growing up and moving out

We’ve come a long-long way together, baby.

And by “baby”, I am adoringly referring to– of course — “the internet”.

From my first X-Files fan site over at Geocities or Tripod (or where-ever-the-hell-that-was) (hey, give me a break, it was 1997!), to Blogger, to LiveJournal, (back to Blogger) and then WordPress.com, Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter(with a few others places in between) (OMFG! Fanfiction.net!!), I have basically grown up online.

I’ve gone through (and/or described) a rainbow of human experiences on some sort of online public forum, from puppy-love, family dramas, deteriorating and blossoming relationships, depression, work, politics, activism…  anything and everything.  To this day, my best friend in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD is a lovely young woman I met online over 7 years ago.  If I’ve lived it, it’s probably happened or documented online.

Some may call me a geek, but I like to think that I was more of an “early adopter”.  Because if MC Hammer uses Twitter, and then re-Tweets me, how on Earth can you call it “geeky”, huh, punk?

Yeah. EPIC WIN.

Anyway. I was talking about growing up. And becoming mature and stuff.

Because, yes, I’m getting older and accruing the odd responsibility that I need to start taking seriously.  The time has come for me to settle down with my internet shenanigans; to assess and consolidate my online presence and to set myself up for what the future holds for me.

However, that by no means involves quitting the internet or passively waiting for work, mortgages and come-what-may to smash me into boringness.

It just means thinking about things like “branding” instead of just blogging my brains out for no particular reason (or, like, because I’m angry at a politician or freaking out about my career), and setting my online-presence up in a way that works for me rather than against me.

Oh, gods. That sounds horribly boring, doesn’t it?

Sigh.

But, honestly this was inevitable.

As they say in Swahili, my favouritest language ever: Hakuna matata, the Circle of Life (™?), et cetera…

Because I am old, now, you guys. O-L-D. And I am about to work for a large, influential corporate entity that works for other large, influential corporate entities, and, yeah… I have to be responsible and sensible and stuff so that I don’t get fired or sued or whatnot.  While the property market might be Just Where I Want It as a flash-hot young law grad at a large corporate firm, it will not be so nice to be unemployed or a freelance whinger who does not even have a Google AdWords account.

So while I am not quitting the internet, I am just going to be a bit more grown-up in the way that I use it.

Phase One of this grown-up online makeover has been completed: about a month ago, I quit Facebook.

Oops, sorry, did you spit out coffee all over your screen? Um. I probably should have put a little warning before that little announcement, I guess. Anyhoo…

While I may have been referred to as The Queen of Facebook on more than one occasion — what, with all my friend-approving and blog-importing and link-posting and group-joining and event-creating and wall-writing — it got to a point where, just like for Gretel Killeen, it was Time To Go.

(And we all know what happened there after Grett-Grettz left, don’t we? Just sayin’…)

As cool as it was to see what people were up to, and to have “ambient awareness” or whatever they call it about all these people that I know, Fb was turning into an epic time drain and the people that I interacted with the most on there were people I would see, or call, or text message, or Twitter to, on a regular and more meaningful basis.

And because I don’t have any photos of me drunkenly groping a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a boss’s opponent that might one day cost me a promotion or something (like this guy) (because I am, we’ve pretty well established, a square) there was nothing Fb had to offer me any more.

So buh-bye!

I was told I wouldn’t last a week, but a month later I am doing JUST FINE! I may have Twittered a wee bit morethan I had done so while I had Fb, but otherwise, I have not missed a thing. (Or if I have missed them, I have not noticed I have missed anything, and that suits me fine.)

Upon the successful completion of Phase One, I have continued to push the cogs rolling ever forward.

I now present to you, Phase Three:

sunili.net

Spiffy, huh?

Yup, I went all-out and invested in a domain name and hosting and all that fun stuff!

Hurrah!

Phase Three is still very much under construction.  I now need to save up so that I can pay the awesomeness who is designer extraordinaire Aja West of Swankmob* to design me a website and business cards and some other peripherals (note to self: ask her if she does personalised stationery) so that I can launch my brand — that is (pay attention, children!), ME — so that those who so wish to do so can hire me to write stuff and be fabulous (which is something that I want to do some day, down the track).  But it’s happening.

*Aside: You guys, if you’re looking for a designer and don’t have to get a second job making coffee to pay for one, HIRE AJA!! Because then she’ll give me a cheaper rate and my site will be done sooner, and you’ll have an awesome site too! WIN-WIN-WIN, people, it’s all WIN!

And now, in case you think I am a moron who cannot count…

I wish to take you back a step to Phase Two:

blog.sunili.net

Tah-dah!

With all the power vested in me upon the installation of WordPress 2.7(hot!) I have set up a new blog in honour of the New Year, and more importantly, the New Me.

I’m going to leave all the old stuff here without migrating it over because I want to make a fresh start of it, and I’m really excited!

So change all yer bookmarks and subscriptions and stuff, and start looking forward to joining me on this next step in my life online.  I’ll see you there!!

Peace out, Team Awesome Readers of Sunili’s Blog — I ♥ you, each and every one!

xoxo Sunili

[Cross-posted @ blog.sunili.net]

Working it out

In a massive turn of geekism, I have decided to start planning my New Year’s Resolutions already. At this stage, 2009 is going to be full of win.

Still planning, of course, but so far I’m thinking:

• buy an apartment
• run (and I mean, like, RUN) the City to Surf
• win the [yet to be established] Pulitzer Prize in Blogging.

What do you think, team?

And, in an effort to get off to a running start (there is a pun there, too, just wait for it…) I started the “run 3 times a week” goal YESTERDAY.

I did the first session of DJ Steveboy’s Podrunner: Intervals First Day to 5K — a 10-week interval-training program that gets progressivly hardcore as the weeks go by.

The tempo of the music changes with a kinda comical hooter noise to tell you it’s time to speed up/slow down to guide you through the run, and I think I did alright for the first go!  I fast-walked and jogged on the treadmill with it pumping out my iPod nano for 30 mins and did nearly 3k! Hurrah!

I also signed up at http://www.gyminee.com/ but I do wonder how long I will stick with updating that. It is much prettier than the last social-fitness thing I played with (can’t remember the name) so that will help me be motivated to log on.  If anyone else is on there and wants to be a GymBuddy, let me know.

the new poltwittical frontier

A little while ago Malcolm Turnbull jumped on the Twitter bandwagon (although not before a tech-savvy satirist got in first) and now, with the launch of the re-branded Kevin07 for 2008, www.KevinPM.com.au, old Uncle Kevin has joined in on the fun.

Within hours, of course, @FakeKevinRudd was on board too.

And Norg boss Bronwen even did up a new avatar for the Real Kev Ruddy (please stand up) along the lines of the No Clean Feed protest piccies:

Bless! Things move quickly in the Twittscape!

It’ll be interesting to see how Kevs interacts with his “followers”.  Turnbull’s actually replied to people here and there, although you wonder how much they take on board.

Anyway. I’ll sure be watching. Will you?

Seriously, you guys, Twitter is the new Facebook. Sign up already!

Plurk v Twitter: the ultimate social-networking deathmatch

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m being a total geek at the moment playing around with Web 2.0 sites. “Uh, what on earth are you talking about, you dorkus?” you ask?  Well, that link just before explains it in detail (hover for a super quick explanation) but basically, I’m talking about online services which allow people to create their own content, tweek things online in ways that suit the way people want to use the web and communicate online, and generally do all that fun stuff, but in ways that are way cooler than mIRC or stuff you may remember from high school (if you’re my age…).

Facebook will always be my first love, but like everything with the internet and technology, geeks around the world have been working hard to develop cooler ways to do things like simple communication, and if you blink, you might even end up missing a few steps along the way.

Blink!

Last week I was planning on writing a posted snazzily entitled “Are You A Twit(erer)?” in a way to try and get people I know (mainly through Facebook!) to think about singing up to Tweet with me. Not that I don’t adore all the awesome Twitterers I’m following, cause you’re all swell, but I’d be nice to send messages to my mates too. But maybe they’re just not geeky enough. I dunno. But I was hoping it’d catch on the way Facebook seems to have.

What I love about Twitter is that it incorporates my fave aspects of Fb: status updates and Wall posts.  (It’s possible that when the new, cleaner Fb interface goes live I may love it even more, but my biggest problem at the moment is that it’s blocked at work. Boo.) You can “tweet” about what you are doing and you can @[username] reply to people while still in the one main interface. (Check out this post for a more comprehensive overview.)

It’s been called “micro-blogging” because it’s a micro web-log (well… duh) of your life and your little conversations with friends.  Then just this week I found Tumblr, which I think is a greeeeat service, which is essentially “mini-blogging” as you can post things a little more substantial that 140 character posts, and I love that I can integrate my blog and my Twitter feeds into it as well as posting fun pictures and quotes and links I find without having to do up a whole whopping blog-post.

Then yesterday, people on Twitter were twittering about this Plurk thing.

Wait. What?

Yeah. PLURK.  Apparently it’s some new Twitter thing. 

So, because I’m a sucker, I joined (not long after I joined ThisNext…).  I played around… I posted a plurk… I tried to look for people (but couldn’t … apparently they’re not making the search feature live til it’s 100% … or something, see more info here)… played around with customizing my profile… and you know what?

I liked it!

I LIKED IT BETTER THAN TWITTER!

Which totally threw about my plans for that snazzily-titled post about Twitter.

Then I was sitting in Court today without access to anything online (I KNOW! Can you even IMAGINE?) and started doodling (but it’s ok, doodling in a Moleskine) a pro/cons list for Plurk v Twitter (I figured that’s kinda legal related!).  I got back to post about it all at lunch time, when I saw a plurk by one of my new plurk friends saying he’d posted on why he likes plurk better like FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE! Damn.

Told you: blink and you’ll miss it!

There is lots of other chatter in the blogosphere about the whole debate which is all really quite clever and much better thought-out that what I have the ability to say, but I just wanted to add my two cents…

My 2¢

The good things about Twitter: it’s really simple to use; there are heaps of other apps you can use to access it (like BeTwittered, which I use on iGoogle); it’s relatively easy to find and follow people.  Blogger updates and links to fun sites are the most useful.

The bad things about Twitter: it fricking crashes all the time; it’s hard to follow lots of people and, moreover, conversations; the @[usernames] uses up characters.

Plurk, on the other hand, makes it really easy to follow conversations, because all the individaul plurksare displayed on a timeline. The flash interface is also really dynamic and fun.

So far, Plurk is really new and they’re working on improving things but here are some things I would like to see:

• the timeline going left to right. But maybe I’m a cultural dunderhead and should apprecite how Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic etc languages read right to left;
• a search function;
• the ability to drag people (or click photos to select them to move) into “cliques” (groups) rather than having to type out names;
• a way to pick specific plurks to follow updates on, instead of being notified of x-hundred new plurks/updates when you log on after a couple of hours.

I had thought maybe there should be groups/plurkmunities so you can join, but I think it makes sense that you plurk your own clique to start a conversation with them, and that you use facebook groups or some other service to organise events and that kinda thing — I realise that Plurk is not the right envrionment for them.

Origionally the “karma” thing irked me, but now it’s not so annoying. And hey, I’m Buddhist — I dig karma 😀

What do you think? Are you on Twitter or Plurk? If not either, do you think you might be interested in joining or or the other (or both)?

The bottom line

I really like being able to follow updates from bloggers and services announcing new posts or happenings on Twitter, but I think I would prefer having people I know well with my on Plurk — there’s more of a “community” thing happening there, and I don’t think I particularly have time to follow random 1-line conversations of people I don’t know well (or at all).

That was more than a line, and now I’m going to get offline and hang out with the people I care about in the real world. Because as cool as the second incarnation of the internet has gotten, there’s nothing better than a real hug in the real world.

Mwah

PS: but despite the above paragraph, I’d love to be you friend on Plurk, so join me 🙂