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Blip Blog - January 2008

I met up with this guy in England :D

January 31st 2008 20:36



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Meme

January 10th 2008 06:27
What is a Meme? A meme is a term invented by Richard Dawkins (most famous in recent times for his book ‘The God Delusion’, which means to describe any piece of information that can be carried onwards, and evolve into other forms. Some examples of Memes may include-

• Why did the chicken cross the road and other jokes ingrained in pop culture

• Archetypal figures such as ‘The Wizard’ or ‘The Hooker with a Heard of Gold’.

• Popular associations between a thing or person and a trait – the idea that foxes are sly, rabbits are nervous or Jews are thrifty.

• Reoccurring ideas or scenes used in various media – ‘magician saws a girl in half’, ‘nun having fun’, ‘mutton dressed as lamb.’


If this is still confusing have a quick look at the Wikipedia Meme Page – LINK.

To refresh – a meme in any piece of information that can be reproduced and adapted. Memes are often terribly influential. Things such as ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ (environmentalism), ‘Do you know who you’re in bed with?’ (AIDS awareness) and ‘Kevin ‘07’ or ‘New Leadership’ (Kevin Rudd’s campaign slogans) are memes that have been picked up, popularised and profoundly influential.

For this reason, a number of activist groups engage frantically with the idea of ‘meme factories’ creative well designed catch memes to spread influence throughout the world.

The most important thing about memes is the process of memetics, which studies the evolution of memes.

An example of this can be found here - This map shows how different pieces of information correspond to each other.


An example of a meme evolution can be seen in the Lolcats phenomenon.

Lolcat
A Lolcat example can be seen here.


STEP 1: A meme (a piece of information) is created either sporadically or through the combination of factors. Lolcats is born of a number of memes –

Meme 1 – The Internet meme of posting funny pictures of cats

Meme 2 - The meme of ‘captioning’ photographs.

Meme 3 – L337 Speak/Computer Speak.

These three things came together to form on new meme – the lolcat. This meme in itself evolved to a number of subgenres, such as lolgay and loltreck.

Meme may also be used to describe any messages or quizzes circulated across the internet.

Image by Helfy in Helfland Licensed under an Attribution No Derivs License.
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Tributes: Nick

January 7th 2008 12:13
Nick was a bit of a funny puppy. He was a good writer, an extremely interesting one. His posts tended to be of a considerable length, and it was hardly unusual to find yourself scrolling down well past the Orble blogs list on a regular post.

Nick earned his domain address. His posts were consistent and of considerable quality.

Nick had two things that resulted in his downfall – he was an American Patriot of considerable intensity, and he cared how others saw him. The considerable number of Australians on Orble ready to engage in a bit of playful (an on occasion, more malicious) yank bashing. Eventually it became too much and Nick deleted all his posts and left. A pity.

He may not have had the iron skin and basic misanthropy required in blogging, but his posts were generally intelligent, well written and promising. It is a shame Nick could not be here for an inevitable nomination for post of the year.

D ARMENTA SHEDS SOME LIGHT ON NICKS DEPARTURE:


You know what sent up the first red flag about Nick with me? That "postal" post about Katyzzz "plagiarizing" his work. That made me think, "Hmmmm; posting a different piece about the same subject is not plagiarism. What's with this guy?"

Then the attack on David for making a fake suicide post was weird..David had no idea that Nick's brother had done himself in, yet Nick assumed David was targeting him. Whaaaaat???? David's psychic now, and can see what's going on in Nick's life???

Granted, Nick was a prolific and entertaining blogger; but to me there was something below the surface with him that wasn't quite in keeping with the image he was trying to convey at first.

That and the gym pic. That put me off a bit right at the start.

Just my 00.02...
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Tributes- David.

January 4th 2008 12:04
David was Orble for a while, in one form or another, an often brilliant and provocative (in a literal sense) individual. In his own words he went ‘from bartender to police officer to monk to taxi driver to postie... And then ... discovered writing ... which is the only occupation that gives any meaning to my nomadic wanderings ... and allows me to continue to be experimental’

He was the biggest name in the whole mob ages ago, albeit under a separate pseudonym of Homer Joyce, on the massively popular site ‘Wordophilia’. I was a massive fan of his writing style, which to this date I would consider some of the best I have read on Orble, and certainly rivals some of the stuff I have read off Orble as well. He stayed up the top for a very long time.

Over this time he managed to put a few noses out of shape, while at the same time pursuing a secret second identity, under everyone’s nose. The noses was due to a willingness to be very blunt when he felt he was being attacked, or simply objected to something that was written. His list of enemies was of a reasonable size, but, with posts as long as your arm, all the way down to five word posts regularly hitting the number one position on Orble, this was evidently no barrier to success.

The secret identity was ‘David my David’ on the site Mind Orgasms – effectively a collection of often deeply explicit love letters between his self and ‘My Lady Me’. This site too ended it’s original purpose before it’s time.

Following the departure of ‘My Lady Me’, Homer Joyce found his site Wordophilia taken away following a nose too severely disjointed to take is lying down. To date I really don’t know what happened because I was a Woodford at the time. There was a quite strong reaction to the whole thing, with a good deal of questioning of Orble's judgement, directed at Jon in particular.

David my David became ‘David’ and continued to post, in a very similar vein to Wordophilia – though no official connection was ever made.

I fell out with him over a comment I made on his blog, prompting a hateful tirade against me. There were a few squabbles. He gave me the shits at times, but he sure could write.

Before disappearing he removed the most of his content off pages, but a little can still be found. This is one I liked, a reply to the blogged question; What is your favorite time of day?

Ash,

Lovely Post.

So conversational.

I love this type of writing.

Great Questions.

Both in the title. And at the end.

I’ll answer them.

Favourite Time of Day?

Dusk. Always has been. Always will be. At the risk of offending certain people. There are three principal reasons I love Dusk. Infinite secondary ones.

(1) It was the time of day that God walked in the cool of the evening with Adam in a preternatural Paradise and spoke with him.

(2) Back in the days when I did physical labouring (before Adam was a boy), the elation at that time of day? Incomparable!

(3) DuskDevi is on Orble. And I think she Rocks. She thinks she Rucks and Rolls. I think she Rocks.

New Word? Relating to love and giving and sharing?

Incarnation. (Old word. Forgotten. Neglected).

At the risk of offending certain people again. Short Definition = God’s gift to man. = Himself.

The gift of Himself. (Encapsulates loving, giving, and sharing).

God I hate the word ‘encapsulate’. It’s so academically pretentious.

But I’m in a ‘cathartic’ mood.

Where do I go for a few minutes of peace and quiet?

I never go anywhere. I don’t have to. My room is a place of tranquillity and order. Peace is the tranquillity that comes from order. (I stole that from St Augustine). Why go anywhere? What is there outside of my room besides chaos and noise?

What do I like to do just for myself? Everyday?

Everything. I’m selfish. I’m trying to come to terms with my own humanity.

What rejuvenates my mind?

I am the eternal child. I don’t need my mind rejuvenated. I am a juvenile. And a delinquent to boot. Ask anyone on Orble who doesn’t know me.

And at the risk of offending you. Your writing is lovely. It would be even lovelier if you separated the text with a few more line breaks. I like to see lovely writing line-by-line.


Yours is lovely.


The crap a lot of others write on here? Condense it. Or delete it. I can’t read it.

Homer.
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Special Mentions 1: Voices.

January 1st 2008 11:48
There are some bloggers that, though we enjoy them very much, disappear from our sights.

The one apparent disappearance I ought to have noted much earlier was VoicesInMyHead. As I writer I could respect her, as a personality she brought a great sense of positivity and cheer to the Orblesphere. She was an American, whose thought of the day changed into a ‘pursuit of consistency.’

A quote of hers I liked –

Dreams:
The beauty of dreams is that most of the time, they don't come true. It is a pleasant distraction from the task of life, at hand.

She left a long time ago, but continued to post a bit, hither and thither. An official final post was left on March 7th this year, and remained the final post until this one in late September - Dreams of the poor are like butterflies in a jar...Beautiful Cruelty.

Voices. You are missed.
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