Twits

Today's photo is old. I might have used it before. I... don't really care, to be honest. I'm really needing some spring to show itself so that I can get enthused -- or at least un-ennuied -- about taking some new shots. Pointless shots? Pretty much guaranteed, yes, but at least they'd be new.

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I'm sort of torn at the moment. I hate it when I find myself thinking about doing something that I've stated outright in the past is stupid and still think is kind of stupid. But, er, maybe not as stupid as I thought it was initially.

By way of illustration, let's go back to about 2002 or so. Picture me, an active internet forum member, chatting to a friend from one of the forums on messenger (back when I used to both chat and use messenger. Boy, that seems like a long time ago now). The subject of blogging came up, and I let it be known that I thought blogging on the whole was kind of a waste of time. I mean, what the heck is the point of a blog, really? You sit there typing to yourself and basically have no interaction with anyone who might possibly be reading your narcissistic meanderings.

We're talking 2002 here, remember. Many blogging platforms were pretty basic, and you had to manually add things like comment forms, counters, and the like from other providers. And sometimes that wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do, so a lot of people never bothered to try.

Back then, the internet to me was all about the idea of community. I went to the internet to discuss things (sometimes incredibly stupid things, true, but they were still discussions), not to be lectured to. To me, the difference between forums and blogs was like the difference between going for coffee with friends and being harangued by some mad homeless person while waiting for a bus. I just couldn't see why someone would prefer the second option over the first.

Then... a few things happened. I started to notice how circular the discussions in forums can get, I wanted to learn a bit of basic html, and I got bored one day.

Bored enough to go to a small blogging site (this was before Blogger became part of the Google amoeba), design a simple layout, and make my first blog post. It's here, in all its non-glory. The template is different now and I deleted all of the other posts on that blog when I decided to start using it for pointless artiness and move the pointless blather to its own place, but I kept that first post just because it was the first.

Speaking of first, at first I just used that blog (which at the time was only posts and a few links. I had no way to allow comments or pictures or much of anything, really) to store some astronomy stories that I used at work. Which I moved over here when I deleted the old stuff, by the way. Just search astronomy at the top of the page if you're interested. I didn't know why I had a blog, I had no idea what to do with it, and I figured I'd give up on the blog thing in a month or two.

That was 2003. Now? I keep two blogs more-or-less going, I blog for work, I follow a bunch of blogs, and the few forums that I even bother to keep up with anymore probably don't even know I exist because I've taken up lurking nearly full-time.

What changed? I dunno. Blogging platforms on the whole got more user-friendly and that caused a wider variety of people to start blogging, maybe. And as commenting became more widespread blogs became more than just shouting in the dark (although I personally still rarely comment). And forums started to seem so deja vu that I really couldn't be bothered to try to come up with new ideas to keep up my end of the conversation, as it were.

I'm not sure that I've really changed my mind about blogs overall, though. Most of them, especially mine, are still largely wastes of time. I suppose maybe I've decided that a bit of time-wasting can be harmlessly entertaining in the end, is all.

And what brought this history of Dee's blogging career on?

Twitter.

I don't especially like Twitter. I tweet for work (if you're desperate for the work blog address or the work Twitter homepage, e-mail me. I try to keep them separate from my personal waste-of-timeage) which at least has a purpose, but the thought of having a personal Twitter account seems pretty darned pointless. Even more pointless than this blog, since the very nature of Twitter makes things smaller and more immediate.

So why am I even thinking of Twitter? Well, I have to admit that there are a few feeds I'd like to be following. A couple of celebrities, some science-based stuff, and a friend or two, mostly. Plus, the whole new phone thing is taking my non-computerness out of the equation, since I'm looking at changing my phone plan slightly to fit the phone I'm sort of thinking of getting. Now, I do realise that I could just start a Twitter account to follow people and not bother tweeting at all myself, but if you've got the account you're probably going to find yourself using it, right?

Oh, bugger. I really don't want to become a twit.

Like I didn't want to become a blogger.





Somebody hit me with a brick now, before things get any worse.