Over the past couple of days I have come to a rather alarming understanding: Facebook and Twitter have eaten the internet. It's true, though; every word of it is true.

For instance, I fully suspect the main reason I haven't been posting here as much is not, in fact, because of laziness but is rather due to the fact that whatever I would have posted already appeared piecemeal on Twitter throughout the day.

Then again, it could be due to laziness.

Or the fact that I still do not have proper internet at home, due to Netspace fail. Seriously, last time it took them two days to re-connect us. This time they claim they actually need to come out to the house to make sure we're not lying about having a telephone line or something, just like Telstra before them. I'm on the verge of sending them detailed photos of said telephone lines, complete with handy labels so they can't miss a thing.

On the other hand, it could just be that their internet technicians are crying out for human contact. Or at least a nice cuppa and a biscuit.

Regardless, at this point, I won't have proper internet until the 13th, which is almost a month after they promised us internet within two weeks. I AM GOING CRAZY HERE.

Anyway, to return to my point: stealage of internet by Twitter and Facebook.

I have my LJ posts set to ship to Facebook automatically. It seemed like the thing to do. Mostly, they just wandered off there and passed by without comment, except on rare occasions. Now I get almost as many comments on Facebook as I actually do on LJ.

Everything just seems to filter through Facebook or Twitter. Once upon a time, I used to get breaking news on my flist; now it's through Twitter that I find out that water minister Tim Holding hasn't ironically perished at the hands of snow.

Why the transition, though? Why have we gone from blogging to micro-blogging? Why have we been drawn in to wasting our time on quizzes or, even worse, farming, on Facebook? Personally, I think it's because it's more immediate. You can have Twitter and Facebook in your pocket with your phone - you can always be up to date with what's going on, no matter how mundane.

Am I right? Horribly wrong? I guess I'm just fascinated to know what inspires these changes. Why have you been drawn in, against your will or not?

Or it could not. I would, of course, be referring to over-thinking. I do it all the time. No seriously, All. The. Time. To offer a case in point: the reason I haven't written in this journal for the last week and a bit is because I keep over-thinking the process. Where normal people would just sit down and blog about things, I have to turn them over and examine them from all angles and ask them questions.

By which point, it's about two days later and the news, she is old.

The reason for most of this thinking? Oh, that would be the new blog I'm putting together for my work. Not to mention browsing through other writers' blogs. It's making me want to work out what should go on here, or if I should get a domain again... I don't know. And I still want to incorporate more videos into this thing, as a sort of complementary thing.

But I know I'll just end up over-thinking it, by which time it'll be a decade later and the internet will be, like, sooooooo passé.

Anyway, in news that isn't old and hasn't been over-thought (but does most definitely involve brains), I should mention that the fivedotnerds channel is under seige... by the undead.



Any tips on what we should do to survive the onslaught? I'm not sure I prepared myself well enough, really...

OK, so technically I promised that this would be photos of the new house.

It isn’t.

I do have photos of the new house.  The difficulty in bringing them to you all lies in the fact that a) I am lazy, and, b) uploading the photos involves overcoming said laziness.  But I shall.

In the meantime, please accept this list of best ofs served up by my week.

Best moron of the week
This one seems like a contradiction in terms, but oh well.  The award goes to the guy who walked up to my bus-stop this afternoon and proceeded to sit down and smoke, despite the fact that it’s illegal to do so in a bus shelter and that, thanks, but I don’t want to die of lung cancer.

So cue me walking away to stand up and wait for my bus after a long day of work in which precious few breaks were to be found.  The main reason for their scarcity probably lies in the fact that they were cunningly disguised as more work.

And then, this lovely gentleman GETS UP AND CONTINUES ON HIS WALK.

*swears at length*

Strangely enough, bus shelters aren’t actually your personal under-cover smoking seats - they’re BUS SHELTERS.  People might want to, I don’t know, shelter under them in air that isn’t carcinogenic.

Thank-you so much.

I need to swear some more...

*does so*

Best achievement of the week
Actually waking up when my alarm went off.  Once.  I had it set for 6:45am (although it’s actually 6:30am, since I follow in the age-old tradition of putting one’s alarm clock ahead in order to encourage timely efficiency... when all it really does is assure me I can safely sleep in for fifteen minutes longer).  So, as I was saying before that ridiculously long parenthesis interrupted me, I had it set for 6:45am, which only resulted in my sleeping in ’til seven.  Aha! I thought to myself.  If I set it for six thirty, then I’ll only sleep in ’til quarter to seven!

Which was a fantastic theory.

In reality, I woke up at six thirty and just slept in for half an hour instead.

But not this morning!  This morning I was up and stumbling about in the miserable darkness mere minutes after the alarm had gone off.  So huzzah for me and my timely rising.

Best catastrophe
This is an odd one and I apologise in advance for it, but the world’s going to end and it’s all my fault.  I’ll probably expand on this at a later date.

And finally...
Best quote of the week
This one goes to Bindi, although it’s mostly for randomness.  The quote in question?  “I try not to look at my sister-in-law’s ass.”

Yeah.

I don’t know whether to be relieved or offended.

Ah, I’m such a useless blogger of late.  Where are the vindictive rants against the idiots in society on the bus?  Where are the posts where I whinge about work?

Gods, apart from a passing reference to a semi-colon the other day, I've hardly even mentioned grammar or the abuse thereof.

It’s a sad, sad thing that being happy and having fun simply doesn’t make for entertaining LJ entries.  Luckily, I think I can live with that.  I can’t even complain about LJ's being blocked at work, because it’s sent me running towards the welcoming embrace of messageboards.  I used to avoid them, because they really ate up my download limit (on top of LJ, that is) but now there’s no LJ, I’m free to cavort about on messageboards and behave like a loon.

And it’s so much fun.

So, I could sit here and ramble on about the fun I’m having and the amazing people I’m meeting but it would only end up sending people to sleep.  Instead, I shall just pop an enthusiastic Huzzah! right here and continue on my merry way.

Oh yes - and I still have to write those two thousand words but I swear, I’ll do it tomorrow!  (Ah, the procrasinator’s creed...)

I spent most of this morning without power.  Gosh it was great.  One minute, I was eagerly popping my fruit muffins in the toaster, the next I was powerless.

Well, apart from the lights.  The lights were working fine.

Not so the toaster, the central heating (waaah!), Bindi’s hairdryer, the fridge and anything else you care to mention that involves a power-point in any way.

Thank goodness I’d just made a cup of tea or I would have gone insane.

I’d relate the following couple of hours of pointless phone calls and frustrated waiting but a) it’s really boring, and, b) would involve far too many mentions of how damned cold I was.  I was freezing!  The weather had been looking up at the start of week, but it had taken a turn for the worse and seemed to be mocking the whole situation.

So... cold...

Oh, did I mention that I couldn’t even turn on a computer?  No warming glow of the monitor, no internet.

So... very... cold...  I think some of the shivers might have been withdrawal symptoms from my beloved internet, too.

So, there I was, wrapped in too many clothes for comfort (including a scarf wound about six times around my neck), reading my new manga until my fingers were too cold to hold things up any more.

When the electrician finally arrived, he said such inspiring things as:

“Oh, I really hoped it wouldn’t be one of these types of fuse-boxes.”

And:

“Damn, I don’t have any of these fuses.”

And then we worked out that the toaster had caused all this trouble.  The toaster.  The stupid, piece-of-rubbish four-slice toaster that's too narrow to fit anything but the slimmest bread slices and that toasts things unevenly anyway.  That pointless, frustrating, AGGRAVATING toaster caused all of this trouble.  So now we have to dispose of it.  At this point in time, I can’t decide if I’d rather burn it or smash it with something heavy.  Both options are incredibly attractive.



In non-toaster related news, I’m enjoying the new range of styles that LJ has given us, courtesy of VOX.  It turns out they’re going to start leaning towards CSS customisation now, so I might actually have a chance of customising it to suit my purposes!

*stabs S2*

Is it just me, or is the internet dead?  Where is everyone?  Are they all off, having lives and doing stuff?  If so, why aren't they writing about it in LiveJournal?

I need entertainment at work!  I need it when I'm at home on Fridays.  When did I say everyone could go off and do fun things and not tell me about it?

I feel a big sulk coming on.

Well, I did until I realised I'm just as guilty of this as everyone else.  There must be something in the air that's stopping me from updating regularly.  Well, that and the fact that not much is going on.  Also, yesterday a story attacked me when I wasn't looking and insisted on spending all day with me.  I can't really complain about that, because it's an infectious story, full of characters and unwanted betrothals and idiots sleeping in stone circles.  I'm sure I must have looked a bit weird, though, at various times throughout the day.  But that's what you get when you have one foot in your imagination and one at work.

Actually, I think I had most of my body in my imagination and just one or two fingers and associated brain cells at work.

It was a lot more fun than my average day at work.  Now all I have to do is start writing the story.  Or the snippets of story in my head, at the very least.

Oh, and did I mention my very modest aim to write ten thousand words in ten weeks?  In that case, consider it mentioned.  Ack.

The other day, in further un-told adventures of the water leak in the front yard, I happened to be pushing my way through the rather considerable weeds along our back fence when I noticed something bright green on my left hand.  I do believe I uttered the word: "Bleh!" and shook my wrist furiously until the green flew off.  It was only then that I realised it was a baby praying mantis, so I went and grabbed my camera in order to take a picture.  It was truly tiny - no longer than five centimetres in length.  Goodness, they're creepy looking things, though.




In other insect-related news, some ants decided to pay a visit and trekked all the way in to picnic at Pickle's food bowl.  Needless to say, they were bundled out in short order, never to return, or so I hope.

---

Votes are now open for the 2006 Australian Blog Awards, although if you're inclined to go and vote, pack yourself a picnic lunch and take a drink.  Either that, or just put your top two or three preferences in and leave the rest to be automatically sorted.  I probably shouldn't say that, but after arranging eighteen votes in order for the Best Designed Blog section, I was too exhausted to vote on anything else.

---

In writing competition news, the KSP SF/Fantasy Awards are now open for 2006!  I've already managed to bully two people into entering and I think I already have a story lined up in my own head for the competition.  Entries close on the 26th of May, so all those Australian writers of SF anf fantasy have plenty of time to get some stories together to submit.  In a further bonus, entry is free if you're 20 and under.