Wednesday, 22nd February, 2006

Disconnected

self

I'm really missing my phone at the moment. On the one hand, it's rather nice feeling uncontactable (even though I'm not), but I'm finding myself missing the connectivity that it gives me.

That's probably a bit of a muddled thought. I'd better explain a little better...

It's not that I've missed hundreds and hundreds of photo-opportunities in the past couple of days — in fact, I don't think I've actually seen anything that made me stop in my tracks and think "crap, I wish I had my phone so I could blog that". But I'm starting to wonder if it's the potential of being able to do that, that makes me want to.

God, that's even more muddled

/me tries again

Do I post photos to Flickr because I can?

I wonder, sometimes, if that same principle applies to this weblog in general. I know a lot of people have some form of adgenda in their writing. But personally, apart from a general wish to have some kind of conversation with various people, I think I only do this because I can.

Sorry — just thinking out loud for a moment

I already spoke to him Jo — I'd best try and find my paper-part of my license

Is this related to occasional feelings like "I only do the tranny thing because I can"?

Hmm I'm not sure I get those feelings. I do get the "I can't be arsed to do the tranny thing" feelings sometimes, and occasionally I feel that I ought to do the tranny thing (because I'm a tranny, rather than because I want to)

The Sound Of A Million Geeks Lamenting

geek

Has del.icio.us gone down? Is it just me? How are people who use it specifically to organise their bookmarks coping right now?

A Long Week

random stuff work

I know I was only in for two days this week, but it's felt like a long one. I think this has a lot to do with the excesses of the weekend.

I left the house yesterday morning, in a blur of unreadyness — which is crap considering I had a full day to sort my stuff out and pack and relax and prepare and wotnot.

Because it was all a blur, I totally forgot to take some Important CDs™ with me that left me in an embarassing position.

(Well, not really embarassing — just a little "OMG I can't believe how crap I can be sometimes" position)

Last night, as M's ceiling is still in bits, I stayed over at D's house, because as well as needing a bed for the night, I'd agreed to update his Imac with as much gumf as I could fit on it.

You know — 10.3.9 updates, QuickTime 7.0.4, iLife 06, Heise.jpg.zip — that sort of thing

He'd promised to make sure I didn't drink too much (seeing as I probably need to detox or something), but even so, I recall getting a massive nicotine rush outside the back of his house after one too many glasses of the Red Stuff™, and spending a good minute or so rocking uncontrollably backwards and forwards until he had to come and hold me steady.

...

Work itself was good this week. I find it bizarre sometimes that I'm feeling really good about things just at the moment, when this time last year I was on the verge of a semi-nervous-breakdown, distraught about the futility of life.

I guess it kinda helps that things seem to be going rather well in terms of paid work — I'm really optimistic about the online gallery thing (thanks for the link Jon!), and the stuff I've been doing with the students centred around our Course Website is starting to gain momentum.

Also, I just finished the second issue of the Art Journal that I do and made it go live the other day. It took rather a lot of work, and I got a bit stressed out about it all for a while, but it's done now, and it's not only paying me back finacially, it's paying me back socially. That little trip to London last month was all on the pretext of editorial meetings

Sorry — gone a bit rambly. It's just all good at the moment.

...

Last night, I was talking to D about my ongoing frustrations in regard to not really being able to talk to the students about what I do online. I didn't really come to any conclusions — apart from thinking that maybe I could try and explain things to them in terms of what other people do, rather than showing them my own work.

Thing is though, I was talking to a couple of them this afternoon about weblogs, and there was a deep desire at the back of my head to show them this thing — just to demonstrate to them the potential of what you can achieve.

One of them — a Third Year — has been using blogs to run a few little projects he's got underway, and I feel a bit guilty about not sharing some of the stuff I do myself with him.

The other — a First Year — had come to me with the usual "Will you show me how to make a website?" question, but after talking to him about what he really wanted to do with one, and a few minutes plonking him in front of the Flickr and Blogger 'new user' registration pages, he was posting away, happy as Larry.

But I was thinking to myself, that here I was, talking to him about blogs and the like, and he really didn't have a clue from what position I was talking to him from.

Normally, when I talk to them about abstract photography and film, they go off and Google me, then come back the next day with an understanding of what I mean when I talk about "My Work™". And I kinda think that's important — if they're going to take what I say seriously, then they need to be aware of what position I'm coming from.

But when I talk to them about the web, I have to leave them in the dark

I'll come back to this in a second — there's something else I need to mention first...

...

Comeplete Out Of The Blue™ phonecall this afternoon — an old, old friend, one I hadn't talked to for about five years.

I'd picked up the phone, expecting one of the students, and was stunned to hear his voice.

He was, basically, the guy who does all the audio in the films that I used to make (she says, linking randomly to one or two of them) and as well as now being a photographer in London, he's recently making what he described as "minimal clicks and noises" — and is about to send me a CD of them.

Which means that suddenly, I'm in a frame of mind to start making films again, after a hiatus of a couple of years.

The other odd (but connected thing) was that while I was talking to him, he told me that I could see some of his work on a photo sharing website that hed been introduced to a couple of months back, called "Flickr".

I immediately (well, not immediately, I finished talking to him first ) went and had a look and added him to my contacts.

...

A few minutes later, I decided to put my "Use other people's engagement with the Web" idea into practice, and decided to show his photostream to the student I was introducing to Flickr, as an example of the things you can do with it.

Except instead of typing the "www.flickr.com/photos/..." address, I (for some reason) typed the "www.flickr.com/people/..." address, pulling up his list of contacts.

And sure enough, right at the first of them, was the words "Siobhan Curran", right next to my buddyicon...

...the same buddyicon that I use on my Flickr-ripoff-course-website

Dunno why I'm writing about this BTW. I guess it's just to observe that even though I lament about not being out as much as I'd like to be, going to great lengths to stay in the closet with the undergraduates (as opposed to the postgraduates and my colleagues, who all know), when the slightest thing happens that could vaguely link boy-me to girl-me, I shit myself.

Seeing the words "Siobhan Curran" on a screen that I was looking at with a student terrified me — regardless of whether or not it even registered with him.

⌘W ⌘W ⌘W ⌘W ⌘W!