Meritorious Practitioner of Murphy's Law

Somewhere in the string of blogs that I read (and sometimes comment upon) is a discussion that a group of us should get together and write our own wikipedia entry.

As everyone knows, it is terribly bad form to write your own entry on wikipedia, but if I did, then 'Meritorious Practitioner of Murphy's Law' is probably how I would describe myself.

Yesterday, was the day of my presentation at the Oundle Festival of Literature on the art of the blog.

Throughout my life, I have been plagued by what is called the 'live demonstration' - which is why I spent so long making sure that I would be able to access all the sites I needed, because part of the two hour slot was supposed to be a session to allow the participants to start up their own blogs. The mystical Murphy stalks me, so I know that I need to make sure I cover off all eventualities.

One of the classmates couldn't access their email, but I had prepared for that. I made sure we could get to gmail and they could set up an email account.

I had made sure we could get to all of the sites we needed to get to (well, except for one, the food pornographer site which was banned as porn - which it ain't).

This time, I thought I had Murphy licked. All the computers had been tested, all the access checked, my presentation loaded, the projector work - I had every base covered and Murphy would be frozen out of the equation and forced to go to the Literary Treasure Hunt.

WRONG!

Sadly, there was just one thing I couldn't have predicted or prepared for. Someone at Multiply decided that 8:00 am EST was a great time for site maintenance! So when we sat down at 1:00 pm GMT we were greeted with a message, albeit a polite message, that the Multiply was unavailable!

The little pixies at Multiply weren't going to hurry their maintenance either (see Note 1). So in the end we were forced to abandon the setting up of new blogs and the poor people (who had actually paid for the privilege) were forced to listen to me spout.

Thankfully, I had a lot of material and there were a lot of really good questions from the floor (some of which I could answer!) which allowed the session to last the full two hours.

I think it went well. I hope it went well. I guess the real test is to see who does their homework and what new blogs for the festival get connected to my festival Multiply blog.

Note 1 : This is because computer maintenance on overtime has to follow a set for. Management notice when you start work and hence qualify for overtime payments, when the computers go unavailable. The know when you finish the overtime, because the computers come back on.

Computer technicians aren't daft. They come in, switch the computers off, then go and fetch themselves a coffee and a doughnut while raking in payment at time and a half.

Stroking an old friend

When I was young, my father came home with a Hornby 'OO' train set. At the time, I was overjoyed. In those simpler times it was every boys dream to own a train set.

The reality of actually owning a train set proved to be anti-climax. Setting it up was fun enough, but I never actually got what my father enjoyed in the actually 'playing with' the thing. To me it seemed incredibly dull.

For those of you who are interested, the picture above is from the Nene Valley Railway site.

The reason I mention this is that I'm aware that life consists of 'Different Strokes for Different Folks' (See Note 1).

This is a little bit of a worry for me as I am well aware that my tastes may well differ from those of my audience when I come to do my talk. However difficult it is to believe, there could well be people there who would enjoy a good steam railway blog.

There are others who could be even more into their food than I am (see Note 2). One interesting blog that I have lost touch with was from the food pornographer. Imagine my delight in finding that not only the link still works, but the blog is still being updated.

Having re-discovered this site, this blog entry is now being cut short as I am salivating in my keyboard.

Bon appetite.

Note 1 : Please be careful out there. Going out and stroking complete strangers is not an advisable past-time. Sadly, like the days of young boys wishing to own train sets, the days when people appreciated a complete stranger stroking them on the omnibus are over. Today such actions are likely lead to a black eye and a restraining order.

Note 2 : This is even more improbable than finding people who would turn over their garden to a miniature steam railway as my waistline will attest.

Size doesn't matter

Let's face it, that is one of the phrases that a man never wishes to confront. It is right up there with 'I see you as a brother I never had' and 'OK, just as long as you don't wake me and pull my nightie down afterwards.'

However, we are talking blogging here, so I should gently divert you back onto matters more cerebral.

The date for my big event at the Oundle Festival of Literature is fast approaching. Somehow I have to find a way of filling two hours without my audience realising that actually I am just an ordinary, boring, old sod. It could be that the secret is already out there as Alexander Mccall Smith has sold out, but so far I have only managed to rattle off a grand total of three ticket sales.

Look my castellated yeomen, it is no good waiting to see if the tickets get cheaper - there are no discounts! Get your bookings in now - the booking office telephone number is on the web site.

Despite the apparent lack of audience numbers, I have been continuing my preparations and the research and the pretty slides are coming along nicely.

Last night, my daughter persuaded me that I should give Twitter a try.

Before you click on that link, it needs a health warning. This Twitter thing is terribly addictive and has the ability to sidetrack you totally from real life.

To oversimplify matters, the principle is that you 'follow' people on the site and you see what they are up to in their daily life in the form of short, 140 character messages and you then have conversations start up rather like sending text messages on a mobile phone.

In my first foray into the world of Twitter was a strange and surreal experience.

I soon started to follow Richard Madeley, who's blog I highlighted in these very pages after I discovered it in the Times Top 100 blogs. Then, much to my amazement, he started to follow me! Just what a megastar of daytime TV is doing following me is a bit of a mystery, but there you go.

Taking the opportunity, I decided to ask the question that has been on my mind ever since I first read his blog 'Do you write your own blog?' to which he replied 'Yes'. So loads of congrats and kudos to the guy. It certainly adds another dimension to the character you see on the boob tube while devouring your afternoon buns.

Anyway, back to the topic in hand. One of the strange phenomenon of the world of Twitter is the number of famous people you can follow on the site. In the real world it would be called stalking, but on this site it seems you can do it all totally legally.

Imagine the response you would get if you sidled up to a celebrity in a restaurant and asked if they wrote their own blog? The restraining order would be the least of your worries.

This Twitter thing is amazing. Next time you find yourself at a loose end and don't know if you want to knit some breasts or try something new on the computer, give it a go.

The day of my event approaches.

I'm pretty sure that there was someone famous (who's name I have forgotten) who said something like "stealing from a single source is called plagerism, but stealing from multiple sources is called research."

Whoever said it was obviously some smart fella who knew his stuff.

It is all pretty appropriate at the moment as the sands slip through the glass towards my session at the Oundle Festival of Literature. If anyone is actually reading this still, this takes place at the Sir Peter Scott Building, Oundle School on 7th March 2009 at 13:00 (thats 1pm in old money.) See the web site for booking details.

With that session on blogging rapidly approaching, it was with great fortune that one of my contacts from the days when I was interesting on 360 surfaced on Multiply. It seems that Neil (aka nomadtraveller) is not only well travelled, but he gets time to read the weighty Sunday papers. I guess you have to find something to do when you spend so much time in airport departure lounges.

It seems that there is a huge aid to my research published in this week's hernia inducing edition, part one of the 100 top blogs by Bryan Appleyard.

Very useful and very interesting - probably the kind of thing that Yahoo 360 had in mind when they started their interesting list and instead they got me! Never mind, I guess that one day they will learn!

It looks like there is a useful mine of information there just waiting for a claim jumper to devour.

As my lunch hour is almost over, I hadn't got much time for additional research, but suffice to say, I had a little surf. Have a go, you'll like it, not a lot, but you'll like it. (I'm sure it used to be his catch phrase, but if it ain't he'll never find me).

Also, I learned something. I wouldn't have believed it, but Paul Daniels is 70! He doesn't look it. Hasn't he worn well? (No, wait, that catchphrase was somebody else).