A few thoughts for a Wednesday evening, in no particular order of importance.
- Attention Mac & iPhone Users: Download, learn, buy, and use 1Password. Religously. 1Password is designed to make your web browsing safer, by generating a long random password to every site you use. It may seem counter-intuitive to have a long password randomly generated for everything, but 1Password stashes all the random impossible-to-remember passwords behind a single password. 1Password also remembers typical auto-fill info–with multiple identities–as well as credit card details in the same encrypted space as your passwords. If you use the “fill with identity” feature, you can basically two-click through the register process of most websites you’ll run across. After using it for several months, I am to the point now where I only know perhaps three passwords. It works with Safari, Firefox (including Ff3), and iPhone(!). Perhaps other browers too, but I haven’t tested them. $34.95. Wow, I wish I got paid to say that, but maybe it means something that I wasn’t compensated. It is excellent software.
- There should be probably is a term for when a Google search term returns no results. A word besides “nonexistent,” anyhow.
- I never thought Facebook would be useful, particularly in the light of classmates and myspace and the like. But in the last few weeks especially, I’ve found Facebook interesting on so many levels. What I’m enjoying is the indisputable fact that Facebook is the de facto social networking site. I’m pleased, particularly because MySpace is the giant <blink> tag of social media (and the schadenfreude of Murdoch paying $530 million for it.) The ads on Facebook are even useful. I discovered an album I’d never heard of (and is totally incredible.) Most importantly, I’ve been able to reconnect with so many old friends on Facebook. People I haven’t seen or heard from in 18 years. That is remarkable. Despite the fact that I’ve been running a blog (or at least some form of web presence) since at least 2000, very few of these people turning up on Facebook have crossed my digital path in all this time. Which leads me to my next point.
- I see you Google, Yahoo, MSN, miscellaneous and sundry robots and crawlers of my website. Since you make up more than 90% of traffic to chrisash.com, this post is not directed at you. Instead I wish to address the other, ahem, 3 readers of this site. There are perhaps more of you than that. By and large, I maintain this site for myself. I have long-standing rambling issues, and the things I write about here are at least filtered by the exclusion of material from my journal. Nevertheless, I try to write nominally-interesting things. Hopefully humorous. Maybe informational. Possibly insightful. Whether I achieve whatever goals I’ve set for myself is one thing, but it is defeating when the majority of my non-robot traffic is arriving via a set of search terms that are totally unrelated to a post I made almost 5 YEARS ago. Furthermore, the one-hand-clapping nature of the dialogue around here is a bit disconcerting.
So, I’m at a bit of an impasse. I’m not at all convinced that I’m writing anything that anyone is interested in reading, nor can I imagine what people would like to read. I’m not a half-naked, tattooed bisexual girl with a webcam. I’m not… anything really. I have a lot of opinions. I could rant a lot (but I’ve always felt that made me sound angrier than I truly am.) I could write sans filter, which I’ve threatened to do in the past. Or I could just make shit up. That might be the best solution, actually. It might have the interesting side effect of scaring off my stalkers. Or encouraging them.
I’m interested in your opinion. Not that you’ll leave it, lurker that you are. Seriously, what are you afraid of? Is the comment system broken or something? There is only one person who I don’t care to hear from, and as far as I can tell, it ain’t you.
5 Comments
Okay, I fixed it so you DON’T have to log-in to comment anymore. Thanks wordpress, for making me look in a hundred different places to figure that out.
I’ll bet that the “half-naked, tattooed bisexual girl with a webcam” line will yield you a bit more search engine traffic. Fbook: if it weren’t for all my students constantly trying to poke me, I probably would have tried it/used it long ago.
Yeah I don’t know why I haven’t bothered with Facebook, MySpace, etc. Though I am starting to consider a MySpace presence if just so I can read/access/comment on some bands’ pages.
While I appreciate the additional security 1Password would offer me, the ability to log-in to a website from anywhere (by having to remember a password) is one I don’t want to lose. Until my method of slightly modified passwords for each website fails me (which, granted, could be an expensive lesson), I’ll pass.
I finally bothered with MySpace, and I heartily concur with myself as to why I hadn’t before. Yech. As far as Facebook, I prefer as much of the illusion of privacy as I can get in my online life. Tame as I am, and blessed with one of the more anonymous names you can have, I simply don’t want the dogs of my past biting my ass all up in my face.
I similarly won’t log in to post a comment. In the first place this keeps me from sounding off and making an ass of myself about 70% more than I do now, so as a policy it’s working out great. In the second place I have no intention of keeping any kind of track whatsoever of the various places I would sound off if I had no shame. (This is why iPassword appeals to me, but I’m relying on shame and cheapness to hold me back.) Lastly, since I know there’s a gazillion trackers I’m not bothering to try to see, I’m affronted by the inconvenience of having to exert myself on behalf of internet profitability. Maybe I’ll feel differently about that if I ever make any dough off this scene.
PHEW. There. Ah Hev Spokane. -Eeyore
thats for sure, dude