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]

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!

fun links to keep the masses occupied

Gah, it looks like I may have called an end to my hiatus too early. But we did have a good couple of weeks up-til now, so I’ll count that as a blessing.

Until I have time to pull together all the notes scattered through my several Moleskines (I try to be organised, but I think I am a scatterbrain at heart) into real blog posts, here are some fun things for y’all to read:

• On the US Election front, Marc Ambinder tells us about the physics breakthrough that the Grand Old Party may have discovered — a tear in the space-time continuum that allows one to separate The Real, Pro-American America from The Fake, Anti-American America (Which is Still, Geographically, In America. Maybe):

If you think that’s special, then think about this. Pfotenhauer said that she lives in a place called Oakton, Va. Oakton is located in Fairfax County. Pfotenhauer implied that the country was part of “real America” because it was open to the possibility of electing John McCain. Here’s the problem: Fairfax County, like its neighbors, are in the process of turning colors. (We can detect this with a special version of a mass spectrometer called a “ballot box.”)

• Stephen Fry is Twittering! He’s currently filming a new doco series in deepest, darkest Africa; but apparently they have good Asian food there. Win-Win. He also signs off every post with a kiss (x)!
• Also new on Twitter in the last few days are TurnbullMalcolm, who unfortunately did not beat MalcolmTurnbull (who is much funner) to the better username, and my darling Brit-Brit (we are on nickname-basis).
• The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Lounge had a cartoon-off between TNY’s Farley Katz and XKCD‘s Randall Munroe. Hilarity!
• Speaking of cartoons — if you guys haven’t seen G-G (that’s Garfield Minus Garfield) yet, you mustmustmustmust go check it out.
• The Senate’s Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee is currently doing a review into the levels of bias, plurality and fair-and-balancedness (™ Fox News) in high school and tertiary education.  Dr Peter Slezak, a senior lecturer at the school of history and philosophy of science, University of NSW, has written a great op-ed, pleading guilty to the charge of encouraging his students to challenge society’s doctrinal mores:

Like regular charges of left-wing bias against the ABC, the moral panic evident in submissions to the Senate inquiry rests on a certain implicit, though questionable, assumption – namely, that only deviation from prevailing orthodoxy constitutes bias.

Conventional views are presumed neutral, and the possibility is never entertained they may be invisibly, systematically biased in the other direction. It follows that the regular complaints of bias and proposed remedies are a form of harassment designed to maintain doctrinal conformity.

…

However, the highest educational ideals require precisely the reverse attitude – that is, encouraging the exploration of alternatives to preferred, taken-for-granted views. As Bertrand Russell remarked, education should make students think, not to think what their teacher (or government) thinks.

Found any good web-treats recently? Please share!

Love,
Sunili xoxo

why I need Flock like a hole in the head

So the other day I tumblred about Flock, this fancy-schmancy Firefox-based browser which makes Web 2.0ing even awesomer.

Sounds, sweet, right?

I remembered I needed to (yesh, needed to) (yes, I meant, ‘yesh’ — isn’t it a great word? I heart it) check this Flock thing out when I was reading about Steven Colbert’s fabulous five-word Webbys acceptance speech and they mentioned Flock’s, too:

No sh**, we beat Facebook?

How can you not love that?

I downloaded it last night and had a play around. I added my Fb profile, my Twitter account, my Digg account, my Flickr profile… The thought of having all those babies linked up and rightthere seemed like the best. Thing. Ever. Add Gmail, add my RSS feeds, then flick and swish and I’m Flocked!

Right?

Wrong.

The more I worked on setting it up, the less interested I got. Maybe it was being all slow and stuff because I was using my mobem (mobile as modem, geddit? I’m awesome. Someone’s probably already said it, whatever, I can’t be arsed googling it), but Gmail would not load (still won’t, btw) and the thought of going through to add my Google Reader feeds, which have been neglected for ages and are all spiderwebbing all over the shop, highly bored me.

Guess what? I don’t think I am as addicted to Web 2.0 as I thought.

Sure, I try to post here as often as possible, but that’s mainly ’cause I like writing stuff, I check my Fb regularly, but that’s ’cause I fricking love Facebook, but aside from checking my Reader occasionally and scanning Twitter and Gmail via iGoogle throughout the day, plus a ThisNext update once a week or so… that’s about it.

Is that a lot? Probably. And in any event… I do not have time for much else.

I am so over Plurk, cause it takes way too much time to interact with people (two of whom I know, and have also not posted since they signed up) and you know what? Eff Karma, I don’t care if it goes down if you don’t plurk, I don’t have time for that crap, I’m way to freaking busy in the real world.

And the thought of being online with Fb/Flicker/Twitter/Digg/whatever blaring me in the face at every moment? Blergk.

I’m trying to streamline my life and sure, I’m not going to be a Zen Habits master any time soon, but whatevs. I’ve started doing my own version of PTO’s Inbox Heaven, I’m happy with Facebook to keep in touch with my friends, Twitter to follow cool interweb people I admire, my Tumblr to add fun pics and links and schtuff to if I happen to have the time to find them, and that’s enough for me, I reckon.

That is, of course, until the next shiny new thing comes along…

Stay tuned, chickens.

Update:

I hereby assert my rights to intellectual property ownership of the term mobem, i.e. a mobile phone being used as a modem, subject to the following conditions — I allow people to copy and distribute and use the term provided they give me credit, don’t change it and don’t make any money out of it. Thanks Grendel 😉

“mobem” by Sunili Govinnage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License. Based on a work at sunili.wordpress.com.

 

Update to update:

Damn, apparently I can’t CC a word. This is what happens when I choose to to hippy law units (eg Indigenous Law) instead of commercially ones (ie Intellectual Property). Does anyone know how to apply for a trademark? 😛