Nerdy blog update!
April 21st, 2008 at 16:05
Warning, if you think an IP address is a postcode in Ipswich, then this might bore you to tears.
I’ve got an incredibly important essay to hand in on Friday – and an even more important dissertation to hand in the week afterwards. So what have I been doing so far today? Quite possibly the most efficient procrastinating ever. Rather than concentrate on things that actually matter, I’ve been busy improving the Twitter feed on the left hand sidebar of the blog.
Now, aside from merely having the text of my latest Tweets, I’ve enhanced it – if I broadcast a live video to Qik, using my mobile phone, that will alert my Twitter – and now rather than just link to it, it’ll display the video in a flash video box so you can watch it on this very same page (there was no end of hassle involving having to parse a second Qik-specific RSS feed and regex out the variables and all sorts). I’ve done something similar with photos, that I can also send in to Twitpic with my mobile phone – if I send in a photo, it’ll now be shown in thumbnail form on the sidebar, with its caption if it has one. I’ve also added a text “glossary” that reads my tweets and if it spots any keywords (like “Adam Hart Davis“), it automatically magically changes it into a relevant link.
I’m pretty damn pleased with it all though – I thought that when I signed up to do an arts degree, I was resigning myself to a lifetime of technological ignorance, not even being able to grasp the simplest of gadgets, but happily, as it turns out, I’m still shit-hot at coding. Well, sort of.
What’s the point in all of this? Well, if you’re asking that question that you don’t understand what web 2.0 is all about – its about doing cool things because you can, not because they serve any practical benefit to the rest of humanity. Really – prior to the invention of Facebook, did you ever have a desire to play Scrabble online?
I’m going to London on Wednesday, so if you stay tuned to my blog, you’ll be able to follow my thrilling adventure in real time! Quite why you’d want to is, er, another question.
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