Archive | September, 2011

genre

September 27, 2011 by books

I’m trying to get a little bit ahead of the game.  I’ve started reading my course book this evening, and there is a quote in it that strikes me as a really interesting perspective.  It says:

To write a poem or a novel is immediately to engage with a literary tradition… The activity is made possible by the existence of the genre, which the author can write against, certainly, whose conventions he may attempt to subvert, but which is nonetheless the context within which his activity takes place, as surely as the failure to keep a promise is made possible by the institution of promising.

I find this really interesting.  Simply because it suggests that by defining a genre that you are writing against, you are promising the reader something.  You are setting out a course for them on which they will follow.  To say that you like a particular genre is to define who you are as a reader.  It is to define your role in the play that the writer has created.  You are the audience, and he or she is the story teller.

It’s almost as if the author is defining the structure for existence.  There is no such thing as supply without demand.  So if a reader demands a type of genre then it is the job of the author to deliver on that.  They form an unspoken contractual agreement, where the author decides to write something in a specific genre, and the reader agrees to write it.  When that contractual obligation is broken, the reader is left broken by the promise the author has failed to keep.

I wonder how many authors out there fail to deliver on these promises?  To say they are going to deliver a crime thriller, only to deliver a romance.  Sometimes reading a book can be a disappointing adventure.  You set yourself ready to enjoy the ride that is given, and the book just doesn’t live up to your expectations.  Do you continue on through the journey, or do you drop the book and all the hope you had within its pages?

In the past, I used to think that I had to do the author justice by promising to finish the book no matter what.  Now? well, life’s too short for it to be ruled by the disappointments that a bad book can give you.  So I just admit defeat and find something else to fill my time.

autumnal reading

September 27, 2011 by books

It’s that time of year again, the one where weekends are often a bit miserable.  There’s nothing I like more, than to curl up on the sofa with a good book and waste the day reading (yes, clearly someone with far too much time on her hands).  So I tend to keep a few books lined up in reserve, ready for filling the days (and evenings).

Anyway, I thought I would share with you my current reading list…

The Honourable Schoolboy – John Le Carre

Smiley’s People – John Le Carre

The Affair – Lee Child

one adult and a dog

September 25, 2011 by really?

When you’re single at the age of 34, it can seem as though the whole world is passing you by.  Bearing in mind you’ve just made yourself single, you were never married and you don’t have children, it feels a little bit, well, strange.  If you were in a city, this would be normal, for cities are full of single people.  It seems that is the place to go if you want to hook up with someone.  Yet when you’re out in the sticks so to speak, being single is an odd state to be in.

This weekend, I feel like a divorced mother having the kids for the weekend.  I was asked to dog sit Lily.  I haven’t seen Lily in three months, and whilst I don’t get to see her, it doesn’t mean that the overwhelming love for her hasn’t disappeared.  She bounded through the front door and remembered who I am.  She was as pleased to see me, as I was to see her.  Wag, wag, wag, went her huge brush-like tail, a huge smile across her blond muzzle.  Here was someone, for a change, who was genuinely pleased to see me, no questions asked.

So, being the ‘single mother’ I decided to treat Lily and take her out for a couple of hours.  Knowing she loves other animals (cows and horses specifically it seems), I took her to the local wildlife park.  I’ll admit, I wanted to go and stand, and stare at the penguins for half an hour (which I did).  I let Lily lead the way around the park, she seemed to enjoy this, stopping to bark at the camels and the cows.  I love seeing her happy, the big smile across her face, tongue hanging out the side of her head, her tail swishing in the breeze.

I’ve said to friends, that there are few places you can go when you’re single that are socially acceptable.  This comment has been waved off on numerous occasions as being something silly to say.  Today, my thoughts were confirmed.  There are places that you shouldn’t really go when you’re single.  A wildlife park is one of them.  I was the only single person there.  Lots of couples about my age, with or without children, but not another single person in sight.  Interesting.  For the large part, I ignored this, as Lily was having a very good time yanking me in different directions to look at the animals and have a good sniff.  The people, stared at me.  Some with a mixture of shock, and others with abject curiosity.  It was as if I had become one of those animals behind the wire.

Perhaps I should have a little sign to hang around my neck ‘single white female, not an endangered species, habitat – Wiltshire’.  I don’t quite understand what the confusion is really.  Perhaps people are amazed at my brazenness – I’ve gone to a couples and children’s domain by myself.  Perhaps it’s awe? I do wonder just how many of these couples are as happy as they like the world to think they are.  It’s a deceptive painting of life, to see the glorious colours of a Van Gough, when the reality is a cheap sepia photo of someone long since dead.  I wonder how many of these people who profess to be happy, are secretly envious of the life I now have?  Who knows – all I know is that happiness is what you make it, nobody has the right to question what does or doesn’t make you happy.

jetpack fail

September 24, 2011 by ux

Following on from an earlier post where I said I was having all kinds of problems with my blog themes… I’ve now found out what the problem is, and how to fix it without killing my theme.

If you get an internal server 500 error on your WordPress site when you try to log-in (or get to /wp-admin/) then you’ll need to do the following.

  1. Use an ftp client to access your site
  2. Browse to htdocs/wp-content/ folder
  3. Rename the ‘themes’ folder to ‘themes_old’ (or similar) – do not delete it
  4. Go to your admin login page for your site
  5. When logged in – go to the ‘plugins’ area in the admin section
  6. Disable ‘Jetpack’
  7. Return to your ftp client and remove the ‘_old’ from your themes folder (or whatever you added to the folder name)
  8. Go back to your admin screen and refresh – if the site stays up, there is your problem.  If it doesn’t, repeat steps 1 – 5, when you log back in, disable all your plugins (except Askimet which doesn’t seem to cause any problems).
I hope this helps – I was starting to get very annoyed with it.

e-ink or ink, ink?

September 24, 2011 by books

Anyone who knows me, knows that I read – a lot.  My passion is clearly literature, but I also love news articles (although I’m trying to stay away from the ‘real world’ stuff – mainly because it’s depressing as hell).  Being the most impatient person in the universe when it comes to wanting to read something, I want to read a book, by my favourite author as soon as it comes out.

In the good old days (OK, so they still exist, but bear with me for a moment please), I would either pre-order the book on Amazon, or I would trundle down to the shops and get the book as it came out.  I would then become the most irritating person in the world while I devoured the book from cover to cover.  If someone tried to drag me away from my book then I’d become grumpy and irritable (nothing’s changed there really).

This last Christmas, I was given a Kindle.  I’d initially said I wanted one, then changed my mind as I was hoping at some point to get myself an iPad, but anyway, Christmas rolled around and I was given one.  For a book reader, it is the valhalla of gifts.

There are many arguments raging about those who love and hate them.  Those who staunchly say ‘but I love the smell of the book, and being able to turn pages’.  Well, I was in that camp, really I was.  Now? Now I struggle to pick up a normal book and read it, have you thought just how heavy they are? Don’t get me wrong, I love my library, and I have a lot of books (although they recently went on a diet), but having a huge library on one device that I can carry around makes my indecisiveness about what to read a lot easier to manage.

There’s a bit that can be said for and against owning and using a Kindle.  I know I love mine (and it’s also handy having it available on my Mac, and my iPhone – if I forget my Kindle, I can just pick up where I left off on another device).  I also know that there are people out there who wouldn’t love it, one memorable quote ‘doesn’t it have a touch screen?’ – no sadly.

So there is a point to this, in an effort to generate some revenue through this site, I’m going to be putting Amazon adverts on the site.  They will be specific to what I’m reading, or have read.  If you click through on the link and make a purchase, then Amazon will pay me some money.  I think it’s a little less intrusive than Google adverts.  So – if you’re thinking of buying a Kindle for someone this Christmas – click through on one of the links on this site :o )

I’ll start posting what I’ve been reading and I’m about to read… warning, there maybe a few posts!

Currently Reading: Fallen by Karin Slaughter

oppressor

September 22, 2011 by stuff I write

In this great wide world of ours, there are people who, for whatever reason believe that they have the right to control others.  It doesn’t matter whether that’s on the scale of a single person or an entire country.  The personalities of these people are, by and large ruled by insecurities.  I’m sure that you’ve all come across someone like this in your lives.  Essentially, I’m talking about subjugation by an oppressor.

An oppressor can take many forms, a tyrant, a bully, a despot, a dictator to name just a few.  The oppressor feels the overwhelming need to control someone.  I believe that this personality is driven by insecurity, and the overwhelming need to prove everything in their lives.  They need to rule the lives of others, because they are incapable of ruling just their own.  From observing these people at close quarters, I think the number one thing that drives them down this sad road, are insecurities.  Everyone has insecurities, it doesn’t matter what someone says, and there are always little insecurities that ripple through lives.  They can be small, or they can engulf a life and take it over letting it rule the way a life is lived.

Very recently my path crossed with someone, who I have known for a very long time.  More and more, I’ve noticed that this person is a bully.  They express instant dis-satisfaction with any element of my life, if it is not to their high standards.  When something like this happens, they are rude and say some reasonably nasty things.  Yesterday was pretty much the final straw.  Instead of lying down like a demure debutant and taking what’s thrown and me, and agreeing with it (something I don’t do anyway, I normally ignore them), I pushed back.  So, somewhat childishly, they ran for the hills crying and hurling obscenities at me.  Clearly, this is their prerogative, but it’s just not something I’m tolerating any more.

I won’t try to understand why this person feels the need to talk to me the way they have.  I have now (I hope) removed them from my life permanently.  So, what can I take from this situation? Well, I can strip them bare of their every facet and trait, and then store them away for safe keeping when I come to craft a story.

So what will I be taking away? I think the venom that I could imagine they spat from their mouth when typing in fury their apparent hatred for me.  I’d also like to explore the ‘oppressor’ and ‘victim’ dynamic a lot more.  It’s one area that could be tricky to develop, but it would also allow me to get my teeth into some of the more challenging aspects of writing, namely, dialogue, voice and personality.  Perhaps the challenge for me would be to create a clichéd view of the ‘oppressor’ and ‘victim’ relationship, then turn it around somehow into something a little bit more interesting.

email

September 21, 2011 by ux

As part of what I do, I find myself researching developments and changes in technology more and more.  Of course, part of this is also keeping on top of the likes of Facebook & Google Plus.  In keeping on top of this, Google has got me thinking about the disposable nature of email addresses.  More specifically, they aren’t so disposable any more.

Back in the good old days of technology, (i.e. when I first started working in IT), the only email account I had at work was an internal one.  Connecting email up to the greater world was unheard of.  If you were a personal computer user, then you a choice between AOL or Compuserve.  I was of course an AOL subscriber, and yes, I do miss Joanna Lumley’s dulcet tones telling me that I had mail (now I long for the red ‘M’ or ’1′).  The thing was, email was something relatively new and unheard of.  You just wouldn’t go swapping email addresses with people who weren’t ‘in the know’.

In the early days of my web life, I had many different email addresses.  Swapping them around wasn’t exactly a problem, why? well, nobody really knew that I had one, and I didn’t really communicate with people via email that much.  Now? well – now I’m lost without my email.  I found out that changing over your email address these days is a complete nightmare.  Have you thought of how many companies and websites you have your email address registered with? no? go have a look – it’s more than you might think.

So, when has your email address become part of your personality?  Changing it is almost akin to saying you’ve moved house.  It’s a wonder that it won’t be too long before companies start using it as a means to determine our identity.  So thinking about that (and the primary purpose of this website), I’ve got to wonder, what do people use their email addresses for?  Do you have an email address for different purposes? Do you just have the one? It’s all very intriguing to think about it.  I have got approximately 6 email addresses (including my work one).  I use half of them actively.

It makes me wonder whether people have ‘throw away’ addresses, that are use for illicit purposes? Do people really keep their work and private life separate when it comes to email?  Are there people out there who refuse to communicate with people in any way other than email?

What are your thoughts?

trying to fix it

September 20, 2011 by ux

Yeah I know – I’ve just updated my theme and got it working.  It turns out there was a conflict with one of my plugins – no idea which one.  Anyway – there’s tons to configure with a Woo Theme, so I’ll be having a play this evening with the hopes of getting this working properly.

If anyone has come here because Google has dropped them off, it’s because you were possibly looking for a fix to a fault that you might have had.  So… here are some keywords that might help…

WordPress crashes when installing a custom theme.

WordPress gives an internal server error after installing a custom theme.

WordPress gives a 500 server error when installing a custom theme.

If you’ve got any of the above problems – please go and read this article - http://wordpress.org/support/topic/500-internal-server-error-while-installing-a-theme.

Als0 – to initially fix the problem, you will need to get ftp access to your server.  Once there, you’ll need to go to the following folder: htdocs/themes > you will need to either delete or rename the folder.  Once you’ve done so, you’ll need to go back to your admin / login page and login.  Once in there, go to your plugins menu and deactivate all your plugins.  One of them is possibly conflicting.  Anyway – that’s the short version, I would suggest reading the article above as the guy who’s posted it has done a really good job with it :o )

UPDATE: I know what’s causing the problem – Jetpack for WordPress – enable it and my site tanks completely.  It also looks as though it’s causing the problems I’ve been having with performance.  Unimpressed!!

the problem with publicity

September 14, 2011 by stuff I write

OK, so I seem to be woefully neglecting to blog on here.  It’s not that I don’t have anything to write, I do.  It’s just that I’m finding that I’m having to censure myself a lot.  Obviously people who know me can find this blog (’cause like, dur, it’s got my name in it), so I can’t say anything about people I know, or my job, or anything like that.  It’s just hugely liable to do something like that.

So the only things I can think of to write about is my writing, but then now I tend to find myself actually writing, rather than actually talking about it.  So I think my opportunities here are to either turn this into less of a blog, and more of a website.  Or I need to find something I can write about that isn’t going to get me into a mountain of trouble.