Twitter

Some of my non-Twitter friends are incredulous at my use of Twitter. I thought I’d better explain.

I don’t think Twitter is anything like blogging (or microblogging). I don’t think of it as IM, although you sometimes get into IM-ish exchanges. What does it do?

Well, there have been a couple of interesting spontaneous group pub trips, although how spontaneous I don’t know because people go to the pub on a Friday night anyway. What I have found is that I’ve got a sense of getting to know people—people who I meet from time to time anyway but don’t normally get any kind of extended involvement with (weak ties, Tipping Point fans). And I’m enjoying that a great deal. This familiarization is almost certainly an illusion to some degree, because meatspace is so important for really getting to know someone. Perhaps it’s just another social lubrication. Like beer.

Krypto the Superdog

Whilst at the gym this morning, one of the screens was showing BBC2 and more specifically Krypto the Superdog. The gym has a couple of screens, and this morning the other screen was showing MTV and the sound from this was being piped out. This led to me having a moment of realisation, as this was one of those cartoons where you don’t actually need to hear the voices and soundtrack to know what is going on, meaning that you could use such a cartoon for language studies, as you could pick up the story without having to understand every word. Thanks to Mike who sits opposite me at work for finding the video clip :-).

Valentine


Valentine by Sioux Hurman
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

I bought my first ever open house art purchase during this years Brighton Festival.

She is called Valentine and was painted by Sioux Hurman.

I spotted this picture the day I first visited the Shadow Box Open House in Tidy Street. She is just so vivid and eye catching. I dragged Richard back with me the following week, just to make sure he didn’t hate it and that if I bought it, I could have it on display and not tucked away at the back of a cupboard somewhere…

He approved, I bought her and on Sunday I collected her, and brought her home. She is now happily hanging on the wall in our hallway.

TV

When I was in the US a few weeks back, I took my laptop and as a result managed to mostly avoid watching US TV. What I found myself doing was watching a bunch of video podcasts that I had somehow accumulated. Things like Mobuzz, Snowfix and the currently off-form Tikibar TV, etc etc etc. Although I’ve been subscribed to a bunch of these for a while, what’s creeped up on me is the quality: they’re really good! (I shouldn’t be so surprised). And there’s lots of them.

So when people talk about the nature of TV changing, I’m starting to think they might be right.

Geek Wine Thing


Checking the colour
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway.

Last night we attended the first Geek Wine Thing organised by Danny and held at the Regency Town House.

Henry Butler from the Butlers wine cellar led the tasting, and for the cost of a tenner we tasted 8 different Spanish and Portugese wines. As a total novice in the wine tasting world, it was interesting to learn more about how to smell, look at and taste wine. Henry was an excellent and enthusiastic teacher.

The tasting started off very quiet and subdued, but before too many glasses had been consumed we got noisier and noisier.

The wines we tasted were:

Whites
Pares Balta Blanc de Pacs 2006 – Spain
Soalheiro Alvarinho 2005 – Portugal
Castello D’Alba 2005 – Portugal
Navajas Crianza 2003 – Spain

Reds
Monte Real Reserva 2000 – Spain
Clos Le Fites 2002 – Spain
Quinta de la Rosa Tinto 2004 – Portugal
Niepoort Redoma 1994 – Portugal

The white wines were split into unoaked (the first 2) and oaked (the second 2) with one each from Spain and Portugal. As usual I preferred the unoaked – so another nail in the coffin of oaked wines for me.

Next time, and I hope there will be a next time, I’ll try and remember to bring a pen to make some notes, as somewhat unsurprisingly I don’t remember too much beyond the first couple of glasses 🙂

As usual, my photos from the evening are all on flickr.