Formspring.me...

Hey everyone!

I guess the new phone has inspired me to be a little more "plugged in" so I've signed on to a few other networking sites. Twitter is up and running now and I may post a feed here so you can follow along with some of the academic tweets I follow.

I've also just started using formspring. I mainly intend to use it as a quick way to respond to anyone who feels like chatting on my blog (but who doesn't necessarily have a comment for a specific post). Since it's linked to some other accounts, I'm sure other questions will come up out of nowhere. If you've got a question, feel free to formspring.me!  (There's a widget in the right menu and a link to my formspring account above.) Answers to questions are in a feed below the widget. :)

Now on Twitter!

Guess I can get that cute little bird for my blog after all!

I am still not sure what to make of it. I made an account so I could subscribe to an academic/activist.  I was surprised they even had a Twitter account. Still, it isn't Chat Roulette so I can't complain...too much. :P

If you want to follow me, here I am!

http://twitter.com/_malaviKat_

Just bought a new phone!

Well I've finally joined the new millennium. I now have a phone that is less than a decade old. :)  I am the proud owner of a Nexus One so I decided to give mobile blogging a go.  Since I am typically long-winded, it is unlikely that this will become a regular feature...but I'm good for now. :)

Cinema Secrets: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (The Making Of)

If you've been paying any attention to me via email, MSN, Facebook etc. in the last little while, you'll know how obsessed I am with this Old Spice commercial that launched during the Super Bowl. While "The Making Of" shares its secrets, it in no way takes away from the brilliance of the final product. The two writers are absolute gold...and the casting of Isaiah Mustafa was perfect. He could be my Sven! Especially if he's packing two tickets to that thing I love.

FYI, my man smells like a man. ;)

Earth Hour 2010: March 27th 8:30pm (Local time)

It shouldn't come as any surprise to see me posting this. Do you participate in Earth Hour? How 'green' are you the rest of the year?

Twitterizing...

I've been trying to improve my blog over the past little while. I guess it's my way of avoiding the hings I should really be trying to improve (like myself). Anyway, for various reasons, the least of which is the fact that I'm OCD and I love organization - and the fact that I've forced myself to navigate some truly terrible blogs - I've been exploring different Blogger options and the plethora of widgets, add-ons and plugins designed to make blogs more user friendly.

One of the most popular widgets/add-ons/links have been Twitter related icons, all designed to make it easier for users to submit a blog article to the networking site and, I suppose, add the author to their list of Tweeters to follow? I don't Twitter myself (so I have no idea whether I'm even using the right language) but part of me wishes I did, if only so I could add one of these awesome icons to my page. :P

What do you guys think of the proliferation of online networking options? Which do you participate in? (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc.) Are they useful? Fun? Annoying? Distracting? Invasive?  What do you think of the increasing interconnectivity between networking sites, photo-hosting sites, e-mail clients, blogs, feed readers etc.?

What say you?

For 50 awesome Twitter icons, check out Pro Blog Design.

Should've stayed in bed...

(An exhausted rant? after three hours of sleep).

Today was a pretty crappy day all round. I had to invigilate/proctor a midterm that started at nine in the morning at a campus that is about an hour and a half (by transit) away from my house. I probably could have driven in but rush hour driving across the city would've taken at least as long and given the fact that it had snowed the night before, the roads were still in a mess.


So, I dutifully rolled out of bed at 6 this morning, exhausted and bleary eyed because 6am is still the night before in my mind. Things were running smoothly, more or less, and I made it to the train only a few minutes later than I'd planned.

Awesome.

Not awesome? The joys of commuting... I didn't realize that my jeans had caught some very sticky gum under the seat until I was just about to get off. Yay! After doing nothing but sitting on a seemingly gumless seat for an hour, there was now gum stuck to both pant legs. (How I accomplished this I still don't know).

I have a thing about germs and being nowhere near a bathroom I didn't want to try to get it off with my bare hands so in my brilliance I used my gloves. Did I mention I wasn't a morning person? Leather gloves and gum is NOT A GOOD IDEA. So of course now I was both sticky and peeved.

After being on the subway for about an hour, the latter stage of my commute requires either a transfer to light rail and then a bus or, time willing, a transfer to an express bus directly to campus. As it was rush hour the express bus was (supposedly) running, so I opted to wait for it - something I typically do not do when I'm heading out there to teach. Twenty five minutes later the bus still hadn't arrived so I was cold, late and covered in gum. I made it to the exam just minutes before we started.

Should've stayed in bed.

A new template...

For success?

haha

I haven't done much in Photoshop as of late (the rare exception being editing photos for my entries on PoP) and I'd started to worry that I'd lost my creative edge. For fun, and partly because I had fully intended to make my blog look interesting when I first established a Blogger presence last year, I sat down this evening and messed with various images.  As it stands I rather like the way my creative forays turned out (though I'm wondering whether the background makes things slightly difficult to read.)

I should also point out that I'm not a web designer and as such I have given little thought to optimizing my blog background for multiple resolutions.  My advanced apologies if this blog looks totally off on your monitor!

Anyway, as is probably obvious, my entries here are rather sporadic. While I'd love to blog on a regular basis I'm fully cognizant of the fact that blogging (for me) is a form of procrastination and with that in mind, I need to be more disciplined if I plan to get any work done on this PhD.  Having said that, I will try to stick my head (and opinion) in from time to time.  Otherwise, I'll probably be doing nail swatches on Polish or Perish. :)

-mKat

Trying this "blog" thing for the ... third? time.

Hi all...

I should start by saying that I'm not really sure what the point of this blog is (nor am I sure that it will ever have a point.) I've written over the years, somewhat informally, on a variety of sites, and the closest to having an actual blog that I've ever gotten is my MSN Live Spaces account. For interests' sake I may open that up again one day but for the moment I've restricted my permissions.

I'm not sure why, but ever since I got online (oh, a good 14 or so years ago?) I've been pretty paranoid about what sort of information I put out in the ether. There's no rationale behind this fear. I have no aspirations toward the presidency (which is good as my country has a Prime Minister) and I will never end up on Hollywood's A-list. I don't come from money, so no amount of information about me would ever make me ransom worthy... All in all, I'm an insignificant cog in a machine and to this point, the machine has no purpose, no direction. Maybe that's why I'm writing?

In the next little while, I will likely test this forum as a place to vent some thoughts. Some may be academic in nature, some very specific to my degree. Others may be more personal; a way of expressing frustrations or exhilarations that I haven't shared elsewhere. Maybe, just maybe, I'll make good on my non-academic dream to write a few romance novels along the way. Maybe someone will read it. Maybe no one will. But here I am. Again.