The Agrinautica

On Mega/Underbloggery
   Having spent much of the last few hours contemplating mega and underbloggery, the blogosphere, and what the heck I am going to write my 30 megablog entries about, I have finally concluded to write about the blogosphere (which is divided into mega & under -bloggery) for this first (second if I count the last one, which I am) attempt.

Underbloggery
   I perused my friends list and found that most of the entries there appeared to be what has been termed "underbloggery" (writing as a journal rather than for general entertainment of readers). Specifically, it appeared to me that these could be divided into three categories.
   Incoherent: those who could not be bothered to ever structure their entries with more complexity than a bunch of one line thoughts either on seperate lines or, worse, in one run-on paragraph. These persons are clearly writing only for themselves and even those who would be interested in their lives find it too tedious to keep up with the reading.
   Emo: Don't think these are necessarily persons who habitually are bedecked in scarves and messanger bags, in this category I'd place any entry which seems to have been posted by emotional neediness, "whininess" even you might say.
   Underblog Proper: those that survived without falling into the other two categories (discounting a few that had combinations of these traits which stumped my finals-dazed mind), livejournals as journals.
   Now all these category names are certainly up for replacement with more apt names; in my neurotic mid-finals stage this was the best I could do. But I'm not even sure "underblog" isn't on a basic level demeaning to underbloggers (the system having been invented by megabloggers, though they claim the two styles are equally viable) and would entertain propositions of better names for the same concepts.

Megabloggery
   In its highest form it seems to me that megabloggery should be generally understandable to all, rather than specific to a smaller group. This is something I think I need to work on myself since (to take a completely random guesstimate) 40% of my friends live in Davis, 40% in Orange County, and the remaining in neither, and I think I tend to write "for" whichever group I'm currently living among (which for example is about to change to OC). This very entry, for example, is probably only interesting to those who have already contemplated the blogosphere, and everyone else is probably like "WTF... mate?" Entries should also probably be humorous rather than an opinion on a highly theoretical topic... ::caugh::
   I've also heard rumours in my six hours or so of familiarity with the topic, that "megablogs shouldn't have polls" and "megablogs shouldn't have pictures." These "rules" sound highly suspect, and I urge those who theorize on the topic to be careful of making rules with such tangent relevance to the main point of megabloggery. The "Golden Four" for example use pictures quite successfully in many of their best mega-entries.
   Megabloggery also, I theorize, should be based on originality rather than regurgitation of things one finds on the internet that are amusing (this very entry: regurgitation of someone else's theory, or valuable additions to it?), but I think at its lowest level, livejournals that do little more than continually post things they found interesting on the internet are more uninspired megablog than underblog.

   Anyway, in conclusion, for one reason or another, I'm guessing that no one will like this entry. Discussion of the blogosphere theory via comments is highly encouraged, otherwise, read my last entry, I liked that one.


The Mundane "Underblog" Daily Happenings
   I can't fight my underblog urges. Today, I fortified myself in my room deep in my gathering neurosis and stress as my last final approaches tomorrow. In the last two or three days I've only left my apartment to go swimming in the complex pool.
   Today this guy "Greg" from downstairs came up to use our microwave ("because someone moved out with the microwave from downstairs" "thats funny, OUR microwave came with the apt, you might want to look into that"). After I had said about two sentences to him he asked me if I was from "the other side of the Atlantic" and immediately launched in to a terrible Irish accent.
   Lesson of the day: Under NO circumstances, should anyone EVER, upon realizing someone has an accent, immediately proceed with your own terrible attempt at such an accent.

   so I went to upload some more pictures onto freepichosting.com, and discovered it tracks the number of viewings of pictures. As the pictures have only been linked from my livejournal, the information corresponds directly to the number of times that specific livejournal entry was viewed.
   The most recent picture posted was on November 6th, and has been viewed 2,684 times in the month or so since. The all time high for the picture was 192 views in one day, which incidentally occured on the day that my journal was discussed in Senate and likely discovered by most of the government (11/20/03). The following day was the second highest, at 125.

   Compare this to the two other times pictures were posted in my journal. On September 2nd I posted pictures of wild rivers (for the 150+ of you who apparently are new here, thats where I worked over the summer). The ratemeter on that entry triggered 719 times total, though only 19 people bothered to look at the pics that were behind the lj-cut. Shame on you all.
   One more picture I linked to on the 5th of September (Of a newt or salamander or something), required that one follow a link to view it, so the hit number corresponds only with the number that followed the link, which 38 persons did.

   Anyway, as I mentioned I discovered this because I was going to post some pictures.. so in a show of shameless narcissism and ostentation, I now present you with the pictures taken of me since I've had the mohawk. Also you get to see me mum.

( Pictures )