A blog post about blogging

I went to bed last night in a good mood. I was in such a good mood that I updated my blog an additional time.

Know why? I got my first ever follower! (The good, Blogger kind, not the bad, stalker kind)

In the past, I have started blogs (personal ones and class-related ones) at different Web sites, but the keyword is "started." Such is the case for many things, it is easy to start a blog, but maintaining one can be challenging.

You'd think that when I took a new media class a couple years ago, where I got a thorough introduction to blogging, vlogging, etc. and some hands-on experience to boot, that I'd keep it up. I guess what I really needed was inspiration. An unofficial hiatus from non-academic writing plus a summer internship where I wrote articles and started writing for myself again certainly provided that.

Over the summer, I also started reading blogs regularly, particularly Smitten, which has different writers. One of its main bloggers, Joanna Goddard, stood out to me -- I like her written voice and personality -- and I started checking out her blog. From there, I started checking out other blogs and finally decided to start my own.

I've continue to gain inspiration from other people and have even started following a few blogs. Earlier today, I read a post by Michelle called Advice for New Bloggers at Oh, Mishka. While I'm not necessarily a new blogger, I still took it as a helpful, blog-related pep talk.

In recent weeks, I've started to become more regular about updating this blog, and I hope that I will continue to do so. While I started this blog for myself, knowing that there are people who read it makes it even more worthwhile.

(Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnett/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 )

A whole new world

That's me flying without a magic carpet. No really, it is.

In the virtual community Second Life, everyone can fly (among other things). I first heard about this Web site two years ago in a new media class, but yesterday was my first time actually trying it out. When you are creating a new profile, you can select a first name and then choose from a list of last names. You also choose a base look for your avatar and can later personalize his or her physical appearance and clothes.

Not long after activating my account and arriving at the "starting point" called Help Island, I exchanged hellos with a fellow new member who approached me. Moments later, this person used this tasteful come-on: "can y fuck you?" (his exact words, not mine)

There are a lot of things wrong with this picture. Besides the missing "I" in that request (which he continued to misplace time and time again each time), it's such a direct, rude statement to say, especially to someone you don't even know. If he (I assume it's a "he") was in an equivalent place in real life (or first life, as it's known in this community), would he use the same approach and language with a woman who he has never met before? Would he use such language to her face? Would he really expect someone to fall for such a line? If so, then's he has really got to work on his game, not to mention his manners.

When I asked him why he wanted to do that, he replied that he wanted to know what it was like in this "game." Maybe that's a problem: Some people forget that on the receiving end of communication in this so-called game, or in the online world in general, there's a living, breathing, thinking, feeling person. Sometimes what people say to each other online shocks me.

In Second Life, there are preset gestures you can do such as laughing or blowing a kiss. If there was a gesture for hard slaps across the face, then I'd keep using against him because he kept following -- or should I say stalking -- me around with the same request. He was not long joined by another guy who said, "yes, give me your ass." What is wrong with people?! I was feeling very nervous and uncomfortable during all this, even making such audible gasps that my roommate wondered what was wrong.

My boyfriend, who recently started using Second Life for a class, saved me by teleporting (yes, teleporting) me to his location. Our avatars then ended up going to a club-like place called Dance Island, where we danced together for the first time ever -- fun times.

All in all, while I can see possible benefits to Second Life, such as real-time online communication through vivid imagery, I'm still getting use to it. My first impression of this second world was very awkward, but it improved from there.

Now, if only I could get my boyfriend to dance with me in real life, making that a reality. Borrowing a line from one of my favorite films, he would quote Mr. Darcy: "Not if I can help it."

Big Brother is watching ... Kindles?

You have to admit that there's some strange irony in the fact that out of all of the books that Amazon.com could have deleted from people's Kindles, it happens to be 1984.

Amazon realized that pirated electronic versions of George Orwell's dystopian novel had been downloaded onto people's portable e-reading devices. The company deleted the files without giving prior notice to customers.

The latest twist in the tale is that a class-action lawsuit was filed against Amazon on July 30.
Among the plaintiffs is Justin D. Gawronski, a 17-year-old high school student who was reading the novel on his Kindle and taking notes for his class.

It's another strange irony that a teenager sues a corporation for deleting something he had downloaded legally during a time when other corporations can go after teenagers (among others) for downloading media illegally.

I got my first real look at a Kindle just a few months ago in a new media class, and I'm not completely sold on its appeal. Sure, you can have access to hundreds, even thousands, of books, newspapers, and blogs at your fingertips, downloaded onto your portable device in mere seconds, but I guess I'm so use to other portable items: you know, actual books and newspapers that look, sound, feel, and smell like actual paper (and probably taste like actual paper, too, but I wouldn't know).

Also in that new media class, I was introduced to the online video "EPIC 2014," which happens to feature Amazon and also alludes to 1984 with the name on the ID card, as shown in the screencap above. While this video (part fact but dives into fiction in the 2005 portion and beyond) focuses more on journalism and Web 2.0, it does touch on issues related to copyright and privacy.

It's pretty amazing, but kind of scary what this video and this Kindle incident could suggest about how invasive others can be in people's lives in this technological day and age. While piracy is definitely an important issue, what about a similarly-spelled word with a totally different, but perhaps even more important, meaning: privacy?