piece of shep

After reading Owen’s post about Twitter Influence there was a brief discussion in the Habari IRC channel about who people follow and why. One part of the conversation was about celebrities. One person in the convo didn’t follow any celebrities. Owen follows just one. I, however, follow 50+. That got me thinking about why I follow these people and how I’m actually using Twitter.

First off, I want to point out that I am not a TMZ, Perez Hilton, US Weekly, People celebrity stalker. In fact, if you look at the celebrities I follow you would find a bunch of names that rarely, if ever, appear in that type of celebrity drivel. The celebrities I follow are people from TV show, music, and movies that I really enjoy. Their updates are usually really good and provide me with entertainment. Denis Leary always has great one-liners. Rob Lowe embraces his fans and frequently talks about his role on The West Wing. Nathan Fillion and Colin Ferguson are just regular guys that tweet just like anyone else. Roger Ebert provides thoughtful political and film essays. Louis CK posts clips from his very funny show and tour dates for his stand up.

The thing is, I get quality tweets from most of these people. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t follow them. Sure there might be a few on there that don’t update, but for the most part they all do and I enjoy most of their tweets. It’s gotten to a point where I enjoy their tweets more than most of the other non St. Louis people I follow. Twitter has evolved from a place where I can see what other people are currently doing to a place where I can get info on my favorite TV shows, movies, musicians, and actors. I still enjoy seeing what my fellow St. Louisans are doing, but that’s about it. I used to enjoy reading what other people were up to or things they found interesting, but that has definitely changed, and I can probably pinpoint two reasons why that has changed.

The first reason is I started following too many people. I follow a lot of people but the people I follow, I follow for a reason. This has disadvantages though. The people I tend to follow update more frequently. Follow a lot of heavy users and statuses begin to fly by one right after another. Even though I find what they have to say interesting, I can only read so many tweets before they are lost forever in a never-ending stream of unreadable text. After a while of not being able to catch up, these updates become noise and provide nothing meaningful. The second thing is what I’m going to refer to as static. These are tweets that interfere with an otherwise good signal and will often contribute to the first issue. These tweets can be anything from a Four Square check in or a re-tweet to get into a contest for an Apple product (which I swear no one ever wins). Then you have paid tweets. That one bugs me the most. With celebrities and other high profile users, it’s easier to get high quality content without a lot of noise. You know if there is an update it’s not going to be a Four Square check in, a RT for a contest, or what song they are currently listening to. It’s going to be something that I find meaningful.

So, have you changed the way you use Twitter over the years? Do you still find it as valuable as before? Do you use it to make personal connections or more broad connections for your interests?

I have added some changed to the blog which you may or may not have noticed. I started adding linked posts to the blog. These are similar to what John Gruber does over at Daring Fireball. Basically, these are links to external articles that I comment briefly on. The reason I’m creating these is that I noticed I post a lot of links on twitter but rarely have enough characters to comment on them how I’d like. I figure my blog is the perfect place to do this but didn’t want just a series of extremely short normal blog posts. That’s when I decided to implement asides.

I found a plugin that will allow you to implement and style your asides without editing WordPress’ loop. It’s a great plugin because the only file I need to edit is my stylesheet so that I can style my asides as I see fit. That still didn’t solve my problem with having the post link to the actual article on my blog or my feeds. Because I didn’t want to hack my theme files, I settled on two plugins that would bring me that functionality. The first is the Linked List plugin. This is technically all I should need but, as I said, I wanted to implement these things without editing any theme files (besides the stylesheet of course). So far, I have styled asides and if you click on a linked post in my feed it will bypass my site and take you directly to the article. I needed one more plugin to link the actual post on my site to the external article. This is where the Page Links To plugin came in handy. I designate the URL the permalink should redirect to and it takes care of the rest.

So when you see posts like the one in the screenshot below, that’s a linked post. You can click on the external link icon at the end and it will take you to the article I’m referencing. If you are reading an external article from a feed reader, just click on the feed title and it will take you there.

Of course, right now I have no way of showing, in a feed, that it is a linked post, but I would think it would be pretty obvious if I’m talking about an article but there is no link within the text. I’ll see if I can find a way to make that more clear from within the feed. If you have any suggestions on how to that, I’m open to them.

Recently Josh Malina posted a little joke on Twitter that has resulted in a variety of hilarious responses. For those who don’t understand the joke, when you click on the link in his tweet it takes you to your own profile. So, no matter who clicks on the link, as long as you’re logged in, you’re taken to your own profile. This joke has been used in a variety of ways in the past, but this one has drawn some funny responses. People who are this dumb shouldn’t be allowed on the internet. They are the ones that will unknowingly send you viruses and beg you with help bolding something in Word Windows. I’ll give you a few of my favorite responses.

By the way, that last guy really took it seriously and decided to write a blog post about it. What a moron. No wonder he’s a Palin supporter.

If you want to follow the continuing parade of dumb people do a Google search for @joshmalina.

It’s no secret I am a fan of TV. I love it. I love (almost) everything about it. I love the acting, directing, stories, and scenery. There has always been one time of year where I (and my DVR) get a break from this addiction: the summer. Unfortunately, thanks to networks such as HBO, USA, SyFy, Showtime, and HBO, this is no longer the case. While the major networks are filling their schedules with reruns, reality shows, and game shows, the cable networks are creating and airing some of the best programming on TV.

For the past several years I’ve had summer time programming to enjoy. From Entourage and Dexter to the Weeds, Monk and True Blood, the summer TV schedule always had something to look forward to a day or two a week. The landscape has changed greatly over the past few years though. USA has been the biggest time consuming culprit of all the networks. Shows like Psych, Burn Notice, and the more recent In Plain Sight, White Collar, and Royal Pains have become mainstays in my viewing habits. Then they decide to create another show, Covert Affairs, as if they didn’t have enough of my attention. HBO isn’t going to let up either, with the Prohibition Era drama Boardwalk Empire starting in September. TNT has also managed to get some of my attention with the better-than-I-thought-it-would-be Memphis Beat. And then there is FX with two of TV’s best shows on television right now. The first being the under-appreciated dramedy Rescue Me and the second being the freshman comedy from funny-man Louis CK entitled Louie. Add AMC’s Mad Men, TBS’s My Boys, and SyFy’s Eureka and Haven to the mix and my summer schedule becomes just as full as my fall viewing schedule.

Summer used to be a welcome break from TV but networks are no longer content with letting the viewing public go outside, not even for a minute. Let’s face it, I live in St. Louis. I never went outside in the summer to begin with. It’s too hot and humid, but at least I was doing other things than watching TV, like catching up on my Netflix movie queue (somewhat kidding) or reading or, when the weather would comply, go outside.

Even though this is far from weekly, I’m going to post not one, not two, but three songs of the week. These songs aren’t exactly new. In fact, they are several years old. They are fantastic tracks though, all by the hip hop group Binary Star. Binary Star was an alternative hip hop group formed in 1998 that was composed of One Be Lo and Senim Silla. Unfortunately this duo no longer exists, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t put out some great songs during their short stint together. These three songs come from the album Masters of the Universe (or Waterworld for those familiar with their Binary Star history). This album is considered a classic by many underground fans and brings socially-concious rap with great beats.

The first track is called Slang Blade and is comprised almost entirely of different slang words and phrases. There’s some good word play in this track.

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The next track is called New Hip Hop. Again, there’s some really great word play and metaphors throughout this track.

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This last song, Honest Expression, is about honestly expressing yourself and criticizes pop rap and rappers that make music for money and not for the love of music.

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All three of these tracks include some great lyrics and wordplay from the two MC’s. I’ve followed their solo careers since the breakup of the group, but nothing can compare to when they were together.