Entries Tagged 'ramblings' ↓

The whole topic of cyber-bullying is pretty big these days. Typically it is associated with teens and sites like myspace, facebook and what not. But in the wide world of the web, it can be pretty easy for adults to treat others rather poorly as well.

This has been a rather huge topic of discussion on Dragon’s Mark, the creative writing and role-play site I own. We have an area for players to talk about a variety of topics, and one of most active in quite awhile is titled No Swimming - Keep Out - and is primarily about how folks treat others, be it on blogs, in chat rooms, or in gossiping with others. And the discussion has spilled over on to at least a few other players blogs that I’m aware of… such as Obviously Pink and If you don’t like what you see here…*

Continue reading →

Ok, I don’t do posts like this very often. But it is Monday… so it seems like a good time to share this particular post I found on another site.

From over on Zen Habits comes 32 Ways to Make Someone Happy Today

The list includes items from the very simple “Smile” to the more existential “Be there when they’re in need.”, and I would probably agree with all of them except #26 - but that’s just me.

My own #33 - Hold open a door for someone coming in as you are leaving (or vice-versa).

The micro-blogging site, Twitter, has been around for awhile.  And the concept is fairly simple…

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

To that end, you are able to post a short (140 character max) message that folks have come to refer to as “tweets”. These messages lets others know what you are doing at any given time. I get the whole concept, but I never really got in to it… just never found much of a use for it, though I have tried on a few occasions.

Maybe I just don’t have enough friends? Well, friends that also use Twitter. Or that are even in to the whole social networking concept. Which is actually rather odd since just about all the friends I have these days I can pretty much trace back to having gotten connected through some sort of online means. Most from back in my AOL days. But I suppose as I have slowly delved more and more in to the world of putting content on the web via various blogs, I was bound to drift towards the micro-blogging here and there.

Continue reading →

I own a site called Dragon’s Mark, which is run with the help of four friends. It’s a site, well a group of sites set up for free form role-playing. Basically, a form of creative writing, usually done on a collaborative scale. The forums are generally used to posting of story items written by our site members. These can range from short “play by post” set-ups where two or more players write out a scene together, to much more elaborate stories that make up scenes from the life of the various characters.

Recently we had an issue crop up where it was found that a number of story type postings were plagiarized. The original poster has said it was not intentional, that the stories were purchased from a ghost-writer. That’s really neither here nor there. The fact is, the items were plagiarized, taken from various fan-fiction sources. the OP took most of them down, well, took down pretty much everything they had ever posted. We (the admins of the site) took down some others. The whole thing has left a bit of an open sore sort of feeling with a number of folks.

I do not, by any means, claim to be an expert on this issue, but I have learned a number of things about plagiarism and fan-fiction over the last couple of weeks.

Continue reading →

Warning, the following is a bunch of .. well… whining.

I’m sick.

The first few days were… eh… not a big deal. Sore throat, sinus pressure, feverish. Went to the clinic Sunday to make sure it wasn’t strep. It wasn’t. “It’s probably a virus”. recommend some OTC stuff and gave me a prescription for a gargle that was the consistency of Elmer’s glue. Even if the stuff had tasted decent (which it definitely did NOT), I wouldn’t have been able to handle it - not with my overly-hyper gag reflex. Cripes, the nurse was barely able to get a throat culture as it was.

Continue reading →

I… have no idea.

Why does anyone write a blog?

Ok, there are lots of reasons. But what about the ones like this site, where it’s just my personal crud. When it comes to ranting, yea, it can be cathartic to write stuff, get it out there. We all would like to have that place where we can just let ‘er rip. But the stuff that really eats at you, the things you reaaaaaaaly want to say - you can’t. Can you?

At least not on a site where anyone knows it is you.

Continue reading →