Update....well partial!

Oh what a couple of weeks its been. I'm sorry I've neglected you. For a start, my laptop got stolen. Luckily all of work is backed up on to an external hard drive at home but its a bloody nightmare. I hate dealing with insurers at the best of times. I think they're going to pay out. Then I've got to go through the rigmoral of buying a new one :-@

On top of that I've been staying at my grandmas for a couple of weeks. I had to get out of the city. An argument with my boyfreind added then rolled in to an argument with my extremely exam stressed housemate and I had to get out. It was on the train into the sticks that my laptop was pinched out of my bag. Bastards.

I'm very close with my nan. Always have been. She has a wicked sense of humor and can put up with my many many excentricities. So she knew something was up when I turned up at her door, unannounced in the pouring rain, face blotchy with tears. I could hardly claim to be just passing. Nan lives in a small rural village miles away from anywhere. She opened the door, gave me a hug and didn't say a word. Then she turned round and went to put the kettle on.

Tea has a special status in my family. There is *always* some brewing. Happy, sad, morning, night its always tea time. I think its a northern thing - a bit like that yorkshire tea advert but the other side of the pennines.

Anyway, that's where I've been recently. Its taken me this long to get to the library, use the internet and register my phone on blogger.com et al and then work out how to use it. Hopefully this will get through ok and normal service will be resumed.

Until next time.

Lx

Sent from my ChuckBerry® wireless device

out of range

Hi all. Just a quick update. I've been out of range for a few days for a number or reasons. Hope to be back up and going (with explanation) by the weekend

L x
Sent from my ChuckBerry® wireless device

Blocked. Completely

I’ve had writers block today. I haven’t been able to think of a single thing to write for any of my projects.

Writers Block is a funny thing. Some people I’ve heard never get it at all, while others go for great chasms of time not being able to write as much as a sarcastic note to their housemate. I don’t particularly suffer from either of these. My writers block tends to come in fits and spurts of a day or two here and there every few weeks. It might be linked to lunar cycles, or too much MSG, or (according to one slightly hippy friend) because my laptop is facing the wrong way. I never did quite get this point of view. For one thing, it’s a laptop, I never use it sat at my desk because – well if I did that what would be the point in having a laptop?

I’d be interested to hear how other bloggers/writers/whatever’s get over writers block. I suppose the solution is as personal as the block itself. The way writers block affects me is not so much that I don’t have ideas, but more that my internal editor (the little voice inside me that veto’s stupid ideas) works overtime. EVERYTHING that I possibly can think of to write about is immediately rubbished by the little voice in my head. So today, I’ve spent some time looking at what other people are writing in an attempt to salvage the spark of a good idea.

I went through all the usual blogs, newspaper articles, comment columns and all that balls but nothing surfaced. I went for a walk to see if there was anything I could get enraged at. You can usually count on a shopping trip at Tesco’s to get me suitably angry and enraged at people/children/commercialism/consumer greed but today nothing was happening. I felt sorry for the people with the screaming children. I felt sorry for the children being dragged round the shop against their will, forcing them to scream. And as for Commercialism and Consumer greed, well I didn’t exactly feel sorry for them, more apathetic towards the concept.

It’s very unlike me not to get angry about anything. Normally a quick search on News Stories, a new “Political Correct” initiative, or one look at Simon Cowell, can have me spitting, hissing and my skin turning a very un-fetching red. Still I seemed fated to be in a placid and unproductive mood for the rest of the day. I did a bit of Fathers Day shopping online and had a wonder around Twitter. I found a few bloggers on there, @dave_turner who’s procrastination station (http://davidturneruk.blogspot.com/) is very funny (I especially like the Child Diagram – I think I was an anti-Christ baby) and @janeygodley who I would swear I’ve seen compare at a comedy gig before now. I can’t for the life of me remember when and where, only that there was a VERY vocal stag group close by and she shot them down in such a way they walked off with their dicks between their legs. I know that’s the usual arrangement but you know what I mean. Anyway, whether or not it was her blog is very funny, but nowhere near enough mention of her marriage to 50cent. I hope she makes more of that in the future. (http://janeygodley.blogspot.com)

That’s pretty much been my day. Considering I have writers block, I don’t seem to have done too badly with this particular blog, though I’ve got fuck all else done. I suppose I’ll have to worry about that tomorrow.

L

I Tweet, You Twit, He Twa...oh?

So yesterday, apart from sorting the reincarnation of this blog, I discovered the wonderful world of twitter.

It may seem that I am the last person in the world to join, but actually the whole "phenomenon" has rather passed me by. I tend to only get in to things when my friends/family/colleagues introduce me, but none of them are really "in to" tweeting. Facebook and youtube and Perez Hilton yes, but not twitter.

So, in an attempt to get some sort of readership for LeoBlog 2.0 and because I was deathly bored, I set myself up as a twit in the twitter universe.

It’s all very simple and nice until it comes to the part where you have to “add followers.” As I’ve already said, no one I know “tweets” if that is the right word to use, so there was no point checking my email contacts. Most of the “recommended followers” I hadn’t heard of or had no interest in following at all. Somehow, after much clicking, I found my way to a “public timeline.”

From what I can work out, the privacy settings on each person’s account allow you to appear on a public timeline for anyone to add and follow you. Looking down the list at people who had tweeted a matter of seconds ago, there seemed to be a fair bit of spam. Essentially I was looking for:

1. A real person, not a spambot.

2. Someone who was fairly human and eloquent (as eloquent as you can be in 140 characters)

3. Someone with a nice profile picture. Yes, ok, I’m shallow. So sue me.

I scrolled down a little and found someone who seemed to fit the bill. A Tweep (is that the word?) called @MrTrev. So I followed MrTrev and said hello. And that’s where it all started. From MrTrev, I found someone else who seem to fit and added them (@AlexLJ) and through her a whole range of other people.

It seems that the charm of twitter is conversations with people you have never and probably will never meet, and you get introduced to these people through other similar people, and so on and so on till infinity. I suppose it’s a little like virtual speed dating, only without the constant feeling that you’re being assessed for the potential of a quick one night stand with a married, middle management man called Bert.

That’s my assessment of the situation anyway. Hardened tweeps will no doubt correct me – and I hope they do. Im always keen to learn.

Until next time, tweet me

@LeoBlog

The Launch. . .Like Big Brother but with fewer idiots.

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to LeoBlog 2.0. After the runaway success of LeoBlog 1.0 (my pot plant enjoyed it very much) I have decided to regenerate like the Time Lord I will never be and start again. This is partially an attempt to leave the old Gumph I used to write behind, but mostly an attempt to get more readers, subscribers and likers amongst the Blogging population...

What am I saying? A single reader/subscriber/liker would be an improvement on my last incarnation. I’ve already said that my pot plant was a fan, but I think that was more because I have a tendency to read aloud whilst writing and not because the plant had a choice in the matter.

Anyway, I am proud to announce the launch of LeoBlog 2.0. This is the first time I have used this particular blogging service, so I hope you will bear with me if it looks a bit odd.

Until next time.

L