Most days I still feel like that painfully awkward, nerdy kid who had no friends parading around in a functional adult costume.
Gina Trapani
ginatrapani
If one of my heroes — and a highly successful tech journalist and writer — feels like this sometimes, maybe it’s ok that I do too.
March 30, 2010 by Screenbeard
Good advice.Some updates:
Spurred on by the outpouring of comments and (!) blog posts after asking for feedback, I got stuck into a few posts here and on my other site. Thank you everyone who responded and wrote replies — it gave me some much needed confidence and meant the world to me. I was buoyed for days afterwards (and loved the commentfest that followed here and elsewhere).
I officially quit Twitter (with my joshnunn account at least). I was leaving it open ended so I could come back without looking like a fool, but now I’ll have to hang my head in shame if I DO return.
First Waves is going great-guns. tjb654 tweeted “Wave on Slow Cook” and was retweeted by Pamela Fox (one of the Wave API evangelists). So I got a bunch of new readers and some more Facebook Fans!
I began re-working my portfolio site. I couldn’t be bothered installing a test environment on my laptop, so I put it up and started editing it live. It took me a little longer than I expected to make it usable though, as the documentation for MODx went down just as I started, so I couldn’t figure out how to build menus. Eventually I got something I’m happy with up just before…
Lifehacker (!!!) linked to my site! What the F is that about?! I suspect I’ve stepped into a mirror world where the Joshua Nunn of this world produces things that interest people and that they want to read. I kinda feel sorry for the poor schmuck who got sucked into my universe, but then I remember he probably goes around with a goatee, so it serves him right.
Tonight I published a massive post on First Waves. I suspect that because I’m massively proud of it, it won’t be read by anyone and I’ll realise that my mirror-self managed to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and switch us back… bastard. Or I could be pleasantly surprised that I get some people reading it. I’ve paid for a Clicky account, so now I’ll know when YOU are reading this… unless you’re using a feed reader… or I’m not on my computer when you do… What was i saying? This point has descended into a Rubenerd–esq sort of ramble. My apologies.
November 18, 2009 by Screenbeard
An example of my proposalI don’t want a separate app where I have to gather all my friends and influencers in one place all over again — I have that in Twitter.
What I want from you is a way to flag a user (secretly) as someone whose opinion has aligned with mine in the past, so that when they say “I love this new movie”, I’ll be reasonably certain that I will too. And if I could flag someone’s opinion as wrong((that’s what we’re all thinking right?)) most of the time, then I will know that when they say “I love this song”, not to bother clicking through to it. It might mean that some of the users in my stream have slightly darker or lighter updates so I can tell at a glance which ones I’ve flagged as trustworthy or mostly wrong.
Heck, just being able to easily see that someone is in a “trusted” private Twitter list with a glance at my main stream would be double handy. Do that.
Thank you for listening. If you do this, you will win the world.
PS. to all the people I follow: I’m not talking about any of you. I think all of you have fantastic taste. It’s those other people I worry about…
September 13, 2009 by Screenbeard
Online communication fraught with peril. An innocent conversation with a friend can turn nasty in seconds with the slip of misplaced word. Umpteen times this week I have put my foot in my mouth, or written something only to spend the rest of the day worrying if what I wrote might have offended someone. Written communication has never been so difficult. Why has it gotten harder, the more ways we have to communicate?
Words ‘o the Day by jblyberg
July 6, 2009 by Screenbeard
I wrote this story in 140-character chunks on Twitter in two long sittings, in March and in June. It required a different way of writing.via Paul Constant Reviews Twitter — Features — The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper.
A fantastically written essay on the popularity of twitter and the future of communication via the internet.
