Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Back to Brighton

Yesterday, in the spirit of the last week and a half, which has been mainly spent re-acquainting myself with the recent past — drop­ping in at my old school, going back to the pub where I work, etc. — I went to Brighton. Nothing too heavy, just a little light clothes-shopping, but enough to retread my usual paths. It got me think­ing about how mis­rep­res­en­ted the city is, quite pos­sibly through my own doing. In the first term, whenever any­one asked where I was from, I’d say “Brighton,” or “near Brighton,” which makes the major­ity of people imme­di­ately think “gay”. Not of me, neces­sar­ily, but the place — it does, of course, have its reputation.

But see­ing it again yes­ter­day made me real­ise just how skewed that notori­ety is — the whole gay thing is just a part of what I see as the main qual­ity of Brighton: that the whole place radi­ates an arty, altern­at­ive, free-spirited vibe that I’m yet to find in any other city in this coun­try. Just driv­ing in and out, as I did yes­ter­day, you pass so many little places — gal­ler­ies, stu­dios, tat­too and pier­cing shops, record shops, skate shops, crazy clothes shops — for the most part inde­pend­ent, unique places with more than just a facade, places you could get lost in.

It might have its rough spots, it might be full of chavs, but there’s that some­thing about it which you can’t really describe, you have to be there. That is why I will keep defend­ing it, not because it’s my home town (it isn’t) but because it has that qual­ity that makes it the place where revolu­tions start, where ideas hap­pen, where cre­ativ­ity is encour­aged and sup­por­ted. Not some­thing that can be said of Coventry.

Introducing…

Alright. Dim the lights, strike up the band — it’s time to usher in the next Act in the crazy play that is BigglesZX.com.

For some time now I’ve been try­ing to think of ways to focus this site, and to focus the con­tent that appears on it, and this is the res­ult. “Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve” is the new title for 2006 for BigglesZX.com — a new label for new writ­ing: what will hope­fully turn out to be a new fla­vour of meat­ier, more ana­lyt­ical writ­ing. Previous incarn­a­tions of this site have tried to do too much at once — tried to present everything of interest about me in one place — which I have come to real­ise is not the best approach. It res­ults in diluted, gen­er­al­ised writ­ing that lacks a cent­ral topic (besides “my life”), mean­ing less allure for poten­tial read­ers, and less motiv­a­tion for me to main­tain it.

Most of the top­ics I have been think­ing about writ­ing about of late have centred around my cur­rent exper­i­ences “on the learn­ing curve,” both in the aca­demic and experience-gaining, self-improving sense — hence the ambi­gu­ity in the title. Had I pre­vi­ously sat down and writ­ten about these things, and pos­ted them here, they would have looked out of place — weighty art­icles in amongst tri­vi­al­it­ies like my latest impulse pur­chase; my last cinema visit. Henceforth, when I say some­thing, I want to say something.

Shrewd read­ers will note the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Chatbox in this new ver­sion — this omis­sion is for both aes­thetic and soci­etal reas­ons: in the short time I spent devel­op­ing this new theme, I didn’t come up with a way of neatly slot­ting the Chatbox in to the new design; but more import­antly, I hope that leav­ing it out might encour­age read­ers to com­ment on posts using the com­ment­ing func­tions instead of the less involved, more curs­ory Chatbox mech­an­ism. It may make a return in the not-too-distant future, as might the much-loved BOFHcam (which is still access­ible here, though it hasn’t been updated for a week or two). For those inter­ested, you can read all about the con­cep­tion of the new theme here.

So there you have it. I hope to update this every few days, depend­ing on how much free time I have (cur­rently: lots) and how much mater­ial I can think to write about. Please com­ment as you see fit, espe­cially if you’re going to say some­thing con­struct­ive. Unconstructive com­ments are not dis­cour­aged, but the former is pre­ferred :-). If you want to swap links, con­tact me or leave a com­ment. Thanks for read­ing, and enjoy the site!