Musings
SEO and Social Media Asshat Experiment
Jan 24th
So recently, I’ve been doing two things: whining about how social media ‘experts’ and ‘SEO experts’ follow me on Twitter, and checking my e-mail to find that a bunch of social media ‘experts’ and ‘SEO experts’ have just followed me on Twitter.
WTF?
Twitter Social Classes
Jan 22nd
Update: Dugg by iPhone in Canada! Thanks! Digg it up if you like it.
So last night on Twitter, I was musing with some friends about the social classes you can see on Twitter, comparing them to the more classical social classes that we all know and love, and I came up with a mapping that seems roughly analogous.
Obsessive Compulsions
Jan 18th
You’d be hard-pressed to find an individual who hasn’t heard of the term ‘obsessive-compulsive disorder’, or its more common abbreviation ‘OCD’. In fact, a lot of people use it to refer to themselves or others, about how they’re ‘OCD about’ something (say, keeping their desks tidy). Like many terms (like the term ‘crazy’, for example), it’s often used to refer to people or situations that don’t entirely qualify, and like most such usages, no one really thinks twice about it.
One portrait of obsessive-compulsives was the 1997 film As Good as It Gets, starring Jack Nicholson as a writer who has a strict routine, including sitting at the same table at the same restaurant every day, being served by the same waitress, and so on. When forced out of his routine, he becomes agitated and (as I recall) seems rather panicked.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder has a few criteria for diagnosis. The DSM IV defines obsessions as recurrent thoughts, impulses, or images that are intrusive and caused anxiety or distress, which are not excessive worries about actual problems. The person knows that they’re all in his or her head and tries to suppress them because they are interfering with the sufferer’s life.
On Mental Health
Jan 17th
I read not too long ago an article by Wil Shipley, entitled ‘On Being Crazy‘, in which he discusses obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression, and it kind of hit home for me. I’m fortunate in that the challenges I face aren’t as potent as those Wil describes having, but there’s an aspect of it which I can relate to, and a lot of points he makes with which I agree. More >
YouTube’s Missing Soundtracks
Jan 14th
YouTube’s got a blog post up about why audio tracks for music videos are suddenly disappearing – apparently it’s a ‘solution’ to the copyright issue. I’ve got a solution for you: get with the times.
As it is, searching for things on YouTube is already a chore because of the colossal amount of people who upload the tenth copy of the same video, but this time from a copy of a copy of a copy ten times removed. You see ten results for one video, nine of which are blurry blobs. It makes using YouTube frustrating, and it makes being a fan frustrating. Now, we not only have ten videos of blurry blobs, chances are good that the two in which you can discern the artists from the scenery have no soundtrack anyway.