B4L LOLCats
Forget deputy leadership elections, opinions of Tony Blair and the merits of Doctor Who series three - if there's one thing all Bloggers4Labour surely agree on, it's the need for more political LOLCats. Hence, B4L-lolcat-mashup-a-go-go:
Or, one could say, the commentaricat. I kill me.
Unfortunately1 I can't get it to work with the full-post feed. Oddly appropriate wongaLOLCats can be found here.
- really it is [↩]
B4L Dance Routine
I was thinking: you know what Bloggers4Labour needs? A dance routine! But who should take part? Obviously it would be bad form to nominate others and avoid it myself...and who else would be appropriate but #1 Labour Blogger Kerron? As a result of these deliberations, I present to you:
The unendorsed, completely unofficial B4L dance routine.
It'd liven up the conference, anyway...
(the site's a little slow right now, but does load eventually)
Thursday’s Bloggers4Labour meetup
I didn't know I could go to the B4L meetup until about 1530 on Thursday, and jumped onto a train after hurriedly packing a bag. A few minutes later I realised I'd forgotten to print out the details of the venue. My Nokia 7610's web browser isn't up to much and kept crashing, but after three attempts I finally managed to find the postcode at the B4L site. I plugged that into the surprisingly useful Google Maps for Mobile application, which downloaded a street-map of the area and showed the nearest tube stations. I also had the iPod London Tube maps loaded, so checked which line I had to use. This all took about ten minutes, so isn't much good if you're in a hurry, but I was quite impressed it was all possible.
I was sitting on the Tube when somebody sat down opposite. I thought I vaguely recognised them from a blog photo, but wasn't sure. I then started wondering who else I might recognise from photos, and promply stopped concentrating and missed my stop. I'm obviously getting comfortable travelling around London - that's never happened before! I made it to the venue without further mishap, thankfully 
Clockwise from the lamp - Andrew (hidden), Tom, Kerron, Baby Washington, unknown (can't remember his name - am a bad person), Paul and Andrew. Luke was there too, but left before I took the picture.
It was a fun evening. Conversation ranged from what next for B4L to Doctor Who to whether we'd require payment if we were King of Canada (it was decided that we'd forego a salary if we could declare such things as 'everybody must wear a red hat'-day). As always my brain wants to overanalyse it and obsess over every time I said something stupid (I seem to remember making up and using the word 'deradioactify', for example), but I'm trying not to. I was maybe a little quiet, but was comfortable and had a good time. Definitely glad I was able to go - they're a great bunch of people.
B4L, and personal posts
Recent comments on a few Bloggers4Labour blogs have, in particularly caustic style, suggested that B4L bloggers should not discuss anything other than politics, and discussing anything else (particularly sci-fi) makes us look pathetic. These people happen to be your basic trolls, but more polite versions would raise three issues:
- The idea that discussing sci-fi / other 'geeky' topics is something to be ashamed of, and that others will laugh at us. I think I demonstrated my contempt for that particular theory here.
- The idea that personal posts have no place on blogs ostensibly about politics. Jo has an excellent response here: "What I’m trying to say is that this is my blog about my thoughts, my opinions and my life. I just happen to be a Labour activist."
- B4L should only aggregate political posts. This, as far as I'm concerned, is entirely up to Andrew of B4L. He built the system, and can choose to aggregate whatever he likes. I like the community feel of B4L, as the inclusion of non-political posts makes it feels much more like a group of real people
than just political pundits(edited - original phrase wasn't really what I meant), but it's really nothing to do with me. I'm not trying to pass the buck, I'm just saying that B4L is whatever he wants it to be. WordPress blogs can supply category feeds, and if Andrew were to ask for a feed that only contains political posts (and I'm certain he'd be a damn sight more polite about it than random commenters) I'd be happy to supply it.
Looking Shifty
I thought I'd avoided appearing in any photographs from the B4L meetup, but Kerron got me. Ah well, it could have been worse
Friday’s Bloggers4Labour Meetup
Bloggers4Labour had its first anniversary last Thursday, and a meetup was arranged at a Whitehall Wetherspoons. On first hearing about it I hadn't intended to go - I'm not good in pubs generally, nor around people I don't know, and also I'm only political in phases. Skuds put some of my fears to rest and convinced me it would be fun, so on Friday I headed down to London. I arrived half an hour early, so wandered down to the embankment and back. At around 1900 I headed inside, spotted the famous B4L sign and introduced myself to Andrew, the creator of B4L. Others soon arrived, and eventually there were1:
Andrew - B4L
Andrew - Andrew Brown
Skuds (real name Andrew) - I found that essence rare
Damian - Pootergeek
Kerron - The voice of the delectable left
Neil - Brighton Regency Labour Supporter
Paul - Mars Hill
Paulie - Never trust a hippy
Tom - Let's be sensible
It's most odd meeting people whose blogs you read daily - everybody's strangely familiar, but at the same time, not. I relaxed very quickly, and had an excellent time.
Neil's blog is always provocative, and at one point he remarked on his ability to offend people without meaning to. At this very moment an Old Guy walked past and stopped, spotting Neil's camouflage jacket:
Old Guy: What rank are you?
Neil: I'm not in the army
Old guy: What rank are you?
Neil: I'm not in the army
[Old Guy walks away, then turns and comes back]
Old Guy: That's very confusing, you know. It certainly fucking confused me!
[Old Guy makes wanking gesture, and leaves]
We were very impressed at this ability to offend without doing anything at all!
Conversation ranged from religion to the smoking ban (we were all of one mind on this, so it didn't last long) to classic television. Unfortunately the others were sadly deluded over the best Doctor Who - it's Jon Pertwee, clearly. This conversation had natural continuations...I have been told that I must stick around for a second series.
I realised after a couple of hours that everybody around me was drinking beer, while I was on lemonade. Somebody else had bought me the drink, and I realised that I'd completely unconsciously been using the supplied straw. Not terribly manly, but I felt so comfortable that I wasn't bothered
Unfortunately due to limited space we were forced to split onto two tables, so I didn't get to talk to Damian, Paulie or Andrew B very much. I'd certainly like to hear from Damian about what it's like to run a blog with more than a couple of dozen regular visitors. Next time, hopefully.
I was very surprised to find it was 2300, but I'd had a great time. It was the complete antithesis to dancing the previous night. Many thanks to Andrew for arranging it, and to Skuds for his help.
Update: Other people's roundups - B4L, Andrew Brown, Skuds, Kerron, Neil, Paul, Paulie and Tom.
- was...were...argh [↩]
Bloggers4Labour Meetup
I'm off to the Bloggers4Labour anniversary meetup in London this evening. I was happy to find that not only are there direct trains to London from Stratford, but it's a chiltern train that goes through Banbury, so there's a £15 return ticket! Given that I was once charged £80 to visit a client in London (they paid!), I'm happy with that.
Bit nervous about the meetup - half the reason I blog is because I have the social skills of a mole - but hopefully it'll be good. They're all terribly nice people, after all My political credentials aren't quite so hot as most, but hopefully that won't matter.
I'll stay overnight in London, but am seeing Jerry Springer: The Opera in Birmingham tomorrow night, so have to get back in time for that. I've no idea what I'll think of the play, but I'm too intrigued to let it slip by
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
Must. Sleep. Cannot. Function.
Having written most of a long Jerry Springer review this morning, I've just come to finish it off and found myself too tired to do so. The sentences just don't seem to be working very well...I don't want to publish something I'd long to fix on a read-through tomorrow morning, so shall wait until I'm awake.
I've just uploaded the few B4L photos to Flickr, too. They didn't turn out so well as I'd hoped, but at least they aren't completely black!
Incidentally, it turns out that coComment doesn't work at all like my recent overview suggested. As this blog post of theirs points out, they do not crawl comments. New comments from the 'Your Conversations' page will only appear if they are posted by other coComment users. I apologise profusely for not realising this fact, although in my defence it wasn't made very clear. In my view, this makes the entire service much less useful. It's handy to have a list of places I recently posted comments, but having to visit each page manually...I feel a bit cheated, really. They say they're working on incorporating non-coComment-user responses, but if the experiences of the FeedLounge team are anything to go by, the infrastructure needed for large-scale crawling is easy to underestimate.
Hope that made sense. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to collapse.