flutter nanoblog redux

Seen those twitter add-ons for longer messages? Er...misses the point? Remember flutter, the 26 char version of twitter?

(above msg has 20 characters left)

triangulation stations

The small padded envelope arrived just as I was about to head out for a meeting. I assumed it was a CD or DVD or similar and din't have time to open it.

When I returned much later, it turned out to be the first printed copy of The Triangle. I fear the English language is in for another shock.

post eurovision cooldown

Well, like many others, we are cooling down after the excitement of the Eurovision contest yesterday evening during which we spent a couple of hours making mild bets and critiquing this anachronistic European television.

As Brits, we've had plenty of years of Irish-voiced commentary to absorb and although Graham Norton rang the changes, the jibes were similar to his predecessor.

There is no clear criteria for selecting the winning entry. It doesn't seem to be song, musicianship, performance or any of the more obvious reasons and even the political bloc-voting of the 42 counties was somewhat less-predictable. I suppose it is just a question of making sure that bookies' favourite gets sufficient votes to ensure a return.

The Norwegian winners had several of the right ticks. It seems that violins were important and they did this well. I know the lead singer Alex Rybok was originally from Minsk, Belarus, but hey, it's within a days flight of Norway.

The British entry hovered around the fifth position, somewhat upstaged by the surrounding entries which had glowing nuclear reactors on stage in one case and hordes of woodland faerie nymphs in another.

Our singer and Lordly pianist combo was a trifle staid by comparison, with no sudden wardrobe changes although singer Jade did get a violinist's elbow in her eye.
The Germans tried adding Dita von Teese, who is no stranger to wardrobe malfunction but despite their most spectacular use of glitter, were unable to get any half decent score.

I suppose I quite enjoyed the Iceland, Azerbaijan and Turkish entries, more because they typified Europop, although try as I might, the fairyland winner just didn't appear on my shortlist.

And it seems I wasn't alone, judging from the robust twittering occurring during the event, on a separate couple of #channels created just for the purpose.

eurovision results latest twitter with added pino grigio

We've decided to squanch around the telly this evening with more wine than is sensible and watch the Eurovision contest.

As a continued way to fund rashbre central, we have bet the bank on the complete results in the order shown, using the customary combination of statistics, artistic merit, geopolitical block vote and live twittering via #eurovision #twumpet and @ewanspence.

Yeah.

And the Cirque du Soleil are rather fine.

Graham - leave some gaps.

Update: Of course the table was merely the rashbre central computerised predictions. And there was no fiddling the winner.

'sno snow y'know

Pah. Fooey.

I see shadows.

I see fluffy white clouds in a blue sky.

The buildings around me are looking sort of yellow in a strange light.

Whilst all around me the twitterverse is talking about #uksnow and bad weather. This morning we had a snowflake fall here. I saw it. Then a little later another dozen or two. I held my tongue out to see whether it passed the tongue test. Nope. I couldn't catch a single flake. Mainly because they were smaller than grains of salt. This picture from rashbre central on 5 Jan 2009 has much more of a snowdrift than anything today.

And now this yellow light.

Sunshine.

I quite like it.

twitter haiku tea break (with cranberries)

I like the idea of using twitter to send haikus.

@amandapalmer suggested it this morning, so I wrote one on the way to the office, as an experiment...

tail lights red, streaming
wintry yellow tarmac glows;
london’s work beckons.

Then, this evening, inspired by the fridge, whilst I waited for the water to filter before I made some tea.

shrill cranberries wait
redly, fiercely, harshly, fat
mesmerizing sharp

Of course, as well as the 5/7/5 = 17 syllables, they are supposed to have some reference to season...

dancing forlornly

Spring's exaltation near goads
happy somersaults

...Then I found the haiku generator...

archly replying
faintly, serene, first gnat smiles
fumbles, anarchic

Its a sure fire way way to cut down on @rashbre twitter followers.

Social Media Jungle

As Mr Ross illustrates above, there's a sudden flurry of interest in 'Social Media Jungle' #smjces and Twitter.

The @rashbre twitter account has been running since February 2007 although in the early days it was like having the only telephone in the village.

Nowadays, it blends some news tickers and general chit chat amongst an entertaining group of people, although self discipline is required to avoid following off along every semi interesting story. I can see that my average posting rate is 1 or 2 posts a day over the last 2 years, but with some increase in recent months.

Because of its speed, there can be a fascination with breaking news stories although realistically a wait of a few hours can often bring a journalism based consolidation. A simple example was yesterday's Apple news. People followed the story in real time but as soon as it finished, Apple loaded their new pages with all of the content directly to their website.

I'm a great believer in 'wide time' (lots of things happening at once) but the compensating 'looking for the long waves' is need to detect any real patterns or stories.

We are also seeing a few of show-biz turning up in these streams now, with Stephen Fry as a fairly long term user and more recently Jonathan Ross (@wossy) appearing along with chit chat about whether his return to television (with Fry) will somehow feature the twitter idea.

Whether these facilities emerge as a sustainable snack-based form of connectedness remains to be seen; I know in my professional world its still relatively uncommon, although I hear that 'www' prefixes were also rare, once upon a time.

my sweetheart the drunk

Interesting to observe the twittering during X Factor this evening. Many regular sources seemed to become a collective commentary on who should be kicked out and bizarrely which cover of the Leonard Cohen song should be the winning entry.

It reminded me of Jeff Buckley's versions of 'Hallelujah' which are the ones I prefer.

The Simon Cowell based X factor is more about shipping 'units' than anything to do with creativity in music, hence the Christmas release dates of the backing track based family popular singles and 'safe present' CD compilations. In fairness, Alexandra, the winner seemed a pleasant enough person; it will be interesting to see how she handles the pop machine.

Meanwhile, I've been happily listening to Jeff Buckley recordings since the TV-programme finished. Or Jeff Buckley's video here (6 million views + 12,000 comments)