Dystopian Future Shirt

I'm not sure why this post was sitting in my draft folder for two years. It contains link to buy a perfectly cromulent t-shirt, one lamenting the current state of affairs.


Dystopian Future Shirt

Diagram of my online presence

To keep straight the details of all my wheeling and dealing on the internet, I have created this little chart. At first glance it's a mind-numbing mess. Subsequent looks confirm this.

The Slashboing Empire

What it all means to me:

I post to each Flickr, Blogger, Twitter, and Livejournal by logging into each, or via email (which I seldom do). To read all the comments made on my posts, I only have to check Hotmail and Flickr.

What it all means to you:

To read everything that I contribute to the internet, you only have to check my LJ account: drhaggis.livejournal.com and my flickr account: flickr.com/photos/drhaggis. Everything I post to Blogger gets posted to Twitter, which gets bundled with its own content to be fed to Livejournal.

However this has recently changed. The "Loudtwitter" service I was using to bundle twitter missives to livejournal is down, and is unlikely to come back. Meaning I need to find a safe and suitable replacement.

I have also updated the format of Slashboing.ca, in an attempt to keep looking up to date. Let me know what you think!

2009 year in review

I have only made 48 posts to Slashboing this year, half as many as I did in 2008. My reduction in blogging can probably be traced to my use of Twitter. Where I used to develop an idea until I could justify a whole blog post, now I reduce the idea to 140 characters and tweet it. When I see a cool youtube video or link it is much easier to click a "tweet this" button than it is to compose a new post.

So what things made me cross the twitter/blogger threshold and actually compose a Slashboing post? Let us summarize, as is the custom of the season.

January: Steampunk, Death of Richardo Montalban.

February: Absolutely nothing. February must've sucked.

March: Watchmen, Kutiman, Lost, Science Fiction, Cocktails, Rachel Maddow, Doctor Who.

April: Star Wars, Joyful Public Dancing, Science Fiction Conventions

May: Bacon Vodka, Pegwarmers

June: My video making hobby starts, Steampunk, John Hodgman, Longevity of SF television shows

July: 52 weeks of video, Twitter, Dungeons and Dragons, Nipples of Fry and Laurie.

August: Steampunk, Star Trek, Dragoncon, GI-Joe, Complementary comedic sketches

September: Steampunk, Dungeons and Dragons

October: I attempt to memeify the moon bombing, Lost Skeleton

November: Three loves of Pho, Community and 3-2-1 Contact

December: Christmas comments and this review.

This was the year that I started playing D&D for the first time, and decided to blog about it. I started Noob in the Dungeon so I could document the game, and not OVERLOAD Slashboing. I post a record low for yearly posts, and I start a second blog so as not to have too many posts on one topic.

Here's to 2010.

Dungeons and Dragons Blog

As some readers may recall from an earlier post, I have started a first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game for my friends who have never played before.

To document the game development and my investigation in Dungeons and Dragons culture I have started a secondary blog: "Noob in the Dungeon". If any of my fellow dungeoneers want editing permission to contribute too, let me know.

Also, I will be using the twitter tag #noobDnD to flag related posts on my twitter feed.

See you in the dungeon.

Survey Results

My last post contained a short survey regarding the content and post frequency of Slashboing to get some anonymous feedback. Now that I have enough responses, I thought I would share the results. In general people like what they see, and they would like it updated more. This is good news for me.

What people generally like:

• Steampunk
• Costuming

Good! I will keep it up!

What people did not like

• Movie/book/tv reviews

This was a new kind of post I was doing for 2007, and it doesn't look like it took off. I will be moving my media reviews to Twitter, where they are only 140 characters long. I will be doing more tech reviews, as they have generated lots of positive and constructive feedback.

New kinds of posts:

• Introspective
• Interviews with cool people

People want to know "the real" me. This is a direction I'm not really prepared to go, for now. I think I may post a journal type entry periodically, to test the waters.

I have been tossing around the idea of interviewing cool people via-email for a while now so stay tuned for that.

Post more frequently.

This was a common response. I will endeavour to post more often. My Twitter posts have taken over the quick one liners that I would try to stretch into full blog posts, so check that out too.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Slashboing Content Survey

In the spirit of blogosphere democracy, I thought I would poll my readers to see what sorts of topics you would like to see covered on Slashboing.

Click Here to take the survey

Twitter with me

I have started using Twitter recently, and I really like it. Those readers who visit slashboing.ca directly have probably noticed this new addition to the blog sidebar, however those who read via an RSS or Livejournal feed have missed my tweets.

I can be followed here: twitter.com/Drhaggis

I also joined Twitter because I didn't want any other 'Dr. Haggises' from taking my username. Also, I really like the "what are you doing now" miniblog aspect of Facebook, but little else about it. I may even be deleting my Facebook account now that several high school friends have found me and its purpose has been served. I'm using a lot of different social networking sites, and I have to chose the right ones for how I actually want to network.

Now instead of having to create a full blog post simply to publish a quip, question, or bon mot, I can twitter it.

Also of note, the Mars Phoenix lander has a feed and he posts regular updates of his progress on Mars. It is done in a casual first-person style that makes it really fun to read.

Tweet you later.

Nablopomo: I did it.

I have successfully finished Nablopomo 2007, posting to Slashboing once a day for the month of November. I'm fairly proud of my content, with very few posts for the sake of posting.

I'll be taking a bit of a hiatus for the month of December, with fewer posts than usual.

Peace out.

Blog Readability Test

A "Blog Readability" test was applied to Slashboing. The results are surprising:



I'm just saying.

Nablopomo 2007

I have joined the National Blog Posting Month project. I will be posting daily for the month of November, as I did last year. This should counter balance my diminished posting for the month of October, but I haven't been surfing the web as freely as I usually do, leaving me with less to pass on to my friends those who pass randomly through the blogosphere.

For those readers on Livejournal, I have a feed that can be added to your friends list, available here.

It is time to make blogging fun again.

Leaving for DragonCon

I'm off to DragonCon soon, so posting will either be non-existent until I return, or it will be of the frequent con flourish style. Either way, May the Force be with you. [/geek]

1001 Apologies to my Livejournal Posse

To the eleven people who read Slashboing via the handy-dandy Livejournal syndicated feed, I am really sorry for the repeated posts that crop up periodically.

This happens both when I make and edit to an older post, or when Blogger and/or Feedburner and/or Livejournal decides to mess with my stuff. Although I do try to keep the edits to my old posts to a minimum sometime it is necessary. However I have no control, as far as I know, over how the feed gets generated or displayed in Livejournal.

We here at Slashboing appreciate your readership and hope the occasional flooding of your Friends page with vintage posts does not sully the experience.

P.S. Invisible Sandwich

One Year of Slashboing

This marks the one year anniversary of Slashboing. Pie and pop was served in the Slashboing office break-room from 12:15 to 12:45.

Back to work!

2006 Year in Review

As is the fashion, I present a Slashboing 2006 year in review. As Slashboing started in April, I will have to guess at much of its pre-blog history.

• January - Slashboing forged in the fires of Mount doom
• February - Slashboing learns to use basic tools, agriculture
• March - Slashboing enjoys an industrial revolution
• April - Slashboing launches in electronic format
• May -Peter Mayhew at the Calgary Entertainment Expo
• June - Fake Soviet things are cool
• July - Star wars is wicked awesome
• August -Something about a local science fiction convention
• September - DragonCon, 365 Days Project
• October - Zombies
• November - NaBloPoMo
• December -365 Days Project dominates

What does 2007 hold?

• Celebration IV in May
• DragonCon will likely dominate September
• General Star Wars references will likely pepper my posts, as it really is wicked awesome.
• Science Fiction book, movie and TV show reviews as a regular feature
  
• Flickr 365 Days project ends in September
  

What do you guys want to see/read here in the coming year?

Slashboing On Vacation

I will be on Vacation from the end of this post until the end of December. I hope to post again before the new year.

Until then, I present the following image for pondering possibilities. The image is from US patent 6,500,041 for "Animated headsets." This is proof that just because an idea is patentable, it is not necessarily useful.

Fooling all the wrong people

Sure enough, the picture I posted yesterday, and submitted to the 365 Days project was indeed my right elbow joint. I don't think I fooled anyone, as it would seem that Slashboing readers and Drhaggis fans in general are too smart to be fooled by a simple"elbow-as-fake-butt" ruse.

I did however score big hits on my Flickr account by using suggestive tags such as "nude," "naked," "flesh," and "skin." I garnered over 200 hits on that image of my elbow, while my typical project pictures are in the 20-30 hit range.I bet people searching for those kind of images were a might disappointed to see what I offered them, or more accurately, what I didn't offer them. <insert convention runners joke here>

Drinkbot: Life imitates art

First of all, I would like to apologize to those who read Slashboing via an RSS feed via Livejournal or other such reader. During my resent switch over to the Blogger Beta system, I inadvertently re-published some of my DragonCon entries from September. It is a little early in Slashboing's life to be running a "best-of" series.

To complete the circle on the earlier post about robot-bartenders, I present the spiritual antecedent to the Motoman; The Tiki Bar Tv episode: Drinkbot!

Here we learn why robot-bartenders will never be able to replace human cocktologists. [Link]

Why I blog

Long before I launched Slashboing I was reading blogs. Some were read because I found them interesting and informative. Others I found by accident through the usual web searches. Looking at the bulk of blogs I would stubble upon I figured I could never start my own blog. Why? Because I don't fall into any of the following categories:

• religious zealot
• conspiracy theorist
• hate-filled misanthrope
  
• *squee* OMG like so in love with Linkin Park
• homophobic bigot
• political asshat
• exhibitionist

So what made me start blogging?

I found that many of my friends had blogs, or online journals, that not only didn't fall into one of blogging crap traps, they were informative and thought provoking. Surely I could do that.

Except this post. Not really much going on here. It looks like the blog orchid has been pretty thoroughly picked over. Maybe some of the blog blossoms will grow back by tomorrow.

Technorati Tags:
Blog, why I blog, what I am not

Top 5 Rejected Names for this Blog

Whilst brainstorming for names for my blog I came up with a few ideas that didn't make the cut. I list them here in the interest of full disclosure.

1. Disgruntled Hippo
2. Drhaggis' Blog
3. Professor Goodtimes and the Happy-Smile blog machine
4. The contents of Trudeau's pockets
5. Running with Caesars

I think I did ok.

Technorati Tags:
Blog Names, Top 5

Hello LiveJournal

Some kind (and paying) user elmofromok of LiveJournal saw fit to create a syndicated feed of Slashboing.

It now can be added to your Friends list to be read along with your other feeds here:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/slashboing/

Thanks mystery reader! Chad!

I do have a LiveJournal account created solely so I can comment on some of my friends posts. If you would like to "friend" me I am Drhaggis.

Enough metablogging. On with the real posts!

Technorati Tags:
Livejournal, Syndicated feed, Drhaggis