dotlizard

well there goes the whole digital brand thing

2008-06-05T08:27:38Z

i had high hopes. seriously. i wanted to be a productive member of social network society, i was going to do ... stuff. i contemplated it avidly & made plans to make plans. yeah and you can guess how well that sort of thing tends to work out yes? of course you can. or maybe not. i don't really care, and i'm sorry about that. wait. no i'm not.

you see back in the day there were a few of us and we were writing like burning. and oh, it was good but that sort of thing is bad for you, let me tell you. i'd tell you to go to the archives but they're still in a mess.

anyway my point, and ... i do have one? sure. is that i was going to behave, but that meant not being me. so the hell with a tidy, orderly digital brand. i might be able to do the illusion, but i'd really rather be me, and i'm warning you that's messy.

anyway thanks for stopping by & hope i haven't just chased you away with this nonsense.

plurk: the wishlist

2008-06-05T04:56:12Z

i would like to begin by commending the Plurk team for creating something so absolutely delightfully addictive. don't want to seem greedy, but there are some features that some of us would really love to see implemented.

for an insightful review, please see @msaleem's post on RWW. what i'd like to talk about now, are the hopes expressed by some avid plurkers this evening, right here. to wit:

Problem: if you have a large group of active friends and you hit the "mark all as read" link, within seconds, the notification will inform you that you have dozens or hundreds more unread comments. every comment on every thread of everyone you follow can get to be a lot of comments really quickly.

Suggested Solution: thread-level filtering, idea based in a suggestion by @GeekMommy, and expanded upon in tonights Plurk discussion: "a checkbox in front of the avatar on the thread that would be checked by default but could be unchecked to ingnore the thread" (per @kdfrawg), and then further updates in that thread would not register as new comments. alternatively, make it opt-in only, with the default to not follow. i can see how this would be helpful in very complex timelines.

Problem: arbitrary selection of verbs. sure, you can freestyle it, but then you lose the bright coloring and some of the fun.

Solution: custom verbs, or "smart verbs". as @codyrobert said, "yes! but the color is the important thing. I want to say: codyrobert laughs about.... but laughs **needs** to be in a neon yellow". @sorenj "wishes for plurk to remember the verbs I use for later". this could be accomplished if we are able to create, and assign a color to our own personal verb, perhaps like this :myverb: (mycolor). and if you really want to Plurk this up, make it a special treat you earn with that elusive Karma.

personally i would also like to be able to find friends using my twitter and/or digg friends list.

ok well so far this is what I've got, please feel free to jump in with more suggestions and let's hope this comes to the attention of the Plurktocracy, who in their benevolent goodness have granted us this awesome playground.

and if you want to join Plurk please use this link thank you.

twhatter? whatever. plurking!

2008-06-04T20:50:39Z

i cannot stop plurking. i fully intend to give a detailed report on the how, the what, the why, and the wheeee! but for the moment i feel the need to return to the plurkiverse, which would be my new favorite place.

come. play.

you can pick your friends ... [twitter edition]

2008-05-27T20:12:54Z

as the saying goes, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose. well, i'm here to tell you that you can, indeed, pick your friend's nose. if you pierce your nose with an ear piercing gun, and days later wish to remove the clamped-on back from inside your nose, and you have those long fake fingernails, you actually have to have a friend pick your nose.

now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about Twitter. last night, my friend Pete on on Twitter asked me, how do you decide whether to follow someone back? i gave some brief, 140 character responses but honestly my twitter follow policy is much more complicated. right now i'm just going to talk about responding to new follows, since how to find people to follow is a whole 'nother subject. but, if you've been on twitter any amount of time and are active, you're going to get followed, often out of the blue by complete strangers. at first i was leery of this sort of thing, and very conservative about following back (even though i get pangs of 'follow guilt' in which i feel i *should* follow back -- i fought those). then i read a few tweets that gave me a whole different perspective:

I'm just saying, Twitter is serendipity squared - and not reciprocating followers is just... anti-discovery.
Chris Pirillo 08:45 PM April 03, 2008 from im

etiquette on twitter: #1 - this isn't your RSS feed here, so say other things, #2 - talk about things other than your lunch....
Brian Wallace 01:56 AM April 18, 2008 from web
...#3 this isn't your im, use dm's. #4 don't flame/embarrass. #5 respond to @'s and dm's, #6 follow generously, #7 have fun!
Brian Wallace 01:58 AM April 18, 2008 from web

these things got me thinking, and strongly influenced my feelings on following back ... "not reciprocating followers is just ... anti-discovery" and "follow generously" have become my follow motto(s). i go on & on about the rest, in the extended area:

]]> now, there are services you can use to make follow decisions based on numbers -- http://twitterblacklist.com/ and http://twerpscan.com/ both offer tools to discover who'd got the worst follows to followers ratios, based on these guidelines:
1:5 = twittercaster, 1:2 = notable, 1:1 socially healthy, 2:1 newbie or social climber, 5:1 twitter spammer. -- evan

i don't like decisions based solely on numbers - but i think numbers are a good guideline. i don't use any ratio-measuring service, just my own judgement. following are the questions i ask when considering following someone back:

1. (of course) are you following a lot more people than follow you? a LOT more? why? the ratio is a good clue, but i don't presume to judge you by your numbers. there are people on that blacklist i have followed back, and if they're spamming me in any way, i certainly can't tell. the way i decide is, i look at the profile, and the history: tweet volume, the subject matter, and the number of @ replies. what i am looking for is, reasonable volume, variety, and lots of interaction - multiple @ replies showing a conversation taking place are a big plus. if the history in any way shows single-purpose self-promotion, i am probably just going to pass. if it's iffy, i'll explore the profile links. if they're spammy, it's just a no.

2. why are you following me? twitter's follow system does not allow for little notes to be sent, so often the motives of the follow request are hard to fathom. i've got people following me who only tweet about fantasy sports, others who only tweet in another language, some who seem to tweet in odd, awkward abbreviations that are like IM-speak, but dumbed-down. they're not spammy, but they're not going to do any good at all in my timeline. so if i don't see some connection, something we have in common (whether interests of friends), i am probably just going to pass.

3. are you doing anything cool? there are times i get to a timeline and i just know i want to follow this person back. it's not easy to describe, but i know it when i see it - usually some combination of humor, geekiness, and useful information. this is where the serendipity comes in, and i've met the nicest people this way. on the other hand, if you are involved in mostly one-way communication, unless it is spectacularly entertaining, i'll probably pass. i realize Twitter is a 'microblogging platform', but i'm much more interested in back & forth than i am in reading about the lunch plans of complete strangers. just sayin'.

4. you from around here? i'm a big fan of tweetlocal, and as it happens, most if not all of the people i added that way turned out to be just the coolest, funniest, most delightful tweople. so if i get a request from anyone within, say, 50 miles from me i'm going to consider it quite favorably, and probably even offer you a brightkite invite so we can all stalk each other.

the bottom line is, i could never recommend using arbitrary limits and numbers-based judgements on following and followers. i've found too many amazing new people on Twitter not to continue to "follow generously" in search of that serendipity.

next up: my Digg friending philosophy.

the smell of fear

2008-05-26T03:07:26Z

we interrupt the quest for relevance with a bunch of whining:

my dog has issues. issues that cause her to behave in a manner that resembles, for lack of a better word, evil. she has definitely decided that i am not in charge of the household, or the boss of her, and to make every effort to negate my attempts to occupy a more dominant position in the pack.

case in point: we know that dogs can sense human emotion. today i reached a breaking point with my house, where hanging out in the social network scene held no joy because there was just too much disarray around me. so i attacked the problem at a serious problem-attacking level: moving furniture and cleaning behind things. at my age, weight, and level of physical fitness (or lack thereof) this led very quickly to me being bathed in sweat; the level of mess i uncovered led to me feeling desperate and overwhelmed (how did i let it get this way? i'll never be able to get through this & make it right.)

now we know the dog is clearly fully capable of comprehending the rich bouquet of emotional and physical distress that was oozing from my every pore. and when i moved a couple small pieces of furniture that had a bunch of crap scattered underneath, she moved in. i gave her a stern 'no' but she held her ground, head low, protecting her find (bits of broken toy she'd chewed up, hair ties, fragments of plastic wrap). i YELLED at her to move. she scurried to her dog bed. i turned my back and she was right back there snarfling around the debris, which i could not reach at that point unless i climbed over the furniture. this went on until i got the furniture moved back.

evil? no, i don't think the canine brain is capable of actual evil, not like the human brain is. but i know for a fact that my dog sensed my vulnerable state and chose to take full advantage of it. i am afraid that the struggle to dominate me is something she's committed to, i think she considers herself an alpha female and intends to pursue this until she succeeds. and i do not want to spend the next ten years struggling to maintain my position.

i've had dogs all my life, never one like this. no matter how casually i took discipline, they seemed to naturally accept me as the leader. perhaps this is because they were all puppies when i got them? i don't know. but i did not expect this when i adopted this dog and if i had that expectation, would never have gotten her. but now, i am stuck with her, until death do us.

line in the sand

2008-05-19T02:21:15Z

sitting (well, standing, so i can get to the wifi) at duke's ventura, 7:22 pm on sunday evening thinking, hmm, the timestamp is off in my copy of emtee) but anyway. it's time a line was drawn, and if i have to draw the think while eating fish tacos and getting moderately drunk on fat tire ale, well, so be it.

consider it drawn.

notice the rather extensive archives. those stay, they are (for better / worse) part of me & cannot be flushed away like the shit they most likely probably may be.

when i started this i had no idea. matter of fact what this was at that time was an experiment in some newer version of emtee than what i was comfortable running on my old surreally.com blog, and it ended up being this thing. this thing were, as [melly] (link pending) once joked to me in the IM, i could make a one word post and get fifty comments. so i did, and it got ... wait, 13? no, the import process destroyed some of them it was more like 38. anyway there were things going on back in those days in spite of the fact i had no goals, no purpose, no particular reason for being aside from, i was testing a copy of MT and it got out of hand. 1700+ entries 16000+ comments and i gave it all up, then there was even more than that and i gave that up too.

well i'm done giving up stuff in my life and beyond that, i'm done being aimless and messageless and purposeless. at least i seriously hope i am.

so i decided i should have a purpose and some goals and stuff. however at this juncture i have no idea what those are. please stay tuned. please? oh, pretty please...

fuck the internet

2008-05-15T09:04:32Z

no really. i am sitting here (it's late i've had beers it was a long stressy day) and for the hell of it typed 'patty melton' into google (because patricia malattia was my best friend from grade school till we grew up got married had babies and she married this guy named jesse melton). and google decides to give me this.

now there's no reason they would have moved to indiana and last i knew of her working it was as a bank teller so this is probably some totally other patty melton. i'm sure.

but it still shook me to my backwards-glancing core, seeing 'estate of'.

i was once engaged to jesse's brother charles. we parted ways. then i went through some shit and i borrowed some money from patty. never did pay her back. would really like to apologize. i'm sure she's ok, somewhere, wherever she is which would not be a grave in indiana right? of course not.

fucking internet.

twitter twitter twitter

2008-05-15T05:53:50Z

twitter went down hard this afternoon. not even the adorable error message with the dead bird on it, just ... nothing. it was a rough couple of hours because, at work, twitter is my best connection to the world. i get my news, my politics, my entertainment - and i get it in the tiny twhirl window which i can sneak peek at, whereas whole browser windows are just like begging to get the yelling.

but anyway. it's not the usefulness, or even the fun. it's something beyond that and it's a little odd because, as recently as four months ago, twitter was a thing i'd heard of but not gotten around to. and now, i wonder how i could live without it.

just this morning, when i was indulging in my usual, 'what if i could go back and start my life over, say 1976 but with knowing what i know now' which is how i keep my mind occupied on the drive to work. (sigh) it's a complicated thing in which i try to imagine doing only what i'd need to do to keep the things i don't regret, while changing all the things i do. of course this is even more impossible than just the going back part, but anyway. this morning it hit me -- "shit. what about twitter?" seriously, how would i go back knowing what i know and realizing it would be three decades until twitter?

yeah none of this is rational. basically i'm just flexing my blogging muscles, it's been a few years. i'll get better at this, i promise (translation: if you are here now, please don't go away, it won't always be so awkward).

(sigh)

so far from done

2008-05-04T00:03:15Z

entries are truncated. files are missing. lots and lots of them. the import process on 1700+ entries and 16000+ comments is buggy at best.

i can't decide whether to get to fixing stuff, or lay on the couch and watch spongebob.

this is it

2008-05-03T08:26:06Z

there have been losses. maybe a year or a few of them, but who cares. six abortive imports of an old text file and the placing of this blog inside the backed up file structure, somewhat minimized some of the losses. those losses though. ahh well it contributes to the whole metaphor for life this was intended to be at the outset.

i'm back.

stop, drop & roll

2004-07-12T19:49:45Z

(below only works on obscure versions of win media, sorry)

i also write poems when california burns

we burn what sustains us & i would link you to fuel but it's not finished
yet

i have this thing with fire

aaaaand the rockets' red glare

2004-07-04T18:19:15Z

so have i mentioned that the lyricbase's list page & lyric display page (which is like, 99.9% of the site) are now XHTML compliant? no?

i blame dreamweaver mx 2004, for starting me down the slippery slope of validation. sure, sure, the static XHTML validates, but then you upload the page & pop a little dynamic content in it & head over to the wc3 & get smacked in the face with ... with ... hundreds of errors. hundreds.

so i hacked away at the picky picky picky little details, invisible to the nekkid eye, but i obsessed nonetheless. it was time to make it right. sure, the site worked as it was, but it always felt a little like driving a shiny red miata with an old pinto engine duct taped sideways in the trunk, hoping no one got close enough to smell the burnt oil. now, it feels ... like a newish kia, with a genuine kia engine, still under warranty.

or something.

· · ·

i live about a half mile from the fireworks, so i had to walk all the way from my apartment, past the apartment next door, up to the main street, then halfway down the block to get these pictures:

the dog ate my homework

2004-06-23T19:26:55Z

first the router stopped routing. the documentation for this internet-accessing appliance is kept ... on the internet, of course. the 404 page was a big help, thanks. for weeks i resisted the simple but regressive fix, just plugging the fucking cable modem into the fucking computer, because i know me with temporary fixes, and i didn't want to regress. i only relented because i was in charge of downloading wedding music.

so then there was the wedding.

it was easy to spot the ventura table:

later, there was a flower-throwing incident. fortunately no one was seriously injured in the resulting fracas:

in other news, i'm guessing that unmoderated comments are limited to the pay version of MT three poing fucking oh. i swear i have every box checked that says, just let people comment ferfucksake, but no. pain in the ass. gonna write my own blogware, i am. but first i better start blogging again, otherwise, what's the point?

i shall now resume sitting here poking gingerly at the 460 emails that piled up while i was otherwise occupied &/or avoiding the internet. apologies to those waiting for me to get off my ass, i'm working on it.

everything must go. no reasonable insult refused.

2004-05-23T17:05:05Z

so i was gonna sit here on the porch & upgrade my MT but you just know the damn cheapass mofos would interrupt me. hmmph. comin' to my g.r.o.j. (get rid of junk) sale insulting my uglyass old lady dining room table & such with offers so low you could use 'em to scrape the mousey dung of'n the legs. i happen to know it's a very fine piece of uglyass furniture & people pay big money for uglyass shit all the time. i mean fuck. offers so raggedy i could use 'em to chase them black widder spiders out of that 'antique' card table holding up that cool yamaha keyboard, it has a whole orchystraw inside it somewheres and it gots some fancy edjumication module, it'll teach any idiot how to play lit'rally whole buncha cheesy songs for crimeny's sake, same model right now on ebay goin' fer a hunnert fifty bucks, all i'm askin' is seventy five and i'll go fifty it's sunday & all i sold so far is a slow clothes dryer, coupla shelves, some fat pants & a frog tool, it is sunday & i find i have a hankerin' i mean i am settin' here on the porch positively pinin' for some tightwads to come insult me like they did yesterday early, i woudn't be near as fluffy about it today.

taking into consideration the deep dip in my prices as the time has passed, & figuring that at least some & mayhap most of the folks who go garagesale-ing understand the psychology of desperation, i'm figuring the offers will be considerably more insulting, here in the middle of sunday. especially the way my sign's looking, i figure they can smell the desperation at least a couple hundred feet away, if they know what they're smellin' for. and if they do, i assure you that they will be entirely accurate in that olfactory assessment.

i will have to take a picture of my sign. it is quite likely the world's worst-taped piece of public information ever affixed to a power pole, i shit you not.

and since the flow of penny-pinchers has slowed to a trickle that is, well, nonexistent, i may as well run that upgrade.

cooler

2004-05-17T11:05:35Z

we rode the four five oh to ellay. well, van nuys. same thing.

my soon-to-be-son-in-law is cooler. uh-huh. & randomly:

i have *so* many pictures. luckily there is a gallery thingy with a cool uploading interface that makes multiple thumbnails & has its own stats package & comment system.

i just had to sit & think hard to type out the code for a hyperlink.