gambitch - now available in blue

Thursday, March 16, 2006

As long as this appears to be the 'in' thing... Any of you guys who happen to know me might as well help fill this in.

Johari window

There's also an opposite window, known as the Nohari window. But I guess I'm too much of a coward to do that one.

(Courtesy Seafood and Nyanko.)

gambitch [ 11:59 AM]

I've managed to slip some time back into doing my duty as an Index Manager at BlogShares (I see tengrrl has slipped a link to my blog - although I'm not returning the favour until I have time to work all my bloglinks). As the guy who goes around killing dead blogs at random, I run into my share of them. Recently I've switched my focus from JournalSpace blogs to MSN Spaces, not because I've run out of JournalSpace blogs to kill (I have not), but because there are an irritatingly high number of MSN Spaces that are dead.

The deal with MSN Spaces are that they are incredibly easy to create. Essentially this leads to a throwaway situation, which has manifested itself more often than I would like to mention. What usually happens is that a guy creates a blog, posts about two to five entries, and then just dumps the blog there and forgets to maintain it for the next six months or longer. The longer you forget, the likelier it is you'll simply never remember. As such these blogs just go away into fallow, except of course they're still sitting there in the BlogShares system. And thus someone at BlogShares has to weed them out.

Does it get me blown up in a head of negative steam? Sure it does. What can I do about it? Not much beyond killing the blog from BlogShares. Unfortunately there's no system that allows me to directly communicate to MSN and tell them to just kill the blog at their end too. It is possible, for example, that the blog owner still wants to keep the blog present on the Internet. Or maybe not. We wouldn't know unfortunately, but this throwaway culture is rather problematic for the guys who have to clean up after.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to hit the rates I used to hit. I once managed to identify over 300 dead blogs a day. Now it's closer to 50 or 100, because I have less time. The football writing work is taking the front seat, as I look towards rising up the ranks in Real Life(tm).

Work's been rather nice lately, for a few reasons. One is the work - it gets more and more satisfying as I proceed. But there are also, ahem, other reasons. But I must be careful not to rush headlong into this, because one of my worst skills is making friends and building relationships with people beyond the business level. I have friends who I treat like brothers in arms, but friends of a different variety are, honestly, another story.

I'm going back to watching older Japanese music videos. They're not that old, really - mostly the late '90s or early 21st Century stuff. Like Utada Hikaru (I have simply never come around writing it as Hikaru Utada). Or DAI. Or Mr. Children. I've been out of touch with newer sensations like Koda Kumi or Chemistry. I'm not sure why.

What I'd really like to see is the music video for Misia's Everything. There is a certain desire to see how it is presented in music video form. Hayley Westenra's rendition of Amazing Grace would also be much welcome. Of course I don't mind checking out Koda Kumi, just to see what all the noise regarding her is about.

Did I mention that Dreams Come True's Nandodemo music video looked really bright and funky?

I'm going through another phase of spiritual recharge. Like some kind of uplift. And somehow the experience is a little scary. Maybe it's because I've had too many false starts and dead ends. Maybe it's because I just never got myself socially adjusted. Or maybe it's because I'm too sensitive and too rich (not in the monetary sense). I'm not sure exactly what I should do about it.

I once vowed I would keep myself sealed in ice.
Yet the fire within proved too strong, and the vow was broken.
And I got burnt, and I froze myself once more.
Thus does the process repeat itself. Thus do I never learn.

Is it thawing again?

gambitch [ 3:06 AM]

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Feedback from my colleagues at work suggest that I am fitting rather nicely into the setup, which is good. Dare I say, even, that that is the way it is supposed to be? Because I like this job. Hitting the road and doing the news rounds is quite the kind of thing I have imagined it to be - perfectly thrilling.

Lately I've been churning through some of my music collection. I think the time will come soon when I will have to add to it, because I haven't been buying much of late.

I was supposed to write something about my love of music and theatre. Well, soon, anyway. Except I cannot remember whether I have written a similar post somewhere in the past. I might have, or I might have not. This is one of those posts that lend insight to my personality makeup, and why I do some of the weird things I sometimes do, such as play an imaginary keyboard at random moments.

But really, that item should wait until I have time to craft out a proper post.

As it is, right now I need a brief period of sleep. I can live with that, because I have been fairly well-charged lately. Screw with your body clock enough to a point where you force a shutdown, and it's remarkable how quickly your body regenerates thereafter.

gambitch [ 4:55 AM]