What the cats were up to this morning

Jus' chillin'. Each in their own ways.

These pictures are also on my instagram account if anyone's into that sort of thing. Find me at deelworld, as usual, because I'm that creative.

The account's pretty new, as in I have a whole four followers. I should add a link badge here, really. In fact, I'll do that after I'm done this.

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A quick word on the operation front: all my pre-op appointments are made, and I have my first blood work and an EKG on Monday. They will tell me that my heart rate's pretty high, because it always is in hospital situations. I get white coat syndrome, as they call it. Many people do. It's screws up measurements, though, and that's a pain in the butt that I could do without. Ah well, it's not like I'm the first or the last person that they'll see whose body's in a panic even while her brain's trying to tell it to stop being so effing stupid.

All of this, of course, is going to make the whole thing more real in a big hurry. I'll spend a lot of time worrying because that's how I'm hooked up. It's making me hope that I don't get bumped, ironically, because I don't see the point in wasting a month's anxiety only to be told that it'll be NEXT month...



I'll keep you posted.

Social media is weird, and other facts from Captain Obvious

One more pointless flower picture, because it'll be all snow once I start using the photos from yesterday. Oh, and for those looking for the weekly Turkey Brothers shot, it's here on twitter.

Ah, twitter. As much as I use it -- especially at work -- I'll never fully understand it. You can tweet something important that you're sure is important to the community (twitter community AND real community, in the case of work tweets) and you might get a like. I won't comment about why likes mean that twitter assumed its user base was too stupid to figure out favourites, by the way. Anyway, something important might get a like, but something completely stupid tweeted in passing is bound to be liked and retweeted all over the cyberverse. I have a personal example from just yesterday when it comes to silliness ruling the day. I'd tweeted a slightly fuzzy shot of my ear and earrings for someone who wanted to see the diamond studs (a birthday gift from my uncle, who bought them for himself but hardly used them, so he passed them on to me. Which, thanks!), Me being me, though, I couldn't leave it at an ear photo (and have you ever tried to take a clear shot of your own ear with a phone? Not the easiest thing), so I then tweeted a joke about my scar.. oh wait, I may as well just link to it: Everyone will want that scar. And what happens? Five retweets, and here's the weird part. None of these people follow me, and I have no idea who any of them are. Five retweets is pretty weird anyway when you have less than thirty followers.

Social media works in mysterious ways, I suppose.

I was going to type more, but I want to do a little drawing before lunch so I guess I'll just stop now. If you need anything more, you could always check out my new favourite thing: kitchen gadget tests. Appropriate for the Christmas shopping season, maybe.

The wonders (and non-wonders) of technology.

Hello? Yes, this is phone.

For anyone who didn't get that.

I've been doing my seasonal purge of you didn't use this one with the photos on my nerdstick, since we now have snow (sigh) and I'm not likely to post more photos of spring flowers until the snow (sigh) completely depresses me. In other words, expect a mixed bag coming up.

I thought I'd give you a quick update on my belated life with a smart phone these days. It's ok. I use it more than I want to, but it's handy. I use it an awful lot at work, actually, because I do a fair amount of our tweeting and instagramming (twitter @naturecentre; instagram @kerry_wood_nature_centre). Besides, at work I can hitch a ride on the wifi so it doesn't blow my data out of the water.

No, I don't have wifi at home.

Why would I have wifi? I don't have a computer.





Except the phone, of course. Which I actually used as a word processor this week to work on the newsletter when I was home on Tuesday. That's when I feel old, really; it's doing things like that. It wasn't all that long ago that we were wondering why the Japanese would even want a camera on a phone, and now I instagram events and write articles on mine. The funniest moment so far (to the point where he couldn't understand my message) was when I realised things were different as I was leaving a message for Dad about the fact that I'd e-mailed him a photo of my first attempt at pizzelle (um... pizzelle), since he was the one who bought me the pizzlle iron as a birthday present. As I was trying to leave him a voice mail it occurred to me how odd it was that I was phoning him to tell him that I'd e-mailed him (from my phone) a picture that I'd taken with my phone.

Our world's become a weird, weird place.

Anyway, there's where we stand with modern phonage. I've joined the cult, I guess. And for those of my two fans who've been missing my incredibly non-exciting blog blather because I'm generally too lazy these days, since I got the phone (and since I curated @PeopleOfCanada a little while ago), my own twitter account's busier than it used to be. Find me @deeolworld. Or, you know, just use the link on the sidebar.

If you've bothered to read this.

Geez, who reads nowadays anyway? Isn't that why Whomever created tl;dr?





tl;dr: I have a phone. I use it.

Phone games

This'll be quick. I have work to do. Actually, that's what led to this.

I was out taking phone shots for work instagram (I'm not on instagram, but work is. I'll give the handle another time if anyone's interested) and twitter, and decided on my way back to the office to try a panorama since I've never done that with this phone. Or anything else, for that matter. Anyway, for a first go it turned out not too badly:

As usual, click on the thumbnail to see the bigger version.

And that's my workplace. On the phone you can pan across the photo, which made Wheat a little jealous since his doesn't do that. Maybe it's a feature of newer Android phones? Dunno, but I'll probably be taking more of these now.

Art?

 My two fans will already know that occasionally when I have a photo that goes beyond pointless into just plain bad, instead of just tossing it I'll play silly photoeditor games for a while. It's just a bit of fun, really: how can I make this thing look completely different and yet still almost somewhat identifiable? The added challenge is that I use a fairly simple free editor with limited abilities. I've never set my hands (brain?) on Photoshop, and while I'm debating trying out GIMP, it seems a bit selfish to download it onto someone else's computer just so that I can play.

Um, yeah. Still don't have a computer at home. I spend enough time on computers at work or here at Dad's place, and frankly I enjoy both the down time and the lower bills. That's not the topic at hand, though.

The topic, such as it is, is about at what point a little bit of digital fiddling becomes art. Let me say from the outset that I'm not denigrating digital artists in the slightest (some of them are absolutely incredible) or for a moment calling my silliness art. It's not. It's me taking a crap photograph and trying to make it more interesting to myself.

But there's also no denying that when I'm playing around like that I'm making aesthetic choices. I'm trying things out, keeping some effects and discarding others, and in the end coming up with something that looks as close to the way I wanted it as I can make it with my limited software. Is that any different than, say, this? This below, I mean:

This is one of my better spider drawings from a number of years ago. It's a Thin-legged Wolf Spider (Pardosa sp.) carrying an an egg case on her spinnerets. The original was done in Wolff's carbon pencils.

Hmmm. Can you believe that I only just now realised I used a Wolff's pencil to draw a Wolf Spider? Entirely coincidental, honestly.

This was done for a display and to some people would be classed as illustration rather than art (although anyone who thinks that illustrators aren't artists is talking through his hat, to my mind), but here you see a choice of subject, a choice of medium, and working until I ended up with something that looks as close to the way I wanted it as I could make it with my limited abilities.

Is that different than playing with photos, then?

It's a fine line. I'll admit that my definition of art is a little old-fashioned, although knowing that helps me to do my best to try and broaden it. One of my blocks is effort. I put effort into drawing; I put very little into photoediting. My reflex is to think of the one with effort as being somewhat closer to real art.

It's not always true, though. Art can be an innovator like Jackson Pollock splashing paint on a canvas, or Banksy quickly spray painting a stencil on a building. And yes, there are plenty of people who would argue that neither of those people made (or are making) art, but there's no denying that what they produced makes -- or should make -- anyone with an interest in art at least stop for a moment to think about it.

Things turn pretty philosophical for me after that, and frankly I'd like to wrap this up and do some other stuff. I guess in the end people have been debating about what art really is for... well, probably since cave paintings, and whether my silly photos count as any sort of art fit in there somewhere. That's it for me today, though. Twitter users, don't forget that I become @PeopleOfCanada for a week starting tonight. Non-Twitter users? I don't know what to tell you.

So it turns out I'm Canada...

Or will be, at least.

The photo is, of course, completely unrelated to the topic. Thus, pointless.

Anyway.

Next week I'll be Canada, folks. And what the heck do I mean by that? Well, it's a Twitter thing. A number of years ago the country of Sweden decided to turn its official account over to private citizens; a different one each week. The idea was to give people around the world a look at Sweden through the eyes of its people rather than just its government. The people curating the account could discuss almost any topics they wanted, with very little censorship. Many of us thought that they were a bit crazy.

It worked. It's still working. Check @sweden if you haven't already.

The idea caught on and spawned many other country, province, and city accounts. Some of these are official and some of them were just started by enthusiasts who wanted the twitterverse to get to know their country (town, etc.) better. They're cool. I follow a couple of them.

So what about Canada? Well, Canada does have an official @Canada account. It's government. It's tourism. It's... pretty to look at? Yeah, but it doesn't have much personality. Sorry, government, but that's the truth.

Long before the government got into the Twitter business Canada gained an unofficial curated account (@PeopleOfCanada). Unofficial, as I said, but they invite Canadians of all types and from all provinces and territories to spend a week tweeting their version of Canada to the world.

Starting Sunday night it's me.

Yep.

So what will I talk about as Canada? Dunno yet, but I'll probably start with where I work and take it from there. I'm asking for suggestions on our work social media since I do want to represent where I live rather than talking about, say, ostomies all week or something like that. The big, weird thing for me is that it's not only putting my city out there, it'll be putting me out there as well. Actual me. No deeol. Actual me with a location and a picture and everything.

That's something for someone who refuses to be on facebook because I don't think the internet at large needs to know that much about me, really.



Ah well. Had to happen sometime. Anyway, if you're curious at all you'll be able to find me @PeopleOfCanada (starting Sunday night, as I said) for a week, and then at my usual @deeolworld after that.





This is going to be interesting.



At least I hope so. And you can get more info here: http://peopleofcanada.tumblr.com/

Auto

'Scuse me if I sound a little down today. I'm not; I'm just tired. Spent too long thinking about work things last night, especially for a day off. Sometimes I really wish I had a Shut Up, Brain switch.

On the bright side, I like today's photo. That's two in a row. This blog is headed to pumpkinland for sure if I'm not careful.

Um, for anyone new to the program: blog comes to point = blog turns into pumpkin. And I really don't want an orange blog.

Anyway.

I've been musing about autos today. Not cars, no. Auto, as in autofill, autocorrect, autopost... Ok, mostly autopost. Autofill I never use, and autocorrect mostly amuses me. Autopost and scheduled post, though, have me a bit conflicted.

The host of our work website, like most hosts nowadays, offers the option of automatic posting to facebook and twitter any time the website is updated. A couple of the staff who are involved in the website use the autopost regularly, but I never do. I hate going on to twitter and seeing that the last thing posted by our account reads something like I've just updated my website! Check it out: (insert automatic link here).

You know, I almost loathe that rather than hate it. It's so... bot. So obviously an autopost, and really doesn't go with the way we as an organisation usually post. Those who use it think it helps drive traffic to the website, but I'm just so not sure. For me as a twitter reader, when I see something that looks like an autopost I tend to ignore it. Too many autoposts and I stop following the account altogether, and I don't want to see that happening with our work account because it's become a pretty valuable marketing tool (and I never, never in a million years thought I'd be using the words twitter and valuable in the same thought). Heck, I worry about ticking people off on the days when I've been retweeting too often, and I only retweet things that I think would be of real interest to our followers. If (if, though. I honestly don't know if anyone does) they get miffed by that, wouldn't they get completely pissed off at repeatedly being told by a bot to check out the website?

I dunno.

Scheduling posts is another issue. As it stands now, we don't do any scheduling. I did an interview last week for the local cable community channel -- which, since the evil that was Canwest Global managed to kill our tv station, is the only tv outlet for local events -- and the producer and I got talking about social media. She regularly schedules tweets, because she's often out in the community shooting and may not have time to tweet live. If she knows she has things that need to be on twitter, she'll schedule them to come out at various times during the day. That has its advantages, for sure. It means she's not doing batch tweeting (which in my mind is almost as bad as bots. No, news organisations, I don't want to see twenty tweets from you in a row on my feeds. At least spread them out a little), and it means that she doesn't have long periods when she doesn't tweet at all. On the other hand, if someone replies to a scheduled tweet she might not see it for a while, and lack of replies can frustrate people who are interested in a particular tweet.

We, on the other hand, are pretty patchy with our tweets. If I'm in the office all day I've got time to have the twitter feeds on in the background and keep an eye on things. If I've been out on the trails with the camera I'll tweet sightings, or if I've blogged my photos I'll tweet the link. Sometimes we'll live tweet events. And then... if those of us who handle the tweeting happen to be out of the office or on holidays (ahem Wheat), we may not tweet for days.

Which strategy is better, do you think? Do we maintain a steady presence that may make it obvious that a person isn't always doing the tweeting at that particular moment, or do we stay with the Bay of Fundy style tidal tweeting that we're doing now? I'm sure I don't know, but what we're doing seems to be working enough to keep it going.



I have no way to end this. Tired, remember? Maybe in honour of pointlessness and all the royal babyness that I never mentioned we should just have a little Prince George? Sounds like a plan to me.

Apparently it's just too much effort

Today's photo inadvertently exemplifies the post title. The camera's at work because I was half-thinking of taking some shots of an event that's happening here right now, but at the moment I don't feel like it so I just took a photo of the side of the filing cabinet instead. I didn't have to move from my desk chair for it.

Hey, at least it's something. I haven't had time to take photos lately. If I have time to blather in this coming week, Whomever only knows what you'll be seeing here.

Anyway. I should keep this short, because I should be working on the newsletter. Actually, I have been working on the newsletter. I'm just using this as an excuse to take a brain break.

So, effort. I have a LinkedIn account, did you know that? No, really. I keep getting the update e-mails, so I must have one.

I've signed in once, I think. Maybe twice. I have a handful of contacts, but I'm not sure that I remember my password.

I guess it's just too much effort to bother to maintain, as much as it would probably be of professional value. It's much easier just to broadcast work-related things on the Twitter account. I do have my own Twitter account, by the way, but I only use it to follow other accounts with. I guess it's too much effort to think of things to tweet that anyone would care about.

It's funny, considering how much time I spend with social media stuff here at work, how little enthusiasm I have for social media in my personal life. I can't even blame that on my lack of computer, since I'm lucky enough to have one of those workplaces where personal internet use is ok'd as long as it's not interfering with the job.

You wouldn't be reading this if that wasn't the case.

I'm not on Facebook by personal choice (I probably should be, so that I could be helping out with the work Facebook page, but I'm not. That's how little I want to be on Facebook). Even if my feelings about Facebook were different, though, I have a feeling that I'd have the least-updated Facebook account in the history of Facebook accounts.

I just don't have the energy to have fake friends.



I need to find the energy to get back to the newsletter, however. Probably no blather here for the next couple of days, but then my two fans are probably completely surprised that I made the effort to blather today after what they've just read.

And now... go back and read the inane sentences my coworkers have left on the filing cabinet. You know you want to. Maybe create one of your own, if you like. E-mail me or comment and I'll put it up there.