Allergic to running

I had my second 'Publishing Project' session yesterday.  We were mostly talking about blogs and websites relating to the world of literature etc etc and I got my first view of what Twitter looks like (and no, I wasn't inspired to sign up).

Some of the sites seemed better than others.  A lot of the blogs are quite interesting but - as was pointed out in class - it sounds like Twitter needs to be monitored pretty much constantly because otherwise you'll miss something.  Sounds a bit dull to be honest.  I'm sure not even the most interesting person has something enlightening to declare every hour of the day.

We also talked some about the threat to books due to the increase in digitalisation of texts and so on.  I've been hearing about all this for a while.  Sometimes I think that maybe the book is going the way of the dinosaur (or the cassette tape or video player) but at other times I can't believe it at all.  Books have been around for a lot longer than either of those things (the tapes and videos, not the dinosaurs) and I can't see them being totally replaced for things like those stupid kindle contraptions.

Perhaps I just move in very atypical circles but I've never heard anyone say that they prefer reading from a screen over reading from a book.  I know I certainly don't but then I am a dinosaur so I guess my views don't often go with the masses.

I had a prime example yesterday of why old-fashioned, plodding-along books are so much better than computerised whatsit-doofers.  I was in the library at uni trying to log onto a computer.  I tried wiggling the mouse, using the keyboard, pressing various on/off buttons several times (which only liked to point out that they'd noticed the first time after I'd done it the second time, so I'd end up switching off what I'd just switched on) and so on, taking ages to come to life and finally load to a screen I could actually use.  It ended up taking at least ten minutes for me to get the bloody thing to work.

And what did I do in that intervening time?  I reached in my bag, pulled out a book, opened it and started reading.  What's so difficult about that?  Nothing, that's what.  Which is why I own over 400 books and NO KINDLE.

I do, however, obviously own a computer.  A desktop one, for the single reason that they are (and I quote) "easier to fix" - because I think I've broken four laptops to date.

Long live the dinosaur.

Today's title is what I concluded after running for two trains and one sister.