Tuesday, 18 October 2005
I'm Breaking About Half of Them Right Now
Jakob Nielsen has posted his latest Alertbox, dedicated to blogs.
In general (i.e. not just this article) Nielson regularly takes himself way too seriously, but I have to admit that he makes one or two good points (numbers five, nine, and ten). Otherwise, he seems to be placing himself as some serious journalism consultant for a medium that has everything to do with informal writing (number seven). Too many of the points lose their weight outside of a corporate environment.
Just what I needed: Creative tips from a guy who has little room for creative uses of a new medium (number four) - or even and old one (number three). Whatever, Jakob. Oh, and about number seven: were that I had a staff who wrote things ready for my imprimatur. Jeesh.
Thursday, 19 May 2005
What the Hell Was That?
There's a shaggy-dog joke that I love to tell whose punchline goes something like that. And right about now, you're probably feeling like you're the punchline of some joke that you didn't even know was being told.
Or not. Whatever.
Well 'round about last July, I tried doing one movie review per day. And failed miserably, I might add. This flurry of movie "reviews" was supposed to have been a part of a much greater blizzard. In July. Err, yeah.
So cleaning out my coffers, I offer to you them - these jewels that the world would have been that much less for, had they never been revealed.
Or not. Whatever.
But beware! For while my back-stock of reviews is now empty, one day they may again rise. Evil incarnate! Inanity innate! The undying, ever-present threat of... movie reviews from the past!
Wednesday, 20 October 2004
Things That You Didn't Miss, Aren't Missing Anymore
Any of you (all one or two) who actually follow my movie "reviews" may have noticed a distinct dearth of said material in recent times. I started falling behind way back in March, so many of you (the other three or four) may never have noticed at all.
In one failed experiment, I tried to catch up by doing a review a day for the month of July. I made it to 11. I guess at least you could say that I made a useful discovery: Imaginary deadlines apparently motivate me much less than any real one would. Good to know.
Part of my writer's block was that I tried to write each entry in the same order that I saw the movies. That's great for writing up the more complex ones, and I regret having lost some of my impressions (and expression thereof) by procrastinating. But many experiences just don't lend themselves to insta-punditry. So, the list of writer-blockers grew, while I continued passing on reviewing other films until I could "catch up."
With my previous entry, I hereby declare amnesty. Maybe I'll get back to the missed reviews - I hope so. In the meantime, here's to starting up again...
Tuesday, 5 October 2004
Heh
On a funny note, in light of my previous two entries - but mostly because it's been some time since I first slammed bloggers - I bring to you a link. (This, after all, being a blog - though sometimes I think we all forget that.)
Ladies and gentlemen, cower and tremble at the power of The Apathetic Online Journal Entry Generator.
Oh, how far the mighty I have fallen.
Thursday, 24 June 2004
Geek Ahoy!
Anyone who's read entries from around the time I started my blog (oh, those long-gone golden days of - er, this past February) knows my love-hate relationship with the medium.
On the other hand, the tools - oh, the beautiful, shiny tools - are really pretty damn cool. After conducting a very scientific (and obviously thorough) survey of three of my friends' blogs, I decided to follow their unanimous endorsement and use Movable Type. Note that there's no hyperlink there: by their license agreement, I have to put a link to them somewhere on my home page. I figure that's one too many required linkages - so find it yourself, you grabby little punk.
There's been a recent uproar among the blogging community - faintly audible as a cough among the cacophony of all the world's true miseries - about Six Apart's change in their licensing requirements. I'm not going to get into that here (free software vs. Open Source is probably better saved for when - and if - I write about Linux), but Mark Pilgrim has a pretty good article about it and its effects. For the present, suffice to say that Mark has a great point: Movable Type is "free enough."
No, what this entry is about (or is supposed to be about) is the fun side of things - the geek side, really. Movable Type is pretty feature-complete in itself, but can be made even richer via plug-ins (the term for those little modules of third-party code that extend an existing piece of software, like the ubiquitous Flash plug-in for your browser).
Thursday, 19 February 2004
Not Every Picture Needs a Thousand Words
Considering my rather vitriolic entry that kicked off this very blog, I'm sure that some of you are wondering why I even bother. Maybe justifiably so.
Right before I went back to the States for the holidays, I was talking to a friend about how much I was looking forward to my trip. "Take a lot of pictures," she said, "and show them to me when you get back." I nodded, and didn't really give it much thought. Of course I'd take lots of pictures, and happily share them with her (in part because I was really interested in her; things didn't work out, but that's neither here nor there).
But you see, the funny thing is that I'm not the kind of person to "take a lot of pictures." I struggle to get through a single roll in a whole year, much less "a lot" during a short period. Besides, the people and places (save for a couple) were ones I had seen a thousand times before.
Friday, 6 February 2004
The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Bloggers
I hate blogs.
I swore I'd never start one. I don't like the cliquish attitude, the incestuous cross-linking within the "community," the chatter of a million monkeys at a million typewriters creating transcripts of backbiting and gossip. The self-conscious exhibitionism of all-too-personal details by navel-gazers whose self-worth is defined by their audience's reaction to the "audacity" of their writing.