Category Archives: Blog-a-rific

Before five

Posted on by
Reply

Beware: This is an Internet meme. Hide the children.

Jobs:

  1. Associate editor, CNET.com
  2. Reporter/Writer/West Coast correspondent/Apple press event spy, Gizmodo.com.
  3. Intern for Wired Magazine, CHOW magazine, TechTV.
  4. A graduate student on the verge of a thesis that would bring academia to its knees, but decided for the sake of her own sanity to take the comprehensive exams instead.

Movies I’d watch again:

  1. The Incredibles – Best superhero movie OF ALL TIME
  2. Clerks – Best Kevin Smith movie OF ALL TIME (No I don’t want to argue this point)
  3. Royal Tenenbaums – First movie Brandon and I watched on a date. It was also our second date that we had the DAY AFTER OUR FIRST ONE. Too fast? Naaah.
  4. Any Monty Python movie – For obvious reasons.

Places I’ve lived:

  1. Malaysia
  2. Pullman, Washington State, USA
  3. San Francisco, CA, USA

TV Shows:

  1. The Daily Show
  2. Good Eats
  3. Mythbusters
  4. CSI

Places I’ve gone on vacation:

  1. Australia
  2. Singapore
  3. Thailand
  4. London

Bonus: Also New York, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Austin, Los Angeles, San Diego

Food:

  1. Dim sum
  2. Sushi
  3. Roti canai
  4. Noodle soup

Websites I frequent:

  1. GMail
  2. Flickr
  3. Upcoming
  4. Bloglines

Places I’d rather be:
1. With friends and family. No matter the location.

Journaling vs. Blogging

Posted on by
2

There seems to be a misconception that blogs are just the Internet equivalent of a personal diary, and is therefore not to be taken seriously. This misconception is even shared by some bloggers, who think their blogs are so much better because they do not stoop to the lows of personal storytelling that only people who use LJ or Xanga do. Somehow blogs are only important and worth bookmarking if the content is primarily about politics, technology, entertainment, or some other specialized field.

I call bullcrap on that.

Not only is this line of thought horribly misguided, it’s also marginalizing and patronizing. It also goes against the very root of the blog idea — free-for-all publishing and the expression of ideas. Theme-blogging and niche-blogging are all well and good, and they certainly have their place in the blogosphere. But its fuel, its life force, its entire reason for existence, lies in the so-called murky depths of identity blogging. The LJers, the Blogspotters, the Xanga-ers, bloggers like me who open up their world to all — these are people who are producing the most meaningful content out there in this crazy WWW. Sure we blog about inane things; like shoes, cats, dogs, school, dinner, etc. — but there is a universality in that inane-ness. Shared experiences, common knowledge, common bonds — this is why blogs have taken off in such a huge way. This is why the blogosphere as we know it even exists.

So what if I blog about feeling homesick, or about forgetting my keys, or about the kinds of shoes I like? Does that somehow lessen the import of my more serious entries that indulge my geekier side? Do my personal stories somehow paint me as one of those annoying pre-pubescent teenagers? If you do think so, I feel incredibly sad for you that you are not open-minded enough to appreciate the joys of blogging from everyday life. I also feel sad that you think that in order for me to be taken seriously, I should start writing lengthy diatribes of Important Subjects instead of things that actually impact my life. I’m sorry, but there is more to my life than just being a Writer. And I rather like letting go and writing about my silly emotional tales — it’s how I relax.

Besides, it’s this very kind of personal blogging that has enabled the blogosphere to expand and grow. The sharing of personal tales is how we connect to other bloggers, it’s how we make friends, and it’s how we stay in touch. It’s a chronicle of our lives, this whole blogging thing. If we don’t speak directly and honestly on our very own blogs, where else can we?

Now I’m not saying that everyone should be completely transparent and honest on their blogs. That’s obviously a personal choice, and I respect you if you simply choose not to divulge details of your life for privacy concerns. All I’m saying is, one should not criticize personal blogging for being trivial. I’m saying we should freaking celebrate it for being trivial — because, really, it isn’t so trivial in the first place.

SF WordPress Meetup

Posted on by
2

I went to the impromptu WordPress meetup earlier yesterday, simply to see Matt and have a feel of what other WP users are like. The full list of attendees is as follows: Chris Messina (also of CivicSpace Labs), Scott Beale, Marc Weidenbaum, Om Malik, Matt Mullenweg, Glenda B, Ryan King, and Craig Cook.

I ended up having a relatively fun time. While quite a bit of it went over my head, I did manage to grasp a lot of the usability issues that were discussed — such as comment and referrer spam, mobile blogging, news aggregators, open-source browsers, and so forth. I also bonded a little with Scott from Laughing Squid because of mutual connections, as well as Marc (turns out we have a mutual friend — small world!).

After the meetup, a few of us headed to Matt’s apartment to chill a little and talk tech (or the business of). Several minutes in and Chris and Matt were trading ideas on improving their CMS platforms, with dueling laptops at their helm. Spurred by the exchange of ideas, I decided to upgrade to WP’s latest nightly build. I was hesitant at first, but since Matt was there to help if necessary, it was as good a time as any. And with some minor adjustments along the way, I am now using WP 1.5, and it is sweet. I’ve yet to implement some of the cooler changes, but I’ll get to them in due time.

Photos: crappy-cameraphone photos I took of the meetup, Ryan’s much-better ones.
Update: Scott has a write-up and photo of the meetup.

Geek dinner and afterparty shenanigans

Posted on by
Reply

I won’t go into too much detail about what happened at Scoble‘s geek dinner the other day, but suffice to say, I was quite overwhelmed by the number of attendees. The entire Chaat Cafe was taken over by a plethora of 40 to 50 geeks. The noise decibel in the room got notably higher as more people arrived. Who knew geeks could be so loud? Jasmeet and I were saying that the restaurant owners must have either really loved us for the turnout, or really hated us for blocking any further clientele.

Shockingly (or perhaps not so shockingly), I managed to get through the entire dinner (plus Matt‘s afterparty) without getting involved in a tech discussion. I mostly listened intently, nodded, laughed, and fiddled around with other people’s gadgets. Not that I didn’t hear a lot of tech geek talk; I just didn’t see the need for my participation. Curse my lack of tech knowledge! Also, I’m not sure if this sort of dinner would be very conducive to new bloggers — seems to be more of a get-together of people who are already in-the-know. Of course, the dinner wasn’t specifically meant for new bloggers, so the idea is probably moot.

As far as my actual participation in conversations, I did talk about other stuff. Like Indian food. And alcoholic beverages. And rainy weather. And San Francisco geography. And Flickr (Okay, ONE tech-related discussion). And other stuff I can’t remember. Scoble had the right idea when he actually walked around and talked to people; then again, he IS the host of the darn thing. Other people mingled too, but all in all, a lot of people just kinda stuck to people they already knew. I’d propose some kind of icebreaker introduction game, but that’d be too radical and horrifying I’m sure.

Most of the actual fun took place at the afterparty at Monsieur Mullenweg‘s place. It was great fun seeing Jonas and Jasmeet trading bartending duties. MJ and I flitted about arranging food on the dinner table, which turned out to be rather pointless since people didn’t eat much anyway (to those who did eat — those brownie squares? I made them. You may compliment me now.) After that, I mostly just lounged about being all lazy. I took some photos, ate, drank, played around with my Powerbook, and gossiped. It was fun. Kudos to Matt for letting us use his apartment as our playpen, so to speak.

More talk of the dinner/afterparty: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Photos of the dinner/afterparty:
Mine: here, and here.
Jasmeet’s: here, and here.
Jason‘s: here.
Jonas‘s: here

PS. One of the more exciting parts of the day for me, was what happened BEFORE the dinner even took place. But I’ve been warned by certain parties that names cannot be used in the re-telling of events. And there’s really no way to tell the story without everyone knowing who I’d be talking about. So it’ll have to remain a mystery… for now.