Word of the Day – (epic)fail

For heaps of reasons in general (like my computer just crashed), but specifically because I have started scheduling interviews for my research (ethics approval pending) and since I am studying social media use it seemed reasonable to communicate via social media. Well, I am connected to some participants in Facebook so I thought I’d try to send messages within Facebook instead of email. I don’t use the “send message” functionality much, but it crashed 8 times while I was trying to send 4 messages. I am still not sure if they finally went through so I ended up using Twitter to contact everybody. Not the best privacy-wise, but at least it works. Hmmm… wonder if I should rethink my research position….?

I bet I am in ethics limbo

Ok, it’s not quite purgatory, but waiting for ethical approval before I start my fieldwork feels a little like, hmmm… well, a waiting game.  I know that I can’t really start talking to people, but I should be doing something, but what?  Should I start making contact and explaining what I am doing?  Should I start making a list of things to do?  Maybe I should work on my theoretical stuff because goodness knows my lit review could use some work.  But if I know me (and I do), for the next week or so I will aimless flit from thing to thing without accomplishing anything using as the excuse that I don’t have my ethics approval.  Maybe I should just take the week off, enjoy the sun, and start my fieldwork refreshed and ready to go?  Well, we’ll see what happens….place your bets.

A bit of Benjamin Button in us all?

I have been feeling a bit Benjamin Button this week.  Well, strictly speaking I am not a creepy man-baby turning into a disturbingly good looking pensioner, but I do have this eerie feeling that I am progressing and regressing at the same time.

I am particularly concerned about my ability to communicate.  Five years ago I had no trouble writing and speaking in complete sentences.  I used proper punctuation, capitalisation, and real words that could be found in a dictionary.  Now I find myself using some bizarre txt-speech not only when txting (see I can’t even spell out “text”) but in other aspects of my life.  Am I 20? I have also noticed my clothes have changed since giving up my real job and going back to school.  Of course I don’t wear skirts and jackets anymore, but now I seem to only wear a single pair of jeans which I keep on the floor when they are not being worn.  In the morning before I dash off to school I search for  the jeans which I know are too dirty to wear when I find them cowering under the bed (think Dr. Seuss and those pale green pants with no one inside them).  So am I 12?  No, because I also wear crazy mismatched coloured tees and tops like a founding member of the Red Hat society.  Am I 80?

I guess I really shouldn’t be concerned whether I am coming or going or evolving or devolving and just enjoy the ride (for as long as I can remember it at least).

On the internet, no one knows you’re a Kiwi

Well, technically I am not a Kiwi (nor a dog), but I do know how comforting it can be to have a virtual persona that doesn’t share all of my embodied traits.  I started reflecting about this dichotomy of identities again a few weeks ago when a developer I met mentioned that his clients didn’t know he was located in New Zealand.  They communicate via online media (email, chat, blogs, etc), so geographic locales do not necessarily influence their interactions.

What I find particularly interesting, though, is when you go from a virtual to a FTF encounter.  I am getting ready to meet and interview (and be interviewed) by people who I have only known online or have mostly interacted with in virtual environments.  They don’t know what I look like (except for the odd photo) or what I sound like or anything about my in-person demeanour.  In fact, I have actually thought about my appearance (brushed hair, wearing clean clothes) in order to be more presentable than I normally am when sitting about my laptop chatting/blogging.  It is a bit like a blind date, but I already know them, so how do you act?  I must say that even though I am nervous, I am excited as well.  I like my life online, but I am really looking forward to experiencing real life (RL) encounters too.

Do you have a funny RL/virtual friend experience to share?  I’d love to hear about it.

At last I’m organised, she sighed and died

I remember my mum used to have a little tombstone on her desk with those words.  I have the feeling that organisation will never come for me, but at some point what does it matter?  I do keep trying though.  Sometimes I think that I switched to an academic career in hopes that people would become more tolerant of my disorganisation.  I guess I am hoping for that absent minded professor aura.  Although, somehow I doubt that constantly being late (and unprepared) for meetings and trailing bits of paper as I walk down the hall is ever going to be endearing.  Annoying?  Irritating?  Perhaps, but being disorganised is only a loveable quirky personality trait in the movies.

What’s worse, I think my disorganisation is spreading from my habits to my thinking (was it the Wizard of Oz that said, “You, my friend, are a victim of disorganised thinking”).  When I write, its a mess lately, so I am really beginning to take this organisation thing a bit more seriously.  So how does one get seriously organised?  [drum roll] – you buy a diary.  Because if life has only taught me one lesson, it is you can buy/consume your way out of any predicament.

So that is how a found myself in the stationary store this morning as I walked to school.  Because if I only had a paper diary to schedule my life (electronic calendars don’t count), then I would be completely organised.  I did find a few flaws in this line of thinking, though, as I went down the diary aisle.  One big problem is that apparently stationary shops have a bias against disorganised people and only carry stock for organised people.  This came as a shock to me as I perused the shelves looking for a 2009 calendar, only to find that they are only stocking 2010 calendars.  What?!  Don’t tell me that I am the only person in Dunedin who has waited 10 1/2 months to buy a diary!  There are still a good 80 odd days left in 2009.  Who wouldn’t want to pay for and carry around an extra unused 280 pages?  Hmm… so what options do I have?  Wait for 2010 (appealing, but seems contrary to my goals…), no I did the only reasonable thing I could think of as I realised that I was late and need to get something quick and dash off to school.

I bought a blank book.  You know, so I could fill it was my hopes and dreams… yeah, right.  I bought a blank book so I could print my Outlook calendar and tape it in to it and spend the rest of my life trying to synchronise them.  Fun.  Now what did I do with that diary?  What happened to my tape dispenser? Who took my printouts off the copier? Where’d I leave the keys to my office….

A new day has begun

I have decided to resume blogging after many months of silence.  It would be nice if I had a real reason for my absence, but laziness is probably the most truthful excuse.  Essentially I started Twittering, @faniemi, and found it easier to tweet 140 characters of stream of consciousness than to put in the effort to blog.

So why did I return?  The short answer is that I have started the empirical part of my PhD research and I needed a place to reflect.  I could (and do) keep a private diary of fieldnotes, but I like the communal nature of a blog and want the chance to bounce ideas off of people as part of the research process.

So here I am.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be gearing up again and tidying up the site.  I should probably also consider hosting the blog myself and getting a better name.  My study is on how software developers problem solve in online environments, so if you are interested in participating, let me know.

Cheers,
Fa

The making of a blog

I just love “behind the scenes” stories.  It probably started back in my Mr. Rogers days when he would show little clips like ‘how the mail gets delivered’ or ‘how crayons are made’.  It makes me appreciate how much goes in to things we do not pay much attention to.  This fascination developed into a devotion to ‘Up close and personal’ sessions during the Olympics and in recent years re-watching the LOTR appendices almost as much as the films.

So I thought it might be interesting to talk about what goes into a blog post.  Blogs are funny things because they are this mix of personal musings and public publication.  It may not be obvious, but I put quite a bit of thought into the blog topic (although, admittedly, not as much into the actual writing and editing).

A new post usually starts off as a bunch of small observations I have made over the past few days.  I walk a lot (to and from school, into town to shop, down the road for coffees, etc) so I have a lot of time to both observe what is happening around me and to reflect on those observations.  Quite honestly, it feels a bit like the beginning of a Seinfeld comedy routine “What’s the deal with people getting on a bus?  Do they all have to ask the bus driver  if the weather is cold enough out there?…”  From there 1 or 2 will stand out as both having a universal appeal as a narrative and some sort of lesson or moral.  Again, as I am walking, I will start “writing” the blog in my head – fleshing out concepts and thinking of a witty title.  However, by the time I actually sit down to type it up I often find that my story isn’t nearly as interesting as it was in my head and that is surely due to the fact that I have forgotten all of the witty bits.  So in an attempt to put pen to paper (obviously figuratively – no pens or paper went into the making of this blog), I just start writing.

Unfortunately, the review process is not as rigorous as the A level journals and after a quick preview I post it.  However, there have been occasions that I have not published the post and they are sitting in drafts waiting to either be edited (which probably won’t happen) or deleted (which probably should happen).  It is funny because I always had this idea that small things were more difficult to write, like a poem is harder than an essay because you have to choose your words so carefully.  However, in this case I find blogging much more difficult than micro-blogging.  I think it is because this feels more permanent while Twittering has a very ephemeral quality (and honestly even with the word count limitation – I don’t choose my Tweet words particularly carefully).

So whatever the reasons or the results, that is the Behind the Music: the making of Fa’s Blog.  Oops I forgot to include the sudden rise to fame, the equally sudden fall caused by addictions to sex/drugs and the where-are-they-now bits….

How I love a good TO DO list

I have recently come out of hiding and returned to the world of the living.  There are a variety of reasons for both my retreat and my re-emergence, mostly related to not wanting to deal with my thesis and realising that I must in fact deal with it.  For the past month or so I have managed to successfully avoid nearly all productive (required-to-graduate) work – but deadlines are now looming (practically crushing me really) – so I have brought back my tried and true tool for ending procrastination – my TO DO list.

I know it seems silly – but lists have some secret power over me, which make me get things done.  In my previous life as a project manager, the walls of my office were covered with large white sheets of paper; each bullet-ed item neatly checked (and crossed off).  When I was in the last few months of my MBA, the lists came back and sure enough chapters were worked on, submitted, revised, and completed.  I don’t know why it has taken me so long to bring the TO DO list back, but it is needed now more than ever.  Here is today’s TO DO list:

• Prepare for this week’s tutorials (done)
• Complete 3 slides for departmental presentation (done)
• Return library books (done)
• Revise 1 section of Methodology chapter (done)
• Write blog (done)

My superpower? Invisibility

I remember when I first started teaching and a very wise old(er) teacher told me when asked about how students felt about teachers – “honey, we are just furniture to them”.  And she was right.  Furniture in the sense that we are very functional, available when needed, and can be ignored when we are not needed.  It might not seem very appealing to be considered furniture, but it is actually quite handy and gives you access to worlds you might not otherwise have.  For instance, being furniture makes you virtually invisible.  Even now as I am re-entering the teaching world at the uni level I can walk across campus and hear and see all sorts of things that I never would be exposed to normally.  So as I was walking back from my tutorial today, I heard a girl telling her mate that she drank too much and should cut back.  I heard another talk about his future plans and yet another couple grinning ear to ear as they parted.  It feels a little like the angel in Wings of Desire – essentially hearing everybody’s thoughts because they don’t notice that I am there.

So I started thinking about how I blog in the same light.  I don’t really notice the people out there in the public who may be reading, just the ones that I know about.  So my blog feels quite invisible in the huge mass of stuff out on the web.  However, occasionally something reminds me that I am revealing my personal thoughts to a quite public audience.  It can be alarming when this happens.  In RL every once in a while, someone approaches me that I don’t recognise.  They start talking to me as if they know me and it takes me a bit to realise that they must be one of my current or former students.  I don’t really recognise them, but they know me.  And I realised that my invisibility doesn’t work all of the time – sort of a flawed superpower.  If you stand up and talk in front of students enough, they will eventually see you and you will have lost your invisibility.  What is more ackward is that because I don’t recognise them, they are invisible and I am the one seen.

So if I blog enough, I am bound to lose my invisibility occasionally as well.  Sort of the price you pay for personal discourse in a public forum.  It is not too bad – really just my 15 minutes – but spread out over many years and presenting itself when I least expect it – 900 seconds of fame (?!) wrapped up in a lifetime of anonymity.

Some of the content from your blog has been stolen

I received the following email message this morning.  I was about to detail it as spam when I decided to check it out.  I was actually a little surprised to find out that indeed, there is another blogger using my posts as his own work.  Now I consider the internet a pretty open place and usually value freedom of knowledge flow over copyright protection, but this is really annoying to me.  How hard would it have been to put a link back to my blog or a couple words giving me credit?  What would be the point of trying to pass off my blog as his own?!  Very annoying and a little creepy.  Let me know what you think about this whole issue.

Here is the email I received from Nick Hine:

Hello, I’m Nick and I run PlagiarismWatch at http://plagiarismwatch.wordpress.com.  Currently it is just me running a small blog dedicated to informing bloggers that they may have had some of their content stolen. At this moment in time I am only tracking one Scraper site, run by a Brandon Berkovits, and I know of him because he stole content from my blog.

So, the post at http://famartinniemi.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/timing-is-the-new-location/ (which is yours) is copied in it’s entirety without crediting you as the original author at the url: http://school-and-other-crap.blogspot.com/2009/03/timing-is-new-location.html by said Brandon Berkovits.

I absolutely guarantee you I will not charge you at all for this information etc, or supply your email to people trying to sell you herbal medicines and the likes, as I dislike spammers almost as much as I do scrapers.

Currently claiming a Copyright Infringement notice at a Blogger blog is difficult, but I can email you a little something telling you how if you’re interested in bringing a sort of justice to this guy. As a preventative measure I recommend licensing your work under creative commons, as they offer a range of licenses dictating just how your content can be used. This is available at http://creativecommons.org

Regards,
Nick Hine