Monday, 15 November 2010
A Little Light Reading
I've got two links on the left hand side of my page, I'm sure I will add more in time but these sprung to mind when I was setting my blog up. The first is a blog by my boyfriend entitled Food, Thoughts, Drinks...and Um...Fitness in which he discusses his main loves of food, wine and movies, as well as an upcoming fitness regime which his work colleagues have talked him into. He's an excellent cook, and I mean a proper cook, we discuss at length combinations of flavours and are both the kind of cooks that can throw together ingredients knowing it's going to come out well. I may well blog about recipes I have come up with at a later date. Incidently, I do have a recipe I posted on the BBC Goodfood website if you want to check it out! He is also expanding my rather poor movie knowledge, and rather enjoyed Howls Moving Castle on Friday night, a film I have wanted to see for a number of years. To illustrate my poor taste in movies I am writing this while watching Tim Burton's adaptation of Planet of the Apes, a film I think most movie buffs wouldn't touch with a barge pole. SIMON: I NEED EDUCATING!!! The second link is a website from a Twitter friend, Karl Webster. He has decided to leave the ratrace and spend 2011 visiting around 80 festivals from music to religious festivals to study how people around the world celebrate their freedom. You can follow his journey from the website I have linked to, and also follow him on Twitter- @karlpmole
Sunday, 14 November 2010
From T to B
So lets go back to August, that's where this story begins. I'll touch on my life before hand, but the title 'A New Hope' (apart from a Star War reference) is about what's happened since.
I was sat at home one afternoon, I'd read everyone's Facebook posts, caught up with everything on the iPlayer, and stared blankly at my laptop. I had wondered what the hype about Twitter was over Facebook, but as I had resisted the pull of Facebook for years until someone asked to add me, I had also resisted the pull of Twitter.
But what could the harm be? I could sign up, have a nose around and then leave it alone like the MySpace account I think exists somewhere.
Quite soon I realised the difference. On Facebook you update your status and wait for your friends to reply, people get bored quite quickly if you post every sandwich you eat or bus you catch. With Twitter I found the ethos was different. If something pops into my head I can Tweet, people will see it, if they care we can get into a conversation, if not, onto the next sandwich.
It took a while of randomly looking at people's tweets, randomly tweeting things myself and retweeting things I liked to slowly get the hang of a whole new form of social networking for me (as well as getting used to cutting what you want to say down to 140 characters)
In the subsequent 3 months I have gained over 100 followers (albeit some of them automated 'bots') but out of those I have also made some new friends.
This is the difference I had to get used to, how a conversation works. If someone speaks to you on Facebook you have at some point in your life met them and to be polite you feel obliged to reply. If someone follows you or speaks to you on Twitter you have the chance to look at their bio, read what they tweet about and decide if you have similar interests or views. Personally I'm up for a laugh, and most people I follow give me a bit of a giggle during the day, so I began to converse with people that did that. To that end I have had conversations this week about taking over the world, custard football and monster munch, to mention a few.
So that's the T in the title, the B stands for Blog where I am going to document some of the more bizarre sides of Twitter as well as release some of the weird thoughts that pop into my head (of which there's a lot!)
Enjoy...
I was sat at home one afternoon, I'd read everyone's Facebook posts, caught up with everything on the iPlayer, and stared blankly at my laptop. I had wondered what the hype about Twitter was over Facebook, but as I had resisted the pull of Facebook for years until someone asked to add me, I had also resisted the pull of Twitter.
But what could the harm be? I could sign up, have a nose around and then leave it alone like the MySpace account I think exists somewhere.
Quite soon I realised the difference. On Facebook you update your status and wait for your friends to reply, people get bored quite quickly if you post every sandwich you eat or bus you catch. With Twitter I found the ethos was different. If something pops into my head I can Tweet, people will see it, if they care we can get into a conversation, if not, onto the next sandwich.
It took a while of randomly looking at people's tweets, randomly tweeting things myself and retweeting things I liked to slowly get the hang of a whole new form of social networking for me (as well as getting used to cutting what you want to say down to 140 characters)
In the subsequent 3 months I have gained over 100 followers (albeit some of them automated 'bots') but out of those I have also made some new friends.
This is the difference I had to get used to, how a conversation works. If someone speaks to you on Facebook you have at some point in your life met them and to be polite you feel obliged to reply. If someone follows you or speaks to you on Twitter you have the chance to look at their bio, read what they tweet about and decide if you have similar interests or views. Personally I'm up for a laugh, and most people I follow give me a bit of a giggle during the day, so I began to converse with people that did that. To that end I have had conversations this week about taking over the world, custard football and monster munch, to mention a few.
So that's the T in the title, the B stands for Blog where I am going to document some of the more bizarre sides of Twitter as well as release some of the weird thoughts that pop into my head (of which there's a lot!)
Enjoy...
Thursday, 11 November 2010
This is me!
It was suggested that I write a blog due to my excessive tweeting on Twitter, so I did, here it is. I have now been sat here for an hour over a pint trying to work out what to write, but I don't plan well so I'm just going to ramble until I run out of steam. I suppose I should start with me... As you can guess from the fact I decided to come for a pint to write this, I like a drink. I've recently moved to a small town in Dorset called Wimborne and have rediscovered my love for real ale, but I also like a good bottle of wine or bourbon on special occasions.
I'm gay, but it's not my life as I've found it is for so many after spending six months living close to the Bournemouth scene. I didn't come out until I was 26 and my best friends response was 'well you're still Dean.' And that pretty much sums me up, I am just me, there's no-one else quite like me and I would never change that.
As I've said I'm a prolific tweeter, I only joined in August through boredom and have already racked up over 3,000 tweets. I've made a lot of friends over these months and like the freedom to write anything in your head as opposed to Facebook where I find myself (slightly) more reserved.
I saw a tweet recently that said Facebook is for people you know that you don't want to talk to and Twitter is for people you don't know that you enjoy talking to. This is by and large true, I have some very good friends on Facebook, but also a lot I added because I 'knew' them and have never spoken to since. I also now have a lot of friends on Twitter, but we started off knowing we have similar interests, thoughts and ideas.
Ok, ramble over for now (must get back to Twitter!) There's more too me than beer and Twitter, but that's the idea of this blog, an insight into what's in my head, so you'll have to stay tuned...
I'm gay, but it's not my life as I've found it is for so many after spending six months living close to the Bournemouth scene. I didn't come out until I was 26 and my best friends response was 'well you're still Dean.' And that pretty much sums me up, I am just me, there's no-one else quite like me and I would never change that.
As I've said I'm a prolific tweeter, I only joined in August through boredom and have already racked up over 3,000 tweets. I've made a lot of friends over these months and like the freedom to write anything in your head as opposed to Facebook where I find myself (slightly) more reserved.
I saw a tweet recently that said Facebook is for people you know that you don't want to talk to and Twitter is for people you don't know that you enjoy talking to. This is by and large true, I have some very good friends on Facebook, but also a lot I added because I 'knew' them and have never spoken to since. I also now have a lot of friends on Twitter, but we started off knowing we have similar interests, thoughts and ideas.
Ok, ramble over for now (must get back to Twitter!) There's more too me than beer and Twitter, but that's the idea of this blog, an insight into what's in my head, so you'll have to stay tuned...
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