The ‘question’
You are gorgeous. You are smart. Life will be hard. Life will be annoying. But if you stick through, life will be absolutely amazing. How do I know? Because you’re awesome. http://www.actsofkindness.org/

My response
This bugs me. I’ve never understood the benefit of telling random strangers how amazing and wonderful and smart and gorgeous etc. etc. they are. It’s inherently unbelievable. You (in a general sense, not necessarily the anonymous poster here who may, for all I know) have no idea who I am or who I look like, and thus your opinions of my appearance, personality, intelligence, and otherwise are completely made up. They have no basis in reality. They are empty words.

I may be gorgeous. I may be smart. I may be talented. I may be any number of the things random people online say to random strangers online at random times online for no reason other than trying to “do a good thing”. But you, hypothetical random stranger, have no way of knowing that. You don’t even know the color of my eyes.

A smile to a person you pass on the street is an act of kindness that can brighten someone’s day. It shows that they notice you, that they are friendly and nice and that they are happy to be where they and you happen to be. It makes the world seem brighter.

A helpful donation of time and money to a stranger in need is an act of kindness. It shows them that there are still truly people who care in the world, and actually helps that person with a problem.

Empty and anonymous compliments to anonymous people on the internet are not acts of kindness. They are acts of ego- and self-esteem-stroking on the part of the one giving the words, and, IF THE PERSON BELIEVES THEM, the person receiving the words.

Do you know how I feel when I am upset about something, or depressed, and some person I don’t know and who has never spoken to me before and does not know me at all says something like this on the internet? I don’t feel loved or appreciated. How can they love or appreciate someone they don’t know? No. I see just how empty those words are. The contrast between those words and the way I actually feel about myself is only sharpened, and I only feel more useless, more stupid, more depressed. I feel as though I’ve been stuck into a mass of “people who need to be cheered up”. A faceless nobody who someone is using to make themselves feel like a better person. Someone who no one really cares about at all. Just another random person on the internet to be nice to.

Oh and that logo is just temporary, by the way. The amazing Irk a.k.a. irkdesu of Infernal Shenanigans is designing me a real logo. I’m extremely excited about seeing the finished product, when it’s done!

I’m so excited about this WHOLE THING!

You have no idea how excited I am right now, really. I mean I want to be a writer, you know? And I, like many people, grew up thinking that you write a book and then send it off to a publisher and hope they think it’ll sell and publish it, and then you do that a few hundred times and maybe you’ll end up a minorly successful author who is read by someone other than your family and friends.

But the internet makes that all different! Especially with the publishers becoming less and less willing to take risks on potential new authors and the sad and slow death of the literary magazine, the best way for a hopeful writer to actually get their work out where it can be read by people is the internet. Web publishing, go! If this works out well I might even start selling some of my work on here. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Yes it would.

So look! I’ve got a story! YAY!

Today is the launch day so it is special in that I am posting the first part (of many) today, but the regularly scheduled updates are every Tuesday and Thursday. If it’s popular enough that I can do stuff with bonus content etc., that’ll be updated on the weekends.

I AM SO EXCITED!

I have a music library, and it is a good music library. I enjoy listening to my music very much. I would enjoy listening to it at work very much as well. However, I have no way to do so. Anything like an iPod is out, by the way, for reasons too numerous to comfortably inflict upon your eyes.

So, what I would like is conceptually simple, yet difficult to find. I want some sort of software which will enable me to effectively stream my music from home to my work computer, as per an internet radio. And I would like to be able to queue up songs or even play pre-set playlists. From work.

It becomes marginally more complicated when I inform you that I use Linux at home. Debian, to be precise. Debian squeeze, to be even more precise. And the quantity of decent music streaming software available for Linux (particularly with a GUI but let’s not get into that right now) is less than impressive. I had previously been using gnump3, but the fact that it is more “stream individual tracks on demand” and less “run an automated radio station with a request feature” is making me somewhat hesitant to just use it again.

If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment. Please.

I take no responsibility for any lack of respect or esteem that you may have after reading this post.

Right, so! This is a little exchange that I and a couple of my friends had in the IRC chatroom I hang out in had. I took out most irrelevant chatter, but left in the reactions of amusement (as gibberish as they may be). Also, one of my friends dislikes having his screenname posted ’round the internet (?) so I’ve altered it.

(Kiramon) since
(Kiramon) i have money
(Kiramon) i will be your financial baker
(Kiramon) er
(Kiramon) laskfd\
(Kiramon) acdlawjkengkajr
(Kiramon) AHEM.
(Drakkar) but
(Jim) instead of laundering money
(Kiramon) i will be your financial backer.
(Jim) let’s stuff it in an oven
(Kiramon) like the jews
(Kiramon) OH SHIT
(Drakkar) if I am lucky there will not need to be coding
* Kiramon has left the channel
(Drakkar) ..
(Drakkar) LOL!
* Kiramon has joined the channel
(Pirate) [Kiramon] “Life is about getting up every day and being corrected about something.”
(Drakkar) OH GOD LOL
(Kiramon) that’s it
(Quote) wb ):C
(Drakkar) shit
(Drakkar) LMFAODS
(Drakkar) FM
(Drakkar) XD
(Kiramon) drakkar can make hillbilly jokes
(Drakkar) OH MY GOD
(Kiramon) i can make jew jokes
(Jim) lawl
(Drakkar) LOOL
(Kiramon) xDDDD
(Drakkar) DUDE THAT WAS LIKE
(Drakkar) INSTINCTUAL
(Drakkar) YOU SAW OVEN AND INSERTED JEWS
(Drakkar) ..
(Kiramon) i am laughing too hard
(Drakkar) haha inserting jews into ovens
(Drakkar) LOLOLOL
(Kiramon) shit
(Kiramon) that was awkward

Read through this post and if you’re interested in possibly participating in something like this, drop me a line.

So, here is what I had in mind for the logistics side of it. The players would each create a new Twitter account for their character, with the character’s name or something similar and a brief description/background in the bio field. I would keep a simple HTML page with a list of who is in the game and links to their twitter page to facilitate both making sure the players know who is playing, and spectators following the whole thing. I should probably stick a quick description of the setting etc. on it as well. Anyway, each player account would follow all the other player accounts (and only the other player accounts), and would link to the HTML page of the player list as their webpage. Depending on precisely how the scenario is set up, there may or may not be a master GM-type account as well. (If there was, it would be mine, of course, as I would be the host.)

The setting I envision starting out as a fairly generic alternate-history Victorian era locale, probably England (because again, that’s sort of my thing), which then could (i.e. would) be elaborated upon and developed further by the players as they create backstories and progress through RP. The method of uniting would be open for discussion; possible ideas are a secret service, an underground rebellious movement, or a group of adventurers heading off to an exotic locale like Africa.

The mechanics of the RPing itself depend heavily on what the scenario bringing all of the players together is. There’s the two most common methods, of course, which are simply roleplaying as first person speech/action, (What are you doing?! *lunges for the door*) and roleplaying as third person prose (e.g. novels/most forum RP). But, due to the nature of Twitter, I had a third idea which could be extremely fun in very specific settings – such as the secret service. It would of course remove a lot of the “action” from the game, so I doubt it would be popular, but I’ll fling it at you all anyway. The tweets would be messages! Like telegrams, or sent by pidgeon, or radio messages (what kind depends on the setting of the RP and the situation, of course). I thought it was a nifty idea, at least. Messages to a specific person would be sent via @name or could even theoretically be DMed although that wouldn’t be as fun for the readers/other players.

ADDENDUM
Some input from other people (including hergeek’s excellent suggestion in the comments below) has spawned a fantastic adaptation of the scenario in my mind which, amongst other things, allows for the combination of any or all of the above scenarios and methods! I shall elaborate, of course.

Instead of simply one alternate universe, we can have several! Think of them as separate groups of players. They can all follow each other and RP as normal via Twitter – but they can also communicate interdimensionally (!!) via some method (I like ‘aetherograph’). This would be accomplished via sending a @message to a specific account I’ll have to set up for that (and which all players would need to be following), which will then post the message in some method akin to “Message for [group name]: [message]“. Of course the messages to other groups will need to be disregarded for RP purposes but I have faith that any interested players would be able to avoid metagaming.

The messages could be fed to the webpage with the player list info mentioned above, and then periodically I could write a “news brief” of sorts with an update on what a specific group has been up to.

ADDENDUM THE SECOND
It is, of course, entirely valid for a single person to decide to RP from their “own” dimension and thus participate entirely through the messages and any discussion re: “news briefs” with me.

A recent brief exchange on Twitter has refocused my thoughts on the fine art of emoticon usage on the internet and, more specifically, how vastly different it is to those who rarely use them. Each brief combination of characters can indicate much about the speaker (it makes more sense to say speaker than writer, as it’s more conversational than literary). A single emoticon can say as little as “I am amused” and as much as “I find this a sad thing, and I am a person who frequently writes on message boards and/or in IM software and dislike the automatic frown emoticon.”

First, we’ll take a look at what the emoticons say about the speaker’s experience in internet communication. The simplest and strongest indicator of the speaker’s frequency of emoticon usage is the usage, or lack thereof, of a single character: the hyphen. People who infrequently use emoticons will generally only use two faces:
:-) and :-(
An unfortunate difficulty thrown into the generalization is that, if I recall correctly, at least one IM client (AIM?) uses that as the default smiley. So it may also just mean that they have limited internet chatting experience. It could also mean both.
* I make the assumption that someone who uses AIM has limited internet chatting experience because AIM is basically a mainstream beginner chat. I may address this in another post.
Sometimes, the dash-nose users will also use:
;-)
This indicates that they are fairly comfortable with using emoticons, but have either not been using them for particularly long or only in a very specific group of people. The reason is that any excessive amount of internet chatting will eventually degrade a person’s desire to use extra and clearly unnecessary characters, unless everyone else they chat with uses the same faces. After some time using emoticons, a person will invariably begin to use these instead:
:) and :( and ;)
Again, you can see the same three basic expressions, but now they are much shorter.

Someone who uses emoticons extensively, however, quickly finds that three faces is simply not enough. They will then pick up others, either from forum smiley codes or from the other people that they chat with. The two most common first additions are:
;( and :D and ;D and :o
Once you reach that point, you’ve been around long enough to start seeing the myriad of variations on the basics and will start using them. So, anything other than those listed so far indicates that you have significant experience in using and reading emoticons.

One particular and “special” type of emoticons belongs to what I can only term an internet subculture. Namely, the anime and manga fans. NOTE: At this point I should point out that I am only addressing the usage of emoticons amongst native English speakers, primarily from the US and areas of Europe. There is a tendency for anime/manga fans to pick up Japanese styles of emotes to better represent some of the specific anime-esque expressions that they may wish to use in conversation. The single most common is:
^_^
Even people who have barely touched the surface of anime and the anime community frequently use that. Also, it tends to be overused by those trying to be more japanese or “cute” (or “cute japanese”), so mixing it with any basic Japanese instantly labels you as… well, let’s just say it is not a positive stereotype. If you don’t want to be viewed at a similar level to, say, pond scum, avoid saying things like “ohayo~ it’s a nice day, ne? ^_^”
Some emotes that you come across as you venture deeper into the subculture are:
o_o and o_O Twitter users will recognize that one and x_x and >_<
Some people may replace the underlines with a - or a . The underline or dash are commonly seen as a mouth, while the dot is more frequently seen as a nose. As you may notice, these anime emoticons are not rotated 90 degrees, as Western emoticons generally are. Sometimes the expressions are translated to Western-style, such as the most common example:
xD

Once you reach the furthest point of either category that I've displayed, you are well and truly sunk in the world of emoticon usage. Anything beyond that starts venturing into group- or even individual-specific types.

Now, we delve a bit into the usage for meanings. The first thing that comes to mind is those who rarely use emoticons - namely, the :-) and :-( users. They are the most difficult to understand and interpret, simply because there is such a large range of potential meaning for a mere two symbols. The smile can mean the speaker is happy, or sarcastic, or joking, or amused, or attampting to console another, or trying to preserve a positive image. The frown can mean they are depressed, or angry, or disappointed, or commisserating. Both of those are only samples of what could be meant. If the sentence that the emoticon is tied to doesn't give enough information, there is very little actual communication done through the smiley as there are simply too many possibilities.

The next step, adding the wink, adds a whole new dimension to it and helps the understanding enormously. The winking smiley generally denotes the speaker's jocularity. The smile takes the stance of general positive feelings, while jokes, sarcasm, friendly jibes, and (usually) flirting are encompassed by the wink. The major benefit of this step upward is that it makes it vastly easier to tell when someone is joking or serious. If one says, for example,
"did you have fun last night? :-)"
or
"did you have fun last night? ;-)"
you can clearly see the difference in meaning. The first is just a pleasant inquiry into your previous night's activities. The latter, however, implies either teasing or a shared knowledge of something that occurred (in this particular example, probably something which my prudish sensibilities prevent me putting into text ;) ). You may notice my usage of ;) right there. This indicates that I am at the least comfortable with using smileys, use them fairly frequently, and am poking fun at myself.

As one travels deeper into emoticon usage, however, the addition of more and more emoticons causes each one’s meaning to be increasingly specific. If one only uses :) and :( and ;), you have only three representations for the entire realm of emotional tones. :) is general positives, :( is general negatives, and ;) is humorous or teasing in some way. We can step forward a few levels, however, and arrive here:
:) mild good feeling
;) mild teasing or joking
:D happiness
;D wink-wink nudge-nudge kind of a thing
:( sadness/unhappiness
>:( irritation
>:O anger
:o mild surprise
:O surprise
>:) evil grin

One who uses the latter set of emoticons is much more likely to attribute a specific meaning to someone who merely says :-) of “mild good feeling”, while the actual speaker may be intending to indicate a sense of jest or teasing. As a result, it is the responsibility of the more experienced emoticon users to understand the varying levels of usage and accommodate the rest.

A Brief Addendum
I mentioned at a point somewhere in the beginning about being able to tell if someone was a frequent forum/IM client user who didn’t like image emoticons, but realized that I failed to mention them at all after that. To put it simply, it’s a matter of direction. People who write their emoticons backwards:
(: (; ): o:
most of the time do so in order to bypass the forum or IM emoticon recognition software. A very small subset of that already small group, however, do so simply to be contrary, so while it is a compelling indicator it is not a conclusive one.