I can’t do it, I can’t take Ricky Gervais seriously. I’m watching old episodes of Alias at the moment (inspired by Lost, and by brother and his fiance’s persistent praise of the show).

Season 3, episode 5 - Gervais makes an appearance - and any minute now, I’m certain he’ll turn to the camera with a joke about disabilities, or pick up a guitar…

Been meaning to take a photo, and write about this for a while. St Pauls Cathedral is being cleaned, washed, painted or something at the moment. They’ve been doing this for quite a while now, and the sheets went up to cover the work that’s being done. More recently, they did this ….

What a fantastic idea! If the work overruns, or over budget on your house… Just don’t bother, and hire a local artist to come around and paint a big picture of your house on the front instead. You could even make your house look bigger, or like St Pauls Cathedral.

My favourite moment about the entire construction process was walking across Millenium bridge a week or two back and listening to a 16/17 year old chav tell his family “It almost doesn’t look real, does it? St Pauls over there.”. “No” replied his mum, “that’s because it’s not”.

I’m glad we spend so much on education. Really, really grateful

Well it’s another day of playing with the blog, and adding new features. Nick told me about the “currently reading” plugin he’d installed on his blog. So I had a hunt around for one for the WordPress blogs too. And lo and behold, along came Amazon Media Manager.

I’d always seen the music plugins to list what you’re currently listening to, along with the post. But it seemed like a lot of work to me. Not only that, these entries often take more than 3 minutes to write, so what I’m currently listening to quickly becomes “what I was listening to, for some of the time”.

Now books on the other hand, it’s unlikely I’ll finish a book in the time it took to write this entry. And they don’t change very much, once a week maybe. So less work is ALWAYS good.

So there we go, over the right you’ll now find a picture, and a link to amazon of the book i’m reading. Even better, should you decide to buy the book I’m reading through that link, Amazon will give me some money. Oh, I know you care

In actual fact, media manager lets me put all kinds of stuff up, if I want to. So expect to see “games i’m playing”, “lawn and patio furniture I’m using” and “my favourite lampshades” soon.

Maybe not.

We got a leaflet through the door this morning.

“SEX SHOP? WITHIN THIS COMMUNITY?”

Yep, the heathens in our area want to open a sex shop, on St Albans road. How could they even dare to think of it? Luckily the locals are rallying round with a vigorous leaflet campaign. I’m sure they’ll follow it up with a violent sit in down the local council offices.

Thank god.

Of course, if you can’t think of any reasons to lend your support and write a letter, there’s a helpful list on the back.

1. “unsuitable for a family area”
2. “proposed trading hours” (!?)
3. “parking and loading problems” (”customers packing in 50,000 dvds”, says male ali)
4. “not in keeping with existing shops and outlets”

The last one is a very good point. Wouldn’t want to take away business from Anne Summers in the Harlequin. Or the sex shop next to the wedding store on the high street. Two’s company, three’s a crowd and all that.

C’mon people, grow up!

From the first explorers, to ships and aircraft crossing continents, the telephone, and the all-encompassing network of the Internet. All have contributed to decreasing the size of our planet. As far as I know, we’re not talking directly here, but rather our perception of the “small world” that we live in today.

People increasingly talk about location as though it’s not important. From the business community, we can get all the work done we need, wherever the skills are available, and it’s most economic to do so. Knowledge can be shared between communities no matter how remote, or central. Families can stay in touch, and new friends can be made whether you’re meeting for drinks in a bar, or sitting on your new wireless network connection halfway up a mountain.

And maybe they’re right, maybe location isn’t important. On the other hand, where you might be at any one point in time could be extremely important. Blogging often relies on location. The most popular writing on this blog so far, is the entries I made while “not here”. The news reports that highlight what an exciting area blogging can be all talk about people writing news from within disaster areas. I can talk about tornado in North America quite comfortably from my living room here in England. But nobody really sits up and takes any notice until I’m actually in the eye of the storm. So location can be important. It gives a unique context to a story that can’t be given in any other way.

And that’s why I’ve just installed the Geo plugin for this particular blog. Fuelled by the success of my travel map for my photos, I don’t see why I shouldn’t give location to my blog entries as well. Especially as a large part of them will be made up with travelling.

So imagine; a map of photos and blog entries. Being able to search for all entries that are 20, 50, 100 miles away from the current entry. Find all the photos that were taken nearby. Find other blogs or pictures from same area, by any number of photographers or bloggers.

There are cameras on the market that have built in GPS, so longitude and latitude can be stored alongside the photos. Hopefully this will become more of the norm in later cameras, and I can get one

Okay, so I’m not introducing anything new here. And similar functionality to that I’ve described is already available. There is a blogging community with plentiful location support, and it’s searchable by location. Highly useful for holiday ideas. But I forget the name of it now

But it’s my plan for this particular blog, and gives me something to do / write. Whether or not I will, being a professional procrastinator - that’s a different matter and one to leave to the future to decide

Good night, all!