Monday, July 26, 2010

Leaving Iron Blogger?

I'm really not sure if Iron Blogger is working out for me. I went to a (champagne brunch) meetup just today, and I had a good time, but I think this may be causing me more stress than it is worth.

My life is very weekend focused. I spend a ridiculous amount of time on weekdays throughout the year just planning weekends, whether it is conventions, festivals, trips, or parties. I am usually exhausted on Sunday nights, and find myself thinking of needing to blog similarly to how I think about needing to deal with the trash (and cat litter) on Sunday nights.

Part of it is that the rest of iron blogger is overwhelmingly about computers in ways I don't care about at all. I love when my friends get slashdotted, but usually their posts mean nothing to me.

I do want to keep blogging in a more formal style, but I might be better off posting because I have something to say, not because I want to avoid paying money.

I almost quit last week, but someone asked me not to. Ironically, by posting about this, I keep myself from hitting the maximum debt level for another week. I'm moving next weekend and running a bachelorette party, so we'll see if I blog anything. If this is my last post in the iron blogger group, well, it's been fun, and remember to talk about things oher than computers sometimes, even if you are really skilled in that area. The world is full of interesting things to explore and talk about!

Monday, July 19, 2010

20 Days of Vidding

There is a popular style of meme/survey in fandom, where people answer a series of questions about things they like (or don't) like, theoretically answering one question a day. I've seen a lot of these lately, probably due in part to the lack of new television recently. There's 30 days of Doctor Who, with questions about favorite companions and season finales, 30 days about favorite songs, and a number that are just generic questions about one's favorite show, or all time favorites across sources. Last week, jarrow came up with 20 days of vid questions, in preparation for next month's big vidding convention, Vividcon. I am going to attempt to participate, and share the results with y'all. Forgive me for overusing the word "awesome", I am not the best at talking about vids. Just watch them. ;-)

Day 1 - A vid that made you start watching a brand new show

Day 1: Winner: Mad About You by gwyn-r, Mad Men. I first saw this vid at Vividcon Premieres last year, and I knew nothing about these women, but they grabbed me, and I needed to know them, I needed to know their lives. I had been meaning to go back and rewatch this vid for a few days, and then this meme appeared! The streaming video was skipping, so I pulled out my VVC 2009 Premiere DVDs and wound up watching a lot of vids. :-) This was my first time going back to this vid since I started watching "Mad Men", and of course it is just wonderful.

Day 1: Runner up is "Fix You" by sdwolfpup, Battlestar Galactica (which was very hard to find given that I couldn't remember who had made it, and it turns out there are a lot of "Fix You" vids!). In actuality, a lot of vidders made me watch BSG, because I saw all my favorite vidders were vidding BSG and I wanted to know the source so I could watch their vids. It sounds a bit ridiculous and silly now that I admit it. :-) This vid did push me over the edge, I think I saw it at a random little vid show at Wiscon in 2007, and I was intrigued, and started watching.

Then right after Vividcon 2008 I read a whole lot of lj posts about the vids, and This post by bradcpu talked about "Fix You" and I went back, having seen tons of BSG by this point, and I was blown away by the awesome.

Day 2 - A male character study vid you love

"In the mirror" by Here's Luck, due South. The reason I am so impressed by this vid is that I hardly know Ray Kowalski. I watched the first two seasons of due South devotedly, completely unaware of the fandom. After that, it became really hard to find the episodes where I lived, and I only caught a smattering of episodes, and was generally suspicious of this major casting change on my beloved show. Years later, I was startled to discover due South had this huge fandom! I had thought only sff had fandoms.

I found this vid, and I watched it, and I felt like I understood RayK, between the episodes I had seen, and this vid, and all the bits and pieces I picked up from people... it all came together in such a great way. Being able to convey so much to someone who doesn't know all the source? Totally awesome. :-)