Nov
28

Friday Flash Fiction: Remembering Lisa

This week’s flash, feedback – as ever – is welcomed:

Remembering Lisa
By Neil Beynon

You’re always most tired before you die or so all the uploads used to tell me. That was back when I worked on the Nets as opposed to living on them. Actually, I guess I probably spent more time on them when I was alive – I used to dream about them. Now, when I dream, it’s not about the Nets. Why dream of endless night punctuated by blazing blots of binary? People go mad in here, they told me that as well – I didn’t believe them and I don’t expect you will.

In the dreams I have these days it’s not the Nets I see but Lisa raising her sleepy-eyed face from the pillow, the flower of trapped heat blossoming across one cheek and a cascade of curls falling over her bare shoulder. In other dreams it’s Vikki and Joe running across the beach towards the ocean, their shrieks and laughter lifting the seagulls into the sky, I can smell the brine.

I don’t know why I keep dreaming about things that never happened. I never – to my memory – recall seeing Lisa in the morning because I was always up first, never willing to sleep too long. As for Vikki and Joe…well they never existed, I made them up. Why? I have nothing better to do in here and you can’t help wandering down the avenues of what might have been, fingering at the ifs: if I’d worked less, if I’d listened more, if I’d realise she was sick or if she’d told me. ‘If’ is too heavy for such a small word.

Those aren’t the only dreams I have. The one I hate the most: Lisa in bed, her slender frame emaciated to the point of being skeletal, her breathing a shallow rasp broken by too long pauses, like she was being dragged a little further away. At the end there are always choices: to medicate or leave alone, to pull the plug or carry on, to be there or not, to upload or fade away.

I never understood Lisa, not really. I didn’t get why she wouldn’t wear all one colour or that the duvet had to be tucked in with the buttons at the bottom or why she liked her toast on the side rather than under her beans. I wondered why she liked hip-hop and glam rock but loathed soul. And I was utterly bewildered by her love of Dickens whom I always found depressing. Most of all I never understood why she chose not to upload.

We never discussed it and at the time she said no to the technician I was too shocked to say anything. They only ask once. I suppose I should have asked but I didn’t, there was so much to do and so many other things unsaid. I ask the others but they either don’t know or don’t care or are beyond understanding. It’s not all bad, there’s plenty of new information on here every day, the world still turns for now and as long as it continues we’ll be here. I trawl the feeds for possible answers on Lisa; I haven’t found any yet. Give it time – I have plenty of that.

In the dream I hold her hand as she goes and that stops it being a nightmare. In reality I didn’t and that’s how I always know it’s a dream – when I wake it’s dark and there’s no one to hold my hand until the next burst of light.

Nov
27

How to kill your blog and other lessons

So apparently posting about CMS was not a smart move as my traffic has done a great big swanny. Ah well, worth a try. However, that’s not why I’m making a post so short it’s practically a tweet.

You will recall my appeal for donations for fellow blogger Abbi and the Movember appeal. I’m pleased to report she did indeed reach target and is currently sporting a large comedy moustache, proving of course the danger in making rash promises on the internet. :)

You should really pop over and take a look. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to laughing my arse off. (Yes, I am easily amused).

Nov
26

Feature: Web Content Management (CMS)

Perhaps because I work in online, or possibly because I read digital media at university and maybe because I blog a fair bit I periodically get asked for advice on how to manage a website. Hence, last night I found myself emailing a friend of G’s about why a Content Management System (or CMS for short) would be a good idea for her site.

And before I knew it I’d written a short essay (or blessay as Mr Fry would refer to it) on CMS and when to use one. Tired of moaning about not having time to produce useful content I thought others might make use of the information within. Here goes:

You know how it is: It seemed like a great idea at the time to start a website – your own personal space to hock your stuff, promote your services, spout off about whatever was on your mind, share your mind-bending expertise on whatever niche interest floats your boat (delete reason as appropriate). Dusting off your self-resolve you either grabbed some poor HTML literate friend or picked up a HTML manual and grabbed some free webspace. Before long you have yourself a website and – if you’re dedicated – an ever-growing list of content, an equally long list of features you’d like to add to the website and you can’t help noticing the paint job needs some work. It all takes time and that’s the one thing you don’t have.

Sound familiar? If so you should seriously consider a Content Management System.

Why use a CMS?

You use a CMS for the following reasons:

1. Loads of content! If you have large amounts of content you will inevitably need some kind of administrative console for the purposes of keeping track of what’s on the site, keeping links up to date and generating site maps (for search engine optimisation) at the bare minimum. A CMS is an absolute must for this type of site whether your content is news, information, blog posts, fiction, whatever…

2. I just want to write! Your site requires updating by users who do not have advanced web skills and/or do not want to have to manually code content. Most good CMS software will have what is called a What-You-See-IS-What-You-Get editor (or WYSIWYG editor) and this can save you a ton of time when writing content up. It also – in good systems – makes a doddle of adding meta keywords to articles as well as enriched content.

3. No money! Relying on the good will of a web development or software development employed friend is OK but it makes it hard to keep your site up to date. This doesn’t just go for content but for other stuff like site structure and design. You can download brilliant, user friendly and most importantly free CMS systems that act as admin consoles for pretty much the entire website. Better yet these systems have legions of developers working on constantly improving the software and through a few simple plugins you can get your site upgraded at the click of a button.

4. I like to redecorate! CMS works by breaking out the content (text and images) from the layout (colour, positioning and style) of the website. If you like to change your site appearance either for a temporary purpose (festival or special day) or just because you get bored easily then CMS makes this a couple of clicks rather than lots of coding. For the main systems there are tons of existing templates you can download for free or at a nominal charge meaning you don’t have to be a designer either.

5. My tags don’t work! A really cool features of current CMS systems has been the provision for web analytics tags (most typically Google Analytics). Hard coding tags into HTML is hard, boring, tedious, prone to error and means you have to remember to put the thing on the page. Any CMS worth its salt will have a facility for putting standard tags on all pages via a user-friendly interface.

As you can probably tell I’m a big proponent of CMS driven websites and I believe a well implemented CMS is one of the biggest cost savings any content rich website can invest in. The good news for individuals and small organisations is that CMS software systems are frequently offered for free; here are some examples:

- wordpress
- Joomla
- wiki
- Elxis
- Drupal
- Modx

The one you use depends on the type of site you want to run and how much effort you want to put into hosting. I use wordpress because it’s one of the best blogging platforms and has a huge amount of plugins that can be used to extend its functionality. It’s also available hosted by them* (useful if you don’t want to have to worry about servers and bandwidth) or as a download to host yourself** (useful if you have an existing URL, want to run advertising or use weird and wonderful plugins).

You’d use a wiki if you want to offer your content in a complex inter-linked kind of way like wikipedia (wiki’s use the same basic structure as wikipedia). Many people discount wiki’s because wikipedia is editable by everyone and they fear their content will be open for everyone to edit, although this platform is well suited to that type of site you don’t have to open it up to be editable to all.

Joomla is a bit more powerful and can be used for more complex sites, typically news sites that carry more complex content than just date-based entries (for which you would use a blog). I’d only recommend this for people who have a good developer to configure it in the first place as it can be quite fiddly.

There are no shortage of CMS systems out there whether you want to spend some cash or take advantage of the free systems. The best approach is to have a clear idea of what you want your site to do and be prepared to shop around for the system that most closely matches your needs. In most cases you should be able to find a demo or example site.

And that’s all you get without parting with some cash. :)

* this blog is hosted on wordpress.com
** bookrater.co.uk is run on the self-hosted version of wordpress available at wordpress.org

Nov
24

Movember

I returned to the office today and, aside from feeling shell shocked, I was slightly perturbed to find most of the men in my team looked like rejects from Boogie Nights. No, they weren’t undressed. The reason of course is that it is Movember and they’re all sporting nose-mats. It’s all in a good cause but still: there were more police around today and I can’t help thinking it’s with good reason. :)

Anyway, acting as official cheerleader for the lads efforts is fellow blogger and colleague: Abbi. In a fit of rash foolishness Abbi has agreed to don a fake Mo for the whole of the 27th November if she can raise £100 towards the collective Movember pot, so far her and the boys are on £45. I dare say there will be pictures posted over on Where The Wild Things Are. In the interests of my amusement a good cause, if you can spare a few bob then please do so.

Who knows, if the donations get high enough perhaps I will demonstrate why I shall never wear a moustache right here on the blog… For now I leave you with the impressive lip-thatches of my team (photos courtesy of Abbi):

Lawrence - week 4

Oli - Week 4

Phil - week 4

Rich - week 4

Rob - week 4

Tom - week 4

Nov
23

Quiet

Just a quick one.

Apologies for not being around much, I have been pretty much trying to get my eye better and so have had nothing of any interest to report. I go back to work tomorrow increasing the chances that interesting things will happen or at least amusing things.

Other than that I’ve been working on Forever and trying to get back on top of my reading which is now somewhat behind where I wanted to be. Forever is going OK – I am currently working on Chapter Six and finishing introducing most of the characters. I had a bit of a crisis of confidence while ill and was convinced that my second draft was a bust but a reread of the first 22k has enabled me to press on. It’s definitely tougher going than The Scarred God but I’m hoping the results will be better.

And I haven’t been doing much else. We have visitors coming down next weekend, my sister leaves for Australia on Friday and there’s a BSFA do on Wednesday that I may shuffle along for, eye permitting. I hope to return to my plans for making the blog more interesting and reanimating bookrater.co.uk soon.

What have you been up to?

Nov
21

Lame

Apologies folks but I kind of lucked out this week on the Friday Flash front.

I think this is largely due to the eye and being somewhat limited in how long I can sit at a computer/read/write longhand. Anyway, all attempts to produce anything have either been lame or come in far too long but it does mean I have a couple more short stories to work on, result.

If you’ve not checked out my archive of Friday Flash Fiction please feel free to have a look round here, more recent entries are down the bottom of the page. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal by next week.

Nov
19

24 Ice Cream

My eye is still bad but – I think – getting better but I’m limiting computer time to essential work stuff and Forever for now. In the place of real content here’s the rather brilliant Ross Noble:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9UyHa1mkB6Q]

Just don’t ask him about monkeys.

Nov
17

They call him Mad-Eye

So I’m back in London.

I wanted this post to be about my weekend and how good it was to hang out with my friends, how relaxing it was to be in the middle of nowhere with nothing in particular to do, and how I felt so much more relaxed than before I went. And all these things are indeed true but then I went into work today and this happened:

Me: Morning All

Abbi: Ah, I see your eye is completely better.

Me: By which you mean it’s not.

Abbi: It’s considerably worse than last Thursday.

Me: Really?

Abbi: Small aircraft are circling the building in case of an eruption.

OK. I made the last line up but you get the idea. And so, having exhausted my arsenal of homegrown solutions, off I went to the NHS walk-in centre in sunniest Soho. I was fortunate to get seen by a Doctor fairly swiftly (I think they were concerned my eye was growing worse as they watched) and was given a course of medication to eradicate the infection. Hopefully.

I say hopefully because I was also told that should the eyelid close I will have to go under the knife. I have had to do this on two previous occasions – the first went wrong requiring a second precedure – and it hurts like buggery, they can’t knock you out and it leads to scarring of the eyelid. However it does give us a new blog competition:

Bladewatch!

Below is a picture of my eye as it currently stands (eyelid swollen half shut), you can vote as to whether you think the antibiotics will work. You can win…urm sweet FA, but I will either feel: a) lifted by a wave of optimism or b) depressed by the bloodthirsty hordes baying for me to go under the knife or c) underwhelmed by a lack of response because most of my views are being generated by Google image search. Let’s play Bladewatch:

eyeweb

[polldaddy poll=1115733]

Nov
15

Chuckles

I’m not around this weekend, I’m off celebrating one of my friends thirtieth and I’m really hoping my eye has started to heal. At the time of writing this I was feeling quite grumpy and trawling youtube for yet more stand up to cheer myself up. And here’s one from the archives:

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wpGtgZw5Z_U]

Made me smile. If you’re after this week’s flash it’s here.

Nov
14

Friday Flash Fiction: The day the aliens came

Still quite under the weather with my eye infection but managed to extract this from my head. I fear it may have been in there too long again but it tested better than I thought and so here you go. That I hope you like it should go without saying although it’s worth repeating; feedback as ever is welcome:

The day the aliens came
By Neil Beynon

Pat was in the bathroom the day the aliens came. In between washing her hands and drying them on the towel, her mind dwelling on the meeting she’d just left, she noticed her reflection in the mirror. Pat wasn’t given to spending much time looking in the mirror because she didn’t like what she saw there: eyes were too small, her eyebrows a little too thick, her nose slightly crooked and hair that would not behave whatever she did. She couldn’t have told you why she stopped to look in the mirror and, if you’d asked, she would have explained it away as her noticing how grey her hair was getting at the front, or how she’d noticed more lines around her eyes but both would have been lies.

She stopped because the reflection was not her own.

That is to say it was her: she could see the too-small-eyes she had inherited from her father and the prematurely greying hair she’d got from her grandmother and the neckline that was her mother’s legacy. Yet it wasn’t Pat that looked back from the glass but someone else.

The shock of it was like a fist in her chest and her heart fluttered around it like a startled bird as Pat leant on the sink staring at the mirror, wanting to look away and not able to. Somewhere in her head –behind one of her eyes perhaps – something moved, unfurled and stretched along a section of her mind. Pat did not cry out. She couldn’t, her mouth wouldn’t respond to her command and so she just stood there gawping at her reflection while inside her skull she screamed.

She willed her limbs and her mouth to move but like she was coming out of a deep sleep early she couldn’t move at all. Her fingers dripped water down the side of the sink and onto the marble floor. Part of her noted that it would make the floor dangerous, another part of her warned that she’d been gone from the meeting for quite a long time and that she was risking her job by remaining.

And loudest of all was the thought she’d gone mad. But she was wrong.

The thing in her head continued to unfurl and stretch. It slid into her memories and began rifling through them searching for the connections it needed for what would happen next. Pat saw her eighth birthday party when all of her friends had dressed as characters from the old west and she’d accidentally shot her friend Pete in the head with an arrow, the smack she’d got for it stinging through the years. She saw her laughing in the snow with her father the day before he fell down clutching his chest and didn’t get up again. She saw herself running away from Sylvia after finding her with Steph and the little bar on the corner of Wardour Street where she’d spent the evening talking to an honest-to-god Pulitzer winning author, Michael somebody or other. She saw herself as Best Woman at her friend Nick’s wedding, she saw the beach near her mother’s house and the first interview she ever got, the first time she got fired. Her memories rolled by like a rolodex and something began to paw her emotions.

Pat’s head tilted and she had not willed it to happen. She felt tired now, though her eyes were wide open, and she was having trouble stringing her thoughts together, there was an overwhelming sense of sliding down a slope that would be impossible to climb again. She dug her heels in and willed her hand to the mirror, to the edge of the reflection that wasn’t her. Someone banged on the door of the bathroom, in the distance she could hear what sounded like an air raid siren but couldn’t have been because the war ended seventy years ago. Pat fingered the reflection of crow’s feet around her eyes and the silver around her hair before she lost control of her hand again.

Her last thought was how old she looked and how she wished she’d spent more time on the beach by her mother’s house. When we made the last connection we didn’t realise what we’d done and it took a long time for us to work out that she wasn’t there anymore. After all, we looked the same in the mirror and we could still walk, talk and breathe but when we went to that little bar on Wardour Street it was just a poky little room with a slightly sticky carpet. When we visited the grave where her father lay in the dirt it was just a shard of rock planted in the earth in a quaint echo of the primitive culture that spawned our host. And when we went to the beach by her mother’s house it was entirely too cold.

And that’s what happened on the day we arrived.

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