Tag: blogging

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CSI for CSS

Until September of last year, my open-mic event would circulate bulletins using a manually-maintained Gmail list. This is not designed to send 50-plus messages at once and the system eventually refused to send certain ones. So it was time to set up a more modern self-service system, and here’s the entry about what happened at the time.

For GDPR compliance, we also needed to set up a basic website to allow members to join and leave. Our Web server would then deal with the request automatically. I found an open-source template online and stripped it down to suit our needs. Everything else on the website was initially a secondary concern, but we’ve slowly expanded the content to include event times, standards of behaviour and the latest bulletin.

While running a link check, I spotted six broken ones. They weren’t important, merely referring to fonts that weren’t in use on the site, but I wanted to understand the errors and fix them.

It transpired that our site was referencing two separate Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) documents. These are used to define the visual appearance and layout of a Web page, including the colours, fonts, spacing and positioning of elements. Worse, the two documents contained some contradictory information, so the functionality of the website could change or break depending on the order in which the instructions were executed.

Combined with a little sloppy HTML syntax, the browser was doing some heavy lifting to correct the errors silently behind the scenes. Remembering the experience of the distribution list, I didn’t want this to collapse as well.

I used to be a lot more interested in computing than I am now, so much of my coding knowledge has left me. But I spent the weekend combining the two sheets and figuring out what could and should be removed. I relied heavily on user questions from Stack Overflow, the output from code validation websites and even ChatGPT to write snippets of code or check what I’d written.

Ultimately, a total of 7,800 lines of CSS code were reduced to less than 160 lines by Sunday night. The resulting Hotchpotch website is still incredibly static and basic, but it fits the bill precisely.

I then had the impetus to revamp an existing website for a small writing class I’ve been running. This time, I used authoring software for the general look and feel, then made small revisions to the code by hand with my newfound knowledge. The Placing Your Mark website is much more dynamic than its Hotchpotch cousin, although I might one day harmonise their respective designs.

Meanwhile, with the bank holiday weekend over, I’m excited to get back to writing words and sentences rather than syntax and semicolons.

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Janae and Jenny Join a Gym

On this blog, I don’t generally post poems or stories. Instead, I look mainly at what’s behind the writing. There’s a simple reason for this. Once a piece has been published online, most publishers won’t consider it. After all, how would they expect to sell books if the text can be found on a website?

I’m today making an exception because I’m unlikely to send the featured story to any publications. It’s dedicated to a poet pal called Ross McCleary, who – incidentally – has been published by Stewed Rhubarb.

Every day, Ross features running jokes on his Twitter account. These are too numerous and nuanced to discuss in detail, but one of these is a weekly critique of the You Be The Judge section of The Guardian, where readers are invited to voice their opinions on an issue dividing a friendship or relationship.

On Friday, it was a couple who attend the same gym but have very different attitudes to working out. I quipped to Ross that I could write a short story with the title Janae and Jenny Join a Gym. He replied simply that he wouldn’t read that.

So for the benefit of everyone else in the world, here’s that story.

The story

It was straight out of a romcom, the way they met. The short version is that Jenny Aitkin and Janae Atkin both began working at the same time in separate departments of a multinational company. After months of each accidentally receiving emails for the wrong person, they finally met at the Christmas party, had a good old laugh about the situation – and quickly became a couple.

That was a year ago. I discreetly checked the calendar. Whatever had initially attracted them must have long worn off because they’d now spent half their relationship coming to me.

‘Your trouble is,’ said Jenny, interrupting herself to turn to me, ‘her trouble is, every time we go, Janae is constantly scrolling on her phone. We’re there to work out.’

‘I pace myself. What’s the point in burning yourself out on the warm-up?’

‘We were in a high-impact class.’

‘I told you I wasn’t ready for that.’

I raised my hand. ‘Hang on. What did the instructor say about this?’

‘Nothing,’ said Janae, ‘just got on with the class.’

‘But the other people, the other regulars, they’ve all noticed. They’re full of praise about what I’m doing, but she wouldn’t know that because she never pays any attention, too busy taking pictures and… God knows what.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘let’s not throw around accusations. Let’s drill into this a little further.’

I asked Janae to talk freely without interruption under the pretence of giving her side of the story. In reality, it was a distraction. Over the last six months, I’d made a couple of key observations about the relationship between Jenny and Janae. Firstly, to my mind, they acted like an animated DVD menu. Unless someone actively pushed a button to interrupt it, you would hear the same drivel coming back around every couple of minutes.

I nodded tactically at her version of events. Speaking by herself, she always stuttered quite a bit, as though she was missing the regular counter-argument from Jenny.

‘Go on,’ I encouraged, after a particularly long pause.

‘Wait,’ said Jenny, ‘where the hell is all this coming from? This is all out of the blue.’

‘Let her speak,’ I soothed.

Which brings me to my second key observation. In older couples, it’s common to see a high level of co-dependency. Yet these two were both under 30 and both in the unwavering mindset that a couple must do everything together. Of the many ethical issues associated with being a counsellor, none of my practice colleagues ever discussed the issue of keeping a couple together for the sake of repeat business, even if they were each other’s biggest problem. In fact, it would be out of order for me to suggest splitting up.

So I’d encouraged them to join a gym, suggesting they might benefit from spending 30 minutes – maybe an hour – on different equipment, then exchanging notes later on. I knew full well they couldn’t, although I didn’t predict how wildly different their attitudes would be.

Speaking of partnerships that weren’t working, I’d wanted to break away from this practice for a couple of years now, run things my way instead of gaining approval the other counsellors. I saw an opportunity here. For the last six months, every penny I’d received from these clients was paid into a savings account by standing order.

If they stayed together long enough, they were going to buy me a deposit on my own business premises. I’d already made enquiries about reserving the business name: Russ Norloch: Relationship Counselling.

I noticed we were less than five minutes from the end of the session. It was time to play one of my favourite moves: the holibobs card.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘you’ve been a couple for a year now. It occurs to me you’ve not been away together yet, am I right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘May I suggest a short Christmas break somewhere nice – a long break if you can spare the time. I think you both deserve one.’

‘Oh we do,’ said Jenny. ‘I’ve got trip ideas coming out my ears.’

Janae turned to face her. ‘Really? That’s news to me.’

With six more months of arguments virtually guaranteed, I said, ‘Have a think about where you want to go, and I’ll see you both at the next session.’

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Notes of Note

Jack Kerouac wrote his novel On the Road in the era of the typewriter. The trouble was that had a story to tell and didn’t want to be interrupted every five minutes to replace the sheet of paper.

His solution was to buy a roll of teletype paper, giving 120 feet of paper in a continuous scroll. That’s the equivalent length of approximately 123 sheets of A4. The novel was reportedly written in three weeks while his wife supplied him with coffee and Benzedrine.

The entire scroll was displayed at the British Museum in 2012. Had it been written today, he likely would have used a computer, robbing popular culture of this artefact.

I’m reminded of this stream-of-consciousness approach as I look at a Simplenote entry I’ve had for the past two weeks or so. Coming home from a poetry gig, I thought of a few lines of verse, adding a few more lines shortly afterwards. Then yesternight, I added a lot more lines, with only minimal editing.

In terms of plot structure, it’s very disjointed and I don’t intend to resolve this. I’m also satisfied with the opening lines and the closing lines, yet I feel it needs something more in the middle to bulk it up from the 23 lines it currently contains and I can’t tell yet what its final form is likely to be.

While it’s unlikely this short note will end up like On the Road, I do have one precedent for a project that grew out of all recognition. I started off writing a one-line gag about how we fictionally used to order YouTube videos by post. By the time I’d finished editing, it had ended up as a short story with more than 1,700 words.

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Being a Judge

On Saturday, my open-mic night Hotchpotch jointly hosted a poetry slam with the Edinburgh-based I Am Loud.

A slam is a form of performance poetry that heavily emphasises performance and audience reaction as well as the actual writing. It’s also competitive, with a panel of judges awarding points based on pre-agreed criteria.

In all my years of attending slams, I’d never been asked to act as a judge before. By all accounts, it was the least-envied job in the room. We would be marking each of the performers on a scale of 1 to 10.

I didn’t see the other judges’ papers, but I found the standard of performance was so high that it generally came down to how much I enjoyed the poem. There were some tough calls, but I don’t think I’d make any amendments in hindsight.

It really did help to have been to so many slams and other poetry events, so as to build up a frame of reference about what I enjoy and dislike. It was also useful to pay attention to the reactions from the audience. I’d be happy to do this again in the future.

It’s safe to say it now, but I was privately rather worried about whether our members would attend a ticketed slam in place of their usual free-of-charce open-mic. However, I’d failed to take into account that the I Am Loud name has some clout with local poets, and they sold out all 12 performer slots – even if two of them withdrew.

The winner in the end was Tom Bird, who goes on to compete in the final competition later this year.

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Second Chance Sales

Over the years, I’ve amassed a lot of novels and poetry collections. Some of them have been finished and enjoyed, while I’m never reasonably likely to read the others, so it was time to clear out most of my shelves.

After letting my pals have the first pick of the collection, I then sent ten of the remainder to Music Magpie for instant cash. I could have sent fifty, but I was only offered pennies for some of them, giving me much more hassle for a relatively low payout. Additionally, some of the books were signed and/or personalised, so I’ve divided the rest between charity shops and eBay.

During this process, I wondered how published authors feel about seeing their books in second-hand shops, so I decided to throw out a question to them. Of my dozen or so sample size, it seems the overwhelming majority wouldn’t mind this at all. Typical reasons included:

  • Their words were accessible to people who might not have bought them otherwise.
  • They liked the idea of their books being spread more widely than the first recipient.
  • Charities receive the benefit from the sale of donated books.
  • It is simply part of the ‘circle of books’.

Honourable mentions go to two parties. The first is the author who sometimes leaves a secret note for the next person who picks up the book. The second is to Gutter Magazine. It has become a running joke in their office that at any given moment, a certain Oxfam bookshop has at least five copies for sale. They added that many of their issues sell out, so it was lovely to see them ‘in the wild’ once again.

I also had a book written by the grandfather of a former colleague about travelling to Hong Kong. She’d originally lent it to me for taking on a railway journey, but I didn’t manage to read it After a four-year gap, it has now been returned.

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Converting Formats

Of all the factors plaguing Dungeons & Dragons players, arranging a convenient time for everyone to gather is probably the most difficult. This meant my group ended up seeing the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves at different times in different cinemas.

Making this film was a real gamble. Not only is it taking a largely open-world game and telling a linear story, but it also sits in the shadow of the last Dungeons & Dragons film made 23 years ago. That one has a score of just 3.6 on IMDB compared to 7.9 for the current one, and Ginny D from Critical Role has analysed what makes it so terrible.

Computer games in particular have a track record of being made into badly-received films, and there are plenty of top-ten lists online purporting to show the worst. Conversely, there is also a history of movies being made into great games. More than 25 years after its release, for example, GoldenEye 007 for the N64 is still highly regarded.

For me and two of my group, though, the gamble seems to have paid off, with all of us enjoying what Chris Pine and the cast brought to the table. It’s also no secret that a solid structure plays a large part in the success of any motion picture. In a blog post, the writer Michael Hague explains the key turning points of most major scripts, and the writers nailed this one near-perfectly.

With all this in mind, it remains to be seen how The Super Mario Bros. Movie fares at the box office this weekend.

T

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Exploring the Collaborative World of Renga

About three years ago, I had the privilege of becoming one of the first people to sign up for a collaborative poetry project spearheaded by W N Herbert.

Each month, he sends regular emails to a group of fellow poets, inviting us to contribute new verses to a renga poem. One suggestion is chosen every day and added to the email chain, so it builds up as the weeks go on.

A renga is a form of Japanese linked verse alternating haikus with pairs of seven-syllable lines. Each stanza has its own distinct direction, not necessarily responding directly to the previous one, but the end result is a collaborative work that showcases the individual voices and perspectives that make up a cohesive whole.

As W N Herbert receives quite enough suggestions from our small group, the mailing list is not open to the public. However, you can read the finished rengas and other pieces on the Gude and Godlie website.

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‘Those expressions are omitted…’

The major literary news story of the week was an announcement that Puffin Books would revise selected passages in new editions of books by Roald Dahl. The Telegraph provides a decent background of the reaction this has provoked.

One word that keeps cropping up is bowdlerising, a reference to Thomas Bowdler. Beginning in 1807, he produced a series of books titled The Family Shakspeare [sic] that removed what he considered to be improper language. The title page claimed: ‘Nothing is added to the original text; but those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.’

It is also known that his sister Henrietta started the project and contributed to the subsequent volumes, although it’s not clear how evenly the work was split.

While the public largely agreed with the changes during its first hundred years, attitudes had changed by the early 20th century. This is when the verb to bowdlerise gained its modern meaning of making overzealous edits.

In the case of Dahl, I think the situation could have been approached differently. Perhaps a newly-written foreword to explain the historical context would have been more appropriate to help young readers understand the language choices.

However, it’s clear that Puffin is banking on solid sales, as hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds must have been spent on the changes. It remains to be seen in the long run whether the readers of the future agree that the text has been bowdlerised.

At the time

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Cataloguing the Uncatalogued

For the last eight years or so, I’ve run my monthly open-mic singlehandedly. However, our collaborations during 2022 showed me the group was becoming unwieldy to manage alone.

So at the next event tomorrow, we’ll introduce our first co-host. Having already briefed her about the help we need, such as welcoming readers while I set up the equipment, I started to compose a short document to explain the role in more detail.

This short document quickly expanded to a long one, becoming a chronological checklist of the entire evening from start to finish. Much of the content is based upon years of personal experience and best practice. But almost none of it had been formally recorded before because there was never a pressing need.

I’ll give the document to my co-host tonight or tomorrow, although it’s still the first version and could do with some refining. Once it’s more robust, it’ll serve as a template in case she or anyone else needs to cover for me in the future.

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Public Poetry

Regular readers of this blog will know I normally write about writing rather than posting the writing itself. This is because publishers won’t normally accept writing that’s available online, especially free of charge.

But on my tour of the Millennium bridges, discussed last week, I took a little time to write clerihews at each stop. They were so situation-specific that there wasn’t any point in keeping them for a publisher, so here they are in full.

Gateshead,
I visited you instead
of fussing
over your green-arched cousin.
Stockton-on-Tees:
your pointed geometry
pointed the way
to a new century.
York
had the longest walk,
and some robust
gusts.
London,
there are none
who match the sheer span
that you can.
Salford
you rise like a bird,
free
from the quay.
Lancaster
there’s no faster,
way to cross the Lune
on a January afternoon.
Glasgow:
I’m sure the traffic will still flow
over and under, come
the next millennium.

Separately, here’s one I wrote at a popular chain restaurant yesternight.

Monday at the Beefeater
Half-past five, half-past January,
in a half-full restaurant,
kids eat half-portions
as dads drink half-pints.
I half-think I see someone
half-inching a glass.