The renovations are finally done. I've taken a few pictures here and procesed them through iPhotos to put them up on YouTube, so that I can "show off" the newly remodeled place.
So, here's a look at life in Singapore for all of us average folks living in HDB flats. And, a peek at the afterlife in Singapore too. The similarities are scary -- does that mean we are the living dead????
I just came acros happens to blog? And what would be the difference?
I suppose, to me, my emphasis is usually on poetry over blogging, but that my blogs don't often reflect this. My poetry blogs are mostly of the light variety, without a whole lot of weight to my blogged poetry. From time to time, I have toyed with the idea of listing my more "serious" poetry on my blogs, but I always end up shying away from it. I suppose I would like to keep my better work for what I consider more serious markets.
...Not that anyone is banging my door down begging for more of my verse to print in their magazines.
but still...
I have recently had some work accepted by various publications. I've listed some of those here, but I think there might be two of my poems I've failed to link to. These are the two most recent, and they appear in The Genesis Project, where my poem "Cursed" also appears.
Under Foot and In Eternity's Eye are my two most recently published poems. They are in the collection linked. The Genesis Project is strictly online now, but may appear in a print volume at a later date.
If you are a bigger shopper in real life than I am, you might especially enjoy this shopping blog. Even though I do most of my shopping online, I found some things on this site that were fun to read through... not the least of which is the recipe for Anzac Day Biscuits! The story about the joey made me smile too. Life Down Under must be something else, when folks are bringing home baby kangaroos!
Stop by and visit this shopping blog. I know some shopaholics who I am going to send this link to right away!
There are all sorts of ways to make money through your blog these days. A new one has just started up too, and I am really liking the format of it so far. The pay looks good, and the interface is easy to use.
The new site is called Bloggerwave. If you are interested in monetizing your blog, then go on over and sign up now. I am hoping it will make it big, so this is a great chance to get in on the ground floor.
In real life, I've never been a big scrap book keeper. That's not because I am not sentimental, or because I don't like nice-looking things. It's because I am lousy with my hands. Things never turn out pretty, and that is a frustration for me.
I do like keeping things in digital form, though. I keep videos, photo albums, etc., all in digital form. I can make things look the way I like more easily, because I get to bypass the need for fine handiwork. So finding a site for keeping an Online Scrapbook is, for me, a good thing. It is still in beta stage, but I like what they are doing there. I signed up in order to do their review before they move out of beta, and I find it a nice, easy-to-use site. Since I was using the free trial membership portal, I didn't get to test its speed with really big files, but it did a nice job of the files I did upload.
I did have a couple of errors uploading files. I am not sure if it is because they were too big for the free trial membership, or if it is because they were Mac files. I couldn't quite decipher the feedback given, but that is something I would check into before going further and upgrading to a paid membership. The only other thing I didn't quite like was that there were so many questions to answer for the profile. Fortunately, they aren't required fields, so I skipped those I don't care about.
Other than that, I thought the whole thing looked nice, and it was easy to use too. Very intuitive.
This is a sponsored post. If you'd like to get paid to blog too, click this tab
This blog post originally appeared at my other blog site several months ago. That site has become unstable, so I am migrating several old blogs. I am leaving this one unchanged, so the "here" in the post isn't here, but there.
Before I began blogging, I have to confess that I had a bias against it. Most of the blogs I had run across were of a sort of writing that turned me off to the idea. But I came to Writing Up because I heard it was different. As Mitchell Allen has explained here, this is largely because of the structure of this site and the Drupal software upon which it is constructed.
Like many other bloggers here, I've pondered the nature of what it is we do on this site, and its connection with "real life." It is something that would naturally grab my attention, given my interest in the potentials of popular culture, beyond just its entertainment value. I've blogged about the topic, and I've also read plenty of other bloggers who've asked some of the same questions that I have over the months. It is, after all, a relatively new technology, and a new experience for many of us. That seems to result in a lot of us experimenting and seeing what this space is going to turn out to be for us.
It seems many of us have settled into our little circles. Some are better than others about moving outside the circle and mixing with other bloggers or groups of bloggers. Others sit content within some sort of comfort zone.
For me, as I have said many times, and like many other bloggers here, it is the community aspect of this site (which is made possible by the Drupal sofware, as Mitch points out) that keeps me here. But "the community aspect" is perhaps something that works differently for each of us. For me, it has been a place for discussing ideas, dialoguing with people and about topics that I might otherwise never stumble across. It has been fun. It has even been challenging at times.
But I recently read an article by one of my favorite columnists that had something to say about sites like this. Alan Jacobs, in the May/June 2006 issue of Books & Culture
However, he finds fault with the infrastructure of blogging. It is a system based on the newest thing out there, which means that meaningful discussion can easily be lost in the fog of the newest headlines that appear on the RSS feed. In addition, he notes that thoughtful, intelligent bloggers are often outshouted by a majority who prefers a belligerent loud-mouthed approach to blogging and commenting. This blogger at another site has suggested that such behaviour grows out of the rhetorical style of political discussions today. I think there's some real merit in that blog's argument. One way or another, I have to say that Jacobs seems to have come to the conclusion that the good blogs often get lost in the haze of flame wars, sensationalism, and general fluff.
At The Valve, a pretty heady blog site that Jacobs mentions, his article of course got a fair amount of attention. This commentor had some good thoughts on the place of blogging in developing one's intellectual thought. Indeed, he says, there are limits to blogging as a form, but blogging does have a place for real intellectual exchange nonetheless.
Having recently been thinking at length about the potential uses of blogging, I found bloggers such as John Holbo and sites such as Crooked Timber rather intriguing. I'll be investigating them both more closely over the next few weeks. I want to give all of this some real attention -- how can blogs be maximized? We know about their potential to make us earners of big bucks (and I'm actually not being entirely facetious in saying that, even if no one's exactly showing me the money). But can blogs be sites for real art to emerge? For discussion of heavy, intellectual ideas? For.... what else?
I hope Jacobs isn't right in his final sentence of his article: "Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the blogosphere is the friend of information but the enemy of thought." While it might not be as revolutionary as Jacobs once hoped, while it might not make us all nicely perched in the courtyards of the Aeropagus, I do hope it can be something more than "the enemy of thought."
My friend Merry Jelinek has joined a discussion on her blog about ghostwriting. I find the discussion interesting, so thought I'd post my answers to her questions here. If you have anything to add, just post it on your blog and leave a link here, and I will stop by to visit.
1. Would you completely write a book, play, or other creative work and allow someone else to have the credit?
I would not do that exactly, but I have in the past written a play pretty much on my own, and shared the credit with the group I was working with. I am not sure if that counts as the same thing. Butif I were part of a group that produced plays, I would be happy to allow the group to claim the play. I wouldn't allow another individual to do so.
2. Would you write a blog and allow someone else to claim it as their own?
Yes, I would and I have.
3. Would you use a pen name or pseudonym?
Not so much for my creative work, but I figure we are doing precisely this when we have a screen name like what I've got here, so ... yeah.
About the example Merry raises of a children's author wanting to write erotica, and so choosing to use a pen name to do so, that reminds me of Louisa May Alcott. Apparently, she not only used another name to do it, but also another hand. She would write her children's fiction with one hand, and her rougher stuff with another. She made a living off of one, but is remembered for the other.
4. Would you write a nonfiction piece and allow someone (or something as in the case of a company) to have the credit?
Yes, I would and I have. There have been a few times I didn't like doing it because of how the someone or something later presented the material, though.
5. Would you write someone’s term paper for them?
No way. The writing of a term paper is about more than just the elegance of the writing. It is about knowledge gained. Generall, ghostwriting is referring to someone who has the knowledge but doesn't write that well hiring someone who writes well to put the information in the right language. Writing a term paper for a student is an entirely different thing. That is about avoiding the whole learning process.
The whole discussion was presented as a sort of ethics of ghostwriting thing, but for me, the only ethical question is #5. The others are a matter of choice. It's your work, and you can either sell it or rent it, or give it away free. It really makes no difference.
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Database of
poetry competitions
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
A Midsummer Night's Dream (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare
When Skeptics Ask by Norman L. Geisler, Ronald M. Brooks
