After my last blog post on the unusual mementos that turn up when we are moving house, I have now come across the following photos:

A couple of our cat Amy (now sadly no longer with us)

I also found this wonderful photo of Grandad and Grandma Mantle, which was slid behind a plastic cover on a small notebook. Not sure when I got it, or who gave it to me, but the photo is great.

I am trying to place where it was took, but my memory is failing me, so any help is welcome.

Finally, I found my 1st year Student Union card at Leeds University. This would have been in 1992 when I was just 18. I look errrm..very studenty.

Moving house does give one the opportunity to go through some of that stuff you have hoarded and throw some of it out; and boy did my collection of flotsam and jetsam amalgamated over 10 years need some ruthless culling.

Whilst I was clearing out some stuff tonight though I came across something that reminded me of a trip taken to the Big Apple in February 2005 to celebrate Andy's 30th. You can see my pictures of the trip on Flicker here. On the night of Andy's birthday we went to eat at a place called Radio City or something like that, just up from out hotel in central Manhattan. I remember little of the night as we managed to polish off 9 bottles of red wine between six of us, before moving on to some bars. I do remember that I ordered a dish that was basically a selection of different types of sausage, after which, I don't think I could face another sausage for a good few weeks.

My other main memory of that night was of the music. They had a jazz band on and a female singer who meandered in amongst the tables. At some point it was flagged to the band that it was Andy's 30th and he had the next song dedicated to him, at the end of which she was perched on his knee, finishing with a cheeky "boop boop dee doo" and a playful rub of Andy's head.

We were all impressed (especially Andy) and she gave us a flyer and told us where they were playing the following night, where they would also have some CDs on sale. Andy was flying back the next day, so we drunkenly agreed that we would go to this bar she was performing at and buy him a CD; of course when the next day arrived, all of us feeling somewhat delicate, we opted for a quieter night and never made it to the bar to see a repeat performance. We could also only remember the first bit of her name (Tira), so Andy christened her Tira Misu, after the dessert.

Tonight when I was clearing out some paperwork, I found the flyer in there, so thought I would scan it in (wirelessly) and share this short anecdote.

The website of the band she sang with is still up here. It even has a page dedicated to Tira with a link to her latest CD: maybe we will get that CD yet, a mere 4 and a bit years late!

UPDATE
Surreal. After posting this blog I went and had a look at the CD which it appeared that she recorded in 2000 with her twin sister Dhira. I then did a search for Tira & Dhira and this brought up this strange YouTube vid from 2007, part of a series documenting the lives of bohemian types scratching out a living in NYC. Considering what Andy christened her, it is amusing how she introduces herself in the video.

Leeds is currently in the grip of strike action by refuse collectors; bin men in old money (Not for the 1st time either). I am not going to get into discussing the claims and counterclaims of the council and the unions, but what I have found is, for a council that does a fairly well developed internet offer, just how little they are leveraging it to keep customers informed.

Our bin has not been collected in nearly three weeks now, although we do now have the advantage of a skip in a front garden because of the kitchen renovations; an advantage I would not be surprised to see some of our neighbours take advantage of too.

When the collections missed for the second time, I thought I would go on the Leeds City Council (LCC) website and see what information they had to offer. What I was hoping for was some kind of information portal that would be aggregating all updates relating to the strike action. I went to the main LCC webpage, saw a news link about the strike affecting several waste storage sites (tips or dumps in old money) and at the bottom of that a link to a webpage specifically devoted to the strike action. "Excellent" thought I, "this will be what I was looking for". Wrong!

First of all I could not get on the page because it kept throwing up errors until I temporarily disabled my firewall's privacy settings. Not a good start, but then when I did get onto the page, all it had were some bland stock answers about the strike action. Yes, there a couple of lines on what to do if you don't get a collection, which is basically, put you bin out on your next collection day (Duh!), but nothing more specific than that. What do customers want to know in such circumstances? When they are likely to be getting a collection in their area of course, but that page offered nothing to manage my expectations. We have had some people taking their rubbish to the waste storage sites themselves, but how are we expected to judge if that will be necessary without more specific information.

Twitter seems ideally suited for LCC to get out status updates on the strike, including when particular areas are going to get collections, and LCC does have a Twitter account. It seems though that this is only used to push out information rather than engaging with customers and answering queries. A shame considering elsewhere LCC are trying to make some services available via the web.

From Twitter I looked at the Posterous site set up by LCC to post updates specifically relating to the strike. Again a great idea, but what does it actually offer customers? What information is there on there? It seems to be more concerned about taking on union claims than with providing useful updates to citizens affected by the strike.

It does seem now that the council will be using a combination of private contractors and working council crews to start to clear the rubbish for the duration of the strike. The latest post on the Posterous page does finally give some useful advice, which has also been sent out via letter over the weekend to all households, but it still does feel that LCC could be using the web more to get their information out.

I would have liked to have seen some information on where they were getting crews working on particular days, but what about trying to make use of Leeds Twitter users as an information source of which areas are particularly bad? Use of the internet as an information source during such disputes is only going to grow, so bodies like local councils needs to be more on the ball about how they use these new technologies.

In late April I went to Malta with friends and family, and I have only recently got round to uploading the photos. The full set can be found hereand Lee's pics of the same trip here.

Although we mainly relaxed in the fantastic villa we stayed at, I did like what we did see of the island and I would definitely go back there again.

The villa we stayed in was north up the coast from the capital Valletta, but as we had great weather all week, you could easily make out the skyline of the city in the distance.

We were a mere stones throw from the Med

An afternoon was spent exploring some of Valletta, including getting some food in a cafe that had a great panoramic view of the famous Grand Harbour.

The day we were in Valletta was Malta's Labour Day and the Maltese Labour Party was holding a big rally in the city.

A good time was had by all.

I didn't quite make it out of here in time to avoid the disruption caused resulting from Andy's latest bonus splurge: a full scale kitchen refit. Ironically it now looks like I will be in my new place (touch wood), just after they have completed the renovation and left Andy with a brand new, sparking kitchen - so fucking typical!

Our old kitchen that has served us so well for over a decade (yeah right!) was ripped out within a day and dumped out in the skip.

You may also note that the skip has been placed on the front garden crushing the 4 ft thistles we had been cultivating (see here for more on the garden). The front garden is going to be done straight after the kitchen is finished incidentally.

Here are a couple more shots of our now empty kitchen.

As we have no kitchen, it means we have nowhere to cook or wash up, so we have everything we need packed into the lounge, including the fridge and, most essentially of course, the kettle.

You will also note that Guinness can now watch TV whilst eating her food. Andy and I in the meantime are living off microwavable meals and takeaways, eaten off of plastic plates so we have no washing up to do. What's changed I hear you cry?

I cleared the backlog of photos I had remaining to upload to Flickr tonight.

The first batch are for a holiday I took back in March to Lechlade in the Cotswolds. This was with Mum, Ralph, Lee, Jules and Oliver: our normal deferred Christmas present to one another. We stayed at a B & B that was part working farm. Accommodation was a bit cramped, but it was good to be in a place where there was plenty for Oliver to see and do.

Ralph made a new friend too.

We went and had a quick look around Lechlade itself; not that there was much to it, but we did go down to where the Thames cuts through the village and stopped at a pub for a swift pint on the way back.

We also spent an entire day at the Cotswold Wildlife Park, which is well worth a visit if you are ever down that way: a full days worth of stuff to see and if you happen to have children who like trains, as Oliver does, added bonus of a train that does the rounds.

My full set of photos are here, Lee's are here and Mum and Ralph's are here.

Belated pictures of my holiday with family in Wells. Good time had by all. Oliver did some crabbing and played on the beach. We went and did some birdwatching at Titchwell and at Cley Marshes. Misty views of 11 Spoonbills, Bearded Tits (fledglings), Marsh Harriers and, at Titchwell on the way back, we caught a glimpse of an elusive Cetti's Warbler we had been tracking for a hour or so.

Here are those Spoonbills

And here is a shot of a Little Egret taken closer to the sea at Cley, where the mist had shifted

And more importantly, here's me and Oliver waiting for food.

(Note my fabulous sunburn. My neck got burnt to buggery too at Titchwell and came up in heat blisters that lasted for about a week before clearing up!)

Of the things I will not miss when I move out of here is having the untidiest front garden in the neighbourhood. The ironic thing is that we only have a patch of grass that is no more than 20 square foot to tend, but still it ends up looking like this:

It would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that those 4ft thistles did not disperse seeds all over the lawns of are house proud neighbours. You can see in this shot a little bit of next doors gardens:

Andy has finally seen the light though I think. I told him when he got it done he should not have bothered with a lawn, so now he is getting the lawn taken out , having it zapped with weedkiller and replaced with something that does not require any tending: dead wood.

I think the straw that broke the camels back was when he tried to "mow" the grass a couple of months back. He got a few feet in:

And then our poor, long-suffering Flymo gave up the ghost.

RIP

Are we becoming a nation of angst prone, nail biting, whiny worriers? On the face of it a poll conducted by the Mental Health Foundation suggests we might be.

"Three-quarters of its respondents agreed that the world is scarier today than it was ten years ago, and that people are more frightened and anxious."

Jesus wept! This is not the nation that stood alone against the tyranny of Hitler, shrugging off the Blitz as if it were a minor irritant. The article does identify part of the problem though:

"...people are responding to the effects of an emotional arms race. Modern media-savvy governments realise that, with so many messages competing for the public’s attention—about benefit fraud, climate change, crime, drunkenness, obesity and terrorism—ramping up the fright factor is the easiest way to make sure individual messages get through. She compares a famous second world war poster that exhorted people to “keep calm and carry on” with modern warnings about smoking or junk food expressly designed to be as terrifying as possible."

That all echoes very strongly the thoughts of Frank Furedi in his book Invitation To Terrorexamines the rhetorical framework used by governments and opinion formers in the debate around the threat of terrorism. His argument is that the entire conceptual structure that arises from the language we use fuels a state of perpetual fear and anxiety.

At the same time, think-tank Demos is launching its Resilient Nation initiative this week. It looks into how prepared we are as a nation to deal with major incidents and has been foreshadowed in the press by a couple of articles, one in the Telegraph here and one in the Times here.

The study, Resilient Nation, calls on individuals to become more self resilient and prepared for disasters or emergencies and less reliant on the state although it stops short of advising the public "stockpile" reserves.

The report goes on to talk about how the majority of people live in concentrated urban areas where reliance on services and infrastructure is entrenched and disruption leaves people with no contingency. The report focuses on the impact of examples like the inclement weather we have had in recent years and our poor state of preparation for such events.

The report in the Times looks at the formation of volunteer force that would swing into action alongside emergency services when faced with such disasters, but also makes recommendations about how new social media and networking technology could be utilised to keep the public up to date in a crisis.

Second, all of us – departments, agencies, citizens, communities – need to learn how to harness the power of social networking sites. Twitter, for instance, may be seen by some as a pointless gossip forum, but it could in fact be an incredibly effective emergency management tool.

In America, the internet has already proved invaluable. The Los Angeles fire department has a blog that invites people to provide information on fires and other emergencies across the city. The fire teams also use Google to monitor key words such as “LA” and “fire”, which helps them to get instant reports on flare-ups and wind directions from tweeters. These reports from the ground are then relayed to the services.

As a result, the Los Angeles fire department has an army of citizens on whom it can call for support.

Interesting recommendations and I wholeheartedly support the need to look at this area more closely by the government, but also by citizens, who both share the same myopic view when it comes to crisis; we never even think about the ramifications of such crisis, as proven by the problems we had with the last set of floods which had such major knock on impacts, like the power outstation threatened down in the South West, or the reservoir that almost cracked and burst in South Yorkshire. There is so little contingency allowed for in the way we live these days and with increasingly integrated infrastructure means that when a crisis strikes, it has a ripple effect outwards into other areas. Look at how the countries traffic was almost brought to a halt a few years back by a handful of hauliers blockading the fuel depots for example.

These days you cannot seem to get away from articles and blog posts about Twitter. Some endorsing it, some saying it is a complete waste of time, but perhaps now it really has arrived: Oprah is using it now.

In the last 6 months there has been a steady trickle of celebrities to Twitter, and although the UK have an irrepressible advocate for the technology in Stephen Fry, surely Oprah is biggest coup yet; as the article points out, she is one of 'Middle America's most influential tastemakers' and her reach, should she get behind the technology, should not be underestimated. This is no mere sports celebrity or has been pop starlet, this is a woman with influence beyond a small niche of over zealous fans. Ignore the fact that politicians have been trying to hook into the technology for a while [see here and here], but you know a technology really is making headway when it starts to attract celebs.

There has been some evidence of what I would call Twitter creep though recently; the inexorable rise of it, something akin to when Facebook started to see its own popularity explosion. Previously used to cover dreary tech conferences, I think Twitter's watershed moment came with the recent G20 summit in London, where is was used by police and protesters alike to keep track on activities. The ubiquity of mobile phone cameras allows people to upload images and video to the web and link to it from Twitter, so people following the event on Twitter have a greater sense of what is happening on the ground. Here is the BBC article on Twitter use at the G20.

"For many, Twitter was a way to find out about and get to the independent media reports from people caught up in the protests. One of the messages most regularly re-tweeted was a link to video footage of the police breaking up the Climate Camp."

Hashtags, Twitter's recent of 'trending topics' and sites like Twitterfall and Monitter, that allow realtime tracking of tweets with particular topics, have become an invaluable way of not only following opinion on the selected topics, but also seeing what material people are linking to. The weekly parliamentary slot for Prime Ministers Questions for example, has the associated #pmqs, so has you watch, you can see what others are saying about it and, if you wish, contribute yourself.

Utilising Twitter for organisational purposes is really very much in its infancy, but as this article in the Telegraph suggests, it can certainly leveraged, even if one puts aside the hyperbole of the article. Or consider this story of the student that 'tweeted himself out of an Eygptian jail'. Twitter is becoming an invaluable tool for sharing information on civil protest or government clamp downs and civil rights abuses. Bloggers have long been a thorn in the side of authoritarian governments and Twitter adds to their armory, providing a medium with more immediacy.

Another way to know you have arrived? When mainstream media technology journos start declaring your death of course. Here's the Independent's David Randall doing just that.

The websites with real permanence are those, such as eBay, which have locked users into business relationships. Or ones like Amazon.com, which have, with their stock and warehouses, raised the barriers of entry for anyone wanting to start an online bookshop to almost high-street levels. The sites which can't do that are vulnerable. They have no means of stopping a slightly smarter version, one that has the cachet of newness, replacing them.

He ends his article by pointing out not even Google is safe in the long term. In a sense it is immaterial whether Twitter continues to thrive and exist, and I happen to believe it will, but the point is that the concepts of microblogging and real time information exchange have started to become embedded in the public's mind. It may not be Twitter, but the demand for that type of service is not going to go away, and as with Google and Facebook, an early frontrunner that can crossover from the tech geek citadels and into the mainstream stands an excellent chance of maintaining its attraction to users.