As of this month, I would say it has been about a year since I've deactivated my Facebook account. I don't have any intentions of going back, so I would consider my attempt to get off Facebook, a success. Now I'm turning my attention to Instagram.
Update: I ended up creating a new Facebook account, here's why. My public Instagram account is still deactivated.
I have two Instagram accounts; a public one and a private one. I'm looking at deactivating my public Instagram account.
The plan is to replace that public Instagram account with this online journal. Instead of posting photos on that account, I will post the photos on here. I'm thinking of starting a new series called “Photo Log” which will basically feature photos, just like posting photos on Instagram. My first attempt at trying out that idea was this post.
Back when I started this online journal, I touched upon the idea of having one without giving readers the ability to comment on posts. I still think that is perfectly fine. It is your blog/journal/website. You should be allowed to decide whether you want comments or not.
Lately, I've been trying to look at ways to replace social media with this online journal of mine. Like instead of posting on Instagram, I would post photos here. I've come to realize that my friends would probably like a way to comment, like they do on Instagram. The problem is, I don't want it to be too easy to comment. I'm open to comments, as long as maintaining them doesn't become a full time job. I'm more interested in having conversations as opposed to comments, something that Matt alluded to in his Commentary and Communication piece.
Note: Wrote this as a submission to today's Write.As Cues prompt. I thought I'd keep a copy of it regardless if it gets posted or not.
A lot of people are probably familiar with the old proverb, “home is where the heart is.” I find that old proverb to still ring true today.
Home to me is not a country, a city or a place. Home is where my family is. Home is where my wife and kids are. Home is where my dad and mom and siblings are. Home is where my trusted friends are.
It's a beautiful Friday in North Texas. It is sunny outside but the temp is 48F right now. Felt good when I went out for a drive on my lunch break. Anyway since it is Friday, time for another music log.
This will be Part 1 of the Falling In Reverse music log edition. Wow Falling in Reverse. I don't even know how to describe their music, other than that it might be the best combination of metal, emo, punk, rock, electronica and rap that I've heard so far. Their lead singer Ronnie Radke has had a rough life having been involved with drugs and going to prison. However he uses his personal experiences and uses it as fuel to write some really, really good emotionally charged tracks.
Note: Most of their songs haveexplicit lyrics. You have been warned.
Let's start with one of their more recent songs, “Losing My Life.” One of the best combination of rap and rock that I've ever heard in a song. I love how it transitions from rap to rock just before the chorus. It also has this sci-fi movie vibe to it.
Even after unlisting this journal from the Read Write.As feed, I noticed that I still kept checking the view count on my posts. It's almost like checking for “Likes” on Facebook or Instagram. I want to stop doing that. So I've decided to hide the view count on my posts using custom CSS.
I'll let this run for a month, though I am almost positive that I'll keep this setting going forward.
So in an old post from months ago, I talked about getting back to playing Lord of the Rings LCG. I never got to write a game log entry for it, so I'm doing one now. I played the Shadow and Flame scenario. So, if you have not played this scenario and don't want spoilers, then stop reading now.
I want to get back to writing for myself. When I started this online journal, all I was looking for was a place to write down my thoughts. A place where I can express myself. An outlet. A hobby.
Somewhere along the way I lost sight of this. I bought into the idea that I should write posts that have value. And that those were the only kind of posts worth writing about. And while that is a very admirable goal, I realized that I could not sustain that kind of effort. Not when I work full time as a senior software developer. I also realized that it changed how I write: I was writing for the views; I was writing to an audience.
The file has been replaced with the platform, the service, the ecosystem. This is not to say that I’m proposing we lead an uprising against services. You can’t halt progress by clogging the internet pipes. I say this to mourn the loss of the innocence we had before capitalism inevitably invaded the internet. When we create now, our creations are part of an enormous system. Our contributions a tiny speck in an elastic database cluster. Rather than buying and collecting music, videos, or other cultural artifacts, we are exposed to the power hose: all culture, raging over us, for $12.99 a month (or $15.99 for HD) as long as we keep up our payments like good economic entities. When we stop paying, we’re left with nothing. No files. The service is revoked.
Oh my this is so true. I just realized that this is a bit like a leasing a car: you pay a certain amount of money every month to drive a car, but once you stop paying, you have nothing to show for all those lease payments you've made.
A somewhat related incident happened to me a month or two ago. My son is very much into Disney's Cars. So I thought I'd buy him Cars 3 on the Xbox One. I thought it would download the movie and store it locally on my Xbox One console. It turns out, you can only stream movie purchases... So basically, if our internet goes down or if we decide to stop paying for internet, we cannot watch a movie that I already paid for. This is my fault for not knowing, but I still think that is ridiculous! Lesson learned here, is to just buy movies in Blu-ray format instead.
I got to thinking about all this the other week after hearing news that Yahoo Groups was shutting down, and wiping out two decades of content – sending online communities and archivists into a scramble to preserve their spaces and history before it all disappears. It’s a huge bummer, for sure; and also a reminder of a hidden price we pay for modern technology. Everything is amazing, but nothing is ours.
Totally something we need to be wary of nowadays. This is one of the reasons to have your own website, so you that you own your content, or as Scott Hanselman would say, “own your words”.
This is a good read that looks at the state of modern technology and the evolving dynamic between ownership and access.
Trying out a new experiment. I will be setting this site to “unlisted” publicity as of this post. That means my posts will not show up on the Read Write.As feed. My reasons for doing so are:
I want to see if not publishing to the Read Write.As feed will decrease the number of people reading my posts.
And if so, does it bother me? Do I even care? Should I even care?
I want to see if it changes how I write my posts, knowing that my posts will no longer show up on a feed.
Specifically I want to see if I'm writing to an audience, or if I'm purely writing for myself.
I'll let this experiment run for at least a month. Maybe two months if I feel like there are benefits to not publishing to the feed. If it goes really well, who knows I might even just keep the “unlisted” publicity setting on.