thing13

I went to a lecture organised by The Darwin Initiative. It was all about “The Science of Sustainability and the Sustainability of Science”. Not just randomly, of course… I’m not quite that masochistic.

The main speaker was from India, and he talked confidently about how we can’t keep on with “Business As Usual” - which of course involves scary graphs with increasing temperatures, pollution and McDonald’s outlets - and how we should instead look to get involved in “Systemic Change”, which involves making biodiesel, buildings out of mud, and everybody very very happy.

At the end of it all, the UK’s Parliamentary Secretary for Biodiversity, Landscape and Rural Affairs called him a “genius”.

And I couldn’t help thinking that if someone else had stood up and been as intellectually dishonest as this Indian bloke about just about any other area of modern thinking, he’d have been called something close to the opposite of a genius.

Call me a cynic, go on.

I just noticed (admittedly, a bit late) that Flickr has added mapping to its already overflowing box of tricks. In a nutshell, you can stick each of your pictures on a map of the world so that everyone (or just the people you choose) can see where it was taken. ‘Geotagging’, for jargon-lovers.

I just went through and geotagged a bunch of mine, and then looked to see who’s been taking pictures in the same locations. Loads of people. Very amazingly bloody clever.

I felt the need for a long bike ride. I had a vague thought that I might be able to find the place I always see out of the window of the train on my way to Suffolk, which is a pub on the edge of Hackney Marshes or Walthamstow Marshes or wherever it is. And after a couple of hours of pleasing exploration, I actually found it, which was a bit unexpected.

On my way back home, I took a picture under a bridge on the canal.

Then it got pitch black dark and cold, cos it’s winter.

Haven’t read any more of “Getting Things Done” yet. What does this mean?

I am reading a book called “Getting Things Done”. It’s quite famous, apparently, for helping disorganised bastards like me to sort their lives out, stop feeling out-of-control about “stuff”, and generally… get things done.

(Obvious joke about not being able to find the motivation/time/etc. to read the bloody thing…)

Self help books have never seemed right to me, somehow… but a friend left this on my desk at work, following a series of stressed lunchtime chats, and I am now on chapter two.

The fact that my blog hasn’t been touched since we went to Denmark months ago illustrates one tiny corner of the pile of undone things. There are billions of things, it seems, that I’d like to do, but feel too tired and distracted to focus on and do.

So, here’s to the 3428th time I’ve said something like “right - time to sort this out”.

Denmark’s capital is great. Smørrebrød is great. Beer is great. Getting away for a weekend is just bloody great.

I’m going to Copenhagen tomorrow. Jen’s working out there today, and it’s the first time that one of her Civil Service trips has hit a Friday, with the chance for me to head out and join her for the weekend.

Right. Where’s Copenhagen?

I have been simultaneously doing an awful lot, and doing absolutely bugger all. A bit of an oxymoronic one, I’ll give you that.

Blimey.

Didn’t take long for a lot of weeks to whizz by, did it?

I feel a bit like I accidentally pressed the ‘on’ button when I wasn’t quite ready… and suddenly we’re not in Kansas any more.

So, apologies for the enormous gap. I never seem to have time to just sit down and explain it all, because there’s too much to try to explain. I still don’t have a proper Internet connection at home, which is another excuse.

So… I think maybe an answer will be to do smaller updates, rather than attempting to write long and meaningful essays each time.

This, for example, is neither a long nor a meaningful essay. (Nor is it, by any stretch, an essay.)

(Timequake, incidentally, is a very good book by Kurt Vonnegut.)

So, here we are.

At long last, after more than a decade of being in a whole ‘nother country, I have returned.

It’s going to take a bit of getting used to, I think. There’s a big difference between the place where you grow up and go to school and the place where you spend the years between your 20th and 30th birthdays. Edinburgh is a great capital city, and an amazing place to be… but it’s a different kettle of ballgames to this capital city, and I’m here in a completely different way to the way I was here before.

In a nutshell, this is all going to be a bit different.

Very very exciting.

I am packing. It’s more difficult than you think, isn’t it?

Had a big night out with work people last night, which was really good. Bit of a slow-burning hangover… seems to be making the whole packing thing more difficult. Which is nice.

Right then.

Now that is funny.

There I was, minding my own business. I stick up my sliding lists idea, and forget about it for a bit. (It’s been improved, by the way, but not updated yet. I have a cool idea to use it… which I will get back to.)

Lo and behold, it gets blogged by none other than the creator of the book which inspired it.

Jeremy Keith calls it “an interesting navigation idea”, which is what I hope it will be, soon. Makes me happy. Cheers Jeremy.

Right then: I will have to start paying attention. Google is watching, even as I pack up my boxes of stuff and continue to panic gently about things in general.

Suddenly there’s just a couple of weeks to go until I leave Edinburgh. I find this very hard to believe, although there’s a strange feeling somewhere that it definitely is happening.

I got my contract from the Beeb through the post. Black and white, there it is: job. I find this very hard to believe, although there’s a strange feeling somewhere that it definitely is happening.

Not long from now I’ll be 30 years old. I’ll have left Edinburgh, signed that contract, begun the journey to London. Three decades. Blimey. It definitely is strange.