Google Buzz

Having just spent the whole day syncing various corporate PR videos and apps onto lots of Apple iTouch devices (not for fun, but for a large multinational company’s annual conference in case you were wondering), I came back home to a googlemail account that was covered with this “supposedly exciting” message and uninspiring logo:

I had just read about Google deciding to “invade” (or should that be join) the over-burgeoning world of social networking gone mad. I actually read about it on Twitter and even though it did excite me for about 10 nanoseconds I did start to wonder how I could fit yet another social networking site into my already social network crammed life. And I don’t even have a job (yet).

I do love the internet, the web and all things tech, but even I have my limits (which will surprise many). That said I obviously joined, as I already have a Gmail account so I was already Buzzed up anyway. I am intriugued to see who will come out on top in the Social networking wars (here’s me hyping the mundane up again). I personally like Twitter the most as it basically gives me access to lots of links on articles about Technology, Culture, Politics and the news from a wide variety of sources. It would take me ages to trawl through all these various news and story providers but Twitter makes the job easier. I can also access it via my iPhone, and, not to put too crude a point to all this, since I spend a lot fo my time on the loo (I couldn’t think of a more sophisticated way to mention this) Twitter on my iPhone means I have access to the world and all its different events from different angles in the one place I need it the most. What else would I do on the toilet? I am always loathe to take a good book in there as books are sort fo sacred to me, and it would be like defiling literature. Anyway, my Irritable Bowel Syndrome problems aside, social networking does serve a useful purpose in my life, given my specific lifestyle. Yet even I don’t spend that much time locked away from civilisation to be able to go through every Plurk, Tweet, Facebook status update, Flickr update or Buzz that comes my way. I wish I did. I really love the way that social networking on the web connects like minded people who would otherwise never meet as they are separated by geography and other traditional barriers.

I was planning to write a blog post about social networking anyway, before all this Buzz commentary. The angle I planned to take was to discuss why I have more than one Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail account and how that connects with the myriad of different aspects of my personality. Social networking and the web in general allows me to share different parts of my life and personality with a diverse range of very different people. This gives me and my thoughts a great deal of freedom to express themselves. If I did not have this option all my thoughts would fester deep within me, like a swirling vortex of pent up frustrations, boiling and bubbling with rage until they erupted and offended all around me.

So maybe buzzing in addition to tweeting may help keep me a sane, normal, and probably more dull person in real life?

Who knows, I probably won’t have the time to even update my Facebook status with the fact that I am buzzing about twitter.

A lot of people have commented on how social networking has become overbearing and gone into overkill. To an extent I agree about the overbearing comment.  With all the social networking sites around one could spend all day every day just reading status updates (half of which are exaggerated half truths or designed to project a specific self image people want to create). I am already singed up for Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Moolto, MSN Live, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, WordPress, Blogger, Library thing and Goodreads! They need one service that combines all of these!

I feel that it is up to the individual to act in a balanced and sensible manner (some might say I am expecting too much, given how humans often abuse advances in technology), when picking which services they use to communicate different types of messages and ideas. Of Course there are some geeks out there locked away in a room with wires attached to their internal organs from their computers who live for the next status update and electronic hit, but most people just use it to share their thoughts and ideas with like minded people.

It is hard to find like minded people who you click with in the real world. It always had been. Most of the people we are surrounded by are with us out of pure chance. They happen to be our neighbours, school friends and family. We have geography and maybe blood or language in common but often we don’t have much else.

Personally I have found sites like TED and Mashable to provide me with a very rewarding experience. I would never have discovered them were it not for Twitter. I have also got back into listenign to more music, and the joys of discovering new bands through sites like Spotify and last FM. I haven’t even joined MySpace but I know it has helped a lot of good bands break through. Twitter has also been a great place for aspiring and struggling writers to network with other writers and get useful tips and make valuable contacts. Like many things social networking can be a positive as well as negative force, and both those forces are at work in our lives.

I hope that I can find the right balance in terms of sensible social networking use, which I think I can, and use it to enrich my life instead of distracting me from facing life.

With all this in mind I will now post this blog onto WordPress, link it to blogger, post a link on Twitter, Buzz, Facebook and Plurk and check any comments on my iPhone, when I should really be finishing “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”

Medium Blogging

It has been a tough week. The week before was tough, but every week gets harder, and the number of outlets to sink my throbbing head into are diminishing as each day passes. I need more positive influences in my life, less stress and responsibility, and more channels for all my pent up anxiety, stress, frustration and disillusionment. Yes, all the madness within me is a great well for creativity and my story ideas and fictitious ramblings have been flowing like the Colorado Rapids but I also need some sanity and order in my life. Order, that is, that leaves me feeling fulfilled and content, not empty, lost and in a psychological state of mind so scary I won’t recount it here in cyberspace. Suffice to say I have hit some very dark places deep within me and had a few chilling experiences.

Composing a new blog entry is not one of the 42 items on my to do list that I need to complete by close of play this week in addition to normal household chores and routine stuff like shaving, eating and sleeping. The fact that I have struggled to complete even 10 tasks is more reason not to waste what little precious time and energy is have typing up a concise, relaxed, non-confrontational account of my current thoughts. So I will do it anyway.

I do, however, feel that I need a medium of expression on the web that is somewhere between Twitter and the micro blogging limit of 140 words, the limitless cyber sheath of electronic viewing that encourages me to babble on incoherently for eternity. I need more than micro blogging, and less than blogging, I need Medium Blogging. Surely I must be able to conjure up a better description than that. My mind is elsewhere. I am in the middle of a blood soaked muddy field under a smoke filled black red sky with a raging inferno that I was the cause of crackling before my eyes. At least the protagonist in mew short story is. He has some issues. He also has a lot on his mind. I won’t explain any further as the more time I spend on this blog the less i spend on the actually story. Even though this blog will get published in a few minuet sand that short story may never see the light of day as anything other than binary codes etched into the memory of my temperamental overpriced computer.

Back to reality.

The plus side of this week is that I finally managed to sit down and read a few short stories. I joined the local library last week and took out 2 short story collections. One is by Anton Chekhov, the king of short stories and the other is a collection called Fascination by William Boyd, which I started sifting through early this week, in an attempt to gain control over my increasingly erratic and anxiety ridden mind. I was glad I too k the first steps on the journey into the world of reading and writing short stories, the first steps being the hardest to take in many cases, mine being a prime example. Just as I cannot justify wasting tie blogging I also cannot justify wasting time reading short stories or trying to write them. However, after reading through 3 William Boyd Short Stories, I was so impressed by them, and the way he managed to develop and project rounded, 3 dimensional complex characters in just 13 pages, that I immediately slumbered upstairs to my pseudo-study and composed my own short story, actually finishing a work of prose that I had started. Yes, that was the great achievement of the week. I actually finished a story I was working on, I never finish my stories, Once I start them, they develop a life of their own and decide to take over and become more complex and run off on their own self created arcs, ignoring my signals to slow down and fit into a small, easy to read and understand box of a plot, so that I will actually be able to hand in a completed manuscript to someone, somewhere and at least pretend I may have a chance of becoming a published fiction author one day. The book demons usually never let this happen. On Monday night they must have been sleeping. I rarely even finish the blog posts I start composing; I am trying desperately to keep this one short to ensure it actually gets posted. Half my problem is my typing is so atrocious I spend needless hours correcting it. I need an assistant, or a typist, someone I can dictate my thoughts to and let them do the hard work. Then I would not be a writer, I would just be a professional rantmeister of wacky ideas. I like the sound of that. Suffice to say I am thoroughly enjoying my trip into the world of short stories and will blog more about it when I actually invent a device to increase the amount if time and energy I have.

Welcome to the Escape

Life has become too complex for me. With an ever increasing number of responsibilities and conundrums arriving through my letterbox every day I have decided to stop running around like an electrocuted Duracell Bunny, trying to fight each and every little fire that pops up around me, and take a break. If I had money and a private jet, or just money, I would take a holiday and go aboard, probably to Southern Spain and bask in the mystical beauty of the Palaces at Alhambra in Granada, letting the cool breeze of the Sierra Nevada mountain air cleanse my hyperactive mind of the neural burn out it is currently experiencing. I don’t have any money so I have resorted to finding solace through sheer escapism and it is to blogs and the pixilated 2-D Virtual universe of cyberspace and the thoughts of the many people who feel the need to commit their experiences and stories to cyber ink that I turn.

My aim is to immerse myself so fully in the world of blogs that I completely forget all the mounting troubles facing me in the real world. Hopefully when i am dragged away from my cheap plastic computer screen and battered keyboard I will be stronger and more centred, and therefore more capable of facing reality and all the punches it throws my way. Whether or not finding inner peace through distraction, avoidance and escaping into a world of diverse blogs will actually give me the ability to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, who knows. All I know is that you do not have to fly 5000 miles away and take a road trip to find yourself or go on an adventure. Although that would be fun.

I am being pro active and trying to use the resources I have around me to go on a journey that will leave me enlightened, centred, stimulated, healthier and wiser. OK maybe forget about the last point, that is a lost cause, but at least I will visit exotic lands and ponder intriguing concepts through the medium of other people’s blogs.

To date this is my 7^th blog, and it is the 4^th Blog that I have created this year. The aim, as is always the case, is to present my won diverse background, ideas, complexities and adventures (if you can call them that) in a coherent manner. That is why I aim to make this my main, general blog, and it will link to a myriad of other sub-blogs each focusing on a specific aspect of my unpredictable rollercoaster journey.

So Far I have another general, main blog in blogspot:

http://razakam.blogspot.com/

I have 3 other blogs in WordPress:

Escape to Books – my adventure sin the world of literature as an aspiring author/ novelist, avid book lover, literary freak

http://escapetobooks.wordpress.com/

Escape to Weightloss – My journey into the world of WeightWatchers, healthy eating, healthy cooking, brining balance to my usually destructive food obsession (I live for sizzling, juicy Kebabs and Burgers):

http://escapetoweightloss.wordpress.com/

Rebuilding Raza – The blog that charts my current battle with Chronic Fatigue syndrome, that most perplexing of illnesses:

http://rebuildingraza.wordpress.com/

I also plan to create another blog about my forays into the metaverse of online Virtual Worlds, such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, the ultimate escape from reality and immersion in fantasy. I will post the link to this blog as soon as it is created.

Until then enjoy my random ramblings and all the various links, photos and thoughts I post up and any feedback is always appreciated and welcomed!

The Alhambra in Wikipedia

Alhambra Info