pogoism

Many moons ago, I wrote about a new thing called tumbleblogging, a service which fits somewhere between blogging and Twitter. 

Anyway, I lost interest in it fairly quickly, stopped updating it, and ended up deleting it all together. However, when I’m spending my hours messing around on the internet, I come across all sorts of random stuff that I think people will be interested in, but I don’t want to create a post for on my blog.

So, I restarted tumbleblogging, using the Tumblr service.

It’s fantastic – with a one-click, you can post text, photos, quotes, links, chat, audio and video, or anything else you want. And it’ll collect information from other sites such as Delicious, Digg, YouTube, Twitter and your blog, and include it on your feed.

As with Twitter, you can also choose to “follow” other people, and their posts will appear in your feed.

Go ahead – give it a go. And while you’re there, follow me…

I’ve refrained from doing political posts on my blog, but today marks the first day of Inauguration Week, and also the first online march for LGBT equality in the US. 

If you’d asked me a few weeks ago what I thought of gay “marriage”, I’d have told you that I don’t agree with it. In the UK, we have civil partnerships, which give same-sex couples exactly the same benefits as straight couples, but in the US, that’s not true. Because the law is written with the word “marriage”, if civil unions are approved here (and the evidence shows that they overwhelmingly would be), then same-sex couples will still not necessarily enjoy all the same benefits of being “married”. Given the passage of Prop 8 in California in November, and all the fall-out from that, an online campaign has launched to educate Americans about what is being denied to committed LGBT Americans. They trawled through Federal law, and identified 1138 laws in which marital status is a factor. 

1138.

That’s a pretty big number. And they range from joint taxes, to hospital visitation, to immigration, to domestic violence, and the main one for me – medical decisions.

Imagine someone you’ve had a domestic relationship with for 20 years has an accident, and because you’re not married, you’re unable to make medical decisions for that person, despite probably being the most qualified person to make those decisions for that person.

Imagine not being able to even visit your partner in hospital.

Imagine being fired from your job, just because you’re gay.

These things happen, it’s not just us whiney gays going on again about equality – they affect peoples lives in a very real way.

I know it seems weird that someone from the UK should care so much, but my plan is to ultimately move here, so I may as well get behind it now so that when I do live here, that chance is open to me. And besides, if arguably the most influential country in the world can’t give LGBT couples equal rights, what chance have other countries got?

So, if you support gay marriage in the US, I’d strongly urge you to go to the EqualityMatters.org website, and donate your profile picture to this cause.

“We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – Thomas Jefferson

From QUB:

A short film by a Queen’s University graduate is to be the first ever from Northern Ireland shown at the Sundance Film Festival. 

Connor Clements from Scarva, Co. Down, wrote and directed ‘James’ as part of his Master’s degree course. The film follows a teenage boy as he struggles to come to terms with his sexuality. 

‘James’ is one of just 22 shorts selected for the International Dramatic Competition, from an overall Festival entry of 6,000 films. It has also been selected for the Sundance 10/10 – an exclusive selection of ten short films available to download from iTunes during the Festival (15-25 January). 

Connor, who will be in Utah to present his film at the Festival, said: “Sundance is one of the world’s largest, most influential and prestigious independent film festivals, and I am thrilled that my debut film, made while studying my Master’s at Queen’s, has been chosen for the International Dramatic Competition. 

“Being shown at Sundance is one of the highest accolades available for a short film and it’s a real honour for any aspiring filmmaker to be part of this high-profile event. I hope it won’t be the last time one of my films is shown on such a prominent stage.” 

This is the latest in a string of awards and accolades for ‘James’. It was chosen for the famous Short Film Corner at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and won a series of awards in 2008, including Best Northern Irish Short at the Belfast Film Festival, The Iris Prize for Best UK Short, and Best International Short at the St Louis International Film Festival. 

‘James’ will also feature at film festivals around the world in the coming months, with screenings planned in San Francisco, San Jose, Honolulu, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Sydney and Miami in the coming months. Connor said: “‘James’ has been popular with festival programmers, and I hope it continues to captivate audiences for a long time.” 

‘James’ will be shown at the Sundance Film Festival from 15-25 January. For more information on the project and to follow Connor’s Sundance Blog, visit www.connorclements.tv For more information on Film Studies at Queen’s visit www.qub.ac.uk/film

You can download this film, and others at iTunes until January 25th.

Daft Punk vs. Adam Freedland – “Aer Obama”

Twitter is probably most simply defined as micro-blogging, or, if you’re familiar with Facebook, status updates on steroids.

Twitter is simple – when you log in, it asks you one question: “What are you doing”. Responses are limited to 140 characters and typical answers range wildly. Essentially, Twitter helps to fill the gap between blogs, or emails. You can update, or “tweet” from a variety of sources, desktop applications, such as Twitterific, mobile phone apps, such as TwitterFon, from Facebook, or straight from the Twitter website. This flexibility goes a long way to making Twitter what it is.

A lot of people say that they don’t care what people are doing every second of every day, and it’s a fair point. However, I’m not sure what it is, but I like the idea. I follow people on Twitter who I know in real life as well as people who I’ve never met. Of the people I’ve never met, I usually follow people that I find interesting and that have similar interests to me.

Twitter has been around for about 2 years, and recently it’s popularity has surged. Some pundits have suggested that in the last few weeks and months, Twitter has come of age, citing the Mumbai terrorist attacks as a turning point, when information was being uploaded to Twitter faster than the news agencies were able to.

If you don’t use Twitter, I’d strongly suggest you give it a go. Go to the Twitter homepage, sign up for an account, and the search for people in your town or city. If you find anyone that seems interesting, follow them. That’s the way to get started, if you don’t follow anyone, you won’t get anything out of it. After a while, more and more people will begin to find your profile and follow you, and other Twitterers will begin to interact with you. The key thing is to stick with it. Don’t give up after a few days – you’ll find it’s well worth it.

The lovely people at CommonCraft have done a much better job of explaining Twitter in plain english. Watch the video below.

And when you’ve set up your account, be sure to follow me.

After what was quite a dull first week back at work, what with there being nothing to do, last night I spent some time with my mate Alonso. We went to Genghis Grill (whose idea it was to name a restaurant after someone who murdered millions of people, I don’t know) in Sparks. It was an interesting concept for a restaurant – when you go in, you get given a bowl and then directed to go to a salad bar type area. You fill up your bowl with meat, vegetables, spices and sauce, and then hand it to the kitchen staff who grill it, and add noodles or rice.

After that, we headed back to Alonso’s. We sampled a Mexican delicacy – chapulines.

From Wikipedia:

Chapulines are grasshoppers of the genus Sphenarium. They are considered a delicacy by many Mexicans. They are collected only at certain times of year (from their hatching in early May through the late summer/early autumn). They are thoroughly cleaned and washed out, then toasted on a comal (clay cooking surface) with garlic and lemon juice and sal de gusano to create a sour-spicy-salty taste. Some people will toast their chapuline with chiles, but most vendors and cooks will tell you that chiles are used to cover for stale chapulines and only show up in the poorest quality grasshoppers. Chapulines are available only in certain parts of Mexico, the state and city of Oaxaca being best known. They are available in varying sizes, small to large. They are known to have been used as food for over 3000 years.

Surpisingly, they didn’t actually taste that bad – they taste like lemon. However, I was expecting them to be crunchy and hard throughout, but after my first bite I felt a squishy interior, which wasn’t particularly pleasant. But anyway, I can cross grasshopper eating off my list of things to do before I die.

The rest of the weekend was filled with cleaning our very messy post-Christmas apartment, and getting rid of the Christmas tree, which was much more of a hassle than Emily or I had anticipated!

Photo via Flickr user daftgirly.

Sarah Palin has a dig at Couric, Fey and the Media in general

George Monbiot of The Guardian interviews Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of oil giant Shell.

I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions, and I don’t normally do posts like this, but I thought I’d give it a go and use it as a chance to look back and think ahead. Plus, I figured if I write them down, and show them to the world, there will be more of a motivation to actually do them.

Be better at responding to e-mails.

Just before I came to the US in August, I set up this blog as a way to keep in touch with family and friends, as I thought it gave me a bit more flexibility than writing the same e-mail to different people. However, I’m well aware that hardly anyone who I intended actually reads this, and people still email or Facebook message me. As a result, when people email me, I find it difficult, and to be honest, tedious, to send an email that contains the same things as I wrote in a blog.

Have a go at saving some money.

UNR don’t really pay me that much, basically just enough to cover my living expenses. But I’m going to have a go at saving $100 a paycheck, so I can do fun stuff I have planned for the coming few months, like skydiving.

Eat out less.

The thing about the US is that it’s really cheap to eat out, and eat out well. Meals here are about the same in £ as they are in $, so roughly half the price. Mix that in with the fact that buying groceries in here is really expensive, poor quality, and difficult to find many things, eating out is really tempting.

Don’t judge people so quickly.

I have a nasty habit of making my mind up about people within a few minutes of knowing them, and if I don’t like them, I don’t bother. So this year, I’m going to give people more of a chance, just in case I’m wrong.

Work harder at Uni.

I’m going back to Queen’s in September, and it’s going to be final year. No resits, no screwing up. I need a 2:1 to do anything I want to do in the future. Time to knuckle down. No more last minute cramming either!

Continue improving my writing skills.

That’s part of the reason I started this blog. I noticed that when I was writing papers at Uni, my writing probably wasn’t as good as it could have been, and it still isn’t great.

Get good at snowboarding.

I tried snowboarding a few weeks ago, and I loved it. But I was bad at it. So, in the next few months, I want to take advantage of both living near so many ski resorts, and the good snow.

Do something totally crazy.

I’m not sure what this is going to be yet. All I know is that I want to do something really, really crazy. Suggestions?

I’m hoping that I stick to at least some of these – they’re not so challenging that they’re unachievable.

For you cynics out there, here is the science behind why so many New Year’s Resolutions fail…

Photo from Flickr user solgrim.

For the third time in just under 2 weeks, I found myself in San Francisco.

I love this city, I really do. It’s the first city I’ve been to that I can imagine myself living in for a long time. It has everything – no matter who you are, no matter what you’re into, San Francisco has something for you. It’s a place where no-one cares what you do or how you act, you can just be yourself – and I can’t think of any other city I’ve been to that has that same ethos.

After a fairly horrendous drive from Reno, thanks to some completely pointless roadworks, we arrived in the city, and checked into our hostel. Originally, I wanted to stay in the hostel I’d stayed at with Sean, despite it being a bit dirty and uncomfortable, it had a great location near Union Square. However, that was all booked up, with it being New Year’s, so we opted for the other HI hostel, City Center. It tuned out that just off Union Square is a touch ghetto-like, but the hostel itself was fantastic – much more comfortable than the other one. The only downside were the 2 people staying in our dorm that insisted on getting up early and rummaging around the room chatting to each other, while the rest of us were trying to sleep after the late New Years Eve.

Melissa and I had come to San Francisco to see The Slackers at Slim’s, so we went in search of 11th Street. That turned out more difficult than we had anticipated, but after re-fuelling on some delicious pizza, we found it eventually. They had a bizarre system for determining who was under 21… if you’re over 21, you get a stamp on one hand, and if you’re under 21, you get a stamp on both hands. Which meant it was incredibly easy to wash one stamp off, to be left with one, and all of a sudden you’re 21. Support came from The Struts (who were okay, but a bit samey), and local band The Impalers (who were fantastic, and in my opinion better than The Slackers). It was a great gig, there was a good vibe, with it being New Years Eve, and a nice mix of people. Anyways, it was a different way to see in the New Year, and we had a fantastic time.

New Years Day, and feeling a bit groggy we headed to the Castro in search of somewhere to eat. Ihad my first Mexican breakfast, and it was delicious - scrambled egg, with onions and peppers. Then we went to the Chocolate shop on Castro for a hot chocolate. Still feeling somewhat sleepy, we caught the streetcar to Fisherman’s Wharf and walked along the ocean front. We ended up looking in some art gallerys, and saw some work by Dr. Seuss, which was cool. Feeling in need of some warming up, we had an Irish coffee at the Buena Vista Cafe, supposedly the first bar in the US to serve the drink. For dinner, we decided to go exploring, and ended up in North Beach. North Beach is essentially Little Italy, jam-packed with Italian restaurants and gelato stores. We ate at Ristorante Ideale, which was amazing, especially the pumpkin ravioli. Highly recommended! Walking back to downtown, we stopped off at the cinema and saw Doubt, which wasn’t as good as I’d hoped…

Friday, our last day in San Francisco, began with walking to the Financial District to go up the Bank of America building, but, as last time, it was shut, and didn’t open until 3pm. I wanted ti go to the Moscone Center, where Macworld will be held in a few days, to see if I could see anything through the windows, but all I could get was the IDG banners on the street, which said “Even the small talk will be big” – perhaps hinting at the long-rumoured iPhone nano? Maybe… but these were IDG banners, and not Apple ones, so I guess we’ll have to wait a few days to find out… Instead, we found ourselves in Chinatown, and did some tea-tasting for a few hours, thenbought some very cheap mugs/tea/therapy balls from a store. Fairly tired, we went back to North Beach, ate, had coffee at Caffe Trieste (the home of the Beat generation) and went back to the car. Our final stop was at Haight Ashbury, which seems a lot like the lanes in Brighton. We didn’t stay long, as it was busy, and we wanted to head home.

Overall, a fantastic few days in San Francisco! I really do love this city, and I feel like I know my way round it well now. Can’t wait to go back, I really can’t get enough of it.