70cities blog

Someone was really rude to me this week. I was slightly taken aback at it, as they're a long-time acquaintance of mine and there really wasn't any need for it, as I was being super-friendly to begin with. It's annoyed me for several days now, though. I'm not tolerant of this sort of thing, especially when it's an affectation (as I suspect it to be). Grr.

Hay fever is back, yet again, with a vengeance. I've been seeped in warm, runny snot for the last few days and it's really depressing me. I've been afflicted with it since the age of six - and now I'm 30, I still haven't 'grown out of it' like all the doctors over the years have said I would. And yes, I've tried every pill/spray on the planet - and they don't work. I am seemingly condemned to ride out all the summer months of my life like this - sneezing, coughing, itching, sitting around in a dazed trance with my head slightly tilted back. Urgh.

Still - bank holiday, and a nice wet one at that. Perhaps I'll just pull myself together and ignore the interesting pulling and pushing going on in my sinuses and get out and do stuff. Maybe I'll mess around with Flash (a pertinent technology, as it happens). Maybe this, and maybe that.

The recent outrage over Apple's Macbook displays being only 6-bit instead of 8-bit doesn't bother me in the slightest. My Macbook display is still great, light years away from what my iBook had, and still better than most regular laptop screens I see. So what if it's dithering? If you're going to do proper print design work on a laptop you'll be using an external monitor anyway - or you're some kind of idiot.

As someone who has, by and large, sat around in offices for the last eight years, The mystery of the daytime idle has often gripped me. I don't know if the picture in SF is different from anywhere else, but London is constantly teeming with people seemingly doing bugger all, all day. Of course, given that I work in Shepherd's Bush a good 50% of them are tramps, propped up against benches or sitting on steps, sinking cans of Tennent's Extra and shouting at each other. Come to think of it, San Francisco has a notable tramp population, but the author didn't seem to approach any..

Crazy week. Loads happening. Can't talk about any of it. Argh!

Had a great weekend so far, though. Friday might, M and I went to see top indie electro-rocksters Maxïmo Park play at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. It's been ages since I've been to a non-club sort of gig, and they were incredibly good live - note-perfect, and incredibly tight. There's also something very compelling about Paul Smith's lyrics for me, given that I grew up more or less where he did and can vividly recognise a lot of the references, places and experiences he alludes to - "standing by the Monument just waiting for the rain". It's been a long while since we had a true Geordie voice in the hit parade - no, Jimmy Nail doesn't count (and probably can't, either).

After that, it was up early on Saturday to hotfoot it (via train) to Brighton for Anna's 30th birthday party. Had enourmous fun seeing the extended family and meeting nice new people whilst munching quality sausages, along with a selection of disgustingly nice French cheeses. Then, in the evening we rushed back to London to catch the Eurovision 'Song' Contest - completely laughable, unfortunately, due to all the block voting going on. Even Sir Terence of Wogan seemed utterly crushed by the complete absence of any real notion of a song contest. I can't see it continuing in its current format for much longer..

Today, hay fever has rendered me helpless (again), despite it being cold, rainy and dull outside. Sniff. Can't do much but sit up straight and swallow snot. Urgh.

So I can't really say much about what's going on at the moment, except that I'm in a period of upheaval at work and I'm not sure how everything's going to land. It's exciting, scary and worrying in equal parts, and ultimately quite confusing. I'm at a very strange point in my career now - I'm not entirely sure I deserve it, but then a healthy dollop of self-doubt never did anyone any harm, did it?

Alongside this, I've been extending my social network, re-engaging with old friends, knocking on doors old and new and generally being a bit cheeky. I think that's OK, though; people don't usually mind a bit of cheekiness with the right approach. I seem to pull it off somehow. I'm a lot better at this kind of stuff that I was five years ago. Maybe hitting 30 has done me good.

I'm quite annoyed that Yamipod has stopped working with my iTunes, so I can't get what I'm playing on me iPod synced up to Last.fm - as I don't spend that much time listening to music at my desk at home, this is leading to an irritating skewing of my listening profile, which should either be 100% accurate or not there at all in my opinion. Of course, it's easy to worry too much about these things. No-one gives a toss but me, but I do find it still too much hard work to keep all the disparate bits of information I deal with all synchronised - although FacebookSync is a neat idea, keeping Facebook contacts synced with my Address Book on my Mac, which in turn syncs with my mobile phone - but I can't get it synced with my Gmail address book easily, or indeed anything else where I maintain contacts (ie. LinkedIn). All these tools are great, but they need to communicate with each other more.

Of course, if I could be bothered, I'd write something that attempted to do this - after all, the APIs are out there and I doubt I'm the only one with these sorts of needs. Facebook's developer stuff looks really nice, I ought to play with it.. RSS authentication would help a lot, but no-one's really doing this yet, although it's starting to pop up here and there.

Anyway, enough pontification. I'm off to eat some burned meat in a back garden in Thames Ditton.