Editing my online world

I have a lot of public profiles on the internet, and for obvious reasons, many of them mention that I work at UCE Birmingham. Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore.

I haven’t been fired or found a new job — the university has simply changed its name. From tomorrow, UCE Birmingham will be Birmingham City University. Apart from the fact that it now sounds like a football club (and looks like one: wait till you see the new logo), it’s okay as University names go.

It got me thinking about what it would be like if AUT (my former employers in New Zealand) made the same sorts of choices. In a town where there is already a University of Auckland, it would become Auckland City University. I can’t imagine that being allowed to happen there — and I don’t know how this has managed to happen here.

The argument is that Birmingham City University is snappier than The University of Central England in Birmingham, which, I suppose, it is. But it’s not snappier than UCE, which is what everyone calls it. When you abbreviate Birmingham City University, you tend to end up with simply ‘Birmingham City’, which always makes it sound like the next word you’re going to say is either going to be ‘Council’ — or ‘Nil’.

But that’s not my problem. My problem is that now I have to go around the internet sweeping up all the anachronisms about where I work. This will affect all of my online profiles, many of which I can’t even recall where they might be.

So… if you find an instance of me claiming to work at an organisation that doesn’t exist, could you please bring it to my attention so that I can correct the internet?

Thanks very much.

Alice Russell

After dinner last night, Bobbie and I went with Sam to see Alice Russell live at the Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath. Great venue for live music, by the way. Alice Russell’s an amazing soul/funk vocalist and, among other things, fronts the Quantic Soul Orchestra.

We left Jake at home with his friends Ethan and Anna, a packet of biscuits, several stern warnings and rules and some videos to watch. Of course they were very well behaved. At least, I can see no evidence of damage, loss or foul play.

We stopped at Juliet’s place just down the road, and she came with us to the gig. We arrived way too early — around 9pm. She didn’t hit the stage until nearly 11.30pm. So we had a drink first, sat outside, talked to people, sorted the world out and generally had a nice time.

Have you seen this man?

When the band finally started playing, we went in and made our way to the front. Sam said he’d follow us in. That was the last we saw of him. Not sure what happened there. Not that I’m overly concerned…

[Update: Sam has reported in. All is well. He was hit with a sudden and inexplicable illness within minutes of us leaving him alone, and crawled on home to bed. He blames the Quorn tacos.]

I’d seen Alice Russell at Shambala, and thought she was really pretty great, though her stage presence didn’t have quite the same power as her voice… but Bobbie had missed that performance, so we made a point of going this time.

Pretty much exactly the same set, with one member of the band swapped out for another. The guy playing the electric violin wasn’t involved this time – and a backing vocalist was added. People danced, and everyone seemed to be having a very nice time.

Afterwards, Bobbie and I popped in to see Clutch for a chat and a sample of his bargain Laphraoig. Collette, Clutch’s partner, was fast asleep because of an early shift at work – but Clutch is 100% rock & roll so he was up past midnight. We’re yet to meet Collette. Clutch has arranged our meetings so far to coincide with her late shifts, because she’s not really that interested in whisky. Even a little bit.

But then he had a thought: “Is Bobbie interested in shoes, at all…?”

I think they’ll get on fine.

More Alice Russell photos at my Flickr set.

Twitter: no longer just for geeks

A long while back, I signed up with Twitter. It was new and I’m always curious to find out about new things.

If you haven’t encountered it, it’s a bit like the Facebook update thing: ‘What are you doing now?’. You type in a short message of up to 140 characters that lets people know what you’re doing, thinking about or involved in. The clever bit is that it’s nicely integrated with mobile phones, so you can text your updates while out and about, and you can also be texted with updates from people you are ‘following’.

My initial impression was that this was something my students would be all over in seconds. It had all the ingredients: SMS messaging, total interconnected socialising, and the potential for endless inane prattling. But they don’t seem interested.

I knew a few people who used it at the time, but I quickly became tired of it, because it’s only really useful when people who know each other are all using it fairly regularly.

It’s been referred to as micro-blogging – and it’s not generally useful at the level of individual posts, but over time, you get a picture of what the people you know are up to, and concerned with. This is Twitter’s greatest strength. When I next bump into someone I know who uses it, I can ask ‘Oh, how did it go with…’ or ‘I’m glad you enjoyed…’.

It gives a nice cumulative overview of what’s happening in the lives of people you care about or are interested in, without having to ring them, email them or text them every day or so to ask ‘So, now what are you doing?’.

And I think people are starting to find out. Like Facebook before it, which took ages for people to really hook into it, Twitter seems to be taking off. More and more people I know are starting to use it, and every day, it becomes more and more a part of my daily communication.

I like to think I do interesting things from time to time. If you want to join Twitter and ‘follow’ me, I’d be absolutely happy for you to do so. My Twitter username is simply dubber. You can see what I’m up to anytime by looking at my Twitter profile, or you can sign up and get updates via SMS, Instant Messenging software or on the web.

Until this week, I was convinced that it was just us geeks that liked to play with this kind of technology. But regular people are starting to find out it’s useful, and not pointless, difficult or scary in any way, which is quite nice.