rammi.glomp.me

// December 1st, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Challenges, December 2009, NaBloPoMo

Somewhere along the line of when I was learning how to use a computer and eventually managing to build a website, RSS feeds became the ‘thing’.* If you owned anything that updated, you HAD to have an RSS feed in case someone wanted to follow what you were saying.
In my case, no one.**

I did try to make a go out of using it, honest! I spent ages subscribing to the blogs I liked, organising all my feeds into relevant categories, and checked them whenever they updated. But it’s just a bit disconcerting when you open Google Reader and there’s thousands and thousands of unread items. I know I could just mark everything as read, but my conscience kept on whispering to me, “you haven’t read that one yet. Or that one. Or that one. Or that little one you thought you could get away with. I saw what you did.”
I’m one of those people that can’t stand anything unread, and will always read all my emails (despite being crap at responding). Luckily, I can keep up with all my emails, but having thousands of unread items in Google Reader every day was annoying, despite me spending hours each day clearing it all. Eventually, I had had enough, and promptly removed the thing.

In retrospect, I could’ve just subscribed to blogs that updated less, but then what would be the point? The blogs I like update umpteen times a day, and I have no time to follow all their posts. Unlike some, I don’t want to know what I’ve missed, which is what my RSS reader kept trying to do. I found it a bit like a whining relative. “You haven’t read [blah]‘s post on [blah] yet! Read it or it’ll stay unread!”

This blog does have an RSS feed (but that really wasn’t my choice; it came with WordPress), and you’re welcome to follow it if you like, but if you agree with what I’ve said above, don’t. Heh. I would be honoured if you counted me as one of the people that you want to stay updated with.

I do see the virtues of RSS, as if you want to stay updated with everything a website does, and keep up with all the latest news, it’s perfect.  However, I feel that ignorance is bliss (at least when it comes to blogs). My way of keeping up to date with everything is… *le gasp* MANUALLY! I have a disarray of unorganised bookmarks of the blogs I like.*** I open them in multiple tabs every now and then to check on how they’re doing; sometimes there’s something new for me to read, sometimes there isn’t. I may miss out on some things (for example, I missed out on the chance to buy a signed xkcd book a few weeks ago), but generally, I like the feeling of surprise and delight I get when I visit someone’s blog for the first time in a few days to see that they’ve added something new that wasn’t there before.

For me, the pros balance out the cons, and I know that my old-fashioned bookmarks won’t nag at me if I don’t read them for a while. They may be old, but they still lead me to amazing stories and show me new things every day.****

*Wikipedia tells me RSS properly took off in 2005, when Microsoft adopted it. Meh.
**A quick check of my stats actually reveals there are 17 people subscribed to this feed. Erm, hello there. Stay with me, please! *clings petulantly*
*** After spending ages organising my feeds in Google Reader, I just couldn’t be bothered to do the same with my bookmarks, despite the fact that I am primarily using bookmarks these days. It’s on my To Do list, honest!

****And my strange metaphor of the day is that RSS is the nagging aunt to my bookmarks, which are the really awesome grandfathers. I’ll take the awesome grandfather any day.

// November 30th, 2009 // 9 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

I DID IT! I’m pretty surprised at myself, considering I usually blog every 3 or 4 months.

30 days.
30 posts.
About 5 hours of staring at a blank screen. Approximately 10 hours typing without proof-reading (because it was 2AM).
Having the courage to become a commenter instead of a lurker. I’ve realised it’s less creepy to comment on a blog I visit often, because my IP address shows up in their logs anyway, and it’s nice to put some numbers to a name.
Leaving hundreds of comments. Getting loads (compared to the big fat zero I usually get) in return. People actually read what I write now!
Finding new blogs to read. Different opinions cause interesting debates in the comments.
Talking to new people.
Learning about… stuff. From terms of endearment in Russian to infertility-related medical acronyms (no links here, because there are many, many blogs)… I’ve read many blogs that I would have never come across if it wasn’t for NaBloPoMo. I’m gonna be awesome at pub quizzes. That is, if there are pub quizzes on building a family, what people did on Black Friday and butchering a cow.

Thank you!

I might try to keep this daily blogging thing up for a while. We’ll see how it goes. December’s an interesting month. My birthday’s on the 14th *cough cough hint hint*, Christmas is on the 25th, Boxing Day (and a certain someone’s birthday) is on the 26th, and soon the month will be over.

For all those I’ve ‘met’ during NaBloPoMo, thanks for letting me into your blogs. I love reading them and will continue to do so. I will also try to occasionally overcome my lurking tendencies to comment and say hi. Joining the Comment for a Comment group was the best decision I made this month.

Now, all that’s left to do is eye up the 2009 Prizes and hope my name gets drawn for something like a sock zombie or a Twitter background from @caffeinatedelf. *drools*

Whee! I did it!

// November 29th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

November is cold, dark, and dreary – on this side of the hemisphere, anyway. I like Australian weather. Everything gets dark stupidly early, it rains more, and my tonsils give in easier to all the viruses floating about (because you really wanted that image in your head). Generally, it’s a crap month, filled with failing portable heaters and limbs that feel like they’re about to fall off.

The internet seeks to fix this by filling it with events with strange names.

There’s NaBloPoMo (30 blog posts in 30 days), which is why I’m writing a blog post now. I CAN’T FAIL ON THE 29TH DAY!
The carbon copy of that is NaBloWriMo, which appears to do the same thing. >.>
…And these two are based on NaNoWriMo, where you write a novel in 30 days instead. I didn’t do it this year, although I did say I would attempt it (and, er, didn’t).
Last week, I also made a half-hearted attempt to take part in IComLeavWe, where I attempted to leave comments on other participants’ blogs, that were largely about infertility and adoption. I do not know anything about either, which made the whole thing a major fail on my part.

Whilst these online events are fun, I wish they’d make shorter names so that I wouldn’t have to abuse my shift key so much.

A typical comment: “Hi, I’m doing NaBloPoMo too (but not NaBloWriMo)! I might do NaNoWriMo this year, but I think I won’t have time for it because IComLeavWe is on towards the end of the month…”

*flails*

// November 28th, 2009 // 12 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

I find buying presents for my friends very stressful. As I’m not creative and cannot make things to save my life, buying seems to be the only option. First, there’s the budget. Does it look too cheap? Does it look tacky? Is it worth paying that much for a present?

Then there’s the person. Will they use the gift I’ve bought for them? Or will it turn into one of those ugly presents from relatives that you never use? No matter how long I’ve known people for, I still don’t know what they want for birthdays and holidays. I hate people who say, “Oh, I don’t care what I get,” because secretly, they do, and then try to hide their disappointment when you’ve gotten them something they hadn’t expected to get. Tell me what you want for your birthday, or I’ll end up picking the first thing that looks nice.
If someone buys me something, I will always buy them something in return. This becomes even more difficult when I hardly know the person I’m buying stuff for. If I had a choice between getting lots of presents (and having to buy people things in return), and getting no presents at all, I think I’d take the latter.

Because that’ll save me from buying someone a wallet shaped like a hamburger as a birthday present.

// November 27th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

At the end of the Darwin exhibition at the Natural History Museum, there were computers asking for feedback. Answers were also projected onto huge screens behind the computers.

I wonder if Charles would’ve approved.

// November 26th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

I’ve been sitting here, staring at this window for half an hour now. I have places to be, and possibly a lung to cough up, but that won’t stop me from sitting here and thinking, “WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO WRITE?!”

I don’t even have the option to write about what I’m doing for Thanksgiving because I’m not in the US. I do, however, love you American companies for bringing the Black Friday tradition here. It’s kind of funny that the commercialisation is the only thing that crosses the pond.

Tomorrow, I will probably spend a stupid amount of money at an American retailer. Today, I will stuff my face with unhealthy foods… It’s all in the spirit of Thanksgiving, right?

// November 25th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

// November 24th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

I skim-read through all my blog spam every day. Akismet, whilst brilliant, doesn’t catch everything, and often gives me false positives. There are many times when I have rescued a comment that would have been deleted if I hadn’t been paying attention.

Lately, however, I’ve noticed more and more bots trying to get past my comment filter and sell me drugs. But none of this viagra and percocet business; that seems to have all disappeared along the line. It’s the Valium they’re trying to shift.

I suffer from frequent panic/anxiety attacks. I need to delve into the cause for them one day, but at the moment, they come at seemingly random moments, and I have been prescribed medicine to calm me down.

Guess what that medicine is?
Yep, Diazepam/Valium.

I appreciate that the bots are trying to appeal to my needs, but if it’s all right with them, I’ll stick to the Valium that has my name on the box.

// November 23rd, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

This blog post is somewhat of a cop-out, as I couldn’t think of anything decent to write. Good ol’ Plinky! I remember responding to a question about a book I’d started to read and never finished, so here we go.

For years, I was told to read Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. “It’s really interesting! It’ll make you think!”, etc., etc.

I read the blurb.

14-year-old Sophie encounters a mysterious mentor who introduces her to philosophy, and, at the same time, keeps getting postcards addressed to another girl. Who is the other girl? And who, for that matter, is Sophie herself?

Not too bad, right? But I soon realised that when I opened the page, it was going to be one of those books. The book that makes you want to slowly die inside. The only other book to fill me with these feelings of despair was Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code (and no, it’s not just because I’m a Catholic. It’s the prose that puts me to sleep).

The plot is confusing, and I never found out the answers to the questions raised in the blurb. Oh, and it’s kind of overhyped, in my opinion. So many people love this book, and I set a very high standard for it when I began to read it. It doesn’t live up to my expectations of it.
I don’t know who the other girl is, and couldn’t care less about who Sophie is.

Has anyone ever read through the whole of this book? If they loved it, why?

Philosophy just gives me a headache; this might be why I never got into the book. Tell me I’m not the only one.

// November 22nd, 2009 // 11 Comments » // Challenges, NaBloPoMo, November 2009

Your eyes pop open. You’re shivering, your hair is matted, and you’re covered in sweat. Shaking your head and sore limbs out vigorously, you soon become more and more conscious.

Instead of reflecting on what made your sleeping self so scared, your first waking thoughts are, “CRAP! I haven’t written a blog post for NaBloPoMo yet! I don’t know what to blog about! And I haven’t left enough comments on other people’s blogs for IComLeavWe or Comment for a Comment!”
Yes, all thoughts were made with exclamations on the end. And because you’re not fully awake yet, you’re thinking in Thai. Thai is the language you use when you’re sad, pissed off, or too out of it to realise.

You check the time. It’s 4AM, and already, you’re obsessing about blog-related activities.
The same time last month, you couldn’t give a flying fuck as to what happened to your blog.

Your priorities are screwed.

Tomorrow, you’ll be having hallucinations (for you haven’t had a proper dream since you were a toddler) of an event from someone’s blog post or a chapter from someone’s NaNoWriMo novel.

But at least this blog post is done. You shall now try to get your lack of skills in commenting on others’ blogs out of your subconscious for the few hours you have left until the morning.