Heres 5Cents

Ok I've decided this is going to be my personal blogg (I did have a loose geek theme but I never really ran with it...but i figure I am a geek... it'll do)

So anyway onto personal drival!! yaaaaay.

Ya know what made my day? the FTI (where I work) vending machine. It takes 5 cent pieces!! oh glory. Its a moment for me, really it is... I mean where else are you going to get rid of them? They are a testing ground for sainthood...paitence of a saint n' all that, cos thats what you need (and the bored checkout chick behind the till needs) if your going to get rid of them any other way.

However if you encounter a vending machine that takes them plink plink plink ....plink plink ....you just keep going till it gives you a coke..no counting ..no confusion no worries.

so yes bless the 5 c machine.

Boooyah

Oh Mr Sandman why do you hate me! Just because I haven't released a bad "heavy metal" track in your honner...you pass me by! damn you sandy see if I care!

Sleep!! Sleep is for the weak!!.....also for the sane I add at this point.

precious precious sanity. sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep I remember what that is...or is that sanity.....

Have fun working with me tomorrow kids!

I'm going to go punch Sandy in the head now.( can't help it the devil music made me do it)

niiiiiiiight

Hail to the Geek

So the theme for my blogg is hail to the geek (am I the only one who thinks blog looks good with to g’s? no? alright then)... The reason for this is simple; its something I can BS about for hours and not run outta content.

In order to do this I think it is imperative that first the definition of "Geek" is set, and I don’t use the word imperative lightly…

The terms Geek and Nerd? ...they are in fact *not* the same, and are definitely not interchangeable, each has different qualities. (which I will now acknowledge cos they make me look waaaaaaaaaaaay cooler [ side note and an irrelevant tangent..I now worry I’m getting to old to say the word cool effectively…there may be a blog entry in that])

Ok on to the definitions!!

The term Geek.. pretty much means someone who knows waaaaay to much about a particular subject. This subject *doesn't* have to have anything to with academia. So for instance you have the music geek or a computer geek or comic geek or a film/tv geek hell you can even have a food geek. Basically they know so much about it, that they can't help but correct you if you make a too broad an observation about their beloved subject. The more obscure the details they know the more geeky.

That’s the specific form of geek… a general geek is someone whose interests are considered geeky. So things like comics, computer games obscure tv, fantasy , sci fi and let us not for get the uber geeky ones of Role Playing, Fanfiction...they are interested in "non mainstream" or alternative things. Being a geek used to be uncool....but in the last couple of years it sorta got a bit trendy.

Dictionary.com’s definition of a geek is

1 A person regarded as foolish, inept, or clumsy. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept.

2 A carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken

Ok while no geek that I’m immediately aware of has bitten the head off a chook the “single minded” thing is pretty on the money.

And good ol Wiki’s definition goes as follows!!

A geek (IPA: [giːk]) is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by obscure or very specific areas of knowledge and imagination. Geek may not always have the same meaning as the term nerd (see nerd for a discussion of the disputed relation between the terms).

Now look? See ? I feel validated!! Wikipedia believes there is a definitive difference between Geek and Nerd. We all know Wikipedia never lies.

Now a Nerd a nerd is all about brains. A nerd knows how to program a graphics calculator. They can tell you the square root of 76 and know the name of the capital city of Greenland, algebra doesn't phase them and they find physics and chem interesting.

The dictionary.com definition is:

1 A foolish, inept, or unattractive person.

2 A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept. (hey look! clever paraphrasing of the definition of the one for geek?!)

Who new it was all about the looks for the nerds? Anyway that’s not the best definition I’ve heard but get out your textas highlight the terms “scientific” and “technical” in there kiddies.(incidentally dictionary.com had this very interesting tid bit that I never knew (The word nerd, undefined but illustrated, first appeared in 1950 in Dr. Seuss's If I Ran the Zoo: “And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch a Preep and a Proo A Nerkle a Nerd and a Seersucker, too!)

Wiki’s Nerd definition goes as follows:

Nerd, as a stereotypical or archetypal designation, refers to somebody who pursues intellectual interests at the expense of skills that are useful in a social setting, such as communication, fashion, or physical fitness.

Notice the difference? geeks know a lot about chosen subject but are not necessarily brainy. While nerds have the brains. There is of course overlap...most geeks are also nerds ..hence the confusion. In a conversation I had with a Nerd (in a pub of all the unlikely places, and considering the place I work the statistical chances of me having this conversation in a pub and not at work? Blow out to like 1 in 20 million) threw in the concept that nerds were more science/math/logic or left brained while Geeks were arty/literary/disorganized or right brained people. I’m not sold on that, but it does appear to have a lot of support..

Either way you get the gist of what I’m saying…

Ok I always said I would *never* get a blog.
and at the time that was a "never" in the sense of EVER!!

I am now a lier. But damn it! all the cool kids have got one. (and thus the title of this blog)

That, and the bandwagon was drifting past me so slowly I couldn't help but climb on...i've seen turtles with gimpy legs move faster than this trend, well no, i haven't... gimpy turtles are kinda rare, but the points there.

I got to thinking, maybe its not another lame ass fad. Which was one of my main reasons for my carefully nurtured loathing. My reasons for defying my "never ever" are simple:
a) I'm an insomniac, its the wee hours and i'm to sleep deprived to be stubborn about it... infact at this point in time it seems like it could be a hoot! and
b) I'm now offically on a quest to know. What the HELL PEOPLE?!? what do people see in it? why there hell have blogs stuck around? whats the freakin point!!

Given all this, I figured for my first post I would wax poet all my issues with blogs...this would hopefully prove to be a cathartic experience for me... allowing me to embrace my new blogging nature(that last statment was in no way sarcastic). As well as giving the anti-blogger stance to all you avid bloggers out there. Yes, I'm aware of the irony..bagging out a blog on a blog.. Har dee Har Har

Form there i hope to find acceptance and embrace this blog. I'm told you should have a theme to write about...that this generates "interest". So as well as posting my discoveries on my "quest to know" with this whole blogger thing. I'm thinking this will be a Hail to the Geek. Interperrate that sentence how you will ..i'll extrapolate later.

and ok this is lengthy and as i say i'm welcoming another early morning...so stay tuned to the next post to hear the words of the anti blogger

Blog on!
-Clancie

(trying to embrace it...thought i needed a "trendy" catch phrase or somthin..)

p.s ok couldn't get the damn spell check to work...those who know me ..*know* i'm an extreme "creative speller"... Hopefully next post I'll be all edgoomacated and will have figured it out...till then try sounding out phonetically.

Waxing poet.

Ok here we are again, the benifit now is that it is actually day time....as in the sun is in the air, and hence I hopefully should be alert enough to write something meaning full.

I'm just going to launch right into it. I hate the idea of blogs. In my harsh moods I see them as pointless self wank covering nothing that hasn't already been covered. In my mellow times I ...well no I still think they are pointless, but I cencor the wank bit.

Heres the thing. I can see the enjoyment in writing them..hell I love throw out my own 20cents about the world... in fact I'm big enough to know that, yes on occasion, I like the sound of my own voice be it spoken or written (Hell it was why it honestly wasn't *that* hard to twist my arm into creating a blog.) I think everyone does.

But ok honestly who wants to read it? OH i know I know "but no they are informative!" ye cry "people can learn from others experiences" ye plea. Ahh yes the, I went to this conference and learnt blah argument. Ok thats fair I'll give you that. However, unless I had a real driving *driving* interest to know I prolly wouldn't take the time to search out and then take in what betty joe down the roads thoughts on it where. *shrug* that may just be a personal thing..maybe I'm too vain when I think "who the hell is Betty and why the hell are her opinons on cold necular fusion so important or vaild?"...come on we're deluding ourselves... Betty's opinions are just that, *opinions*, they can entertian us with her thoughts and tickle us as we compare them to our own...but Betty could be the insane cat lady that lives at number 67..to say that we can take "informative information" away from it is a big leap

I already hear your argument of "but that has been the case in all published work and all pages on the internet since we threw away our biros and learnt to tap keys" and I hear you ...this is true, and i did sound very anti that knowledge...when I'm not. It can be very interesting and entertaining to hear it. So I guess this comes down to for me the ease in which people can post. Before while not hard persay you had to be fairly intent on getting your message out. Now Betty the Crazy cat lady, can be surfing the net looking for the ultimate white persian, when she comes across a blog page ..the mood stikes her so she babbles down some information. *shrug* surely the information looses its quality in the face of such a mass bout of information diahreeia.

This harps directly into my other pet peeve with blogs. Other forms of "Blogs" have been around for ages... just called different things, and all of a sudden we're embracing this ' revolution'!?! pul-lease if you wanted to post an article or a story or put your opinon out into the hazy space that is the net.. the outlets have always been there, and not hard to access either. They weren't just ballooned into this neferious blob of a section called blogging. It did however require a more thorough search, because you had to find the *right* space to post and the aproppriate place. Which was *good*..it meant it stood out ...it reached your target market...cos to find it, people who had the interst were already there drifting through the different sections...as apposed to being lost in amoungst a trillion billion other "Blogs" out there.

And lets just finish up my who wants to read it tirade...cos I didn't get to finish the Personal Blog vein. Which lets face it is the ultimate of all i find wrong with blogs. so in short WHO WANTS TO READ IT?!? So far in my minor parooozal of blogs 9/10 are personal in some way... and outta that they fall into 2 catigories. The first being the VENT blog...a blog that essentially acts as a live journal...and the host bitches about things that have pissed them off. Ok to put this in perspective and to be a cheeky shit. Why do they need to write it down? *because* if they vented in such a fashion live at a person? lets face it, we'd prolly tell them" hears a tissue for your issue" and to get over it cos honestly we don't want to hear it. c'mon we've all had friends do the rant thing...and its ok for a bit but after a while it gets a bit old. So if we don't really wanna listen to it why the hell would we wanna read it?

The second is well the "me and the family went to albany this week" do we like sitting through slide shows and photo montages? If so you have your audience ...but these sort tend to go into the "and last thurday i went here and then i went here and then i went here". Again i'm an arrogent cow...cos that would prollly hold my interest for a whole of 4.5 seconds I have my own life thanks.

So who wants to read a Blog? most specifically a personal blog? and lets take it even further who would actually think.."i like the tone of their rant I'll come back?" One of my esteemed colleges referrs to creating an audience, commenting that what people had considered an audience has changes from 100 people to 10 people...in the case of blogs i see it more like 4 people...and lets face it they will be 4 people you know and who know you..and thus already have their interest in what you have to say.

Ok I think i'm done. to summerize I think they are pointless. But I'm going to try and grow from here maybe I'm wrong...this is my un educated accessment of them. Perhaps, after having one and delving into one a bit more...I'll revise my opinion. I realise I'm a big fat hippo (crite) I now have a blog which i used to rant but if you can't beat em join em. I hope i do learn to understand cos i really wanna be cool like everyone else
- The Anti-Blogger