Superstition aint the way

October 5, 2008 by 1 Comment

I started attaching tags to my posts a couple of weeks ago in the hope that my pitifully low traffic would pick up a bit. I’m not sure how successful this has been; the graph of my visitor numbers has been as erratic as the Dow:

I did get a comment yesterday, for the first time in a while, from Ann’s New Friend. It was a bit snarky, but any attention is good I guess. I felt it was unfair of him/her to imply that I wasn’t interested in reading opinions that conflicted with my own; I look at right-wing journals and blogs all the time. I was just worried that readers might interpret the fact that I had linked to Real Clear Politics without any comment as meaning that I had some sympathy with the views expressed therein.

Hats off to ANF’s work rate though; I had been feeling pleased that I had managed six posts in a week, but he/she is a true stakanovite who produces fifteen in a day. It’s interesting that the biggest item in his/her tag cloud is “Obama” (as indeed mine is “Palin”); it’s always easier to talk about your opponen’s failings rather than your candidate’s qualities.

It did make me think about why I bother commenting on the US election; hardly anyone reads these posts, and those few who do are unlikely to be swayed by a few links to stuff they’ve probably seen before anyway. I have previously expressed the opinion that blogs are vastly overrated as a medium of political discourse, but I am finding myself more and more drawn into the cross-linked world of the political blogosphere.

I made a light-hearted reference to voodoo the other week, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that blogging has a lot in common with primitive religious rituals. (No offence to adherents of voodoo; I’m using “primitive” in the sense of “uncontaminated by civilisation”).

Faced with a process that is likely to affect my life in many fundamental ways, yet which is completely outwith my control – like a volcano, or winter, or the US Presidential race – I am reverting to simple superstition, offering tribute to the secular gods of liberal elitism, and bowing before the mighty deity that is Tina Fey.

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Unclear politics

October 4, 2008 by 1 Comment

Apologies for linking to Real Clear Politics in my last post; I though it was a left-leaning site, or at least neutral, because the Guardian has a link to the RCP poll aggregator on its US politics page.

I discovered my mistake when I read this post on the site, via Annsnewfriend’s Weblog (which, I hasten to add, I visited purely randomly while tag surfing). RCP’s Republican sympathies are embarrassingly obvious if one even glances at the homepage – they link to a Bill Kristol column today – which once again proves that posting while tired/drunk/stoned is inadvisable.

I toyed with the idea of changing the link to some other poll site, but I had a feeling that that would be dishonest, though of course no one would have noticed.

Readers will have noticed a veritable tsunami of posts recently, which is partly due to my reawakened interest in US politics, what with the election, and the financial meltdown and everything, but mainly because I have had a bit more free time recently, and it’s been raining a lot. I’ve even managed to sneak in a reference or two to Second Life. I doubt that I’ll be able to keep up this pace, but I’ll try.

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Tag this

September 17, 2008 by Leave a comment

After about a year of blogging, I finally got round to reading the instructions, and discovered the difference between “categories” and “tags”. So from now on I’m going to tag all my posts. We’ll see if that increases my traffic much.

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Back on track

August 31, 2008 by Leave a comment

I should have a bit more free time this month, and, since the summer is over, it won’t seem such a waste to be sitting indoors in front of a computer screen, living in a virtual world, rather than outside enjoying the corporeal pleasures of the real one.

I’ve got a specific Second Life project in mind, which, if I actually get round to it, should give me something to write about.

I know I’ve said this before, but I really am going to try to get this blog into gear sometime soon.

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Diane …

July 3, 2008 by Leave a comment

It might seem that I have been idle over the last month; but not so. I have in fact composed several high-quality posts; unfortunately I am much better at thinking about things than actually doing them.

Also, I think that my reluctance to put anything down in writing stems largely from the fact that my words always seem witty and profound when they are in my head, but sadly cliched and banal on the screen.

I should maybe get a 3G phone so that I can post stuff while I am out and about. Or carry a dictaphone, like Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks.

I once visited Snoqualmie, in Washington State, where they filmed Twin Peaks. It’s a nice place. They have a big log right on the High Street. I had coffee and cherry pie in the diner. Come to think of it that might have been in nearby North Bend, where they also shot some scenes. I also went hiking in the hills, and nearly froze to death. (That’s another, and altogether more interesting, story. I should write something about that sometime. Just after I type up all my other good posts).

I never did get to meet Laura Palmer though.

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Happy Birthday

May 24, 2008 by Leave a comment

In two days time this blog will be one year old. I’m feeling quite pleased that I have managed to keep it going this long, and without any massive gaps. I’ve averaged about one post a week, which is pretty good, and about 10 hits a week, which is not so great, but not completely hopeless. I’m not sure how many blogs reach their first birthday, but since ex-bloggers outnumber active bloggers two to one, I’m guessing that it’s not many. My Technorati ranking has dropped from an initial 3297860 to a slightly-disappointing 5137428, but I’m putting that down to blog-inflation rather than an actual drop in popularity, or, more accurately, an increase in non-popularity.

This blog’s continued existence is even more impressive when one considers the fact that it has been almost completely devoid of interesting content, and, especially over the last few months, has had very little to say about its supposed subject, Second Life.

The fact that I am posting this today, instead of on the actual anniversary, goes some way towards explaining the low level of SL-related comment. I’m not going to be able to post for a few days, because I have much more interesting things to do in my real life.

The sad fact is that, in my experience (and most SL members agree with me, if you believe Wikipedia), Second Life just isn’t very exciting. Most of the time there seems to be no one else around. There are places that are guaranteed to be busy – you can probably guess the kind of establishments I’m referring to – but even those locations get dull pretty rapidly.

I have had a few interesting interactions on the grid, but nothing that’s really added to my knowledge of on-line psychology. I’ve learned more from a few hours reading journal articles than many, many hours spent wandering round deserted shopping malls looking at virtual shoes.

My hopes for this blog may have remained unfulfilled, but I’m going to keep it going anyway. I may find myself able to devote more time to the project, and I guess it is possible I will find some interesting facets of SL that I have hitherto overlooked. I might start posting up more links to other interesting sites, which, after all, is what a blog is supposed to be for. And I’m sure I’ll have a few more things to say about the US elections, even though Hillary’s campaign looks dead in the water.

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Brand new love

April 13, 2008 by Leave a comment

I’ve been out of town for a while, so as usual I’m way behind the pack on the latest bombshell from Linden Labs, the changes to the SL trademark policy.

I’m pretty sure that the new rules, if strictly applied, mean that I have to pay LLabs for the privilege of using their trademark, or else change the name of this blog. However, since approximately nobody ever reads these posts, I’m hoping that I’ll slip under the radar.

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Remember the Alamo

February 14, 2008 by Leave a comment

I’m still exiled from Second Life, due to unreliable tradesmen – it would be a lot simpler if I could just point at the walls to make them change colour. Still, I’m not missing it too much, since my real life is about ten million times more interesting than SL at the moment anyway, and I don’t have hours to waste in front of the computer.

Despite my confident predictions, Obama seems to have the Big Mo, and Hillary looks in serious danger of losing. It seems like the super-delegates are going to line up behind whoever is ahead in the popular vote, even though I thought the whole point of having super-delegates was to provide a safeguard against the party getting swept away by a tide of enthusiasm for a lightweight nominee. Texas and Ohio on March 4th will be Hillary’s last chance to turn things around. I can only hope that the primary voters stop and think long enough to realise that McCain is a very electable candidate, and that it’s going to take someone with more experience than a few years in the Illinois State Senate to take him on.

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Stuck in the real world

January 31, 2008 by Leave a comment

My real-life house is getting decorated at the moment, one consequence of which is that my desktop computer, with its fancy graphics card, is packed away in a box under the dust sheets. I can access the internet on my old laptop, but I’ll be exiled from the grid until the paint is dry.

My trusty old Toshiba Satellite is a bit slow, even with a stripped-down linux distro (DSL) installed. Its original Pentium processer ticks over at a steady 166MHz, but it really doesn’t have enough memory to run Firefox, which means that web pages can take an age to appear, even over broadband. It’s reminiscent of the old dial-up days in a strangely comforting way though.

Being unable to get into Second Life may be a blessing in disguise, since just wandering around on the grid isn’t really the best way of finding out what is going on anyway. Instead I’ve been reading other SL blogs, which is rather more illuminating, not so much about Second Life itself, but more about the interests and preoccupations of residents, or at least that subset of the population who blog their experiences. I should probably start leaving comments on some of the more interesting blogs, but to be honest getting into any sort of dialogue seems like a bit too much hard work at the moment.

Anyway I’m still a bit distracted by the the Democratic primaries. Opinion seems to be divided about the significance of Clinton’s good showing in the supposedly meaningless Florida vote, though bouncing back after the South Carolina result has to give her some extra momentum ahead of next Tuesday. It’s not clear which way Edwards’ supporters will shift now he’s out of the running, or what effect McCain’s performance in the Republican race will have. I think the latter development may swing people towards Hillary, since she seems better equipped to take McCain on than Obama does. I’m still fairly confident that Hillary will win, both the nomination, and the vote in November.

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Time passes

January 6, 2008 by Leave a comment

What with the holidays and everything I’ve not been online much in the past couple of weeks, and when I have, I’ve been too busy checking out the predictions for the Iowa Caucuses to waste time in Second Life. Not that anything I read deepened my understanding much – I was confidently predicting to anyone who would listen that Hillary was going to walk it. I still think she’ll get the nomination though.

Anyway, I’ll try to get on the grid a bit more this week, and work up a column for Friday.

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