Heh
After posting that last item I got a 'Ping error' from weblogs.com, and for the first time ever actually looked at the error message, for which I commend them. Wouldn't you?:
"Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: Ping error: Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every half-hour. It's cool that you're updating so often, however, if I may be so bold as to offer some advice -- take a break, you'll enjoy life more."
Forgot To Say….
....that the reason I posted the below now is that I'm heading off to the frozen North early in the morning (well probably not that frozen) to spend some New Year family time.
I won't have a connection of any sort while there, so I'll be running silent until Friday afternoon/evening when I'll be back home.
So in the meantime, have a great New Year's whatever you're doing, and I'll see you next year.
Last Day Of The Year
I thought about trying to do a Mayfly Project round-up of the year, but realised that it's been full of so much incident that I couldn't possibly do it justice.
One thing that has struck me is that 2003 has been a bad year for a huge number of people I know. It's been remarkable to note.
Anyway, in an attempt to categorise:
Work: Well, I'd call it a year of ups and downs. The very best endeavours sometimes come to nought no matter how hard you try or how strongly you believe in what you're doing. My feelings about not being my own boss any longer are still in a state of flux - the sheer relief of being in another job, with a bit of security and a chance to make something equally good, if very different, is over-riding any other analysis just at the moment. From the depths of despair to the pleasure of opportunity in about 24 hours is a bit much to take, really.
One thing I won't miss is having to deal with the worse client I've ever had to deal with. Someone I used to regard as a mate, and who turned into a malicious, vindictive and entirely unprofessional monster for no good reason we could see but that she'd begun to realise exactly how far out of her depth she is. You've got to feel at least a bit sorry for someone who goes on about how technically experienced they are and then keeps referring to HTML as 'the back end'. At least, you feel sorry for them until they start rubbishing your team behind your back in attempt to deflect people from their own performance.
Life: The above has had a significant impact. A general feeling of insecurity and uncertainty has hung over the whole year, pretty much. I've been pretty down, and distracted from what would usually have been my escape routes - hardly been to the cinema, never got back into the proper routine or rhythm to do the writing I'd like to, couldn't socialise as much as I wanted to - and wasn't much in the mood anyway - even the online places I used to haunt haven't seen much of me for months. I'm hoping that some of this can start to change now.
Blog: And again the impact of the first item was felt. I was distracted and even when present was brief and uninspired for much of the year. The lack of attention to parts of the site that I mentioned in connection with the redesign was a sign of the malaise. But I'm starting the new year with plans to turn a bunch of my ideas for online projects into reality at last, and also to revisit the ones I've been neglecting.
So the end of the year has coincided with the end of some pretty negative times, and the start of some hopefully positive ones. It's possible that all will go horribly awry, but equally possible that this was a thing that was meant to be.
To quote a certain Time Lord who's been mentioned here quite a bit in the last few months:
"Time will tell. It always does."
Work In Progress
So - All Change? Not quite all, but quite a bit of change.
I've given this place a new look in time for the new year. I liked the old one, but this is a bit lighter, with a slightly more upbeat feel, I think.
I've also done some serious rationalising - I've dumped everything I wasn't updating on a regular basis, the Links, People, Words pages, and the entire Opinion section, and brought the focus firmly back to the blog and its related pages.
I've always done that thing of advocating websites as living, changing things, and having all that stuff there as dead as a dodo was not exactly practicing what I preach. I will reintroduce some bits, like a dedicated links page, when I can find a way to do it that I'm happy with and that I can keep up to date.
As far as the Opinion stuff is concerned, I have a plan for that, but it's going to take a little while to get organised. I'm going to build on the idea I mentioned a few weeks back of setting it up as a blog so that it's easier to update and also so that people can comment on it. I'm just vaguely planning the expansion of that at the moment, but I'll hopefully have something in place within a few weeks.
Anyway - this is indeed a work in progress - I'll need to run through various odd pages that launch from old journal entries and the like to make sure they're behaving properly and a few other bits of housekeeping like that. Plus the search templates need completely redoing, but the core stuff is all where it's supposed to be for the moment.
A Few Quiet Days
Not for any other reason than that there's bugger all going on. I've been working on work, but that's hardly blogworthy. And apart from that, there's not much to report. But I am working on some stuff of my own too, so maybe I'll get that to a state where I can unveil it.
Ooh - aren't you intrigued....
D’You Know….
....despite my expectations to the contrary, I didn't actually go completely over the top with food yesterday. Alison and I spent the day at Chris's, and though we started with a late breakfast, had lunch at 4pm (one course) and finally felt we could face dessert at around 9pm, the sum effect was like we had one three-course meal spread across about ten hours, so not too over-the-top at all. The drink was rather more consistently applied, mind you 
And against all expectations, I managed to track down a couple of decent films in the morass of 'seasonal programming' - Belleville Rendezvous, only in cinemas a couple of months ago, is a strange but brilliantly constructed French animation, and then later on, Amélie, which I always intended to see but had never got round to.
And today I'm at home, doing as little as possible. I know I'll have to make some productive use of the next few days, so this is my reading and dusting off the Playstation day.
Hope everyone's chilling well.
That’s It Then
I'm out of the office now for one day shy of three weeks. This is not the same as not working for three weeks of course, but it's close enough for now.
Hope everyone has a good break, and if you celebrate something, it's a very enjoyable one.
For myself, I'll be celebrating the human ability to eat huge amounts of food and drink while watching crap TV.
Sorry Ma’am
So....anyone want to guess what Princess Anne might be getting the Queen for Christmas?
BSE in the US
There's an episode of The West Wing, I forget which one, but it's either late in Season Two or early in Season Three, in which cattle at a US farm appear to test positive for BSE (though annoyingly, they never once refer to it as such - It's "mad cow disease" all the way.
During the course of the episode, the immediate effect of the US declaring its first case is discussed, including the decimation of a multi-billion dollar export business, fast food being deserted, and millions being wiped off meat industry shares.
The Prodigal
Mr Cook is in town, so I'm going to go along and join some drinkage organised by his social secretary, Dave. I'm expecting to see Mike and Chris, so it'll be a pleasany and somewhat unexpected pre-Christmas get-together.
I hardly ever see Mr Cook, but it's always pleasant to do so. He actually gave me the job that led me to get to know all these other people, so he clearly has a lot to answer for.