Saturday, 31 January 2009

Powerpointers - A Possible Occasional New Series...

Ever since the term "workshop" ceased to become a place with tools in and started to become a seminar on "coping strategies for the networking narrative" or "how to maintain equilibrium in the work space" our language has had to be toughened up to compensate.


Just like Gordon Ramsay has to swear a lot to cover up the fact that he's just doing girly cooking, modern working lives have to contain macho stuff like "bullet points" and "power point" to make up for the absence of proper "manly" manufacturing references. I once went to a Librarians' Conference which featured "break out workshops" - I led a platoon of 6 plucky librarians armed with chisels and hacksaws along a corridor before we were beaten back by a "robust initiatives" group from the Large Print directive.


Anyway, all I wanted to say is that I had an idea that I could combine my passing familiarity with Powerpoint and spreadsheet charts with the fact that I'm now one of the oldest people in Blogland and use these modern tools of communication to impart gems of ill-gotten wisdom to you, dear reader. No, please don't thank me ... it's a public service.


Anyway, here's Powerpointer No 1:

Thursday, 29 January 2009

The Ernie Wise of Blogging

Well, Murph has gone and suddenly everything seems different.

I'd sort of dared wonder what would happen in the unlikely case of Murph's demise and sort of assumed that Oz or Lily would sort of pick up the reins - I'd even thought of a name for the Tibetan Terrierist - "Oz World, Mostly". When the time actually came after 3 years and hundreds of posts by the wise old Lab Cross it just seemed completely wrong to try and seamlessly continue like Little Feat without Lowell George or Taggart without, er, Taggart.

So "It's a Dog's Life" will sit there in memoriam, like 10cc should have done.

It reminded me that I'd been assisting Mr Murph in his scribblings for about 6 months before something occurred to me. My late Father retired in the 80's and put a great deal of enthusiasm into his employer's quarterly Newsletter to retired staff around the globe and one feature popular amongst the 37 readers of this photocopied missive was the hilarious stories of his (psychotic) Old English Sheepdog Bobby and little (overweight) Westie chum BeeBee. It was called "It's a Dog's Life".

OMG I thought! I've turned into my Old Man!

Anyway if you've braved the hyperspace leap from Murph's blog to here, thanks for coming and I'll try and defy statistics and keep this bloggy rolling! Oz and Lil and Mrs (so-called) Rine send their best and will no doubt appear in these bright blue new surroundings from time to time.

....Bring me Sunshine, all the while.............