Yesterday my childhood football team Tottenham Hotspur saw it’s magnificent 2010-2011 campaign begin a slow limp to a disappointing ending.  This was an incredible year for the team, making the UEFA Champions League at the close of last season, narrowly qualifying for the group stage, going on an incredible run to finish top of the group and then knocking off AC Milan to get to the Quarter Final, one stage further than our fierce rivals, Arsenal.   Along the way we have had some great victories and matches, including some incredible league derby games against Arsenal, and some scintillating attacking football from PFA Player of the year, Gareth Bale. Injuries, mistakes, an arid strike corps and a late, fatal dip in form have meant that the Champions League is all but out of reach for us for next season.  Yesterday’s travesty at Chelsea, a game which the Blues won 2-1 on goals that were not goals at all (the ball HAS to cross the line, players HAVE to be onside in order for a goal to count, technically speaking) has sealed our fate.  I was feeling a little melancholy about it this morning when I came across this lovely animation of Gareth Bale’s performances against Inter Milan this year, a true coming of age for a great footballer.  Bale is a lovely young man, soft spoken, competitive and incredibly blessed with speed, stability and a superb talent for crossing the ball with his left foot.  When he scores he makes a little heart with his fingers and runs straight to the fans.

He has been the best part of what has been, to be fair, a really fun season to follow, perhaps more fun even than the 1981 FA Cup year, when Hoddle, Ardilles and Villa thrilled my 12 year old heart.  The old refrain now sounds…always next year.

This afternoon sitting in the forest above my house in the warm sun. Insects are everywhere, flies landing on me to say hello, the moss and rocks on the cliff warm and dry.

I am sitting with a mug of tea made from the first tender leaves of the season’s lemon balm. Listening to silence punctuated by a squirrel chattering in a rhythmic patterns of sevens “cheap a cheap cheap, cheap a cheap”. He is consistent enough that I can drum softly on the moss beside me in time with his voice and sing a little song about belonging. Making music with the context.

There are many seeds I have planted this winter and I feel a sense of anticipation that some will come up. I also wonder what will never come up and what will grow that I never planted.

I wonder dear few readers, if there is something between you and I that we have spoken of that wants to be born? Are you reading this and thinking about work and play we could do together? Is there a call, however faint, that wants to be voiced?

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes via  JordonCooper.com.

While this is a cool data visulaization, it strikes me as remarkable how hard it is for sub-Saharan Africa to catch the rest of the world. Stephen Lewis can tell you why.

I have submitted to the cloud.

As I get older and juggle ndiverse projects I notice that my memory is starting to get worse.   My mind is incredibly active these days, full of ideas, snippets of poetry and song, meeting designs, half written blog posts/   I have had a mish-mash of ways of recording these ideas in the past: audio notes on an iPod, photos on a camera, notes in a Moleskine, or on a blog somewhere.

Recently I acquired my first iPhone, and this has made life easier but has changed a lot of my routines.   I now use Evernote for almost everything, taking notes on client calls, recording ideas, clipping web pages (that and Instapaper has replaced delicious for me).   I create first drafts in Evernote too, and record a daily journal.   It has become my source, and from it I post tweets, create documents, make blog posts and write poems and songs.  I can record audio and video and with my phone it’s all online and in the cloud.  All of my writing is tagable and searchable which is great for revisiting ideas.  There is even a plugin for Google Chrome that will search your Evernote notebooks, as well as returning Google results.

Added with fully using Google Calendar, Gmail and Tasks (with ICal and MacMail as offline backups on the phone and the laptop) I feel more organized, connected and free than I have been and less stuff is falling through the cracks.

Now every day is a cloudy day.