Tag: blogs

Foreign Interests

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

How many times have you cursed the Anime and Manga fans who clog up book shops, or rolled your eyes at people pretending to be Japanese?

As annoying it is, to see people looking at different cultures and favour them over there own, looking at different cuture to your own is intriguing. And as the Western world becomes more Americanised, you have to look further afield to look at a completely different culture. After America, the other country whose culture is a huge influence, especially to the younger generations, is Japan.

Japan seems like a different world, when compared to the UK. Of course, not even Japan is immune from Americanisation, what with KFC becoming THE Christmas meal in Japan and McDonald’s appearing in every major town. There are still enough differences, to make studying the culture interesting. The big interest in everything Japanese is thought to have started in the late 80s/early 90s, when Japanese companies Nintendo and Sega took the forefront of computer game technology, and each sold millions of consoles around the world. After people got a taste of the cute characters, people started to purchase into Anime and manga, so much so, that almost every book shop in the UK now stores a Manga section bigger than that of the more traditional superhero comics. Then thanks to the popularity of Pokemon, Hello Kitty and singers like Qwen Steffani mimicking Japanese style, more and more people have confessed to being ‘Japanophiles’.

Whilst, you may get the idea that I don’t like Japan, this is not the case. I still play Pokemon on a regular basis, and I have read my fair share of manga. And although they have a harder working schedule than us in the UK, they also seem to enjoy their life a lot more. So, it has been suggested, that people see this positive outlook and try to mimic what they see to try and improve their quality of life. There is truth in that, if you pick up a new hobby that you enjoy, it will improve your quality of life, because of the simple fact that it makes you happier. And, it doesn’t matter who you are, if something makes someone happy, and it’s not harming anyone else, they should be able to do whatever it is.

As a person who will admit that she likes looking at the differences between here and Japan, I am going to recommend Tofugu for people to have a look at. It is a blog which looks at various parts of Japanese Culture, and may answer some of the questions you may have in your head.

Sayonara!

Resolve to blog?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

As it is a new year, people resolve to do things such as blog. It is the same as attempting to keep a diary when you were at school, except it has moved onto the world wide web, so anyone could see what you are thinking. This is something which is great, because I feel that blogging is such a great way to express yourself. It helps me do the job that my paper journals have done for years. In fact, my more personal blog over on Livejournal, reaches it’s 6th birthday this year, and this blog is approaching it’s second birthday.

Which gets me onto something rather irritating. People who are starting blogging, for no other reason than they think that they will be able to make money out of it. Like if they start posting mulitiple links to YouTube in a day, it is a good blog, and they deserve web traffic because of it. Why, though? I mean, I am all for promoting music you like to the world, as music is really one of the best ways to express yourself. But, is posting 8 videos posted by someone else in 1 day, really make you a blogger, or just a rehasher?

Maybe its because blogging is such an important thing to me, and it is something that I feel has helped me personally. I have never, ever blogged for anyone other than myself, and use it to express myself. I mean, I know people who have started blogging, when they hate writing. Is that not like watching a Lost marathon, when you hate TV. It makes no sense to me.

Most people, have not got the energy to work at improving the quality of their blog, and to then frequently update it over a long period of time. It is a nice new thing at first, but if they don’t get comments and visitors, they lose interest. This pisses me off. I worked hard, to make sure that I can express myself the way I want to, and put a lot of thought into what I post. And to know that someone thinks that posting a football score is a blog post, kinda makes me feel a little ill.

 

Maybe I treasure blogging a little too much :/

Question: Why do I blog?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

This is a question I get asked a lot, so I thought I would answer it today.

I started a personal blog, almost 6 years ago, on livejournal. I was 20, and I think it was when I started struggling with depression. I was at uni, training to be a Veterinary Nurse, but I struggled with the pressure. I was away from my folks, and was also being to struggle with handling myself in situations. I was always very critical of myself, and it became worse. But the job, of being with animals, helped. I loved that I was helping another creature, and it made me feel better about myself. I failed my exams and it was so expensive, that I couldn’t afford to do it.

It was hard. I mean working with animals was all I wanted to do as a kid. So I started working in a local bakery, so that I had some money coming in. Which was hard, because my head was all over the place. But I used to blog, and at that time, there wasn’t really any professional blogs, from what I was aware. So it wasn’t trying to be famous, it was letting go of all my emotion, and at the time, it was semi-private. Also, rather than feeling like I am pushing things on my friends, I can get it all out of my system, without feeling like I am forcing someone to listen. I feel guilty for forcing my problems on others.

The only people who would read your blog, would be people who use the site, and used it for similar reasons. So nobody would judge you for what you wrote. Now, I think that people start blogs just to get fans. I still have my Livejournal blog, which is still updated regularly, then I have this blog, which although the content is slightly less whiney, than my LJ, it is still me expressing myself.

And, ultimately, that’s what a blog should always be. It should be expressing yourself, writing about thoughts and feelings. I write my blogs, because it is a big release. When I am writing a blog, I am so focused on the task in hand, and sometimes blogging is the only thing that holds my attention. I love it though, blogging has become a major part of what I do online.

Its nice. You visit my Facebook, you can find out the basics about me, but visit one of my blogs, you get to actually know me.

Losing the will to live.

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Why can’t WordPress and Blogger talk to each other?

I have two Riot Graphics blogs, because I tried both sites and decided that I like WordPress better, so I stuck with WordPress. I then came up with the ingenious idea, that I could automatically post my wordpress blogs on blogger, therefore keeping everything updates.

Why go to all that effort, I hear you say?

Well, a lot more of my friends and blogs I like are over on wordpress, so I figured, it’d be nice to update that one as the same as I update this. But alas, Blogger is not wanting ‘nice’. It wants ‘pain in the backside’.

Basically, to get a blog to auto-post onto a blog on another website, you need to download an XML file, and then upload it onto the second site, so that it will re-post your entries. Simple so far, yes? WordPress was good, and I got the XML file no bother at all. But when I try to upload said file onto blogger, I get ‘there has been an error uploading your file’.
-.-

I thought it was maybe my crappy internet connection, so I left it a minute and tried again. Same thing happened.

I chose WordPress, because I find it so easy to use, and I wouldn’t get annoyed, as everytime I logged into Blogger, it logged me out of YouTube. Which is a HUGE no-no, in my book. And I spent many-a-time using blogger in Google chrome and youtube on firefox, so I could do both. (I don’t think it logs you out anymore, but I dunno.)

So, yeah, if anyone has ANY idea of a way round my lack of blog sync-iness, then please contact me. It’ll be appreciated.