Foreboding...

I've a strange sense of forboding. I have so far created three websites - all of which I have completely failed to maintain past the first week. The first I created when I was 16. It was very poor, but what can you expect at 16? In 1997? I didn't have much of an agenda for it, I simply thought having a website would be great, but alas, it wasn't.
The second, 'randomnight.com' was the result of one random night, where a couple of friends and I travelled to Bournemouth at 2a.m. to paddle about in the English Channel and bury Gwilym in the sand.


Gwilym buried in the sand

We vowed after this to have more random nights and I would document them in the afforementioned website. There were no more random nights (except one which wasn't very random - we planned it) and it took me eight months to get the website up. I never updated it.
My final effort was a website to promote my own work, which never got past a logo on the front page.
So, why have I a strange sense of forboding? Well, I wonder if this blog will ever make it past the first week and be the first site I've managed to maintain. It's not that I'm lazy (although that is true), it's more discipline in documenting thoughts. Now, this isn't meant to be a diary, but the documentation of thoughts is similar. I have never kept a diary, but I wonder if this experience will bring out some hidden truths, or if I'll discover things about myself that I've never known. I like to think so.

You don't get owt for nowt!! (At least you shouldn't)

You may feel this a little geeky, but I spent most of this afternoon trying to find free fonts on the Internet. After an hour or so, I stumbled across a page whose first sentence was “I spent most of this afternoon trying to find free fonts on the Internet”. Intrigued by the article, who’s author was obviously suffering the same plight as myself, I read on what was a well-constructed argument on the issue of font piracy.
You see, a while back I discovered a font on my PC that I had planned to use as the principle typeface for this website – Bodoni. As for the details of its acquisition, they remain a complete mystery, since various fonts seem to leap into my computer, without my even knowing (the font fairies come in the night, when I’m asleep, presumably). Anyway, ‘tis a sad fact that computers suck and I had been forced to completely reinstall Windows due to some major fuck-up a couple of months ago, without the forethought to back-up my fonts. Hence, Bodoni had been lost forever. With my limited knowledge of the fraught and stressful world of typography politics, I figured that since I acquired it without even meaning to, then it mustn’t be too hard to find a passable free alternative on the internet. How wrong can a man be? Marko Karppinen has hit the nail on the head with this evaluation of the underground free font scene – “I dare you to type “free fonts” into Google and feel lucky. The parallels to smut become obvious in a split second”. I shan’t reiterate the whole of Karppinen’s article; you can read it yourself by going to http://www.markokarppinen.com/20020424.html. I guess the gist is that, as with anything, there is a price to pay if you want something. That goes for music too, but I'm not ready to tackle that particular thorny subject yet. Suffice to say, if something is worth having, it's worth paying for....

Hello, Yeah?

Let me get something straight from the start. I'm not going to explain myself here, or try to advertise myself for self glorification purposes. This isn't the diary of Iain, either. What I choose to fill my days barely excites me, so I don't know how it could excite you. No, that isn't important. Infact, this blog isn't very important, but here it is, in all it's ugliness. The thoughts of a bored man; the product of too many hours of pointless contemplation for all to see. I hope it at least causes a thought in your heads.
Oh, and if you enjoy reading others ‘blogs’, and I suspect if you’ve got this far on mine so far, you must be pretty hardcore, then be sure to visit Neil Bennion’s site about his trip around the Americas, Litter from America. That is a diary, but it is wickedly funny and fairly entertaining to boot. Anyway, here you have my blog, but please be sure to let me know if I start writing pieces littered with ridiculous rhetorical questions like that sexually frustrated woman on ‘Sex and the City’.

This could be the start of a beautiful relationship...