Has Harriet given up on blogging?

Since Gordon Brown’s gone on holiday, that leaves the country under the watchful eye of his co-pilots.While looking at this BBC News article about deputies, I had a little moment when I wondered whether Harriet Harman (one of the 3 grown-ups currently in charge) had ever got back to her blog. she had a little incident in April when it was hacked, and her ‘resignation letter’ was posted.

It would appear she’s not gone back to it since…although there is a spoof blog that’s quite entertaining! Actually, I think I prefer the spoof one to the real one…

In the spirit of the Running Librarian…

…I shall detour from my normal random posting on vaguely law and library related topics, and sidestep into my “real” life for a moment.

On Saturday 19th July , I took part in the Edinburgh Rat Race for the 2nd time, doing the Mean Streets Prologue event. The Rat Race is a team event, 3 people with 2.5 hours to make their way around the city by foot, hitting checkpoints and completing fun challenges along the way. the Adventure Class do it over 2 days, with much more crazy stuff on the second day, and the Mean Streets counts as their warmup, taking placeon the Saturday evening.

As a not-very-fit sorta person, I wasn’t sure I could manage this at all last year, but I did, and so I was looking forward to doing it again this year. A friend organised the teams, so we entered 6 teams of 3 peeps. I’d never met my team-mates before, so I was worried I’d be slowing them down if they were really fit:  a 20 year old Uni student and Officer Cadet, and a 40ish marathon runner! In the end though, we turned out to work really well as a team…so much so that, 7 miles, 15 checkpoints / challenges (including keepie-uppies, juggling oranges, Wii ski-ing, deciphering anagrams, piggy back traversing stone ball sculptures, running up and down vennels, lanes and streets, climbing Calton Hill and general madness) and 2.5 hours later, we actually ended up being the winners from our group of 6 teams! And from what I can work out from the spreadsheet, 7th overall of the 35 Mean Streets only teams!

Very chuffed with myself, especially as some of the guys in the other teams were VERY competitive!

And as proof, here I am as we started – the current toxic red hue of the head is particularly distinctive methinks, especially when it looks like I’m growing out of someone elses bandana…!

The difference between a virtual service, and a ‘real’ service

Well after all my moaning before about the National Archives of Scotland, and how slow they can be to get a document to you, I have to say, the in-person service is a different matter altogether!

I spent a good chunk of 2 days last week rummaging around in there, and the staff couldn’t be more helpful. From the security guard at the door to the Duty Archivist, everyone was happy to explain what they were doing, walk me through the processes and procedures, and help me find what I was looking for.

Unfortunately, some time between 1968 and today, the document I was looking for was vapourised by either the Scottish Office or the Scottish Government…*sigh*

But, it just goes to show – the service you receive remotely can never compete with being able to go, in person, and ask the staff for help…so thank you NAS for your great service last week!

Gossipy Facebook

I’ve been getting these emails occasionally from FaceBook over the past few months, and been deleting them, but…I think the whole concept of this email is wrong (and misspelled – gossips?!?!):

Do you know any gossips about your friends? Your other friends may want to hear it.

(Gossip is always anonymous, never appears in notifications, feeds or anywhere else where the author could be identified.)

 *list of friends names*

To check out gossip about you, or other friends not listed here, click here

What the Social Profile application wants you to do is post anonymous, possibly untrue information about friends and acquaintances, and allow others to see that.
Surely there’s some issues here with libel? If anyone can ‘publish’ unsubstantiated information about others, under the guarantee that it’ll never be traced back to them, which Facebook will then distribute around its system?

Hell, maybe I’ll start posting anonymously about affairs friends have had, bodies they’ve buried, crimes they’ve committed…all untrue of course, but hey, it’s anonymous, what’s to stop me?

And, Facebook’s changed their layout – it’s gonna take me ages to get used to this, gah!