I’ve hosted this blog on WordPress.com for less than a year, but already I’ve decided to move again, this time to a self-hosted WordPress blog.
What this means to you:
Not much. The site may be down for a few days. Make sure your bookmarks and links point to http://aloneandunobserved.com/ and once the site is back up you should be fine.
See you on the flip side!
malki http://xrl.us/becqjm: Most people have no idea how Twitter could possibly be useful, in any conceivable world, ever. Also get off their lawn
about 11 hours ago from twitterrific
Some people are clueless and cranky about new technology. Some are eager early adopters. And some are eager and clueless.
David Pogue, a tech writer for the NY Times, seems to fall under the third category. If you visit his Twitter profile, @davidpogue, he seems like a fairly normal Twitterer. But yesterday, he wrote a blog post about Twitter that was probably well-intentioned, but which ended up being so wrong-headed and just plain misinformed that readers are left puzzled and underwhelmed by the very service he ends up tentatively recommending. It’s no surprise when many of his commenters thank him for steering them away from such a useless, time-wasting service. “I’ve been skeptical of Twitter from the get-go,” many of them say, in effect. “I’ve held out against it this long, and after your post I’ll never use it.”
So let’s ignore Pogue’s post as a nice try that unfortunately failed, and move on to the main questions.
What is Twitter?
Twitter began as a way of a) using text messages to post updates (or “twitters,” “tweets” or “micro-blogs”) to a website, where other people could read them and b) of receiving, also via text message, updates from friends and acquaintances. A year or so ago, Twitter made its API public, which meant that outsiders were able to design third-party applications that could live on computer desktops, in browsers or on mobile phones, which could be used to update a person’s Twitter feed and read other people’s tweets. I use a service called Ping.fm to post updates not just to Twitter but to all my social networks, and an iPhone app called TwitterFon to read my Twitter feeds and carry on conversations. (My Twitter feed.)
Why is Twitter special?
Twitter makes it possible to send the same text message (or text-message-sized blurb) out to ten, a hundred or a thousand people. This sounds like spam, but it’s not, for the simple reason that Twitter is opt-in. People who want to hear from you will follow your tweets. People who don’t, won’t. That’s one strength of Twitter as a communication tool over simple text messages or emails: more people tend to have your cell number or email address than you typically want to hear from. Not so with Twitter: any time you tire of hearing from a particular person, just tell Twitter to stop texting you their updates, or unfollow the person altogether.
Why should you Twitter?
The main reason I personally Twitter is because Twitter is FUN. But everyone has a different reason for Twittering. Some use it to keep abreast of what their friends or favorite celebrities are doing, minute by minute. Some like to engage in conversations using @replies. Some use Twitter’s search feature, at search.twitter.com, to follow trending topics in the Twitterverse. Some join Twitter to promote themselves, their product, their company, their ideas or their website. Each of these uses leads to a different style of Twittering.
Twittering is different from a more immersive social network such as Facebook in that communication and information sharing is the key. Do you like broadcasting your ideas across the web? Are you prone to pithy witticisms? Do you want a larger network on which to complain about or praise the companies you patronize and the company you keep? Do you have a website to promote or a web-based business to market for? Twitter is excellent tool for all of these purposes.
What should you Twitter about?
Pogue makes it sound like you should never Twitter about what you are doing right now, but that’s not true. Throw away the rules. Anything that can be condensed into 140 characters is fair game. Twitter about
And here are a few suggestions:
Special suggestions for those who want to use Twitter for promotion/marketing/feedback/etc.:
I repeat: NO ONE LIKES A SPAMMER.
According to the ANTI- Label Blog, for every blog that reposts the link to Neko Case’s new single, “People Have a Lot of Nerve,” ANTI- and Neko will donate five dollars to Best Friends Animal Society.
You can either listen to the single on the ANTI- Label Blog or download it directly from ANTI-.
If you like Neko Case, if you like animals, or if you like both!!!!, go to antilabelblog.com to find out how you can participate.
Patron, pointing at my arm: “You could probably be a deep-sea diver. You’ve got pretty big guns there.”
Well. I wasn’t expecting to move anytime soon, but a room opened up in Craig’s house and—it’s done. I moved out of my old apartment over the weekend, and now I’m slowly starting to settle into my new place. It’s weird having a roommate, and it’s especially weird not knowing where to put any of my stuff. I may not have tidied up my old apartment much, but I usually knew more or less where everything was, and now… let’s say that the move was extremely chaotic, and all my things are currently living in piles, boxes, bins and heaps all over my room and all over the house.
While I was going through some old things before the move I ran across my Mormon Trove, a box where I had shoved all my Bibles and Book of Mormons and hymnbooks and mission stuff years ago and forgotten about. The scriptures and Sunday School study guides I have no use for, but as soon as I started leafing through the mission papers and letters and notebooks and journals I was sucked right in. I didn’t really keep a journal when I was a teenager, so my mission writings are a fascinating glimpse at a young me who was very earnest, desperately conflicted and working very hard to reassure himself that GOD EXISTED AND THE CHURCH WAS TRUE DAMMIT. Besides my doubts and shaky faith, my mission was incredibly stressful and almost proved too much for me emotionally, and the journal entries provide a picture of a young man continually on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
But my mission was also an amazing experience. I lived in Italy for two years! That still isn’t real to me, especially since traveling and seeing foreign countries is so far from my current life as an impoverished quasi-librarian. I learned to speak Italian, I learned how to cook Italian food, I got to know a procession of interesting and diverse Italian, European and African people. My journals and notebooks brought all of those wonderful things back to me just as much as the bad.
Over the past few days I’ve also reconnected in a small way with other parts of my Mormon past: BYU Men’s Chorus, the BYU ballroom dance teams, the BYU Math Department and Math Lab… all were major parts of my life at one point. I no longer consider myself even culturally Mormon, but Mormonism made up a huge part of my upbringing and a significant portion of my college experience, and a large percentage of my friends and an overwhelming majority of my family are still Mormon. And maybe I’m finally ready to stop being embarrassed by that fact and accept the formative influence that Mormonism has been in my life, for ill and good.
I did this meme back in 2007, and liked it so much I thought I’d do it again. I’m not going to tag anyone, but if you do it, feel free to link to your post in the comments. Happy New Year, everyone!
The rules for the meme: Take the first line from the first post of every month for the last year, and post them together as a kind of cross-section of what you were blogging about during the year. Remember to link to all the posts you are excerpting.
January
Back Home, for the Nonce
After Christmas with my family in American Fork, a week and a half at the Tibbitts Family Manse in California and a day of driving with a friend, I’m finally back in Salt Lake City.
February
In Which I Am SO BORED I Finally Resort to Blogging: or, All About Me (motto: “Every Paragraph Begins with ‘I’ ”)
I am sick.
March
“And if my cat looks scared it’s because it knows it won’t be going to heaven.”
Because I was bored, and had nothing better to do, I spent several hours over the past week compiling a mix of all my very most favorite music, and then uploading it—byte by byte—to my DivShare account so that everyone in the whole world could enjoy it.
April
Fester, Fester, Fester. Rot, Rot, Rot.
I teach a beginning internet class at my library every month, and every time I get up in front of the students I remember why I wanted to become a math professor.
May
Bewitched, Be-lei’d and Bewildered
I had my master’s commencement and convocation today (for the degree I received last August), and my parents came up from California to attend.
June
“Mom: The Most Common Nickname of a Meth User in Utah”
Every morning in my neighborhood, the meth moms come out in force, with their babies and their toddlers and their strollers.
July
In Which Madame de Pompadour Owes Her Life to Doctor Who
My online friend Misty (Hi, Misty!) introduced me to DailyLit a week or so ago, and since then I’ve been soaking up Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables and Rainer Maria Rilke’s Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, delivered via RSS feed in easily digestible chunks to my Google Reader inbox every morning.
August
Watch This Space for Future Developments
I got back yesterday afternoon after two exhausting, up-and-down weeks on the road camping with my family.
September
Thanks Be to the Google Thesaurus Function
A man just came up to the reference desk, saying he had called in a hold for a book and had come in “before anyone else could get it.”
October
If You Wait Long Enough
…it’ll be too late, and then you won’t have to worry about it, right? Right??
November
Mr. Clayton, It’s a Bit Late to Talk About “Civility,” Don’t You Think?
Proposition 8 just passed in California, amending the state constitution to take the right to marry away from gay couples. And I will be blunt: I blame the Mormon church.
December
Why Can’t Boys Just Figure It Out?
I have a straight female friend who regales me occasionally with tales of the latest Boy she is interested in, and I’m always fascinated by the things she takes for granted about her role in her dating relationships.
I watched the movie Alien last night, and, since there was no one present to make snarky comments to, I turned to Twitter. That’s right, I live-Twittered the movie! Below are all 28 updates, from the first (which presciently prefigured all the mayhem in store) to the last (which presciently prefigures the fact that Alien has a SEQUEL).
(I stopped the film several times, which is why the timestamps run 129 minutes while the film only runs 117.)
[ 2008-12-30 22:35:01 ]
Eating brown rice & Quorn and watching Alien. They’re approaching the face-hugger nest NO DON’T GO OVER THERE!!!
[ 2008-12-30 22:40:19 ]
Someone’s face is about to get hugged. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, mister!
[ 2008-12-30 22:55:07 ]
FACE=HUGGED (also, @ping.fm = back?)
[ 2008-12-30 23:05:14 ]
Ack! Chestburster! CHESTBURSTER!!!!
[ 2008-12-30 23:10:05 ]
None of you are safe! It’s a ship of death you are on!! DEEEAAAAAAATH!!!!! (I wish I had some popcorn.)
[ 2008-12-30 23:22:37 ]
The alien just sucker-punched him. With its MOUTH. I call unfair advantage.
[ 2008-12-30 23:28:37 ]
Now a guy is crawling through tight ducts w/ flamethrower. Even w/o a killer alien, that’s the kind of situation that does not end well.
[ 2008-12-30 23:32:32 ]
I can’t believe they can’t track something that produces that much snot. And–yup, he just put his hand in it YUM
[ 2008-12-30 23:37:42 ]
It just wanted to hug you, man! Stop screaming and struggling! The alien is FILLED WITH LOVE
[ 2008-12-30 23:40:55 ]
Sorry, Ripley. Mother is all out of happy answers. (Also: I never realized that “project the screen on their faces” trick was quite so old.)
[ 2008-12-30 23:47:24 ]
Never trust a man with milk in his veins, for he will use his terrifying strength to–wait, that’s not what rolled-up magazines are for!!!
[ 2008-12-30 23:52:49 ]
There’s some alchemy of milk and camera angles that made that guy’s severed head look like a rubber mask for a moment. No, look, he’s back!
[ 2008-12-31 00:01:09 ]
Somehow I didn’t expect “coolant” to come in such small bottles. Maybe this is the recreational size, from Ripley’s private stash?
[ 2008-12-31 00:04:40 ]
So the cat whose existence surprised you earlier–you know, the one you almost tazed to death–suddenly has a name, and is worth your life?
[ 2008-12-31 00:07:38 ]
JUST FOLLOW THE RIVER OF MUCUS OMG
[ 2008-12-31 00:17:48 ]
This self-destruct is brought to you by your disapproving grandmother.
[ 2008-12-31 00:19:41 ]
“You BITCH!”
[ 2008-12-31 00:22:01 ]
Mother’s very disappointed in you, Ripley. The alien is too.
[ 2008-12-31 00:23:41 ]
Mother, how many times you gotta explode? Why won’t you just DIE?!
[ 2008-12-31 00:27:11 ]
Ripley’s down to her panties. Should I be excited? IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME?? (Maybe I’m gay. OH NOES)
[ 2008-12-31 00:29:19 ]
Ms. Weaver’s ass is (was?) flatter than her chest. It’s flatter than Debra Messing’s chest!
[ 2008-12-31 00:30:36 ]
ACKTHPP OMG THE ALIEN JUST TRIED TO MOLEST HER!!! WITH ITS HAND!!!
[ 2008-12-31 00:33:26 ]
Ripley repulses the alien’s advance and remains unmoved by its sultry bedroom demeanor and shameless vamping.
[ 2008-12-31 00:34:42 ]
Okay, that was WAY more crotch than I wanted to see, lady.
[ 2008-12-31 00:37:39 ]
The alien gives her another sultry come-hither stare, but Ripley’s eyes are full of DEATH. And her hands are full of toy harpoon gun.
[ 2008-12-31 00:40:59 ]
Look out! There’s a man in an odd rubber suit, clambering outside on the hull!!!! Obviously a pervert.
[ 2008-12-31 00:43:36 ]
Now she’s reclining in a caftan. And now it’s over! Now: bed. Tomorrow: New Year’s Eve!!!
[ 2008-12-31 00:44:26 ]
Now I need to rewatch Aliens. But not tonight.
Today’s the last day of 2008, and I thought I’d do a couple of year-end memes. This one I’ve seen around in various places, but I decided to do it when Linda of All & Sundry posted it and then promised to link to anyone who did it OMG WTF???!!! SIGN ME UP
So here it is. I don’t promise to link to everyone who does it, but feel free to post your own links/answers in the comments if you like.
1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Went into repayment on my student loans. In happier news, I also got my first (and second!) piercing.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I’ve given up on New Year’s resolutions. I have an aversion to resolutions in general, because I’m afraid of failure. If you don’t try, you can’t fail!
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My brother and sister-in-law had their first child, a baby girl named Allison.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.
5. What countries did you visit?
No other countries, but I did visit Northern California, which is like a different country when compared to Utah.
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Financial freedom, a library science degree, a boyfriend, the discipline to clean my house.
7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Um… none are coming to mind.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting an A in my website creation course, despite spending the entire semester assiduously avoiding the homework.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Getting a C in (and actually almost failing) the easiest course known to humankind.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not any worth mentioning. Unless you count the two piercings I got this year. Which are worth mentioning.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
My iPhone.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My family’s, for being so willing to look past our differences and spend time together regardless. The Utah LGBT and allied community, for coming together for the protest at Temple Square.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Too many politicians to count. The Mormon church’s, and many of its members.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Food and rent.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
The Dark Knight. The Graveyard Book. The iPhone 3G. The idea of gay marriage in California. The protest on Temple Square. Milk.
16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
I discovered Iron & Wine this year. So his music, I guess.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
Sadder. I think I need to go back on medication again. *sighs*
b) thinner or fatter?
A bit thinner, although not as thin as I would wish.
c) richer or poorer?
About the same.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Social activities.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Procrastinating.
20. How did you spend Christmas?
Watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.
21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
No.
22. What was your favorite TV program?
Pushing Daisies.
23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Hate is a strong word, but I don’t have many positive feelings for Thomas Monson, president of the Mormon church.
24. What was the best book you read?
Let’s go with best books, plural, in reverse chronological order.
Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
A Hundred Silences: Poems, by Gabeba Baderoun
The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet: Occasional Outbursts, edited by Gavin Grant and Kelly Link
Lonely Werewolf Girl, by Martin Millar
Atonement, by Ian McEwan
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Iron & Wine and Rufus Wainwright.
26. What did you want and get?
My iPhone; my piercings; various items of clothing; a bike.
27. What did you want and not get?
A Wii; a Mac; a vehicle.
28. What was your favorite film of this year?
These are the films released this year that I enjoyed the most:
Wall-E
The Dark Knight
Tropic Thunder
Religulous
Milk
And these are the films I enjoyed the most this year that were not released in 2008:
Company, with Raúl Esparza (which is actually a televised stage production but so help me god IT WAS AWESOME)
The Times of Harvey Milk
Atonement
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 28 this year. I didn’t really do anything for my birthday.
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
N/A
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
In flux.
32. What kept you sane?
Books. As usual! Also, my friend Craig.
33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
N/A
34. What political issue stirred you the most?
California’s Prop 8.
35. Who did you miss?
My older sister, who moved away to Texas with her husband and adorable baby daughter.
36. Who was the best new person you met?
[Your name here]
37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Um… don’t procrastinate homework for the entire semester, or you’ll be forced to try and complete it all in one day.
38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Trees break the sidewalk
And the sidewalk skins my knees
There’s glass in my thermos
And blood on my jeans
(Star Witness, Neko Case)
Patron: Hey! You have breakfast at [local café]!
Me: . . . er, yes, sometimes.
Patron: My husband and I saw you there and we thought you looked like an interesting person, and we wondered where you worked.
Me: [Astonished silence]
Patron: And now we know!
Me: [Totally creeped out]
Sat down in the stylist’s chair on Friday and asked for something different. After a bit of discussion, two pots of color and a lot of razorwork, this is the result.
Last night Craig and I had our Winter Solstice Party. Sorry there are no pictures. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it was lots of fun. Gallons of eggnog and mulled wine and cider and punch were made and consumed. Cheeses of all descriptions were devoured. Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts were also featured. And of course batch after batch of holiday cookies and treats.
There are lots of leftovers. My coworkers are about to receive a bonanza in the form of cookies, bars, cake, tarts and such. Lucky them!
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