Three years ago I even managed to tweet some interesting observations and compile them into blog posts. But these days Twitter has completely taken over the role of recording my personal life and this website has, I think, suffered.

I used to post long, thoughtful essays. Now, such essays tend to be about the things I write about for money, and published elsewhere — and there’s nothing wrong with that, except that I’m possibly becoming typecast as a “tech writer”. But between writing several pieces a week for money and maintaining a high-volume Twitter stream, there isn’t time or energy left for much else.

My other podcast The 9pm Edict has disappeared. So has my little video program Stilgherrian Live. So have presentations like the one I did for PodCamp 2007.

Have I got the balance right? I think not.

That’s not all I’ve gotten wrong this year. But I won’t wallow in the mistakes here. Or at least not now. I’ll merely note that perhaps I do need to disconnect more, provide more time for reflection. And maybe those thoughtful essays will reappear.

Tomorrow morning I’ll provide live Twitter coverage from Microsoft’s Windows 7 launch at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.

There’ll be plenty of people covering the event from a technical viewpoint, so I’m going for the anthropology. The culture. The fashion.

The style is bound to be a lot like my Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown, but with more focussed snark.

The event officially starts at 9.30am Sydney time, but I’ll start the commentary on my Twitter stream from 9am. If you’d like to play along at home, you can watch Microsoft’s live video.

I’ll use the official Twitter hashtag #win7. To see everyone’s tweets, use this Twitter search or, for a prettier version, use this Twitterfall search.

Update 3.25pm: It’s been pointed out that using the hashtag #win7 will mean our coverage of the launch event will be lost in the global chatter. We will therefore use #win7au, which you can track on Twitter Search or track on Twitterfall.

Wow, that’s in just a few minutes! [Update 22 December: No, it was last night. But you can still see what happened in the CoveritLive tool immediately below the fold. The timestamps seem to be an hour early though.]

If you don’t see the CoveritLive thingy immediately above this sentence, you’re not using a compatible browser. That’s not my problem.

I’ll be watching Twitter for commentary, and may or may not respond to comments coming into the liveblog.

• Kruddiversary: The internet thanks you for 12 months of achieving nothing, my Crikey article looking at the first year of the Rudd government from an Internet geek’s perspective.
• Thailand’s political crisis: an introduction, though later pieces in The Economist are better than my amateur efforts.
• Journalism in a hyperconnected world.
• @KevinRuddPM stumbles into the Twitterverse, a Crikey article which includes links to the previous three essays I’d written about the PM’s entrance into modern social media.
• Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown, my experiment in live-tweeting a descriptive essay and still one of the best things I’ve written all year.
• How Dell fixed my monitor order, which is being used by clever consultants as an example of how to use social media for quality customer service.
• Sunday Thoughts about Journalism, a rather lengthy essay with many links to background on the Death of Newspapers this year.
• Finally, The Shave, a rather wonderful film we made.
• The Great Firewall of China: how it works, how to bypass it.
• Note to “old media” journalists: adapt, or stfu! This piece triggered an entire wave of discussion and was quoted globally.
• Winter Solstice Meditation.
• Anzac Day Rememberings.
• ABC Playback: so this is the future of television…? Nope! A review of what’s now called ABC iView.
• There ain’t no shortcuts to professionally-managed IT.
• Remembering the Space Age: Arthur C Clarke dead at 90.
• Super Hornets are Go.
• Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up. I don’t really think Jason is evil, but I do worry about the self-centred anti-human attitude of many people connected with Internet start-ups.
• New national anthem: I am So an Aussie, when the Snarky Platypus and I created, yes, a new national anthem. Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!
• Is it really so wrong to mix business and politics (and religion)?
• Leaving room for elephants: a chat with David Attenborough, a personal fave since it harks back to an interesting time in my life. This is still one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve done. Ever.
• Angry geeks: “Don’t waste money on internet filters”, one of many articles I posted about censorship, but which outlined the key issues way back in January.
• Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish.

John Birmingham has followed up his highly-successful Axis of Time trilogy of military thrillers with another “ripper yarn” novel, Without Warning: America is Gone. It’s a good read, but not as good as it could be.

Like Axis of Time, which posited a 21st-century naval task force suddenly finding itself at the Battle of Midway and the final volume of which I reviewed earlier, Without Warning is alternative history. One the eve of the 2003 Iraq War, an unexplained energy field obliterates all human life across most of the United States. As the world realises the last remaining superpower is gone, the novel tracks the political and military conflicts which emerge through the eyes of characters ranging from a US general at Guantanamo Bay to a female assassin working undercover in France.

My perceptions of Without Warning are coloured by Katie Harris’ comment that my recent Gonzo Twitter effort was like Hemingway. I still haven’t read any Hemingway, but I’ve been thinking about writing styles. In a previous review I described William Gibson’s noir prose as “a richly textured cabernet merlot” in comparison with the “slab of VB” simplicity of Adrian d’Hagé’s action thriller. Birmingham’s writing is another slab of VB. It’s a fast, easy read without too many difficult words or complex metaphors to slow you down.

Of course there’s plenty of military and other boy’s toys brand names and train-spotter facts.

Lee… opened the throttles on the big boat’s massive Caterpillar engines, unleashing a stampede from the 1492 horsepower contained in each one…

Three identified shooters there. All white males, dressed casually, armed with FAMAS G2 assault rifles…

She opened the oversized hold-all and pulled out the artillery. The pistol-grip Benelli shotgun came first: customised 12-gauge, extended mag with a side-saddle shell carrier. Next was the deal closer, a specially cut-down Heckler & Koch UMP .45, with an extended box mag housing thirty rounds of .40-calibre Smith & Wesson goodness. She slung the HK over her shoulder. It was a large, excessive arsenal for just one young lady to haul around…

Yeah, I know. Chicks with guns are hawt, and there’s plenty to keep the lads moist. Who’ll be cast for the movie, I wonder?

Occasionally I was forced to look up some piece of military jargon or other to grasp the sense of a scene. Irritating to me, but Birmingham’s fans would reckon that just brands me a n00b.

I agree with the estimable Duncan Riley’s review too (interestingly the first Google hit for the book after the Amazon listing):

The French stream, except nearly right at the end of the novel, was perhaps the worst character development ever delivered by Birmingham…

The ending wasn’t great, and set the story up for a sequel which Birmingham is already talking about writing. It’s a BIG book for a Birmingham novel, and an awful lot to cover, and the need to flip ahead into the future is understandable, but it didn’t conclude strongly.

Still, it is what it is. A thrill for the fans. They won’t be disappointed.

Don’t get annoyed by the about-the-author blurb though.

John Birmingham refuses to build a website, but he has three blogs…

Um, and what is a blog if not a website? Fuckwits.

I’ve always thought that my essays are my best work, even if I say so myself. I’ve done observationals before, like Saturday Night at The Duke and Burnt out sofa, burnt out life. But this one’s different.

As I walked home through Newtown last Saturday evening, I started sending little observational comments to my Twitter stream:

Actually still on Darlington Rd, a long-haired woman plays melancholy guitar on the terrace-house balcony as a currawong flops past.

As I moved into King Street, I kept going. As I went to Kelly’s On King for a beer, I kept going. I discovered that a rapt audience was watching my comments — although not everyone liked the volume of material. I suggested they use Twittersnooze to unfollow me for a while.

The 140-character limit imposes a certain staccato style which I quite like. I was chuffed to be compared with Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw and (especially) Hunter S Thompson!

Here, then, is my first attempt at Live Gonzo Twittering, across about 90 minutes last Saturday night. the only changes I’ve made have been to fix some typos. Is this the best way to present it after the fact? Enjoy!

Saturday Evening in Newtown

The sun has set. Opposite corner of Church St two guys play the blues, set up with portable amps under the hardware store verandah.

Outside the bank opposite, a woman in fishnets and a black top hat plays gypsy accordion. Welcome to Newtown.

Outside Better Read Than Dead bookshop, a 16yo artfag in hornrim glasses enthuses at his friends about his visit to Louis Voitton & Versace.

Another bank verandah, this one with guitar and fiddle players churning out playful Irish folk tunes.

It is, indeed, a normal Saturday night on King St. I bought dinner from Taste, but have stopped at Kelly’s for a pint of people-watching.

(I’m sure that @ApostrophePong is too deep in his editing to want dinner yet, what with a late lunch n’all.)

As dusk falls, a cool breeze drifts in thru the pub windows as the video jukebox plays Promises’ “Baby It’s You”. http://is.gd/4ixh

6’4″ of young gothboi with sleek black hair and perfectly-formed flowing black trench coat strides out into the street, purposefully.

Dear fat red-haired man on passing bus, your combination of straggly beard, slightly-too-tight shorts & Led Zeppelin singlet does not work.

Two middle-aged women stroll by looking well-educated and stylish in their Little Black Dresses. One carries a small gift, wears a red boa.

Two rough-voiced cropped-hair dykes walk the other way in jeans and singlets. One carries a bottle of wine, poorly wrapped in brown paper.

The stylish gothboi returns, accompanied by a curly-haired friend who looks like an off-duty car radio salesman in a cheap striped shirt.

Two chubby middle-aged lesbians stroll slowly, holding hands, smiling, chatting about passers-by. I’m guessing mid-ranking govt staffers.

More immaculate gothlings arrive and are carded at the door. Red plastic spikey wristband. The Maori/Islander bouncer smiles, waves them in.

The third in the group, a young women, is slightly older, but only slightly. Hair tightly tied back, she’s either a librarian or a spook.

A wogboi in baseball cap revs his spoiler-equipped electric blue BMW. No-one is impressed. He moves 2m forward in the traffic jam.

Shaved head, muscles, “celtic knotwork” barbed wire tattoos, baggy jeans, black singlet: Sydney gay cliché. Alone. Pauses, crosses road.

Two young Chinese student girls, sharing the carrying of their brand new rice cooker. Sentimental Jap-kitch t-shirts.

A Greek couple, him in white shirt and dress jeans, her in dark skirt & blouse, her hand down the back pocket of his jeans.

Gangly curly-haired politics student in khaki shorts and battered shirt, carrying his Thai takeaway, striding awkwardly.

Old man shuffles, long white hair, long white beard, black-rimmed glasses, green-chequed flannelette shirt. He looks very, very tired.

Woman strides into the pub, bright red dress, bright red lipstick, henna’d hair, whistling. Moves with all the grace of a farmer.

@NickHodge Yes, the old guy looks like one of the local old Communists. I think he’s remembering the good old days, but only dimly.

His t-shirt reads “sotally tober”. She has seven stars tattooed just above her left breast. Her blouse is… skimpy. They’ve been drinking.

Skateboarder. Tall, skinny, black-clad but for white baseball cap. He almost drops his drink in its bright pink disposable cup, straw.

Mostly couples in the street now, pointing to potential eating-places. Also men, either alone or in rowdy pairs.

Family. Tired mother shepherds three children, each carrying bookshop purchases. Father looks into pub window disapprovingly. I glare back.

I suspect the people strolling slowly have already eaten dinner, those walking faster are still looking.

The man talking to the bouncer is trying to maintain eye contact, so he keeps missing when trying to put his lighter into his pocket.

A man with a mid-life crisis and a racing-green convertible has his son in the passenger seat, wide-eyed with delight at King St’s wonders.

A young couple looking very pleased that the bouncer is taking a toilet break. I don’t think they’d have passed carding. Upstairs, fast!

Young man in sports car passenger seat! It’s an hour after sunset. You do not need sunglasses on your head. Arm inside the vehicle, please!

Bleached-blonde woman on phone outside pub, carrying a plastic toy golfclub. More pretend-golfers inside. She’s loud, tanned, gold-bangled.

On the video jukebox, Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta have been replaced by a popular but simplistic dance track.

@JonoH I’m drinking one pint of James Squire’s Amber Ale, maybe one more before I deliver the chicken and salad home. Watching my village.

Bleachy-pseudo-golfer is STILL on the phone, tapping the toy club against her leg like a riding crop. Bright purple, with a blue handle.

That is the shortest short brightest bright purple dress I have ever seen! Just a flash as she almost runs past, handbag flapping.

The mob of 10 pseudo-golfers emerge, shouting at their bleachy friend to get off the phone girl. All have the toy clubs.

They’re blocking the street as they decide their next move. The men chat quietly, the girls scream & giggle & shout. 2 separate circles.

“Hi Alex! Let’s go!” One of the girls pretends to fellate her golf club as a camera-phone picture is taken. Flash. The group turns, is gone.

Man walks in carrying guitar case and a box. The next man carries a Marshall amp.

Gothboi and his car radio salesman friend leave, followed by all the other gothlings. I think they saw the band arriving. Good call.

Grey-haired man t-shirt “I got Bourbon-faced on Shit Street”, 7yo daughter in floral-print She’s fat, bored, skin like too many burgers.

Lights changes, masses cross, a jumble of alt and punks and respectables and then the change again and the bus roars into action.

“Where’s your friend?” a boring regular shouts. I pretend not to hear. But he shouts his question again. I shrug “dunno”, return to kbd.

It’s not a floral print dress it’s a dark blue beach dress with orange crabs and yellow fish and a red button holding it closed at the back.

She is still too fat. She and the grey-haired man are waiting for the women to finish using the pub toilet before moving on.

Drummer arrives, and drummer’s girlfriend.

Fat girl has an older sister, maybe 19 or 20, fat in her zebra-print blouse and jeans which yes your arse does look big in them. Drab hair.

Dammit I will stay for another beer, which I have now. Fat Family has negotiated their way up to the terrace for a family dinner.

Visitors. @katska and @matthewlandauer arrive. The old man admonishes me for being antisocial. I go offline to drink beer with friends.

The karaoke kicks off with a bunch of drunken drag kings singing “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”. Kill me now.

Correction. It’s not karaoke. It’s just that the cover band has been totally pwn3d by drag kings. Well, the whole pub, really.

Hah! Both Jebusfone users have flat batteries! Losers!