The Online Places To Avoid When Saving

1.   Ebay 
 Okay, this may seem obvious, but when you’re trying to save/generate dollars, it’s easy to be drawn to ebay to sell those things you’ve got hanging around that you never wear or use (you probably bought them on ebay to begin with). The trap is that as long as you’re spending time on the ebay site, checking your listings and answering questions, you’ve pretty much got to be made of stone not to have a little browse for something you ‘really really need.’  The worst part is, you can so easily justify buying things because you’re selling stuff – the amount of times I’ve caught myself thinking ‘I’ll buy this and sell something else in its place’ – and it seems to level out. But that’s the thing with Ebay, you never make as much money selling as you do buying. I know this rule seems absurd because, for it to work universally, somebody has to be making money selling you all the things you can’t afford, but it’s true, at least in my case it is. I recommend, either staying away completely, or keeping a guardian in the way of a friend, parent, partner around when you’re at you’re most vulnerable.

HitRECord

While contemplating the role Creative Commons plays in making media content available to the public and in the creation of new content through the process of collaboration, I began searching for other organisations that emphasise a communal approach to artistic output. Enter, hitrecord.org. 

hitRECord is an online, ever evolving collaborative process, where subscribers create content purely with the intention to share it and to witness it be remixed by other members.  The utilitarian website is kind of like a beacon of hope, with its complete absence of advertising, membership fees, or revenue driven strategies of any kind, emphasising only the artistic process and joy in collaboration.

Is The Personal Political?

 I was a little shocked when I noticed that a few of my friends on Facebook had filled out and submitted polls concerned with the renaming of the new Kraft product, iSnack 2.0 . As if that wasn’t bad enough, the  response options offered by the poll gave me the chills – two of which were, ‘I don’t give a toss!’ and ‘No, shithouse.’ The whole thing left me really confused. Did the people filling it out realise it was a funded market research study, or did the informal language used in the questionnaire feign the appearance of a user created survey, not unlike the thousands of quizzes that already populate the Facebook site?

Vouyuerism 2.0

© Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock

 'And when we fast-forward to today we see an almost cruel irony in that people can and often do develop on-line relationships with folks on the other side of the globe, without leaving their homes. But at the expense of the time that would have otherwise been available for involvement in other activities,which might foster a sense of community in their villages, towns and cities.' Will Baker  

Thinking further on the notion of the ‘blogger’ and the way that they are said to be ‘exerting a "disproportionately large influence" on society,’ I can’t help but muse over another of the potential social repercussions of new media. 

Feature Portfolio: Part One

These articles are intended for the internet literature blog HTMLGIANT, which deals with a broad variety of literary topics and debate, in a semi-casual manner.

Why Raymond Carver Is My Elvis

Raymond Carver left his first dent on my heart while I was in my early teens. After reading So Much Water So Close To Home I spent the following couple of days burdened by an intangible, unshakeable, sense of uneasiness.
It took me a while to identify the source because I’d never felt this way before – I was a kid and any anxiety I had known was easily identifiable, and just as easily resolved – but eventually it happened upon me, quietly, slowly, in the very same manner as the story itself had built that almost unbearable sense of suspicion. I had, for the first time, been deeply affected by a writer, by another world, someone else’s story.

Don't Follow My Lead: Be Consistent!

In light of how erratically I have been blogging, I thought maybe I’d poke a bit of fun at myself and take a look at the role of consistency in the formation of a successful blog. Apparently it’s important – really important – like in the top three of the key factors to blogging success.

Evidently,‘people depend upon your regularly scheduled blog posts. If you set a schedule, keep it. If you start an article series, finish it. If you have regularly scheduled posts like weekly reports, links, challenges, memes, or other repeated content, keep it on schedule as people have come to expect it. Just as you expect others to show up for their appointments, you better show up for your blog appointments.’
This doesn’t bode so well for me, but it does make sense. The internet is overflowing with content and who wants to waste their time navigating to dead blogs? As they say, attention is the true currency of the internet, and there is no faster way to kill peoples interest than to become stagnant and boring. There are a couple of other articles on this topic, here and here.