Project 365 – 9th Nov 2010

Day 283 – @theashes

As you may notice I’m only updating today’s entry on the 29th of November and I have just encountered a funny incident on twitter in which an American woman, with the unfortunate twitter name of ‘theashes’ is getting inundated with tweets about the cricket! It seems to be another way in which the world is becoming smaller and random pieces of communication is being passed through people on a massive scale who, even a few years ago, would never have been aware of each other’s presence.

Oh, and that incident has very little to do with the strange picture for today! No, I wasn’t at an execution but was doing a photoshoot (undercover at a graveyard being bitten alive by mozzies!) for an advert assignment which I ended up discarding afterwards anyway! Just goes to show that pre-visualisation of how something is going to go can very often be completely off base.

Anyway back to the twitter incident with quotes for the day:

“The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful” – Jonathan Zittrain, Harvard law professor and Internet expert

“Whoever said that things have to be useful?”
– Evan Williams, Twitter co-founder and CEO

Project 365 – 20th August 2010

Day 201 – The Modern Way

I watched a few minutes of ‘The Ellen Show’ a little while ago that featured Sharon Osbourne. Sharon was talking about how her daughter set her up on twitter while she was on holidays but that she doesn’t like to use it. I think her exact comments were something along the lines of I’m not narcisstic enough to be twittering ‘I’m now at the theatre’ blah, blah, blah. Does she miss the point of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook? I think so. I also think it was quite an ironic quote from someone who has become famous through the reality tv show about her family.

Anyway I love twitter and facebook. Whether you like it or not it’s how people are communicating today. It’s fascinating reading other people’s comments back and forth to each other (even if its a little stalker-ish!), sometimes when people are not quite being themselves you can get a different insight into their personalities with how they are in public communication with other people or with the profile or even profile picture they choose to post. Twitter is quite a revelation into celebrity personalities, even though I don’t really have any favourite celebs that I’m interested enough in stalking right now! If anything it makes them seem a bit more human. Is that what Sharon Osbourne is afraid of?!

Modern technology is a funny thing in terms of communication. It’s mind boggling, rapidly evolving and a little bit scary but it’s always interesting and sometimes not even relevant.

In the words of Adam Levine: Twitter is the most vain, narcissistic, and downright egotistical invention since the mirror. In otherwords, it is AWESOME”

In the words of Jimmy Carter:  Globalisation, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world

Project 365 – 26th July 2010

Day 176 – Days of our Lives

I’ve really gotten into Twitter this year and have to admit I often look at what random thing is trending worldwide. It’s quite funny how one can instantly find out what most of the people in the world are thinking about and then get their reactions to that. I’m wondering though what Freddie Mercury would think to know that almost 20 years after his death he would still be one of the top trends on this new phenomenon of a micro-blogging site. Whenever I think of Facebook/MySpace/Twitter or any of the sites I now recently frequent but didn’t exist a few years ago, I wonder what the hell is coming next?!

Here’s one of the best quotes off Twitter in the last year: RT @TheBestQuotes: “Marriages are made in heaven. But so again, are thunder and lightning.

Project 365 – 19th July 2010

Day 169 – TimeOut

This has no relevance to the picture or the day or photography really, only my twitter-stalking habit and therefore I ask the question, am I the only one who kinda feels sorry for Lindsay Lohan???

It’s a funny one because obviously we don’t know anything about her apart from what the media is spinning out. What is for certain though, from the prison sentence handed to her, she has a problem with drugs and alcohol and it seems she is quite adequate on blaming other people.

Seriously though, tell me you don’t know people in the same position, whether it be on a lesser scale or not even to do with drugs or alcohol. They are just an easy and accessible option for someone who is wealthy and has time to indulge and become addicted. How many people you know would spend their lives out partying if they had the money and friends to do it with? If you were famous and that environment constantly had people boosting your ego? And if you got into that spiral at all, and especially from a young age, it would be basically all you knew, then how the hell does one get out of it?

It’s so easy to judge, and Joan Rivers certainly has taken that option along with half of ‘Twitter-land’ this morning (I’m actually updating this on the day she went to prison). A stem of tweets from Joan last week were directed in Lindsay’s direction, most of which I thought were just horrible unnecessary attacks that certainly won’t help someone get out of the dark hole that has become their life. Why would you do it?

To paraphrase a comic genius, I’m not in the habit of repeating myself but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s a great phrase that tells us to be extra nice to people, everyone fights their own battles. Of course it doesn’t always work but we’d be a lot better off if more people took head to it.

Project 365 – 19th May 2010

Day 108 – Earnestly

I was watching a film today that was set, and filmed in the 50’s and it struck me how differently the people communicated back then. The film, The Importance of Being Earnest’, based on the play by Oscar Wilde, satires Victorian manners and customs but you’d have to think what would Oscar Wilde write if he were alive today about the current social manners, or even where they are headed in the future.

Not that I am too critical, I facebook, blogg and twitter as much as the next person, actually probably more! However, outside of how we actually communicate, the language we use, the quantity and quality and the things we communicate about have also changed in their own different ways. Have we become more lacking in sophistication or are we still caught in an attempt to shake off the formal shackles of the past? (Interesting lacking in sophistication means the same thing as vulgar according to the apple dictionary!) And when we reach a point where we feel those shackles are finally cast off where will our communication then be headed?

Twitter has certainly been a new revelation in online communication, and with it sites like Digg and StumbleUpon and facilities like RSS feeds, but for those who have managed to avoid the internet explosion, or those that purposely avoid it, where and how has communication changed for them? Will (perceived) advances in communication always be linked with technology or do the differences in how we think determine how we impart our thoughts to those around us? Lastly are there any schools of thought emerging today that have the potential to change our communications, online or otherwise? I’m thinking probably not, but who knows what the future holds!

Quotes from the movie:

[on hearing that Jack’s wastrel brother died suddenly]
Miss Prism: What a lesson for him. I trust he will profit by it.

Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness.

Algy: Bunbury? He was quite *exploded*.
Lady Bracknell: Exploded?
Algy: [pretending sadness] Mm.
Lady Bracknell: Was he the victim of some revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr. Bunbury was interested in social legislation.
Algy: My dear Aunt Augusta, I mean he was *found out*. The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live – that is what I mean – so Bunbury died.
Lady Bracknell: He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians

Lady Bracknell: I have always been of the opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
Jack: I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell: I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a very delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor’s Square.

Gwedolen: Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me so nervous.

Lady Bracknell: Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.