Thought Socks

I confess - games consoles are something I did not envisage writing about here. I thought I’d cover my thoughts and my life - gaming isn’t a gigantic part of either. But this week I’ve been gaming like it’s May 2002 (Gamecube release Europe), and surprisingly it isn’t the Nintendo Wii, the Gamecube’s popular successor, that I’m living on, but that devil-console - the Xbox.

Never would I, previously a Nintendo-devotee (Well, as much a devotee as one can be when you haven’t gamed regularly for a few years), have believed my love for being alone in a dark room with only a man with a gun - or Link - for company would be re-ignited by a non-’tendo console. But so it has.

A few weeks ago I posted a short lament after my brother sold our Wii. I questioned:

In the long run, which do you prefer? Is Live better than Wii-mote madness? Or vice versa?

I now know. The Wii was immediate, easy to grasp, friendly, cheaper. This is why it is selling so well. I still love all those things - I still think it’s great. But I prefer the Xbox. Live is better than Wii-mote madness, and that’s not just because I detest alliteration.

I’ve found two main differences. One is that Xbox games involve you -  immerse you - far more than anything I ever played on the Wii. Perhaps this is because you’re not standing up twirling your arms around in the real world. Perhaps it’s because that’s what they’re aiming for, and the Wii wasn’t. I think both are so. With the Wii, Nintendo were, I think, aiming for real world entertainment - more like a modern monopoly, whereas Microsoft aim for a more immersive experience. I prefer this immersive experience - just like I enjoy a bit of escapist fantasy fiction. The second reason is Xbox live, just as my brother said.  It’s odd, but incredible. Odd in that you’re connected via not just a cable, but a  microphone to a group of random strangers all over the world, incredible in that you’re playing with and against real people and not computer AI. No, that’s wrong. Plain, simple multiplayer is not incredible -  that’s old - but great - tech. What makes the plain, simply multiplayer incredible is the aforementioned oddness - in other words: being able to interact verbally with these strangers.

After playing with both consoles at length, I’ve come to two conclusions. One is that I prefer the Xbox. The other is that I feel that the Wii should not be compared with it’s two competitors as a games console. The dissimilarity of the control systems makes the Wii a different beast entirely. No, they should be compared purely in terms of their entertainment, and I’ve got more pure entertainment out of my Xbox in 3 weeks than I did from the Wii in over a year.

It’s a sad day.

My younger brother has just sold our Wii.

It’s been ours since December ‘06. We had a wonderful time. Despite it’s repetitiveness and it’s low difficulty level, Wii Sports Tennis would never have got old. I guess I neglected it a little at points in the last year or so, but why?

He’s replaced with an Xbox (A cross-box, apparently?), which he says is better for two reasons: Call of Duty 4 and Xbox Live. Is this true? I haven’t had a chance to try them out properly.

In the long run, which do you prefer? Is Live better than Wii-mote madness? Or vice versa?

I’ve been meaning to write a little something about this for weeks.

A few months ago I noticed Paul Stamatiou links to the top six most frequent commenters (Of the last 30 days) at his wonderful tech blog, one of my daily reads. Make it one of yours now!

It’s great to see that blogs, especially medium-sized and major-player blogs, do this. In addition to consistently producing excellent and stimulating content, I can’t think of a better way to repay your followers; it’s fair in that it repays those who give the most; it offers 1) those small fry bloggers a little free publicity, and 2) everyone else a reward for their participation.

The benefit isn’t all the reader’s either - the incentive of publicity encourages more participation, which can only be better for any blog.

Advantages of linking to these devoted participants are obvious then, so why not do it?

I’ll certainly be including this feature at Thought Socks if the comment-rate ever picks up!

Download the Wordpress Top Commenters plugin.

All information the prospective/beginner blogger needs to get started can be found at ProBlogger’s ‘Blogging For Beginners‘ collection. It includes everything from introductory posts, such as What Is A Blog? and 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers - Is a Blog Right for You?, and Blog Design, to tips on writing good content, and on making money from your blog. Every tip and piece of advice one might need once one overcomes the ‘beginner’ phase is also available. It’s all covered succintly and accurately by Darren Rowse (With a bit of help from his friends).

I think Darren Rowse is a talented writer who does well what he does. He’s done very well for himself, more or less inventing the market for blogging tips, and it has proved very lucrative indeed. He’s a bit of a blogging sensei, and I really respect his opinion.

At some point in the blogging careers, everyone attemps to give advice on actual blogging, including myself. A couple of months ago I reached the conclusion that around 50% of this advice is given because it’s writer genuinely believes it useful. However, I believe the remaining 50% is written because the writer has seen how much traffic and coin this has earned Darren, and others. They want a slice of the pie. I, barefooted, rag-clothed, homeless, desperate-for-traffic, not getting any, living in a dark alley in Blogtown, did it for those reasons. Content such as this may in some cases give reasonable, sound advice, but this is generally just repeated advice. Repeated. Repeated, repeated.

In the last few months (Since I started blogging, basically) I’ve seen the latter figure creep upwards. The number of blogging tips posts and dedicated sites are on the rise. What I want to know is when will people see that blogging is a much discussed medium of communication. It’s over a decade old. It’s advantages and disadvantages, how to do it?, why do it? - It’s all been covered. You’re making the web, which I think can be described and interpreted as a living, speaking organism of many, many parts, repeat itself. A prime example of this is a recent guest post at ProBlogger. I had a look at the guest poster’s personal blog and enjoyed some of the content - he writes very well-, but I’m personally surprised that it made the coveted guest post slot at ProBlogger, as I’ve found only very good articles find their way on.

The said post is ‘9 Tips to Start Blogging Successfully‘. Let’s have a look:

1. Have a Consistent URL

The identity you create for your blog lies in the URL. Once you decide on a URL for your blog, do not ever change it. Every time you change it you need to popularize your blog all over again. Besides, the technical problem is that the search engines and articles that reference posts in your blog have links to the older URL and it can create a lot of confusion and hence lost readership. Choose your URL carefully and stick to it.

Surprisingly, considering what I usually expect when I read a post entitled so, this is sound advice, although I’m sure the majority of bloggers would say it is common sense. A beginner may not be aware of the problems, though.

It’s not advice that regularly appears in such posts, and when it does it’s certainly not first on the bill. I can’t rubbish it, the only worthy inclusion.

2. Choice of subject to blog about

Choose the subject of your blog with care and consideration. Your blog should mirror your passion and knowledge on the subject. Identify whether you will be able to consistently post on the subject. Some topics that are search engine friendly and that never really die out are technology blogs, product related blogs, city centric blogs and money making blogs. There is always news to give your readers and also there are a lot of points to discuss on. More challenging blogs to write are blogs on thoughts, ideas, short stories, poems. In these blogs you have to be able to provide self- driven original content whereas in the previous kind there are other websites from where you can draw inspiration and ideas.

Niche-importance and subject are mentioned consistently often in Blogging Tips posts. Ridiculously often. In the very ‘blogging tips’ collection I linked to at the beginning of the post, this is covered. Repititttionn.

3. High Quality Content can get hard to produce consistently

Posting quality content consistently keeps your readers engaged and makes them come back for more. In the initial days posting is easy since you will have a lot of ideas in your mind. However, delivering high quality content to your readers day after day gets tougher as time progresses and ideas dry up. You need to keep innovating and ideating constantly.

Writing good content is a regular post topic at ProBlogger, and DailyBlogTips, and BloggingTips. Heck, each one even has it’s own category devoted to ‘Writing Content’ (Writing content category @ PB, DBT, BT). These are only the big three too, this is not to mention the thousands and thousands of little sites writing about the same thing.

If you haven’t already, read the rest of the post here. I won’t discuss the remaining six ‘tips’. Each one has been talked about and talked about by every blogging tips site, and a gazellion others. It’s a bit tiring, and to be honest I’m a little few up with it. As I said above, I wonder why this article was published. Darren, are you repeating your content knowingly?

I also said above how I respect your opinion Darren (If you ever read this), but on this count I can’t see why you thought this worthy of the coveted publicity it’s receiving.

All this applies to all similar posts out there now, so unless you’re certain you’re point hasn’t been reasonably widely discussed already, don’t write about it! If you must write ‘tips’, write advice about something less well covered, like padlock folding.

Maybe the Mustgive Tips - a famous Austrian psychologist - Syndrome already exists.

Disclaimer: If this for some reason has offended you, then: I’m only sixteen, my opinion is void! If not, then: Age is void. My opinion does matter!

Darren Rowse, I love most of your articles.

I generally wouldn’t call myself a particularly proficient player of the piano - my lessons lasted for a month before I argued with my teacher and decided to stop (This was after an entire lesson was spent adjusting my posture. I have no doubt it’s important for those want to take classical piano seriously, but I wanted to take it entirely unseriously!). I still play for probably 30 minutes every week, but I just twiddle around. It’s purely for fun - nothing set, nothing formal.

Although I guess I would call myself a proficient musician theoretically and practically (On the guitar at least), I can’t read music, and I very much need to learn. So when I found myself volunteering to accompany some friends on the piano at a concert my music class is holding, I new it would be a real challenge.

Later at home, I had a crack at the piece. Impossible. My notation reading skills were simply too dire. It would have taken me hours. Fortunately, the modern web presents me with a practical solution: How-to videos.

How-to videos are great. The concept has obviously been around since TV became popular, then it moved on to new mediums like VHS, then the web. What makes now such a brilliant, convenient, lucrative and expansive time for how-to’s is YouTube, and alternative sites like Blip.tv and Veoh.

Convenient

YouTube is right there, at the click of a button.

Lucrative

YouTube is of course free.

Expansive

The most important point. With millions of users, the amount a variety of content is vast, and, at least in terms of how helpful it can be, I’m not sure people realise this.

Searching ‘how to’ digs up 2,320,000 results. On the first page of results alone you can learn how to moonwalk, how to make hot ice, how to make a burning laser, how to solve a Rubik’s cube, how to hack into a vending machine, how to paint the Mona Lisa in paint … the list goes on (For another 100,000 pages!).

I searched YouTube with my problem, and surprisingly around 5 different how-to’s came up. I watched the first one, and within ten minutes I had the gist of the entire piece. Incredible.

As aforementioned, I don’t think many people appreciate the usefulness of YouTube in this respect. There majority of instructional videos on YouTube may be music based, but there is something for everything, and everyone: How To Give Ayurvedic Massage, How To Eat A Jaffa Cake, How To Greet …

WWW: World’s Wonderful Web

This is just one example of the greatness of this interconnectedness the web gives us all. How exciting it is, and reassuring I suppose, to know that someone out there will know, and that you can ask, and that you may not even need to as someone’s got there first!

The subject of countless discussions it might be, but the internet giving ‘everyone a voice and everyone a connection’ enhances the learning and knowledge of it’s every user.

Writing for other blogs, or having anothers content and input on your blog - interweaving - can be beneficial both to a blog and it’s owner. Writing for another site will hopefully cause you to think things through differently or try a fresh approach to your writing, and having another bloggers content on your blog can freshen it up by offering an alternative topic and/or style.

The other advantages are that activities such as these connect you with people, and of course send more traffic to your blog, which is ever important.

To this end I thought it would be interesting and productive if I offered both my writing services to other bloggers and other bloggers the opportunity to guest post here. So …

Every Wednesday, I’d like to include a guest post from another blogger. It should at least relate to the topics usually found here, and be of a decent length. You will be credited and linked.

I’d also like to offer my writing to services to other bloggers, for free, naturally. If you want me to write something for you, on any topic, provided I know something about it, I’m sure I’d be happy to. Just contact me. The sole condition will of course be that I’m credited as the auther and linked to.

I look forward to hearing from anyone interested.

Just a quick reminder to anyone reading that I’m offering free advertising on the site.

All details are available at the Advertise page.

Are to-do list managers any good?

In a word, no, but firstly, for those that don’t know, let’s clarify: a to-do list manager is a to-do list which you maintain and manage on your computer. They’ve been around for a while, but recently services like Remember The Milk and I Want Sandy have attracted more interest and publicity.

There are only two reactions to this idea, I think, and they come from two groups into which everyone can be divided: Those who take technology too far, and those who don’t. I plant my feet firmly onto the side of the fence where the latter group is camped. I draw the line at using technology for the sake of technology, when it is clearly impractical; No doubt in 50 years time, when we are all hooked up to the web via ours ears, and one eye permanently devours a constant stream of RSS feeds through the compulsary miniscule inbuilt screen inplanted into our retina at birth, while our brain-computer renders keyboards useless with its ability to hear our thoughts, a virtual to-do list may well be useful and practical. But now, in 2008, we are limited to clumsy great screens and keyboards and mice.

A virtual to-do list is slower and fiddlier than using a calender, or reaching for a pen and paper. I don’t need to install pen and paper, or to adjust my calender settings.

Maybe I’m just behind, but I don’t like them.

Sadly, for me at least, and hopefully for you, I won’t be posting for a week or so as I’m off skiing at the wonderful Stubai Glacier, near Innsbruck, Austria. I’ll probably break a leg.

I’d love to hear from anyone else who’s been up near Stubai, so leave me plenty of comments and emails! Or just one or two might be nice …

See you in a week!

Cromer, a town quite close to my home, is recognised by many for it’s magestic, surprisingly massive church, a world famous (Or at least Norfolk-famous) chip shop and excellence in the crabbing industry. However, apart from it’s actually-very-beautiful-indeed sea view, which encapsulates a wonderful pier, it isn’t well recognised as a town of beauty: The main street is an ugly jumble of grey concrete - a nasty, grungy miscellany of traffic fumes and failed industrialism -, the smaller, sorrounding streets even more so. When you Flickr search ‘Cromer’ every result is an image of the pier, the sea, the view. The lens agreeably doesn’t once point in the other direction.But pluck up the courage to venture off the main street, past Budgens, that chip shop, the arcades and you’ll find a handsome, glowing golden, wordy reward. Courageously plow onwards as the smog thickens and the street darkens further, take a left, and opposite a throbbing generator and a few overflowing bins, you’ll see a little door, a plaque above it: ‘Bookworm’.

Bookword is a wonderful secondhand bookshop. Since an early age books have been as important a part of my growing diet as food, and since an early age my parents took me to Bookworm: there is of course an eclectic but extensive children’s section. And still, all these years later there aren’t many greater pleasures than a visit to that tiny little bookshop; a crisp £20 at the ready, as well as a willingness even to embrace the constant flow of classical music (Which I now will only associate with one thing).

One of the great things about secondhand bookshops is the price: that crisp £20 note could get you 8 books, depending on what you choose and it’s condition. This especially can be said of Bookworm, whose price/condition ratio is unusually wallet-friendly. The same amount of money hardly qualifies you for 3 books from any conventional, new-book touting merchant.

Some would no doubt argue (Were an argument such as this taking place) that obvious pricing differences aside, a wider range of books are available at most normal bookshops, which is true, and that this makes them better. I, riled and unthinking, might argue back, my voice higher than usual, ‘What? Secondhand sellers have a much wider range in terms of publishing time span!’. This, in most cases, would be a correct but unnecessary point. When I want a recent book I go to Waterstones (In truth I don’t, I get it from an independant bookshop with a cry of ‘down with chains!’), as I’m sure other secondhand book-buyers do, and none of us will dispute that doing so is more practical than waiting around for a copy to pop up in our secondhander. I will agree with argument a few sentences above: ‘normal’ bookshops are better, but in one way only: you may easily find and purchase most extremely popular and recently published books from them. The secondhand bookshop, no matter how it wants some, does not expect this sort of business. They are a different kettle of fish, and their utter brilliance lies elsewhere.

The glory of the secondhand bookshop lies in their sheer unexpectedness, for who might know which dusty fruit the shelves will present this time? To me a secondhander is like a raffle, but one you win every time. The glory lies in he fact that what you might find is not bound by popularity and time, that the prizes in the raffle span a whole millenia of literature, something no commercial bookshop will ever have.

So I urge you: go and find that little door you always passed but never really noticed. Find that little sign reading ‘Used books’, and go in. Visit often. Love it. Treasure it. Cherish it. Give it the business it so needs to survive.

For those of you who don’t live near a secondhand bookshop, or are too lazy to leave the house, or have evolved to fear natural light, there are internet options: Ebay and Amazon both offer used books as well as new. AbeBooks offers a huge selection comprising solely of used books, as do the aforementioned Barter Books. But remember, despite maintaining the monetry advantages, internet ordering removes that wonderful unexpectedness I described above.