Journal Entries
That way madness lies...
Posted Jul 10, 2000
OK, time to hunker down with that postgrad dissertation I've been threatening to get written for the last year and a half. At long last I sympathise with my tutor, a highly educated and decent-minded woman who, I suspect, has long since begun to despair of ever getting a sensible word out of me. I too have begun to despair somewhat. Three months to save the Universe, as usual. I always leave it a bit late. Help. I don't even particularly care about the Universe, now I come to think of it. Let it all go hang, I'm off to the pub... No, discipline. Men from the boys, all that sort of thing. Tally-ho, etc...
Books; paper; computer booted up and primed for all eventualities, barring nuclear meltdown; Internet connection (last thing I need at the moment, frankly); plenty of food in the fridge; bottle of whisky in case of emergencies, already half-empty (this is an emergency, after all 
)...
Actually, I'm nearly looking forward to this...
But how right I was, many moons ago, on that fateful evening when, as a misguided youth, I gleefully observed that Literature would one day be the Ruin of me. That Day approaches...
The quest for Philosophical Knowledge... A solitary, relentless, ultimately unrewarding endeavour. But, hey, that's what I like about it. Maybe this'll turn out a bit like Jack Kerouac on Mount Desolation seeking enlightenment and failing with flying colours - that is, he didn't find it but he wrote the Dharma Bums instead, good enough to be going on with. Or maybe I'm setting my sights at the wrong level here... Anyway, I know it'll work out sooner or later, because it always does, with me, when I'm writing - it's just something I know how to do. Whether I like it or not. In fact, come to think of it, I'll start tomorrow. Hah, it's too easy. For now, to misquote the (other) great bard, I'll just have one more piss, one more pint and then, maybe, one more Cup of Coffee - for the Road, you understand. Before I go - like Dylan, like Lear, like the rest of us eventually - to the Valley Below...
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Latest reply: Jul 10, 2000
Alas poor graphics (I knew them only too well)...
Posted Jun 8, 2000
Well, I'm proper chuffed. Recently I took the plunge and got myself a phone / Internet connection after numerous years of dilly-dallying and hum-hahing and, er, nay-saying. But it's a rather old computer that I have (Pentium 133 and only 16 Mb Ram) and the modem clocks in at a prehistoric 28.8 kbps (what the hell *is* a kbp?), and I found I was sitting around waiting for between 5 - 10 minutes just for a simple h2g2 forum page to load up, naturally becoming pretty despondent and cheesed off about the whole affair, two steps away in fact from giving up altogether and resigning myself to a sad life haunting the Internet Cafes in the evenings searching for vaguely interesting email postings and paying over the odds for the privilege.
But - and here's why I'm chuffed - I happened upon a 'preferences' option that enables me to switch off all graphics, animations and so forth. All the stuff, in fact, that I absolutely hate about the Internet - those silly gimmicky things featuring cartoon characters dancing across the screen making seductive gestures at me, funny flickering balls bouncing all over the place every time I move my mouse button, you know the kind of nonsense (nothing to do with h2g2, this second one. Just a nasty memory I have from some website or other). The sort of thing that any half-competent designer wouldn't even waste their time opening their mouth to sneer at. If only I'd been smart enough to realise how easy it is to do away with all of that...
Anyway, now I can download text-only, and it only takes a minute or two per page. Things are made still easier by the improvements that the h2g2 techies have recently been making to the service. And I love that alabaster homepage. That's all something to celebrate. Time for a nice strong cup of tea...
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Latest reply: Jun 8, 2000
Writer's Workshop...
Posted Jun 3, 2000
Just editing a few of those Guide articles I left lying around a couple of months ago. Now that the summer's here I have time for this sort of thing again...
I had a piece on Nonsense that got a little out of hand, so sensibly enough I ended up splitting it into two separate articles - one attempting to define nonsense in general terms, and the other dealing specifically with seventeenth century English nonsense poetry. Before that, the material was all mixed up together, and it looked a little incoherent in places.
There's probably a better chance of getting an article approved if it limits itself to just one subject, rather than doing a broad, discursive piece of writing. It seems sensible enough that this should be the case. After all, that's how an encyclopaedia would normally be organised, with each entry dealing with one particular subject, and then referring the reader to other related subjects...
As for the editing problem, often noted by researchers disgruntled at a sub-editor's hatchet-job... I think the best way to maintain some control over the eventual outcome of a piece of work is to try to know the sub-editor's job as well as they know it themselves. By which I mean, one should do as much editing as possible oneself, before it gets to them, and there's a better chance that when it's approved it will get through without having been butchered into tiny pieces. Really, this is just following the basic literary procedure of cutting out any word or phrase or passage that doesn't serve a purpose, that doesn't move the piece forward in any way. (I'm not claiming to be an expert at this myself, by the way. Just an enthusiastic learner...) Pre-editing also saves time for the editors, so I daresay it works in everyone's favour really...
Overall, I'm pleased enough with the quality of the pieces I've been working on. The hardest thing is condensing down to the basic points without being too wordy, but at the same time trying to avoid over-simplification. The only one I really dislike is the article on Lee Harvey Oswald. I can't decide whether I want it to be mainly biographical stuff about Oswald himself, or speculation about the events of the actual assassination, or about the whole media cult that's sprung up around it and Oswald over the years. Consequently there are two or three different articles in there all jostling for the same space. That's one that should never have got off the drawing board; in fact, I might even cancel it - or else, look around for someone to collaborate with. Any paranoid conspiracy theorists out there? Come on, I know you're hiding somewhere...
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Latest reply: Jun 3, 2000
a life less laboursome II (Easter message)...
Posted Apr 23, 2000
Another Sunday, another mildly rejuvenating afternoon. Newcastle and Leeds are playing football somewhere inside my little radio set, I have a nice cafetiere full of intense coffee and the remains of 'Chicken Bloody Good' to contend with, and I'm enjoying the pleasant after-effects of two glasses of more or less half-decent Chardonnay. The simple pleasures, they say, are the best, and while I don't know who 'they' are to dispense such wisdom, I suppose I'll just have to take 'them' at 'their' word. 'Simple' is all I got, right here...
I notice, more by chance than anything, that it happens to be Easter weekend. One thing I can be sure enough of :- if life occasionally raises itself above the level of the unsatisfactory, it is thanks to my own efforts and the efforts of those around me, people that I care about and have respect for - not 'God', thank you very much, whether there is or is not such a thing. It's an insult to human intelligence to think otherwise...
Let's not any of us be fooled here. This world we live in was made and unmade by humans - used and abused as well, unfortunately. 'God' simply doesn't come into the equation - until we come to terms with this basic insight we will never take full responsibility for the state we have got the world into. Blaming our problems on the decline of religion won't get us anywhere - rather, shove us into reverse gear...
Just thought I'd make that point, on this of all days. What's the use of salvation, when we haven't even got things sorted out yet at ground level? As that great master of the human shallows Woody Allen once pointed out, there is no question that there *is* an unseen world. 'The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?'...
Might as well be facetious about such matters...
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Latest reply: Apr 23, 2000
a nice quiet weekend...
Posted Apr 16, 2000
Just having a nice quiet weekend sleeping late and reading through some boring old newspaper articles...
Also trying to breathe a little life into those Guide entries I started writing the other week. The hardest thing is finding the right balance - writing in an accessible way without making too many sacrifices to simplicity. The worst thing is to insult the intelligence of the reader by not telling them anything new. On the other hand, nobody really *likes* reading on screen - if something looks too involved we tend to skip through it or possibly just ignore it altogether. Thus, writing for the Web generally needs to be shorter and more to the point than more traditional forms of writing...
A difficult balancing act, but a useful discipline to learn, bearing in mind that this is a medium that is obviously here to stay. I find that many of the articles in the Guide tend to err too much on the side of simplicity - too much seems to be sacrificed, to the point where there is often not a great deal of substance there. Then again, I normally find myself tending to the other extreme - 'over-writing', in that amiable, discursive way that works so well on paper but doesn't always quite seem to come off on the Web...
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Latest reply: Apr 16, 2000
Lear (the Unready)
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