Archive for the 'Twitter' Category

Friday night archive rant

Published
by
John Stansbury
on February 22, 2008

There are nights I wonder what it would be like, if I drank.

Just got done watching Monk.

Thinking about streams of consciousness.

Reevaluating Twitter.

Working on proper punctuation.

Realizing that most of my best stuff will sit, unread, in the archives, never seen by a human other than me. That really saddens me. I guess that’s why I don’t think about it much.

It could drive me to drink, if I was into that sort of thing.

MySpace will be deleted, soon.

Last.fm is kind of pointless.

Flickr sounded like a good idea at the time.

Six years of stuff, and I’m no closer to being an internet superstar than Adrian Monk is to solving the murder of his wife.

Categorized:
Flickr, Personal, Rant, Site Updates and Twitter

I just turned off Twitterrific

Published
by
John Stansbury
on February 10, 2008

Twitterrific iconI just turned off Twitterrific. I didn’t turn the Twitter tool off because it wasn’t working, or because it was causing problems with my computer. The reason I turned it off was because it was working as it was designed. It connected me to Twitter, something I find less and less interesting.

Mind you, while I love me some short–form outbursts of insight, and I love a good sarcastic subtitle, the chatter tends to get old, fast. It gets that way the quickest when people use it more as a public internet messaging session than status messages. When they added the @username convention, things got really bad.

It moved from being something followed to an incestuous popularity contest. I could see the reasoning for the @username, a way to cite other tweets — but it became a way to yammer on like that lady yelling to the person on the other side of the cellphone. If I wanted to listen to half of a conversation, I’d use Verizon. The best feature related to @username replies is in your settings: the ability to hide them.

A few days ago, Twitter moved off Joyent servers, and nothing really changed. It’s still not all that fast. In fact, until they switched hosts, I never cared one way or the other. But now its apparent that it wasn’t where they were that was the problem, it was what they were.

I’ve added quite a few people who either said interesting things, or were ‘internet fabulous.’ The people on the A–list, the ones with all the followers. I mean — come on, if they weren’t interesting, why’d they have so many followers? I’m still trying to figure that out. It was those A–lister types that got the masses to sign up, and that’s when whatever Twitter is proved to be incapable of handling the success.

Too popular, too large, and still too slow. And, paradoxically, it was never an issue with me until the big switch. Now it’s too convenient an excuse not to use.

What this is really about is that I’m not excited to wake up to a hot cup of other people’s status messages. While it was all…er…terrific tweeting, when the novelty wears off, it’s just a bulletin board of people I don’t really know. Maybe if I was a famous A–lister type I’d feel more compelled to continue the chatter — for the good of the people.

But I’m not. So I turned if off. Here’s to being quiet.

Categorized:
Joyent, Rant and Twitter

Where you can find me (the Linkness story)

Published
by
John Stansbury
on January 18, 2008

In 2006, it seems I started a trend towards using WordPress as a platform for writing and linking. The concepts isn’t unique, it’s just I’ve noticed more and more people moving to WordPress, and shutting the comments off. I’ve always thought that Movable Type is perfect for a blog written that way, yet people are ditching that platform to move to something that’s built for ordinary blogging.

The first page I worked on, when putting this site together in WordPress was a subdomain with its own catchy title: “With a linkness.” While trying to copy the more famous bloggers of the time, I was using tools that were wholly incapable of completing the task. Again, Movable Type was, and is, a better tool more adequately suited linking and logs. It wasn’t until I started looking at the different social networks that I found my solution.

One fateful day, I signed up with a del.icio.us account. Then all my questions were answered, and all my troubles were gone. I’d figured out how to make this happen. And as I ventured out into the web, my off–site link hosting led me to some other avenues of expression.

In 2007, I burned out, and rekindled, then burned out again. Subtle life changes made me care less for the adoring of my internet fans, and more willing to take some risks. In addition to taking risks, I’ve also grown tired of working for my social credits. That means that I’ve actually deleted some accounts, because they don’t fulfill any useful purpose, and they waste my time.

So, now down to three. There’s others out there, but I can’t remember (or delete) them all. But you’ll see these three mentioned more than once on the site, and featured on the Linkness page. Here’s a brief description of the services, and what conned me into using them.

Twitter

Random outbursts of creativity, 140 characters at a time. Short–form micro–blogging, where brevity will force perspective. Can I tell you that I love this thing? Because I do. I love it.

I’m amazed at how I’m now able to record some of the (sometimes) crazy things I think of to write. That I have the chance to share my inanity makes it worth the hassle. I like it so much, you can see the latest update (or tweet, in Twitter parlance) on every page of the site.

Flickr lies, do not trust it

The de facto leader image sharing and hosting service. Obviously, this is where the images go, but also the screenshots I take. It’s easy to hit the shift+command+4 and upload the stuff on my desktop. Though I’ve been hesitant to use it like this before, now I’m seeing how capturing images and showcasing them there, that way is the proper way to share.

That, and taking some proper photographs would require me to go outside. Can’t do that, can I?

del.icio.us

Where I waste most of my valuable linking prowess. It’s mostly technology–related, but I do get some other geekery in there. It’s always great fun if you’re looking for somewhere to be diverted.

I’ve rolled all three of these services in one, through the miracle of “The Internet”. Now, you too can follow everything I do, say, think, or believe by simply adding this feed to your feed reader/aggregator of choice. And no, I’m not going to explain what a feed reader/aggregator is.

Follow me, join me, yada yada yada.

Subscribe to Linkness in a feed reader

Categorized:
Flickr, Personal, Twitter and del.icio.us

9 Things overheard at Macworld

Published
by
John Stansbury
on January 16, 2008

9. Did he just say, “in Tiger?”

8. “I’d like to thank Intel (and not that iceberg IBM), and I’d like to invite Intel CEO Paul Otenilli…”

7. IT WAS ON THE STAGE THE WHOLE TIME! IN THE PACKAGE! ON THE STAGE! HOW DID HE DO THAT? I’VE NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE! THAT’S SO AMAZING! Look at how thin it is. It’s so thin! Can you believe how thin it is? Wait, you can’t change the battery in dis thing? Lame.

6. I can’t get Twitter to load. Can you get Twitter to load?

5. Ah, four things. Betcha one of them’s iPhone 1.1.3. Whatta you wanna bet?

4. …*

* This right after the announcement that the improved iPod touch was $20

3. Bingo! Oh, wait, no. Never mind. I thought you said,”and now Leopard 10.5.2″

2. It’s just Myriad Apple Text. They’ve used it before.

1. Yeah, woo! (applause) (Who’s Randy Newman? Did John Mayer cancel?) incomprehensible rambling Explicate incomprehensible rambling [moonbat song] (rapturous applause)

Categorized:
9 Things, Apple, Mac OS X, Twitter, iPhone and iPod+iTunes