People are like sheep and have no brain. Granted, not all otherwise I would be one of them. But you can find all these sheep people loitering in one place: on twitter. What a bunch of twits they are. Maybe you understood by now that this post is not going to be about the praises of Twitter.
Can anyone tell me what is the attraction of Twitter? People just post random, stupid and useless short messages: I am eating a sandwich, just bought this or that, feeling bored now. No wonder they feel bored if they rely on Twitter to entertain themselves.
Contribution of Twitter?
What is the contribution of Twitter to society? What can we gain from it? I struggle to find answers. Someone can disseminate their message quickly and efficiently to the general public. But is there anything worth saying that will interest most people and in such few words? If it’s just a small group of people, why not just email them? Most people won’t find anything you have to say interesting, unless you do or you are someone famous.
Followers follow me
Enter Sarah Brown and Britney Spears, famous tweeters. Sarah Brown, as the wife of the previous UK Prime Minister, got a large number of ‘followers’ as they are called. What has she done? Hello, she is NOT the Prime Minister. And who cares if she is drinking wine or not? Well, it seems many people care. Get a life, you sad people.
How about Britney Spears? She’s supposed to be good at music, isn’t she? Well why not just give her a microphone or buy her CD? She’s not going to sing on Twitter, is she?
Recently there was an article in the news, the more conventional type, about how some celebrity followed a ‘normal’ guy from the UK whose few tweets were about cleaning his cupboard. Overnight, that ‘normal’ fellow became a celebrity on Twitter and gathered a large number of followers. What, just because he had a celebrity following him? Get a life again you sheep.
It seems if a few people, or a critical mass head onto a website, especially followers, everyone else will follow like sheep. Now marketers spam Twitter like there is no tomorrow because everyone is on there and they hope people will see there message.
Who are the sheep?
Well, the funny thing is that I don’t personally know anyone who uses Twitter. Sure, most of the people I know have Facebook but not a single one of them neither follows anyone on Twitter nor even has a Twitter account.
So who the hell are all these sheep then? Maybe I cried out too loudly and there are no sheep. The only sheep left on Twitter would be these marketers following each other, marketing their products to each other and following the celebrities when they get bored with their stuff.
Keep twittering sheep!*
*My deepest apologies to sheep of the grazing kind who can’t tweet (yet).
Getting your priorities in life right
Life is a learning curve. You start as a helpless baby unable to walk and talk. You go to school, you learn your trade. If you enjoy the academic world, you might carry on after school and go to university for 3 years. You come out of the education system at 21years old then, having spent around 16 years in a learning establishment. The hardiest might go on for a 2nd degree but this is where the water becomes murky.
Educational steps
When do you leave this cocooned world? When do you go out there in the real world to earn a living for yourself? University studies are not compulsory, in fact, continuing at school after 16 in the UK is not compulsory but advisable. If you go on to university, do a first degree and then a second, when do you stop? Is the second degree really going to be useful or are you delaying the inevitable – that of going out there and earning a living?
After finishing a degree, shouldn’t one be expected to get a job and settle down? Find a partner, get married and start a family? Move on to the next logical steps in the learning curve? It is now about learning responsibilities, learning about parenthood and then passing down to your children that experience in life that you have accumulated and that was passed down to you in turn.
Holding on to the past
Too many people out there are just grown-up children; kiddults is the new term. Some have no priorities and go where the wind blows them. They finish university, hang out with a partner for a while, party all over the place, move from job to job and when they get close to their 30s, they decide to go back to university again. They already have a first degree and instead of moving forwards, they go back to their easy, cocooned world.
When you leave university at 21, it’s great: you have your whole life ahead of you and a solid education behind you. But if you start university again when you are approaching 30, you are not progressing in your life. This is especially true if you have a spouse who is working and already supporting you financially. Your spouse may be looking ahead to the future and a family while you are looking backwards and going back to university for a second or third time instead of following the next logical step in the progression of your life.
Time is relentless
What you don’t know is that the clock is ticking. By the time you come out of university and get that ‘proper’ job, you will find out you have wasted your best years and that you are fast approaching middle age. Is that the time to start a family? Would children like to have elderly parents?
A large age gap is irreversible and sometimes means that children and parents are unable to form a close bond. The generation gap and diverging interests are just too far apart. A lack of fitness at an advanced age also translates into an inability to play sports with your children and have fun with them, leaving you sitting on the sidelines. By the time you retire, your kids will just be starting out in life as an adult and you may well never see your grandchildren.
Don’t delay what you can have now. Life can pass you by and then one day you will suddenly realize you have accomplished nothing in your life. Act now. You only have one life to live.
Educational steps
When do you leave this cocooned world? When do you go out there in the real world to earn a living for yourself? University studies are not compulsory, in fact, continuing at school after 16 in the UK is not compulsory but advisable. If you go on to university, do a first degree and then a second, when do you stop? Is the second degree really going to be useful or are you delaying the inevitable – that of going out there and earning a living?
After finishing a degree, shouldn’t one be expected to get a job and settle down? Find a partner, get married and start a family? Move on to the next logical steps in the learning curve? It is now about learning responsibilities, learning about parenthood and then passing down to your children that experience in life that you have accumulated and that was passed down to you in turn.
Holding on to the past
Too many people out there are just grown-up children; kiddults is the new term. Some have no priorities and go where the wind blows them. They finish university, hang out with a partner for a while, party all over the place, move from job to job and when they get close to their 30s, they decide to go back to university again. They already have a first degree and instead of moving forwards, they go back to their easy, cocooned world.
When you leave university at 21, it’s great: you have your whole life ahead of you and a solid education behind you. But if you start university again when you are approaching 30, you are not progressing in your life. This is especially true if you have a spouse who is working and already supporting you financially. Your spouse may be looking ahead to the future and a family while you are looking backwards and going back to university for a second or third time instead of following the next logical step in the progression of your life.
Time is relentless
What you don’t know is that the clock is ticking. By the time you come out of university and get that ‘proper’ job, you will find out you have wasted your best years and that you are fast approaching middle age. Is that the time to start a family? Would children like to have elderly parents?
A large age gap is irreversible and sometimes means that children and parents are unable to form a close bond. The generation gap and diverging interests are just too far apart. A lack of fitness at an advanced age also translates into an inability to play sports with your children and have fun with them, leaving you sitting on the sidelines. By the time you retire, your kids will just be starting out in life as an adult and you may well never see your grandchildren.
Don’t delay what you can have now. Life can pass you by and then one day you will suddenly realize you have accomplished nothing in your life. Act now. You only have one life to live.
Andy loves gossip
Andy at school who loved gossips on other kids who got in trouble but when he got in trouble for smoking in a classroom, he never uttered a word about it.
Andy was a boy at my school who loved gossips and gossiping on other kids. He would actively propagate the latest mishaps to befall them and glee with pleasure when learning about a new one.
As he entered his teenage years and left boyhood behind to experiment with manhood, his love of gossip did not cease. However, his first few steps into the forays of manhood started with experimentation like many others, especially if part of the wrong crowd. Andy did not really mix with the bad boys, he was not one of them. In fact, he was quite friendly, as long as you were of the average type – not in trouble nor a geek.
His teenage curiosity led him to try out smoking. I never saw him with a cigarette at his lips, after all, smoking was expressly forbidden within the schoolground and I didn’t see him beyond. However, I learnt about it in a big way when the gossip rounded on him to spread the news that he was caught smoking in the classroom. Gossip being gossip, it could all be untrue but his last chance of keeping his reputation intact was shattered when it was announced the next morning during school assembly that a kid had been caught smoking inside the classroom and that it was reminded to everyone that smoking was expressly forbidden at school
As Andy had never been in trouble before, at least as far as I knew, I wanted to learn more about it, perhaps in a way to delight at his downfall. So I asked him what happened and if it was true that it was him. Andy being Andy, when his was at the centre of the storm, he suddenly lost his tongue and all his glee and never uttered a word about it. His sudden silence about this sort of event confirmed everything for me. If it was another kid, his tongue would have been working overtime to spread all the juicy details to all and yonder.
Man in a suit in a train
A man in a suit is not always the best behaved.
I was traveling by train the other day. When I entered the carriage, I went to sit at one of these desks. There sitting opposite me was a well-dress man in a sharp charcoal-grey suit and shiny shoes. He was reading a newspaper and had a cup of coffee and an empty banana skin next to him. He also had a bin just behind him to throw away his shit.
After I sat down, he made no attempt to move his empty cup and banana remains out of my way, even after I pushed my way in somewhat. Sir seemed too engrossed in his paper. And it wasn’t The Sun by all means. A while later he finished reading and put his paper away, leaving his rubbish still on the desk. It might well not have been his but when his stop came, he got up, picked his litter and finally dumped it in the bin.
I could say that at least he threw his rubbish to the bin instead of leaving it behind like so many people. But he also should not have left the desk strewn with it even though others were also using it. Did he own the train? Was I invading his personal space which he had to mark with his banana in my way? Wearing a suit does not mean well-educated and well-behaved although one may have had a lot of money spent on education.
Habit maketh not the monk, something for me to remember.
I was traveling by train the other day. When I entered the carriage, I went to sit at one of these desks. There sitting opposite me was a well-dress man in a sharp charcoal-grey suit and shiny shoes. He was reading a newspaper and had a cup of coffee and an empty banana skin next to him. He also had a bin just behind him to throw away his shit.
After I sat down, he made no attempt to move his empty cup and banana remains out of my way, even after I pushed my way in somewhat. Sir seemed too engrossed in his paper. And it wasn’t The Sun by all means. A while later he finished reading and put his paper away, leaving his rubbish still on the desk. It might well not have been his but when his stop came, he got up, picked his litter and finally dumped it in the bin.
I could say that at least he threw his rubbish to the bin instead of leaving it behind like so many people. But he also should not have left the desk strewn with it even though others were also using it. Did he own the train? Was I invading his personal space which he had to mark with his banana in my way? Wearing a suit does not mean well-educated and well-behaved although one may have had a lot of money spent on education.
Habit maketh not the monk, something for me to remember.
The Chaos of transport
The other day it was raining, I was in a packed train and the ceiling was leaking. Fortunately not on me. Oh, and did I say the train was not moving?
Train travel is very expensive in the UK yet its price reflects in no way the level of service. As a commuter, you will fork out a lot of money for an expensive ticket only to be provided with a regularly delayed and appalling service. What with the poor state of the engineering industry in the UK, it's no surprise it has come to this.
We all know how sensitive trains are to the weather. Snow falls on tracks and trains are stuck. If it’s windy, it’s too many leaves on tracks and trains are stuck. If it rains, the tracks are flooded. If it’s too hot, tracks buckle. Even when it’s sunny, I’ve heard that trains have to go slowly because of the glare or reflection of the sun off the rail into the driver’s eyes. They must be the most disable people on earth!
What other option does the commuter have? Travel by car, by bus? Not much better. Traffic jam, road rage, expensive parking…. If your commute is long and you take the train, at least you can do something during this time, for example read the paper. If you are driving or stuck in traffic, you can only keep your eyes on the road and make sure you don’t get too close to the car ahead.
Train travel is very expensive in the UK yet its price reflects in no way the level of service. As a commuter, you will fork out a lot of money for an expensive ticket only to be provided with a regularly delayed and appalling service. What with the poor state of the engineering industry in the UK, it's no surprise it has come to this.
We all know how sensitive trains are to the weather. Snow falls on tracks and trains are stuck. If it’s windy, it’s too many leaves on tracks and trains are stuck. If it rains, the tracks are flooded. If it’s too hot, tracks buckle. Even when it’s sunny, I’ve heard that trains have to go slowly because of the glare or reflection of the sun off the rail into the driver’s eyes. They must be the most disable people on earth!
What other option does the commuter have? Travel by car, by bus? Not much better. Traffic jam, road rage, expensive parking…. If your commute is long and you take the train, at least you can do something during this time, for example read the paper. If you are driving or stuck in traffic, you can only keep your eyes on the road and make sure you don’t get too close to the car ahead.
How to restore menu toolbar in Firefox
Just hit the ALT key.
Long answer:
I was fooling around in Firefox and unchecked the visible toolbars under View > Toolbars. The options are the Menu toolbar, the Navigation toolbar, the Bookmarks toolbar and any other toolbar you may have added. I started from the bottom of the list and hid the bookmarks, navigation and last of all the menu bar.
That left me in big trouble because the View button had disappeared and I could no longer access the View > Toolbar options underneath in Firefox. What to do? No way to fully browse the internet. I did a quick search online using the key terms in this post's title to find out the way to restore the menu bar in FIrefox. after all, if you can hide it, you can unhide it. Unfortunately, either I used the wrong search terms or Google is not as good as we all thought and I couldn't find a solution quickly enough on the first page.
I picked a link on the first page about a Firefox addon to hide the menu bar (is that necessary?) and in it, it said to press the ALT key to restore the menu bar. Close to desperation, I tried just that although this was supposed to work specifically for the addon but hey presto, my menu bar was visible again.
After clicking pressing the alt key, don't forget to go back to View > Toolbar and tick the Menu toolbar because if you check the View Bookmarks toolbar instead, as an example, the Menu bar will disappear again. Although by now, you will now how to make it appear again using the keyboard. Once again, I'll repeat it because it is so nice and reassuring to know that: press the alt key to make the menu bar reappear in Firefox. At least this works in the latest version of FF (3.6.3 currently) and on Windows XP.
So if you happened to have been in the same situation as me, I am writing this posst in the hope it will appear high up in Google if you are ever making such a targeted search.
Long answer:
I was fooling around in Firefox and unchecked the visible toolbars under View > Toolbars. The options are the Menu toolbar, the Navigation toolbar, the Bookmarks toolbar and any other toolbar you may have added. I started from the bottom of the list and hid the bookmarks, navigation and last of all the menu bar.
That left me in big trouble because the View button had disappeared and I could no longer access the View > Toolbar options underneath in Firefox. What to do? No way to fully browse the internet. I did a quick search online using the key terms in this post's title to find out the way to restore the menu bar in FIrefox. after all, if you can hide it, you can unhide it. Unfortunately, either I used the wrong search terms or Google is not as good as we all thought and I couldn't find a solution quickly enough on the first page.
I picked a link on the first page about a Firefox addon to hide the menu bar (is that necessary?) and in it, it said to press the ALT key to restore the menu bar. Close to desperation, I tried just that although this was supposed to work specifically for the addon but hey presto, my menu bar was visible again.
After clicking pressing the alt key, don't forget to go back to View > Toolbar and tick the Menu toolbar because if you check the View Bookmarks toolbar instead, as an example, the Menu bar will disappear again. Although by now, you will now how to make it appear again using the keyboard. Once again, I'll repeat it because it is so nice and reassuring to know that: press the alt key to make the menu bar reappear in Firefox. At least this works in the latest version of FF (3.6.3 currently) and on Windows XP.
So if you happened to have been in the same situation as me, I am writing this posst in the hope it will appear high up in Google if you are ever making such a targeted search.
Digital movie downloads
I recently read someone’s blog post about the challenges of downloading a movie in Windows Media Player format. The movie in that format was not compatible with iTunes, PSP or Zunes. Adobe Air and a snooping Digital Copy Manager that reports on your activities both had to be installed as well. In brief, whoever came up with that didn’t make life easy for you.
Unfortunately, this sort of behaviour happens all too often in other spheres followed by a lack of complaints or action from those on the receiving end. Some companies may offer very poor delivery services; maybe others call you home time and again for one of their surveys; others impose restrictive use on the products they sell. A good example for this case would be the DRM, Digital Rights Management, to stay on-topic. It was initially used to prevent people making multiple copies of CDs they had legally purchased.
While I can understand that the manufacturer wants to protect its assets, in many cases, these restrictions were too heavy and people have rightly protested against them. In many cases, they win.
So today, instead of just accepting your fate, or being resigned to losing out, go out there and complain actively. One person might not make a difference but if enough join and hit a company where it hurts most, change might happen.
So Molly, instead of just being resigned to this ‘restrictive and intrusive DRM’, go out there and vote with your feet.
It’s time to turn active.