ianbee: this is instead of getting a dog

Australian Culture

I have to post this before you all tell me about it in a deafening flood of dog-related trivia. There was a music concert for dogs at the Sydney Opera House yesterday. As I lay dozing in bed this morning listening to the item on the news, the reporter did nothing to dissuade me from believing that the concert was actually in the main opera house auditorium. Do the dogs get a seat? I wondered. Did they put plastic sheeting on the floor? Was there a bit of turf by the loos? It turns out they held the gig outside, very disappointing.

Speaking of dogs, i have been reminded that the "down under" dog banner needs updating. The original banner was modified by a friend as a going away present, and he has offered to celebrate my return by designing a Yorkshire version. But if he is reading this and feels super-busy and doesn't think he'll get round to it, I understand. (Although I am wondering if I left my ice-axe in your cupboard?)

When I arrived in Bangladesh, my friends couldn't meet me at the airport as they were occupied by a prior funk engagement. The driver they sent to pick me up was clutching this distinctive banner ...

Winter Sports Blip

There's been another massive blip in readership. This time I know why. Google is sending every poor unsuspecting Winter Olympics fan to my blog because of this old, slightly grumpy, post! Which unfortunately now seems in really bad taste.

Blip

Someone asked me yesterday how many people read this blog. I don't make a habit of looking at the statistics, and I hadn't gone near them for months, so I guessed about 20. Which turned out to be right, although some of those twenty are me! The rest are my either my parents or assorted friends and acquaintances such as Richard, Emma, Harriet, Joelle, Catherine, Matthew, Philippa or Kenny*. There are also several assorted Germans, a friendly Brit living in Spain, some Kiwis and various bored people at work. Then there'll be two people who stumbled onto it via google whilst searching for "dog, sydney, helicopter".

Something happened on Monday. 439 people read my blog. Or at least there were 439 'page views' which is not exactly the same thing, but lets pretend it is. That is a better and less creepy explanation than one person checking my blog 439 times. As you can see from the graph, it's a bit of a blip. What's going on? The snowboarding videos weren't that good, surely?

* if you consider yourself a regular reader please don't be offended if I missed your name off! I decided to respect your anonymity.

Welcome

Hello. There seem's to be a little flood of new people dipping into this blog, so I thought it worthwhile writing a short introduction and explanation. I've been typing away on this website for a couple of years now, mainly because I enjoy it; I enjoy writing and I enjoy making people laugh and I enjoy communicating. This is not the sort of website where deep and moral issues get discussed or frustrations get angrily vented, it's just a place where I mention things that have amused or entertained me and try and make my friends and myself laugh. This blog is read by a mixed group including my parents and colleagues from various jobs past and present ... so I have learnt to be careful and steer well away from anything remotely controversial or confidential! That said, sometimes I mess up. In the years I've been tapping on this keyboard I've only twice had to remove a post that I shouldn't have written. I think that's a pretty good record - my friends trust me not to post identifiable pictures of them or use their names in the writing without permission. If there is a story I want to tell where someone is easily identified I take great care over what I write. But like I said, sometimes I mess up, and I do appreciate it when it is pointed out to me.

The writing has taken on a fresh importance now I am overseas and separated by distance from family and friends, I guess this will also serve as a some kind of diary, a record of the experience. Feel free to stick around if you are obsessed by mice, mountains, biscuits, snowboarding or even stuff. If you are brave you could even write a comment ... Thank you!

Spelling Police

The spelling police have been in touch with me. Apparently there is a word called 'bought' which I haven't been using correctly. Or at all. I apologise to all who have been offended or inconvenienced by this omission. (I'm all for constructive criticism.)

Spring Clean

I need to warn you. I have redesigned this blog. It's all going to change. Hope you're okay with that, I know some of you don't like change. Some time in the next few days it will be all shiny and new. Excited?

UPDATE: Done it! That wasn't much warning was it! Sorry. What do you think? (The dogs were drawn by Simon.)

I feel fine

Sit back and clear your diary, because reading this post will take up the rest of your day. Alex has introduced me to We Feel Fine, a website that gives a snapshot of the emotional state of the population.  Let the authors explain it themselves ...

"We Feel Fine has harvests human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved."

"The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine's Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on."

Wow. The interface is amazing. You can dip into a mad whirl of feelings, or narrow down your search by age, location, sex, even weather! The experience is dizzying, absorbing, addictive. The world seems very small and very connected. The most common feeling today is 'better' (phew!) followed by 'bad' (oops.) and then 'good'. This is the state of the planet. Dive in.

In awe

Well, I was looking for something Eastery to raise the tone of this blog out of the "a funny thing happened to me today" rut and who should start blogging but my friend Gillian Breckenridge in New York! I urge you to read her Good Friday post - ironically she left a comment here looking for blogging tips.  The only tip I have for her is "read my blog less, write in your blog more".