Skin of Stars

Thought I might talk a little about the changes I have made to my blog. The new layout is pretty obvious, I went for the ultra minimalist theme as thats just what I like to see on webpages. The new tagline, In the City Of Spires, is a (misquoted, should be Dreaming Spires) description of Oxford by a poet called Matthew Arnold in a poem where he harks back to his days of studying in the city:

‘That sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not summer for beauty’s heightening’

I have had a little adjustment to the left hand column. For the time being there are all the usual Thanet blog links, but I suspect that I will also change those in time, no rush though. I have adjusted a section to what is now called buttons, seeing as all the cool kid blogs have them. I’ve included the obligitory ‘get firefox‘ button, as really everyone should. The bird at the top is called the songbird. It is a music player based on the same engines as the firefox browser. Its still in developmental stages so not recommend as a replacemnt for your current player (yet) but is good fun to use and a great way to search for and listen to music on the net.

There is also a particularily interesting button on there for anyone who wants to just read all their favourite webpages in a glance, thats netvibes. Netvibes is essentially a web rss reader, but it has many other cool tricks under its belt. I will be honest, its through netvibes that I now read everyones blogs and has been the case for some time. It informs me when there is a new post on any one of a number of blogs I have listed on it and gives me the ability to read the post without ever having to visit the blog. It saves lots of time and effort. If there is something I want to comment on then a handy link is provided to the post. Alas, I can’t see Tony’s pics on it, but I have always had trouble with his feed, so thats nothing new for me.

Below the button section we have my del.icio.us tags. Del.icio.us is a service that I use to bookmark webpages that I find interesting or useful. It is also possible for others to view those bookmarks I make. Tags are simply the categories that those links come under.

A terribly interesting thing I came across by a site called Maps Of War. The animation looks at the war thats been raging in the middle east for the last 5000 years.

Is there a point to blogging? I think there is perhaps even a beauty to it. It is an opportunity to express yourself with added bonus that people may actually hear your words. It makes such a difference to ranting to your walls, which instantly absorb and forget. The words hang in the air for others to view for months, or even years down the line. Though you can be sure that you are only remember you by the last thing you utter. I remember posting a youtube of myself doing diablo work on here and one of the comments I recieved was the statment ‘not sure if your into girls or boys’ (I paraphrase), yet only a couple of posts earlier I was talking about my g/f (girlfriend in J17 talk). Its like the classic, people replying to forum threads with the words ‘I couldn’t be bothered to read the whole thing, so I just read the last post’.

None the less, blogging is a very personal and in its own way very satisfying thing. You say what you want to get of your chest and damn the rest. I type because it makes me happy, not because it make you happy.

Thanet Life seems to be under threat. If you are a Thanetian and want to have your own say in a well read local site on local matters, then please go there with an open mind and volunteer your services.

Thanks
Kevin

I no longer run Thanet Blog List. After my recent possible bias in the comments of this site I felt I needed to hand it over straight away. It has been given to another and I will not name them. They intend to develop the idea and I hope it becomes an even more useful resource.

This Saturday I will no longer be a Thanet blogger. I expect I will keep blogging for the same reasons I started in the first place. I will probably even change my subheading I also expect to continue reading others, you’ve been fun. Hope it doesn’t get too much more political (vote anyone but tory, hehe) and you all remember that life is supposed to be fun. Perhaps I’ll also point out for the sake of sillyness, has anyone else noticed that Ramsgate Tourettes and Eastcliff Richard have taken a break at the same time?

Thank you Thanet, its been emotional.

Seems I got somewhat busted in the BBC Kent article on bloggers as the man behind the Thanet Blog List. Many of the more savvy would have guessed anyway, but its really out now, so I guess its time to discuss it.

I started the list in reaction to Cliff Richard saying he was quiting the scene after a spat with the doctor. I was concerned that there wouldn’t be the central point for bloggers to rally around. I also had issues with the links being removed from peoples blogs due to personal issues. I felt the best way to resolve this was an independent list that would link anyone regardless, trusting the reader to decide what was hot and what was not.

Now we come to the problem. Not only is it not very independent now that its clear its me, but I am leaving Thanet and so feel I will have less time to hunt down local blogs.

We have a few possible solutions here:
a) Kevin continues as is and only adds blogs when he checks thanetbloglist@yahoo.co.uk once every few months.
b) Some other person contacts Kevin saying they will take good care of it and will remain impartial.
c) I tell you all the login and password for the blog and you can all add stuff when you find it. Kevin (or someone) hangs onto the email to reset any abuses with a password reset.

I personally like the third option as I’m a community thinking kinda guy, but I can see its problems.

This is up to you guys to call it as its really your list.

Admin authentication is starting to annoy me. I can understand in some cases with the blogs, but frankly, the admin can just delete the posts anyway, so why bother. What really annoys me is when it’s supposed to be on a social site outside of blogger. Why should the admin tick off each post? Its not the dark ages of the internet anymore, so why do small site owners still not trust the users to say something sensible. Frankly, I find it very off putting and it discourages input. I am one of the 1% who creates content, but I’m not going to if you don’t trust what I have to say.

The Wikipedia articles of Ramsgate and Margate have been recommended for the Wikipedia CD Selection. At the moment, the seclection only has just over 2000 atricles on it. So it’s pretty neat for our local towns to be chosen out of 1,291,557 english language articles (02/08/06).

The problem is that the articles need more work. I know Adem of the Big Blog has been doing some work on the Ramsgate page, posting a gallery, etc. But the two articles need alot more work. For example, the Ramsgate article states Gary Pallister as the most notable resident (he played for Middlesbrough once), yet totally neglects to mention Van Gough.

Please visit the pages and do what you can to help.

This has been a good weekend. I started Thursday at the 50th Moon On A Stick gig. It was a neat collection of music from far and near. I also got to check out one of the acts (Neverest Songs) that’s going to be playing at my Thanet Rocks gig on the 20th of August at the Westgate pavilion. Also playing will be one of the big blogs friends, Black Primra. I have told Alex McNally’s secretary about the gig. Perhaps he’ll give it a feature or any mention. I’ll be honest, I crave attention from the Thanet Crimes.

Whilst I nipped for a packet of smokes I saw and recognised the Man Eating Sausage. I bothered him for a while, but I’ll leave that there as he has talked about the chance meeting. He did tell me one interesting thing though, I hope that he doesn’t mind me mentioning, that he uses voice recognition software and talks at his computer to write blog posts. What an ingenious idea. He did also mention that he wasn’t sure if i was an anonymous poster. I’m not. My name is Kevin Carmody and I live in Manston.

On Saturday I ran a juggling workshop for Manston fun day. I had some huge help from my friends Danny and Luce and from my girlfriend Rebeka. It was huge amounts of fun, though we were treated a little like a creche.

And today was the Ramsgate carnival…… erm ……. err …… great!

Ok, here are a couple of web treats:
Type ‘failure’ into google and hit ‘I’m feeling lucky’.
And…
A note of word verification.

I found an interesting article on the amount of people that actually participate in web content:

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | What is the 1% rule?

The summary would be something like this. For every hundred people who view a social site (eg wikipedia, blogger etc), 1 will create content, 10 will comment or add content, 89 wil just read. I hope this makes those of you who worry about the lack of comments or input on your blogs makes you feel a little better.

So, like Lucy Mail said in this blog post, don’t worry about the fly catching audience, just power on