Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place

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The title is from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” of course. Okay, okay. I admit I had to look it up–I was going to say it was from “Alice in Wonderland.”

What happened to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr just being fun? Twitter changed the look of its profile pages back in September. I still haven’t fixed mine to add a header image. In fact, I never got around to adjusting the width of my left-side graphic either. Same with the other social media sites. By the time I get around to making them look slick, the rules have changed again.

I used to really enjoy doing that kind of stuff. I don’t know when it started feeling like work.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’12: 9 of 30)

Now where did I leave my linkage

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I almost never use URL shorteners except on Twitter. I like seeing the domain that a link is originating from, and as long as character count is not an issue as it is for Twitter or SMS, I do not want to click on a shortened URL and take the chance that it is not what it is advertised to be. I really like that TweetDeck gives you the chance to see the long version of the shortened URLs, and that FriendFeed expands the URLs for its feed. Sorry. Just paranoid, I guess.

So the closing of Tr.im won’t affect me much, if at all. Most of the shortened URLs I’ve used on Twitter, regardless of the shortener, are links to time-sensitive news stories and will probably expire within a few months even if I had used the full URL.

This did, however, make me think about linkage in general. It led me to backup my Delicious.com bookmarks, which I have not done in a very long time. I also scheduled some time to check my blogs and journals for dead linkage.

Of course, the big social media news of the day was that of Facebook acquiring FriendFeed. I’m still deciding what I think of that, probably because I don’t use either Facebook or FriendFeed to best advantage.

I am so sick of all the games and apps on Facebook, mostly the fact that game scores and quiz results are considered “news” for the news feed, that Facebook is mostly unusable to me. By the way, if you are a Facebook friend and have actually posted real news or better yet, photos, you might want to go old-school and email me or call me so I know that it’s worth digging through the so-called “news” to find whatever you’ve posted!

I joined FriendFeed a while back, but I haven’t quite figured out how it fits into my what-I-do online. Same with Ping.fm. I don’t currently use the social aspect of Delicious.com at all right now. I use it simply to make my most-used bookmarks available to me at any location. I suppose I should look into the sharing and social aspect as well. I guess I should take some time to update my social media social life in general. Talk about demented and sad, but social, huh?

(NaBloPoMo | August ’09: 10 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 198 of 274)

Observations, more tech-y than not

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  • New iPhone 3GS is really tempting, until I come back to the part of having to switch to AT&T. Cut-copy-paste will finally be enabled, as will MMS. Oh, wait. Back to that AT&T thing again. No MMS right away for AT&T customers. Plus, less bars in more places. I will be fair and say that AT&T has less bars in more of the places that I have to or want to be. I’m sure coverage is fine for many people who are not me. Still, no deal, yet again.
  • Also not making the cut for me, even though as a longtime Palm PDA user I would have loved it to: Palm Pre. I would so love a smartphone like this with touchscreen and “real” keyboard both, and an included navigation app, too. No SD card is a minus, and having to switch to Sprint would be a bigger minus. See above about coverage in the places that I have to or want to be.
  • This Facebook user name thing is probably going to bite me in the ass. Hopefully the other 30-something people with my same first and last name will be asleep at the switch, so I don’t get the lame versions of the user name.
  • And I’ve said it before and will probably say it again: does every damn thing have to be a freaking video? I don’t always want to sit through even a few minutes of video. Sometimes I just want bullet points that I can skim in a few seconds. Can’t you give me both?

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 9 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 136 of 274)

Does everything always have to be about games?

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I’m not cool enough to be part of the beta testing for the Twitter game Spymaster and so far, it doesn’t seem that too many of my followers and followees are involved either (not necessarily because they are not cool though as my followers and followees are all way cool).

This isn’t really about Spymaster, though. If you want to read about it, there are thousands of inches of copy about it already floating around the ‘net. You can start with the link up there. The game even sounds like it might be fun to play.

I just wonder why everything has to be about games. Why exactly does Twitter need games?

I’ve been a member of a number of forums that added arcade modules. It didn’t seem to me that the games attracted people that really contributed to what was supposedly the main purpose of a forum: discussion. And in some cases, good and entertaining discussion slowed down because people were busy playing games.

I don’t spend much time on Facebook these days either. Again, everything there seems to be about games and quizzes. The sad part is that all of the noise with game results, game invites, and quiz results sometimes causes me to miss things that are more important to me and the person who posted them. Stuff like blog updates or status updates with actual thoughts, opinions and feelings. Stuff like new photos of family, friends, pets and cool places. Even if I don’t know someone all that well, I’d far rather see a photo of their child or pet, or even hear them bitch about their job, than know the fact that they just robbed a store in “Mafia Wars” or made a building in “Metropolis.”

I’ve complained before about people who communicate solely by sending game invites and pixel gifts, so I won’t make you all listen to that again.

But am I the only one who thinks there are too many games in places that really shouldn’t need them? Or am I just not fun enough to live?

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 3 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 130 of 274)

Finding my place on the ‘net (2 of 30/68 of 274)

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“Oh, no, I’ve said too much… I haven’t said enough”

I’m not sure whether this is about growing, or just about moving around or moving on. I have been online for a very long time. I remember acoustic couplers, 300 baud modems, BBSs, choosing between The Source and CompuServe, and paying by the hour for internet access. I’ve been involved in online communication and communities, mostly as a participant rather than an instigator… ermmm…. organizer… since the late ’80s.

The technology has grown and evolved so far since then. I would have never predicted the widespread availability and portability of internet communication, including high-speed access both wired and wireless. The high-quality audio and video that is now available to us to help us get our messages across more clearly is even more amazing when compared to the limited offerings in the not-so-distant past.

Technology changes quickly, but people are slower to change. We may have new and improved interfaces on our discussions, but the human side hasn’t changed much. The joke about “how many internet mail list subscribers does it take to change a light bulb” is over a decade old, but still applies to so many forums today. Someone has to lead, someone has to follow. Someone has to be the voice of doom, another the eternal optimist, another always missing the point. Instigators, mediators, complainers, fixers. We all just want to find our place somewhere on the ‘net, just as we do in real life.

Some of those places don’t turn out to be good long-term residences. A few days ago, I re-Tweeted one of RapierTwit’s one-liners (follow her on Twitter, those one-liners are fun): Wondering if I need a Second Life when I don’t have a first one, along with the comment that I was getting away from virtual worlds, which I am. Not Second Life; I did try it but my old laptop’s graphics card wasn’t up to the challenge, and I didn’t like being tied to my desktop computer just to fly around as virtual me in a virtual world.

The VZones worlds (newHorizone, Dreamscape and Seducity) are based on an older 2D technology which even my older, slower laptop could handle. I really did enjoy those worlds, particularly Dreamscape with its fantasy theme, for several years. I served in a few different volunteer staff positions as well. Ultimately, though, I find myself feeling the same way as I do about Facebook (read my post about that here if you didn’t already): too many silly games and pixel “things” (and unlike on Facebook, many of these cost actual cash) and not enough real and genuine interactions. Not to say that there are no opportunities for real conversations; what I am saying is that there aren’t many there for me recently. I still like having places on the ‘net to escape to, so I’m still trying different places out to see how they fit.