me and the blog

I've been asked before why I blog. It's a good question, but one that is hard to answer. I like to write, but there's a difference between writing for fun or relaxation or to comment on political or social issues or just life, and writing as a craft. I might work for weeks on a 400-word story or a poem, but that isn't going to happen with a blog post. And it shouldn't. It's more natural to just write and only edit for correctness. It's like the difference between snapshots and paintings, and the blog is more like a photo album than an art gallery.

Because of this, I sometimes worry that what I write on the blog is largely superficial. That isn't to say that I don't ever write about issues that are meaningful to me, but most of the time they are issues that are out there in the world and not about me personally and my own life. Some of the reason for that is that the most personal things (worth writing about) are hard things and it's difficult to open yourself to the vulnerability writing about them entails.

I don't write very often about things like the deep lonliness I sometimes feel, or how frustrating it is to feel like I have this immense capacity for loving that I never get to express (at least haven't for a long time). I haven't been in that many serious relationships, but those few were pretty good. I was good at loving them (obscure Christian Slater movie reference anyone?) I hope I get that chance again with someone I like and respect.

I've spent my whole adult life caring for, teaching, supporting and generally emotionally investing in other people's children and it's painful to realise that I may never get the chance to raise kids that I get to keep instead of give back. To be honest I've never even really cared whether or not I gave birth - I hate it when people say you have to bear a child to be a mother, because it isn't true. But the difference is that when you do give birth, you really have to screw up for someone to take that child away. When you don't, you have to wait for someone to allow you the privilege of raising a child, and that's rare. A couple of years ago a close friend of mine and her partner were basically just given a baby. I wish it were that easy for me. If someone dropped a child off on my doorstep, I'd have to change my entire life to accomodate them, yet it would be an easy decision to make.

These are the things that I don't often say, because they are ever-present and if I blogged about them all the time it would be a very angsty blog indeed. Generally speaking, my life isn't so angsty. It's busy and challenging and sometimes lovely. And sometimes not.

The other reason I don't blog about personal things a lot is that I'm (perhaps too) aware of my audience ~ both the known and the unknown. In my life offline I have a few friends that I talk to about pretty much anything, but only a few. I've connected with some awesome people through the blogosphere, some of them people I think I could be friends with for real if we lived close enough to each other for that to be viable. So part of me wants to just be one of those bloggers who writes without concern for who reads, because I've had good experiences with people who read and comment.

But the internet is a weird place and I find it more sensible to assume that everyone I know reads the blog, because then hopefully I won't write anything that hurts someone, or that exposes me or someone I know to stupid gossip, or reveal even good things that they regard as too personal for the internet. One of my closest friends found and read the blog for a while before telling me that they were doing so. What they thought they might read while I was unaware I do not know. But it's one of the things that makes me cautious, because this is a person who probably knows anything I'm likely to write here anyway. I don't know if it's truly possible to be anonymous on the net, and I'm not even sure I want to be completely so ~ but if not, then what I write will always be tempered by an imagined audience. It's just the way it is.

Anyway, the point of this post is really that I hope I can open up a bit more in the future about myself, even if there will always be a line that I don't want to cross. During my short break I read some of my earlier posts and it felt like I had more to say. I still have things to say. I hope some of you will stick around to read them.

a familiar addiction

Dedicated to all those who understand how

"definitely getting an early night"

becomes

"is that daylight?"

today's post is brought to you by the letters 's' and 'u'

After months of procrastinating, I finally updated my sidebar. My blogroll now actually reflects the blogs I read, rather than the ones I was reading a year ago, and my current distractions are actually current. It was a bit scary to realise how many blogs I read regularly, but it did explain why I've become more of a lurker in the last few months. I enjoy commenting, though, so I'll try to do more of that.

Most of the newly added distractions are cool things I found while using Stumble Upon. SU was in amongst some Firefox add-ons I was browsing, but I've since found it's available for IE, too. You initially select some areas of interest and each time it chooses a random page from those areas you have the opportunity to click (on the toolbar) that you like it or not. You can also click that you like any page you happen to be browsing and if it's new to the SU system it will add it in. The more people who vote for a page, the more likely it is to come up when people click the 'stumble' button on the toolbar. As you go along, it gets more of an idea of the type of pages you enjoy. At the moment I like probably three quarters of what it shows me, and find something really interesting about one in six clicks.

Earth Album is a Google Maps & Flickr mash-up where the top eight photos on Flickr for a particular country are shown when you click on that country on the map. Of course I picked Japan first and the photos were great (two pictured here are Shibuya crossing at night and a Tokyo girl), but then I went more random and found the two photos below of the boys in the sand and some unusual trees, from Madagascar.

Songza is a search engine for songs and jukebox rolled into one. It remembers your playlist automatically and the interface is very simple to use. A current top ten also sits on the page and I have used that a few times to check out artists that I haven't heard before. If I want to hear a whole album I'd just find it in my music folder, but what I love Songza for is those moment where a song pops into your head and you want to listen to that one song without having to go searching through your music collection. Sometimes Keyboard Kid will tell me about some random song he discovered this week and I can find it in about ten seconds on Songza, and play it right then to see what he's talking about. Quicker even than him finding it on his iPod and I don't have to stop and put his earphones on to hear it.

One SU toolbar feature I've made a lot of use of is the option to email a page link to myself (or other people). It can be used for any page, not just ones that I've stumbled. In the past I've cluttered up my bookmarks with pages I found but didn't have time to look at properly. Now those pages end up in the stumble folder in my email and I can browse through them when I have time. And if I never get time it's just an email to delete, rather than a bookmark I have to cull at some point (more trouble). I think it's going to make it easier to keep my bookmarks relevent and few, which is just how I like them. And it's quicker than opening gmail to send myself a link.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the distractions as much as I have. My SU blog (just super short reviews of pages I really liked) is here. I've clicked lots of pages I like; the blog is a way to indicate my real favourites.

keep your parents off the net

A funny guide to keeping your parents off the net.

When the dad mentioned "the little cord that connects the TV to the typewriter" I nearly snorted lemon lime cordial all over my keyboard.


















Note: 'a little east of reality' in no way endorses the use of "interesting, exciting, obscene" websites. ^_^

parental responsibility and the internet

Our new Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has pledged to provide porn-free internet feeds to schools and homes. He wants the Communications and Media Authority to draw up a blacklist of unsuitable websites, which internet service providers will then be required to block to their customers unless they specifically request an uncensored feed.

I think this is a great idea for schools and a very bad idea for households. At school one teacher may be in charge of 40 students at one time. They cannot be expected to watch every student all the time in a computer class, yet the school does have a legal responsibility to control what information children are exposed to in school. The same way that a book of pornography should never make it's way into a school library, so too, a school needs to make some realistic attempt to filter the internet content to which students have access. I also think that limited access to computer labs means that there is less time for children to be using the net unsupervised or for those who know how to hack through filters.

Households are a different matter. It is a parent's responsibility to know and control (certainly within their own home) what their children read and view. They might use filtering programs themselves, but shouldn't be relying on them. It is also their responsibility to teach their children about internet predators the same way that they teach them stranger danger before they let them walk to school on their own. Internet dangers are a reality of our life and the government can't solve all our woes. In fact, I agree with this morning's Sydney Morning Herald editorial that trying to filter out all objectionable material will simply give parents a false sense of security that their parental responsibilities to ensure that their children are not viewing objectionable material on the net have been taken over by a body with the power to ensure that nothing gets through.

The problem with a blacklist is that websites are easily created to replace those on it, creating a constant battle to keep the list accurately updated. Also while the most objectionable material might be blocked, such a filter lets through a lot of other kinds of pornograghy (eg showing acts that are legal between consenting adults in this country, suggestive online dating advertisements, and other content not suitable for children. Parents relying on government blocking (or net nanny programs for that matter) are just fooling themselves. They would be much better off following more practical rules for children's net usage, such as keeping the internet connection in a public area of the house (computers in child's own room don't have to be connected to the net) and monitoring kids' email (thinking particularly of young kids here). I heard about a guy who unplugs and hides the modem every night so that his teenagers can't access the net during the night. He knows it makes him look untrusting and over-protective, but he doesn't care, because he's more focused on the way the internet is being used by people who view teenagers as prey, and he understands that teenagers often think they are more world-savvy than they actually are.

Given that the internet industry has suggested it would take the average tech-savvy young person about two minutes to get around the system Senator Conroy is proposing (the net filter distributed by the Communications and Media Authority last year was defeated by a sixteen year old (Tom Wood, pictured) in about half an hour), I don't think giving parents a false free pass to ignore their children's net usage is realistic or kind to the children in question. Better to spend the money on increased Australian Federal Police resources to pursue child-porn rings and on educating parents about home-based filters and activity monitors.

been surfing the net too long now?

You might find your way here.

adventures in frustration

Big storm last Friday. I got home that night around midnight to find the computer fine, but the router/modem completely fried, and having taken the ethernet port out with it. The 320GB external drive I bought a about two weeks ago was also toasted to golden brown uselessness. Sigh. My powerboard claims to have a surge protector, but I'm sure you can understand my skepticism.

Saturday I bought a Belkin model, only to find that they have a protocol problem with exactly one internet provider in Australia: TPG. Guess who I'm with... TPG also has issues with NetGear. These are, naturally, the two most popular brands, sold everywhere. Somewhere around Wednesday I found a computer store that sold NetComm and finally our net is up and running again with newly bought surge protection in place.

To use my dad's favourite reward when I was a kid...a golden nothing to the first person who can guess what the computer guy found in between two little panel things in the computer when he was putting in the new ethernet card!!

speed...the non-druggy kind

Did I mention I changed internet providers. That's because my current provider offers adsl2+ (read: much, much, faster broadband) but cannot give me any idea when they are rolling out the service to my area. I waited a few months and then got busy looking for a new provider.

Adsl2+ takes me from the 512kbps I was on up to 8000kbps. I don't download movies, but to give an idea of the speed, at 8000kbps a movie would download in about five minutes. It's kind of amazing to watch your downloads move that fast. Not that I've seen it at top speed, but getting a fan-subbed Japanese TV drama (even the DVD version don't have English subtitles) in a few hours instead of a few days is a real joy.

And it's not just about downloads, either. Things just work better - watching movie trailers, loading a page with lots of pictures, and cool things like the behind-the-scenes videos that Keyboard Kid sent me fifteen links to last weekend. (We approve of the casting for the upcoming movie - especially Evanna Lynch as Luna.)

Basically, this is the first time since coming back to Australia just over three years ago that I've had broadband at a speed that comes close to what I got dirt cheap my last year in Japan, and behold, it is very good indeed.