It’s Blog Action Day for climate change today but last night Andy Roberts took the initiative and brought BAD to our local folk club:

Andy says on his blog:

Blog Action Day – When The Waters Rise

I mentioned Blog Action Day at the end of performing a version of my song “When The Waters Rise” on the eve of #BAD09 last night at Havering Folk Club

It’s a good example of the blurring boundaries between online and offline interaction. Artifacts, social objects, issues, aren’t situated in just one space whether online or off. It’s all real and there’s nothing ‘virtual’ about it.

To coin a phrase (familiar perhaps to Ultranaughts)

He tangata he tangata he tangata

It’s people, it’s people, it’s people

I’ve moved my main blog over to Linda M Hartley.co.uk

I’ll still blog here about matters educational and about things to do with The Classroom Displays Blog. However my online interests are much broader these days so a new blog seemed in order.

I’ll be writing mostly about writing online and off and about blogging. I’ve got a theme that lets me do very quick microblogging updates as well so there will be a mix of these and longer more substantial posts.

There’s also a lifestream page where you can see almost everything I’ve been doing all in one place. Fun

Do come and join me over there if you think you might be interested. All are welcome but there will be less stuff about teaching and education.

Update - comments closed on this post due to too many spammy comments. It seems to be ranking for the phrase ‘moving house’ and that’s attracting some human spam comments. It’s wordpress folks – y’know, ‘no follow’ links in the comments? Sheesh!

It is not easy being a digital nomad

I’m out of a comfort zone I didn’t even realise mattered to me. I thought I already was location independent really. I work on a laptop and I have for the last 6 years. It travelled up and down the country twice a month all the way through the degree and I worked at both houses, no desk at either, and on the trains.
Now I live in one place but I don’t have a desk so I just perch where ever I can in the house. Occasionally I even stick the laptop in it’s bag and take it somewhere else to work. So I didn’t feel particularly tied to one place, till now.

This latest trip is a bit of a try out for more extended absences from base. Instead of taking ordinary holidays this year the idea is to take extended trips and work for parts of each day. And I’ve been surprised to discover it’s really not that easy.

Mobile Broadband

This is great when it works well but seems strangely intermittent. It may even be affected by the weather! I can get 2G connection some of the time but it’s too slow to do much of what I need to do. The 3G connection is faster but rare.

Location

This leads directly to the issue of where in the house I can work. Some rooms are better than others for comfort or convenience and some for the connection. Everything is compromise. There isn’t an ideal solution.

Work

• Email is fine, reliable but a bit slow to open.
• Multi-tasking with lots of tabs open is not possible
• Blogging’s hard, but not impossible thanks to MarsEdit. I can create drafts and upload them when I’ve got a good connection.
• I can’t add photos very easily, upload takes too long & connection gets lost. Hence no photo in this post, gave up on the 3rd attempt.
• Quickly checking facts and adding links is a bit of a challenge.
• Research for new posts is out of the question

Time Travel

It’s really a bit like time travelling back to a world before broadband and always on internet.

It’s not like coming away and knowing you’ll have no connection. Then there’s not temptation to do any of the ‘normal’ routine of things and the online world is soon forgotten.

The Up Side

On the plus side, like having no internet, it makes it easier to concentrate on a single task, like a piece of writing. On the first day I finally got round to writing a short e-booklet about Classroom Displays I’ve had rattling round my head for months.

Not to mention the walks by the creek, little egrets, the wind in my hair, charming Cornish pubs, watching the surf, green everywhere, birdsong, rabbits in the hedgerows and the pot, and dark nights with no light pollution, no traffic noise, no tubes, no hoards of people.

All of which I would illustrate with a photo, if only I could upload one!

Better preparation

Trouble is that I ran out of well researched things to work on. That’s got to be the major learning from this.

I can work on stuff in draft and upload in a batch, things can get done but I need to do far more preparation and research in advance.

This is a challenge as it’s not my usual way of working. I expect there will be lots of creaking, groaning and moaning till I get used to it.

Why bother?

I’m a bit of a nomad at heart. I’ve never lived in one place for a huge amount of time and I don’t really feel the need to put down roots. I like not having much stuff and being able to just pick up and go. I always wanted to own a yurt (ger) from being very young. (I blame a project I did about Mongolia when I was in junior school !). I love to travel, love the feel of being in different places.

When we work out how make it work we’ll be able to combine work with longer trips and travel more. It’s bumpy just now but it’s got to be worth exploring.

Now to see if I can post this, wish me luck!

Update  – comments now open

Wordpress for Beginners – why should you use it?

Wordpress is ideal for anyone starting out on line. It is so easy to use. The interface is as simple as Word or writing an email. I’m not really very techie but I edit Wordpress sites, like this one (!), all the time.
Have a look at this screenshot of the blog interface to get the idea.

See how easy it is?

• No complicated code to learn, (no need to use html)
• Easy to change the look and feel just by changing the theme with a single click
• You can easily add images and video

Wordpress for Beginners – where to start?

There are 2 kinds of Wordpress sites. The ones you pay to host on an independent web host (I tend to use Bluehost) and the kind that are hosted for free on Wordpress.com.

Rather than going straight into setting up an independent Wordpress site you could try setting up a free one on Wordpress.com (http://wordpress.com/).
Try to register http:/replacewithyourkeyphrase.wordpress.com/. Note – your key phrase is likely to be something people would naturally type into a search engine like google when looking for a site on your subject.

You can use the Wordpress.com site to play around with the Wordpress software to see if you like it and then if you do decide to go the independent hosting route link to your main site from it. This will then also give you a valuable link back.

Wordpress for more advanced users

Although it is often used for blogs Wordpress can be used as a content management system (CMS) giving you a complete, complex, professional standard site that you can easily edit and update. Not only that, the search engines like Wordpress giving you a SEO (search engine optimisation) advantage straight away.

Confidence, Poetry and Life: Interview with Sage Cohen, Author of Living the Life Poetic | Confident Writing.

Joanna’s got an interesting post about poetry over on Confident Writing. I like the suggested method for unlocking your creative juices and finding your poem.

Put your pen to paper and keep it moving for ten minutes without stopping. Then put your notebook away without looking at it.

The next day, pick up your freewriting and underline every word or phrase that looks interesting or surprising to you. Choose one, and write that down as your first line. Maybe you want to also include a few other phrases from your freewriting too…

It reminds me a lot of the ‘reflective splurge’ method of reflection that I used such a lot during the degree. (Gillie Botton)I’d almost forgotten that this same way of working could be used to tap into a more artistic form creative writing. (Another unexpected cost of the degree).

I used to really enjoy writing poetry, especially the discipline  of fitting words to my chosen form. I was quite keen on sonnets and haiku. I’m going to have a play with this idea now. I might post the results of my experiment tomorrow.