Sep. 22nd, 2012

I started a Wordpress blog: verseanduniverse

This is not because I am tired of you guys here on DW, it's because I want to be able to put "familiar with most popular blogging and social media platforms, including Wordpress" on job applications a little bit more honestly. But since I was doing it I figured I might as well do it properly.

So now it is a log of every free-to-public-access academic paper I read, with silly summaries in limerick format. (I blame all of you who were at that meetup in Boston, you know who you are.) If that is the sort of thing you might find interesting, follow me? (There is a dw feed, because otherwise *I* would forget it exists: verse_and_universe_feed.) Although I am trying to keep this one at least vaguely resume-friendly, so if you for some strange reason want to link to it elsewhere, I'd prefer you pretend you have no idea that the writer has a DW/LJ id.

I dunno if I will be good at keeping it up, but I have already queued up twice-weekly until the end of October, so at least until then. (OMG you guys, scheduled posts.) Topics queued so far include Icelandic settlement, Colonial Boston trade, fighting lava flows, the 52-Hz whale, phallic artifacts, hidden shoes, mountain-building, mystery lightning, potlatch ecology, penis fencing, alpha-beta-omega dynamics and supervolcanoes. Some of you will recognize some of those because you linked me to the papers in the first place. :P

I have also made some posts to my poor tumblr (melannen). See above re: resume-building and not abandoning you guys! I've been reading tumblr a bit more because I have some RL people who only communicate through there and Facebook anymore, and I'm still not getting a facebook. I continue to find it annoying for socializing and interacting, though, and I'd rather get my image-blog fixes in big lumps, not mixed up all over a poorly-styled dashboard, so even though I've followed a few people I'm still way more likely to just go to their tumblr pages and read there.

As a one-to-many image blogging platform, though, it's nicely effortless, and since I had a bunch of comic-book scans that were building up and full of the craic, I went ahead and posted them. I've scheduled a few more posts there, too, so it will keep going every few days until at least the middle of next week, but I am even less likely to keep up with that than with the limerick-blogging.

So far there is a complete scan of Stephen Colbert's first appearance in the Marvel Comics universe, if anyone is still interested. (I'll post the proper Stephen/Spidey team-up sometime later when I feel up to scanning a whole story. Probably.)

Hey, did you know you can write your own alt tags on tumblr? I didn't know that. Apparently if you post as text rather than images, you can just upload your images to be regular html img elements. I am trying to figure out why anybody would use the photo option instead. There must be some things it does that the text option doesn't. Goodness knows where I would look to find out, though.

Oh tumblr, why you so incredibly poorly documented? (although I do approve of having a list of suicide hotlines in your FAQ. Oh tumblr, good tumblr. Now if only you also had 'how to use our service' in there.)

Scheduled posts!!!! OMG scheduled posts you guys. *swoons* I think I am in love. I want scheduled posts on DW so much more now, you don't even know.

(even if Tumblr's are weirdly implemented and very poorly documented. Oh Tumblr.)

Still not getting a facebook account. The resume will have to make do with "--and facebook-like sites."

Gave in and signed up for polybigbang. You people are hereby encouraged to poke me about that.

So apparently I have somehow ended up on a ludicrously short list of "registered Democrats under 30 in Maryland's (x)th Congressional District who have voted in every election for which they were eligible."

As a result, the Young Democrats keep sending me Special Invitations to do stuff.

Do I want to go to a wine-and-hors-d'oeuvres debate watching party with the Young Democrats? I am almost tempted, and yet.

Pro: Free food.
Con: Would have to actually watch the debate, or at minimum be in the same room with it on.
Pro: Gets me out of the house.
Con: Requires me to act like a functioning social animal.
Pro: Good networking opportunity!
Con: Would have to interact with the sort of people who go to events to network...

Anybody ever been involved with a Young Democrats/Young Republicans group want to weigh in? Anybody want to help me decide if it's worth it or not? ...anybody want to come with?