estriel

I have been thinking recently about social media and my experience with them. A couple days ago I had watched this video about Project Glass, a new augmented reality technology Google is starting to try to develop, a sort of a multi-media tool or platform that would be integrated into a pair of glasses, so that your text messages, video calls, social media activities, applications such as maps etc. would all be displayed right in front of your eye. The video showing the possible product's functions and use was full of examples of how this could be used with social media. (I shall refrain from commenting on the fact that the only used platform was Google+, which nobody really uses in real life.)

While the geek (and Google fan) in me thought that this was extremely cool, at the same time, it made me wonder, whether this is something that would be appealing to me.

The first "social medium" I had started using - excluding the chat rooms and online boards that I used to visit when I was younger - was Livejournal. I literally grew up with LJ. What I loved about it was connecting with people who shared my interests, people I had something in common with, and getting to know these people, or at least some of them. Also, LJ served as an outlet for my own opinions, interests, problems, thoughts - a journal. That was before blogging became widely popular, before Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr.

I remember wondering what the hell Tumblr was good for - it seemed to me like a stripped down version of LJ that allowed you to post only minimal texts, which seemed rather silly for me. I was used to reading, to writing. The fact that social media would become as instant, immediate and "reduced" didn't cross my mind back then. I still don't care much for Tumblr or Twitter. What I do use regularly, though, is Facebook.

However, as addictive as it is, Facebook has never had and I daresay never will have the value that Livejournal has had for me. I also never find myself being "upset" when Facebook is down, and I don't miss Facebook when I don't use it the way I missed LJ. When LJ was down, it was… TERRIBLE. When FB is down (which doesn't very often, admittedly), I just move on to other things and even feel better, because I'm not wasting time on it. LJ for me was about true connections and, as silly as it may sound, about friendships and shared passions. I believe there's so much to that - to connection and passion - than clicking a LIKE button.

I miss what Livejournal used to be for me - possibly it is because I have changed, because all of us have changed and grown (apart), but LJ isn't the same anymore. I don't have the close-knit communities/groups of friends that I used to have. My friends don't post as often as they used to and neither do I. I wonder if LJ is dying in general or if it's just the fraction that I see and read that is dying?

I wonder if (social) media that require us to spend more time, that require us to write and think and read, are losing their momentum in general?

What makes me use Facebook is, in part, the fact that I want people to respond. (Isn't that what drives all social media?!) And somehow, a like is never quite as satisfactory as a good old comment, something the other party actually takes time to think about and write down.

I find Facebook and Twitter and Google+ and co. kind of… unsatisfactory, while at the same time I appreciate their immediacy. Though on the other hand… I wonder how I feel about that, too: it used to be nice/cathartic to write everything down once the event was over, to relive or ponder the events later.

I sometimes feel like being connected all the time takes something away from the relationships we have. (Just to make things clear: I do appreciate social media a lot, I think a lot of what we have available today is awesome. I just choose not to elaborate on that point in this post.) If I let everyone know what I'm doing while I'm doing it, using one sentence to talk about it, aren't I missing out on the "story-telling" part later? aren't I missing out on conversations I could have, recapping my day to a friend/partner/family member? Because if they have seen it on Facebook already, what's the point in repeating it to them? (I know that I am simplifying, because you'll never post on FB in full detail.) If I'm connected all the time, doesn't it make me focus less on the action or even itself, because a part of my attention is drawn to my posting about it on social media?

Like I said, the geek in me loves the technology and loves the possibilities - at the same time, a part of me remains old-fashioned and nostalgic. I even miss hand-written letters in the mail.

PS: Once again, this is not an anti-FB/anti-social-media rant. I will admit that sometimes I like FB very much. :)

Sometimes when all your dreams may have seen better days
When you don't know how or why, but you've lost your way
Have no fear when your tears are fallin'
I will hear your spirit callin'
And I swear that I'll be there come what may


I went skating for possibly the last time this season, everything felt off (including the way I felt on the ice - I usually feel beautiful when I skate, but not tonight), so on my way back I felt the urge to pop Middle of Nowhere into the player. It wasn't MMMBop this time that made me feel better, but songs like Weird and Yearbook (that one is SO haunting even after all these years; oh Taylor Hanson, how did you do things like that with your voice at age 14?!) and I will come to you. The last one I listened to while my car was already parked in front of the house, and I sang along.

I miss being a fangirl. I miss being passionate about all these little things. (I still think Taylor Hanson is pretty, by the way.)

Resolutions for March:
• less sweets, or less food in general
• more sports
• less Facebook
• more LiveJournal (and writing)
• more art
• I resolve to be happy

ETA: I am toying with the idea of... going on vacation for three weeks, job-search be damned, even though I'm not allowed. I haven't been anywhere for way too long.

I've got 4 invites left for Google Wave (and probably more on my corporate account). Anyone want one? I want people to wave with; I haven't really had the chance to test it yet.

You all probably already know that Johnny Weir is now on Twitter. It was only a matter of time, as I'd predicted.
(You see, Reets? You'd have gotten Twitter, too, eventually, even without me bullying you into it. I mean, we joined MySpace because of Weir and Twitter is by far not as obnoxious as MySpace used to be/still is.)

Now, the funny part is that Johnny has made a great total of 3 tweets... and the poor boy is already censoring himself. I had time to spare today in the morning (I was faster than expected with getting ready), and so I checked my e-mails and also Twitter, and Johnny had just posted a tweet about an hour earlier, saying that he's going to bed and that his day was full of 'bullshit'. I don't remember the exact wording, but I remeber the word - it made me smile, because it was him sounding like a very normal boy. Now that tweet is gone. I assume somebody - either his agent or some official channel - told him to delete it, because cursing and calling flights and choreo and scheduling 'bullshit' is probably not considered appropriate.

Poor boy.

1) Happy Birthday, marsianka_selma! It has been a joy getting to know you a little (and hopefully I will get to know you more as time goes by) and I hope you had a wonderful birthday. <3

2) The afternoon was spent in communications class. We're going to produce... media. My group is doing a video. My group = two French girls & moi; they're actually quite nice. But today, after having like 30 minutes (or more) to discuss what we're going to do - and we did discuss and came up with some good ideas, in the first five minutes - after those 30 minutes and after me and one of them decided that it would be neat to do our video in a vlog format, this other girl looks up from her laptop (she's spent most of the time... I don't know, updating her facebook). Approximately 30 seconds before the teacher will want to know what we're going to be doing exactly. She looks up and asks 'so what are we doing'? When we tell her, she says 'but that's boring'. She proposes a thing that would be cool - except the video is only supposed to be 3 minutes or so, and there's no way we could do that in 3 minutes. Annoying, y/y?

3) Do any of you use Twitter? We talked about it today in class. I'd heard about it before (I was one of the few people who knew what it was) and I find it kind of... pointless? (Like LJ for people who want to waste even more time online than they already do and prefer short and succinct to long, elaborate and sophisticated?;)) What do you think?

4) I hit (and surpassed) 10K today. Two scenes to go. Cel, I hate you. ;)

5) I'm going home tomorrow. My suitcase is around 20kg if the scales aren't lying. (They also tell me that I'm 58kg. Which... I'm not sure I believe.) Lille-Brussels-Prague-Pirna once again tomorrow.

6) I really feel like babbling - speaking - to/at someone. Or listening to someone. Are any of you on Skype? (Not necessarily right now, but in general.) Voice posts, anyone? Sometimes it feels like the more I communicate in the written form, the more I miss the... human side of it.

There should be a fluffy Valentine's Day post. There will be one later, I think, with fic. But uh, I'm just so annoyed by this and it can't wait. I need HELP. SOLVED IT!

Last night, Opera started displaying LJ comment pages like this:





instead of displaying them normally like usual. It doesn't matter whether it's my comment pages or friends' comment pages; it doesn't happen, though, when somebody is using a custom style for the comment pages. No other LJ pages are screwed up, just the comment pages. The memories pages are screwed up, too. It's not my account's settings, because I tried with another LJ account and it was the same. It's also not a general problem because everything looks normal in Internet Explorer.
Either I have accidentally changed some setting - but I have no idea WHAT it was - or Opera and LJ are suddenly not compatible anymore.
Anyone have any ideas on how to fix it?

I also don't know how to reset all the settings for the browser. I tried deinstalling and reinstalling Opera, but somehow, the sucker just remembers my settings, even when I deleted the folder it was installed in. How do I get rid of this? (That way, I could reinstall Opera and start anew, with the original non-screwed up settings - hopefully that would fix the problem. I don't really want to do this, because it means losing all my cookies etc., but if I have to...)

Oh, and I already tried deleting all the LJ cookies - it doesn't help.

OMG MY INTERNET WORKS! I was just mulling it over in the shower and then decided to give it one more try, with a thing I'd tried earlier, using my old IP address, only I changed the last number to a higher one because I figured maybe the lower numbers are being blocked (like when Sarah and I were having this IP address conflict a while ago). And OMG it WORKS!
More news later, haha, but I'm just so damn happy!

I'm at school, we just did a presentation of our project. It was okay, if not particularly good. Main thing: it's done and over.

I still have no internet at home. I talked to the boys, who promised to come, but didn't. I talked to the landlady who said she'd ask them about the internet, and also that the new connection would be up in 1 week. Keep your fingers crossed for me? I can live without a connection now, because I don't have much schoolwork yet, but once I start getting more work, it would be nice to have internet at home. :( I still have no idea what the problem is. The internet in that house is just fucked up.

I went skating last night. The bouncer I'm friendly with who'd asked me for a postcard of Prague wasn't there. At first my feet and legs felt all stiff and weird and I kept stumbling, but then it got better. My waltz jump was niiice - I realized that when I jump "further", sort of forward instead of just "up", it looks/feels quite right. I landed one lovely loop, too, but after that, I had no luck. My salchow is not completely lost, either, so yay for that, but my toe-loop is just getting worse. But, considering that it was the first session after quite a while, I was happy. And I love my new vest - kept me all warm and cosy. The staff at the rink gave me smiles and wished me happy new year, which was nice.

It was cold on the way back, I listened to Narnia music and thought about my novel; it made me so bouncy and excited!

There are more things to comment on, like JWe's new journal entry, which was greatly amusing, but I'm famished and I have to go grocery shopping, buy some plumber liquid for our sink as well as some new thing for cleaning. I have to clean this weekend; the apartment is filthy, oh my god!

And there's SALES! EVERYWHERE! I think I'll have to go shopping, but not on the weekend - weekends are always crazy and a sales weekend will be even worse. But I'm afraid next week all the good stuff will be gone already! I also want to go to Lush to get a new bathbomb to make my room smell nice, mmm.

Ok, lunch now. Write me letters or something non-internetty. ;)

My other roomie is back (German one) and I already hate her again. I totally did not miss her these past two weeks. She broke my already bad internet with her laptop. *eyeroll* And so I was forced to spend the evening writing melodramatic cheesy Evan/Johnny songfic. I like some parts of it, though, so I might finish it and then let a select few read it, just to confirm that it's bad and not to be shown to anyone else.

Also, favorite news of the evening: Johnny Weir apparently instructed his Russian fans (!!!) to make banners and to cheer for Adam Rippon. I wonder what Adam did to soften his heart. I need to go to bed now so I can go skating in the morning, but oh, puppies! I will try to download some videos from CoR tomorrow, because there are things that I need to see.

(See? I spread my attention evenly between Johnny's many lovers. Evan gets some, Adam gets some, everybody is happy. Stéphane will get some, too, don't worry. And D, the One True Epic Love.)

Writing just doesn't work.
I want to write figure skating fic.
I started four times tonight. One was Evan talking and had an unspecified pairing (as in – I did not make up my mind), key word: well-fucked. Two were about Johnny and Adam and hair issues. The third was Gwendal/Johnny, feat. Marina.
Nothing works.
And I want more pictures of Adam Rippon, with straight hair, with curly hair, and with lipgloss. (I swear he's wearing lipgloss in one of the two pictures of him that I currently have on my computer.)
I also crave Johnny/Stéphane. I miss them, I miss them so much! And I miss Drew, too. In my universe, Johnny and Drew will get back together in the future. Because they're oh so beautiful together in my head, and Drew is so not over Johnny. Plus they could do pairs together; wouldn't that be pretty?!
Oh and I had that weird, weird moment in which I really wanted to ship Johnny with the Kerrs.
I think I want to watch skating now. Otonal, maybe. I still need a HQ version of that program, sigh.

Anyone want a drabble? Only figure skating this time, though. Prompt me and I'll try.
(I profoundly apologize to the people whose requests I failed to fulfill the last time. Try again? With a different request?)

I went skating today, btw. It was so pointless. The session was very full, the ice was crap, there were stupid kids everywhere. A group of little girls followed me around and kept talking to me even after they realized my French was bad; that was cute.
There was police – like 10 of them or even more – at the rink for some reason. I don't know what happened. I only noticed because when they arrived, the ice cleared as everybody went to ogle the happenings. (At first, I thought it had started to snow outside and that everybody went to look at that, but no. Snow isn't as fascinating as a bunch of policemen in the vestibule.)
I skated less than an hour. People just kept coming; it was impossible to work on anything.

I inquired about the internet again. "Somebody's coming starting next week, probably," the boy told me. He said that last week already. :/

I have school all day tomorrow. And in my lunch break, I have a meeting with our tutor/the lady responsible for the double/triple degrees. :( I also have school on Saturday this week. That's bad... and worse because Saturday morning is the best time for skating... and I have to sit at school instead.