cat >/dev/null

Well,

it’s that time of the year again, when you draw the conclusions and look towards things to come.

All in all, I must say 2006 was an unexpectedly interesting year.

As has always been of late, my most important resolution was to lose some weight. The news is that I succeded to some extent. I’m still far from satisfied, but it was a definite step in the right direction. Also, I lost count of the years I haven’t been smoking, and that’s got to be a good thing too. In other words, 2006 is the year I started to get old.

I bought a house of my own and plan to move into it. It’s very, very small, but it finally gave me the opportunity of being enslaved to the Con of Man, that is, take out a loan. Now I can call myself a man.

I confess that I like the sound of even years, and as such, 2007 gives me some worries. But I understand this is not the right attitude to a new beginning, so I’ll try to be more positive by making a small list of resolutions for the coming New Year.

Ordered by importance, ascending (that is, more or less, chance of succeeding, descending):

• Stop refering to my sites as “blogs”. I’ve come to hate the word.
• Be much more focused on my priorities. All evidence points to the fact that I have limits, in spite of my failing to recognize or accept them.
  Practical examples include:
  • Do not waste time with undeserving people.
  • Never turn the TV on. Time-shifted recordings and movies allowed with moderation. Avoid fiction, so-called entertainment and news like plague.
  • Spend less time on the Internet, but write more on my blogs sites, maybe scheduling some time. Of course, trying to keep the number of articles, copycat blogging and the bullshit/word ratio as low as possible.
• Move away from Italy. Sad as it is, this is not the place to be if you’re supposed to make a decent living by working (as opposed to stealing).
• Fight my Jesus complex. People do not want to be saved, except on Sunday mornings. Sadly, most of the times this includes ones you care about. And blog posts.

My best wish for your New Year is, make your own resolutions and stick to them!

There is one thing that has been annoying me for some time now. Then something happened, and the last straw broke the camel’s back.

As I said before, my shot at trying to keep some sort of web log goes back to times when the word blog was still well into the realm of typos. I always liked the idea of bragging about various topics, often without a specific purpose other than helping myself focus my thoughts on the matter, and maybe share some fun. I’m glad that I have a following, albeit very small, but never in my mind has been the thought of imposing what I write to the public. Even without mentioning the metaphor lying behind the name of this site, the fact that I keep writing most of my posts in English, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of my readers are Italians, that Italian is my mother tongue, and that I’m a lousy English writer, is a testament to that.

This is not to say that I don’t believe in what I think and write, mind you. It’s just that information is what my job is about, and I think I know something about it, about how it should be done. This blog is not how. Sadly, I don’t get paid for writing, and there’s a serious chance (not to say clear evidence) that I never will, so I usually don’t have the time to check things and write them down properly. Many would even question that I’d have the skills anyway. So, as the Dude would say, this is just… my opinion, man. Take it easy.

Anyway, this blogging frenzy came over, and suddenly everyone and their sister has to write about whatever comes to their mind. Obviously I have nothing against it, actually I’m all for it. If I get to thinking that your opinion is of some value to me, your feed is mine; otherwise, thank you. You do the same with me, and we’re fine and dandy. I’d very much like that aggregators let me set some kind of rating, but I can live without that.

What I can’t stand is the phenomenon I started to call copycat blogging; that is bloggers copying the same piece of news, over and over, from popular sources and main aggregators, with the optional smart-assed short comment sentence added, as to make it their version. Just link the original source, and your conscience is as clean as a whistle. But why on earth should you think that I don’t know how to use Google or read Boing Boing? Because I regularly do, you see. Now show me that you’re smarter than Cory or at least as cute as Xeni.

It’s like the modern, socially-networked, RSS-powered version of the infamous habit of full-quote replying to a lengthy post on a mailing list or forum, just to add your “I agree” below. You agree? So fucking what!

Some would say, not completely without a point, that it’s the nature of the blogosphere and how it is supposed to be in the end. Anyway, I don’t subscribe. There are excellent blogs around, all with their fair share of news digesting and wit injecting. To which I subscribe.

May I add, it’s often blatant that blogging about popular topics is done on the purpose of getting more traffic to the web site, all the way down to the usage of very specific, clearly SEO-friendly words and sentences. Like the modern, socially-networked, RSS-powered version of mine is longer than yours.

Some other would say that the web came to free us from the old paradigm, just to enslave us to another one, equally flawed; that we traded editorial control for information overloading. I don’t buy into this either, because I think there are ways around it, but I have to admit that this is pretty much how at the moment. Very democracy.

Well, sorry, don’t take offense, but my time and patience are not endless. Enough is enough. I will not stand for this any longer.

I’ve dramatically cut the number of feeds in my aggregator, and I already feel a lot better, just like taking out a pair of shoes two sizes too small.

Next up, I’ll practise what I preach. In the past, I have always tried to add value to my copycat blogging posts. Of course this is not to say that I always tried hard or necessarily succeeded, but at least I think I tried. Now I promise that I will try harder and raise the bar, and when I’m not able to resist the temptation, at least I’ll tag the post with the relevant category, as I’ve been doing right from the start, waiting for some smart aggregator to enable my readers to take advantage of this and eventually block the whole category out. Maybe some already do, I don’t know.

I will also take other actions to try and raise the value of my posts, starting from taking more time to write them down. Since my time is limited, that will surely mean I will post less. Amen to that!

Funny corollary to all this is that it’s been days since I last heard news on the TV that I hadn’t already read about on a blog.

Or ten, haha.

Image courtesy of goenglish.com