Friday, June 24, 2005

Quick Quick 

Oooh, experienced broadband today. I don't often have access, unless I'm sitting in an Internet cafe and paying to check my e-mails. All the sites popped up heaps quicker with the exception of Blogger. So I'm blogging at home on dialup rather than spoil today's speedy netwanderlust.

Tagged along with Megan to go swimming at the Margaret River pool Wednesday night. Megan's netball game began at six so I had plenty of time before the pool closed at seven. Rec centres are like a whole other world for me. One Wednesday evening I'm congratulating myself on being at ease while buying myself a drink at a Northbridge hotel and the next I'm freaking out about where to enter a heated pool.

Right now I'm wondering what all the crashing noises are downstairs. I better go before the house falls over or someone needs an ambulance.
// posted by Deanne @ 22:10
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Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Lurch Along Meet Up 

Last week I discovered that even when you haven't had a beer, it's easy to lurch towards James St on the upper balcony of the Brass Monkey. I think the balcony slopes a little. Thanks to a Perth Weblogger Meetup I checked out more of the pub than ever I've wanted.

Plan B was to buy a beer and wait. Nic of The 52nd State wandered by my balcony table and I asked if he was a blogger. Plan B worked. Only after we'd become lost on the second floor and gone downstairs to check the restaurant, the beer garden and the courtyard did I realise I'd met him twice before. We then agreed to return to the balcony and sit on cushy lounge chairs to await 'the others.'

'The others' turned out to be Bret from Not the West. We talked about everything new related to blogging, the media and us plus a little about chenin grapes and their potential to grow well in Gin Gin.

I love that blogger meet up is unpredictable. I never know who I might meet or even if I'll meet anybody at all. Or perhaps I'll miss meeting people if I don't take a risk and ask strangers if they blog.

Unfortunately, I didn't take the risk and ask a woman sitting at the table I eventually occupied if she blogged. Sorry if you came along and a curly-haired woman looked at you before lurching on. That was me.
// posted by Deanne @ 20:22
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Monday, June 20, 2005

Licences, Sitemaps and Democracy 

Andrew's recommended I check out an article about openDemocracy at Creative Commons: Text. I'm yet to apply a Creative Commons License to my site or blogs but it's on the cards (along with one or two other things).

The latest issue of ResearchBuzz included news of Google Sitemaps, which looks like a good way to have your page indexed accurately. Also looks like it might take some time to make a sitemap. I wonder if having an HTML sitemap will help me make one in XML? Probably not. (Small sigh). Guess I'll take a look. The ResearchBuzz article mentions a few ways of generating sitemaps, including sitemaps specifically for people using Movable Type and WordPress. Read more in 'Google Announces Google Sitemaps' (ResearchBuzz, 7 June 2005).
// posted by Deanne @ 20:34
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Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Blue Poles in Pieces 

I remembered feeling under pressure. To quickly feel something. To see it whole. I remember moving closer, moving away, wishing people would shift so that I could see it all at once and from a distance. Without the bench in the foreground and perhaps without the walls or the floor or the roof surround. My companion pointed out the blue poles.

Nine years later someone asks me if I was impressed. Not really I say after pausing to remember. I should have added, But not because it wasn't impressive.
// posted by Deanne @ 16:41
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Monday, June 13, 2005

Paperclips, Reflex or a New Blog? 

Every time I log into Blogger I'm tempted to create a new blog. I don't know why, I can hardly ever work out what it is I want to write about in the blogs I do have. I think it's another form of writing procrastination. An e-version of going to the newsagency and buying lots of stationery.
// posted by Deanne @ 17:03
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Saturday, June 11, 2005

Hungry Eyes 

At last, proof that the Dirty Dancing soundtrack has a solid scientific base. New romantic love is like hunger, thirst or craving for drugs. At least that's what some US researchers believe after looking at functional MRI scans of people in love. Each subject was shown an image of their partner. I wonder if the same part of the brain becomes active if people hear or smell their partners?

The same researchers have now moved on to scan the brains of people who've been dumped. Preliminary findings show that being dumped heightens romantic love. How much does that suck?

Read all about it in 'Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain' New York Times, 31 May 2005).
// posted by Deanne @ 12:47
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Sunday, June 05, 2005

Read Me Loud and Clear 

Ooh, someone read my blog. I know because he asked if I'd broken my feed when changing to XHTML.

Oh, said I airily. I don't have a feed for my personal blog. And I couldn't have broken it even if I did because the blog's still in HTML 4...

Then I thought that if someone is reading, maybe I should have a feed. And perhaps I shouldn't think of my site as only being the site hosted by my ISP and perhaps include the blog in that definition. Seeing as how I announced to the world that 'my site' is now all lovely and extensible here.

So now my temporal island's all lovely and extensible too. And I have a site feed. And sometimes I'm way too nerdy for a girl who isn't into spec fic.

Thanks Andrew for making me think abou this!
// posted by Deanne @ 17:39
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Sliders and Secrets 

From the latest ResearchBuzz comes more geeky news:


  1. Yahoo! Mindset helps you skew your search depending on whether you're searching to research or searching with intent to shop. I'm never searching with intent to shop (sometimes even when I'm at the shops). I often find it really frustrating when searching for information about a place (say, Margaret River or Dubai) and have umpteen accommodation sites listed on the first results page. Now I can let the search engine know what I'm about before I start.

  2. 'Google Secret Lab, Prelude' (Henk van Ess's Search Bistro, 1 June 2005). You have to love a Secret Lab story.


// posted by Deanne @ 17:38
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Friday, June 03, 2005

Lightening 

A weekend or two ago a friend and I became caught in a storm after eating an early tea in Northbridge. Sheet lightening lit the sky to the East as we hustled between shop overhangs along James St. The thunder followed us down William St as we headed for the station.

One thunder clap felt so close I hurt my neck pulling my head in and I almost ended up in the arms of a guy selling copies of the West. There's very little gutter along William St and after watching a piece of paper and a small block of wood float by I could soon watch the water flood over the kerb whenever a car passed. We listened to a group of women squeal and giggle as they crossed from a carpark. Turned out we knew the giggler, who'd trodden in a puddle in her haste.

My friend and I decided to catch taxis home rather than public transport. The trouble with thunder storms is that you don't like to ring people during them to say 'please, please come and pick me up from the station' because you might have a nasty thunderstorm accident on the phone. So to the taxi rank - just as soon as we could cross to the train station where we knew there to be one.

Despite startling at every flash of lightening, I enjoyed the show. With no harsh sunlight, lots of ambient lighting from restaurants, and the amber streetlights reflecting off the wet streets, I could see more comfortably than I ever can.

The rain eased and we dashed as fast as people who can't see much can across Roe and up into the station. I spotted a Hotham Valley train at Platform 6 and noted that a mystery bus service known as the 606 was replacing the Freo train.

We wandered about contemplating this until I spotted the 606 stand at the taxi rank and the thunder storm passed. So my friend waited to check that the mysterious 606 did exist and I boarded a semi-articulated bus with foggy windows.

Walking home I could see that the train line across the road was floodlit and I could even see through the fence at a man in brown pants and an orange vest working on the line. The air was warm and still and I could hear metal hitting metal.
// posted by Deanne @ 18:13
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Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Editing Conversations 

One blog entry a week is surely enough? No? I've joined EditZone, an online community of people who write and, naturally, edit what they've written. So I've been popping into IRC chat channels that (big breath) aren't related to my waning eye sight (and the waning sight of others, of course, it's not all about me, really!). So far, so good - it's a lot of fun chatting to people about something fun instead of making fun of something that isn't. The nature of the EditZone chat means that people are more self-conscious about their typos. Yes, me too.

Meanwhile, the new Stephanie Plum novel Eleven on Top by Janet Evanovich is out on the 21st of this month. Which means it's nearly a year since Dad's operations when he read Ten Big Ones in a drug/pain-induced haze at Margaret River Hospital. Yeah, they're that easy to read. And I'll no doubt be reading number 11 by July.
// posted by Deanne @ 21:30
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