On Being a Twit.

I've been on Twitter for a while now -- my first Tweet was on April 1st, 2007. I didn't really get into it much at first, for two reasons: 1) I didn't see any real reason to sink large amounts of time into it, particularly since I was already blogging my random thoughts on MySpace (ugh) at the time; and 2) I know that I have a very bad tendency to sink large amounts of time into things once I get into them, even when there's no good reason for me to do so, and I did not want to fall into that trap at the time (same reason I have not, nor will I ever, get involved with World of Warcraft and the like). So my Tweets were few and far between. The fact that my job's web filters started blasting Twitter three days after my first Tweet helped, too (although now Twitter is unblocked, go figure).

Well, now I'm starting to fall into that trap. Lately the things I would like to do with my (admittedly limited) online presence have grown well beyond the limitations of MySpace and Facebook and probably even this blog, and as I'm able to sneak away more time in front of the computer (not an easy task with a toddler), it will continue to evolve. So I decided that being more involved with Twitter would be a step in that direction. Plus, it's kinda fun.

Part of my reluctance to get sucked into the vorTwex (see what I did there? It's like vortex, but unnaturally mated with Twitter) was my inability to find interesting people to follow. My followers seemed completely random until I realized that they were probably just executing a search on certain terms and following anyone whose profile included any of those terms. I didn't want to cast that broad of a net. I also didn't want to put in the time or effort towards doing it the right way (see point 1 above).

Now that I am Tweeting more of my silly little life away, I have run across a number of web applications that have made Twitter a little more useful to me. In the open spirit of the Internet, I shall share them:

Twibes allows you to hand-pick the 10 Twitterers (Tweeters?) you are following who you think deserve to have more followers. Mmm, word-of-mouth advertising.

Twittelicious is a similar service, encouraging you to submit individual Tweets or Twitter sites that you find interesting (or amusing or whatever). They're even separated into sub-groups like "Weird" and "Famous People." There should be a "Creative Profanity" section.

WeFollow is a user-generated Twitter directory. Twitterers (look, I just prefer "Twits" so I'll use that from here on in) list themselves under different categories so that other Twits can find them easily. Most popular ones bubble up to the top of the listings.

TweetScan searches Twitter and other microblogging sites for given search terms and spits out a list of all the recent Tweets (or whatever other sites call their posts) that match the terms. Great for following hundreds of conversations about waffles, for instance.

Twubble digs through your existing friends and gives you a list of other Twits you may want to follow, based on what it discovered whilst interrogating your associates.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on my mood), these services are helping me rediscover Twitter and keep it from being the next stale account that I never log into anymore (I'm looking at you, Friendster). I'm certain there are more which I haven't discovered, but there you go. Of course, now the problem I find myself running headlong into is that I have to sink more time into Twitter just to keep up with all my newfound friends. You'll recall, unless you're a turnip, that this is the reason I kind of stayed away from Twitter in the first place, treating it more as a curiosity than a vital social tool.

I've decided that I need to be more selective with my circle of chosen Twits. Now that I'm following a few companies, online magazines, news aggregates and such, it occurs to me that it makes no sense to do so. I see no advantage to following these entities' Tweets that can't be gained with a plain ol' RSS feed reader. There is, however, one major disadvantage: the sheer volume of these Tweets makes it so that I have to scroll through multiple pages of material just to catch up on the Tweets of regular individuals. So, new rule: no following company Twits who have functional RSS feeds. Eliminate redundancy.

True, there are Twitter clients I can install that will help me keep corporate(ish) Tweets separate from Joe Blow Tweets, but I find the notion of installing a local application to keep up with a web-based application... unappealing. Maybe I'll try it out, but I promise nothing.

There is one thing that can save me from my impending addiction to Twitter, and that is my other annoying tendency to quickly get bored with things and walk away from them when the effort required to maintain an addiction reaches an even remotely uncomfortable level, or (more often) when a new shiny object slides into my view. I have a feeling the next shiny object will be finally learning Drupal, or Django, or Joomla. Who names these things?

Useless Cat.

Sheila and I have a pet cat. Well, Sheila has a pet cat. What I have is an animal which I must tolerate living in my home. Anyway, Zorro (that's the cat) is completely useless. He just lounges around and occasionally vomits on something. If there's a bug in the house and he knows about it, he might chase it. That's about it.

Zorro isn't like some cats, the cats that do funny or cute things and you take pictures of them doing said things and then e-mail the photos to all your coworkers and clog up their Outlook inbox with banality and hey look people, they only give us 50MB limits on these things so why don't you get back to work and stop harassing me with your dumb pets and by the way I checked on Snopes and that story you e-mailed me about the Nieman-Marcus cookie recipe is totally bogus.

No, Zorro does nothing worthwhile at all. I can't even make a decent lolcat out of him. I've tried:








I mean, these are the worst lolcats ever, right? I won't even waste the time, bandwidth, and server space of the good folks at I Can Has Cheezburger with these failed attempts at kitty humor. Zorro just isn't funny. Except for his extreme irrational fear of foam pool noodles (apparently also known as water logs). That is hilarious.

So lazy.

Wow, it's been over a week since I posted anything here.

I swear, I have stuff to say, I've just been preoccupied with work (and have been taking half-hour lunches so no time to blog there) and wife and baby and sleep and stuff...

Finally performed a long-overdue distro upgrade on my PC. Now I'm only 11 months behind the current release cycle, not 17. Hooray for progress. Had I more ambition, I would go ahead and make the leap to Intrepid.

Also catching up on some comic book reading. I hate being out of the loop. More on that later (eventually).

Tomorrow (er... later today), I paint. And not the good kind of painting. No, sir, nothing will be hanging up at any gallery... or above a friend/close acquaintance's fireplace (but only on the days when I happen to stop by, otherwise it's dogs playing poker). On the contrary, this is the bad kind of painting, the kind that evokes thoughts of Bob Vila and his more metrosexual counterpart Ty Pennington.

Parting ramble: type "powerpop" into the Tag field of your Last.fm radio. You will alternate between being utterly disgusted and pleasantly surprised. It's almost surreal.

Good morning.

Covers

I really like cover songs. I love to hear familiar tunes that have been reinvented by different artists. Kind of like the way I love seeing how different writers and artists interpret my favorite comic book characters. Even if a cover song sucks, I usually appreciate the attempt made by the artist to pay homage to an old (or not-so old) favorite.

So, today I decided to type "cover" into the Tag field on Last.fm Radio and give it a listen.

Ummm... holy crap. Why didn't I think of doing this sooner? My ears were filled with almost pure win.

My only complaint is that entirely too many artists have gotten it in their heads to cover the song "Umbrella." Seriously, did they all get together and record a "Let's help Rihanna get her face patched back up so she'll be pretty again" benefit album?

...

I know, I know... that was terrible. Domestic violence isn't funny. Not even when it happens to celebrities.

So anyway, if you're a fan of covers too, go and listen to Cover Radio on Last.fm if you haven't already. Because Pandora doesn't have tags (and it is also now blocked by the web filters at my job).

Over-Thinking Children's Television, vol. 2

Anyone who has watched even a single episode of Dora the Explorer can agree that Swiper the fox is a total douche. It isn't enough that he's always stealing things; he has to just casually throw them away, rather than scurrying off with his ill-gotten goods or maybe doing something useful with them. But then he's got this, I don't know, pervasive developmental disorder or something, where if you tell him three times not to rob you, he won't. Maybe it's like a mild avoidant personality disorder. I don't know... what do I look like, Frasier?

There's one episode of Dora that displays a moral ambiguity that I'm not comfortable with. Dora and Boots have a hankerin' for some blueberries, and rather than simply going back to Dora's house, or say, a grocery store, and getting some more blueberries, they decide to go to Blueberry Hill and pick some. Aside from the obvious insecticide-related concerns related to the consumption of unwashed fruit picked from random shrubbery, their scheme has a slight kink: Swiper lives on Blueberry Hill.

Of course, Dora and Boots are all worried that Swiper may come out and swipe "their" blueberries. The whole time, they're all "keep an eye out for that sneaky fox" and "he's always trying to swipe our stuff." I have some news for you two: You're tresspassing. You got the munchies, and suddenly it's okay to go stamping around Swiper's house and steal the berries he has lovingly cultivated all season? Selling those blueberries is the only way Swiper's able to pay his rent. Are you gonna let that klepto crash on your couch after he's been evicted? No, I didn't think so.

Oh, you're the star of the show, Dora, so you get to act on whatever selfish whim you happen to have. Nice. What's next? You and your boanthropic pal Benny gonna go down to the river and set fire to the Grumpy Old Troll's bridge so you can toast marshmallows? He lives under that bridge. Jerks.