What's he up to, eh?
Dannsa hits Episode the Third with a trip to Taynuilt, near Oban. Well, relatively “near”: Taynuilt isn’t near anywhere, which is sort if the point of Ballet West. In idyllic surrounds, the ballet degree students have few distractions, other than the odd stag sticking his majestic head through the studio window to enjoy a rehearsal.
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
Following on from last week’s blog, here’s what I have to say for myself regarding the music choices in Dannsa, episode 2, which is on tonight at 10pm, BBC Alba.
This week, we concentrate on the Fusion dance group in Aberdeen, with a brief sojourn with Livingston’s b-boyz (and girl), the Heavy Smokers, kicking off with… Continued…
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
A new show TV started last Monday, 10pm on BBC Alba. It’s called Dannsa[1] and you’ll all be able to get it, because BBC Alba has just become available to anyone with Freeview. That’s you[2]. I recommend the show to you, because it’s rather good. I know this because I worked on it, along with a string of extraordinarily talented people.[3] And frankly, we all worked damned hard. I don’t want to give too much away, but one aspect of the post-production that I feel I can discuss in some detail is the choice of music. Obviously, the dancers featured dance to something, so music choice was a primary concern.
The show follows six dance groups from all over Scotland with wildly varying ages and dance styles, from classical ballet to contemporary, an over-60s group to a breakdance crew. There’s something for everyone, and it was a joy spending time with them all, particularly when they start coming together later in the series. Episode One introduces us to them all, whereas subsequent editions focus on one group at a time. So this introduction to them all is, itself, a kind of compilation album, a mix tape, a playlist. So the music better be good.
Categories: confession, editing, Personal, Recommendation, tv, Work.
Just watched the political discussion show, Empire, on Aljazeera. Jolly good. I’m quite enjoying switching to the Doha-based network whenever BBC News starts wittering about cricket and there’s nothing good on Parliament. They had, among others, Carl Bernstein of All the President’s Men fame going on about Wikileaks, cyber activism and national security.
The whole thing got me thinking, though, how much of my morality is framed in the context of Star Wars. No, really.
Categories: confession, Personal, politics, tv.
There’s a truism in the world of copyright and media piracy: you can’t compete with free. Thing is, though, you can.
Categories: complaint, confession, DRM, idea, Personal.
Since updating to OS X 10.6.6 and having available the new Mac App Store, I have acquired yet another book app: Amazon’s Kindle for Mac. There have been, and are, others, none of which have the killer function that I look for in an eReader. Continued…
Categories: complaint, confession, DRM, idea, Personal, Recommendation.
Think dreams can’t come true? Or that the only ones that do are mediocre ones that were achievable anyway? Think again! I can prove that if you believe hard enough, for long enough, even the most ridiculous fantasy can come true. But to do so, I must take you into the past…
Categories: confession, Personal.
Despite the late night, Brussels beckoned on the morning of our first full day. One of the deciding factors in choosing the Scandic Grand Place was its inclusive buffet breakfast, at which we could shamelessly stuff our bellies to save money on food later. So stuffed, we trotted out into Bruxelles, data-less on our phones thanks to crippling roaming charges, but armed with the cheap map gifted to us by the reception clerk. The generosity was soon understood when we noticed that instead of directing us to landmarks of historical and social interest, its key was devoted to the “RN Make-up For Ever” boutique and “La Parmigiana” restaurant.
It was certainly useless in locating the Mannekin-Pis, a statue of a cherub who urinates realistically, albeit ceaselessly, into a fountain to the delight of all who bear witness. When researching the trip, websites designed for tourists in Brussels would list very little apart from the chance to “giggle” at this display. Click on the ‘Nightlife’ tab and we were invited to giggle at it at night. It adorns the side of all the public buses, appears in numerous guises (a guitar photoshopped over his modest member to advertise a rock festival; an Uncle Sam costume and “Yes We Can” placard to honour Barak Obama) and seems very much the official mascot of the city. For us, it would serve as a token piece of touristy sight-seeing before we hit the bottle.
Categories: complaint, confession, Personal, Recommendation.
Last week I heard in the news that Twitter had bought Tweetie and turned it into their official client. “Tweetie…” thought I, “is that one I’ve tried?”
Like most people, I found the idea of Twitter, when explained to me, thoroughly uninspiring. I believe it was this post by the legendary Wil Wheaton that convinced me to set up an account and give it a whirl. At first, through a browser, my initial prejudices were confirmed — waste of everyone’s time. I was intrigued, however, by that little widget that advertises client software —little programs that organise your Twitter life outside if the browser.
The first one I tried was for the desktop, and its name escapes me now. It wasn’t great, but it was better than the browser, and it gave me my first taste of Update Anticipation.
It was when I got one for my phone that I really started to get hooked. I could whip it out my pocket and casually see what @GreatDismal or @doctorow were on about at any given moment. Plus I could tweet on a whim. Monty’s bowel movements became a matter of public record.
Categories: complaint, confession, Personal, Recommendation.
We had our new coffee machine wake us up with a fresh pot this morning. I’ve never been much of a coffee-drinker, but now I’m beginning to feel like I did when the family took its first foreign holiday (to Rimini, Italy) when I was fourteen or so and I discovered that I did like spaghetti. Up until then I had liked the look of spaghetti; that and the fact that it could be bought in the shape of whatever the toy fad was at any given time. I’d made my mum buy me dinosaur spaghetti, Transformers spaghetti, He-man spaghetti and a million other kinds, only to spit the first mouthful back onto my plate and demand that she make me something else. My problem had been the disgusting tinned pasta that Heinz and others thought somehow would ‘do’ and the lazy way they used the same tomato sauce they used for their baked beans. Then, in the restaurant of our Rimini hotel, when there really had been nothing else I could stomach the thought of on the menu, I had surrendered and asked for spaghetti bolognaise. The joy of al dente pasta and a sauce that someone, somewhere had given a shit about flooded my being. I was in love with pasta instantly, and my passion has never waned.
Now, having picked up a coffee-maker in the post-Christmas sales — reasonably priced and coming without the advertised instruction manual and measuring spoon — I’m discovering that freeze-dried, instant coffee isn’t really coffee at all. Mo tells me it’s not tolerated by anyone in the United States and I’m immediately ashamed that there are millions of the people who can simultaneously vote for George W. Bush and hold more sophisticated tastes than I.
This new coffee is a revelation. I’m already an addict, and proud of it.
So, this morning the timer on the machine had coffee ready for us at 9am. Mo poured it and brought her mug and mine back to bed. She also made the first run for refills, I made the second, and after our third cup I was so awake that I wondered why I’d waited over three decades to start the day with this jolt of awareness. It struck me that half the planet starts the day this way, so I’ve really had no excuse not to give it a try. Now, now I can see their point.
What other wonders await me? Do I really not like tuna? Can the eight tenths of the world’s population that smother everything in mayonaise all be wrong?
As these radical ideas bravely burn new pathways in my extra-alert brain, I realise that my cup is empty. Mo offers to refill it, but I claim the chore for my own. For one thing, I’m getting restless just sitting here. Honestly, how much of my life have I spent at rest? How could I have tolerated it? I’ve got to move around, dammit. There’s also the fact that the coffee machine is my new toy, and I want to play with it. If they made coffee-machine-shaped spaghetti, I’d probably go and buy some right now.
Cup refilled, I ingest the goodness. It’s been over a week since I last had a beer, but I’ve a new monkey on my back, and he’s very friendly. Next time I see you, I’ll introduce you. Name’s Joe.
Categories: confession, Personal, Recommendation.
Occasionally, when I have only a little money left to my name and it’s getting me down, I might be tempted to blow it all on a silly purchase of purely entertainment value. It reaffirms that although I may be poor, I’m still in the category of people who can spend money on silly things of purely entertainment value. So it was that, a while ago, I was standing in Sauchiehall Street’s HMV, upstairs in the Comedy section, admiring a box set of Absolutely, a sketch show I used to watch when I was in high school. Back then, it was universally acknowledged to be the best since Monty Python, and we were all lucky to have it. There, in HMV, I seriously considered blowing forty quid I didn’t have on this paean to my formative years, when I first had a TV in my room and could watch whatever I damn-well liked. (In a side note, I’d like to thank the French film industry for featuring so much nudity in their output, and to Britain’s Channel Four for showing so much of it after my parents had gone to bed.)
I didn’t succumb, though. It was too much money, and I, like most folk, have come to realise that much of the time the memory of things is better than the reality of them. Then, the other day, I sauntered onto YouTube to find an oversized banner ad for 4oD (Channel Four on demand, see?). Included with the temporarily available new shows were permanently available older programmes. Among them was Absolutely.
Not only can I report that the show is just as brilliant as it once seemed to my teenage self, putting all subsequent sketch shows to shame, IMHO, but that I discovered to my delight and astonishment that I’d begun watching the show originally from the last episode of the first series. Which meant I had new Absolutely to watch!
All of which is great except for a few things. As YouTube and Channel Four have arranged it, the ads which play before and during the show seem to be independent of the show itself, presumably to keep them replaceably current. A result of this system of dynamic video in the middle of static is that I can’t watch it on my phone. Plus, if I stop the playback for any length of time and try to resume, I get an error message and have to reload the page (and watch the ads again). These could just be teething problems with the new embedded video ad system, but it means that, regardless of content, the videos of amateur uploaders are better than this classic TV. It’s inferior YouTube, from a customer point-of-view. Not the best idea.
Still, better that this great series is available than otherwise, and if I get fed up with Pepsi Max and Sony Bravia ads crashing my browser, I can just ask for the DVD boxset for Christmas, can’t I? Now I know I’m not fooling myself and Absolutely remains the best Scottish comedy since Stanley Baxter went to LWT.
Categories: complaint, confession, Recommendation, tv.
Took Monty to the park this morning, early. The promise of a reasonably quiet park on this beautiful day, and a relatively sober Friday night, made the sacrifice of a Saturday lie-in more than worthwhile. There was a mist in Kelvingrove that glowed in the morning sun which was so low in the sky the shadows stretched for miles.
The sought after tranquility was in abundance too; save for three neds who between them had nine litres of Strongbow, the fair-weather park-goers had yet to arrive. There were plenty of other dogs to play with, though. Half an hour in we encountered Chico and Chrysler, an English Bull Terrier and Boxer respectively, who gave Monty 35 minutes of non-stop chasing. That should have wiped him out, but he was dashing back and forth all the way to the gate, and when we got home all he wanted to do was play frisbee.
The dog is mental. If George Galloway was here he’d praise Monty’s indefatigability.
Then to Ikea to help Rick with his bed-buying. Jonathan Coulton has a song about Ikea. The chorus is, “Ikea (Ikea)/ Just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen/ Ikea (Ikea)/ Selling furniture for college kids and divorced men.” Which is funny because Rick needed a bed ’cause he’s getting divorced. Ho, ho, and, indeed, ho.
With Mothers’ Day tomorrow, I had planned to skoot about my childhood haunts, filming a wee video for my mum, which I would then set to music. So I went for a new-video haircut and headed back to the first home I knew. I had made sure my camcorder battery was fully charged, but had been less diligent with my tape stock situation: i.e. the tape I had assumed was in it wasn’t. Just then I remembered that I had my stills camera, which takes fairly decent video and fits on the same tripod. So I approached the woman tending the garden, introduced myself and asked if I could wander about her property filming myself. I hoped the Mothers’ Day explanation would preclude any assumptions of weirdo-ness. Instead she threw me a sideways glance and asked, “Are you going to buy her something too?” I chuckled amiably and lied to her.
It was an odd sensation, being back there. Odd in that I had no feelings of nostalgia whatsoever. I had no emotion vested in the place; it’s just a house. Hopefully my mum’s a bit more sentimental. From there, I had a whole route planned out, taking in my old schools, the nursery she used to drop me off at. But my camera’s battery chose that moment to run out, so that was that.
Back home, Monty got another walk (what is with him?) and I went to the gym. An hour on the treadmill and I was just about dead. Must get back into regular attendance! Then, without having had anything to eat, I went the pub and got smashed. Finished the night embarrassing Monty by passing out on the floor of my office after incoherently ranting at Rick. Somehow I found my way back to bed.
My name is Kenny, and I am thirty-one years old.
Categories: confession.
UPDATE: I have discovered that this post is mostly bollocks, because Sky have been showing the new episodes in this country for weeks (in fact, just four days after the US broadcast). Shows what I know. I’m leaving it up, though, firstly because I feel simply deleting it will be dishonest regarding my ignorance, and because although it’s totally inaccurate in the details about the availability of the final episodes of Galactica, I stand by my general points about torrents and DRM. So here, unedited of stupidity, is the original post:
Sky TV, who co-funded the 21st century Battlestar Galactica miniseries, will begin showing the latter half of the fourth and final season on Tuesday 8th April. The Sci-Fi Channel in the US (as different from the UK Sci-Fi channel as BBC America is from our ‘beeb’) has been broadcasting these last episodes for a month now.
At first, I had a choice. I could do what I’ve done in previous years: wait for Sky to show it in the UK, get fed up with an entire week between episodes, not to mention ad breaks, and give up, waiting instead for the DVD boxset, which I would consume in one marathon go. Or… I could torrent it episode by episode. I’d have the week gap to contend with, but this is special. I can’t wait, just can’t wait, to see how it all turns out. So for the last month, that’s what I’ve done.
I justify it thus: I don’t have to justify it. In addition, though, I can justify it if I want: I’ll still watch it on TV (for the superior quality), so they’ll get the ratings, and I’ll still buy it on DVD. I’ll probably even buy it on Bluray when the get done licking their wounds over HD-DVD. So they’ll lose no ad revenue or royalties from me as a result of my illegal acquisition of material that the powers that be have decided should not be seen by me until well after my next birthday.
So I torrented it. It’s an uncertain world out there. The first episode was encoded from a high-def original, and looked simply fabulous on my laptop screen. Plus, not being DRM’d, it looked even more fabulous when I copied it to my Playstation 3 and watched it on my telly. Since then, the best I could hope for in terms of picture quality wasn’t that great. The last one I torrented was lousily encoded, and it affected my enjoyment of the league-of-its-own drama.
Then I made a discovery. The powers that be had been releasing these new episodes in the UK, in both standard and high definition, via the iTunes store. A week behind their US broadcast, they became available for purchase, £1.89 for standard def, £2.49 for that and high def (presumably so you can put the space-saving SD version on your iPod/ iPhone).
This was a deal breaker when it came to my brief flirtation with torrenting. Not because it was legal, or because it gave the makers of this fine show some revenue (I had that covered, remember), but because the quality was second to none, and there were no ads. (In case you’re from outside the US, or are from the UK and don’t watch anything on Living TV, there is now a trend for advertising upcoming shows DURING AN ACTUAL PROGRAMME. You’re watching CSI, trying to figure out if it was the waiter or his pre-0p lover who pushed the lawyer into the live volcano, when graphics fill half the screen instructing you to set your PVR for Crossing Jordan next Wednesday. TV Land is getting desperate, no?)
TV, DVD, film companies, LISTEN: people are willing to pay for quality and fairness. I’ll happily give you two-fifty for a show that I know is complete and freely available elsewhere on the planet if you treat me with a little respect.
In the case of iTunes, there is still the DRM. I can’t watch the glorious HD on anything other than my laptop screen, because Apple have encumbered the file with extra data — developed at great expense to them — which checks to see what device I’m playing it on, and whether that device has been their blessing to play said file. Madness. I could have watched the episode I’ve just finished a week ago, for free. The only thing that stopped me was that the pirates weren’t discerning enough in their encoding.
That’s what you have that they don’t. That’s why I’ll give my money to you and not get it from p2p for free, NOT because you’ve “cleverly” broken your file with DRM that’ll make you, to quote Douglas Adams, “the first agains the wall when the revolution comes.”
So I’m legal again, folks. But not entirely happy about it.
P.S. And another thing: why was I unaware that Galactica was on? I understand that Sky have been running commercials that I’ve obviously missed, but I googled it and the closest I came was some fan posting on a blog saying Sky had told him the new series was starting in April. If you go to Sky’s official page for the series, there’s no mention of broadcast times. There are some video interviews, and on one of the taglines there is an indirect reference to the fact that season 4.5 is back, but no more detail than that. I realise the mistake is mine, but Sky really don’t seem to be advertising it very well. Everything in the world can’t be my fault, can it?
Categories: confession, DRM.
Checking my stats today I found that someone came to this blog via a simple search for one of the most ubiquitous words on the internet. Doing the same search, I found that my humble blog was, indeed, on the first page of the results.
So how could this mostly unread and ignored corner of t’internet end up in such a prominent position within Google’s Great Map of the Web? Simple: through the awesome power of misspelling! In this case Wikepedia instead of Wikipedia. The typo directed the poor soul (who’s from Aldershot, apparently) to this post on George Clinton.
Now I’d normally go back and edit a spelling mistake having had it pointed out to me. This is to better maintain my image as a wordsmith of at least average skill. This time, however, I will leave the error in place in the hope of luring more unfortunate users into my den of sub-standard english.
Aha, aha, ahahahaha!
Categories: confession, idea, Recommendation.
I failed to hit the NaNoWriMo deadline. Big surprise. So I get no winners’ certificate, no little badge that I can proudly post on this blog.
What I do get is more written than I ever had before. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but lack of motivation stops me doing enough of it. The deadline, even though I’ve missed it, made me JUST WRITE. I’ve listened to so many writers give that advice: don’t get it right, get it written; apply seat of pants to chair; and so on. What has happened is that ‘just writing’ has helped me shape big things like the overall plot that previously I assumed should be dealt with in outline form.
I’ll finish this novel, even though I won’t get a certificate for it. At the moment it’s a mess of disjointed scenes, a barely coherent cloud of incident and characters with no clear timeline and no continuity. The more I write, though, the more small incident I put down the more the bigger picture comes into focus, at least for me. I start writing a scene, then halfway through come to the knowledge that it won’t survive in the edit, but I keep writing it anyway, maybe from a new perspective, maybe with a new assumption that didn’t exist in the first half of the scene. I can go back and fix these glaring inconsistencies, but the reason I’ve changed tack is that I’ve come up with something better, something I’d never have come up with in an outline or just by idly thinking about it. This has been quite exhilerating and I plan to keep it up.
As for the promised video, I shot one but it’s a pretty pointless affair so I won’t even edit it. You’ve got the story.
Categories: confession, Personal.
Here‘s the trailer for Dreamworks’ upcoming film, Monsters vs. Aliens. Didn’t think much of the synopsis, but the trailer genuinely made me lol.
What is it with me lately? I’m supposed to be a serious film buff, and here I have going gooey over commercial fluff. I’ll justify it with the following: I’ll keep a record of how good I think films look and compare it to the films when I see them. It’s really an exploration of how misleading trailers can be, I guess.
Case in point: I thought the latest Indiana Jones movie was utterly terrible, and when I think back to the trailers, I realise that I thought they were a bit shit too. And still, when I went to the first screening, five past midnight on Thursday morning, I was looking forward to it and expecting it to be good.
So all this is to find out if I should have more faith in trailers. Stay tuned…
Categories: complaint, confession, idea, Personal, Recommendation.
I like movies. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I’m a bit of a buff. In fact, I’d go further still and say that I’m a film snob. I hate most of what gets made for a mass audience, finding it cynical, misogynistic and insulting. I just saw a trailer for a film co-produced by Nickelodeon which should have me ready to vomit. What can I say, though: I’m a dog kinda person, and this pushes my buttons. So help me, I can’t wait to see it.
Am I bad?
Categories: complaint, confession, Personal, Recommendation.
Wouldn’t it be so predictable if I just did a couple of days’ work at the start of November, National Novel Writing Month, and then did bugger all for the rest of the time? Well, I like to be reliable so that’s exactly what I’ve done.
According to my NaNoWriMo spreadsheet, I can still do it if I write 8851 words a day from now on. I don’t see that happening, ’cause this is a busy week. I do have a plan, though: I can write my last 45,000 words on Saturday. If I plan on being awake for twelve hours, that’s eight periods of 90 minutes. That means if I can write 5625 words in an hour, then take a half hour break, then write another 5625, and so on, I can finish my fifty thousand words in time to upload for verification.
That’s 94 words per minute, which, if I remember my old call centre job application in the year 2000, is just about how fast I can type. So basically, I have to keep typing furiously and not quit, pause or draw breath.
Difficult, but surely it can be done. Make no mistake: this is my plan. I’ll videotape it and post it on YouTube for proof.
Categories: confession, idea, Personal.
The month of November looks like being the busiest of my professional career to date. The busiest of my life. I am a lazy man. This should get interesting.
It therefore makes perfect sense for me to commit to NaNoWriMo and, along with tens of thousands of other poor sods around the world, write a novel between the 1st and 30th of November. Fifty thousand words. Fifty thousand. That’s 1666.6667 words a day. Miss a day, that’s 3333.3333 the next day.
I am not only lazy, I am dumb. Anyway, I’ll keep you all posted.
Categories: confession, Personal, Work.
I have ceased being an atheist. I have decided to worship P-Funk.
Earlier in the week I took up a free trial of eMusic, having been directed there by Pitchforkmedia.com. My first purchase was Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain.
Bit of history: when I was in my teens I discovered George Clinton’s 70s bands, Parliament and Funkadelic (as well as the Brides of Dr. Funkenstein). It exhilarated me like no music I’ve heard before or since, but somehow I let it all go before I had even scratched the surface. Perhaps the insane prolificacy of Clinton, Collins, et al proved too daunting to explore fully; perhaps as I was the only person I knew who loved it so much I grew apathetic in a desire to ‘fit in’.
Nevertheless, Maggot Brain took me back. I had known the title track since the early days (of my musical life), but none of the others. Listening to it brought the same exhilaration and I cursed the wasted years.
Anyway, looking the whole thing up on Wikipedia turned up the funniest non-spoof wiki article I’ve yet to find. So I’m officially changing my religion to P-Funk.
Join me.
Categories: confession, Personal, Recommendation.
I’ve been to Kennedy Space Centre (I should call it ‘Center’ as they do, but I won’t) and rather enjoyed it. One thing that disappointed me, though, was how far the spectators are kept from the launches. I wasn’t there during a launch, you understand, but when I see them on telly I think, ‘those people are awfully far away. If I were there I’d want to be about twice as close.’
Having watched this, I have revised my opinion.
Categories: confession.
I’m watching the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham and it got me thinking. The attendees love the Tory party, and not because they’re crazy. They’ve benefited from their Tory-led council, they’ve been let down (with the rest of the UK) by their Labour government, and they will vote Conservative at the next general election with a clear conscience. These people are not evil, misguided or, again, nuts; nevertheless I cannot find any common ground with their position.
In Scotland the Tories will never have power. It can never happen. Thatcher was no friend to us and we will not willingly go back to those dark days. Trouble is, Labour are basically a right-wing party now, and have demonstrated a penchant for illegal war, surveillance-obsession and alarming ID card schemes.
I voted for the Scottish Green Party at the last election, and the one before that. It’s not considered polite to ask a person how they vote, but I don’t mind telling you. I was told by some that it was a wasted vote, or worse, a vote for the Tories. The Greens could never achieve power and every vote against Labour strengthened the Conservative position.
Nevertheless I stuck to my guns and my principals. This is a democracy, I thought, and as such surely it can only be for the general good if I vote for whom I want. It may be tactically unsound for the anti-Conservative, but my conscience wouldn’t allow me to endorse the Labour party who I consider criminals. So I voted Green.
What happened? The SNP got the majority of the vote. Neither Labour nor Tory. In England, the Liberal Democrats are the ‘third’ party and they have no hope touching either of the Big Two, but here someone else pipped them all to the post. Not by a great margin, however, and to form a minority government the SNP had to go into coalition with one or more of their rivals. The Tories wouldn’t even consider it and neither did Labour. So who used their limited number of seats to take up the SNP shortfall? The Lib Dems and, yes, the Greens.
So thanks to all those who voted for parties other than Labour or Conservative, we are now governed in Scotland by neither of those two behemoths. The Nationalist-led coalition’s performance so far has received a mixed reaction, but no one could argue that it has been a disaster.
I offer all this to make the following note-to-future-self: forget tactics, vote for who you want.
Categories: complaint, confession, Personal, politics, Recommendation.
Lost my homepage. It used to be a pointless cluttering of the web, but it used to work. Alas, now it’s a handy way to bring up a 404 error.
Here’s me apologising in person:
Thing is, trying to fix it resulted in my completely losing this blog for a while. Essentially, my index file (I presume) was trying to direct to a sub-directory that to my knowledge has never existed. I tried deleting and replacing it, to no avail. Curiously, this happened in Firefox and not in Safari. I then started to wonder if Apple’s iWeb was to blame. To cut a long story less-long, I started mucking around with my DNS settings directly, despite this warning on my host’s site that seems written especially for me:
To make matters worse, when I realised that I had screwed things up, and put things back to the way they had been as far as I could remember, I faced the fact that deleting CNAMEs seems to have instant effect, whereby re-instating them takes hours. So although everything looked okay, no blog.
Finally, it reappeared, but at the time I was just thinking, ‘to hell with it, I obviously wasn’t meant to blog.’
I’m back, though, and aren’t you glad?
Categories: complaint, confession, Personal.
