Home of Rex Havoc, Space Adventurer and other assorted Geekeries.
Most days I still feel like that painfully awkward, nerdy kid who had no friends parading around in a functional adult costume.
Gina Trapani
ginatrapani
If one of my heroes — and a highly successful tech journalist and writer — feels like this sometimes, maybe it’s ok that I do too.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cole007/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Some updates:
Spurred on by the outpouring of comments and (!) blog posts after asking for feedback, I got stuck into a few posts here and on my other site. Thank you everyone who responded and wrote replies — it gave me some much needed confidence and meant the world to me. I was buoyed for days afterwards (and loved the commentfest that followed here and elsewhere).
I officially quit Twitter (with my joshnunn account at least). I was leaving it open ended so I could come back without looking like a fool, but now I’ll have to hang my head in shame if I DO return.
First Waves is going great-guns. tjb654 tweeted “Wave on Slow Cook” and was retweeted by Pamela Fox (one of the Wave API evangelists). So I got a bunch of new readers and some more Facebook Fans!
I began re-working my portfolio site. I couldn’t be bothered installing a test environment on my laptop, so I put it up and started editing it live. It took me a little longer than I expected to make it usable though, as the documentation for MODx1 went down just as I started, so I couldn’t figure out how to build menus. Eventually I got something I’m happy with up just before…
Lifehacker (!!!) linked to my site! What the F is that about?! I suspect I’ve stepped into a mirror world where the Joshua Nunn of this world produces things that interest people and that they want to read. I kinda feel sorry for the poor schmuck who got sucked into my universe, but then I remember he probably goes around with a goatee, so it serves him right.
Tonight I published a massive post on First Waves. I suspect that because I’m massively proud of it, it won’t be read by anyone and I’ll realise that my mirror-self managed to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and switch us back… bastard. Or I could be pleasantly surprised that I get some people reading it. I’ve paid for a Clicky account, so now I’ll know when YOU are reading this… unless you’re using a feed reader… or I’m not on my computer when you do… What was i saying? This point has descended into a Rubenerd–esq sort of ramble. My apologies.
I don’t want a separate app where I have to gather all my friends and influencers in one place all over again — I have that in Twitter.
What I want from you is a way to flag a user (secretly) as someone whose opinion has aligned with mine in the past, so that when they say “I love this new movie”, I’ll be reasonably certain that I will too. And if I could flag someone’s opinion as wrong((that’s what we’re all thinking right?)) most of the time, then I will know that when they say “I love this song”, not to bother clicking through to it. It might mean that some of the users in my stream have slightly darker or lighter updates so I can tell at a glance which ones I’ve flagged as trustworthy or mostly wrong.
Heck, just being able to easily see that someone is in a “trusted” private Twitter list with a glance at my main stream would be double handy. Do that.
Thank you for listening. If you do this, you will win the world.
PS. to all the people I follow: I’m not talking about any of you. I think all of you have fantastic taste. It’s those other people I worry about…
I should preface this post with an introduction.
I’m Cathie and I am the “bloody end user” component of this blogging team. Â We figured that if Wave is going to be the ubiquitous thing that Google envisages, it will have to be workable by everyone — not just the more “savvy” of those amongst us.
So what I’ll be doing is coming at Wave from my perspective — perhaps not such a big picture view — but a fingers on keyboard aspect.
Okay … so one of the first things I looked for once I had my Wave account was a Twitter interface thingamabobby!
I found two — the first was clunky and ugly — but the second works a treat. Â It’s by TwitterGadget.com
To set it up …
Open a new wave, and click on the green blobby thing which allows you to add a gadget by url and paste the following url.
http://www.twittergadget.com/gadget_gmail.xml
This will then take you through to Twitter to allow access — and then this tidy little interface appears in your wave!
Online communication fraught with peril. An innocent conversation with a friend can turn nasty in seconds with the slip of misplaced word. Umpteen times this week I have put my foot in my mouth, or written something only to spend the rest of the day worrying if what I wrote might have offended someone. Written communication has never been so difficult. Why has it gotten harder, the more ways we have to communicate?
Matt is a fellow school support officer, doing ICT at another large metropolitan high school. He’s highly qualified and extremely knowledgeable, and a huge Microsoft fanboy. He’s my first port of call for questions about Windows Server and Active Directory, as I know he’s always on top of the latest information from Redmond.
Commander Keen also has an iPhone fetish. For months he paid me out about mine, but it turns out he really was just jealous. So now he has one of those fancy ones that does video and your taxes. They are pretty neat I guess.
He looks out for his friends and is willing to drop everything to help out a mate. He’s a prolific poster on the ICT help forum and email lists we have in the department, and his answers are actually helpful1. Since he joined Twitter, I’ve discovered he knows half the geeks in Adelaide already.
So if you want to follow someone who really knows their tech, Microsoft2, Open Source, and other geeky stuff and is super friendly and a good mate of mine — hit up @Talie5in.
As of posting, @networkvideohub hasn’t tweeted. I’m hoping that will change soon!
Today’s follow recommendation was a last minute ring-in. On a whim I suggested to Scott Thomas, the manager of Aberfoyle Park’s Network Video, that they should start a Twitter account, and he sounded keen. I thought it’d be neat to be able to tweet movie recommendations, check whether videos are in stock and generally interact with the staff there, who are all so nice.
The staff there have taken the time to learn my name, and give me recommendations when I go in of videos that I might like, having learned the type of videos that Camilla refuses to watch. And the Scott has very good taste in movies too, which is a good thing for a movie store manager. The other week I asked about the IT Crowd, and Ryan1 immediately hopped online and ordered it. That’s service.
They haven’t got a website for me to link to unfortunately2, so their Twitter account will have to do. Follow @networkvideohub if you want to support a local Adelaide business who’s trying something new. Follow them for information on the latest movie releases, movie recommendations and because the staff there are friendly and know videos.
I’ve never met Mo. You might think I’m afraid of him because he’s scary lookin’ or because he’s a “400ft tall doomsday megabot1″ but I’m not. I just haven’t had the opportunity yet. He isn’t scary online though — in fact he’s quite the opposite. His avatar shoots laser beams from his eyes, but I’m sure they’re laser beams of joy.
I’ve followed Mo soon after I joined Twitter. He’s one of the more active Adelaide Twitterers, despite the fact that he’s unapologetically2 a Friendfeed fanboy. He’s just as active on both services though, and happily pops in and out of both to carry on cheerful conversations with his many followers. He’s helpful and talented, and an inspiration with his (rassafrassin) custom workouts. He tweeted the beginning of his plan to get fit, and has reported huge successes since, showing tremendous determination.
His ReactionDynamics site showcases his photography and 3D design work, as well as his impressive resume. It also contains a picture of Mo with his sweet Abraham Lincoln beard3.
If you wanna follow someone who’s well known to both Twitterers and Friendfeeders alike, who sometimes talks like a robot, has a wicked wit, and is and all-around overachiever, follow @mokargas. And on Friendfeed too, if that’s your thang.
Beau is one of my few core Twitterers who I haven’t actually ever met in person. But he’s the epitome of what the internet means for relationships for me. Though we’ve never met I’ve known him for about a year now, and I respect his knowledge of technology, I appreciate his perspective as a high school student, and I love his enthusiasm and sense of humour on Twitter.
He was one of the first people to follow me on Twitter (out of the blue), and then a few days later emailed me for access to a locked website I administer. I’m pretty certain it was completely coincidental1 but if he hadn’t added me to Twitter I would have given him access, as it was only through Twitter I knew he was a high school student and not a teacher as I would have assumed — HA!
I’ve followed his websites in their various incarnations over the last year. Unfortunately I’ve only realised in writing this that his entire site has moved AGAIN, and I need to re-subscribe to his blog. It’s packed with tips and tech news and obviously updated a lot more often than I’ve been thinking for the last month or so!
If you want to follow someone who’s full of energy and enthusiasm, is a little quirky, has a passion for geekery, and I suspect may have a little of the drama queen in him2 you can find him on Twitter @beaugiles.
Lord Folland of Albion (or David as he was known before he took the throne of Albion in a bloody muddy coup) has been a mate of mine for years. We used to attend the same church, and had enormous fun making videos together and editing them on his eMac(?) iMac.