Green Lantern

I watched Green Lantern without any expectations because I avoided reviews like the pestilence. And so I experienced it without any preconceptions and I liked it a lot. I never read the comics so I don’t know how true to the original the film is, but it seemed to come straight out of the book. A slightly stupid and annoying typical bloke in the “normal” world becomes through strange and rather fun circumstances a responsible fighter against evil – what’s not to like? There are some holes in the plot, some stones to stumble over but it is a comic and so everything is possible, however stupid it seems. I enjoyed it so much – the CGI is absolutely brilliant, so very well made, one of the best I’ve seen so far. The story is fun – evil awakes deep in space and has to be fought and who better than some innocent from Earth. The evil monster is class, the baddy on Earth is absolutely fantastic (very well acted) and the fact that even the “normal” human can take being thrown around without much ruffling of the hair is just what I expect from a comic. There is a bunch of amazing aliens to marvel at and some fast space travel and if you like your cameos – Tim Robbins plays a mean senator. All in all probably not the best film ever but a big bunch of joy to watch. I won’t say more, don’t want to spoil it – just watch it and make up your own mind. And avoid the professional reviews like something bad.

Patrick Ness

Last night on one of those wonderful evenings at my favourite bookshop -Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath- I met Patrick Ness, writer of some some truly amazing and different YA novels, my most loved there being the Chaos Walking trilogy. These evenings at Mr. B’s include music played by their “own” Bookshop Band, a buffet with wonderful food, wine and a lot of mingling and chat, but here I will concentrate just on the guest author of the evening, said Patrick Ness.

He brought a flipchart – rather unusual, at least in my experience, so we knew it wouldn’t just be a reading. He must have been equally surprised about the fact that the audience were not his usual teenage demographic but rather approaching middle age. He started introducing himself in a very interesting way – showing how easy it can be to develop an idea that might lead to a novel. An idea might be a good one, but will never lead to anything if it is not backed up with a string of facts and smaller ideas to give it enough substance to be made into a story. So he -and probably many other authors- draws on his own life. His dual nationality, being the youngest of three, his love of running marathons and some bad experience there that left him bleeding but still running, an early childhood spend in Hawaii – all this are recognizable, if slightly altered, in The Knife of Never Letting Go. One of the only two Teenagers at the event was asked to come forward and introduce herself in a similar way and with those notes we were asked to quickly throw ideas into the round for a Sci-Fi novel. It worked rather well. Another rather interesting fact was his approach to his beta readers and editor – he does not ask for critic but wants people to ask him questions about the book and in those he determines what is wrong or right with the story, where he has reached his goal and where more work is needed – that struck me as a very good way.

Patrick read a short excerpt from the first book of the trilogy and not only did he read very well, but he also read very fast to give us an impression of the young boy’s voice and the way he thinks – he hit the note there brilliantly, very impressive, because exactly that voice was in my head when I read the book.

What this evening did to me was a wish to write myself, seeing as it was so easy – but don’t worry, after a nights sleep I am ok again, I am not an author, I am a reader. But should you feel the need to write – there is one big bit of advice Patrick Ness gave to all might-be-authors: Only write the book you desperately want to read. If it is funny you need to laugh, if it is sad you will feel the tears, anything less and it won’t be a good book.

Seems sensible to me, this.

Book Reviews

I just thought I let you know: My book reviews can now be found at http://www.librarything.com exactly here http://www.librarything.com/catalog/HeikeM

They’ll be updated nearly daily, so don’t hesitate to go and have a look quite regularly!

MY EX-BATTERY HENS

Since we moved proper out into the countryside we keep chicken. Mainly for the eggs, but they are fun to have in the garden as well, usually very interested in whatever we are doing and very inquisitive. Until recently we had 3 beautiful hens, each very different from the others.

Our three hens before the fox came

The lazy one on the ground is a big fat thing, a Speckled Sussex, very tame, curious to the point of annoying, very confident, takes no prisoners. The white one is a small thing, a Sussex Star, never very trusting, slightly paranoid and a little bit “special”. The black one is a sort of breed too, but I forgot the name – it’s a normal hen, nothing special, relatively tame and minds it’s own business. It lays fairly well, up to 5 eggs a week. The other two are lazier, 3 eggs per week is the norm in the summer month and then they stop, the white one gets broody as well and sits for weeks on absolutely nothing trying to get some breeding done. A few month ago the black hen got taken by Mr. Fox, who is quite a regular in these gardens, we have seen him during a sunny afternoon, standing in the garden, observing us a while before ambling away. So, when the black one was gone the eggs became rather sparse in our kitchen and we decided to get some more hens. As nice as the proper breeds are – egg laying machines they ain’t. So we thought about getting some “normal” layers and when we saw a poster in a farm shop for the charity that does re-home ex-bats we thought “hey-they are bred for laying, so that should be good” and applied for three of them. We got another chicken coop and secured the pen with a better and higher fence before collection day. We got our three hens – they did not look as bad as expected which we greeted with relief. We took them home and put them into the pen separated from the existing hens by a fence.

Just as fierce as they look

Immediately the new ones started fighting each other. We knew that that was normal, but we never encountered anything as fierce as that before, blood was flowing pretty quick, these beasts knew where to peck.

Trying to draw blood

And after establishing their own pecking order they went for our established hens – through the fence. And again draw blood – but somehow they managed to get the order of power right pretty quick and we could release the new ones into the big pen much earlier than anticipated.

Fierce little creature

And after a couple of days it was as peaceful as in paradise in the pen – one happy flock.

Nice

So now on a warm sunny day when we are in the garden to weed, dig and do all the other gardening stuff our work is accompanied by the sound of happy chicken.

And the new ones lay about 6 eggs per week each, so omelets, soufflés and all the other egg-based foods are a daily occurrence on the dining table. And there is nothing better than a spring omelette – fresh eggs, fresh herbs from the garden, the first asparagus – heaven.

Conclusion: these ex-battery hens are fantastic little creatures. They are tame, curious and strangely know exactly how to behave in the open, what to eat and what to leave alone. I recommend them wholeheartedly to anybody who would like fresh eggs on the table – there is nothing better.

If you are interested in getting some of those hens yourself got to http://www.bhwt.org.uk/ , the site of the British Hen Welfare Trust and you find everything you need to know.

Just A Little Update

As you might have noticed I was rather lazy on this page in the last couple of month but I did write nevertheless. Just to point you in the right direction: there are new pages for you to browse through, you find them on the left there. I started reviewing books, because I read a lot and I hope that other book lovers might be interested in hearing about novels. And maybe find a read or two they like. It is only my humble opinion, you might think differently about a book, but that is what a blog is about: the writers opinion.

Anyway, I read a lot of translations and the more obscure, I do not read romance  novels (urrghh) and neither do I read those hardcore crime things. I do read crime novels, in the bath, like Rankin maybe. You won’t find SciFi here either, or at least not the one with the aliens and spaceships. I do like warped minds and fantastic worlds, the dark ones.

Right, that’s it, go and have a look.

Brrism – a Social Media Café

I am just back from another social media cafe, brrism, in Bristol, on the whole a very good evening.

It started with a short talk by Michael Corbett outlining the possibilities of structures in the group – we are still in the infant stage and a clear structure without too much leadership has yet to be found.

As a short interlude, meant to lighten the atmosphere and get us talking to each other an icebreaker in the form of introducing our demons (the sort you find in The Golden Compass) to each other was fun if a bit silly, but got us talking for a while. We then split into three groups to talk about twitter, brrism and something else I did not catch. I went into the twitter group, planning on changing to the brrism group after 10 minutes. That didn’t happen; I stayed with the group, partly out of politeness.

To finish we had a discussion about the direction a branding of brrism should go.

I like the brrism evenings and will continue taking part for now, but I have a few points I wish to make. The talk was fine as was the demonic game. The group I joined afterwards was interesting, although not new and not really going anywhere. We talked a bit about the new RT function on twitter, it’s pros and cons, voiced our individual opinion – but that was all and had been done on twitter itself before. One of the criticisms about the corporative and money angle of twitter I found a bit hypocritical as most of the people at the cafe are using social media to try and earn money.

It felt impossible to change to other groups – we had been told it is ok to move, but I think it would have been better if somebody would have just said: “Everybody move now!” I know that a leader as such is not wanted, but humans do like some sort of direction. I would have liked to talk about brrism itself.

The branding – if brrism is a social media cafe for Bristol, for people of the area to meet and talk about all things social media – why does it need to be branded? There is no money involved (hopefully), we don’t want to grow to include the whole of the West – so why?

I felt the need for more talk and answers to my questions when the time was up and there was the possibility of continuing in the watershed over a drink. So off we all went, found some room, got our beers and sat down to – what? Certainly no talk about social media where I sat and the only questions I got was about cooking. Utterly bored and disappointed I left for home, where the discussion was much more interesting.

I hope all that will in time change as the group grows and learns – even though all of the above might sound a touch negative it was a good evening and I did enjoy most of it greatly. I might give the pub afterwards a miss though, that was definitely a waste of time.

Why I Am Still On Twitter

A few days ago I –for some reason or other- read through my past tweets, for me a sort of diary, interesting and sometimes helpful in remembering when or where certain things occurred. But to be honest, as fascinating as it is for me – why should anybody else be interested in my coffee drinking habits or holiday antics? The only people who took the least bit of notice are those who want to get me as a customer for their goods – coffee or holiday apartments in aforementioned cases. Come to think of it, that seems to be the main reason for a twitter account – to sell your wares or plug your causes. Even tweeps I thought of as interesting people to start with have now become just businesses. Everybody on twitter has to sell or plug something and most of the ones I follow have become predictable and, at least for me, boring. I did not join twitter to buy things or consider somebody’s causes, all I wanted was I picture of humanity, chatting and telling me about their lives.

After considering all this I decided rather thoughtlessly to stop tweeting except if I had something really clever or important to say.

But then I kept mulling the whole thing over and over: twitter has been just that, a forum to tell the world what you were doing and maybe why and also to occasionally recommend a film or some music or some fun and interesting websites. That’s why I joined and that’s what I want from twitter. And considering that nobody is unique I guess there must be a few more like me out there who don’t want to buy stuff or hear about your pet project – those things can be found all over the net  if you need it. And hearing about it on twitter is just like these mounts of paper the postman drops into your letter box -to be instantly discarded onto the recycling pile.

It is sad that absolutely everything has to become commercial and that everybody seems to be ok with that, maybe even expect it. So I thought in the end that I really should stay and chat about my inconsequential little happenings, thoughts and deeds just to provide a small weight on the other side, to help balancing the social media. To try and provide a bit of the spirit that has made social media, that has helped invent social media in the first place – inane chatter and sharing of eating habits. As silly as that sounds, it is the core of humanity, the communication of everyday occurrences, of your life to other people. And when we are all 95 it might be the only means of communication left to us in our wheel chairs. So I will not give up but bore you to an early grave with the things that happened to me on the way to the…whatever. And hopefully I will weed out all the sales persons and be left with people who have a life, interesting, silly and human.

First Impressions of the Google Wave

This is only a very small blog to get a couple of things off my chest:

A long time ago I watched that fantastic 80 minute video by the inventors of the google wave and was so smitten by the demonstration that I immediately signed up for the trial. And a few days ago I was one of the few “lucky” ones to receive an invite to try out the new and shiny wave.

I was given 9 invites to send to friends or colleagues to try out whatever the wave was offering. After a few days of waiting they all received their invites and we started trying all the buttons or should I say we tried to try out the new buttons. After the first day of stumbling through all the new stuff all my waves suddenly told me that I wasn’t a participant anymore despite my avatar stating quite clearly that I was and that included the preinstalled wave of *how to use the wave* – not very helpful at all.

The installed extras (little apps to make the experience even more fun) did not turn up on my tool bar until three days later – hey, my toolbar needed a whole day to appear. Then without rhyme or reason half of my contacts lost their avatars. Then all of a sudden for about half an hour everything worked, one of my contacts was on the wave and for that short and sweet time we managed to get all excited about the wonders of the wave before it then crumbled again and left us very frustrated and lonely.

Apart from all these glitches (at least I hope that’s what they are) there are a few things just not right:

• There is no scroll bar on the bottom of the wave, so if you don’t have a wide screen you lose a good portion of any gadget on the wave (in my case a Sudoku).
• You can’t access the profiles with one easy click.
• There is always a problem adding new contacts – google can’t decide which of your e-mails to use (you get a googlewave one and if you get confused in the process of constructing your profile you get a gmail one as well – and then there is your real one) so it uses all of them and then can’t decide and tells everybody that you are not there. Frustrating!
• It takes ages to sync your wave and then it warns you that your wave might explode (google for *this wave has crashed*), which happens way too frequently.
• There is a very tight limit on the size of the gadget you can download.
• If you stretch one or the other column the smaller on will lose half of its toolbar.

This is my very first impression of the wave and I sincerely hope that it will get better very fast – we have been promised so much and I hate disappointment. And I can see Microsoft rubbing its little hands with glee while preparing to send out a perfect version of the wave. That would be horrid indeed because I really don’t like Microsoft very much.

THE END OF THE ROAD FESTIVAL SEPTEMBER 2009

I am just back from a rather wonderful weekend at the Larmer Tree Gardens in Dorset. As every year in September the End of the Road Festival (EOTR)took over the gardens and as every year I enjoyed the weekend very much. EOTR Festival is a small festival with a maximum of 5000 visitors and mainly indie Bands playing. It was started 4 years ago by a couple of young idealists who wanted a festival with their favourite music and no sponsors. And that has grown into something simply wonderful. Here is a small review of the weekend for you. The occasional XXX means there’ll be a video link as soon as they are on YouTube, which will be in a day or two – the speed here is very slow.

THE MUSIC

The music at the EOTR is for me and many others the most important thing and the reason why we go there. There are no mainstream bands and not even music that is known to everybody – but what there is is music that can and is being taken very serious indeed by all festival goers.

Mumford & Sons

Friday afternoon’s first band on the main stage was Mumford & Sons, a band that I had seen before and was quite excited about seeing again on a larger stage. And I was not disappointed. Their brand of alt.americana has all their tour venues sold out very quickly and I felt very privileged to be able to see them right at the front on this sunny Friday afternoon. They were energetic, happy, so very good and even managed to get the audience onto their feet – no small feat considering the sundrenched lawns in front of the stage.

Before travelling to the site I always make a very well researched plan of the bands I want to see, which ones are very important to me and which ones I need to miss at all costs and so on. So before the next “scheduled” band, Shearwater, there was some time to just walk around and have a look onto the other stages to see if anything new and exciting can be discovered. So we dipped in and out of tents and tipis where we found a lot of probably good music, but nothing for me to get stuck in and then finally off to the main stage again for said Shearwater. Last year they played in the Local, a cramped tent affair and although the sound was ok we did not enjoy it that much. So this year we anticipated them to come across better and so they did. What a wonderful band they are, what a beautiful voice, soaring over the lawns, the gardens made even more magical with the songs of Shearwater around us. Video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mEpsXg04nM

There was not much time for a “wander” afterwards as I wanted to see the next scheduled band, Dirty Projectors. And again -what a brilliant band! Aside from the fact that the female voices singing the strange and haunting harmonies seem to belong to 12 year olds (am I old?) it was a perfect show.  Not usually my cup of tea this helping of experimental rock put me in a fantastic mood indeed.

Before the head liners of the day we went to have a quick look at Herman Dune, because a lot of other music enthusiasts rave about him – but again very quickly came to the conclusion that I do not like his music. Off we went then to see the highly anticipated Explosions in the Sky. But I was somewhat disappointed – it’s not the sort of sing that I like – no lyrics and a lot of messing about with the instruments. No, we went instead for a walk around the site to find all the little secret places the EOTR always has.

Saturday morning started early and very good with the Leisure Society (at 12.00) on the main stage and boy, were they good. We recognized the singer from Sons of Noel and Adrian (which we like a lot) and the show gave us what the album promised: beautiful, very well played music combined with the wonderful lyrics. Such a good start to the morning! Video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E81vhX4LPQk After that we did our usual wander and then watched Low Anthem – who where a bit different from what I expected – much calmer, gentler than on the album. But that doesn’t mean they were bad, oh no, still brilliant! But maybe next time I’ll try to catch them on a smaller stage. Video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRCqiISmc7E

The Broken Family Band managed to keep us for 20 minutes – not bad but not different enough, just good old straightforward indie. Instead we tried to watch the highly tipped First Aid Kit – but unfortunately they played on the smallest stage in the Tipi Tent and we had no chance of getting in there. So back to the main stage and The Acorn – and even though we’ve seen them a few times already they were still so enjoyable. Brilliant set, again, and considering the talent and the skills they will be as good next time, I am sure.

Games in the Woods

Afterwards we tried the Tipi Tent again for Blitzen Trapper, which I only know from a few live songs on Daytrotter.com and liked a lot – but even though we managed to get in it was impossible to see anything and the sound was less then acceptable from where we were standing, so we left to see the Okkervil River set. And again my choice proofed to be perfect – very good show, beautiful sound and great songs. And just before dark we saw the peacocks settling down for their night and the parrots roosting on their favourite tree – is there any better festival than this?

By now we knew the Horrors had cancelled and so we went to the main arena relatively early for the headliner Fleet Foxes. And even though we were quite far back, it was still very good and enjoyable, the music building a wonderful background to the clear starlit skies. There were a few long pauses between the songs and some chatter which so far back were impossible to understand, but after a while they got going and that’s when it became magical – the music with its beautiful harmonies, the stars so very bright – did I say that I love this festival?

Gemma Arterton's legs being filmed again and again pinned underneath the "drummer"

Sunday morning dawned with a little something special: Stephen Frears did film a few scenes of his upcoming feature film Tamara Drewe in the grounds. We watched a little while first thing at the main stage before Whispertown 200 came on. Nice enough set, not brilliant, but ok to while away half an hour. Lots of time for breakfast afterwards with not much going on for us until 14.45. That was the time for the next bit of filming – they needed a crowd to react to a favourite fictive band’s split-up on stage during a performance and we did react. Once. Twice. A third time. And then again and thankfully that was all the time they had before the next real band came on stage. It was fun though.

After that husband and I split up (for about half an hour only) because he wanted to see Dan Sartain (urrgh!) and I fancied Sparrow and the Workshop in the Tipi Tent. I got in, I saw them, I even could understand some of the lyrics, but the sound was awful, the whole tent idea with the corners and low hanging sides is not very good for music listening. (Except maybe right at the front for about 20 lucky people. But what I could here was very good and I will try and catch them somewhere else with a better sound. Video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2AE0-34Ja4

Next up were the Brakes.  I think they did the exact same set from last year and I don’t have much patience with that, I like bands to evolve and show me something fresh on every new tour. So we walked around a bit and came across T Model Ford playing on the “secret” stage, which is a little cube in the woods made to look like a living room with a piano in it. He was playing there for a long time, telling stories from his long live (he is 89) and even though I am not too keen on Blues, in that setting it was very good. Video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rYmgW8FHcg

T Model Ford at the Living Room

So then The Dodos! Oh I do like them so much, seen them in the beginning of September in the Thekla in Bristol and couldn’t wait to see them on a bigger stage. And I was not disappointed – brilliant, loud, fast, soo good! I like the weird instrumental set-up – drums at the front, vibraphone at the back and a guitar. It makes for an unusual but unforgettable sound.

And then it was time for a big favourite of mine: The Hold Steady. Again, I’ve seen them before in the Fleece in Bristol and they were the best thing I’d seen in a long time so I had big expectations. We managed to get right to the front which is definitely the best place to see any band (that’s why I don’t like big crowds) and even though it was the third night of a very busy festival and I was basically totally knackered they got me jumping and dancing from the start. That Craig Finn has so much fun on stage that you can’t help but join in. I love his “embarrassing Dad” dance moves because they are delivered with such an innocent abandon, I love the lyrics even though for the first few songs I couldn’t understand a single word (that got rectified) and the whole show delivers such a childlike joy and exuberance that you can’t but love the man. Nothing can ever top The Hold Steady’s show so we didn’t bother with anybody else and went to bed. Video here, even though it’s only half a song – but so good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzFV_beFlgI

Verdict: best festival ever, purely about the music.

THE FOOD

The food at the EOTR surely deserves a special mention. There is absolutely no rubbish food to be had – even I as a vegetarian can see that the burgers who are normally at the bottom of the food chart are first class, thick and juicy and the slow cooked ribs ever so tempting and tender. I tried the veggie chilli (good), the saltfish and ackee (yummy), the falafels & accompaniments (very good), the Moroccan mezze (very fresh and tasty), the kedgeree (from the Goan seafood people, brilliant as ever) and a grilled mackerel with salads (fresh and tender) and the occasional scone or cake from a wonderful little cafe (Cafe Dish) that baked its own cakes right there in the tent. The hot spicy cider from the Cider bus was so good that I had rather more than the normal one (I am not a big drinker, 1 unit a day and sometimes 2 is all I drink) or two glasses but hey, it’s a festival, that surely doesn’t count. Everything on offer was well cooked, nicely presented and affordable and some stalls were a lot of fun as well, like the Tea Stop, a tearoom in a Double Decker with a pretty garden in front, complete with water fountain and flower arches.

THE REST

The EOTR is not like other festivals, even though there is some comedy, a cinema tent, some kiddies stuff, it’s really all about the music and that’s all I want to watch there. We did go and play a game on the lawns on Sunday, we wandered along the stalls and I even bought a couple of little things but on the whole it’s music. Very nice and later at night very magical are the woods with their millions of twinkling lights, the occasional surprising art work – there were lit up tiny tree houses in a very tall tree, upside down lit umbrellas making an entrance arch to the woods,

Twinkling Cafe in the woods

a living room with grass furniture and plant telly and a rather fun discotheque with a dance floor of flashing coloured squares.

The Disco in the woods

The woods never got boring, so we wandered them frequently and the path ended in a clearing with the “living room” and its piano.

The toilets this year were mostly clean and didn’t smell quite as bad, hat off to the organisers for that. So in all, the rest was very good.

THE FILM

And there was a little bit extra this year: Stephen Frears shot a few scenes of his upcoming feature film TAMARA DREWE (Based on a weekly comic strip serial by Posy Simmonds published in the Guardian. The strip is based upon a modern reworking of Thomas Hardy’s nineteenth century novel Far from the Madding Crowd) here in the Larmer Tree gardens. It was all about the fictive band SWIPE splitting up very loudly on stage while performing their big hit.

Filming the split-up

For that a crowd was needed to cheer and clap and finally boo. Which we all did, all of 4 times, before it was all over. Even though that doesn’t sound much it was a bit of fun and had everybody quite captured for a moment.  Video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3xvosQpw0A

I already bought my tickets for next year and will have problems waiting that long. I do like this small festival which for me is incredibly big as far as the music is concerned. I do hope it will never grow in numbers but always stay a small, ever so big festival which takes music serious.

What is happening to twitter?

I love twitter, I really do. (see blog from—) It’s the variety; it’s the colourful diversity, the interesting links, the political information, the stuff you can learn – all that kept me on the laptop much longer and more often than I used to be. I even started blogging and had up to 27 hits a day – not much you might think but for me it felt good and I felt listened to.

On an average morning I had about 200 tweets to read of which about 10 needed closer inspection, links to look up and maybe even an @.The same again during the day, there were small conversations, fun games and silly stuff, news and lots of things to retweet. I got used to it and posted links, got retweeted, received @s and even got #ff. So all in all a busy thing twitter.

But recently, maybe the last 4-5 weeks, I wake up to no more than 20 or 30 tweets. During the day there would be maybe 80 – 100 – less than half the traffic that used to be there. The content shrank as well, people seem to stay now in their own little world, authors converse with authors about all things publishing, social media geeks share their stuff with other social media people and musicians talk to other musicians, suddenly tweeps stopped opening up and including us “normal” people.

Some stopped altogether or only appear once a week where they used to tweet 5 times a day, some just send links to their own blogs or sites and ignore anything else.

There are still a few left who continue tweeting as before, sending silly, clever, new, serious and lovely things, conversing with strangers and generally having a fun time – they keep me on twitter for now.

I am just wondering what is happening here. Is twitter old? Is it nearing its natural end? Is it our boredom threshold, throwing everything out that is older than a year? Do we need something new and exciting for the next year? Is it the “done that, got the t-shirt” mentality and we are all off to newer lands?

Am I bored with twitter and therefore I am questioning what is going on or is twitter boring me because it has gone quiet?

I know none of you ever leaves a comment on my blog site but I really would like a discussion. Do you feel the same? Or are you one of the tweeps who are happy to stay in their own little world? Have you found something new and ultimately more exciting?

Or is it the fact that twitter ate your time and finally you have come to your senses?

If twitter is slowly ambling towards its end then I just hope there is something better. I do enjoy my time there and I will be quite sorry to see it end. So please comment and start a conversation or discussion about all that.