John Lacey Gets Personal » blogging http://blog.johnlacey.net Mon, 16 Aug 2010 01:01:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Sensational Sabbath http://blog.johnlacey.net/sensational-sabbath/ http://blog.johnlacey.net/sensational-sabbath/#comments Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:09:00 +0000 John Lacey http://blog.johnlacey.net/?p=319
From PoochCafe.com (Click Image to view at full size)

Back when The Bible was conceived of there was no YouTube, no MySpace, no Facebook, no Google, not even so much as an Altavista.

Fortunately attendees of the “Godblogs” conference in Kennington, southeast London, in their infinite wisdom, have drawn up a few guideliness… well “commandments” actually. Ten of them. Go figure.

Ten commandments for bloggers

1 You shall not put your blog before your integrity
Surely I wouldn’t do anything opportunistic like write about iPhones or free stuff on the internet just to draw a crowd? Surely I wouldn’t bait notables like Nalts and Loren Coleman to comment on my blog just for bragging rights? Tsk, tsk.
2 You shall not make an idol of your blog
And John said, Let there be blog: and there was blog. And John saw the blog, that it was good: and John divided the ‘culture’ from the ‘personal universe’.
3 You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin
Five words: I have a GodTube account.
4 Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog
Happy Sunday everyone!
5 Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes
I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologise to QiRanger for drawing attention to his substitution of “threw” for “through” (which would’ve been more grammatically correct given the context) in the comments section to his recent post titled, Ultimatums.
6 You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings
In fairness, ABBA did that to themselves. [Incidentally something that came to my attention after the recent story I carried about Eucharist Desecration was that Bjorn from ABBA was infact not Bjorn again. He's a card-carrying Atheist. I guess producing music like that would make me question the existence of the divine too. Check out this video of him talking about his beliefs.]

Also, any reports suggesting Dan from RandomProdInc had died were completely erroneous. (If you check the comments on that post, you’ll even find an apologetic one from Tom – also from RandomProdInc. Oh, memories!)

7 You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind
This is becoming increasingly precarious territory. Okay, I have a confession; I once penned a slightly risque blog post about somebody I knew from one of those social networking sites. I felt it was so risque that I decided not to publish it. I did, however, work up the nerve to send it to the person it was about. They accepted it quite graciously and complimented me on my writing skills. It is worth noting that the individual in question was neither married or in a relationship at the time.
8 You shall not steal another person’s content
Okay, I actually agree with this one; shocking, isn’t it? A blog is an invitation to be original, to be yourself, to create. There is no obvious benefit in (as we say in programming circles) ‘reinventing the wheel.’ Not only does it infringe upon the copyright of others, duplicated content is deemed very poorly in the esteem of search engines like Google. Bloggers don’t let other bloggers hurt their Google ranking.
9 You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger
RoboFillet and Killert00thbrush do not believe in gnomosexual marriage. (Stop the hate! Love thy gnome as you love yourself, damnit!)
10 You shall not covet your neighbour’s blog ranking. Be content with your own content
It’s only human to compare. Alas, subscriber envy is a common occurrence in today’s digital world. I may have once or twice exclaimed, “Check out the Feedburner Subscription counter on that – woah!”

That being said, I like my content. I’m quite proud of it. I like writing. I like writing here. I like that a small number of people read what I write, but I really feel as though I have reached a place where I enjoy the process enough that it wouldn’t matter if nobody was reading. That said however…

Thanks for reading!

]]> http://blog.johnlacey.net/sensational-sabbath/feed/ 2 No Connection http://blog.johnlacey.net/no-connection/ http://blog.johnlacey.net/no-connection/#comments Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:21:43 +0000 John Lacey http://blog.johnlacey.net/?p=203 I recently found myself internet-less for a few days. It wasn’t the end of the world. Actually at first it was great; I found myself doing chores and other useful things. I started watching television again. I started reading again. I had lunch by the river, and scribbled notes for articles at Get A Web Start.

By the end of day two, though, I missed the interaction so much I used what little bandwidth my ISP would afford me to check my twitter messages (waiting up to 10 minutes for a single page to load).

Without the internet, without the blogs, without the videos, without the podcasts, I felt so intellectually starved. I found myself driving to my local library thirty minutes before its closing time on a Friday night just to get some mental stimulation.

And on my return to internet access I felt compelled to seek out new blogs and bloggers. The truth is i don’t know many bloggers. Most of the people I know are youtubers. Some of them also have a blog, though it serves as little more than a forum to showcase their videos. (There are exceptions though: notably QiRanger, RiverBasil and RoboFillet.)

But more than that, I felt this need to seek out Australian bloggers. One of the things I have always appreciated about this medium is its ability to connect people with common interests and values, irrespective of their geographical location. When faced with Internet Connection Deprivation (ICD) I came to a realisation. My ability to connect with the people in my ‘extended network’ (yes, we have been reduced to MySpace parallels) is only as strong as my ability to connect to my Internet Service Provider.

Suddenly geographical location took on a whole new significance.

In my efforts to connect with Australian Bloggers I joined Aussie Bloggers – a community with a fairly self-explanatory title.

Within minutes of posting a short introduction I discovered there were bloggers living as close to me as Albion Park (about a 45 minute drive) and that there was going to be a “Blogging Event” there on Sunday! Clearly, it’s a small world after all. (Happy Birthday Snoskred!)

This made me feel really good.

Twitter Cure

Having a shared interest in something was cool, but having just heard the same song at the same time on the same radio station… that’s something else entirely.

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