Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Five Things

I usually do not like “memes” or viral bloggy games and tests that never cumulate or provide us with sound statistical charts but I am too lazy to stick by my usual paper standards this morning. Why? Nils has a good post following on one of these themey-thingies called 5 Things I’ve Done That You Probably Haven’t. Nils are pretty good – except that he is in the entertainment industry and a former radiohead so all his access to celebrities are cheat-a-ramas of the umpteenth degree. And frankly, Nils, anyone who has tried and failed to waterski has waterskied upside-down if only for a moment.

So what have I done? My mind is drawn to celebrity and thinks I ought to go without reference to current work related things:

  • I spoke with Tony Randall in passing (who hasn’t);
  • I taught Billy Bragg to play bar room shuffleboard (rehash, yawn);
  • I invented the term “vitamin K” for Keiths ale (and I am sticking by that one);
  • and…and…good lord…I really am dull…

See, this is why I am no good at these things. I think of things like “I didn’t really like the pie at Helen’s of Michias but really enjoyed the view and the staff’s pleasant attitude” or “I was very happy when me and my grannie-in-law did shooters the night the Jays won the World Series”. So, if you know me, please tell me what I did that makes me as cool as Nils. Hmmm. I did participate in the invention of the one-afternoon game called “bumball” where five-a-side boot a soccer ball high in the air towards the other team and one of them has to trap the ball only with their arse without falling at which time the entire group shouts “BUMBAAAALLLL” as loudly as they can. It was undergrad and it was just before, during or after happy hour…I think.

Bloggy Triumphalism

I would have posted this Christian Science Monitor article if only because it is by fellow Haligonian and Kings College alumnist and my brother’s fellow Halifax Daily News guy, Tom Regan. Apart from my obvious suckiness and cronyistic motivations, it is an excellent observation of the bloggy triumph of the gut over the brain and pajamastan’s current toying with the dark void:

I’m a big fan of blogs and I truly believe they have the potential to reenergize and redefine journalism. But the reality is, despite what their more ardents boosters say, most blogs are driven by opinion. Occasionally they will uncover a news nugget, but bloggers will then wrap that nugget in so much personal opinion that in the end it bears almost no resemblance to actual events.

Read the whole piece.

More Blogs For Hire

Here is the real story in blogs for 2005 – not their importance but their sale to interests or operation for particular agenda. Consider this post today by Darren Broadfoot:

One of the companies I’m involved with is looking for a particular kind of blogger for a new contract. Jeremy puts it better than I can:

Okay, we’re in need of a new blogger for a confidential client project. It requires a very specific type of person. For lack of a better word, we need someone who’s able to post 3-4 posts a day of the wacky variety. I don’t mean daffy duck kind of wacky, but more like Fark or CollegeHumour kind of wacky.

It’s a 3-month gig to start with. If you’re responsible, familiar with the blogosphere and passionate about blogging.

Consider too that tourist industry of PEI has hired an internet consultant. 2005 will be the year, all under the guise of “the passion for blogging”, that we learn more and more that political blogs are paid for by political parties, that product friendly posts and comments are made by producers and their staff, that gurus are merrily making a good buck at “future forecasting” exactly in the direction of the thing they have already figured out, that pyjamastan is riper for corruption than other media due to its trendiness and de-centralization.

Upon review, I am sure that Darren’s client’s gig is a good one as long as you can be “wacky”, Bittmanesque. It just now needs another name…like “$logging”…perhaps “flogging”¹.

¹[Ed.: Please everyone note that I coined “flogging” because I know someone in France or California posted it last week and is starting to get famous for it.]

Hockey Pool 2005

Given the collapse of NHL/NHLPA talks on uncancelling the cancelled season this afternoon, we have to move on. We have to show the NHL that we don’t need their stinking hockey and show that we know our own hockey. Since 1997 when it began on a Kings College ’80’s alumni Idle Crows email loop, I have operated [with the help of computer wizards more wizardly than I am] an internet NHL playoffs hockey pool in the spring and by jumbo I am going to do a pool of some sort again this year. But what rules? I think we have to pick the winners of the Memorial Cup, the World Hockey Championship, Swiss League, Swedish league, the NCAA tourney…that sort of thing. As these competitions would exist otherwise, this is not a scab picket-crossing sort of pool but it will take a bit of research and edjification so any ideas?

The Road

A morning meeting in Newmarket, three hours west. You learn as you wrinkle there are morning people and there are middle-of-the-night-get-in-the-car-drive-to-Florida people. I like dawn being part of my morning person lifestyle. Dawn is an hour and a half away.

While I am enjoying the delights of the rental car – ooooh, a grey Taurus – why not perhaps comparable partake of the delights of the archives? The link usually sits down to the lower right. Today, you can enjoy the past, my past, right here ordered by date and topic for your perusing pleasure. 1616 posts of pure time waste. 22 months of my life – gone. Find the dullest or the wrongest post.

Our Man In A Coup

One sometimes correspondent here has found himself in Nepal during the Royalist coup and has sent some dispatches which I have been permitted this afternoon to release to you all which I do anonymously though you may figure it out as I am not much of a secret secret spy. Here is most of his first dispatch:

Am alive and well. No fear. Sitting in the Kathmandu Valley for now…If things get worse, of course, then I’ll start looking for the helicopter out, but all well at present.

Rest assured, I am well. Please don’t spread this e-mail around to anyone of an official or media nature, as I’m using a connection that HM the King has not found out about and therefore not cut off. And I
should hate to get the good people allowing me to send this short missive into trouble.

You will all have heard of the palace coup that took place on Feb. 1st – the King has declared a state of emergency, locked up the politicians, and suspended all constitutional rights which were not already suspended except for habeas corpus, in declaring a national
state of emergency. He has promised to restore multiparty democracy within three years, after having dealt with the Maoist insurgency and restored order in the kingdom. Here is my take on it – I’ve quizzed various people about what they think about it all, and distilled their opinions into a coherent narrative. There are two questions for consideration:

1. Is King Gyanendra sincere?

I wonder – he has always been hostile to liberal democracy – he did not favour his late brother’s decision to grant a constitution. Though he pledged to respect the constitution when he ascended to the throne, he dismissed Parliament in 2002 and has been unable (or unwilling — not sure, given that there is no effective government control of the country outside the KTM Valley) to hold elections for a new one since then. Given the state of the politicians – they are corrupt, and have been unable to form a stable national government or war cabinet in the two and a half years they’ve had since Parliament was dismissed – I tend
to sympathize with the King. He has locked down all the bank accounts, too, in order to take back the money that various ministers have embezzled from the treasury.

2. Assuming that he is sincere in his statements, can he get the job done?

Of this, I’m also not sure. The Royal Nepalese Army, invaluable as they’ve been in keeping civil order in Kathmandu, is armed with WWII-era weaponry. HM will have to re-train his whole army, possibly with American assistance, in order to re-take his country. I fear
that he may be going the way of Tsar Nicholas II, after he took personal command of the army in 1915, in that he will be held personally responsible for any failures in future. Essentially, the King is gambling his throne on his ability to restore order and to restore the state. Whether he can get the job done is unknown.

The mood among the largely well-educated crowd I know is surprisingly upbeat. They value law and order, and think that the present situation could not go on. One effect: the Maoists called for a three-day bandh (gen’l strike) from 2-4 Feb, and nothing happened – people went about their business as usual, instead of being cowed by threats from Maoist goons. So, this is a good thing in their minds. BBC World and CNN International were restored by the evening of the 1st and so I got to watch some of the international coverage (and to see Pres. Bush’s State of the Union address – v. exciting stuff).

Went to a wedding on the 1st and 2nd – and the reception is this evening – for a childhood family friend of mine. (You know me from my year in Halifax – “state of emergency” = “time to go out and party”. Martial law a bit more serious than hurricane or big
snowstorm, but the principle’s the same.) Was very interesting — the royal wedding was a Chetri (sp?) wedding, whereas this one was a Brahmin one. More or less similar, except that the Army “brass” band this time included two drummers, two saxophonists, two clarinet players, a guy with a tuba, and two bagpipers. (The pipes are quite popular in S. Asia — I think there are more here than in the UK, actually. Saw some pipe band stuff on TV for celebrations of Republic Day in India, which I found rather humourous.) Indian news stations are censored here right now, as are the Nepalese ones – there apparently is an army major at every channel monitoring what can go out – for six months, they say. As much as I value order, though, I think that the extraordinary measures the King has taken will backfire on him. One simply cannot
arrest all the politicians, no matter how corrupt they are, and the Constitution, though it should not be a suicide pact, should not simply be suspended at will. I mean, what’s the point of having one, then? (But he didn’t want it, of course.)

…I’ve had the opportunity to see a coup up close and live through it – I’ve always wondered what it would have been like
to be living in a St. Petersburg suburb in October 1917…