I warn you, this post is not one of my best. Nonetheless I have written it — I just wanted to document what I did this weekend.

I just finished importing into WordPress the emails I sent when I went travelling, eighteen years of age. The trip is an interesting read. Certainly the first few are pretentious and make me cringe, but you can really see me grow up during the 72 days I was away. Especially when I get to Thailand and have to make it on my own.

I wrote the script to turn the HTML static page I had into an RSS feed to import into Wordpress using Ruby. That was a surprising pain in the arse. I kept slipping up due to not knowing the syntax quite right, or not understanding nuances of the weak typing and type conversion. Still it’s a language which feels promising. I need to do read some better reference code. The documentation on Ruby out there is rubbish. Suggestions welcome.

I was going to fix my activity-feed/life-feed thing. Especially since Steve at work is getting me all excited about DataPortability and Microformats and that. But I will have to rewrite chunks since for some reason my server no longer has the PHP SimpleXml module compiled in.

Looking through my epic eight years of blog entries I realise I must spend a whole weekend at some point just categorising and tagging it correctly. Categories are tough. I don’t like my current set. Work is easy enough to classify. But Detritus? Life? Should Life be about me or about Life-issues like philosophy? I feel the latter. I may make a category called Me. Boring crap like this can then be neatly avoided by those who wish it .

I have to say, classification and naming is a tough problem that I absolutely love to get right, but I find it as hard as the next person.

Tagging is easy but I want to be consistent with my tags. That’s the hell of web2.0 init? Tagging well. Tagging consistently. Mass tag editing is conveniently lacking too so you can’t easily change your mind later about naming decisions.

Also I find myself tagging posts eg. Amarok, but not categorising them as such. I’m using the two systems separately. The category is only Amarok if the whole post is about Amarok. But if it mentions Amarok, I tag it as such.

I checked up on my site backup solution. I have a cronjob running which does a backup everyday at 1:03am server time. On the last day of each month it makes a monthly backup. I created this system about six months ago after catastrophic data loss (MacFuse at fault grr!) But I’m not backing up my database. Which means I could lose all my blog entries. I don’t want to put my password in plaintext in the backup script though. Which made me wish we could do push notification across the Internet already. My backup script should be able to stick a dialog in my face once a week asking for the db password even though it’s on a completely different computer. Isn’t this just an extension of D-Bus?

I cleaned up my ClaimID somewhat. I also fixed the MicroID I was broadcasting on my blog to get the verified sticker at ClaimID. I cleaned up MyPlaxo even though I hardly use it. I feel Plaxo has some interesting possibilities in the future. That being cross site and application syncing. I think they actually will allow me to sync iCal with Facebook and Last.fm events within a few months. That is pretty awesome.

I also made my site OpenID 2.0 compliant, even sending the XRDS header. Although MyOpenID do all the actual authentication work. I added a Pavatar too. Which made me want to pick a new avatar image. I host my avatar at methylblue.com/avatar/, and more and more sites nowadays allow you to specify a URL rather than upload an image as your site avatar. Off the top of my head, ClaimID do and so do Blogger. Also a bunch of other sites nowdays allow you to use your Flickr avatar image, which is almost as good. At least it’s easy to change it in one place and reflect that change across your online presence.

And speaking of Blogger, they now let you login with an OpenID. Which is both fabulous and interesting. Does this mean Google will be rolling out OpenID authentication across their whole suite? I can only hope so.

I did most of this due to interest in what Steve is doing at mokele.co.uk. He’s combining a lot of relatively new web technologies and making a system he calls OpenFriend. He was calling it OpenRelationship, but I think he wanted to be taken more seriously . He’s making an open Facebook essentially. You keep your data. Your friends keep there’s. Everyone authenticates their friends in a distributed social network. It’s fun and I want to be along for the ride.

I also edited this post enough times to realise I want inline editing for WordPress. Does that exist yet?

One beautiful late spring morning in the garden, I played in the sand pit while my parents attended to their strawberries; I was six.

A heard a buzzing and glanced up to see a bee land on the wall surrounding the pit. It walked around a little, exploring the crevices in the brick. It found no nectar, presumably, and as it took off I jumped up and started chasing it. I circled the garden keeping the bee in my sights. Round and round again. It was so much fun! I began to giggle with delight.

Suddenly the bee swerved. A moment of horror took me as I realised, the hunted had became the hunter. Not laughing now I turned and started running circles around the garden the other way. I started screaming. My parents thought it was all part of the same game and ignored me.

Over my shoulder I could hear the buzzing of the bee, sometimes closer, sometimes more distant. But always there. I was tiring. In my heart I realised that the bee was relentless. And it was going to get me.

The fruitlessness of the chase and the inevitable sting scared me plenty. There was nowhere safe I could run. In my barely developed brain I understood without really understanding that I couldn’t escape into the house, as there wouldn’t be room to circle, and I would be trapped, and stung. But my rapidly fatiguing legs were telling me I couldn’t run forever, and I somehow knew the bee could and would.

My flailing legs eventually stopped doing as I was desperately asking them and I faltered. As I fell the terror of impending pain and the fear of the unknown gripped me.

I was stung. I wailed. My parents came to see why I was crying.

But you know the sting wasn’t that bad. Mum applied something to it and the swelling and pain subsided.

I guess I learnt some important things that day. I learnt empathy. I learnt that fear of the unknown is often worse than the thing you fear. I learnt about karma. I learnt the feeling of futility, and the horror of unstoppable pursuit.

What I learnt this year.

Personal

I learnt that people are the most important thing in life. I’ve always known this. But it took me a while to realise that I can’t rest on my laurels everytime I get with a girl. Relationships with people must be nurtured and cared for. Fostered, loved and respected. Be good to people, forgive them. Honour them. Be tolerant of their flaws, because nobody is perfect, and everyone has something to offer.

I learnt that you can’t tell another person what is wrong with them as defence when they are telling you what is wrong with you. There’s a time and a place for that, and it’s not a valid defence, no matter how baseless their attack. It just makes you look worse and unable to defend your actions, or unable to apologise.

I learnt that happiness is not that hard to obtain. Life is amazing, and there’s something around every corner to laugh about and to learn from.

Work

I learnt that working in a team is a lot easier and more productive when you are together in the same room.

I learnt that working in a team is a lot harder and less productive when you are together in the same room.

Love

I learnt that love is blind.

I learnt that people are rarely open with you until you are intimate with them. And even then they hide as much as they can.

I learnt that love is a beautiful thing, and that you can’t relax in a relationship, you have to try, and try, and keep giving the whole time. Don’t ruin something that can be wonderful.

I learnt that relationships are about compromise, and a person who will not compromise back, or does not understand that everything is two way is absolutely bad news, no matter how great they make you feel.

I learnt that women are amazingly complex, and it’s amazing that any man is good enough.

And…

I learnt that life isn’t easy, but if you make the most of it, and stay cheerful, and talk to people, and try hard; every day is rewarding.

The lyric, “It wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her”, is wholly inappropriate for its target audience. That being, children.

On the last day of work before Christmas, we constructed and frolicked about in a ballpit, I blogged about it.