Migrated to Wordpress...

...so I can start a few things all over again. No worries, I do feel like starting all over again...quite a lot:)

You can find me here.

Cementum - interview with Richard

You cannot imagine how enjoy doing those interviews! I not only learn more about people I work with, but more and more look up to them - their ideas are brilliant!

Here's one I did with Richard, author of Cementum, blog based around his project of writing a sci-fi novel. Here you go:

Syl: Your blog, Cementum, is describing the process and your expierences during writing of your book. What ispired you to start the blog? What is its aim?
Rich: Well, I’ve been blogging for a number of years now about various subjects. Prior to starting to blog about my novel I was blogging about technology, and as much as I enjoyed it I found I just didn’t have the time to do both, i.e. blog regularly and write a novel. So I decided to combine my two passions and blog about writing a novel, include some tips, try and join the aspiring novelist community online, get involved and have some fun with it, and it’s been great so far. Lots of feedback, always constructive, always interesting.
The aim was to just talk about my novel writing experience, add some tips in there on the experience I have had and possibly get some feedback. Since I decided I am going to try and get it published however, I’ve ‘upgraded’ the reason for doing it, to self promotion as well, so as well as joining the conversation and community around novel writing, I wouldn’t mind a bit of traffic these days as well.

Syl: What is your book about? When did you start thinking about writing it and what made you want to publish it too?
Rich: The book revolves around my own personal fatalistic beliefs and tries to explore how they work, why I believe in them and how I can explain them. It’s done through the medium of science fiction and, at its basis, tries to show how you can believe in Fate, without having to believe in a Sky Wizard (read God), I know it’s a contradiction, but that’s what I enjoy doing, challenging myself. Taking two opposing views, smashing them together and seeing what comes out the other end.
I hadn’t thought about publishing it until I got a few of my peers to read some of my first chapters, just to see if it made sense really. They came back with shining praise again and again so I thought, well why the hell not try to get it published. It’s a very personal book, very exploratory, raises some deep philosophical questions about the inner self and society as a whole, but it’s definitely readable, and after some revisions, I think could do pretty well.

Syl: What was the main challenge while writing the book? What is your favourite part of it?
Rich: Sometimes I sit down and have this stream of consciousness whilst writing, it’s called surrealist or automatic writing, where your brain just pumps out ideas and prose, without any real thought or structure. That’s the best part, just letting my imagination literally run free and turn ideas into words. It’s brilliant. The most challenging part is exploring my personal beliefs, my own belief system is complex and full of contradiction, arguing with myself about it and why I believe in it is very difficult. Putting the words on the paper isn’t a problem.

Syl: How does a book writing differ from blogging? What are the similarities?
Rich: Novel writing and blogging can be compared on one level I think; that you’re often putting yourself out there for others to read and praise or criticize, whether intentional or not. You’re bearing yourself to the world, so to speak.
A novel will always give a real insight to the author, and similarly a blog will always give you an insight to the writer. But similarly, you can get authors that ‘write by the numbers’ like Danielle Steel, that just pumps out romance novels to a certain structure, in the same sense, blogs can be purely informational blogs that don’t really show what the writer is all about. However, given that the author, or blog writer, has chosen to write about romance, or tech, or whatever, you can always get a little bit of info on them by the subject they chose.

Syl: If you were to choose, which one would you prefer?:)
Rich: VERY difficult question. What if I take, blogging a novel? Like each post is another chapter or paragraph or something like that, I’ve seen them around. I’ll go with that, it’s cheating a little I guess but I get to embrace both of my passions then!

Syl: Going back to your blog - you have a very stong presence on-line. Does this presence influence your life and/or vice versa?
Rich: My presence online has influenced my life for a number of years now, since I went to my first ‘geek meet’ about seven years ago now. I remember it well, a bunch of us hired out an internet café for 24 hours, and generally drank and geeked out for that period. Since then, my online life and real life have been a blur, just the other day I went to a stag do of a friend who I’ve known for 8 years, we first crossed paths in a gaming forum, now we’re good pals, crazy really.
Now everyone is jumping online with the explosion in social networking, which isn’t a bad thing, but I generally like to keep ahead of the curve. I like to get involved in all the latest technologies to get to know new and interesting people.

Syl: There is a lot of discussion recently about blogging dying out. Do you agree?
Rich: I don’t see blogging dying out, I see it getting diluted as more and more people get involved, and I see it getting rubbished as more and more companies / money grabbers try to take advantage of it. Blogging is here to stay, just how much people trust it and the people who blog, is the real question. 4 years ago if you saw a blogger, you’d instantly trust that was a person without an alternate agenda, now you have to take your time when hitting a new blog to see who the person is, what they’re trying to sell, what ideas they’re trying to get you to read etc.

Syl: What about more traditional genres - novels, traditional letter writing, printed books (as opposed to e-books), do you think we will gradually move away from those?
Rich: They’ll always be around, just in more limited forms. I occasionally like writing letters to people I’ve not spoken to in a long time. With the advent of E-Ink, e-readers are becoming a lot more popular and easy on the eyes, books will always be around though, unless the green lobby gets its way of course~!

Syl: You live in Oxford now - what is your favourite place in Oxford for writing?
Rich: definitely http://gdcafe.com/FrontPage/frontPage.htm G&D’s cafe on cowley road. It’s nicely lit, it’s got a good atmosphere, they do great bagels and brownies, it’s independently owned, it has free wifi and loads of power sockets and the icecream is awesome. I’d say I’ve written at least 50k words in there in the last 8 months. The staff are really nice as well!

Syl: You have seen our new project, Bar Mleczny, and already gave us few tips. Do you think one day you would like to sit down in our Milk Bar and meet few Polish readers of your book?:)
Rich: Yeah absolutely, I’d love to go to a milk bar, I adore milk always have, so writing with a big glass of fresh milk sounds like a great idea to me. The polish contingent wouldn’t be too bad either! Hehe.

Syl: Have you ever been to Poland? If so, what was your best and worst memory of it?
Rich: I haven’t, although I’ve planned on going a number of times! I’ve had a lot of polish friends whilst working in the states over summer months of old and I get along with the polish very well. I think it’s the hard working attitude, the love of drink and a good time, their impassioned nature and consummate humility that I see in a lot of the Polish people I meet that I enjoy about them. They’re very much like the Scottish, and being half Scottish myself I can see why we get along. I’ll get to Poland one day, when, I’m not sure, but some day!

Syl: Bar Mleczny is all about culture and food. What is your favourite dish? Do you cook yourself?
Rich: I try to cook every night, I love it, I find the process very cathartic and love having produced a tasty meal at the end of it. I really enjoy cooking a nice curry, Indian or Thai, my spice and sauce cupboard is always full of hot and tasty things!

Syl: When I say 'Polish food/drink' what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Rich: Vodka and erm, Vodka! The polish guys and girls I’ve hung around with in the past have always enjoyed introducing me to very nice native vodka’s, which I’ve always encouraged. In terms of food, I’m not sure, I think I’ve had a polish dish cooked for me once or twice when working with the Pols, but I can’t remember what it was, it was a good few years ago now and I’m fairly sure I would have been drunk at the time of eating as well!

Syl: Just last question about your book (2 q's:): when can we expect the book in stores? Will you continue blogging to promote it then?
Rich: In stores?! Lets not get too ahead of ourselves here! But seeing as you asked, I’ll go with the ‘dream’ scenario, which is basically; Finished in the next few weeks, revisions up until Christmas, submissions in the new year, get a publisher by the end of the first quarter, sign contract, marketing, printing and release late 2009. Though like I said, that’s the ‘dream’ scenario, and is highly unlikely. And yeah, I plan on building Cementum as a platform for discussion and exploration on all the novels I write in the future, and as a place aspiring novelists can use as a resource for tips and advice. So you’ll see it around for a good while yet!

Colin Mercer on the Inter-Web - interview with Colin

Here's the second of my blogger interviews. Check Colin's site before you read it:)

Sylwia: How did you start your adventure with blogging? When? Why?
Colin: A multi thread question, a lovely place to start, at the beginning. My first experience of blogging came from being called into my boss's office and being told that I had to start blogging and that was that. This was a corporate blog which I was the sole person contributing on for around 6-8 months. I probably shouldn't say much more about it, a quick Google search for "colinm blog" should make it pretty obvious though.

That’s the boring, accurate answer out the way, onto why I started blogging at colinmercer.co.uk. I honestly don't remember, I have had the domain for a little while, then the opportunity of hosting came up so I thought why not give it a go again. Being back involved in the industry after uni meant that I had some time on my hands to experiment and get involved so I did and Colin Mercer on the inter-web is the outcome.

Syl:Does your blog reflect your private life? Does your blog affect it?
Colin:Almost entirely, everything I blog about is private life related. I am a keen lifeblogger, which means that when something happens I like to blog about it instantly. Whether this is a picture of me in the pub with some mates, or whatever, I like to throw it straight up. Until very recently I have kept my blog based entirely on my personal/private life, now I have started to add in some more things about work and other topics.

The only affect the blog has had on my private life is positive, opening the door to meeting a wealth of new and wonderful people who previously I would not have had any contact with.

Syl:You post a lot about your company’s projects/events. Am I right you are a fan of full transparency when it comes to marketing?
Colin:This is something which has changed a fair amount in the recent weeks, until now I have stayed away from posting about what I do with work. Previously I would post about work situations, or happenings at work, or places I was going with work without a reference to who I work for. This I suspect will continue as I want to keep up some separation from my blog and my work.

Full transparency in marketing is something I am 100% behind, as you know, I spend a good whack of my time at work striving to achieve this. I feel that this does not affect my decision not to post about work on the blog as I am far from running a marketing blog.

Syl:You have several presences on-line. What is their role in relation to your blog? Which one is your favourite and why?
Colin:I do indeed have several presences, my latest challenge is to tick all the boxes on usernamecheck.org, and undoubtedly I will get bored very quickly. Their role I guess is to try and increase the awareness people have of my blog, the overall aim would be to get my opinions in front of as many people as I can. However, in practice, the blog merely acts as a tag to link all the presences together, and gives people I encounter on individual sites the opportunity to find out a bit more about me.

My favourite site is clearly Twitter, I find it very easy to update and keep up with the people I want to keep up to date with. I also love the Jaiku, but find this much harder to follow than Twitter is.

Syl:How about your friends, do they blog? Do they use Twitter?
Colin:I have a few friends who blog, this number is ever growing as I slowly but surely convince my existing friends to start blogging, and make friends with people who are already blogging. I would say a higher percentage of my existing friends use Twitter than blog, coincidentally, in the last few days I have had a number of people ask me to explain "this Twitter thing" to them, which is encouraging.

Syl:What does the blogging mean to you (in three key words)?
Colin:Meaningful, empowering, brain-splat

Syl:I want to publish part of this interview on bar mleczny (www.barmleczny.blogspot.com) if that’s OK, hence my next question:
Colin:What is your favourite dish? Do you cook?
Being an English male, Steak, Chips, Peas, Green Beans and English Mustard wins the day. Yes I love to cook, I wouldn't say I'm great but I like to experiment and find great satisfaction in accomplishing an edible meal.

Syl:What is you favourite foreign cuisine?
Colin:Curry, however I'm pretty sure that the curry I like isn't actually foreign cuisine, just our version of foreign cuisine. So I will also say Mexican, things like Fajitas, Tacos, etc.

Syl:If we were to have a Polish cuisine evening once based around cooking and eating and possibly drinking Polish shizzle, would you join us?
Colin:YES - you bring the vodka, I'll get the cucumber!

Thank you, Colin!

Why I like England...

Google+Simon Says=Chromon, celebrating 10th Birthday

I know, Google celebrated last weekend, but I have one bad characteristic - I do not like to post when it's expected, I prefer to do it when I feel like. I have quiet days, and active day. Guess which one it is today?:)

'Google' came into the system of basic metaphors of our language and dictionary now, and it's hard to believe that this baby is 'only' 10 years old. I use the calendar, gmail, google image search, orkut (well, not much so), Picassa, Google Earth, I try to use Google labs gradually. I count on Google Alerts. YouTube is on my daily list. Google Maps is where I always go if I look for geographic location of new places. Now I am moving on to Google Books (The Tale of Genji - first novel ever- is there too - what a bizarre feeling:)) and cannot express my graditude to blox.pl/Gazeta.pl for making a deal with Google so I can use gmail on my old gazeta.pl e-mail account!
And hey, I still blog on Blogger, hehe...

I think Google holiday logo's are pieces of art. Hey, Google team, how about exhibiting them?;)

(Dilbert Google Doodle - May 20, 2002)(Google celebrates Vincent van Gogh's Birthday - March 30, 2005)

Check them out here.

So, to celebrate, let's play:) Remember Simon says? What do you think of this version?



Source here.

Apologies to the Girl! (TweetStats)

I would like to apologize (even though it's extremely late!) to the Girl for not responding to her @-tweet! I translated her interview in Hungarian once and posted it as a comment on her blog (very good interview btw) and now - thanks to results on TweetStats - I can see she messaged me on Twitter and I have ignored her. I do not ignore people normally, but it's difficult to follow all the tweets if we need to work sometime too:) So I am double-happy that I have found this tool tonight.
I also noticed I use Twitter more nowadays - see above. It's probably due to the fact that I use it for communication more now, than I used to. I used to use Twitter for tips and news on social media or info about my friends. I am more active now, simply because it saves me time. I also got into the habit of updating all my friends with the news earliy int he morning, before I start work or while my Outlook is opening (my dear Vista makes me wait for it aprox. 15 min, grrr...)
Yes, I do like TweetStats, even though I am a linguist - I hate numbers and I hate stats...usually;)

Privacy on-line or tweets on the bus

The more I read about ethics and on-line privacy (the two often come together) I contemplate my own openness. See the example above - just to scan my own content I have tweetbeep and google alert set up for my name. This is what I have received today:) Funnily enough I am happy to see it up somewhere where I have not expected it, simply because I am a fan of postmodern and I like to see the game of sudden and unplanned together with my own experience in it. I remember that morning - after my first coffee, with a book in my hand, just left my son at the nursery which he loves...relived that he is in good hands and I can relax one more hour before I go to work.
I lost this moment among all my tweets, now it's back:) 'Tweets on the bus' is a cool site, as opposed to Twenis and the like (of which I am unsure when it comes to ethics, I guess it's quite subjective).
I wish someone could come up with a similiar blog collecting all tweets containing the word 'coffee'. Judging from my Twittercloud, I would be able to include more links;)