I took loads of notes at November's Thrilling Wonder Stories II but never got around to typing them up. Fortunately, @rossignol's report is pretty much what I would have said (although I don't agree with him about all of the speakers) | a TWS2 report from @markasaurus | interview with the TWS2 curators, Geoff Manaugh and Liam Young | interview with Matt Webb of @berglondon | video archive of TWS2: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 | original Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine covers on CoverBrowser | retrofuture.com | Dissecting The Mystery: the Death of the Retrofuture  

Less thrilling wonder, more quietly mundane, was #boring2010 in December, where I didn't take any notes at all. Luckily, Lucy Peel did, and posted a list of all the speakers' websites and presentations. | (The only thing she's not mentioned was my 30mins slideshow of photos of coal holes that was onscreen while people came in and found their seats. But that's because nobody knew it was there, due to the lights being too bright to see the screen and the music too quiet to hear over people greeting each other. Oops.) | more #boring2010 links: Irish Times | WSJ | @oye_billy | @siansparkles | @joemoransblog | A Less Boring Version of 4′ 33″ by @martylog and friends [via @mykreeve]
     

coal holes on Londonology | 200 manholes per mile | how to lift manhole covers safely | beautiful Japanese manhole covers | misplaced manhole covers shows sudden, surprising beauty in accidental juxtapositions 

Sound Diaries [via @iamjamesward] | submit your own vending machine sound diary here, to be included in this year's #boring2011 | related: @oye_billy on vending machines 

More found sounds from: @mapsadaisical, the Sound(s) of Islay | London sound survey | Inhabit Sounds, an "urban soundscape project". I love this bit: "A road that was once thriving with the sound of manufacturing is presently occupied by Ghanian worshipers – whose religious congregations [...] fill the wide street with sounds of song and music. The result of the buildings change of use actually results in a road [...] where there was and still is a bold and vivid soundscape that envelops the passer-by." [found via a google search for "coal holes". Everything connects...]

And at the moment I'm sitting here listening to pretty birdsong being drowned out by emergency vehicle sirens (probably for the hospital but there's a police station nearby too), and wondering how a word that originally signified something irrestistably alluring ever came to be applied to such a harsh and ugly noise. Language is weird. 

More mondo linkage collected at the mondo linko tag.     

#closeyoureyesanddrawbatman is brilliant [via @robgog and @injculbard] | related: portraits drawn without looking [via @jabberworks] | build your own Mo-Bot [via @neillcameron] | related: my review of Neill's book at Write Away | interview with John Porcellino [via someone on my UKCZI list] | interview with Kelly Supersonic | Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comics, a conference at the Courtauld Institute that looks pretty good. I'm busy but you should go.

Chico & Rita is lovely film with amazing backgrounds and a great soundtrack. Worth checking on a big screen if you can, but there are lots of pics and clips here. There's a fun scene where a car falls apart, which must have been based on this illustration by co-creator Javier Mariscal | every appearance of Han Solo in the TV show Firefly. Like I needed another excuse to watch it again [via @ninagleams] | Firefly is notably missing from this article In Praise of The Sci-fi Corridor — so is Farscape — but the pictures are all great [via @moleitau] 

In a similar vein, nice photos of arcades [via @johncoulthart] | New York Sleeps, lovely large format photos taken by Christopher Thomas early in the morning [on show in London until Feb. 26] | unlike morning birds such as Christopher Thomas, I really am more productive much later in the day, so I like cosmickitten's theory on night owls, because I, too, "am a watcherwoman by genetic destiny"

Camden Passage, Islington, 2006

Two bloggers from the early days made a welcome return to my feeds this week: Troubled Diva |  Interconnected | related: @intrconnctd is on Twitter | (Matt is one of the most thought-provoking people I have ever met, and strange intriguing notions seem to fall out of his brain in the same way the rest of us breathe air.) | "Digital duct tape": if this then that looks really nifty [via @peteashton] | Pete's articles on The Future of Local, what it means to be "local" in the context of the internet, are worth a read.  

Punch & Judy Festival, Covent Garden, 2009  

How we engage with the places in which we exist: the poetry of the Shipping Forecast [via everybody] | related: a lovely obituary for Finisterre from a few years ago | A Cloudy Language, the poetry of weather reporting — more here. Lovely stuff [via @creativereview] | City of Sound: Flood. Dan Hill not only provides an outsider's first-hand (and first-time) account of the Brisbane floods, but also drops it into a historical and architectural context which provides some sharp lessons on why the damage needn't have been so severe in the first place. | *Hauntology* Flickr group | Remembering Trish Keenan | a live performance of Lunch Hour Pops by Broadcast. RIP Trish.

That was the week I created my first blog, hiding out in Stacy's apartment one cold and snowy night. (I think it was the same day I got lost walking around in a snowstorm, having become literally snowblind, and unable to recognise any of the landmarks that I passed, which would explain why we had opted to stay indoors that evening, setting up a blog instead of meeting up with more friends.)

I started my second blog a few days into January 2001, having already forgotten my password to the first one. Between then and now, I've actually lost count of all the blogs I've actively contributed to, and it's hard to go back and find out because so many of them died or got deleted (yes, blogs die). 

So this isn't the post about the history of my ten years' blogging. There are some things I remember about blogging culture, as it was back in the early days, like the sheer living-in-the-future excitement of seeing the "recently updated blogs" on blogger.com updating in real time rather than once every four hours (I know it doesn't seem like much these days, but back then it was a Big Deal). Or the often surreal entertainment value of search results statistics, and how we'd check them every day to see what new hilarity was there; or to see whether anyone had commented via their own blogpost, or search engine request, because most of us didn't have built-in commenting. As much as I like built-in comments, I sort of miss the days when we didn't have any and had to find innovative ways to communicate— I rarely look at my webstats these days: they're so dull.  I remember putting in hidden messages to clever readers, that could only be found by viewing the source code, or by mousing over the right word, and how most blogs didn't have any images because there were no sites where you could host pictures for free. 

Then there was the weird rivalry/snobbery between those who used Blogger and those who used Livejournal, although I never really understood it, because it seemed silly to me to proscribe restrictions to a burgeoning medium that was constantly evolving, and I couldn't see much difference between them, anyway, at least when viewed across the board. (Ironically, despite many bloggers' snobbery and dismissal of the LJ platform, it was actually Livejournal which was the early adopter for much blogging innovation we take for granted now, such as comment streams or syndication, with all the other platforms taking a while to catch up.) 

So this is the post to mark my ten years as a blogger and, even if some times during that time I took extended breaks from blogging, and even if most of what I wrote is no longer available to be read, I'm proud to stand up and be counted. 

I'm not going to link to significant posts in the various archives of those blogs that are still online, and I'm not going to list all the reasons why blogging made my life better, as other people have done. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that everything I could list was something I'd discovered — or could have discovered — through other online activities: things like mailing lists, message boards, and Twitter. 

Ah yes, Twitter. I don't do much looking at mailing lists or message boards anymore, and I don't even seem to do much blogging anymore, but I do like Twitter. In fact, using it feels like the old days of blogging (and the old days of message boards and mailing lists, let's be honest). I've seen people discover it for the first time and they have the same sense of wonder and warmth and community that was there at the early days of blogging. (It's probably no coincidence that the man responsible for Twitter's popularity was the same man who was responsible for for the popularity of blogger.com)

I wonder whether, in ten years time, I'll be writing a half-arsed post about still being on Twitter? (or seven years time, actually, since I've already been on Twitter for over three years) I guess, to quote an inevitable cliché, time will tell.

Is that cryptic enough?

Anyway, I figured I should say something for all the people who follow me via RSS, because even if the site disappears at least there'll be a post out in the ether somewhere to let you know why. And there's always my livejournal account as a back-up — the RSS feeds directly into it, and it's chock full of archives dating back to before I got around to getting my own website at mondoagogo.com.

It does give me a good excuse to finally get around to the redesign, I suppose.

So, two things last week. I was having a bit of an odd day on Thursday, and found myself in an angry, livid mood for no reason. I was seething and I didn't know why. So I took myself off for a walk on Hampstead Heath, intending to stomp up Parliament Hill and look out over London and feel a bit superior to everyone. Instead, as soon as I got to the start of East Heath, I immediately calmed down and felt better. So I wandered down a secret path and found a clearing to sit in on my own, which was lovely.

I was messing around with my phone, taking photos using the randomiser on Hipstamatic and I decided it might be fun to take a random photo with it every day. I liked the way these branches were all twisty against the sky.

On Friday I finished a project I had embarked on a couple of months ago, so it seemed like a good time to start something new. I randomly remembered my JPGmag account for the first time in months, and lo, there's a 365 challenge. It was meant to be.

However, it didn't seem right to start a new photo project without posting the pics to Flickr, which is where my main photo activity and community is. So I'm posting the pics there as well. And sometimes here on my blog, too.

It was a pretty good gig: three female comedians and a band, with an accompanying exhibition, The Museum of A Hundred Days. Event organiser Josie Long was pretty funny, although she was heckled by a nine-year old who got more laughs. Isy Suttie's witty and biting songs were great, but unfortunately I found Sara Pascoe's piece felt interminably long and not very funny, so I was glad when The Pictish Trail came on and regaled us with his 30-second songs. He was pretty funny, too, although most of his songs felt like the beginnings of better things. Hopefully he'll develop some of them into longer songs, as they were all pretty good (even the Birds one that he was so disparaging about), and it was nice to see Adem pop in for some percussive support (he can make anything into an instrument; it's awesome. I've never forgotten the time I saw him play a xylophone with two violin bows).

For various reasons, I sort of dropped the ball on my own #100days project (to make something creative every day), at least as far as doing it on a daily basis for the set time period, or for posting about them under the #100days umbrella, so I didn't actively participate to be included in the exhibition. As it turns out, I was included in the exhibition after all and here's a bad photo to prove it (the room was dimly lit, making good photos difficult).

I don't feel like a failure for not having done what I said I would do on a daily basis, though, because I think I made the right decision not to do so. I signed up because I thought it would be fun and make me feel better, especially during the dark days of winter, but the days when I lacked a creative impulse made me feel guilty, and that didn't make me feel like a better person at all. Sometimes it's better to know when to quit something, because it gives you the space to start something else, which is what I did.

Despite what I said last year about new year's resolutions, this year I decided to give the Uberlist another go, and I've been doing pretty well with it. I got the idea from Kelly Sue years ago, but hadn't made one for a few years. This year's list is a combination of Important Things I Need To Get Done, lots places I've been meaning to visit for ages, and random ideas that struck me as a good idea at the time. It's a long list.

Usually an uberlist is 100 items plus an extra one for each year (so next year's will be 111), but in a moment of enthusiasm my list has 210 Things To Do In 2010. This isn't as wildly optimistic as it sounds, because I've sort of cheated on the numbers (for example, instead of one item that says "go to the cinema once a month" I've got an individual item for each month), especially as some of the items were really simple things that were hanging over from my basic to-do list at the end of last year.

Since it's such a long list, though, I'm not going to post the whole thing here (unless anyone really wants me to) but I might post progress reports as the year goes by. Which is kind of where we came in. I may not have completed a project to Make Me A Better Person under the #100days umbrella, but I've been Getting Things Done on my uberlist (over 10% done already), and it's more-or-less taken place in the same time frame, so I feel like I've earned the certificate they gave me at last week's gig. And there's a space on the certificate for me to write in, so maybe that's what I will write.

The exhibition was pretty good, too. Seeing all the work other people had done was quite inspiring, and I managed to come away with some swag, apart from my certificate: two of Daniel Weir's lego creations, a badge from Edward Ross, a story from Gemma Seltzer, and a trangam from Chrissy Williams, who gets the final word in this post:

"Small things accumulate into big things. This means that small things matter. What do you want to do today? Can you make time to do something small, or will you do nothing?"

The irony that the core subject of his return post was about self-promotion isn't lost on me, though.

If you're desperate for updates, there's always Twitter.

The only trouble is that it seems to make the page a little slow in loading, and I can't figure out how to add more stuff to it, either because I'm too thick, or because the site really is that badly designed. Oh well, it's there, anyway. It might even lead to a bit of money for me, but that's not really why I put it there.