I read this interesting article earlier [ A future without personal history ] and it’s something i’ve thought about myself before now. We generally no longer send and receive letters, most of our correspondence is now done electronically so how do you keep a record? Wouldn’t it be nice if in 100 years from now some relative could find some of your love letters or journals tucked away in an old trunk up the attic? Unless of course you are a complete psychopath leading a questionable life but anyway …

The author go on to say he is storing his IM’s, text messages, emails, facebook comments, tweets ….!? WHAT!? Now surely that would be the equivalent of storing every scrap bit of paper you have ever scribbled a note on. Who is sad enough to want to pore over that level of shite?

All this talk of backing up your every electronic communication to the web such as a blog (websites go out of business and vanish and a blog will vanish when you do unless someone is paying for your bills!) or the cloud (again, these things could vanish), hard drives (easily damaged) CD’s (are you kidding me? Mine last a max of 5 years) and so on. There is another way. First of all no one wants to read through every SMS, tweet and facebook comment you ever wrote – hopefully they have a life. So why not narrow it down to a few quality entries per week – even just one if your too busy tweeting/texting/etc?

But where to keep such a thing? Ok here’s a radical thought, how about ….

I don’t know about you but if i have any thoughts, doodles, photo’s, memories or special bits of communication then i keep them in a journal. I don’t mean an iPad app called iJournal (eurgh) i mean one made from paper. When we have days out i usually take photos and i always print them off (screw digital photo frames) and i put our favourite photo in my journal along with a bit of yak about the day.

Much nicer to look back on than a collection of texts/mails/comments/tweets/posts scattered all over the web/drives/discs in my opinion.

“Skins may well be the most dangerous show for children we have ever seen” ~ The Parents Television Council (US)

Why am i not surprised? :-) I haven’t seen it yet but after all the uproar caused by various people and groups labelling it as dangerous and terrible and shocking you can bet i am going to watch it now out of sheer curiosity. Just like the very people whom the PTC don’t want to see it will now do. I’m going to guess that it is nowhere near as horrendous as they are making out and i will also bet that it is nowhere near as graphic as the UK version (now on season 5), which incidentally doesn’t seem to have damaged our youth (well, no more than they already are).

I find it astonishing that these complete and utter nutjobs can label a program like this as child pornography and yet they seem fine with movies such as Hostel and Saw dealing with torturing other human beings. The mind boggles. This is one of those times where i can definitely say i’m proud of our UK TV shows!

MTV’s Skins: Has new show gone to far?

I took an order 3 days ago for 70 party invites. Worked on the design with the customer and sent a final proof for him to view before i started printing. 3 days later and i am still waiting for him to reply to my two emails just to say ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ so i can get them printed and sent off. You just know i will get negative feedback off him for slow delivery!

I was just reading a blog post here by a guy who has quit world of Warcraft in order to get his life back. He’s exercising now and everything! It’s a very long read but the gist is, I don’t think WoW is the problem. I think you are either capable of moderation or you’re not. I’ve been playing WoW for 2 years (in moderation), and I haven’t yet cancelled a real life activity in order to play. I joke about it being addictive but in reality I play whenever I have spare time to play.I sometimes go weeks without touching it and i know hordes^[1] of people do the same thing.

We are adults after all, what is so difficult about managing your time so that you can go out on your bike, do your job, visit your friends and family, mow the lawn, walk the dog and yes play WoW and even Farmville! It is possible to do all of these things. Is that so hard?

If it is then (imo) it’s not WoW that’s the problem, it’s the player. If you can’t manage your time then don’t blame the game/activity. Frankly i don’t care if you are an addict, some addictions are great but i don’t much care for people getting on their high horse and making it sound like we must all follow suit now that they have seen the light.

Anyway, i can’t sit here blogging all day, i have a Blood Elf that needs levelling up …. :-)

1. Do you see what i did there? [↩]

I’m a big fan of this look.

I love vibrant punchy photographs, especially landscape and nature. I usually do various amounts of tweakery in photoshop messing around with levels and multiple layers but i found this tutorial which shows a much simpler way of doing it. Check it out here. Click the thumbnail to see how the image looked originally. It’s a really useful site for photography fans, some very useful articles.