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Listen to Musak has a set of Frequently Asked Questions and there is a separate set for Man of the Moment.
2005: 1700 Tracks And Counting
2004: links for 2004-11-12
2003: The Trench
2003: More Time Shifts
Listen to Musak is a personal web site full of things that I find interesting. I hope others do too but it is designed to reflect my life. I have previously written more about why I write it.
I adopted the name Musak when I first went online back in 1993 on the Monochrome bulletin board. I have used it elsewhere online ever since. There was no other real reason for it except that it wasn’t taken, although I have grown to love it ever since. Subsequently, I purchased the domain and moved many web pages that I had elsewhere here.
I live in South West London, England – Earlsfield to be exact – and have lived here since I came to London in 1993. Occasionally the size of this city gets me down (along with the commuting nightmare) but really I love it. You’ll find lots of references to London’s transport system scattered throughout the site – it’s one of my daily pains. Every new politician promises to ease transportation problems in London and none of them do; it’s one of the many reasons I have started to lose respect for politicians.
Man of the Moment is a sub-section of Listen to Musak. There is a separate FAQ for the Man project.
The site has a privacy and ratings statement. Please refer to it if you have any concerns.
I first developed a web site back at the tail end of 1993, not long after HTML was released and the IT Manager at the company I used to work for decided the internet might change the way we do business. In the end, it perhaps had a greater effect on my working life than on the business. Very little of that content survives although some of these pages have their roots back then.
Much of this site contains much newer content. The history of the site is here and you can also read about my online working life, here.
Together, I guess you could call these a blog. According to Blogger, a blog “is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically?like a what’s new page or a journal”. To be honest, I tried the daily-blog routine on another site (twice) but each time gave up after three months or so. Most of that content was deleted and is consigned to a recycle bin somewhere. Other people’s blogs are much more interesting and I have found some fascinating writing on the web. The blogs I read the most are listed here.
The Man of the Moment project is something of a reason to update the site with a list of attractive men.
I categorise content which is useful if you want to see the kind of things I write about.
2004: More Say About Trains Than Bush
2003: Brookside Closed