Samuel's Blog

Twitter Updates for 2012-03-13

• I've returned to Twitter after years of abandoning it. Can't guarantee I'll stay, but it's worth a look. #
• For the record, it was 2008 when I was last here. My old username was taken while I was away 🙁 #
• Low flying helicopter over Reid. Perhaps "they" noticed my return to Twitter and plan on taking me out…well, it was nice knowing y'all #
• @markparton Ah good, a witness 🙂 And alas, it is never too early or too late to go to work these days. 9-5 went out the window yonks ago. in reply to markparton #
• Tried to sleep, failed, but refreshed anyway. Now listening to @2GBAndrewMoore then @WSJThisMorning over breakfast and on my way to work. #
• Newspoll has Fed Labor down to 31%. If this keeps up, Julia Gillard will never call an election, but Bob Carr might. #
• Great singer, but when I first heard him sing, I thought he was a her.
  “@markparton: Happy 73rd birthday to Neil Sedaka. [snip]” #
• and the traffic, and the heat, and the good conservatives “@tenbreakfast: Paul Henry: Canberra is much like Vegas, minus the attractions.” #
• @larryemdur @morningshowon7 Sure, and make sure you turn it in to a fake Shopper afterwards like you did when she signed off from Nine. in reply to larryemdur #
• @markparton ACT Government prancing about while stuff collapses? Is the final act an election? in reply to markparton #
• @larryemdur @kyliegillies You two should be worried. KAK's taking over! Run back in with your coffees stat! #
• @coasttocoastam Mysterious unidentified fireball streaks across the sky of Melbourne, Australia. http://t.co/FGo7maBS #
• @VentraIP congratulations. I guess this means that I get to enjoy transferring my gTLDs to you all over again at renewal time? in reply to VentraIP #
• There endeth the work day. Time for lunch, then a nap to catch up on the sleep I couldn't get last night. #
• My @TheIPA welcome pack just arrived in the post, hand-addresses too. Nice personal touch, thanks 🙂 #
• @VentraIP Rightio, I'll get in to that after you've got everything in place. An extra year on the domains never hurts. in reply to VentraIP #
• @markparton at home or at the supermarket Mark? At home, it's probably not theft, but at the supermarket, how are you resealing the boxes? in reply to markparton #
• Obama's birthplace might be interesting, but no judge will sack him for it, so it's irrelevant. There are better issues to focus on. #
• Obama's faith, on the other hand, is relevant if it affects his policy decisions. #
• @coffeyn dumb question, but have you restarted the iPad? Mum's Safari was crashing on launch, but a restart fixed it. in reply to coffeyn #
• @TheIPA indeed I do, much more there than I expected, so thanks again 🙂 in reply to TheIPA #
• @afllivefootball Are you allowed to stream this year? AFL website indicated that you would prior to NAB Cup, but that document has vanished #
• @coffeyn Do other web services (mail, twitter etc) work over 3G? If not, could be 3G in your location. If they do, then I agree it's Safari. in reply to coffeyn #
• http://t.co/MD2jO6GJ hear hear! @morrison954 is a great guy. I have also been enjoying Frank's selection of Stan Zemanek caller highlights #

March 13th, 2012 at 10:00am

I’m back on Twitter

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time may recall that in 2008 I briefly experimented with Twitter and, after a few days, closed my account as I deemed it to be a waste of my time. At the time, this was true…Twitter held no value for me. Of course, at the same time, neither did Facebook, and yet now I don’t think I would be able to function without Facebook (or at the very least, the withdrawal symptoms would be difficult for a while).

For Facebook, this changed for me in either late 2008 or early 2009, I don’t really recall which of those times it was, when a growing number of overseas friends meant that it was easier to stay in touch that way. Since then, Facebook has grown for me in to both a news source and a limited creative outlet. Unfortunately it also causes me to stretch myself a bit too thin. I am much busier now than I was in 2009 and, as much as I might try to write something of substance here on a regular basis, it just doesn’t happen as much as it should…frankly, I don’t have the time, so I opt for the easier option of writing a quick opinion on Facebook and then neglecting the blog.

It is not ideal, but it would be safe to say that Facebook has become a mini-blog for me, with a limited audience. There are some benefits to this as not everything that I write on Facebook is intended for a public audience, but there is a downside too. Despite the fact that I am not paid to blog (not even by “Big Oil”, despite my views on mythical man-made global warming…but if anyone from “Big Oil” wants to send me a cheque, I’ll gladly accept it), and despite the fact that I am busy enough as it is, whenever I let this blog sit silently for a few days, I feel guilty, and I feel guilty because I feel that I am letting you, my handful of loyal readers, down. I feel worse about this because I know that I’ve posted some thoughts on Facebook which I would have liked to blog about, but I never got around to expanding the Facebook thought bubbles in to meaningful blog posts.

This, for me, is where Twitter comes in…or at least, might come in. I have a small following on Facebook, a slightly larger following here, and potentially some people I would like to follow on Twitter. I can integrate Twitter with this blog, and Twitter with Facebook, whereas I can not easily integrate selected posts from Facebook with this blog…and given the way facebook like to mess with settings on a regular basis, I don’t really think that will ever be viable. So, to me, it stands to reason that if I can share my small thought bubbles both on Facebook and on this blog by sharing them on Twitter, and I can gain a new stream of information in the process, it may very well be the right thing to do.

That said, I am still a wee bit skeptical of the whole thing. It annoyed me last time, and it didn’t get off to a good start this time when my name was one character too long to fit properly and I had to drop a space to make it fit. I’m also not convinced that I can make my thoughts fit in to 140 character bursts (I used to struggle with the character limit on Facebook when that existed, and that was much larger than Twitter’s limit), but I’m going to give it a go and see what happens. If it works out, then it will solve a few problems, and bring this blog back to life in the process.

I still intend on maintaining this blog…that won’t change…and I won’t be letting Russian guests write more blog posts than me (you should see the column she submitted this week…if there’s a sentence structure in there, I can’t find it, so I’ve sent it back for clarification and hopefully I’ll receive a publishable version for next week), but I will also be sharing my little thought bubbles here as daily digests of my Twitter activities. If all goes to plan, that should auto-publish at about 9pm Canberra time, or 9pm UTC if the Twitter Tools plugin is as insane as it was the last time around. You can also follow me on Twitter @Samuel_SGS and I’ll see about adding one of those sidebar doohickey-thingamabobs.

At the very least, this should be an interesting ride. Hopefully a valuable one, but only time will tell on that one.

Samuel

3 comments March 13th, 2012 at 03:37am