Archive for June, 2005

eBay, PayPal, Google: The joys of the Internet

Published on 30 June 2005 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

Have just spent the last hour setting up a new PayPal account to pay for a book I won on eBay. My old PayPal account had my maiden name attached to it and I couldn’t for the life of me find a way to change my name on the account. Once I had a new account it took a good 20 minutes to find out how to unlink my old account and link my new PayPal account to my eBay account - sheesh! As I used first eBay’s help pages, then PayPal’s, and finally resorted to Google, I thought about how much the Internet has become part of so many people’s lives. Pre-Internet, there was no

  • eBay
  • PayPal
  • Google
  • email
  • Flickr
  • file-swapping - music, games, tv…
  • BLOGGING :)

Without eBay I would not have my pen collection :)

Without PayPal my credit card bill would be far smaller.

Without Google I would have to do a lot more detective work when looking for information.

Without email M and I might never have become a couple! (Really! A story for another time perhaps.)

Without Flickr no one would know that Baubles the Cat is white, fluffy and overweight, that I have way too many books and way too many fountain pens.

Without blogging, well, you would not be reading this!

Oh, and I forgot file-swapping. Without file-swapping, M and I would not have been watching up to five episodes of Lost every night this week! (I better stop now and not incriminate myself any further ;) )

I sometimes wonder how much time we waste doing things on the Internet. Like when I get sent yet another email with some cutesy cartoon or pet picture or joke. And the amount of energy we all spend on our blogs.

Categories: ,

The pathology of blogging

Published on 29 June 2005 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments

I’m sure it must be possible to document the stages you go through when you create a blog. Something along the lines of interest, enthusiasm, doubt, (re)assurance, wonder (people respond!), obsession (overwhelming interest in other blogs, blogging, what shall I write today??), burnout, recommitment… Of course bloggers have already written about these stages (this one in 2002!), and I’m sure someone will study this phenomenon, sometime :)

I think I am in the obsession stage at the moment. I check my feeds too often (I need to tidy up my Bloglines feeds), I find myself thinking that such-and-such would make a good topic to write about, or wonder whether the topic has already been picked up by a blog somewhere… And where does the feeling of frustration that you can’t write about work in too much detail (or in any detail at all!) because you could get into trouble, where does that feeling fit in? I envy all those well-established bloggers who have worked out what their focus is, and write these lucid, good-to-read entries everytime they post! (I include all of you who comment on my ruminations in this.) Blogs like abecedaria and feel-good librarian, for example.

I think I just need to get over this angst and get on with it. Time for a bowl of porridge.

Categories:

Do this survey!

Published on 29 June 2005 in Uncategorized. 2 Comments

Check out this survey:

Take the MIT Weblog Survey

Courtesy of Blisspix.

Ok, back to work!