(b)logophile » blather http://www.logophile.org/blog blog of a logophile (not "logos", but "λόγος") Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:04:12 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=7435 Slowing down the blogging http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/04/25/slowing-down-the-blogging/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/04/25/slowing-down-the-blogging/#comments Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:50:38 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=876 So my three faithful readers (hi Mum!) might have noticed a bit of a slowdown here of late. There’s a great reason, but also a geeky reason.

The great reason is that I’m flat-out finishing project work before starting a fulltime programming job next month. I don’t know yet how fulltime work is going to rearrange my life, but it’s likely to change the amount of recreation time I spend online.

The geeky reason is that I’ve joined Identi.ca and Twitter.1 So posts that just say “Look at this, it’s cool!” are going there instead.

Notes:

  1. Yes, there was already a Tikitu on Twitter. No, I’m not pleased about that.
]]> http://www.logophile.org/blog/2010/04/25/slowing-down-the-blogging/feed/ 2 Absent at present http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/08/07/absent-at-present/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/08/07/absent-at-present/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2007 08:45:49 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=313 Two weeks in Dublin for ESSLLI, blogging … won’t be happening since my laptop is at the dry-cleaners. See y’all in a fortnight…

]]> http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/08/07/absent-at-present/feed/ 0 Semi-hiatus http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/04/17/semi-hiatus/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/04/17/semi-hiatus/#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2007 09:58:33 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=264 Blogging will be light the next wee while — real life (remember that? the one without a 3:4 aspect ration) and work are making their presence felt. I’ll still pop up if anything exciting happens, but I guess there won’t be any reviews or similar for a while.

]]> http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/04/17/semi-hiatus/feed/ 0 BooksPrice: polite spam http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/03/12/booksprice-polite-spam/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/03/12/booksprice-polite-spam/#comments Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:43:34 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=245 I’m seriously in two minds about this. According to Lucy Orbach of BooksPrice, I rate a notification that their service just got better. On the one hand, it’s spam [ok, no it's not.]. On the other hand, it’s personalised and polite and damn it I think I probably do want to use their site.

I can’t help wondering, though, how many thousands of copies of that email went out with a name and blog title filled into the template… (“I will appreciate it if you can post a comment at your blog”…)

Anyway. BooksPrice is a price comparison site for bookshopping, I haven’t used it yet but it looks like it might be a good replacement for BookBurro (which died after a Firefox update a while ago, and which I never bothered to fix).

Apparently I should be buying my books from Wal-Mart, which neatly illustrates the biggest disadvantage to this sort of scheme. I don’t want to buy from Wal-Mart, or from Amazon, or from anyone big enough to offer really cheap prices. So I don’t know how much business BooksPrice is going to get from me, but I applaud their marketing.

And if any publishing houses feel like sending me review copies of anything, well, it looks like I’m for sale.

Update: I bite my tongue. This wasn’t spam: unsolicited, but not mailed in bulk –Lucy chimes in in the comments– and sent to me because I’m likely to be interested. In fact, it’s the sort of commercial mailing I should be encouraging, not shying away from. (Which doesn’t make it any less weird to get asked by a stranger to endorse their website, but keeping a blog does make you a public figure, in a ridiculously minor fashion. Just something to get used to.) My reservations about using the service haven’t changed: price just isn’t that important to me most of the time, compared to a bunch of other factors. Rank your hits by how pleasant the staff are when your order goes astray, or how dusty-and-Victorian the store is to visit, and you’d be guaranteed my business…

Update #2: Ask and ye shall receive. Lucy has extended their book offer (see Brendan’s comment below) to me (“just because we like you”). So I still don’t really know how good the service is, but my guess is they’d be delighted if you told ‘em how to make it better. After all, that intensive marketing effort should give some sort of payback, no?

]]> http://www.logophile.org/blog/2007/03/12/booksprice-polite-spam/feed/ 3 Hexpedition Southerly http://www.logophile.org/blog/2006/12/28/hexpedition-southerly/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2006/12/28/hexpedition-southerly/#comments Thu, 28 Dec 2006 15:43:29 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=240 Tomorrow (tomorrow already! gah!) I leave this hemisphere for six weeks in New Zealand. The forecast for blogging is light-to-nil, since I’ll be travelling lots and won’t usually have reliable internet access. (No camera, so no pics either.) I will be checking my email whenever possible, so Kiwis: if I haven’t already gotten in touch with you and arranged a meetup somewhere, prod me. As soon as I get back, more or less, I’ll be trotting off to Poland for our workshop, so I won’t really resurface until March. See y’all then!

]]> http://www.logophile.org/blog/2006/12/28/hexpedition-southerly/feed/ 4 Up and running http://www.logophile.org/blog/2005/04/18/up-and-running/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2005/04/18/up-and-running/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:35:59 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=13 Well, here it is. Thanks to Theron Parlin I’m not ashamed to look at this blog any more. So everyone else can too!

Soon (?) to come:

  • some new reviews
  • a review category with extra info (recommended, where you’ll find it, etc)
  • some cleverer content management (transient posts shorter, reviews longer, etc)
]]> http://www.logophile.org/blog/2005/04/18/up-and-running/feed/ 0 a new blog http://www.logophile.org/blog/2005/04/05/a-new-blog/ http://www.logophile.org/blog/2005/04/05/a-new-blog/#comments Tue, 05 Apr 2005 20:05:44 +0000 tikitu http://www.logophile.org/blog/?p=4 It’s here, it’s a blog, it’s new. I’m so overwhelmed with the technology, I can’t get myself together and write anything.

Actually, the first priority is to remember enough CSS to alter the style. A lot.

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