Political dynasties

There’s something a little strange about political dynasties in a democracy.  Two Bushes in the Whitehouse. The Benn family. The attempts of Prescott fils to get onto the green benches.

But nothing quite as strange as Matthew Taylor’s discovery. He was adopted, and didn’t discover his birth parents’ history until late in life.  Taylor was elected to parliament at the young age – long before he discovered his great-grandfather had also been an MP.  It’s a fairly exclusive club, so quite a co-incidence to discover a relative you didn’t know you had was also a member.

New design

The tuit fairy (1) has arrived and I have wasted spent a few hours redesigning the layout of the blog and updating all the plugins, so that I am now bang up to date across the board. Wonder how long that will last.

In the process, I seem to have killed the blogroll. This may not be a bad thing – many of the entries were to colleagues who have shuffled off this mortal blogosphere.

But there are some 114 115 blogs I read regularly according to my Google Reader OPML and it would be nice to reflect this in the gaping void in column three over there –>

Apart from anything else, it’s part of the community of bloggers to have links to the people you read.

Nothing I have tried has quite worked. I don’t want to enter the full 115 into the WordPress links manager. Various weird things have happened when I have tried to use Google Reader’s “clip” function, including disabling my entire website, apparently for me only. Dataflame’s live customer service people managed to fix it, but I am not entirely sure what went wrong.

Bah. Any good OPML widgets out there?

I have also finally succumbed to the near ubiquitous Lib Dem Buttons. Not least since I was asked to design one recently!

(1) tuit fairy, brings the round tuit. As I will do that when I get a round tuit.  Pronounced too-it not tweet. Got there yet?

Tweets on 2008-03-17

  • @miketd I only found out about Duffy when you blogged about her, and my other half had the same reaction. #
  • Church newsletter says "Alleluia, Christ is risen!" Bit premature, seeing as how he hasn’t been crucified yet. #
  • Still, it has led to Welsh hymn tune Hyfrodol replacing Welsh national anthem Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau as the thing going round my head. #
  • Parade for St Patrick in city centre looks very busy. #
  • Wondering if there’s something wrong with Nottingham phones – weird things happen when I try and phone out. #
  • Off downstairs to prod the chicken soup again #

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Nine Lords a-blogging

All over the internet, people are welcoming a new initiative to bring peers of the realm closer to the rest of us.

Lordsoftheblog.net is a group blog by a cross-party bunch of peers who want to demystify the upper chamber.  And judging by the first few posts, it’ll be an interesting one to follow.

And loudmouth that I am, I have already found the need to weigh in with my opinion.

I came over to write a note about the sentence “we don’t know yet what really interests the wider blogging public,” and I find someone has already responded to precisely that.

Don’t write about what you think we will find interesting. Write about what you find interesting. Your enthusiasm and passion for the subject will carry you forward. You’d be astonished at what takes off and what doesn’t. And don’t censor your language. If bicameral is a word you use, then use it. If people don’t know what that means, they can look it up without your help, or they can choose to maintain their ignorance.

And, speaking as a modern languages graduate, I think Brits should do much more to get along with our nearest neighbours. We’re amongst the few people on this planet who think it’s normal to only speak one language fluently. My fear is that our school system forces us to specialise much too soon. A person who does well in all their GCSEs is a polymath at 16 and a specialist at 18. If you pass a foreign language at GCSE your options are little more than specialise in it – at the expense of something else – or drop it entirely. Our A level system does not help our young people maintain broad interests, and all too often foreign languages are squeezed out.

I saw an angel in the marble

Another photo for tonight, then I’ll hit the sack.

marble

I saw months ago this building on the Forest Road in Nottingham had neon lettering all around the side of it, spelling out the phrase “I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set it free.”  Google tells me it’s a quote from Michaelangelo.  It’s taken me months to go back to the Forest Road after dark and get a good picture of the neon lit up.  I must find time to go back at dusk when ambient light will help get a picture that shows the building as well as the lights. It took some time to get the picture technically right – I kept confusing over-exposure of the lights with camera shake, so kept taking measures to keep the camera steady.  Eventually, I twigged what was going on, and used the compensation setting to sort out the over-exposure.

The Michaelangelo quote is on two buildings in the Arboretum / Hyson Green area. It’s also painted along the top of the fencing around the building work that is the Wart Exchange, in one of those fab Mat Hand murals.

My new camera

I got a new camera last summer – an Olympus E500, my first digital SLR.

I found these photos languishing on the memory card from the first few weeks I had it. I was trying out how good the 40-150mm zoom lens was by taking some snaps from my bedroom window.

This is a reasonable close up of the flowers in the garden from the first floor window

Cam trials

Here are a series of shots of my neighbour’s pear tree at the bottom of their garden, 20m or so away.

Cam trials

Cam trials

Cam trials

And finally, the main reason for going SLR is the huge amount of extra control you get. EG this shot, where you can get the camera to focus on the near tree and leave the tower block artily fuzzy.

Cam trials

Who knew the view was so interesting?

Tweets on 2008-03-14

  • One of those confusing conversations based on a misunderstanding. Carpet-bagging is not the same as carpet-munching #
  • Back to work with tail end of cold. 3 meetings, two simultaneously. Then cllr sugary in library. #
  • Starting to get serious about my birthday party. Caterers not answering phone! #
  • Grabbing a coffee before Member Development Steering Group. #

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