<insert crazy ramblings here>

I'm off for three weeks, and need to take some stuff to keep to keep me entertained that won't weigh down my suitcase too much.

I'v already grabbed a cheap copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, as I enjoyed it on a previous holiday. I found the structure to be brilliant. Read some theory. Do a warm up exercise, and something then something bigger that seemed to take me between 45 minutes and an hour each time.

I've always said I have no desire to write fiction, but I quite like the idea of something like the DotRSotB structure for writing as zero kilogramme travel entertainment.

Any suggestions?

I stopped using Live Journal just before the fanfiction clampdown. I don't just mean I stopped posting, (although obviously I did), I stopped reading anything on Live Journal. It was a combination of a few things, covered below, but basically I'm back now.

I was prompted into posting today by a post at Websnark on the re-deleting of fanfic. I think he has a point that Six Apart are mad to be doing this. Other social networking sites are on the rise, and pissing off your paying userbase when the competition is so strong is not smart.

Which leads onto the first reason for my LJ Gafiation. Facebook. I have rapidly become completely addicted to it. Losing my WAP phone for a week, and work's firewall have slowed me down, but still love it. I should post a bunch of my more surreal status updates sometime soon. The Live Journal feature I'd like to see most on it, is custom friends groups.

While I was spending my internet time on Facebook, I paid less attention to my feed reader. It was only when talking to offensive_mango on Facebook that I noticed that I seen her Live Journal update for a while. Or any Live Journal. Bloglines had been failing on the Live Journal feeds. Their customer service was pretty good for a free site. A fairly typical two days to reply, but it wasn't a form response. I replied with the information they wanted, and they fixed the problem a few hours later.

This lead to what I'll term forum bankruptcy. I like to go back through the archives of webcomics, forums, and blogs, to not leave gaps when I've been away from the net for a while. This problem is it leads to me abandoning things when I can't bring myself to up to date, and then it only gets worse. So I'm declaring forum bankruptcy on Live Journal, and am not going to try and catch up with all the posts I missed. I'll try and keep up now though.

Finally I've spent a lot of time travelling with with work to Eastern Europe recently. I'm not complaining about that. It's been nice to see these places, but it has left me with even less spare time than normal.


Another reason for posting again was that Dave Licence asked why I hadn't posted for a while. Which reminds me I forgot to comment on his amazing photo of a household spider. The way the focus is so tight on the center reminded me of Tilt Shift photography, and I was going to ask Dave how he did it. Until I remembered that the whole point of tilt shift is to fake the look that happens naturally when you're shooting something small. If you're reading this Dave, thanks twice over.