Blogging

3.2.1 Quote Me! — Good Health

Fandango12 Comments

09EDADA0-4EFE-478C-B498-4AA539CA7DCDSadje, at Keep It Alive, tagged me for this thing called “3.2.1 Quote Me!” I’m apparently supposed to:

  1. Thank the selector
  2. Post 2 quotes for the dedicated Topic of the Day (which is “Good Health”)
  3. Select 3 bloggers to take part in “3.2.1 Quote Me!”

Now I have to admit that I haven’t been following these 3.2.1 Quote Me! posts, So it’s quite possible that my two quotes could be duplicates of what others have posted. If that’s the case, I apologize.

So first to thank the blogger who selected me. Thank you Sadje.

Now here are my quotes on good health:

Quote Number 1612D035B-1129-47DC-A23F-582FF03577A5

Quote Number 2C461C653-AF4B-4835-B4F0-EFBD75D7FC17Alrighty then. It’s time to select 3 bloggers to do their own 3.2.1 Quote Me! posts. Are you ready?

I choose:

Have fun with this, you three.

What Makes a Good Post?

Fandango18 Comments

007D5DE2-094F-489A-8453-A7CEC24B8B6BA popular blogger I follow, Di, at Pensitivity101, wrote this post asking what makes a “good post.” And at the end of her post, which was a very good post, she asked these questions:

  • What do you think makes a good post on your blog?
  • Do you have a favorite?
  • What do you prefer to write about?
  • What do you like to read on other people’s blogs?
  • What attracts you to follow a blogger?

Since Di said that she was interested to know what we think, I thought I’d tell her…and you.

What do I think makes a good post on my blog?

Well, all modesty aside, I like to think every post I write is a “good” post. However, I guess it depends upon how you define “good.” If good means a post that gets the most views — which I don’t actually believe is what defines a “good post” — then my “goodest” post since I started this blog would be this post, titled “Better Than Sex,” although it’s really about blogging and not about sex.

Do I have a favorite?

I’ve published more than 1,900 posts in the almost 18 months I’ve had this blog and it’s nearly impossible for me to pick out one specific post that is my favorite. So I asked my wife and she thought my post about manscaping was her favorite.

What do I prefer to write about?

As my tag line states, my post is about “random musings on life, society, and politics.” But I also really enjoy writing flash fiction and responding, often with flash fiction, to word and photo prompts.

What do I like to read on other people’s blogs?

Pretty much the same things I write about on my blog. I like to see the different ways in which other bloggers have interpreted the same photo and word prompts that I respond to. There are so many truly creative bloggers out there and I’m so impressed with what they write. And, of course, I enjoy hearing how other bloggers perceive what is going on in the world that we all share.

What attracts me to follow a blogger?

I like to be entertained, informed, stimulated, and distracted. I like bloggers who are witty, who are articulate, who use proper grammar and punctuation, who know the difference between fact and opinion, and who have something to say.

I currently follow about 150 blogs and I try to read as many as I have time to read each day. If I had more time, I’d follow more.

SoCS — Point Taken

Fandango14 Comments

CBDA963C-B68B-40D0-B4B5-97B4219E0024Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt this week is less of a word than an action.  She wrote, “Your prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is ‘point.’ Open a book on your lap, close your eyes, and put your finger on the page. Whatever you land on, whether it be a word, a phrase, or a sentence, write about it.”

This challenge proved, um, challenging for me because I no longer have any physical books. Every book I currently own is an ebook that is in my Kindle app on my iPhone. So I couldn’t exactly open a book on my lap, close my eyes, and put a finger on the page, could I?

Instead, I opened up the Kindle app, handed my iPhone to my wife, and asked her to randomly pick a book, open it up, pick a page in that book, and then pick a word, phrase, or sentence on that page, highlight it, and copy it. She did, and I pasted it below:

“One day he rose from his arm-chair, and went to his library in search of a book.”

This sentence came from the Victor Hugo classic, Les Misérables. It can be found in “loc 442 of 27004.” That means it’s fairly early in the book. In the first one percent, actually. I can’t tell you what the page number equivalent would be in the print edition because I don’t have a print edition of the book.

I asked my wife why she chose that particular sentence to copy. She told me that she thought it was apropos for the prompt that asked us to select a book and to choose a line from it. And she also thought that it held some irony in that I don’t have a physical library with actual books, but instead have a virtual library with electric books. Very clever, my wife is.

As to the context of the specific sentence she selected from the book, I have no idea. It’s been quite a few years since I read Les Misérables, and I’m pretty sure I’d have to go back and read at least a chapter or two before that sentence to figure out who “he” is and why he went in search of a book.

But I don’t want to do that. So instead, I am writing about the process of finding a random sentence in a random book so that I can respond Linda’s rather random prompt in a randomly stream of consciousness way.

1337 5p34k

Fandango24 Comments

C5664DEF-6BE3-48C6-BE1C-4C38CCB88054Yesterday I received this strange notification from WordPress congratulating me on having received 1,337 followers on my blog.

That seemed to me to be a rather random number to have generated a special WordPress notification. I got one at 1,000 followers and I figured my next one might be when I reached 1,500 or 2,000. But 1,337? Huh?

So I typed “1337” into Google and learned that 1337 means “elite.” Apparently, “1337” is a sort of webspeak kind of symbol for elite. And “1337” is also referred to as “Leet.”

Curiosity piqued, I did a Google search on “Leet.”

LEET (1337) is a written language or cipher used in online gaming, emails, text messaging, tweeting, and other electronic communication. The root of the term “leet” is the word “elite” — translated as 31337 — and 1337 was initially developed as an exclusionary language: a way to encode text so that messages could only be read by the initiated. The defining characteristic of 1337 is substitution of symbols and numbers for letters (for example, in the term “1337,” 1=L, 3=E and 7=T).

Apparently there is this whole language called “leet speak,” and its alphabet is a specialized form of symbolic writing. According to Wikipedia, leet originated on bulletin board systems (BBS) in the 80s. Back then, having “elite” status on a BBS allowed a user special access and privileges.

Leet symbols, especially the number 1337, have become internet memes that have spilled over into popular culture. I guess I’m not so in touch with pop culture because I’d never heard of leet speak or was aware of any special significance to the number 1337.

And while doing my Google research, I also came across “1337 5p34k,” which translates to “leet speak” in, well, leet speak.

So essentially, “leet” is shorthand for the word “elite,” which, in leet speak, means “better than everyone else.” And apparently, the 1337 badge from WordPress is WordPress’ way of telling you that your blog has somehow achieved elite status for having reached 1,337 followers. Woo hoo!

I suppose this is a good, albeit weird, kind of recognition. But I came across another definition of leet speak that defined it as “the language used by geeks to help them identify one another.”

Now I’m not so pleased anymore. I’ve been called many unflattering things in my life, but “geek”? Seriously?