Connection Vertigo

Having a blog has offered my friends and family the best opportunity to keep up with what I've been up to. Although, I realize that there's not much in my updating, plus most of the stuff I write and post about are not in the "hey, this is what I've been up to lately" sort of vein. There are some interesting anecdotes to be found here and there, but not enough for a regular reader to expect on a continuing basis. Posting about my life here seems sort of odd to me, even though, yes, this is a blog and blogs are supposed to be repositories for intriguing and interesting life stories. Or are they? Blogs are what you make them and here, well, anything goes.

Obviously, there are other options to stay connected with loved ones. It's practically a sin NOT have a myspace account, right? Well, I never wanted one. An ugly, UGLY website that means practically nothing to me. (Look, I'm not even going to link it. Take that, myspace!) Ugly in the sense of visuals, audio and navigation. I know that having a myspace page has become the hottest thing to do this day and age -- it's great for musicians to connect with their fanbase (even that's been tainted by some groups hiring an internet lackey to hook up programs that automatically "friend" people out there -- a Web 2.0 loophole, I guess) -- but the site is glaringly cumbersome and fraught with spam comments, ads and irritating fake accounts from "girls" who "saw my icon and thought I was cute but can't seem to figure this all out, can you help me?" Yeah, right. I'm not stupid, people. I have a myspace page up, but don't bother friending me. I probably won't update it because, really, what am I going to do with it? I only started it up so I could grab the "Wardomatic" name and cybersquat until I find it necessary not to do so.

Recently, two of my friends (real friends, not myspace friends) sent me invites to start up a Facebook account. Skeptical at first, I'm still trying to figure out if it's a worthy application. I can see why it's so big with students and campuses -- started up by college students, there's some sort of lackadaisical collegiate "what's up? what's goin' on?" attitude I get from the site's interface. It's a good way (and at times fun) to see what your pals are doing, but really, in the long run...is it worth it? Well, Facebook has its share of pros and cons -- 100x aesthetically better than myspace, if you ask me, with its clean design and structure. I like that. All the crazy applications gets incredibly annoying, however. Why would I want to "share a virtual beer" with anyone in cyberspace? It's one step away from Second Life, if you ask me. And I'm not down with that. I do have to say that Facebook has enabled me to find classmates I've lost track of through the years. I'm more than likely to check up on my buddies through this site than on any other community-based site, to be quite honest.

As mentioned earlier, I signed up on Channel Frederator RAW, the "social networking community for Channel Frederator." I'm enjoying the simple layout of the site, with the occasional updates from other members. I like that you can delete these updates in your profile if they're irritating you. Even though I probably won't update my profile and engage in too many conversations on the forums here, I think RAW has proven to be another successful diversion from my already-busy day. Bonus: finding fellow Portlanders that I was not aware of before joining. Another bonus: my fellow co-hort in LAIKA crime, Eric Weise is up in it, too. That makes two thirds of LAIKA/house's 2D directors trolling around here.

Truth be told, the best way to get in contact with me is to email me from my profile page, or send a message through my Flickr. I'm addicted to Flickr, in case you haven't noticed. Contact me, tell me what you think of my blog, my art, my graffiti, my pics, anything. It might be a while before I respond, but I'll do my best. And please, by all means, don't take it personally if I don't get back to you right away. Being a director for a top animation production company requires a lot of my time. That, and having two kids will pretty much tap me of any free time during the day. (I sleep at night, in case you're wondering.)

UPDATE: I knew I forgot a few sites. LinkedIn is another one of those "connection" sites where I'm having a hard time trying to figure out if it's worth being a part of or not. The only thing that LinkedIn seems to be good for is accumulating "links" or people that you're connected with through businesses and former colleagues. Supposedly this is worth something in the workplace world out there, but has anyone gotten a job because of their LinkedIn account? If so, I'd like to hear about it.

Of course, how could I forget YouTube? If you're down with low-fi video quality, then this is the place for you. Even with the crappy quality, Andrea and I never get tired of watching Jim Gaffigan clips. It's like we're watching our own network, which is exactly what the people at YouTube want. Don't expect me to find the time to actually favorite clips. There are a few that I've favorited, but that's about it. Don't have enough time to search videos all day.