You never really understand just how dependent (read: addicted) you are to something until you are forced to be cut off from said “thing” for an extended period of time. Case in point: for the past two weeks, my workplace has blocked social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This has likely been done in […]
Help us name our pulp fiction anthology!
So, myself and an eclectic collection of wanna-be authors are presently working on writing short stories for our very own anthology. The catch is that the stories are all pulp fiction (this pulp fiction, not that one). We have quite the extraordinary mix at the moment: a handful of hard-boiled detective stories, at least one […]
What have I been up to?
My regular blog readers have probably noticed the silence these past couple of months. I’ve been extremely busy, both at work and at home. At some point within the past few months, I slightly altered the sidebar description of this blog to denote that it is reserved for “larger more encompassing thoughts, essays, concepts, and […]
Don’t mind me, just hanging up the “gone writin'” sign
I would love to able to say that I’ve been “busy” lately, but that just isn’t the right word. Distracted is probably more appropriate. Between being glued to the Democratic National Convention speeches and pretending to write a novel, I just haven’t found the time to do much else besides surf and not blog. I […]
Could Des Moines be a web 2.0 hotbed?
A while back, Jesse Stay (FriendFeed | blog) asked a question on Twitter (which I, of course, responded to on FriendFeed, as did many others). It was a simple question: Just curious, if you had one city in the U.S to live, based on affordability and web 2.0 networking potential, where would you live? I […]
Disconnecting, and it feels so good
Being offline for an entire week has really put a lot of things into perspective. Coming back to a veritable information overload online with over 1,500 unread Google Reader items, I’ve decided that a lot of the noise I listen to runs completely counter to my goals in life. So I’ve decided to make a […]
Another reason to love Twitter: the randomness of cartoonists
A good number of popular webcartoonists have Twitter accounts these days. I follow a small sampling of these excellent creative individuals, and happened to catch onto something marvelous that came absolutely out of nowhere today. Rene Engstrom, the Swedish creator of the comic Anders Loves Maria, posted a tweet this afternoon: Ok Twitter! I’m taking […]
What the hell is Toluu? And does it require a prescription?
After generally ignoring my blog for several days (as I am wont to do every now and again, especially when Twittering so much), I checked back in today only to find that I was receiving an unexpected influx of traffic from a site called Toluu. Curious, I jumped down the rabbit hole and followed the […]
Twitter is NOT blaming Scoble for their problems
It’s amazing. Everyone complained when Twitter wasn’t saying enough about their downtime. Now that they are working to be more transparent, they are being harassed for it. Alex Payne (no relation, as far as I know, though my youngest son’s name happens to be Alex) posted on the Twitter dev blog some answers to questions […]
Fun online tools: blippr mini-reviews
So, I’ve been hooked on blippr lately. What is it? It’s a simple site where you can leave and peruse reviews for movies, video games, and books. The catch is that in Twitter fashion, your reviews can only be a maximum of 160-characters. I love this service for one very obvious reason. When I ask […]