OMG I like have a lifestream?

The main page of this site now displays my Friendfeed — the comments link on that page will re-direct you to Friendfeed. I’ve been using it for a wee while, and I quite like it. It’s an easy way to aggregate everything online.

Blogging in the traditional sense of the word has become somewhat cheapened over the last five years or so, with loads of people (and companies) hopping on the bandwagon and trying to make money off it. Spammers are getting in on the action, with splogs that scrape content off legitimate sites. To me, it continues to be an entirely personal project, a way to expose my silliness to the world instead of keeping it all confined to email. And as time goes by, I find I have fewer words to say, but my interest in news, politics, science, gadgets, crime… hasn’t gone away, and so I have these multiple presences online, documenting everything in different places. And it was kind of messy.

I’d been thinking of ‘lifestreaming’ (in my own private way) for a long time — witness the shitty job I did on the previous design incarnation this year — although I didn’t know that at the time. But then I read this piece about the ‘future’ of blogging, and it all became clear. Add an RSS parser to the mix, and a CSS-styled, non-widgety lifestream now lives on this site.

Note: I would probably have used the FriendFeed comments plugin, too, but I have too many posts with the same title. Since I haven’t had any comments from FriendFeed yet (too few people I know actually use it), this has not been a problem, but I suppose this is something that needs to be worked out. I really need to learn PHP.

Note: FriendFeed is arguably not a lifestream, but that’s all you need to know about my life if you only know me online. I don’t do a whole lot else, anyway.

• 6 Aug 2008
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This Canadian holiday I…

• learned not to fly in the middle of the day
  Because it always ends up being delayed. I spent five hours sitting around Glasgow Airport on the way out and had time for dinner and dessert on the way back, my flights were so damn late. The key is to take the first flight of the day, which is why my sister booked herself a 5am service.
• ate a hell of a lot of Asian food
  This I totally did not expect. I had century egg porridge, mee pok tah, spicy Sichuan fish stew (水煮鱼片), tofu salad (老虎菜), dry-fried beans (干煸四季豆), roti prata, sashimi (gigantor slices), dough sticks (油条), beef sandwiches (肉夹末), chye tow kueh (carrot cake), xiao long bao (小笼包), various soy products (豆水 and 豆花), and probably more but I forget. My cousin told me that the Chinese food has got much more varied since the Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese immigrated en masse.
• bought those Fluevog shoes I was talking about
  Oh yeah. The surprise was my sister and cousin paid for them as my wedding present. Haha. Motorcycle-type boots and slightly fetish-y shoes for a wedding present. How totally excellent.
• had lots of lovely long talks with my aunt, cousin, and sister
  I’m the baby of the family (on this side, not counting the sprogs), so this is the first time I’ve heard many of these anecdotes, from relatives I haven’t met up with for ages. I also met an uncle I haven’t seen in years. He’s the spitting image of his dad. Heh.
• met the man Kevin McCloud would die for
  My cousin’s boyfriend, Steve, is the handiest DIY-er I have ever met. I spent my first day in Canada marvelling over his house, and I mistook his double garage as the neighbour’s house, it’s that good. This man has done it all (he is Bob the Builder in real life, I swear) and owns every power tool known to man. Plus he rides a motorcycle. And he’s got a Jag.
• misplaced my backpack
  Well, the airline did. I’ve been lucky and have not my luggage not appear on the carousel for two decades or so; I suppose my time has come. That doesn’t mean I’m not distressed — my new Volcom cardigan is in there.

Flickr set

• 31 Jul 2008
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The joy of Fluevog

I’m a shoe freak. I also keep my favourites till well after they have collapsed and died (unless Neil talks me into throwing them out). I bought a pair of Supervogs back in 2000, and excepting the soles that I had to replace, they are still on the go. So John Fluevog makes me happy.

And so this trip to Canada will have to include a visit to the local Fluevog store, because I want these shoes. They’re a bit fetish but perfectly normal at the same time. I like the double-duty.

And these ones. They’re smarted-up motorcycle boots. Grrrrowwwllll!

Let’s see if I have to make yet more space again for yet another couple more pairs of shoes. Plus they’re not exactly cheap. You get what you pay for, right?

• 23 Jul 2008
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An ode to lard

Nothing contributes more joy, satisfaction, high blood pressure, and heart disease than junk food, and none more so than pork rinds (crackling). I’ve never made a secret of my love for the wholly un-nutritious, but the dietary compulsion for Mr Porky is a totally new thing.

Indeed, I have eaten the fried lard one occasionally gets in bowls of mee pok and with guzzlingly gut-busting gusto, and I remember crunching on some crackling off some roast pork back in my uni days (which are growing terrifyingly distant, whaddaya mean I graduated last century?), but deep fried pig fat and skin, dipped in salt? Phwoar.

I’ve been really bad lately, consuming a full bag over a 24-hour period (even my conscience and intestines cannae cope with eating it all in one sitting), at least once a week. I blame Neil, who I allege is trying to mitigate his excessive consumption of Magnum ice creams by deflecting my Singaporean shame rays back at me. He encourages my purchasing of Mr. Porky whenever we’re at the Co-Op — that’s how devious the man is.

The really freaky thing is I don’t even particularly like how pork rinds taste. Like all the people with self-imposed diet and lifestyle problems, I just cannae help it. My brain says, Eat fresh food; but my stomach says, Crisps and soda and pork rinds, please.

• 21 Jul 2008
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• Thinking