Of Gravatars and Twitter

I recently added two features to the blog that I have somewhat mixed feelings about but I figured that I should at least give them a chance before I naysay them or take them down.

First up, I added Gravatar functionality to the blog’s comment section. What is a Gravatar you ask? It’s a Globally Recognized Avatar. Basically it’s a little picture or graphic like what you’d find on a forum that’s used to identify your posts and comments. All the Globally Recognized part means is that the image is linked to an email address of your choosing so any site that you go to that uses Gravatars will post associate an avatar with your email.

I personally like this idea and it’s native to 90% of the themes on WordPress (not surprising as the WordPress guys bought Gravatar recently) but it didn’t seem to be that way with the particular theme that I’m using so I got off my lazy arse and went ahead and played around and activated it (I’m still trying to clean up/tweak the sidebar widget to fix the number of list stars that appear in the background). Now all I have to do is manage to convince people to actually use Gravatars. So go sign up already. It’s free and there’s no spam involved. There, wasn’t that convincing?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.

The other feature that I added was Twitter, which is the add on that I’m unsure about. I just don’t know if I need it. For the most part though, I’m just trying to actually figure out what the point of the whole thing is and why everyone is making such a damn fuss over the idea. I mean, I get the general gist of it: you can use it to keep your readers “up to date” about your current whereabouts and such in “realtime”. It’s a perfect example of the whole interactive Web 2.0 ideal that everyone spouts off on in the media these days and from that theoretical standpoint I like it. From a practical standpoint however, I feel that I just don’t lead an interesting enough life to warrant 24/7 interaction.

Maybe I’m wrong though and there’s a dedicated cult of nubile young women out there stalking and tracking my every move (wouldn’t that be nice). Who knows. I guess I’ll leave it up for the moment and see how useful useless it turns to really be. If the nubile nymph cult comes calling, you lot will probably be the last to know. 😀

A Long December…

I could wish you all a Happy New Year and join you in the traditional singing (read: butchering) of Auld Lang Syne but I won’t. I just don’t care for the tradition. Nor do I really care for the tradition of watching the walking corpse known as Dick Clark as he shills craptastic bands and singers on us and they all end up watching a glorified Christmas decoration “fall down” to commemorate what is essentially just another spin around the sun.

For me, New Year’s Eve has always been a time of personal introspection and reflection. While I usually spend it blissfully drunk off my gourd in the company of good friends (whalebone anyone?), I am generally just being social for my friends’ sake. I have always actually preferred to be alone, in the dark and silence thinking about life as midnight rolls around.

In the quiet and dark I can reflect on my deeds and misdeeds, my triumphs and failures and while I don’t ever set resolutions because I don’t really believe in them (I’m too much of a procrastinator), I do try to promise myself to not repeat the same mistakes in the upcoming year. Sometimes I even accomplish this.

In the past while I’ve been mulling over the year I’ve always managed to find a song that fits my mood and in some way describes my overall feelings. This year is no exception.

This time around, the song that best describes how I feel about the year is A Long December by Counting Crows. It’s sad and melancholy with just the barest shade of hope that things will get better in the coming months. To me it perfectly reflects and sums up my mood, especially for the latter half of this past year.

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On that note, good night folks. Maybe this year will be better than the last…