Tiny Planet

Sort of. Apparently at least two quick posts I wrote in the last month have vanished into the ether, but no matter. My thesis is finished and I have started on my PhD. I need to do some overhauling of the blog but that’ll take a while as I have a fair bit to do in the real world.

If you’ve come here and been greeted with some sort of Twitter authentification window, apologies. I only found out that was happening tonight. I have removed the Twitter feed from the site as I don’t like that sort of thing. I might re-embed it when I figure out something better.

The server on which this site is hosted was down for about 24 hours, so if you arrived and were greeted with a database error that’s why. As you can see, Tiny Planet is once again up and running.

Something went amiss with the Twitter feed I’d embedded in the website, but I think I’ve fixed it now. I’m leaving it in plain HTML rather than going for the shiny Flash option, which should maintain load times and give the widest possible readership. To the left, then, you’ll see an idea of what I’m up to while I’m away from Tiny Planet. Feel free to follow, but send me a message so I know it’s you!

I can post without any trouble on my Vista laptop while using Chrome, but it seems largely fubar on my XP desktop using Firefox. I notice that the “problems” post made it through, although I didn’t get a confirmation page when publishing it. Not that anyone cares except me.

I don’t seem able to post on this blog (if this makes it through it will leave me baffled). I can type it up etc, but when I click on “publish” I just get a blank screen. Refreshing the site shows the post did not go through, and is still in my drafts folder. Suggestions anyone?

I’ve joined the Twitterverse: you can follow my tweets on the left-hand side of this page. Still very busy with research obligations so I don’t know when I’ll get blogging again.

There’s a good reason I haven’t blogged for what looks like a solid six weeks: I’m up the walls. Unemployed or not — for I departed the ranks of the jobbers on Dec 31 — I have had too much on my plate. Even my Blogline feeds are stacking up, save for one or two.

So it’s a recession, and we’re all heading to hell in a handcart (or insert your phrase of choice here). Is the feeling of gnawing panic down to the internet?

This is our first experience of recession in the internet age, and so far I don’t like it one little bit. You could say that the internet makes the recession more bearable as there are all those networks to help people get jobs and there is eBay for buying second-hand things.

Yet such things are trivial compared to what the internet is doing to our confidence. The internet has created a global psyche. The web has mentally joined us at the hip, so we can no longer put our heads in the sand. If that sounds painfully contorted, it is because it is. Just as no country can decouple itself from the ailing global economy, none of us as individuals can decouple ourselves from the ailing global psyche.

Through blogs, websites and e-mails, the world’s economic ills are fed to us on a drip all day long. It is not just that we hear about bad things faster, we hear about more of them and in a more immediate way. My worries become yours and yours become mine. On the internet, a trouble shared is not a trouble halved. It is a trouble needlessly multiplied all over the world.

I’m up the walls. I’d tell you the names of the books I’ve read in the last few weeks but you’d give me a quizzical look.

Odd thing happened this morning: I checked the spam in my Gmail and found a legitimate one from eircom. It’s not the first time that’s happened. What’s Gmail trying to tell me?

Apparently this is my 510th publish post. I’m not sure how that happened, especially given how I slacked off while without a web connection in the UAE etc. But, there you go. Interesting how such things sneak up on a person.

While the world continues to cheer the election of Barack Obama as president of the world’s most powerful democracy, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck has been anointed king of the world’s newest, Bhutan.

Apparently you can accidentally steal a car.

Gorillas need surgery too.

Companies are turning to blogging as a way of reporting layoffs, rather than letting them get picked up by the traditional media.

It’s a beard off!

Cleantech is growing in silicon valley.

The Mars lander is guestblogging on Gizmodo