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February 7, 2012

Tag: blogs

January 13, 2011

Why The Positive Geek Bloggery Continues

by Frank — Categories: Internet, Site Related, Social Geekery — Tags: , — 2 Comments

I’m stealing a post topic that’s stealing another post topic by referring you folks to Ysharros and her post a few days ago about why she blogs for the internets. In the face of the rise of blogging and how it has helped geeks and non-geeks alike with putting forth popular opinion, I thought it would be nice to talk about.

The fact that there are many folks like Ysharros and HZero that do blog, and blog not for a grander community or loftier goals, but for themselves and their opinion, is a heartening thing for communications on the Internet. Why do I say this? I think that the beauty of the Internet itself when it comes to people and what they think is in the dissonance of its collective voice. While sometimes the disagreements on the internet lead to inevitable pages and pages of flames that would cause the best of us to facepalm, it is in that disagreement and variety of opinion that I think we find some insight. Not every discussion over the internet is a world-shaking piece of dialog (“ur mom” never really taught me much of anything except that I have a mom, which I knew) but if you know where to look to engage in talk that you enjoy, you won’t be disappointed.

Blogs are just dedicated places that add to the voice. It’s part of why I do mine, really – there’s a lot of the negative nancy and the snark out there. While that usually makes for higher traffic and more comments, I think I’d rather write in a way that comes naturally to me. I’m an optimist, and usually see the good or silver lining in the worst thunderclouds. I’d dare to say that my kind of tolerance for the bumps and bruises of geek media is a rarity today, where people can get upset over something as small as a coloring or a single powerpoint slide. As a result, I command a significantly smaller reader base (at times, I’m not even sure if many people are paying attention at all), but I think that’s a small price to pay for adding what I think is a small, yet necessary voice to that of the internet.

There’s also the therapeutic nature of blogging that I think that people forget about, and which even Ysharros and HZero might not have touched upon. Regardless on whether you write about sunshine and puppies rolling over for the first time like me, or you rant about the stupidity of people who have no concept of the word “respect”, afterwards, most bloggers who continue to blog feel fulfilled and satisfied in some way. I don’t really tend to write about my personal life, but I can say that like any human being, I’m not always a positive person, which is, by the way, a big difference from having a positive outlook. During the more difficult times in my life, the blog, such as it is these past three years or so, has been a way to excise bad feeling. Today is no different than then.

Ultimately, the really great thing about the marriage of discourse to internet media is the fact that it’s pretty much an inexhaustible resource, and always ripe for innovation. Blogging has obviously proven its value far beyond its initial mockery of being a glorified diary – it’s an exchange of opinions, a flashpoint-in-time archive of sometimes emotional reaction to the topics of the world, and to most of us blogger folks, good clean fun. I look forward to much more positive posting in the future, even though I’ve had my lulls – and I look forward to reading all of you out there who write, as well.

January 10, 2011

Everyone’s An (Online) Critic

by Frank — Categories: Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , , — 1 Comment

I’m not sure if I want to know where they got a movie where a cat was in a bride’s outfit…

Anyway, today’s little missive to start the week involves something I was thinking about the other day as people were reacting to some seriously awful news regarding the shooting in Tuscon, Arizona of a politician and a few other folks. I know my first reaction was to hope for the recovery of the injured and feel sympathy towards those that had lost someone, especially the family of the 9 year old girl. It’s never a good thing to see such violence perpetrated, and I think we can all learn and take to heart the value of life despite the tragedy.

My second reaction, however, was to go to the internet, which is really the subject of today’s post. I would have to say that even as recent as a few years ago, there weren’t this many people writing about this many subjects online. Through social media I got the quick, couple of second updates and thoughts from people – 140 characters and short sentences provided me with the up to the minute opinions of people who were reacting to the news. When I got home, blogs, news sites, and shared internet links provided a plethora of thoughts, ideas, craziness, and, well, let’s just say “passionate” viewpoints about the whole issue. It was definitely enough to keep me enthralled for an hour or so.

In today’s modern geek media age, the events of the world and how everyone reacts to them is like a giant, persistent episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, whose premise was critical (and comedic) commentary on bad films. While not every event and every happening plays out like movies that have cat brides in them, there is a certain level of screwball as well as the serious that makes it play out eerily like MST3k. But in general, there are a lot of normal Joes and Janes, mixed in with all the professional and career folks, that sit in the theater of the Internet and toss out their level of commentary at what is happening on the real-life screen, and that’s an amazing, instant, and wonderful thing.

Some people would say that the saturation of online opinion and commentary on the world’s events is a bad thing – that there is a giant signal-to-noise ratio that needs to be maintained, that people who generally provide poorly formed, or even poorly inappropriate, opinions are a reason for limiting the amount of attention and people that can be considered credible online. But I think that the collective voice of everyone’s MST3k-ish criticism is more important, accurate, and credible than anything else out there. It’s important because people are talking and conversing about things, no matter how poorly written it might seem, it’s accurate because it’s a collective opinion reflected in a larger amount of people, and it’s credible because it’s real. Not everyone can and should react to something as a journalist or a professionally trained writer should. There’s a certain level of credibility in the person who is indignant, or emotional, or perhaps even inappropriate in their commentary on what is happening. It’s a humanistic element that I think is part of why blogs like mine can find a niche and continue to exist in it.

Given the choice between having only a few critics to read that I know will write detailed and thoughtful comments and having everyone be a critic where I can choose the kind of commentary I want to read, I’ll take the latter – especially if the Internet is going to provide me with more entertaining thoughts on cat brides.

April 22, 2010

The RSS Rolling Freight Train

by Frank — Categories: Internet — Tags: , — 2 Comments

Over at Kill Ten Rats, Ravious talks a bit about unsubbing from a blog and what it takes to get people to go away from following various writings on the intenret. I peered intently at this article, and the comments that followed it, not just because the subject was interesting and caught my eye, but because I have a real problem. I know, right – the great optimist having an issue is unheard of – but trust me, this is serious business.

My name is Frank, and I’m addicted to RSS.

Ravious seems to find it easy to unsub from a blog, whether it’s due to change in subject or resonance. I can’t seem to do it. Of the 246 rss feeds I’m currently subscribed to, I think I might have only unsubbed from 1 of them, and I think it was mine because I was changing over to Feedburner. Maybe I need help. But hear me out – I kinda like it this way, ok?

The first logical question is how I am able to keep up with the hundreds if not thousands of articles that arrive every day. For one thing, I think I’m finally able to put my BA in English to work for more than just being the butt of jokes about working at McDonald’s. I’m able to quickly scan, digest, and read content. Sure, it’s a challenge sometimes and I tend to miss the articles that my bloggery friends really, really want to read (“what do you MEAN you missed my article on donating to the Buy A Cute Puppy Fund ._.”), but I get a nice little global snapshot of what’s going on regardless.

The second reason is that I simply like enriching my own viewpoint with others’, no matter if I disagree with them or not. The sheer variety of missives that exist on the internet is seemingly limitless, from crazy life stories to serious analyses and more. And I’m subbed to just about all of them. How can I abandon any of them, even the long-dead ones? You never know – they might just come back and post, and with my luck it would be on a day when I’m dealing with something more important like cleaning up cat poop or trying to kill zombies.

I guess it’s really a matter of a little blind loyalty. I like seeing what people have to say, no matter ho often they say it. When I add someone or something to my blogroll, I do it for a reason. Most of the time that reason comes from a genuine desire to be entertained, and the things I subscribe to do that for me. While I can generate plenty of sunshine on my own, it’s always a nice boost to get it from others – and why not RSS?

August 26, 2009

Happy Humpday Highlights – Darth Hater

by Frank — Categories: Gaming, Star Wars: The Old Republic — Tags: , , , — 2 Comments
Darth Vader Christmas
Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

Happy Humpday to all, and to all a good Hump!

Ok, well maybe that sounds REALLY bad, but I bet it made you laugh a little, right? Mission accomplished in my opinion.

It’s the middle of the week and hopefully you’re looking forward to sending off August with a bang this weekend. Until then, here’s another blog from my long and illustrious blogroll to keep you busy.

Darth Hater has emerged from the pack of SWTOR blogs with high quality content and constant news about Bioware‘s new and upcoming MMO. With multiple writers, and posts like their now-famous dissection posts that look for bits of detail revealed in SWTOR’s videos, Darth Hater is well on its way to establishing itself as a reputable fan source for all things The Old Republic.

The multiple author format has advantages in creating sites like Darth Hater. There’s variety for one, with each author having a distinct style and mode of speech. There’s also the ability to update quickly, so even if one of the author’s isn’t online to catch a bit of news, someone else is inevitably able to pick it up. This shows in the frequency and quickness with which news is posted to Darth Hater, from developer postings, to significant threads, to new reveals. My Google Reader always has something new at Darth Hater to look at, and that’s not a bad thing.

As if the blog wasn’t enough, the guys over at Darth Hater also have a fledgling podcast on SWTOR. They’re up to 4 episodes now, so if you want a good bit of an SWTOR fix and you can’t stop at reading the various blogs and news sites, check out Darth Hater’s podcast. I know that among the many TOR podcasts currently running, I enjoy listening to theirs.

Even though the name of the site distinctly puts them into the camp of the Sith, don’t be worried –  Darth Hater has plenty of balanced, frequently updated content for Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I highly advise adding them to your RSS.

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August 25, 2009

My (Blogging) Hero

by Frank — Categories: Internet, Social Geekery — Tags: , — 3 Comments
S is for Supersexy Superhero
Image by karla_k via Flickr

Lately I’ve found myself at the bookstore on a regular basis, and with time to kill I’ve managed to devour a number of interesting and meaningful tomes, from Chelsea Handler‘s hilarious “My Horizontal Life” to Jim Butcher‘s Dresden Files novels. I haven’t really found very many geekery books out there that were worth mentioning, but there are a couple that are near and dear to my heart.

Blogging Heroes is a book that compiles interviews from 30 of the best known and successful bloggers of the Internet, from sites like Lifehacker, Engadget, Gizmodo, and more. It’s interesting not only to take a peek behind the keyboard for many of these internet celebs, but also to see how varying in response they are to certain things. Some like using Search Engine Optimization to drive their traffic, other eschew it for a philsophy of quality content. Some had a careful, laid out plan to become successful at blogging while others sort of just fell into it. Some of them are in it for the competition and some, just for the passion and fun of it all.

I can’t recommend this book enough, just because the somewhat dissonant voice of the various interviews typifies many of the bloggers I know, love to read, and help cross-promote. We all have different views and ideas, some of us generate tons of traffic while those like me struggle to clear 40 hits a day. From the many ideas the book gave me, I hope to get better at generating my own brand of sunny, happy content that people will hopefully like to read daily. I’m still, well, optimistic that optimism itself has a place on the Internet, even when it is so over the top you would think I’m on drugs. It’s part of the charm, after all.

Perhaps the best lesson I came away from the book learning about, that was one of the few consistent thoughts across interviews was that you have to have drive and passion for whatever you are writing about. If you lack this, if you’re just punching the clock and doing the job, you’re just going to have  a ton of trouble generating contenta nd attracting users. There are a couple other tricks of the trade, but that one point is one that I totally have to get behind. I wouldn’t be able to generate 1-3 articles a day without passion.

Anyway, this is definitely worth a read, and hope other bloggers can take cues from what these folks have to say.

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