Sunday, September 21, 2008

The 23 labours of Antiblogger

I don't have much to say, I feel like I said everything I wanted to say during this exercise and any repetition would be pointless and would be a waste of space on the internet. I can't say I've enjoyed this exercise as it has taken up a lot of time and felt like another assignment. In the process of this exercise I created so many new logins and passwords that I couldn't remember the important passwords that I need. I'm just glad it is all over and I can continue my more mundane but more real existance in the real world. My conclusion:

Sartre wrote «L'enfer, c'est les autres.» - Hell is other people.
I knew what the words meant but I never fully understood them until now.

«L'enfer, c'est les autres.»

Existence 2.0 is suffering.

ebooks

This is a great idea but after looking at Project Gutenberg I was a little disappointed. Most of the available texts were either technical ones or were incredibly old. So I didn't find anything of interest there, not even a Satre book. The kindle idea sounds great but too expensive and would they ever sell anything like that in NZ? Probably not. Nuff said.

Podcasts

Another irrelevant and not very clever neologism. I have looked at the two sites and I struggled to find anything of interest. It was also difficult to navigate around. I subscribed to the learn Spanish podcast as it was the most interesting one I could find. I have no intention of learning Spanish. ¿Que?

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Web 2.0 Awards list

Who decides which is the best? Shouldn't the page be a wiki so the plebs can determine which site is the best? The site itself just seems like another pointless waste of space to find more sites that are pointless wastes of space.

I looked at google maps although this was out of general interest. The new feature google street view has some merit in that you can see panoramic images at a street level. The streets look just like any other street and the traffic jams look just like other traffic jams and overseas tourist attractions have tourists flocking around them so it all seems out of place. I did take a little while to get used to navigating in the new view and loading was a little slow but overall I would give it 6 arbitrary units of performance measurement out of 10 arbitrary units of performance measurement.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Week 8 «Zoho Writer»

I prefer the layout of this to Word. I can more easily find «les guillemets» which is always important in an emergency.

I would like to know where this information is stored and who «owns» the information. People should have some concerns about this. And this means that you couldn't access any documents without an internet connection and we all know how unreliable those can be at times.

I can see the potential for people to work collaboratively using this tool but as they say «Too many cooks spoil the broth».

Also the publish option didn't work so I had to copy and paste.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Social networking

Once you've seen one social networking site, you've seen them all. It's nice people have found another way to communicate with each other. I have looked at various sites. These days 'social' seems to be the prefix of choice, put in front of all sorts of words just like e-everything ten years ago. The focus on all things social is akin to bread and circuses. These sites give people the illusion of control over the internet and their own lives and distract people from important politcal issues happening in the real world.

Week 6 (Pointless 2.0)

I didn't think it was possible but these services are more pointless than the last. Personally I wouldn't use deli.cio.us and no I don't think that's a clever name. Question: Why would anyone care about how other people 'tag' things?
Technorati is another service providing unnecessary solutions. Question: Why would anybody want to search for blogs?
Some of the perspectives on library 2.0 were engaging and meaningful, hopefully new technologies won't be thrust into people's faces before they are ready as I feel that would breed resentment.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Guess who?



Guess who? If you've met the someone like this you'll know who I'm talking about because you will never, ever forget. No matter how hard you try.

I prefer to use YouTube to view good quality video, not mediocrity by commoners. I don't know how this could be applied to library websites, any insights I did have would not be used anyway so my thoughts are irrelevant.

I wiki therefore I am

Yes I looked at the library wikis and was very underwhelmed. Yes I edited our library wiki to let the world know that 2 is my favourite number (well not really, it just seemed like the 'correct' thing to say). I'm sure wikis are useful to some people somewhere. However, is this a new idea? After having participated in this activity, it became clear to me where I had seen this before. Wikis are just the internet version of talkback radio where any unqualified pleb can add their two cents about whatever they like regardless of the facts. Yes I am doing the same, but who will stop me? I fear no reprisals as I sully the internet with my inane thoughts. In order to escape it is best to tune out, as most of us do to those talkback radio gurus.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

2B or not 2B?

http://rollyo.com/antiblogger/pencils/

Here is the link to my Pencil search engine using Rollyo. The instructions given made absolutely no sense, so here we are.

The Pencil search engine was designed with the discerning pencil consumer in mind. In these times of uncertainty we can now quickly check price movements in the volatile stationery market. We focus mainly on 2B but coverage includes 6B and even mechanical pencils so there should be no more confusion between 0.55 and 0.7mm pencil leads because we have all been there. At this stage the search engine is confined to the small domestic market but we hope to expand this to encompass the international markets in version 2.0. Bigger and better.

Our motto:

The Pencil search engine. Possibly the World's Most Unnecessary Service - until the next one.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

Ode to technology

I like computer.
I like computer networks.
I like computer networks because they make life easier.
I like computer networks because they make life easier, although I do worry that they might be infiltrated by a gang of intergalactic criminals for nefarious purposes.
I like computer networks because they make life easier, although I do worry that they might be infiltrated by a gang of intergalactic criminals for nefarious purposes but I like that I can voice my concerns about this on blogger.

Long live blogger, long live the internet.

Coercion is the mark of the civilised enforcer.

Coercive power in its rawest form. Too bad the picture doesn't show up.












In addition some other stuff from another pointless site.
They say a picture paints a thousand words but I have nothing to say about this experience.









Monday, July 28, 2008

web 2.0 stuff and something or nothing

Here is the compulsory link to my bloglines account.

http://www.bloglines.com/public/Antiblogger

Does anyone else think by subscribing to lots of RSS feeds it defeats the whole purpose of using RSS feeds to limit information overload?



http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Antiblogger



LibraryThing does have some utility and isn't so intrusive and image generators seem like a great toy if one had a lot of free time.



For example:



Amazing. I think I finally understand in full the old adage «L'enfer, c'est les autres.»

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Week 2

I have no opinion either way about the merits of RSS feeds etc. This is not a service I intend to use long term and I would rather not have my blog roll or whatever made public. Is there no place for privacy? It all seems like feeding time at the trough.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

I blog therefore I am

I have no thoughts, only questions.

Do I exist? Or is this existence 2.0?

Is there a point to existence 2.0?? Or is blogging existence enough???

Is there no longer any place for silence? Or to validate our existence, must we compete to see who can blog the loudest??

Is there suffering in existence 2.0???