Tag Archives: Google

Au Revoir, Facebook.

I’ve deactivated it for time periods before, but going full monty this time. Over the past few months I’ve pretty much jumped off all the social medias, including the Plus here, but have decided to gradually come back to some, in a more curated fashion. Found overall that spending less time in front of screens was a really beneficial exercise.

I’m still going to have some reservations about not having a Facebook account, things that kept me from deleting it before. A couple of Groups I was managing, and a few other things, but for the most part I won’t miss it. I’ve made arrangements to share photos with family via Flickr and I have been keeping in touch via more ‘conventional means’ like email, text, and old-fashioned voice phone.

I had hung on to Facebook for a long time primarily for Messenger, but I’ve learned you don’t have to have a Facebook account to use it. People from Facebook can still connect with you on it provided they have your phone number. It also works with Instagram – just learned this today – which I plan on keeping because I enjoy it quite a bit. Something about it being image-based, and there’s less politics and drama. I hate that they’ve started fucking with the timeline chronology, but, oh well.

Deleted my twitter account as well. Hadn’t used it as more than a link-reposting device in months and frankly, looking at it these days just bores me.

I think I will be dipping my toes back into Google+ some, though it will never be like the early days. Just poking around I very much dislike a lot of what’s been done with it, even in the short time I haven’t really been paying attention. It seems that it’s even harder now to find that genuine engagement that made it so exhilarating in the beginning. I find there’s too much being ‘pushed’ at me now, with suggestions, ‘things I might like’ or other upsells.

Collections, though good in theory, only works if everyone uses them, allowing you to opt out of portions of people’s content. Unfortunately I find most people don’t use them, or at least the ones I wish did, don’t.

So my Facebook goes dark 14 (or less) days from now supposedly. Perhaps I’ll do some sort of countdown here, because, reasons. Whatever.

Bare Bones

In an effort to focus time spent here more on content and not mucking about with design and bells and whistles, I’m conducting a bit of an experiment by going with the straight up stock default WordPress theme vs. a Studiopress theme and/or various plugins. It’s also my effort to better understand the stock features of WordPress and Jetpack – many of which I currently have no idea with regards to their usage or function, even though I’ve been developing WordPress sites for several years now.

In addition with the increase of doing actual day-job work on WordPress sites, my desire to noodle with the design and features of my own has dwindled. In fact, part of the reason I never post here is because visiting has become quite ponderous. Social media has – for all intents and purposes – supplanted the blog for the most part. I often forget though, that the Jetpack Publish feature will automatically post these to my various social media sites.

I keep telling my clients that the web has shifted from a few years ago and more emphasis is now on both content and usability – particularly mobile responsiveness/friendlyness – with regards to sites and less so on fancy designs and gimmicks. One benefit of the stock WP theme is that it’s mobile responsive right out of the box. (Not that the Studiopress themes aren’t – they are, but just saying.) Websites have essentially become online apps that people use to execute a need – be it read your post, find you company, buy your thing.

Among other things on the to-do list is to once and for all try to assemble some sort of online portfolio of my design work. Over the years I’ve used various methods including galleries on this page, galleries on photo sites such as flickr or Google+ and third party sites like Behance all to various levels of success/satisfaction. I’d really like to find one solution and stick with it.

Call it an exercise in minimalism if you will, but really what I’m trying to do is strip things down in order to get more. It just occurs to me that coincidentally, I’m trying to do the same in the real world as well.

The Return of Green Day?

Ok, so pursuant to a thread last week on my Google+ page about Green Day records, for the past week I’ve been checking out their latest ‘trilogy’ for lack of a better word, Uno! Dos! Tré!.

I remember being nonplussed when they started releasing these. I have to admit that my first reaction was, they’re releasing THREE records? WTF? Ok, they’ve finally jumped the shark.

The records were released to relatively little fanfare, especially after BJA’s on-stage blow up and subsequent rock star cliché ‘admission to a substance abuse program’ both overshadowed the records themselves and also caused the cancellation of the majority of the live shows that were in support their releases.

I remember joking with a buddy that maybe BJA’s tirade was ‘orchestrated’ to get press the day before one of the records (I think the first) dropped. If so, the plan backfired.

All that being what it is, now that I’ve given the records their chance, I think they’re solid. As often with double albums, I often wonder if they shouldn’t have just focused more and whittled it down to two records, but then, well, the novelty would be lost, I guess, since they’re three of ’em right? (Well actually there’s four now, these sessions were the first to include touring guitarist Jason White – the now ‘official’ 4th member of Green Day, so where’s his record?).

I don’t think that this material is as monumental as say American Idiot or 21st Century Breakdown, but then again, I don’t think it’s supposed to be. I think that’s maybe part of my hang up. After the grandiose expanse of the last two records, I’m actually having trouble adjusting back to two minute, 3 chord bashers. I think my inner prog – punk rock love child needed more.

Now that I’ve let the set grow on me though, I’m digging it. There’s a few tunes that I could do without and a few that are drop dead awesome – as would be expected in an artillery of 37 tracks, but I’m getting past my initial instinct to find the characters in the tunes (as I did with the last two records) and just listen to the songs themselves, and I’m finding as a whole, they’re pretty good.

It’s like going from standing against the back wall of the club, nodding your head in pensive reflection of the deeper meaning of it all, and getting back into the pit at the edge of the stage and throwing elbows again.