moosifer jones's lair & grouch – online home & blog of Mags L Halliday

I have a backlog of books to review, never forgetting the epic ‘to be read’ bookcase (aka where GJ plays librarian). So in an effort to clear it, I’m experimenting with reviewing each book in under 200 words, excluding the key book info.

The reviews will also post at 8.30am. Not because I’m free to post then, I’m not. Just for consistency.

You have to love Yahoo. Everything they touch turns to crap. I was quite pleased that, though they bought del.icio.us (an online bookmark site) they left it to its own devices.

Turns out that’s because they’ve just fired the whole team and are shutting it down.

I have 1669 bookmarks saved to del.ico.us, complete with a tagging system. I use RSS feeds of particular tabs to feed content to this website. I’ve exported the lot and now I need a new online bookmarking service.

Here’s the spec:

Essential
• online, accessible via Firefox and IE
• user-defined tags
• RSS feeds for tags as well as account
• full backup to CSV file
• no flash elements to the site

Optional

• Firefox bookmarklet
• comment space
• iPhone app version

I don’t want a microblogging site like tumblr, just straightforward online bookmarking. So, any suggestions out there? Pinboard? What else?

(And they’d better not bugger up flickr. I might go and back it up in case…)

Just getting around to submitting this place to technorati. Ignore me…

UV6UHYHK382C

I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I just used a Manics song as a post title. If you now have this as an earworm, I can only apologise.

I’ve had a tumblr account for ages but haven’t been able to work out what to use it for. Basic link library? I already have del.icio.us. Microblogging? Twitter. Blogging? You’re reading it.

Finally, I might have worked out how to channel one of my interests into it and it’s going to be a daily post featuring a design I like. It might be a print, or a object, or clothes. I’m planning to feature UK designers as much as possible although the first week is heavy on the etsy as a quick way to get started.

Here we go: my tumblr.

These aren’t necessarily things that fit some objective view of ‘good design’. I may have done design history at university, and have some very fat books on modernism on the shelves, but I’m actually pretty eclectic in what I like. And the tumblr will be stuff I like and that you might like as well.

If you hate craft, you may prefer to visit regretsy.

Recent searches that ended up here:

• The penguincubator
  It’s still brilliant. I was wishing for such a device just yesterday
   
• lost in austin
  learn to spell, people. Austen, not Austin.
   
• “above ground” piccadilly line poster
   
• albert campion fanfic
  nope.
   
• dr who eccles cakes
  I have this terrible feeling they meant to find ninth Doctor fanfic involving cake
   
• fashion blog london girl reading a clockwork orange
  A tad too specific, I suspect.
   
• is jane eyre metafiction?
  No. HTH.
   
• is joan fontaine still alive?
  Yes.
   
• the title of the novel by s. waters in which one of the protagonist is imprisoned in millbank panopticon
  It’s Affinity. I liked it.
   
• was moquette used in the edwardian period
  I don’t know, but now I really want to find out.

At school, we had a weekly English class in condensing text. It was in the days of O-levels, OK? They also made us read Hardy which is really uncalled for. I was rubbish. I’d submit stories in creative writing that were 1800 words instead of 800 (a Marlowe pastiche – Philip, not Kit). Then I discovered the drabble: stories told in exactly 100 words, no more, no less. You really have to condense to make 100 words tell a story. Cutting adjectives, finding tighter phrasing, understanding colons. All of those came from drabbling. I recommend it to people as good practice.

Tonight I found I have a new favourite editing warm-up. 140 characters, inc. punctuation. If you want to learn to edit sharply, get twitter.