emotionalmarkup

My clock stopped working at home this afternoon so I thought I’d build a new one in JavaScript! It just shows the hour, minutes and seconds. Nothing special. If I ever come back to it, I want to add days and months so that I can remember the date as well.

It was a rush job so there are probably scenario bugs and better ways to organise the code, but hey, it’s nearly 6pm and it’s time to go out.

Also, because I want to alienate ie6 users I’m using a transparent png with no css hack.

Take a look at the time

I don’t make a show of complaining about the cold but when I make even the most pithy remark it’s met with derision. It’s hard being surrounded by a complete miscomprehension of what it’s like to come from a place where it doesn’t get below 15 degrees celsius.

Is blogging on its way out already? Considering how trends on the internet come and go faster than stomach gas at high altitudes, all I can say is that I hope not. Just mentioning the word today causes some rational people to foam at the mouth.

“Oh, blogging is so 2003!” they cry and then retreat to a dark corner to twitter all night about Steve Jobs’s latest fart.

This is a disturbing situation and one which reminds us of the role of news media up until the birth of the internet. The pro-bloggers (those blog-eat-and-sleep weirdos) and blogs backed up by commercial interests have personal and financial resources that allow them to be the biggest voices in the market; and so they become the opinion makers. Fair enough - many of them have worthwhile things to say.

However before the converse-wearing marketing executives stole blogging from us, grass-roots web publishing was hailed as the great leveller: more reactive than traditional news and a positive effect on the diversity of opinion. What is to become of the millions of people sharing their stories and experiences online?

Most of them have looked to twitter, flickr, digg, pounce, facebook, myspace, bebo blah blah blah. To link social strands and make rapid comments, these are fine resources. And let’s face it: writing, and writing well, can be a bore.

It’s too easy, and of course fun, to share different media formats instantly than to sit at your computer editing an op-ed on the pros and cons of watching movies on mobile devices. But I make a plea to the busy blogger who used to dedicate hours writing for catharsis, to practise or just to share information: don’t stop! You provide an important social resource.

I can estimate that searching Google for specifics such as how to install Django on Ubuntu while drunk or bondage and chaining in JavaScript, 80 per cent of the time I head to your blogs for information that most of the time has saved me. Advice from personal experience is gold, it’s worked for 1000s of years, and that’s why blogs will continue to work.

Oh yes, and a side note: experts-exchange? Please remove yourself from my search results and die.