StuckInTheSixties Offline

70 Single Male from Napa       149
         

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I'm Becoming More And More ...



... anti-social here in Wireclub.

I know that. I'm aware of it.

I'm sorry, but I just can't get enthused about what it's turned into. I can't pretend to have any interest in "the wall." That wall, and 95% of what gets written upon it, is of absolutely no interest to me. Wireclub has turned into something where it's ALL ABOUT THE WALL. Frankly, I just don't give a SHIT about the wall, or any of what gets written on it. I just don't care.

I don't even bother deleting all that junk by clicking "Hide" anymore. At first I used to delete like a fiend. Now I just don't bother. I just don't bother looking at it any more than a passing glance.

Once in a while something will catch my eye. If it's a notification of someone's blog, and it seems like it might be interesting, I MIGHT go look at it, but probably not. I think I've just become conditioned to just not bothering. I'm just more likely now to pass over things that in the past I would have scrutinized. I'm just habituated to ignoring almost everything now. And because so much just gets put on the wall, even if I might have had an interest in something, in all likelihood, it's been pushed downwards, off the bottom of my computer screen, so I never see it. And I DEFINITELY don't go scrolling downwards to see what's there.

Why?

I'm not sure. I certainly made no secret about hating the wall from the very beginning. So I ask myself if I'm just being petulant or spiteful, purposefully ignoring it just to make a point, to make a point to Wireclub, or to myself.

I don't think so. Of course, since I'm examining myself here, I can't be objective. So maybe I'm being petulant, maybe I'm not. I don't know. But I don't think so. It doesn't FEEL like I am.

Truly, I think I just don't give a shit about it. It doesn't matter.

And I've found that I'm not spending as much time arguing with idiots (and scholars) in Forums, either. I'll still compose long, elaborate, complicated arguments in some cases, but in a lot of those threads I would, in the past, be following very closely, and never passing up an opportunity to add a blow-hard opinion, I'm just seeing the notification, going there to see it, seeing that the same couple of people are talking, and departing without having read anything. I've started to click "Unfollow" a lot, too.

Yet I'm logged in a fair amount of time. Sometimes I'm "Online." Sometimes I'm "Offline." To be truthful, I often log on, barely look at what's going on, and then walk away from the computer, leaving the portal between Wireclub and my desk open ... but I'm just off doing something else in real life.

I've been working on a project.

But I'm not sure if I'll actually complete it.

I have a bunch of blogs that were created to feature photos I took, and some other pictures, silly printscreens I created, stuff like that. The old blog format didn't really work too well for this purpose, but in New Wireclub, pictures in blogs is simply a catastrophe. It's as if they tried to specifically create the clumsiest, shittiest, most user-unfriendly means possible for the integration of text and pictures. I swear, I think they did it purposefully.

So now there's these things called "Albums." At first, they were designed even WORSE than the new blog format. The new design was just a bad joke.

I nearly quit Wireclub. Seriously, I was just about to bail.

Nothing dramatic. No "I'm leaving Wireclub (unless you pity me and plead with me to stay) " message. I've said before, if I ever do leave Wireclub, I won't delete my account - I'll just simply quit logging in, and leave the profile to just hang there.

The very day I was going to log in, leave a precious few people the private message that I was now gone ... I found that they they actually made one HUGE modification to the Pictures page that will actually, though BARELY, make it worth my while to hang around. I won't bother detailing what the improvement is. It's boring to anyone but me.

But I digress ... I should go back and re-write this, compositionally clean this up, make this a more organized, logically structured essay here ... but fuck it. I'm just going to keep rolling, letting the stream-of-consciousness out onto the page, so this is getting messy. Fuck it.

Back to my "project" ...

I want to convert all of those clumsy blogs, blogs that are all but impossible for anyone to actually look it now, and convert them into Albums. But with those blogs, there is text as a component. It accompanies the pictures. And just as I was unwilling to throw away the text-in-the-form-of-comments that were attached to many of my pictures when I took them out of my Gallery and placed them in blogs, I'm determined to save that text again when ... if ... I convert those blogs into Albums. I figure that if someone bothered to look at the pictures, and bothered to leave a comment, I should bother to save it.

So I'm in the process of taking all of the text from those blogs, and copy/pasting it into Word documents. The idea is that when ... if ... I actually pull the trigger and start creating Albums, I'll be able to quickly and easily copy/paste that text into the very first comment that will appear under the pictures, to use that in place of captions. Doing this also allows me to tidy things up a little bit, to clean up the organization of it, make it easier to read, etc. The process of changing those blogs from the Old Wireclub format into the New Wireclub format really fucked up a lot of stuff, so I'm also trying to repair that damage as much as I can, too.

I figured out that the preserved text kind of falls in to a few standardized formats of organization, and I put together some "templates" where I can take the text, drop it into the proper template, and then save those documents in the same folder as the pictures that the text will accompany. Using the templates reduces the likelihood that I'll screw something up, although the sheer volume of material guarantees it's going to be IMPOSSIBLE to get it perfect, particularly because it'll be getting dropped into Picture Comments, which can't be edited. So if ... no ... WHEN I get something wrong ... if I actually do it ... it'll STAY wrong.

I've also just recently purchased a new monitor. As I had suspected, and as certain events surrounding the change-over from Old Wireclub to New Wireclub revealed to me, my previous monitor had been producing a drastically inaccurate image to my eyes, and as a result, for several YEARS, I've been processing my pictures, trying to get the best image possible, on a monitor that delivered an inaccurate reference. So if I actually embark on this big BLOG-TO-ALBUM conversion, I'll also be going back to the original unprocessed-in-any-way pictures, which, thankfully, I saved and kept filed away, and reworking them. So if I actually pull the trigger and do this project, the pictures will look significantly better.

I'm intellectually dancing around here ... I keep saying "IF" ...

I'm not sure IF I'll go through with this project or not. I'm not sure why I should. I'm not sure if it's worth doing.

You may have noticed ... no ... you probably haven't ... that I seem to have stopped posting pictures. I haven't stopped taking them. I just unloaded a hundred to two hundred pictures from my camera tonight. I just haven't been working with them, and posting them.

Why?

Because I'm unsure of what my relationship with Wireclub is now.

And that's why I'm not sure if I'll actually do this big conversion project or not. I'm just not sure.

I'm really not sure if I care, or not.

I started to proof-read this, and decided I don't even care enough about it to do that either.

(shrugs)