Moonlit Minds · »sketches in the wind«

Traditional Happy New Year wishes…

31 December, 2008 in feature | Comments

Well, I do not write here as much as I would like to. But nevertheless - I would like to wish everybody a calm, peaceful and above all - insightful! - New 2009 Year.

We all are probably under strong influence of news about economic crises and wars. I have always believed that no matter how difficult matters look, there is a brighter side… Try focus on it, and try also to focus not only on yourself.

We have so many amazing and wonderful tools those days, I am thinking about technology - and especially - communication technology, but did it make us happier? Did those things really improved our communication? I beg to differ. We spend more and more time inside not only our houses but - inside our inner worlds. Paradoxically, the technology made for improving our relations with outside world and others, instead of reaching the goal very often destroys the connections. I am far away from blaming the technology for it. I suspect that the reason, why it is so, is hidden in our personalities. We all are more or less narcissistic and all those new “social web” tools facilitate our narcissism.

I am not saying it is wrong. I just wonder if it has to be so. How many of us use Twitter only because we want to have more and more “followers” ? How many of us share a real knowledge and not just the news about some shiny, new “toys”? How often did you comment on blogs or FriendFeed just to be noticed or - hm - sell your product not having anything to say on the subject?

No, I do not say it is wrong - I have no right to it. I just want to point out that this way we, in the same way as mythological Narcissus, become slaves instaed of mastering the tools.

There is, of course, the way to turn the things in our favour. There are probably even more ways than one. But let me point out that one - if you take part in social game as I do, try to think what is your higher goal, your mission. How would you like to improve the lives of others by sharing your words?

You see, perhaps this way you would become less “popular” but maybe in the same time you would teach at least one person something valuable. And as a bonus I hope a useful tip: if I am sharing something here on the net I have in mind one person - my 22 years old son…

Let’s make this New coming Year really happy - for someone else.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: FriendFeed, Narcissus, New Year, Social network, Technology, twitter

So, we have spent Christmas holidays in Poland - Warsaw (my home city). It was very cosy. I took some pictures and now - when we finally landed back home in Oslo - I hope to upload some of them here. Perhaps they will be of an interest for some of you. Polish Christmas is slightly different than in other countries. Some more info soon

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

27 December, 2008 | Comments

Well, as some of you noticed - I changed the theme of this “bloggie”, which is now featuring Tarski Theme. I was playing with thought to make my own theme and I even made something based on Sandbox and style by Demetris of op111.net - I really like style of op111… But displaying pictures was not working correct So, now we have Tarski here - and I like it - kind of refreshing minimalism… and it suits perfectly the moods around… Mini is especially beautiful in the more difficult times. Don’t you agree…?

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

18 December, 2008 | Comments

New Wordpress 2.7 - huurrah!

11 December, 2008 in feature | Comments

I managed - following instructions from Wordpress Codex site here, I manged few minutes ago to upgrade this humble “bloggie” of mine.

The upgrade was painless and relatively quick. My host, one.com , worked without the glitch - big thank you to One!

Everything seems to work so far. What’s next than? Well, I suppose that it’s the time to play with the new Hybrid theme, based on Hybrid theme framework Child Theme - “Old School”. It looks quite amazing (especially “under the hood”) but - it will take some time for me to adjust it to my vision of the site (a bit “gloomy”, greyish, personal blog). Anyway, new version of software deserves “new clothes” .

My first impressions of Wordpress 2.7? It’s great - I like new administration interface a lot. It seems much more “user friendly” and the overall look suites my taste. I also hope that the new feature - automatic upgrade - will work in the future. Not that the upgrade was too complex or difficult. It was just… stressful.

And as the last note - apologies to myself and others who visit occasionally my place here. I did not update Moonlit Minds lately because of few reasons. One of them being learning how to use social web applications like FriendFeed and Twitter (yes, it takes some time…) another - being busy with real life matters.

I hope to share some of the things I’ve learned about “social web” in the near future. Perhaps my sharing my experince and mistakes will help some other people who, as me, are new to this stuff.

I wish everybody nice day (remember: weekend soon!)

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Tags: blogs, first impressions, FriendFeed, ThemeHybrid, twitter, Wordpress

Weekly Mind on the Bench

18 November, 2008 in feature | Comments

Shadows

Well, it has been some time since my last post here. Amazing thing is that having a blog makes you fell obliged to write something from time to time. Funny…
Anyway, it is OK - it motivates me, at least, to “share” what has happened lately here - at my end of the “net-space”. And it has happened a lot!

For the first, Santa is coming early this year - with a lot of “goodies” in his bag:

Acer Aspire One
Nokia 5310
New hard disk (500 GB)…

Wow! I simply cannot wait to unwrap my new Blue Communication System!
Next - there is a lot going on in the Wordpress world. Many theme creators are going Open Source which gives us, simple users, opportunity to try out some excellent themes, new version of Wordpess (2.7) is closer and closer, many interesting articles were published. My personal choice of last week Wordpress-connected links worthy underlining:

Why am I pointing out those articles? Simply because in my humble opinion, the authors are doing a lot for Wordpress and Wordpress themes and they deserve much more publicity than they actually have - watch their sites - their design will be the future of blogging (hopefully!).

Now few words about Twitter. I am relatively new user of the service (and according to latest statistics - I should not be using it - too old… ). Well, I find it actually useful and funny. Again only in my modest opinion, it is something in between IM (Instant Messenger) and blog. Perfect tool to find out trends and - “make a buzz”. Remember though that it is relatively easy to make something “trendy”, make an excitement around new things - much more difficult is to keep interest of the public. This craves a real effort and… a real value. If you would like to learn a bit more of “wise tweeting” try following this blog:

Twitip

Really good tips out there!

Talking about value, not so long time ago I started to use Zemanta service on the blog. Zemanta is a service which adds semantic value to your “writings” (suggests pictures, links, tags and so on). I am pretty satisfied with the service but today I “stumbled upon” Tagaroo (based on Calais powered by Thomson Reuters). It is not the first time I consider the service - it just seems pretty similar to Zemanta. And here I have a kind request - if you are reading this blog and you are/were using those services - can you, please, explain to me:

The difference between Zemanta and Tagaroo?
Could they be used side by side?
And if not - what is an advantage of using one over the other?

As you probably noticed my questions are shy trial to invite you to leave a comments here. Why? Hm, because the real value of social web, in my belief, is in creating the space for dialogue, sharing points of view, knowledge.

It seems I wrote slightly too much… Anyway - I hope you enjoyed my Weekly and… hope to meet you soon again.