Companion Anne: November 2014

So I Broke My Template

Posted by Amanda Harris Saturday, November 29, 2014 comments (0)

In an attempt to get my social media links to populate in a different area, I managed to break the pages list entirely...

Anyone who knows Blogger templates... please feel free to help.

Twips (Twitter Tips) episode 1, 3 things to consider before #following back

Posted by Amanda Harris Friday, November 28, 2014 comments (0)

I get a lot of Twitter followers, and I take the rather controversial approach of not following absolutely EVERY one of them back. (sorry, it's just the way I am).

If you don't care about the quality of your twitter connections and you focus more on quantity, good for you. It's your twitter, do what makes you happy.

Now, if you're more like me and you DO care about the quality of your overall twitter experience, then there are some things to consider before fostering a twitter relationship.

What does the short description say?

That tiny little profile can be choc full of some big information. If there's nothing there, I don't follow back. If there's nothing but hash tags and links, I don't follow back. If there's a short message saying they don't respond to DM's or something like that, I don't follow back.

If there's a thoughtfully written, short bio, that tells gives me some sense of who, what, how, when, where or why... oh yeah. It's likely that one will get a follow.

Is the header image pixelated?

Maybe it's an aesthetics thing from my web design days, but if that header image is all pixelated to hell and gone, I'm not going to consider that person to be a professional. I am, therefore, less than likely to follow for a professional connection.

If it's a personal twitter, yeah, fine, you're forgiven. But if you're a professional who is serious about your social media, either learn how to make your header pretty or hire someone who can.

Read a few tweets, at least the first page...

If there's nothing but retweets... nope, not gonna follow. If the tweets are original, but completely vapid... nope, not gonna follow. If the tweets are nothing but an endless drivel of self promotion... yep, you guessed it, nope, not gonna follow.

If the tweets are full of quality, original content. Much better. Points if there's at least one hashtag in there.

If the tweets are links to blogs or news articles. Fantastic, you have my attention. Well done.

All in all, please tweet responsibly and there's a good chance you'll gain more followers for just being awesome.

Dead Like Me (aka Adventures in Nerdy Pair Bonding)

Posted by Amanda Harris Saturday, November 22, 2014 comments (0)

It seems like ages ago...

The Beloved One and I lived in a bi-level apartment. I LOVED that place. The lower level was kitchen and living area. The upper level was two bedrooms and a bathroom. The Beloved One had his desk set up in the living area, and my 'office' was in the second bedroom. We used to call it the dungeon and the tower.

Anyway...

One day I was upstairs and curled up in bed with my laptop. The Beloved One came up to check in on me and bestow affection, as he is want to do frequently throughout the day.

After kisses he asked "whatcha watchin?"

"Dead Like Me."

"Dead Like Me?"

"No no, Dead Like Me."

"Hm, what's it about?"

"It's about a girl who get's killed by a toilet seat entering the atmosphere from the Mir Space Station. Then she's recruited to become a grim reaper."

*eyebrows raise*

"I'm only about 20 minutes into it, I can back it up!"

"Oh, sure." In his 'I'll stay for one episode and snuggle' voice.

...

We didn't leave the bed for the rest of the weekend, except for a brief interlude between seasons one and two where I demanded to go out to a diner for breakfast at 7am. We pounded down the entire thing, and LOVED every second of it.

...

Years later we still quote the funnies often in our daily conversations. These are inside jokes that have continued to amuse us quite a bit.

Sadly, it is no longer on Netflix instant. But, they do have the DVD's. Just a day or so ago we giggled heartily repeating "I have illegals in my bottom," in funny English accents.

Heh...

Guess what's next in my Netflix queue now.

Being "Friended" is not the same thing as having Friends...

Posted by Amanda Harris Friday, November 21, 2014 comments (0)

... and having "Followers" is not the same thing as being Followed.

I'm really amused by the show Selfie. If you're a social media junkie like I am, you probably are too. While the show has been criticized as by some as being too annoying, it's a social media gold mine.

Our heroine is played by Karen Gillan, whom you might remember fondly as Doctor Who's Amy Pond. Eliza Dooley, is a self obsessed girl who is never more than inches from her cell phone and her social networks. She has an epiphany after a nasty bout of food poisoning in which she was left to suffer entirely alone because she had no actual friends. During the course of her misery, she reaches out to several people connected to her across various social media channels, only to have them message back with unsupportive words or outright taunts over her circumstance.

Eliza learns the hard way that being Friended, is not the same as having Friends.

*sigh*

Recently I've been hit with a similar epiphany.

After getting serious about blogging again I started to fully integrate myself back into the wide world of social media. I started communicating to the outside world in more than just Facebook status updates, but took to Twitter as well. I'm on everything else now too, but Facebook and Twitter are basically the social media dynamic duo. You get the social media holy trinity when you add in Google+. I digress...

After tweeting to a new TV show, I was really surprised when the show itself started following me on Twitter. I was all, 'Oh Cool, something famous FOLLOWS me'.

Time passes, and I aquire more followers.

I realize that I'm starting to get a lot of attention because I tweet about social media and social media marketing quite a bit. Other social media enthusiasts begin to connect with me. I'm elated.

Taking seriously the effect of one's social media reach in terms of actually gaining fans or professional contacts, I begin to look into the products and services that claim they will increase my twitter followers by the thousands, tens of thousands and even, oh yes, even by the HUNDREDS of thousands. Curious, and having been offered free trials, I check them out.

I'm ... what's the word? I'm usually so good with words. I'm speechless? I'm dumbfounded? I'm Offended? I'm downright fucking pissed off?

Some of these sites, services, apps, whatever actually troll the internet looking for hashtags and keywords in peoples tweets, and automatically, yes I said AUTOMATICALLY, favorite, follow and even send direct messages via Twitter.

What

The

FUCK

People

?????????

At what point did social media completely cease to be, oh I don't know, actually SOCIAL!

After this I started going over the mental list of some of my own recent favorites and follows. Like the TV show... Oh, and that community of runners (as in sports, as in running for sport, as in fun and EXERCISE) yeah, I'm talking to you! I tweeted that I was watching a string of connected HORROR MOVIES. You favorited my tweet only because it had the word 'marathon' in it.

And the rest of you bots that have been favoriting my tweet asking for actual HELP on something, and not offering a single shred of actual assistance. Yeah, you're NOT impressing me!

I have learned the hard way that having Followers is not the same as being Followed.

I'm not resolving to do anything about this. I'm not going to wage protests or boycotts or anything. I may be irritated by my so called 'followers' who are actually just spam bots... but what the hell right? Some people don't have my kind of free time and have to resort to bots to advertise. *shrug* whatever.

I'm just disheartened is all.

And those of you who are actually Flesh and Blood and Real People. I just want to take the time to say I love you, and to thank you for actually being there.

American Horror Story, Freek Show, and the music therein...

Posted by Amanda Harris comments (0)

I was really caught off guard when the character of Elsa Mars (played by Jessica Lange) started belting out the song Life on Mars in the first episode of season four of American Horror Story.

This season brings us "Freak Show", set in 1952 Jupiter, Florida.

The performance caught me off guard because the song seemed out of place for 1952, as did the outfit Ms. Mars wore on stage.

You'll have to forgive me for my ignorance on this one. I do claim to be a David Bowie fan, but I'm only familiar with his work from about the mid to late 80's on. Life on Mars was released in 1973, the year of my birth.

Mildly intrigued, but not enough to investigate at the time, I moved on.

Then I caught Episode 7, Test of Strength, where the character of Jimmy Darling (played by Evan Peters) belts out his cover of Nirvana's Come As You Are. Now that one I KNEW didn't belong!

Prompted to actually investigate this time, I headed for the wikipedia and started searching.

I was amused to learn that the outfit worn by Ms. Mars while performing Life on Mars, is in fact the same one that David Bowie wore.

HAH!

To which I say: GOOD JOB SHOW!!

Been a while!

Posted by Amanda Harris Wednesday, November 19, 2014 comments (0)

First there was the tragic death of Claire, my laptop computer.

She was rather lushly replaced by Victor earlier this month.

However!

Right about the time I acquired Victor, I learned about NaNoWriMo and EVERYTHING got put on hold because I had JUST managed to crawl out from about half a decades worth of writers block.

Queue debilitating health condition...

*facepalm*

My rat poison was amplified by the medication regimen I was placed on to combat my follicular yeast infection. This thinned out my blood to the point of massive black bruises and fountains of nose bleeds and even triggered a trip to the emergency room.

The side effect was I just felt like ass. I was tired, listless, depressed... bleh, meh and bletch...

By the second or third day of this, I threw in the towel and said no to the NaNoWriMo. There was just no way I was going to recover a word count in time. It was a blessing to at least be writing again.

I took some time to get my head back in the game and then took on the daunting task of cleaning out my email boxes from the accumulation that had occurred while I was sans a decent computer.

That out of the way... it's time to get back into the swing of thing and get my projects back on track. First thing on the list is to fix my Amanda Harris Blog. I found a beautiful blogger template but the original developer is portuguese. It's going to take me tapping all of my background in web design to do the workarounds necessary to fix the foreign language links and what not. From there I want to do some social media tidying and weeding. Then I'm going to put my Non-Profit back at the top of the list and work on publishing my EBook(s) second.

Sound like a plan?

Yep, works for me.

Right! Let's get to it then!

... and rawr...

BTW Charlie the Unicorn says hi.