petite anglaise

petite 2.0

28.05.2007 9:30 pmmisc
detail from a sampler I made when I was eleven years old

Having written an article for Comment is Free back in April about internet footprints and the danger inherent in leaving personal data all around the internet for future employers/parents-in-law to see, what have I gone and done? Enlarged my trail from its previously modest sparrow-like proportions into an elephant-sized paw print of worrying dimensions, that’s what. A week of enforced inactivity in a Yorkshire village was all it took to unleash my inner 2.0 monster.

The eagle-eyed among you have already noticed the petite myspace link in the sidebar, to your right, along with my facebook profile and associated non-official “fan” site, with its own cafepress merchandise store (I shan’t link to these as they are not my own creations). I’ve been scrobbling away in LastFM and joining groups with names that made me snort my Yorkshire tea down my nose. The only thing I have so far managed to resist – and I must, because it is the internet version of crack cocaine – is twitter. But I fear it is only a matter of time.

Where will it all end? Will I find myself unable to engage in any form of communication which does not involve a keyboard? Will my MacBook become welded to my satin pyjama clad thighs?

I fear for the future.

51 comments

  1. Okay, okay, a blog is one thing… but LastFm is so
    p-e-r-s-o-n-a-l…
    Britney Spears, eh ?
    It’s like a red rag to a troll, I mean a bull…
    I’m keeping shctumm about my profile just in case, they do a Britney on me while I’m away from the PC answering the door or something !

    ;-)

    Ajay | 9:36 pm

  2. I won’t add you as a friend as I know you but you have no idea who I am. However, consider yourself poked ;)

    Daniel | 9:49 pm

  3. Even the Internet palls. The trouble is the amount of cr*p one seems obliged to receive as part of getting the good stuff. I’m somewhat “shy and retiring”, but still there are a hundred e-mails of rubbish each day.

    John Norris | 9:50 pm

  4. Please do take a moment to admire the detail from the sampler I made when I was eleven.

    A BBC micro 32k, no less.

    petite | 10:03 pm

  5. Thighs clad in TWO pair of satin pajamas!

    Le Meg | 11:05 pm

  6. “Will my MacBook become welded to my satin pyjama clad thighs?”
    Will we be treated to a photo if it does? :)

    bonkers | 11:07 pm

  7. I never heard of Twitter before your post. Great, another way to fritter away time that I should be doing something productive.
    Thanks!

    Voyager | 11:15 pm

  8. Alrighty, I friended you. Even though I’ve never met you. :)

    srah | 11:25 pm

  9. Just sent you a friend request on Last.Fm. You mention twitter as the internet version of crack cocaine, I guess that makes Last.Fm the interweb equivalent of weed. I’m always obsessed with the latest track scrobbled, tagging tracks, and reaching the next magic number of tracks listened to (at the moment 10,000).
    I really like the blog, and am intrigued about the book. Maybe it’s time to start building the anticipation with trailers (just like in the movies).

    All the best,

    The Chemist

    ps. You just took my commenting virginty. How was it for you? ;-) (I hope not too much of a disappointing fumble in the dark)

    the_chemist | 11:41 pm

  10. My own internet trial has been a cause of some worry for me for awhile. Most particulary, when I worked at my university’s student union a petition was signed ON MY BEHALF for some cause, and placed upon a socialist alliance website! There are also two other people with my name, a scientist also living in my home country and home state, and a lawyer from New York. I thought I could get away with a fresh start by the name change when I get married, but sadly I made the mistake of using it as my user name in a forum where I was subsequently involved in a flame war, and despite the evidence being gone now is archived in google searches forever….

    Rochelle | 12:39 am

  11. If it’s any consolation, the mobile phone networks seem to be blocking Twitter and Jaiku either completely, or on a case-by-case basis.

    If you do end up using them, I wrote some code you might want, that publishes your last few twitters into the sidebar of your blog without hanging your webpage in the meantime. Give me a shout.

    Jonathan | 12:44 am

  12. Regarding Twitter and why it is so addictive, you *have* to have a look at the excellently-written post on kathy Sierra’s weblog: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/is_twitter_too_.html

    Bruno | 2:02 am

  13. I see you’re reading Cloudstreet. Have you seen Tim Winton’s kids books? The Bugalugs Bum Thief is hillarious :-)

    (I lived around Fremantle for ~16 years)

    Anne | 2:07 am

  14. Ohhhhh be my friend on facebook, please?!?! :)
    haha

    victorai | 2:20 am

  15. C’est dommage que dans les mises à jours, les fluxs RSS ne contiennent plus qu’un aperçu de l’article complet.

    C’est ennuyeux pour ceux d’entre nous qui aiment lire ce blog sur leur aggregateur en voyage.

    Frédéric | 5:22 am

  16. You won’t have a problem with your internet footprint as long as you keep to your ‘petite anglaise’ nom de plume and keep your real name out of things as much as you are able.
    Petite anglaise has written so much it would take such a real detective who wasn’t one of your fans to find your real name amongst all the words that have been written by and about you.

    AussieGil | 6:23 am

  17. You’ve buggered that up on LastFM, haven’t you?

    AussieGil | 6:26 am

  18. I discovered your site via The Glory of Carniola (http://tinyurl.com/3affad) which ran a story on the Satin Pyjamas. I hope it’s a healthy kind of addiction, as opposed to Twitter, which is just so … pointless. BTW you don’t happen to have a cousin called Kim, do you? Same last name, and a spitting image as far as I can tell. We went to uni together.
    Keep up the fantastic work.
    Karen

    Karen | 8:38 am

  19. As usual, lots of ‘advanced internet talk’ means little to me but enjoy your publicity; it will serve you well when it comes to book sales.
    P.S. I remember those BBC computers when I was a teacher. I can also remember the Spectrum – so why am I so computer illiterate?

    sablonneuse | 9:00 am

  20. Maybe we should all fear for the future. Was Huxley right? Or was it Orwell?

    A U.S. legal publication reports that lawyers are now investigating the social networks of prospective jurors and of parties to law suits, focusing on MySpace.

    Watch out for what you publish!

    Lost in France | 11:37 am

  21. I feel robbed! I knew it was a BBC micro, probably model B and was going to ask…

    meredic | 12:08 pm

  22. Oh Twitter is so yesterday, it’s all jaiku now.

    Tom | 1:48 pm

  23. ‘Where will it all end? Will I find myself unable to engage in any form of communication which does not involve a keyboard? Will my MacBook become welded to my satin pyjama clad thighs?’

    To help out I would happily draw a qwerty keyboard on my so you feel at home communicating with someone IRL. Oh and if you need to be liberated from your MacBook, just let me know.

    Always willing to lend a hand, or two! ;-)

    Steve... | 4:41 pm

  24. Bet twittervision.com gets you hooked …

    Mark | 7:12 pm

  25. I’ll take a look at your MySpace, as I have one as well.

    Jean-Luc Picard | 8:16 pm

  26. I suppose the fact that we are all here means that we are to some extent, at least, hooked on aspects of the internet. But I fear that at the end of a day, month, year, lifetime, we may wonder what it is, exactly, that has been accomplished in that time.

    Jim | 10:47 pm

  27. “Oh Twitter is so yesterday, it’s all jaiku now.”

    –> Oh jaiku is so yesterday, it’s all me.dium now.

    rose selavy | 1:15 am

  28. Sablonneuse said, “I remember those BBC computers when I was a teacher. I can also remember the Spectrum – so why am I so computer illiterate?”

    Uh, because you never got past LOAD “” ? :)

    bonkers | 7:04 am

  29. Go on Twitter ye not?

    Alan | 8:52 am

  30. I remember the days of “Syntax Error at line 120″.

    God, I’m old.

    petite | 12:56 pm

  31. I remember the days of that two tone BBC start up noise. Barrrrp Beep!

    Daniel | 1:51 pm

  32. The one I truly hated was ‘Missing ” at line 120′…
    I mean if it knew it was missing. Grrr.

    meredic | 2:11 pm

  33. Having just joined twitter, I think the next logical step is to physically attach myself with a USB cable to my laptop.

    Neil | 4:08 pm

  34. Petite reminisced, “I remember the days of “Syntax Error at line 120″.

    God, I’m old.”

    Old you may be m’dear but those messages are still alive and well today. :)

    bonkers | 4:15 pm

  35. Ah, Petite. I want to hear nothing about your age! I know without looking I must have several years on you. Tadpole is but . . . well, a tadpole. My oldest led me around Paris in March, finding just what she wanted to see on the Metro maps.

    Kaycie | 5:13 pm

  36. Bring back punch cards! I went not long ago to the Science Museum and saw one of the first computers I worked on in a IT startup from the 80s proudly displayed there ….

    Mark | 5:14 pm

  37. Congratulations on both your lovely new pairs of satin pyjamas!

    Zinnia Cyclamen | 5:34 pm

  38. Lost in Paris, if it means that I won’t have to do jury duty, then I think I’ll publish all my personal details and let the lawyers ‘go to town’!

    Ben | 5:52 pm

  39. Petite
    I’m also old; I used to program BBC micros too with the usual basic syntax errors. BTW are your (satin clad) thighs really hot enough to weld a MacBook to them? That’s quite a thought!

    Andy (who loves child bearing hips) | 10:02 pm

  40. “I remember the days of “Syntax Error at line 120″.

    God, I’m old.”

    Pff, old indeed. To communicate I actually had to write *letters* in my youth. Oops, sorry, that would be “snail mail” for anybody born after 1980 :-) . “Syntax Errors” were still something I associated with grammar … or communication attempts with girls :-) . Never mind computers.

    mbast | 2:23 am

  41. How cute is that sampler?!

    Julia Buckley | 10:41 am

  42. http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/

    Off topic, sorry, but I thought that you’d love this blog. This entry most especially. I loved it.

    Susan | 5:03 am

  43. It’s weird isn’t it? Our email address includes the number 2000 in it. I thought I was being really head of the times in 1998 by putting 2000, for the year 2000.

    It’s not even ten years ago. How life has changed!

    Sally Lomax | 8:49 pm

  44. Where can I buy a tee shirt ?

    King negrito | 12:09 am

  45. There are all those science fiction books or films that are set in the far future like 1984 or 2001.
    I also remember working for a computer company in late 1999, and doing all that extra testing to make sure that our customers still had a working system in January 2000. It make me fell old (but then I am old).
    By the way, have a really good bloggers pic-nique tomorrow

    Pierre L | 1:12 am

  46. negrito: here
    pierre: it is next week!

    petite | 2:11 am

  47. I’d not seen the Petite-inspired merch before, that is pure genius.

    Christian | 6:04 pm

  48. Four years ago, when I first learned about myspace, I mocked it mercilessly. Same with blogs. God knows what happened inbetween then & now.

    ambika | 8:30 pm

  49. ooOOOOooh – Fade to Grey by Visage.

    I hadn’t heard that one, in a very long time. Great choice.

    Roads | 8:43 pm

  50. So I must feel very lucky to have met you in Real Life at Musée Rodin… At least your charming presence was everything but virtual ;)

    Emmanuel Vivier / BuzzParadise.com | 8:45 pm

  51. “I’d not seen the Petite-inspired merch before, that is pure genius.”

    Yes, they even come in petite sizes ah-hahahaha!
    (Sorry, never could resist a cheap pun :) )

    bonkers | 7:40 am