So, Twitter?  What’s the big fuss about???

I hear you blogosphere… I asked myself the same question in the early stages of owning a Twitter account… Can I just say, that was in Feb 07?  I’ve had an account that long making me a bit of an early-ish adopter maybe… but not early appreciator… (tis a werd?) I actually really only started using it properly this month.

So, what is it? 

Twitter is micro-blogging tool for keeping up with people in real-time. It’s based on the simple question "What are you doing now?" and it works like this.

• I create a Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com
• I invite friends to follow me on Twitter
• I choose people to follow on Twitter
• Whenever the spirit moves me, I tell Twitter what I’m doing, thinking etc in 140 characters or less and Twitter tells all my followers.
• Whenever the people I’m following update with a new ‘Tweet’ I get the message in any of my chosen tools for keeping up to date (more about that further down the page).

Twitter can inform for me in a gazillion ways.  It can SMS my posse with my my update (depends on how they’ve got Twitter set up) and I can get SMS from any of my posse.  I haven’t got into this side of it because I can’t figure out if it costs me money…

It can be added into my Facebook account and be used to look after my status updates.  THIS is the primary reason I started getting in to Twitter.  I LOVE Facebook status updates – and being able to update Facebook, without being IN Facebook seemed a very good idea… especially as Facebook is blocked at work for most of the day…

Having Twitter meant that I could update the blog with status updates!  Whee… little tiny bits of ‘what am I doing’ at Singular Scene without having to make a new post.  I know… a little bit tragic… but fun nonetheless… the technique of doing this involves getting the ‘add twitter to your website’ code from my twitter account and pasting it into my blog templates.  It also required a bit of css coding to make it look like the rest of the blog… I’ll post more on that over at the Web Princess Blog… (remind me to tell you about the Web Princess Blog…)

I also have a Firefox add-in (seriously, get Firefox) called TwitterFox that sits in the status bar at the bottom of my browser which keeps a counter of current Tweets I can check out at any time and on which I can click to add a Tweet of my own and given that, when you know how much time I spend in front of my computer you’ll understand why I don’t really need to update Twitter from my phone…

Basically, it’s another form of blogging that’s a bit less word intensive and a bit more immediate.  It has proven useful for one particular man as it helped keep him out of an Egyptian jail! recently.  The rest of the time it keeps your friends and relations up to date with the inanities and enormities of your existence with very little effort required on your part.

And on that point alone it could be a curse or a blessing… So tell me, do you Twitter?

Also known as when good technology goes dreadfully wrong.
Also known as, the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day [week].
The D100 packed it in with ‘mirror issues at a recent work ‘Big Thing”. It’s a DSLR so it has a mirror that flips up out of the way when you depress the shutter. This is a good thing. It is a bad thing when the mirror doesn’t go back down when the shutter closes and so it went of to camera hospital to be repaired.
And it came back repaired but with a whole new problem; as in now the on board flash doesn’t work which isn’t a huge deal, actually I’m not a big fan of flash photography. (This is partly because I don’t know how to do it well and because I think it makes people look pasty and as though they just got a big fright.) Anyway, NOT having the on board flash working can still be a bit of a pain even for a non fan, so I had to send it back for more repairs which is an even bigger pain really. So I’m still shooting my 365 pictures with the baby Canon and I don’t like it, no I don’t.
Happily, even though I was sans Nikon when my last paid picture taking gigs came round my good friend Cove lent me her Canon DSLR (and (gasp) I actually liked that one. I know, I’m hopelessly brand disloyal, let’s face it I’ve tricked out my Mac so it behaves like a PC, do I really care about any kind of Canon/Nikon loyalty?? No, I have Nikon because my first camera was one and I don’t want to have to buy new lenses to suit a new body…)
So, there I am with a wad of pictures that need tweaking and editing and burning to discs for the women’s dept so what do I do? I burn them onto my back up hard disc, an external one that I carry everywhere. My safety net, my portable life and I leave them there because I have a v busy week prepping for another ‘Big Thing’ at work and I plan to manage those photos and send out my month’s invoices over the weekend.
But that wonder drive, that hard disk I always have with me… that portable life, is the one I dropped off the arm of the sofa onto the floor.
That drive was the one that was still going at the time.
The one that wasn’t going when I picked it up.
Fuck Fuck Fuckety Fuck. (Sorry, it really was a bad day… some days there are just no other suitable words.)
It’s days like those in which your life flashes before your very eyes and force you to sift through your mind to try and recall exactly what it was you lost.
And then you start to breathe again, because you have all your photos on disc as well as hard disc because you are a pragmatist and a practical girl and because most clients commission disc copies. So you make 4 for them and one for you, just to be safe… So the hard drive really was a back stop and an easy access archive.
And then you remember those blog illustrations you spent ages working on and you are crushed because when you finally found them on that drive you were relieved, knowing that they did still exist somewhere but as you’d searched everywhere for them another time and you knew that the HD was the ONLY place they were, but they weren’t business pix, they really were just for fun so you figure, you might just about get over it eventually.
But even so, you spend hours surfing Google to see if you can find the originals.
But they are.
[Sob]
Gone.
Then you remember the last lot of pix you transferred to the drive were a commission, worth a bit of cash and you remembered that you…
Don’t.
Have.
Them.
Anywhere.
Else.
And you know the client is going to
Be.
Very.
Upset.
And you feel absolutely certain that you wiped them off the SD card before you returned the camera to its owner but you email her just to be sure and ask her to check to see if there are photos still on the card.
And then you hear she’s lent her camera to someone else to shoot this latest Big Thing.
And so you panic.
And then you get her email saying that, no, you didn’t wipe the card before returning it and she didn’t give it to the latest photographer and so the photos are safe. A miracle of epic proportions considering how much of a pedant you usually are about leaving things in better shape than they were when you borrowed them…
And you thank your lucky stars and offer up a bit of a praise because you know that deep down…
Jesus loves you just enough to save your sorry arse.
(And no, I still haven’t finished Harry. I’m up to the bit where Najini nearly kills…)

I have admired him from afar in a kind of ‘Oh, Dear Lord, the Hotness’ kind of way for years and now it would appear that he’s been feeling the same… (I know this because you can see him just light up, if not the minute I walk in the room; at least as soon as we touch).
He’s slim, fair and a bit of a snappy dresser, I feel pretty dowdy next to him but I think we can work that out. Actually, when I hold him I have to say he makes me look a whole lot sharper… and that’s just a tiny bit of what’s so appealing about him, that and the hotness.. Oh Dear Lord.
Anyway we’ve been talking about hooking up for a couple of weeks and so booked a date (one that he postponed initially, honestly, boys are a total lesson in patience) and finally, last night, we met and it was love at first sight.
Oh Dear Lord, did I mention the hotness?
We’ve got heaps in common, both of us techies, both creatives too, such an odd mix… and in a cool way I think he’s going to teach me a lot about all the stuff I’m doing… I’m looking forward to lots of hanging out and spending time chatting online, not to mention working on great websites and writing projects together.
And, while I realise that to tell you that we slept together last night may cause you to raise your eyebrows somewhat, especially as I have a bit of a public personal position on premarital sex, if you saw him you’d understand… I just couldn’t help it.
It’s a seriously good thing that God has such a reputation for forgiveness because I have a sense that I’m going to need to draw on it regularly… My baby, he’s a lust magnet… oh Dear Lord. However, I’m pretty sure that with this guy? God totally understands… because at least as far as information technology is concerned? at Chateau Deeleea it is now, on earth – as it is in heaven…
There’s a picture of him below… but, be careful… you’ve got to watch out for the hotness…

Day 33 – iLove
*completely irrelevant title…

I’ve practically made a religion of blogging carefully and it’s my belief that in order to do it safely one must adhere to strickt rools(sic).
Here’s a refresher.

The Rools aka The 5 Commandments

1. No blogging about work nor blogging from the office, regardless of how relaxed things are in the bosom of the IT dept where I work. Just not worth getting dooced.
2. Do not blog anything you’d be afraid/embarrassed to have someone (read anyone) know about you.
3. Sound intelligent [also known as the don’t blog about TV rool (no disrespect intended to TV bloggers… no, really – there’s a place for it… it just isn’t here)]
4. Don’t blog about the family. Ever.
5. Don’t blog drunk. [ok so it never happens, but the rool’s there, just in case.]

And it’s just as well. Because, as pretty much any blogger knows, you just never know who’s reading.
So, I hear you ask… ‘Deeleea What’s making you think about this today of all days [or any other…]?’
Well gentle reader, I got totally sprung today. Big sprung me by Googling my name – and not even my real name but the name that I usually go by [yeah, they’re different…].
To his credit, when we were IMing today he came clean. And truth to tell, if I’d known I’d probably still not likely have watered down my recent entries but I was a bit shell shocked that it was so easy to find.
It’s interesting, I’ve always been honest about the blog, and would have ‘fessed up to it eventually, KiwiFella used to read it, maybe he still does, we haven’t been in touch for a while. The O.C knows how to find it but I don’t think he’s that interested in my personal life so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t pop in (unless he does… in which case Hi!).
So I was surprised by how disturbed I was. I guess it was the ‘element of control’ factor. It’s usually me giving the keys away rather than someone finding the keys under the mat and letting themselves in.
I guess I just wasn’t aware that the keys aren’t under the mat.
They’re in the lock.