Blogging grows up

This article does a nice job of summing up the state of blogging these days:

Could it be that blogs have become online fodder for the — gasp! — more mature reader?
A new study has found that young people are losing interest in long-form blogging, as their communication habits have become increasingly brief, and mobile. Tech experts say it doesn't mean blogging is going away. Rather, it's gone the way of the telephone and e-mail — still useful, just not sexy.

Actually, I think blogging hasn't been "sexy" for quite a few years. And this blog, well, never, lol. According to the article, about 1 in 10 adults in America has a blog.

All of that rings true to Sarah Rondeau, a freshman at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.
"It's a matter of typing quickly. People these days don't find reading that fun," the 18-year-old student says.

A college students says 'people these days don't find reading that fun?' What kind of place is College of the Holy Cross?

"Five years ago blogging was a club," says (David) Sifry of Technorati. "There was this wonderful, delicious feeling of being able to talk privately or semi-privately with people who shared your interests. And there were few consequences of being able to share with your friends on a blog.
"I think we're seeing a deeper awareness of the perception of privacy and how that can affect your life if it's violated."

I definitely see all of this. I now tend to see blogging as a regular hobby, like stamp-collecting or short-story writing, not a social networking trend.

Also, the privacy thing is always on my mind when I'm posting something, and that definitely wasn't the case when I started my first blog in 2001.

And the original generation of bloggers who thought blogging was the coolest thing ever and have continued to post, well, we're all old now, no longer the college students or slacker young adults we once were.

But I like my blog, even if my fondness for it makes me seem old. Twitter annoys me, I'm losing patience with Facebook, texting does nothing for me. For a person (like me) who wants to do some real writing, I think there's really no better hobby for you to have.

- Got today off work and thank God for that.

- I never used to get what a big deal traffic alerts were until I started doing the 8-to-5 schedule thing. Wreck on the freeway = misery.

- Today's reading material: a short story by Nabokov and The Bible: A Biography.

- Bad idea not to collect the mail for four days in a row.

- I think I may have to buy Patti Smith's new book. There's an interesting profile of her in New York Magazine: " 'A day doesn’t go by where I don’t create something,' says Smith. 'Sometimes it’s a rough day and I’m about to go to sleep at eleven o’clock, but I’ll get my Polaroid and take pictures of a series of things. Then I go to bed really happy because I have something to look at, something I did.' "

- Departures is an amazing movie.

A good analysis of the iPad:

An iPad won't do everything a laptop does. It's not supposed to do everything a laptop does. The relationship between iPad and laptop is similar to the relationship between a microwave oven and a set of pots, pans, and cooking utensils. The pots, pans, and cooking utensils can produce more satisfying meals than the microwave can, but often you just don't want to drag all that stuff out and clean up afterward. A microwave is a good complement to a well-equipped kitchen.

Night of the nerds

I didn't expect to spend my Friday night eating atomic wings with five nerdy guys. "Do you want to join us?" my friend asked after our reading group. I hesitated. I glanced at their T-shirts and hipster-ish hair cuts. I know next to nothing about animated series, comic books, Star Trek or trendy music, which I had heard them discussing earlier. "Uh, sure..." I'll try anything once. I could go in anthropologist mode, observe and take mental notes.

We spent 10 minutes deciding what wing package to order and how to pay. One guy's wallet was literally made out of duct tape. The dinner basically turned into a contest over who could eat the most atomic wings. I joined in laughing as faces contorted and changed colors. Two of the boys ate 4 or 5 each, a vegetarian knocked back a huge glob of sauce, one guy didn't eat and spent most of the night texting. I ate one and it was enough for me. Such a girl.

As expected, the 20-minute discussion of South Park flew right over my head, and I think I insulted a couple of people when I said I hated Snow Patrol. Smile and nod, eat a wing and some fries. I definitely have a geeky side, but no, I am not that kind of nerd. Time to go.

I was the odd girl out, but whatever, I did it. Would I do it again, NO, please give me someone who knows more about the news than anime, but for one night it was OK.

Moby asks, has anyone else noticed that almost every movie has roughly the same indie soundtrack? Yes.

No such thing as privacy on Facebook

I totally agree with this article about Facebook changing its privacy settings: "350 million people signed up for Facebook under the belief their information could be shared just between trusted friends. Now the company says that's old news, that people are changing. I don't believe it." Neither do I. I think it's all about $$$.

I really DON'T want the whole world to read my dopey status updates. Nor do I want a record of every time I comment on or 'like' someone's status update, or to wade through what everyone else on my 'friends' list has commented on or 'like'd.

I find it very scary that Facebook users have so little control over how the company uses their information. A cautionary tale.

Work notes

I think in every job there is a ratio of things you love versus things you hate. Let's just say, in other jobs the percentage of "things you hate" was a lot higher than it is now. Let me preface this by saying that I like my job, I really, really do.

Still, a job is a job is a job, and I don't know if I'll ever stop pining to be back in grad school. Last week an acquaintance and I were comparing notes about dress codes and work lunches and sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day. "What I miss most about school is the flexibility, being able to choose your own schedule based on what you want to do." Oh, yes. Actually, what I miss most is learning about obscure stuff then talking about it with smart people.

Work reminds me of the "other" school, the K-12 years, going to bed early and being told when to take a lunch and when you can use the bathroom. Seeing the same people every day and caring what they think. You seem to spend a lot of time counting down the days, hours, and minutes.

In the midst of the stucture you can only dream about that other life that you know is out there, the one besides rush-hour traffic and meetings and presentable clothes. The existence where I could stay up late and walk outside in the middle of the day and I could wear jeans and it wouldn't be frowned upon.

I've noticed the number of people I hang out with on weekends has been steadily declining since I got out of school. I was actually invited to go to a club on Friday night but I said no because I was about to pass out because of tiredness. Last week I went to bed before 10 p.m. a few times.

It's funny but I think if I was still in school I'd have had a totally different response to the Haiti earthquake. I'd get on the Internet and look at stuff for hours. I'd reflect on it more, take some time for it to absorb instead of what I did, which was acknowledge it then quickly move on to business as usual. How different of a person am I from what I used to be? Am I that fundamentally changed?

But this is what you do to have your good name and money in your bank account. Yes, of course, a job provides its own forms of freedom, financial and opportunity-wise. And I really don't miss forking over several thousand dollars every semester, over-long lectures, and wondering if what you're studying ultimately matters in the real world. Maybe I'm also forgetting about the stress that came with school, the homework and the uncertainty. Still I can't help thinking about those years as the golden years. They may have ruined my outlook on work for life.

Adventures in cooking

- I used Google to find out what fennel is.
- I now know how to supreme an orange.
- Probably better to grate the cheese before you actually need to use it.
- Spaghetti carbonara is *really* good.
- It took me much longer than 30 minutes to make one of Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals. False advertising or am I just a disorganized cooking dunce?

Jennifer Lopez grows up.