Communication - let's get the conversation started

Before I do forget I'd like to wish all our followers a very Happy New Year even though I was early to bed on Tuesday night as my joints were rather achy with this R.S.I. which I contracted in the early 1990's and indeed as I type, I'm in my splints.

Communication is today's subject which can be difficult for some people because of things such as stammers, getting "tongue tied", going mute which I can do or having a speech impediment.

You may even find the whole being in a conversation so much you don't really get around to saying what you did feel you needed to.

That being said with support and practise, many of us can get by and at least it is fairly easy to clear up any misunderstandings as you get into it.

The amazing thing today is many younger people even those who don't have any recognized speech disabilities just do not seem to engage with each other personally through face to face conversation to the point that even being in the same room they rely on things such as messaging and many dealing with things such as recruitment report that they are increasingly failing to give of their best in interview which really matter such as going on courses or gaining employment.

It is that that appear to be losing essential social skills to the coolness, the detachment of the online world and it isn't just with that but even with forming relationships, having regular boyfriends and girlfriends so we hear much around the increased loneliness of younger people who just don't seem to know how to form deep friendships never mind actual relationships with people.

Perhaps rather than just being concerned around smartphone usage by time especially on social media and the prioritization of that over well-being , we ought to bring more "face to face Fridays" where people are expected to talk with people more, make voice calls, say "Hello" to someone they haven't met before?

The state of the scroll

 Month is coming to a close, some topics purposely left off the blog  cos they take me to places that are not good and while of that was going on, we find more than enough to post about.

Social media often feels that way -it can be bad enough for your processor to get through a forest of big size pictures and gifs without failing to load any- never mind all that scrolling  to get to the stuff you really want.

You might think to just see things on accounts you have chosen to follow would be such a great experience to offer but how many times do you find "Posts you might like" added in or promoted posts?

Often and that is what can make doing social media such a energy sapping time consuming business just because they want more click through's cos that's potentially more revenue for them or the people they promote.

I do think a basic charter of rights for the end user is needed.

Lighting the flames at Tumblr

It's like standing a distance away with a friend hearing the crackles slowly intensifying as a bonfire  roars into action  consuming its content and others fearful moving back and even away lest the sparks come anywhere near them.
This week Tumblr primed their bonfire, pouring kerosene under all 18+ marked NFSW blogs they had accepted since 2007 in the fall out from losing having apps in Apples iOS store and Google Play late last month.
Okay, personally except for the odd post one on one account I could live with that if it wasn't for the start on Monday of removing the old safe search and sensitive content filters replacing that with a computer based algorithm that looks at pictures and the odd tag  and decides if you are hosting sensitive/nsfw/adult  content .
Anyone with past memories of sites can recall the issues other sites had with such approaches such as on Yahoo360 and issues from time to time on Facebook but at least it is used as a moderation tool.
Here it can decide by itself to deactivate your blog and worst still is being applied retrospectively to all your posts so if like me you an account that has near enough 8,400 posts on in about 5 and half years, you are them expected to trawl though each one on your dash to find any that have been flagged.
That is an unfair expectation to place on people as there is no indicator of flagged posts you can click on to show you just those posts. It could take a person several weeks to find them.
When you do, you see often the most innocuous of posts flagged up things like a reblog of childrens toy ads from a 1989 christmas catalogue - material safe for kids to browse at home in the company of parents - being treated as if it's porn.
There appears to be forming lengthy lines already for such flagged posts being reviewed one hopes by actual humans and the more false positives it finds, the longer this will take for each and everyone to be looked at.
Trouble is the deadline for no nsfw as deemed by this system is December 17 so if we accept any blog that was flagged as nsfw is gone by default then if posts are not reviewed and accepted as mistakes then you may find your blog mysteriously gone.
Potentially you may not get the chance to be reviewed if there are too many cases for the very limited staff doing this to work through.
One top of all of this a barrage of tags have been classed as nsfw such as "lesbian" and "trans" like they're porn related rather than the means of people who are trying to find each other through searching through tags.
This is already leading already to an exodus from the site because apart from those who do post intentionally but lawful nsfw content, many of us are finding this whole business so time consuming and emotionally stressful we are close to meltdowns, fearing losing friends and for those of us in age regression communities, support when our blogs are deactivated.
Like I saw, I fear they've lit the bonfire that will in time burn the site down so it's a ghostly relic like My Space or gone for good like GeoCities and Yahoo360 are.

Dealing with how we and or friends may of been treated

The origins of prejudice can be many-fold as those of us who have faced it and even perhaps unthinkingly acted upon it can certainly vouch for.
Sometimes it is a prevailing view that we are brought up with such as to see those who don't share the same religious beliefs we do as a threat, to view those of certain ethnic minorities as lesser, almost children limited by design in ability or to see those with disabilities as a drain on society.
As repugnant as each and all of those opinions are the bigger thing tends to be what it is that people do with them as if merely having an prejudiced point of view were a crime I dare say most of us would be paying for it in one way or another.
Sometimes were bear one less than something we co-opted from others so much as it is the result of drawing the wrong conclusions from something that was real that involved us such as the bullying and physical assaults I experienced from 'normal' kids at junior school where amongst other things I was being falsly accuse of damaging school property by a known school bully and every other child refused to speak out even though I could not myself. In the end one girl did and was ostracized for a period for it.
It could be the verbal assaults and insults you may get from others for things you simply cannot help in the street or online.
It would be easy for me to form the view that those of you who are not disabled cannot be trusted to treat me with respect and to hide away fearful of what an encounter might bring given how those experiences (and others) left me.
The thing is I'd then be treating you little different, forever suspecting you, keeping you away, persuading others to join in cos that's what prejudice is like: it removes the individuals personality and identity and replaces one based upon an encounter with one or more others who share something in common with them and convicts them upon this collective image you have formed.
Sometimes too  a person having done something really hurtful may begin to see just how that impacted on another and yet it would be easy yet again to refuse to forgive them personally and any group you associated their actions with.
Circumstances bring us together albeit a chance encounter on the street or as one social media site or forum closes and we move to another.
How are we going to treat our new friends and neighbours?
   

An old friend goes...

This blog goes back quite a few years and will soon be marking  its tenth year which in the world of computing and the internet in particular is quite some time.

The origins of this blog go back to joining Friends Reunited in 2004 which had a blogging or perhaps more accurately a journalling facility to which you could send links via email to but was designed for site members to help keep in touch with each other.
I looked at it, tried it but even Blogger circa 2006 was a better tool so that's why this blog ended up here.

The site Friends Reunited launched in 2001 with a simple premise which was to enable people to get in touch with each other by holding information people freely submitted about the school, college, university and places of work they went to in groups.
You could search by name, year, place or establishment they had something to do with which soon made this UK site one of the biggest sites on the web.

  I joined to keep track of some of my friends who were still alive (many sadly have life-shortening conditions) from the schools we attended using it to get back in touch and learn more about how our lives had moved. 
It's success bought it to the attentions of various groups like ITV Plc who bought and in the eyes of many messed it up to fit its commercial interests introducing fees too and in 2010 it was returned to it's original owners.
The world has moved on since those heady days, with the growth of things like Facebook, Google Plus, Tumblr etc and so in that time it's users fell.
It'll be closed shortly simply because it's really lost what would keep it a  sustainable entity a lot of big users posting with the small number left using it to just post messages to each other.
R.I.P Friends Reunited.

Common sense

Doing the rounds presently is this caption and like most it's kinda bold in its declaration however it's worth thinking  thinking about.
For one thing, you may of encountered folk who've told you "There is no such thing as common sense". My problem with such an answer is, that quite simply if we'd assumed nothing at all, all our responses to everyday situations would be entirely random with a very chaotic set situation of situations soon breaking out.
I don't think it's for nothing that one of first things any small group of people do is establish between themselves some ground rules and it may be that some of them form a  part of what we call "common sense" because they are the things we assume in any given situation.
Most of us are fairly rational in our responses even if we're angry about something or other, we can sense if a proposition is going too far or otherwise disproportionate and so on.
The irony is in the caption: Often those who need it the most, seldom use of it to make better responses.

Tag hash wednesday

Hello folks from a very warm room today.
I'd like to talk around a few  topics today that have been on my mind for a while.
 I was reading yesterday on Tumblr about an argument between two users whose names I'll keep out of this entry around the use of Hash (#)  tags where one person was saying that they didn't wish another to use the #lolita tag in their posts and the other person responding by saying that they've every right to and if the individual had an objection to other aspects of their life that might be evident from their entries it was kinda tough.
For what it is worth no one person or 'community' owns a hash tag, the only thing that matters is it should be applied correctly so that for instance an  entry  just on lolita fashion or meets should use it as it is an aid to finding entries NOT as a part of a series of unrelated tags.
That's because it's not helpful to people trying to find entries on a service like Tumblr if we mix up all the tags.
It is unfortunate that some (not all) in the #lolita community can be very judgmental taking issue with non brand wearers at meets as well as being transphobic.
It is true we all have different takes on life, how we may present and we may not wish to know about anothers, however that is something on social media is something you can control by choosing who you follow which as the name suggests means you are able to see easily more of that persons entries and if we just dislike an individual (or all their posts) you may have the option of putting them on an 'ignore' list that effectively hides their posts from you.
When posting it is probably a good idea to try to keep mainly to one topic if you intend to tag it so it's clear what your post is about and does lessen any potential to offend even if you personally don't feel it should.
The final arbiter of what is acceptable at sites such as Tumblr, Google Plus, Facebook and so on is them because you accept their terms upon joining and they have reporting systems should you feel a post or entry is inappropriate.