Open thread for lurkers February 9, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : distributed research, blogs and community , trackbackThis is an “open thread” patterned blog post which means that I’m not writing on any particular topic, instead I’m leaving it open to my readers to initiate discussion by bringing up any subject you’d like to talk about, or even just to say hullo.
According to conventional wisdom the ratio of lurkers to posters in any online forum tends to be around the 10:1 level, depending on the nature of the topic and I probably only know about a handful of people who would seem to be regular readers. I know there are more out there though, and this is your opportunity to “delurk” as they say, to come out from hiding in the silent shadows and acquire a voice of your own.
There must be something that’s been on your mind, let’s get it out with.
Come on in, the water’s lovely 
CC photo credit “The truth lies behind the blurry curtain” by assbach
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
Hello, here I am…come out into the light. But I have racked my brain and can’t think of anything to talk about…it is Sunday morning after all. So I’ll content myself with sending you greetings on a drizzly morning in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Hello Sarah, it’s still Saturday night here, and winter. But kind of warm and sunny during the day. The blackbirds think it’s spring anyway. So thanks for delurking on my blog, I read yours too - the moxybustion video was quite compelling, I wasn’t sure what he was going to do with it when he first unwrapped that device. Then he said to light it with a candle
I’ll try and view the underwater twins next.
Hello from the other Dùn Èideann well that’s the original name of Edinburgh in Scots Gaelic and it’s a grey but dry Sunday morning here.
Well Andy you asked what “things are on your mind get it out there”
So here goe in no particular order.
1 How did Joe Brown (and the Bruvvers), on Friday night’s Later show manage to play his ukelele so beautifully and more to the point can i manage to learn to play my uke as well as that?
4 Finally I must stop worrying about mu daughters pregnanacy it’s all going to be fine and there will be a lovely baby come April!!!
Hi Graeme,
Well you’ve got some good advice from Sarah there, so I’ll just answer the ukulele question. Practice.
One way to make sure you get in lots of practice is to go
busking like Lloyd. Is there an underpass at Edinburgh Waverley station?
I enjoyed the concert for George video a lot, thanks. My little tribute at the time was this,
seems a few years ago already.
Cheers
Oops I wish there was a Preview feature for Comments! points 2 an3 got lost due to my incompetence at using href code thingy here’s the bit that I missed….
2 Can I manage to wake up early enough on Monday morning get to work to get a drawing started and finished before my boss arrives so the highly efficent Team Leader (anther formidable woman in my life!) that has been nagging me to help out her young team as she believes they haven’t got the where with all to do the drawing themselves.
3 How can I find out the name of the road from Dalmeny which according to Google Earth and Google Maps is called “Main Street West” when plainly it is on the East side of Dalmeny and according to the City Council doesn’t exist. All so I can ask them to repair the terrible condition of the road.
You may be in luck here, because Dalmeny is on OpenStreetMap so if you don’t like it, you can change it!
Just remember “The map is not the territory”.
Hi Graeme, congratulations on being a grandad in April. Don’t worry, and enjoy watching your daughter bloom into being a mother. cheers Sarah
Just to follow up on this here thread but I am now officially a Grandad
Many congratulations Graeme! Probably home by now. I was due to call one of mine Phoebe but perhaps not such a great name for a son. They’re both grown up now, not keeping my fingers crossed for grandchildren though.
Thanks Sarah I am looking forward to the new arrival but I just can’t believe how nervous I am about it all, I mean I’ve gone through five pregnancies and have four brilliant kids to show for it and I was never this nervous with them and even the eptopic pregnancy I wasn’t nervous more worried as we started to realise something wasn’t right.
I’ve been having great fun digging out all the bedtime story books that I used to read to the kids. Turns out some of them were quite scary well according to my second eldest she still gets scared when I read “The Monster Bed” but they all loved “Burglar Bill” and “Sir Nobonk and the Terrible Awful Wicked Nasty Dragon”
Jings who’d have thought there is an Open Source / wiki type of mapping!
I remember Alan Coren saying that part of his morning ritual was to log onto his Wiki page and correct the year of his birth where upon it would get changed by some anal retentive who’d chang it back to the wrong year by one year.
I love the idea of Busking as a Darwin Award method to improve my musical abilities and in my case to also overcome my shyness! I have never played guitar in public let alone sing! I have preformed one song (only the second song I have ever written) in front of my work colleagues at a birthday party but I cheated and had a pint of beer fist to steady my nerves.
There is something in what you say about busking, I met a girl at a friends party and we got talking about playing guitar and what music we liked and she told me that she wanted to get out of her dead end job by learning as many songs as she could to start earning a living by busking. Well she, Donna now has a band called Amplifico and they are having an album launch party on the 1st of March here in Edinburgh. Good for her, just shows what a lot of hard work and practice can get you.
I enjoyed your tribute to George you play that 12 string really well and your singing is great, dagnabit Musk Rat I’m jealous
Hi Sarah I just took a look at your Blog and I laughed! I suspect this isn’t the reaction you were expecting but I hadn’t realised you were a midwife and to be greeted on your Blog by an image of a woman with her baby’s head crowning just caught me by complete surprise!
Anyhoo I’m going back to your Blog to have a bit more of a read to see what if anything has changed since the last time I attended a delivery which was 14 years ago, I mean baby’s still come out of the same place but has the approach of the Midwives and Doctors improved. Often I felt that the Doctors in particular tended to see a pregnant woman as being ill or as a problem whereas Midwives spoke of the delivery proces as a natural function of your body (not my body my wife’s)
Hi - I used to love The Monster Bed! “I’m frightened, I’m frightened,” the the wee monster said” From now on I think I’ll sleep under the bed” :-)Interesting thread. It never occurred to me my Dad might worry about giving birth! Off to ask him if he did- he never said at the time!
Hello Lou, good to hear from you and thanks for de-lurking here - it’s working! I was never exposed to The Monster Bed but it sounds great, boy-friendly, possibly suitable for Better Reading Partners.
I’d assume that dads worry about everything that daughters do, including giving birth but I wouldn’t really know - I have two sons, both by natural births.
So what did he say then?
Hi Andy,
Great job on the blog. Have lurked around the blog a few times, made my first comments today, so what better post to comment on to mark this notable occassion.
Keep up the good work!
I have posted on here from time to time, but I will delurk again now and say hi. Really enjoy what you write about on here Andy, keep up the good work