"Collective" is a community website by the BBC where you can join and review things and make a weblog and talk to others. Here is my page which is a bit empty presently.

It caught my attention as I'd been thinking about this very thing for New Zealand -- an arts and culture portal where the content was provided by the public. Hey if it can work for tramping and walking, then it can work for  books, movies and music — all eminently more reviewable. And if people could upload their writing and photographs and pictures and music, and events too, and just communicate and connect, that would be a good thing. Our culture needs a voice, and culture, like soylent green, is people. Just like everybody is a photographer, everybody is an artist, one way or another. I am aware of The Big Idea and that's all very well, but I envisage something where schmucks like me can contribute something worthwhile too.

If I had the BBC's budget then I would pay myself a lot of money and have fancy buttons and lunches. Since I did the majority of the hard work last year, really I just need a few spare weekends and a domain name. I don't even need to have meetings where I justify my decisions — I always agree with me!

Anyway, if I build it at all, it will probably be this winter. I like being at that point where possibilities stretch out ahead. It's entirely up to me.

Each flick of the eye is called a 'saccade', and we are thought to have about three saccadic eye movements per second during our waking life.

A question that has plagued scientists for years, however, is why we don't notice this saccade. Why is it that when you look from one eye to the other in a mirror, for example, you don't notice your eyes move?

Yarrow and colleagues found that the brain actually projects its perception of the second target backwards.

"These data support ideas of conscious experience as an ongoing, often post hoc reconstruction emerging from multiple cognitive systems."

"We've found that when something happens just before, during, or after a saccade, it appears to happen at the end of the saccade," he said.

"Time is effectively compressed."

I find the idea fascinating that landscape does not reflect our worldly concerns. I don't know whether it is a shock or a comfort to see no evidence of human horrors. Who has not visited the site where someone they knew died and looked for evidence intrinsic in the landscape. Just another place. We live our lives on this earth, these sheets of paper, but we are drawn in soft pencil. We do not persist like sand grains.

I have a sense that there is a story about landscape just beyond my grasp. Like those finches that harvest ants from hollow branches, I need a stick.

Did you walk here
Beneath this cliff,
Gaze at the horizon,
The silhouetted hills?

Time is an uncrossable distance.
White sands forget footsteps.
The landscape is unstained.
Carbon remembers;
Silicon forgets.

But look closer.
Every grain of sand bears scratches —
Scars of its history,
Memories of its boulder.
Which truth?
Which facts?
Choose.

We, Cowdy & Company Limited, acting as landlord's agent hereby give you ten (10) working days notice to remedy the breach of the tenancy agreement as set out below.

Rent paid to 19-5-06 and is therefore in arrears of $10 due to a rent increase on 20th May to $250 per week.

Take notice that if you fail or refuse to remedy the breach within the time specified the landlord will be entitled to apply to the Tenancy Tribunal for an order terminating tenancy.

My response:

Thank you for your ten days' notice to correct the matter of being $10 in arrears due to a rent increase four days ago.

Actually you might be interested to know that my rent is not in arrears at all. According to Tenancy Services, "Rent in advance that has not been paid does not count as rent arrears." It would have fallen into arrears some time this coming Friday by which time my next rent payment would have been made. I don't believe I would have actually been in arrears at all until Friday 2 June, and then only for a few hours.

Given that I've never missed a payment during my tenancy, don't you think a friendly email might have been more, well, friendly? It can be hard to reach me at home but you do have my email address, my cell phone number, and my work number. Perhaps friendliness is not an element of your brand identity, in which case: well done on that.

Here's an interesting experiment. Take three blueberries and blend one in a cup of white vineger, one in a cup of water, and one in a cup of water and baking soda. You can see the results above (although I substituted, ahem, glass cleaner for baking soda).

You can see that the vinegar (left) really helps to break down the berry and that glass cleaner (right) makes lovely frothy drinks. More significantly, you can see a distinct colour change. The acid solution turns red and the basic solution turns slightly blue.

What's happening here? Blueberries contain anthocyanins as do blood oranges, aubergines and other berries — blackberries, grapes, cherries. Anthocyanins act as pH indicators, turning red in acids and blue in bases. You may be familiar with hydrangea flowers indicating the pH of the soil.

Anthocyanins (from the Greek for purple and flower) are antioxidants, protecting plants from UV and ionising radiation. That's why you see red colouring in new growth on plants — it is not yet fully developed and needs some protection. They are of course also used in flowers and fruit to attract insects.

There seem to be health benefits of dark fruit such as blueberries. In particular they seem to benefit the brain and memory and help fight Altzheimer's disease. It's just a pity they taste so awful. Oh wait....

Once upon a time not so long ago, we were continually being chased by large animals. Consequently we got pretty good at running. Nowadays, not so many animals. But we still like the running. Personally, I find things are spiced up a little if I imagine I'm being chased by a big white polar bear. Sometimes I pass other runners and I imagine our respective polar bears stop and sniff each other in passing.

Now that I think about it, you can really see the influence Northern Lights had on my world view.

So anyway I ran for 45 minutes last night, and then I drove the route to see how far I'd gotten. It was 7km, which took about 12 minutes to drive. It is to me (as a non-runner) surprising how far one can get.

I'm working up to the 10km SBS "Fun Run" in three weeks' time. Several people from the office are entered and my sister too. I've never entered something like this before but that's good enough reason I guess. I pray (in my modest secular way) for my knee.

I wonder how much difference it makes to the world that "fun" and "run" rhyme. For example, if "run" just happened to rhyme with "absolutely knackered," would the event draw the same numbers. All those runners; all those sniffing polar bears. 

Critically, is running as much fun in other languages? [Google translations removed because they were so bad, but see comments]

• Spaßrenn
• Pret ren
• correr por diversión 
• course d'amusement

Clearly not — they definitely don't rhyme. So what do non-English speakers do for their d'amusement? I'd love to know.

This evening while making frozen mixed smoothie berry muffins (because the supermarket was out of blueberries) I was watching Bruce Springsteen playing Pete Seeger songs and talking about music. He differentiated folk and pop music, saying that folk retains a roughness and richness that is polished off in pop. It has to be or it wouldn't be popular. It's just another example of how observation (or in this case listening) changes what is there.

Diversity is freedom.

This is an interesting article on Wikipedia that talks about why people might want to contribute knowledge to an online community. Four points are identified:

• reciprocity — an expectation of receiving help in return (and this is particularly relevant to discussion forums and mailing lists);
• reputation — identity, recognition, respect;
• efficacy — the sense of enhancing an environment;
• community — people want their submissions to gain responses.

I would add one further point: ownership — the sense that a community project is owned by its contributors, and that in contributing you acquire some equity.

Conversely, there are demotivating factors:

• technical difficulty;
• discouraging standards and submission rules;
• delays in submissions going live;
• heavy handed post-submission editing;
• loss of anonymity;
• a sense of having nothing of sufficient standard to contribute.

I am currently involved in two community knowledge management sites. One is NZ Tramper, and the other is an internal office knowledge base. Some of the factors above apply to both and some do not. For example, anonymity and privacy are irrelevant to the office knowledge base, but reputation is relevant. Another factor that is particularly relevant in an office knowledge base is that the submitters may well refer to the information they submitted earlier.