Dec
31
2008
Not that I’m utterly miserable or anything, but I have spent the whole of this Christmas trying to shift a stubborn cold. I suspect I picked it up at the Woolworths sale. So I haven’t been a very conscientious blogger over the ‘festive’ period.
But I haven’t totally neglected the dangling modifier. I’ve been looking at how I might improve my blog in 2009. Thing is, one of my geek friends told me I needed to interact more with the ‘blogosphere’, so I thought – as this time of year’s so quiet and probably most people are too pissed to bother checking obscure, unknown blogs like mine – it would be a good opportunity to look into adding new features to the blog and making friends with other bloggers.
I started by looking at this fantastic article that my friend recommended:
27+1 Tips for Building and Maintaining a Blog Audience
Obviously I felt bad and inadequate when I read the bit about updating regularly, but then I reminded myself that you are all probably busy with your loved ones. Never mind, I thought, a new year’s resolution. I need one of those now that I finally have given up smoking, so it may as well be about blogging.
But I’m already getting stuck. The tips recommend stuff on tags and social bookmarking. I had to ask another geek about this. He said it should be “easy enough” to find a ‘plug- in’ on Wordpress. So I checked the plug-in page and it said:
“The core of WordPress is designed to be lean, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat.”
I’ve given up for now. I’m going to go and eat more mince pies and come back to it later.
no comments | posted in technology
Dec
12
2008
The Woolworths Superstore Playset – on sale now
I notice since I raised the alarm last week – about the world being under threat and everything – Gordon Brown claims to have saved it. But he hasn’t saved the Woolworths superstore.
I wonder what went wrong there. Could it have been they weren’t listening to the management consultants?
“We have seen nothing like this before.”
May be they did visit the site. But Woollies has been around a long time; their senior managers may not think of themselves as ‘downturn virgins’ and so must have assumed the report wasn’t for them.
May be what Woollies needed was some ‘thought leadership’. If only Logica worked with general stores. They offer “transversal corporate functions“. And who could argue with this statement?
2 comments | tags: business, downturn, Gordon Brown, thought leadership, Woollies, Woolworths | posted in Management consultants
Dec
5
2008
Of course I never trusted them after the window incident, but that is just a personal thing, and I hope I’m big enough not to let my personal experiences affect my judgement irrationally.
It’s just that I can’t square it. Either they were wrong, in which case they shouldn’t be teachers. Or they lied, in which case they shouldn’t be entrusted with the welfare of the little children.
There was the stuff about splitting infinitives and their irrational hatred for the word ‘got’. But then they had to tie us in knots with their insistence that writing is boring if you use the same word twice in a sentence.
“Think of a different word to make it more interesting.”
That’s what they said. Of course I never believed them (although I don’t like to boast). Why do people give teachers so much credit for knowing things?
Successive captains of the Starship Enterprise continue to split their infinitives. Surely that’s enough to make people question the wisdom of those who told us not to?
But no, people insist on looking for a different word to “make the sentence more interesting”. And the worst culprits are journalists – sports journalists, and especially in broadcast.
If only they would read this blog and believe me when I say:
“There is no shame in repeating the name of a football team. Why must you call them ‘the visitors’ or worst still, ‘the tourists’?”
They are not tourists, they are paid professionals and they have come to play football not to see the sights. And they are not visiting, not for long. As soon as the match is over they get back on the bus and go home.
Sports come on the radio during the news. They wait until I am running towards the cooker, busy with a pan of over-boiling milk. Or I might be watching television, and just as I step away to make a cup of tea the sports correspondent starts gushing about visitors and tourists in that over excited way they have.
I suspect they have joined the conspirators, the ones who laugh at editors everywhere. I can’t listen any more. I have turned off the radio, unplugged the television.
I sit alone in the dark wondering about the UN. Dare I look for news online? I need to know whether the conspiracy has reached the highest level of international governance. I know they are holding climate talks, so here it is…
The future of our planet is riddled with abbreviations and acronyms.
no comments | tags: conspirators, editors, split infinitive, sports, Teachers, tourists, visitors | posted in Teachers, international, news, sports
