Wednesday 20 May 2009

Lets be geeky

See, this is the real purpose of having an anonymous blog. The ability to really indulge your geeky side which spends most of the day clicking about on the internet and gets annoyed - not massively annoyed, not oh lord, I want to throttle you with a strawberry lace annoyed - but just slightly irritated with certain things.

Like Twitter. I know this is last weeks news, but I've only just realised how annoying it is now you can't see other peoples replies. Whereas most people immediately realised the downsides and tweeted about it all day, I didn't really get it. But now I do, so I can have a whinge. It completely does away with any sort of group discussion. Take Monday, when me and a couple of others were trying to have a nice game of Penis over Twitter. The problem was, no one could see what other people were replying to me unless you copied them all in each time. Bloody stupid. What was wrong with having the option? Now a game of Minge and Penis just doesn't reach it's full potential.

Then there's me mucking about with different blogging platforms more out of boredom than anything. At the moment I'm trying out wordpress and seriously, other than being able to make entries private...I'm at a loss with it. It doesn't let you put in simple codes to make stat counters work. You have to use their own one, which is like visiting the stoneage. It's pants. Even the spellchecker doesn't get stuff right; underlining the first two letters of perfectly well spelt words. Numpty.

And do you know what I hate more than people picking their nose behind me in their car, but less than Fearne Cotton?

Fussy websites.

Flash intros are the worst for this. What a waste of time - these days no one has the time to sit through a jamboree of swirling patterns and tumbling pictures. I'm like "SKIP! SKIP! SKIP!" I just want to get straight to the content, no messing. SKIP!

And OH GOD this one really takes the biscuit. When you click onto a website, or blog, or anything that's not your own iTunes and sound seeps from your speakers? Why, did I accidentally press play on a random strangers iPod? No, I don't think I did. I don't care what's in your last fm playlist and if I do, then I'm quite capable of pressing play myself. Why do companies and website and blog owners think it's a great idea to inflict sound on you the minute you get onto their site?

Err, I think that's it. For now. Feel free to add your own internet / blog / geeky irriating confession below. I won't tell the real world you care, I promise.

12 comments:

The Author Of This said...

Hey, what's wrong with lastfm! I love it, can't get me off it. I use their widget thingys on my siderbar, but I don't think they play automatically. That's one thing I hate about myspace, especially if you're not expecting it.

Something else geeky...Google Reader isn't working. No new posts are appearing. At least, for me anyway. Do you use Reader? Is it working!?

James said...

I'm so with you on this... all this James_ink malarky is just an excuse to induldge in my geeky tendencies without revealing all to my Real Life Friends (I do have some I promise)

I'm still a little undecided with the new Twitter rules. I think people just need to adapt. If a conversation is a group convo then they just need to move the @ away from the start of the tweet... i.e. That really made me laugh @pleasedonteatjo. Or for a game of penis / minge use a space or something like _ or * before the @ i.e. *@pleasedonteatjo you think about Penises way too much.

The new rules really do help for those people who use @ replies so much, even sometimes to people who have their replies protected. The more popular twitterers are much easy to follow now too.

As for wordpress. The .com version is pretty rubbish, I regretted moving over to it with my blog. The blogs tend to look more slick than blogger but so limited. If you're thinking of moving this blog over don't do it... although if you're thinking of starting another one, and you are sure it will be purely for writing and you won't be wating to embedd vids, add widgets etc then it might be an option.

As for things that drive me mad on the t'internet. My biggest pet hate recently, is childish idiots who rant and rave in forums and such like. Everytime Last.fm (yes my fave site) change/improve anything lots of angry people come out demanding that the site returns to the exact way they want it. They want everything they want for absolutely nothing, and they want it yesterday. Using no sort of valid argument and wishing death on anyone connected to the site. They seem to think the internet is a God given right, and everything on it must be Free.

That is my big problem with the internet, it can be difficult to not let those people with no life skills, dominate the conversation. People get turned off by it. I know that if you took the computer away from these people and stuck them in a business boardroom with the owners of the site / product they are ranting about all of a sudden they wouldn't feel so big with their long greasy black hair, death metal t-shirt and ill looking complexion. I wish the internet could be more grown up sometimes... that's what annoys me.

Of course I realise the irony of ranting on the internet about ranters on the internet. I hang my head in shame.

Please Don't Eat With Your Mouth Open said...

All Mod - Hard to tell with google reader really. Either I've exhausted all possible feeds or it's not working. And Last fm, seriously I like it, I just have been on some blogs where last fm or something similar starts playing through a playlist of their favourite songs when you get onto their page. Such a bad idea.

Oh james, I knew I could count on you to join me in being a little bit secretly geeky. Thing is with the twitter thing, if you leave spaces then you can't just click reply. I just find it really annoying, and think they should have left it as a choice or maybe just made it so you can choose whose replies you see.

As for my experiment with wordpress.com, I'm regretting starting using it really. It's mostly for writing, but the occasional video (as I discovered the other day) ie. embedding a BBC news clip, is an absolute nightmare. You can't just put the code in because it's not accepted by wordpress. I should have done it on blogger but I wanted it to be completely separate from this one and can't really risk being logged in to the wrong account accidentally.

And oh yeah - forums! Arrrghhh, the epitomy of useless chat. People get all high and mighty, so much politics and whinging.

Emma said...

I work in digital marketing and we spend about 99% of our time convincing people that no-one wants to watch those videos before they look at your site.
i think we are listened to about 5% of the time. it's becoming some sort of company wide vendetta against them.

and with twitter, maybe you should #tag your games of penis and minge, then it's searchable easily! there was a great game of #fritzl friday going on last week i noticed!

The Unbearable Banishment said...

I’ve said this before so please forgive me for repeating myself; I don’t recall having any sort of life prior to the invention of the internet. I mean, obviously I was alive, but I don’t recall having anything to do at that time. Please don’t judge.

Have you ever clicked on a sound-activating site at work? It’s highly embarrassing.

And I hate Twitter.

ninetyninewords said...

I've went through MSNSpaces and Blogger ending up, and preferring, Wordpress.
I run Statcounter on both my Wordpress blogs.
You just need to create a text box widget and put the Statcounter html in there (it won't accept the javascript version).

I've been able to embed videos easily (can't remember if I've tried any from BBC) and most feed readers pick up new posts immediately unlike on Blogger where it can take several hours.

I haven't noticed any issue with spellchecking (have you checked you language settings in the dashboard?) but use Firefox anyway which means I have an additional way to spellcheck (right click in Firefox).

Robbie said...

I had all of these problems a few weeks back.
I've wasted more then enough time with all of the internet geeky things and have now moved on to hardware geeky-ness.
I've installed, uninstalled Ubuntu on my laptop and now (right this second) I'm trying to figure out how to move some MFT files so I can shrink my drive, partition it, install Windows 7 and Dual boot my laptop, just so I can see what Windows 7 is all about.
Becareful about Geeky-ness...it doesn't know when to stop.

Apparently twitter are brining in new @reply rules so don't get too annoyed. But I do likes Em's idea of #hashtagging your games.
I also hate music playing blogs. You should use Opera browser as you can block certain content, ie stupid music widgets, and never have to worry about music when reading certain blogs again.
Wordpress.com sucks. Stick with blogger or pay for wordpress.org.

Anonymous said...

I hate the way that my life is being sucked away by the internet.

I find myself with real-life friends, saying things like "hey there was this really funny thing on the internet the other day..."

they look at me blankly

they don't laugh

"Rosie, you really do spend a lot of time on the internet don't you?"

"Yes. Cats are funny."

Please Don't Eat With Your Mouth Open said...

em - Good idea with the #penis. I wish your clients would listen to the flash site thing. Show them this post if you must.

Unbearable - strangely, I have vague memories of everyone in my class bringing in a print out from Encarta Encyclopedia whenever we were asked to do research, but other than that, a life without the internet is a very strange concept indeed.

ninetynine - Using the HTML version means that you don't get any referring links. It tells you how many people visit, but not where they come from. Embedding videos from the BBC / you tube / anything not already on your computer requires you to use a separate programme. I'm on about wordpress.com not org, btw. Spell checking is ballsed up, and yep it's definitely English.

Robbie - Hurrah, a fellow anti- wordpress person. Haven't considered using another browser like opera. I'm mostly too lazy ;)

blueskies - haha, yeah I have moments like that. Especially when I remember something funny that happened, start telling someone then realise I'm relaying a blog story from someone I dont even know.

ninetyninewords said...

I'm on Wordpress.com and video does embed easily.
Check my other blog http://bendersbetterbrother.wordpress.com/ to see. No other software required. Honest.See here too.
http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2006/01/26/youtube-support/
Check you haven't the visual editor disabled in your personal settings, tickbox at top.
Yes, to the referring links. Need javascript which would rule out Wordpress.com if you need to know where visitors came from.

Please Don't Eat With Your Mouth Open said...

I think Texas said it best

"Well you can saaaay what you waaant but it won't change my mind, I feel the saaaame, abouut " - wordpress

I'm sorry. I'm a blogger girl through and through. I just find wordpress too fiddly.

Sebastian Anthony said...

I think the best thing about being unanonymous (phew, what a mouthful) is being able to celebrate geekery.

I'm a geek, and proud. And not anonymous.

It's up to us to make sure geeks become revered rather than reviled. We're on the cusp of a major breakthrough at the moment -- you should be OUT THERE, not hiding away in some corner, ashamed of your geekiness.

Oh, and Wordpress Rules OK!

 

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