Mae fy dewis yw danah boyd, ymchwilydd a blogiwr. Dw i erioed wedi cwrdd â hi ond dw i wastad yn mwynhau blog hi, un o’r goreuon arlein yn y maes.

Mae hi’n trafod cyfryngau cymdeithasol a thechnoleg yn y cyd-destun pobol, yr ifanc yn enwedig. Mae’r maes yn eitha newydd ond mae llawer o bynciau. Mae dealltwriaeth hi yn dwfn.

Er enghraifft, mae gwahaniaethau pwysig yn bodoli rhwng

• rhwydweithiau cymdeithasol
• rhwydweithio cymdeithasol
• gwasanaethau rhwydweithio cymdeithasol
• gwasanaethau rhwydwaith cymdeithasol

Yn ddiweddar, dw i wedi bod yn darllen ei feddyliau hi am preifatrwydd, Facebook a phobol ifanc.

Let’s watch it fly and fly.

RATM wasn’t the first successful Facebook group-based campaign (see HSBC’s student overdraft charges, for instance). But I think it is a good model to emulate.

As I said here about song-based campaigns, negative campaigns can work (by that I mean campaigns that unite against something). News is usually “negative”, it’s very often about conflict.

For campaigners it’s also about establishing the cause in different places and among different influencers – not just a Facebook group, but a conversation point, a Twitter hashtag/phrase, news stories, blog posts… Online, everybody can be an influencer, to an extent.

I think the group does act as a hub for the rest of the campaign, a backchannel of sorts. Why? Facebook is dominant, it relies on existing friend/social connections, joining a group is relatively frictionless and each action in the group (joining, posting something) results in a news item for others to see.

I’ve joined the group.

Billy Bragg is threatening to withhold his tax on 31st January in protest. Something’s got to give…

UPDATE: Oh my, there is a lot of traditional media coverage of Bragg. I wonder if he’s peaked early and in doing so bypassed the groundswell that could have happened on social media. We’ll see…

Diolch am ymaelodi a’r Grwp hwn. Gan fod yr Adroddiad wedi ei gyhoeddi bellach, rydym wedi cadw cofnod o gynnwys y Grwp Gweplyfr a’i ddirwyn i ben.

Thanks for joining the Group. Since the Report has now been published, we have kept a record of the Facebook comments and closed the Group.

What?

Closing the Facebook group is probably a mistake.

Part of the reason for using social media to get people’s opinions SHOULD be open access to the original stuff. The Convention achieved that during their work – to an extent – but what now?

Where can we read the opinions that were submitted via Facebook? (I’ve replied to ask and will blog the response, if any. But I suspect they’re filed in a dusty box somewhere.)

It’s not only about reading them – but quoting them, scrutinising them and linking to them. The group now has the text: “The work of the All Wales Convention is now complete”. That’s correct, but its recommendations and conclusions will affect Wales for a long time to come.

There are lots of UNKNOWN reasons why you’d keep something live on the web, and preferably with its own unique URL. Who knows what future purpose it might serve? It’s cheap, so why not? Incidentally here’s: the URL to the blog post you’re reading.

Real time web is exciting but it doesn’t diminish the value of persistence. And if all this is undesirable for someone, they have the option of writing you a letter or email instead.

Weirdly, for some reason, there are only three members in the group now and most of the submissions have already vanished. As for the discussion forum on the All Wales Convention main site, it’s being closed for comments – but kept live for future reference. Does this mean your comments via Facebook are worth less than comments on the main website? I hope not.

For me this brings to mind major weaknesses in Facebook as a tool for political engagement. Sure, it’s fashionable right now and it does offer access to large numbers of people. I’m not saying Facebook should never be used for this sort of project. But it’s very difficult to export your data for archival purposes like this. It’s also impossible to deep link to a specific comment. Facebook itself makes no guarantees about the persistence of your data either.

UPDATE 11/12/09: The group has gone, along with everyone’s comments. I received a short reply saying they only had a paper copy and would get back to me about how it could be accessed. I hope future government projects emulate the good parts of this example (attempting to engage with people, mainly) and leave out the bad. Lots of potential blog posts there…

So Twitter Inc have decided to increase support for the world’s languages, which is an excellent move. They’ll be asking users to collaborate on translating the interface, which again is good. The language community, made up of fluent users and some professional translators, knows best. Then everyone wins.

Twitter Inc haven’t said exactly how they’ll choose the next languages. But we can ask for Welsh. Here’s how.

1. Go to http://twitter.com/translate
2. Click the link “Sign up with your username and language”.
3. Type your Twitter username.
4. Select “Welsh” from the list.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Welsh speaker or not. Welsh can belong to everyone!

I’m calling it a “vote”. You might as well use your vote for a language you’d like to see supported, even if you’re not a speaker.

Let’s not wait months and months for Welsh to get support – we can ask now. If they receive a high number of requests, it may spur them into offering Welsh.

Facebook made a similar move a while back. The whole thing was a game, with scores and a leaderboard for contributions. This resulted in a very rapid translation, completed in around three or four weeks as I recall. Twitter will be even quicker, I think we’ll do it in mere days.

In fact, Welsh was among the first languages to be supported by Facebook. This was mainly because there was a lot of demand expressed noisily, via a group.

“The squeaky hinge gets the grease.”

“How can we make better use of new media and digital technology to engage with the people of Wales?”.

The members of the group are the Assembly members Alun Cairns, Peter Black, Alun Davies and Bethan Jenkins. Not all of them could actually make it but as an intro conversation with q&a it was worth attending.

Foomandoonian has blogged last night’s line-up (with representatives from Google UK, Oxfam GB, MessageSpace and chaired by Rory Cellan-Jones). He’s also blogged some of his highlights of what the guests said.

Below are some of my thoughts. I did raise my hand and ask a question about monitoring blogs and other social media. I also filled in a feedback form (on good old paper). Maybe I can explain/expand on them here. I’m offering them from my perspective and as someone who works with the web and is interested in seeing Wales do well.

Getting attendees at the meetings. I get the impression there will be more of these meetings. “Engagement” is a popular word to drop in, how can we actually do this? Well, for what it’s worth I only heard about the meeting because a friend emailed the details to me. Otherwise I would have missed it. So next time please put a page on the Assembly site about this meeting. Then it can be found by Google and we can send it around by email, blogs, Twitter, Facebook and all the other various networks. Whatever existing publicity there was worked well because there were about 80 people in attendance, give or take. This was described as a good “turn-out”. It seemed that most of these people were middle-aged white men in suits. It’s just an observation, there were exceptions of course and it’s actually a good start. But not to have an open page (none that I could find anyway) on the web about a digital Wales meeting is missing a trick. Get a bigger room next time because we’ll be spreading the word!

The meeting itself needs to be more open. The meeting is already somewhat open because people are blogging about it and some people were using Twitter with the hashtag #digitalwales. Please record it next time. Just the audio will probably be fine, with a roving mic for questions. Document the whole thing. That is engagement because you can upload it somewhere and make the best use of public money. It’s a public meeting, so make it as public as possible! There’s no reason why time and space should prevent people from at least hearing meetings anymore. Someone in Pen Llŷn will thank you. I recently wrote about recording meetings on my Native blog.

Bill it as open. This is a public meeting. If people want a private discussion with the AMs involved, there are already lots of ways (email, phone, face-to-face). So just make it clear to attendees that things will be recorded and for the benefit of everyone in Wales.

Let’s have a discussion about open data in general. The USA house their open public data at data.gov and the UK are not too far behind with data.gov.uk (not launched yet but currently on a developer preview). On the feedback form I suggested mySociety as guests for a future meeting because they’re probably the UK’s leading experts on making tools that use political and other data to benefit the public. Good to see that this is what they’re planning. There are almost definitely opportunities for Wales in open public data. By that I mean business opportunities that create employment and projects which help communities – as well as ways to understand the viewpoints, hold politicians to account and run a proper democracy.

But we would like Assembly data in standardised formats please. The online transcriptions of AM speeches are a bit disorganised at the moment. If the Assembly exists to serve Wales, then one way to achieve that is to make them machine-readable. Ideally this would be XML format, but it doesn’t actually matter as long as it’s consistent all the way and the original language and translation are clearly indicated (English and Cymraeg). Then all kinds of things become possible. A good example is the volunteer project They Work For You, which has a search engine for parliamentary discussions and related functions. It has UK parliament, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly – but it’s missing the Welsh Assembly. I’ve written about the need for They Work For You to index Welsh Assembly discussions before. It’s been discussed on a mySociety mailing list and we welcome all coders! But the main point is NOT to raise the specific issue of They Work For You because it’s a volunteer project and only one of many possible applications. The point is making it as easy as possible for citizens to use the data.

Good broadband access. There was some discussion of this last night. I don’t know much about the situation elsewhere in Wales, other than that it’s important. Broadband is infrastructure, like railways. In the past, the railways moved coal and steel. Now we also move information, at much higher speeds. As with any infrastructure, it requires good usage – there is no magical transformation. But it does increase the possible ways people can communicate, learn and work.

Let us see the political process. So much of the discussion at the Assembly and the Assembly Government is private and it doesn’t need to be. I suspect it’s private because people tend to rely too much on email and waste opportunities to “engage”. The question for ministers and staff should always be: does this NEED to be private? If yes, then use a private method like email. If no (could even be the majority of cases) then quickly upload/publish it somehow (blog or wiki or some other tool). Now email the link to people. Thanks, you just opened up the political process! Don’t spin or polish the posts. We’ll vote for you if you’re honest and you communicate.

Some quick notes on tools. Posterous is a good tool because you blog by sending it an email. It’s not the only one with this feature but it’s quick, easy and free of charge. Facebook is OK here but be careful. By default your personal profile is not open – it’s halfway between private and public. My suggestion here would be upload/publish on an open platform (blog etc.) then post a link to Facebook for your friends and supporters.

I could have emailed my thoughts here to somebody. But I blogged them instead. Now anyone can email the link to anyone – or link from anywhere. It doesn’t mean they will but it allows it. People can also find it via search. I’d like to see this model in action.

Your blog posts don’t have to be as long as mine! Preferably they would have a name and a face next to them, not a logo.

Search is key. An AM should probably monitor (or have someone monitor) mentions of their name and issues they care about. Google Alerts are OK, but RSS is probably better. It’s not “ego searching” to look for your name. It’s… that engagement we keep talking about.

Thanks for reading, comments are open.

Sometimes I think almost EVERY form of publishing in social media can be considered a form of blogging. Is everything here blogging?

On Flickr, for example, you upload images which have dates and tags. YouTube and other video sharing sites let you upload video, again with dates and tags. There are subscription options in these too – you add people on Flickr and you subscribe to channels in YouTube. There are variants on other video sites. These “content services” also have feeds of course. They don’t look exactly like blogs but I’m saying the default view you get is incidental to this concept of them being about blogging. Of course, the default display of a blog is incidental. You could take feeds or content from any blog or set of blogs and display them in aggregate in a multitude of ways. The point is, all are about time-based publishing which is essentially all a blog is.

Facebook is like a huge group blog. The newest thing is at the top. Posting a status or whatever is obviously like doing a blog post, but almost everything else you do is subscription. Clicking Like for something is subscription. Writing a comment on a post is a form of subscription. Becoming a fan of a page is subscription. Responding to an event is subscription. And of course, adding a friend is a subscription. It can only be two-way, symmetrical. I tell people Facebook is weirder than blogging and Twitter because of the privacy stuff. There’s a grey area between private and public, but let’s forget about those aspects for now. Facebook is a huge group blog. The things that are slightly annoying on Facebook are the non-bloggy things, mainly the private inboxes. There’s your inbox for requests and your inbox for direct messages. Another thing, if you don’t respond to an event you are automatically subscribed to receive direct messages about that event. That’s annoying because automatic subscription to anything is not bloggy.

Stretching this even further – and this is highly provisional now – maybe a wiki page can be considered a form of blog. The time-based element is most apparent if you look at the history page. This page shows all the edits that have taken place. It looks like a blog, except that instead of different posts it’s the same post being refined over time by multiple authors. And of course there’s a feed of this history too.

Or, the other way around, maybe a blog can be considered a history for its AUTHOR. The author is a biological wiki changing over time! Changes are occurring in the author’s mind and each post is a snapshot in time. So each blog post is a wiki edit. Or at least an indication of one. (If you comment on my blog, I will read it and you will edit me slightly. And the potental future of the blog will change. Have fun.)

Starting an open content service like Twitter, YouTube or Facebook looks like so much fun. I would do it differently to those guys, natch. If I were starting such a service I would look at blogging in detail for which features I could borrow. This often happens subconciously as people have absorbed the customs and features of blogging. Maybe I could start by adapting an old UNIX command.

I’m abstracting features of software here. When I studied Computer Science, I went to a lecture about “computing in the real world” delivered by a software consultant. He said that he’d been asked to work with a prison for their database of inmates. Should they pay to develop an expensive new database system for the prison, from scratch? In a stroke of inspiration, he suggested they just adapt an existing hotel booking system. A prison is a hotel, except if you’re staying you can’t decide when you’re going to leave. On an abstract level, that’s the only functional difference. Inmates are guests.

That observation has always stuck with me and I’ve always tried to look at problems in a similar way.

Of course, not everything is blogging. Now go and eat your tea.

Mae Geocities wedi cau heddiw a rydyn ni wedi colli llawer o safleoedd o’r 90au.

Dw i erioed wedi dechrau safle ar Geocities ond dw i’n teimlo’r poen heddiw. Pam? Dw i’n meddwl am y cyfraniadau mawr i diwylliannau arlein, gwaith caled a breuddwydion gan pobol o gwmpas y byd.

Gofiaist ti papur, finyl ayyb? Ydyn ni’n byw yn yr unig oes pan dydy pobol ddim yn recordio eu stwff yn iawn?

Collen ni safleoedd Cymraeg ar Geocities (darllena’r post Geocities gan Dafydd). Dw i’n meddwl am y canlyniadau – am y we Cymraeg. Dw i dal yn meddwl bod Cymraeg yn rhy dawel arlein beth bynnag.

Pa safleoedd dyn ni’n colli nesaf?

Efallai fy hen cwmni meddalwedd wreiddiol pan o’n i’n ifanc, ar Angelfire! (Rhywle arall ar y hinternet).

Dw i’n clywed bod MySpace yn colli arian ar hyn o bryd a dydy Rupert Murdoch, pennaeth News Corporation, ddim yn deall e.

Ydy cwmniau mawr yn poeni am dy cynnwys? Neu Cymraeg? Nac ydy, dim llawer – yn y tymor hir, mae diddordebau gwahanol gyda nhw.

Yn cyffredin, pan rwyt ti’n defnyddio gwasanaethau am ddim, dwyt ti ddim yn rheoli cynnwys dy hun. Bydd yn ofalus os ti’n cadw dy syniadau a gwaith ar unrhyw safleoedd fel ‘na. Fel arfer mae’n anodd iawn i allforio dy cynnwys.

(Facebook, dw i’n edrych at ti. Gallwn i sgwennu mwy am Facebook. Efallai tro nesaf.)

Dyma pam dw i’n defnyddio WordPress fy hun ar safle fy hun. Dw i ddim yn dibynnu ar wordpress.com – mae nhw yn gallu newid y gwasanaeth. Dw i’n newid fy safle pan dw i eisiau. Mae WordPress yn cryf ar hyn o bryd wrth gwrs ond mae’n wella i bod yn annibynnol gyda enw parth dy hun.

Gyda llaw, dw i’n rheoli fy hunaniaeth a phrofiad darllenwyr. Does dim ots gyda fi os mae fy dylunio yn ddrwg. Dyna FY dylunio!

Dydy gwasanaethau tanysgrifiad ddim yn diogel chwaith, e.g. Sidekick.

Dw i’n awgrymu dau blog am pethau pwysig fel hwn – Dave Winer a Chris Messina.

Mae nhw yn sgwrsio am ffyrdd i datblygu’r we ac amddiffyn y we agor. Hoffwn i datblygu eu syniadau yn y cyd-destun y we Cymraeg.

I’m by no means a veteran Scrabble player. I just got caught up in the whole Scrabble thing – as an indirect result of the buzz around the Facebook app I guess. (On that note, the title of this blog post is a shout-out to those heady days of 2008.) I don’t think I ever played the Facebook app. It holds no interest for me. Call it a personal foible but for me Scrabble is an unmediated pursuit, very much like poker. It’s physical, it’s haptic and other synonyms. Scrabble involves tiles, racks, the board, a pen and paper. The match is completed in one sitting. Online play would be a completely different game. It would be a sprawling mess, allowing for ridiculous amounts of cheating. Also, it might be there all the time, distracting me from more important things I’m aiming to do, like work. (Or writing this, natch.)

So I’ve been playing the real Scrabble for a while. It’s reasonable to say I’ve been getting gradually better through practice. Most of what I’ve picked up is from playing and losing and learning. I know what to do with an “S” and I’m not about to leave some megapoints open just on a whim. “ZA” is allowed and is short for pizza. Yeah, I know! But it is. You can’t quibble with SOWPODS, the official dictionary. You’re not allowed to play “ZEN” for some reason. On a related theme perhaps, “QI” is allowed and is another way of spelling “chi”, the Chinese concept of a vital life energy.

The margin of 16 points was clear enough tonight. In any field of combat this would be a cause for celebration and reams of bunting. What’s more, I felt for the first time that I was making some kind of breakthrough – not only with Scrabble, but with finding any kind of game to call my own. Quizzes I can do, but otherwise in my life until now I could never claim any notable sporting ability. It’s just not my thing.

In physical sports, for instance, there’s a pattern. Generally I achieve mediocrity and then enter a negative spiral and very quickly settle into a relaxed state of very little ability or, for that matter, concern. I’m happy this way.

Imagine being some kind of sporting jock who took it really seriously! That’s not my style, dude. Tennis would be the worst. Charging up and down, earnestly trying to strike a ball like some pathetic trained animal. Then working up a red-faced fit of pique at the umpire’s decision. What folly. I tried playing tennis once, then immediately felt constrained and wanted to exit the game as soon as possible.

Most of the football matches I played were in school. I wouldn’t have minded being better at football. And I felt bad for the guy who got picked last for the team every time. I would be around fourth or fifth from last. So not really exceptional in my lack of sporting talent either.

Fact remains, if I have a “competitive streak” it has rarely ever surfaced in these kinds of pursuits.

And we’re back at the board of brutality. Recently every Scrabble match I have played has offered a real opportunity of victory. Therefore the victory is the focus and it must not be compromised. In Scrabble, as in life, I’m the kind of guy who cannot abide cheating. In my presence there will be no illegal words, prior dictionary research nor any deviation from the proper rules whatsoever. Last summer I ended up having a debate with somebody who was trying to play “IQ”. (As if that could ever be considered a word!) OK, it wasn’t a debate, it was more like an argument. Call it the unfamiliar feeling of actually being competitive and caring about winning a zero-sum game. I didn’t like that feeling.

Tonight I had a kind of flash-forward, which is like your flashback as a standard movie device except into the future. If I were to work at this Scrabble brilliance then I would have to become the best in the Riverside district of Cardiff. And then zoom out from there. Talent, fame, wealth and comprehensive knowledge of peculiar words awaited. Mostly the latter.

The vision became one of supreme Scrabble ability but I could already clearly see where it was leading. The pinnacle of vocabular skill promised so much. But when I was to conquer it, I would feel empty inside. True, I’d emerged victorious in my future imagining: a real Scrabble overlord. Nevertheless, I felt my qi ebbing away.

In order to progress to this final stage and excel at Scrabble, I would have to proceed to the next stage. The next stage is to play more and better people. The training pathways are pretty much set and gradual improvement is almost inevitable, if you have a knack for it. You get some practice with superior players and spend time equipping yourself with heavier and more effective precision armoury, word patterns and the like. The shortest words are a good place to start.

Lists of the two and three-letter words are easy to find. Now and again I’ve tried. But every time I glance at such a list, I immediately question myself. What am I doing? What has my life become? The exercise seems so futile and I cast aside the papers in disgust. (More often than that I close the web browser window in disgust, but that would be to diminish the dramatic effect of this story.)

I know a guy who hates Scrabble. Let’s call him Matthew, because that is his name. He’s an intelligent guy and you could imagine him being quite good. But Matthew hates Scrabble, his body rejects it, because the words don’t mean anything. They’re just collections of letters that correspond to valid English words. It’s therefore a pointless pursuit in his mind. I don’t hold that point of view but I’m beginning to understand it. Especially when considering all this properly. What kind of person learns those words and pursues that kind of excellence? Sure, you could spend extra time learning the actual meanings of the words, but that’s peripheral to the goal of Scrabble prowess. The meaning is not intrinsic to the game. Did you know that there are, say, Asian people who can play the English version of Scrabble to international standard but who cannot understand English with any degree of fluency? I don’t know if that’s true or not but someone told me once and it could be true.

The learning of words is an arms race in which there can only be one winner. That winner could be me. It could! But it could just as easily be someone else. In order for it to be me, I’d have to really desire it and put time and energy into it. In that activity there is no incentive for me. I have this in its right context now. In any given Scrabble match I certainly wouldn’t mind beating you. But I no longer feel the need to beat you. And I don’t care if you beat me.

Incidentally, I also own a brand new Scrabble Yn Gymraeg set. It’s the official Welsh version with a different set of letters. As far as my Scrabble Yn Gymraeg is concerned, I am hopelessly impaired and stand a very good chance of losing utterly. And that retains a lot of appeal.

It’s all fine I guess. I could pick an example, but then I would probably try to find something noteworthy about the event, its ramifications for society, etc. which would make the update seem less trivial. It’s not my job to judge another person for writing something which was only meant for a few of their friends. That would be mean of me. Imagine trying to compare that to a great work of literature when it was never intended as such!

Why all the trivia now? The web has lowered the hurdles of cost and effort in getting your message out there. Messages which would never get through to you can now get through. All kinds of important and worthwhile examples abound. Creative ideas and works which previously lacked the funds or force to emerge. News from brave dissidents in oppressive regimes. Forgotten, sidelined or hard-to-find historical documents, files and recordings. Current dispatches from remote places far away from big city journalists, news agencies and PR companies. That sort of thing. Maybe I can talk about this stuff next time. Today I’m here to give you the trivia.

Before you cry “hyperbole!”, my title above is incorrect. It’s not “all” my possible trivial status updates. It’s just a selection. But I’m sure you’ll agree it gives a diverse range of magnolia shades – numerous daily activities in all their unsurprising, inconsequential and marginal glory. Actually there’s not much glory, just indifference. May the vastness of its triviality yawn before you.

Does a big list of all this stuff become, by virtue of its existence, any less trivial? I don’t know. It’s probably more trivial for all I know.

What I’m mainly trying to do is collect them somewhere for those that might care. If nobody reads them here then I don’t particularly care either. I have used this to fully purge my system of triviality sharing. From now on, if you are wondering what trivial things are happening to me or being occasioned by me, you have the option of referring to this list. One or more will have applied to me in, say, the last hour (if I’m still on this planet when you read it).

After this moment, everything that I put or publish online will have some wilful intent to provide relevance and value to finite groups of other people. The urge to detrivialise is the only change. I mean, I might fail to do this and put something really trivial on the web by accident. Or something which you would consider trivial. You could earnestly point it out – but only if you feel you have the time and energy.

OK then. What don’t I mean by “trivia”? Last summer I went to a gig and saw a grey-haired man, a band member, swooshing a live chainsaw through the crowd, augmenting the music with its ferocious buzzing sound. It was supposed to be a pleasant evening of vintage German experimental rock music but in that moment, seeing and hearing the thrashing chainsaw, I actually feared for my life. It was then that I realised I must send a short text to the world to announce this. You might have wanted to do this too if you’d been there. Fearing for your life. Or, if not your life, then the integrity of your limb attachments. Obviously I didn’t succeed in texting the whole world, but a little section of my tiny world may have taken note. I sent something to Twitter and that’s when Twitter began to make sense to me. Myspace made sense to me when I used it to listen to some music by a band I’d never heard before. Facebook made sense to me when I saw a photo of somebody with a funny facial expression which made me feel somewhat cheery. The items in these examples don’t count as trivia, neither are they all that notable. Nevertheless these kinds of activities will probably continue.

Obviously I can’t promise ever to succeed in actually being “profound”, but I can at least clear away the reports of the everyday and the banal. To be sure, there are people who’d be well advised NEVER to attempt to be profound – or even allow themselves to consider the possibility. I’m mainly thinking back to ex-footballer Eric Cantona and the seagull metaphor he once used, tenuously, in a press conference. Maybe he should have stuck to what the French call the quotidian.

Other than that last unprompted and – might I add – uncharacteristic slight, I’m not talking about other people. This is the web and what they or you do here is not my business. This is MY trivia!

Usually you can comment on my blog but I’ve disabled the comment function this time. It would be cruel to tease you with the opportunity to attempt a response when you can only but salvage a meagre something from this litany of the nondescript. So let’s hear no more of it.

This post may leave you feeling somewhat beige. Feel free to read in any order, or not at all.

• eating breakfast
• putting the rubbish out
• putting the recycling out
• washing a few dishes
• buying sponges and detergent to accomplish previous chore
• trimming my nails
• shaving
• going to the toilet
• flushing
• shuffling some papers
• deciding what to eat
• putting on socks
• choosing colour of socks as prerequisite to previous task
• double-checking the oven is on (or off)
• deleting a text message
• doodling
• posting a tax form
• standing and waiting in a queue
• picking up a leaflet while waiting in a queue
• making tea or coffee
• querying a bill
• sniffing the milk to discern its fitness for consumption
• buying a bag of frozen peas
• deciding whether or not to “call it a day”
• eating some cake (a pre-packaged, shop-bought variety)
• invoicing
• deleting an exclamation mark
• setting mobile phone to silent
• using the computer cursor to idly highlight some text in an article
• reviewing bank statement
• trimming nasal hair
• cleaning a kitchen worktop (or inside walls of microwave oven)
• checking a spelling
• using cling film to cover a plate of food
• placing food in fridge
• using a hole punch to punch two holes in a piece of paper
• being on hold
• checking the small amount of change that has just been handed to me
• reading food packaging
• sleeping normally
• remembering a dream which happened during the previous activity
• hanging clothes
• peeling aluminium seal from the spout of a new tube of toothpaste
• waiting for a bus
• stretching an elastic band for no good reason
• deleting my spam email
• reviewing a miscellany of stationery items which have accumulated in drawer
• operating a light switch
• gathering pens from the four corners of the desk
• breaking wind
• opening a jar
• closing the windows
• crossing off a task which I previously wrote on a list
• adjusting a shoe
• ironing
• going into another room to fetch something
• eating an apple (or banana)
• scribbling on a piece of waste paper to coax an old ballpoint pen into a working state
• washing my hands
• placing wallet and keys in their rightful household place
• scratching my leg
• making minor adjustments to items on a shelf
• picking my nose
• buying a postage stamp
• crumpling receipt into a ball
• plucking crumbs and other specks from a garment