New Look

I've changed around the color scheme here on the blog to match my main site, and added a FriendFeed widget. I've been trying to use FriendFeed a bit more lately, instead of just randomly sending my tweets/pictures/etc. there without thinking about it. It will be interesting to see what the recent Facebook acquisition will do to the tool.

Also, yes, I have other things I am supposed to be doing, and yes, I should stop procrastinating and get back to them.

Recycled Soda Bottle Box

This is a beautiful, functional example of re-use at work: recycled box by Zitta Schnitt.

In fact, I think I'll add a tag for recycle, to cover both recycle and re-use examples. My mind seems to be bending that way lately, even to the point of subscribing to two different eco-friendly Twitter streams. I guess my use of that tool is evolving somewhat!

As Seen On Twitter

JessaJune: Staggering into CC, unshowered, pocketful of almonds as breakfast, Pass forgotten (luckily in bag). Glad out late enough for @jmcnally #sxsw

Twitter Advice

From Ari, via Twitter: How to Use Twitter for Marketing and PR

Why yes, I am posting this solely to improve its Google ranking, in the desperate hopes that Marketing and PR firms will see it.

(I am not saying Twitter cannot be used for customer outreach - check out SFBART for a great example of this. But Twitter is more for getting information out and improving the experience of people who are already your customers, not for driving up new business from strangers. I restricted my Twitter feed because I got tired of being followed by people trying to hawk businesses and services, who mistakenly thought that following ME was going to get me to follow THEM and their advertising messages, instead of just showing their ignorance and making me think worse of them. Figure out how the technology works before you start using it - otherwise you're just a spammer. And on Twitter, you're a failed spammer, at that.)

Too many channels?

In the car last night, I was composing a blog post in my head about the gorgeous sunset and fog-rainbow that I experienced last night driving over the Santa Cruz mountains. The mood was somewhat jarred by the fact that there was a car on FIRE at the summit - not smoke, actual flames.

And when I got home, instead of blogging about it, I updated my Facebook status.

Instead of blogging my concern about California's water situation and the wish for rain, and my disappointment when it fails to come and my happiness that we're finally getting some this week - that all went into my Twitter and Facebook statuses too.

The only thing I've been using the blog for with any real consistency is for my knitting projects. And then I joined Ravelry. I find I'm using my project notes sections on Ravelry like a mini blog! For example, here is part of my project page for my Calorimetry:

(Click for a bigger image.) You'll see that I made some notes when I started the project, and then made dated updates as I knit the pattern. Excerpt follows:

I’ve been meaning to make one of these for a while. Shockingly, I did the full gauge swatch as indicated and am exactly on. I actually would prefer to be a bit under, so I’m going down a needle size...

Jan 16
Done, except for finding a button for a fastener. I actually went down 2 needle sizes, and while the length ended up right, it’s wider than I’d like. I think I’ll leave it, though - it definitely fits, it’s just more hatlike than I’d anticipated. At some point, I’ll probably knit another and eliminate some of the rows for a more headband-ish look.

Jan 19
Buttons purchased & sewn on. The wood matches just the way I thought it would. Pity the weather is so warm, I have no cause to wear this for now…

There is the relevant information, targeted to those specifically interested (any member of Ravelry who is interested in me, the yarn involved, or the pattern can find this page). And it's not on my blog. Because face it, not very many of my friends knit (and those who do, I encourage to join Ravelry!), and therefore are most likely not interested in the minutia of how I created a given project. They might be interested in the pictures, but those can be found on Flickr.

I can't decide if this is a good thing. My blog is starting to feel a bit obsolete. Reserved for only the things not targeted to a specific (knitting) audience or more than 140 characters long, I find I am not often drawn to make entries.

I find myself wondering if engaging in all the various social media outlets, we are spreading ourselves too thin? I certainly feel like my blogging efforts in this incarnation are nothing like what I was creating in 2001. Part of that is maturity, both of personality and internet savvy, but some of it was that blogging was the only way I had to communicate with the internet world. Now I am flooded with options, and it feels like there are too many channels available to do all of them justice.

Don't Friend Me, says David Lee King

Recently I was happy to have found David Lee King's blog about libraries and web technology. There are a lot of good conversations going on over there - most recently about Twitter and libraries friending patterns, plus a follow up where I perhaps waxed too rhapsodic in the comments.

He talks about libraries just friending other libraries rather than reaching out to their community. I added to that my experience of being friended by lots of libraries and librarians spread all over the country. Perhaps it's a unique scenario, since I use Twitter purely as a means of staying in touch with friends, but I did put that I was a library school student in my profile. And for a while, I was accepting all the friend requests that I recieved from librarians, so long as we seemed to have something in common in addition to that (usually knitting).

But eventually I let almost all of them go - they weren't twittering about things that interested me, and I had a really hard time imagining they were interested in the fact that my cats can be annoying, or that I love my crockpot. As far as library institutions go... if I don't have some sort of connection to them, I'm not sure why I would want to follow them. Besides, many of them don't pass the following/follower ratio rule (if there are a large number of people who you follow who don't follow you in return, I am probably not interested, either). I do follow places that I have some connection with - SF BART, for example. If the library in my neighborhood had a Twitter feed, I would follow it. But just because someone, somewhere has some connection to library science is not enough for me. Not for the way I choose to use the tool.

Which is not to say I don't wish my fellow library-related people and institutions well. I do. I just don't necessarily want to read about all of them every day. Life is too short, and time too precious.

Tweet Cloud

The Tweet Cloud app is pretty fun: here you can see my twitter cloud.

For me personally, it's interesting to see my vocabulary reflected - which words crop up the most often (feeling, paper, gorgeous) tell me interesting things. Paper especially, perhaps, what with the whole digital archive kick I'm on.

Earlier I did a scan without excluding @ words, which showed me that my most frequent replies are to boobolina, kplawver, and esinka. No big surprises there.

I was glad to see that while "crap" was noted, it wasn't in one of the stronger fonts. I feel like I've been using that word a lot lately. But cats and coffee trump it by a long shot.

Not Dead Yet... I think I'll go for a walk...

Yeah. So um, hi. That whole "if you don't have anything nice to say..." rule makes for a crappy blog. Also, I've gone back to using Twitter as my primary status source, it seems. I am apparently getting better at short-form posting.

Quick update:
- My mobile phone is dead. It was in fact, my only phone, so if you need me, send a tweet or email. I hope to get a new one over the weekend.
- Big mystery project is still only 3/4 done and I haven't worked on it for weeks. I need to drop all other procrastinatory hobbies and get back to it. I'm kind of over this and ready for it to be finished. I still think it's going to be awesome, it's just... sooooo time consuming.
- I managed (after much last-minute scrambling) to submit my intent to graduate or whatever-the-heck-it's-called for December 2008. Why December graduation stuff has to be filed in March (aka 9 months in advance) is beyond me. Scheduling completion of a master's degree should not the temporal equivalent of birthing a baby, IMO.
- There's a big meet-and-greet for the applicants for the Saratoga Cemetery Board happening this Friday at 6pm in the Saratoga Senior Center. If you're a resident of Saratoga or Monte Sereno, or have friends/loved ones/acquaintances/enemies/pets/etc. who are, come on down and talk to the folks! It's only an hour, and we want the community to use this opportunity to give Supervisor Kniss their feedback.

Twittered

It's true that I enjoy Booboolina's company, but my Twitter seems to be stuck. Every time I try to update, it just repeats.

What I WANTED to say was T minus 2 hours to Margaritaville.

Cue OK Go

Here it goes again... I haven't blogged for years. And Blogger was the first tool I ever used, after the hardcoding days were over. Why am I blogspotting it now... why, laziness, of course.

Okay, to be fair... it's less laziness than sheer exhaustion. I'm working full time in a crazy job, doing the grad school thing (part time), trying to maintain a relationship and friendships, and fussing over my cats. Oh, and knitting, and occasionally logging in some time playing The Sims 2.

My inner computer geek isn't bursting to get out, since I work on websites all day. But on the other hand, I work on websites all day, so it seems dumb not to be working on one for myself. Ahhh, contradiction.

So I don't know where this is going, I've just been kicking around the desire to post again. Mostly because I've been using Twitter as my personal mini-blog for the last month. And that's just silly. Everyone KNOWS I can't be that brief.