I write this damn page every few months and it’s never right. Ideally I’d not bother but I know the first thing I check on a new blog I find is the about page so here goes. Again.
This is reasonably accurate as of Jan 2009. It will get progressively less accurate as time goes on.
I’m a man of 36 years. Sometimes I look older, sometimes I look younger. I occasionally have a beard but it’s less an affectation, more laziness on the shaving front. My head is usually shaved and often concealed with a cap which again is less an affectation, more a need to keep the sun out of my eyes. Though I do like my cap a lot.
I live in Birmingham. Not a native but my dad is. The Ashton and Moore factory in the Jewellery Quarter was started by my late grandfather but it’s not in the family now. If you like the family history stuff here’s a site my dad did about his dad.
More specifically I live on the border of Moseley and Kings Heath. It’s nice there. I tend to work in Digbeth at the Custard Factory. So I’m a bit of an art-media-wanker cliche I guess. Even have the rectangular glasses.
I’ve been blogging here since June 2000, so that’s about eight and a half years, which is a long time. Prior to blogging I did fanzines, which were like blogs only on paper and sent by the post. Here’s a nice essay I wrote about the similarities I see between the two.
I’m pretty active in what we call the Brumbloggers community, albeit with the caveat that it’s by no means comprised of all bloggers in Birmingham, though they’re all welcome if they want. No worries either way. Paradise Circus is the closest we have to a hub but most of the activity happens on Twitter. Here’s a post Stef wrote entitled 50+ Birmingham Twitter users you need to follow and while the title is a bit strong (“need”?) it’s a handy list if you’re starting from scratch.
I take photos. They go on Flickr. I was a pretty average snapper when I started on Flickr. Now I consider it an art form I have some mastery over. Which is lovely as I’d been looking for an art form all of my own for years. I don’t do it professionally but I like to pretend sometimes and you’ll often find me at the front at gigs, especially those run by Capsule.
Other stuff I like to do when I’m not curating the Internet for my loyal band of readers:
Go to gigs. The odder the better. Like I said, I take photos and they go on the blog. All my live music photos are here. At some point I’ll pick the best ones out but going through (currently) 1,024 is a bit daunting.
Read comics. This was an important part of my life for a long time but I’m just a reader these days. More of the alt / comix / underground / art stuff. Can’t be doing with superheroes.
Watch trashy glossy American TV series. Y’know the drill – Buffy, Lost, Battlestar, etc. Also like the usual HBO suspects – The Wire, Six Feet Under, Sopranos, etc. I tend to binge a season at a time. Once I watched two seasons of Buffy in one weekend, but those days are over now.
Talk about stuff with interesting people. I’m somewhat cursed in knowing a lot of interesting people at the moment. Is very tiring but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Not be very good at proof reading my stuff. I’m always leaving typos in my writings. I think this is because I’m self taught (pretty much failed English at school) and type as if I’m talking. And I’m probably a teeny weeny bit dyslexic. So if you spot a rogue “its” or a typo the spell checker did a false positive on, please be forgiving. In return I won’t pick you up on calling a blog post a blog.
Earn a living from this blogging lark. I’m what we call a Social Media Advisor. I was a Social Media Consultant for a while but didn’t get on with the C word. Thankfully I keep all that stuff on a different blog, over there on ASH-10.
That’ll do for now.
