Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Kingston Blogger Meet-up

Last night, we stopped off at the student union center at Queens to drop in on the inaugural Kingston bloggers get together. As it is homecoming weekend, the city is littered with guys my age and older in their own undergrad leather jackets looking for a keg party to crash so it was easy to inconspicuously hang out on campus for an hour with folks yet to make most of life’s mistakes. Except for the Red Sox’s hat. All of a sudden it is ok to shout “Hey! Go Sox!” at the guy with the Red Sox hat on across the street. Fine with me, I suppose, just as long as they don’t try to rub my belly for good luck.

Anyway, as I was taking herself out for dinner, we only had an hour or so to talk blog but we did get to meet the guys behind:

It was interesting to discuss how the move into blogging was something that was growing in part by word of mouth. John of Hypothesis knew, for example, Eve at The Swamp; Matther Matthew of Living in Society help introduced Blackhole of the View from In Here. We had to cut very early and missed the rumoured attendance of Queens alum Joey of the sideburns and yesterday’s Globe announcement. A good first gathering and we may suggest a few gather at the brew pub before Christmas. Still, I had a sense that this was as yet good geekery so my old fart advice was don’t mention if you are single that you blog until the engagement is confirmed.

After, we two ended up at the Toucan on Princess for supper – which was disappointing enough not to warrant a review at A Good Beer Blog. As portland says, the enemy of the good is the excellent and Guinness poured frosty and pot pie and chip that take one hour and fifteen minutes to materialize are no way to win anyone who has been attended to at the Kingston Brew Pub or Pilot House. As it was homecoming and the entire place was staffed by two just waiters, I would still go back as the gravy in the steak and kidley pie was kidleyesque. But re-route that Guiness line around the cooling unit, for heavens sake. The inhumanity of it all.

Quality

Somedays the hopes and dreams of those who sell on eBay just amaze me. This is for sale at a starting price of 45 pounds:


Glentoran Football Club Signed Postcard 1980

Hey! It is signed. And…ummm…its 24 years old and…its from a club in Northern Ireland who “won the Cup” in 1980. Nothing but respect for the team but, holy moly, over 100 bucks Canadian for a beat-up, creased to…wherever creases go…old postcard.

Maybe it is because of the haircuts…or the cheap hotel shorts.

Half Life 2

Appparently it is coming out in a month. I had a weird experience with my glacial attempt at the original Half Life. I was half way down the collapsed building fighting evil things when 9/11 happened. I just couldn’t pick it up after. Maybe now I will be ready to beat shin-high brain/chicken monsters with a tire iron again. Maybe now that I have kids who can turn on the computer I won’t.

My New Conspiracy

During my weekend newspaper and magazine reading, I kept coming across references to politicial blogging and its new found effectiveness or perhaps just acknowledgement. KOS was referenced somewhere in the New York Times without much explanation of what he was. The latest issue of maissonneuve had an article called “A Blogger on Blogging” by Maud Newton. On top of that there was lots about the discourse generally, the presence of Pajamastan.

So if the pop culture is getting all substantive about blogs, sooner or later they will get co-opted, bought-out, sponsored. Sooner or later, someone will drop a bomb via a blog and it will turn out, like controversial medical research going against the grain, that BigCo was behind it all the time. The supposed independent voice will turnout to be coming from a cubicle in a farm of bloggers, all supported by wage or grant and a policy guide defining what must and must not be said.

Has this happened yet? How can I get in on it?

Get Foxfire

While Pr0n may have created the internet as we know it, there is no way I am going to let someone’s errant .jpeg on a non-flagged “not safe for work” blog posting eat my hard drive. I just removed the IE explorer icon from the desk top and created the Foxfire one.

Update: then I realize – is this a browser issue at all?   Do I have to get the Windows out of my computer entirely?   Who knows about this?

Dryden Explained

I like to read Living in Dryden but had thought it was the work of a crazy old guy sitting on a sofa screaming at the authorities alone in the room dressed in what he is comfortable calling his pajamas. I have found I was wrong as I have come across this explanation of its focus on a small community east of Ithaca, New York:

A blog about Dryden has a naturally limited audience, but at the same time, the people who are in that audience likely have a thorough knowledge of the place. They drive its roads, pay its taxes, and hear its stories. Because of Cornell, there’s a large population just passing through, but even some of those people are likely interested in figuring out where they are at the moment.

The blog I started has a definite political angle (“One Democrat’s perspective”), and I started it after an election that didn’t go the way I’d hoped, but I don’t think there’s any reason that focusing a blog locally should condemn it to being less opinionated than blogs which look out on a larger world. Local politics is tricky, though – simple platitudes about “those who deserve work will find it” or “everyone deserves to get a good start in life” are hard to sustain when you’re writing at this level. People don’t necessarily know everyone, but alliances shift, ideology is frequently less important than communications, and the flow of news is irregular at best, making it hard to pick and choose stories.

It’s been difficult staying inside the town borders, and I’ve occasionally strayed elsewhere in the county when it seemed relevant, though I’ve tried hard not to discuss issues outside of Dryden unless they had a direct impact here. “Think global, but stick to local” might well be the motto for this kind of blogging.

This is good. Too much activity in Pajamastan is about what you do not know, blabbosity about someone else’s belief systems of politics and corporate consumerism abstracted from the author by many degrees. In my current hunt for good Upstate New York bloggers, having exhausted my eastern Ontario searching perhaps too quickly, Living in Dryden joins NYCO, Brian (who is away in Iraq) and Linda as do-ers, observers and reporters. For me that is the best sort of writing. For all the hype, they are few. Any recommendations for other first person writers of quality would be gratefully received.