I set a goal of blogging 150 photos this year. This photo will be number 102. That means I have to blog another 48 to mean my goal. I already missed my goal of taking a photo every day. I have made my goal of spending a night in 12 cities other than my home. It seems like a mixed bag for resolutions so far this year.
Last night I was watching Frontline episode News War Pt. 1. I thought about a lot of things when I watched this episode. I thought about why people don't trust the media. I think about what the media has become in modern day America. How did we get to this place? How did the media and government get in a place where it is such a battle all the time? This is supposed to be a four part Frontline. I hope they go over a lot of how we got here.
They talked a lot about grand juries and journalists. There is no federal shield law for journalists. If a federal grand jury asks you a question you better answer. The Attorney General and Department of Justice will have no problem throwing anyone in jail. With the public option of journalist, I do not think the public will come rushing to your aid. On top of these is the question, who is a journalist? Is a blogger a journalist? There is no licenses for journalists. You do not have to pass a test like a lawyer. You do not have to join a professional society to be a journalist. If you go back to when the Bill of Rights was written anyone who could print up a pamphlet was a journalist. I think that is a good reason to say a blogger is a journalist.
In the Frontline episode they talk about Josh Wolf. He is currently in jail for not providing his unused footage to the police when they asked for it. He is now in jail because of this stand. I remember when this case started. I guess I was not too worried about it because I do not like anarchists. Since this was related to an anarchist anti-globalism march, I was not too worried about the results.
According to the episode Josh Wolf has been in jail longer then any American journalist. I wonder what this is not more in the news. I know that many journalist do not like bloggers. It is easy to see journalist painting bloggers all with the same brush. I would think that journalist would be more interested in this because it could happen to them.
I would like to point out Keith Olbermann. He covered Judith Miller going to jail for her source like it was a matter of national shame. He spoke as if her going to jail as our democracy was falling apart. Yet I do not remember one mention of Josh Wolf on his show. Judith Miller knows that she and Josh Wolf are in the same boat.
I met Josh Wolf once. It was a few weeks the whole protest thing happened. KRON held an event for bloggers. We talked about video blogging and if it was really going to take off or not. He was really passionate about video on the web. This way way before YouTube and Google video.
As a blogger I feel that I should be doing more for this case. I am do not see myself as a citizen journalist. I still think it is important for bloggers who do work as citizen journalist are protected. I think that shield laws should protect bloggers.
I am outraged that Josh Wolf is still in jail. I am disappointed with the mainstream media that they have given little notice to this story. I am just not sure what I can do about any of it.
The story of the Egyptian Blogger getting jail time is very disturbing to me. Freedom of speech and freedom of press is the most important freedom to me. I understand that laws are different in different places. I understand not every culture is like my culture. I can see why people want their rules to fit where they live in the world.
My problem is I think speech is the most important thing in the world. Speech is the basis of thought. What is free will without free speech? It is meaningless without free speech. There is no other way I can put it. It is more important than I can even say.
I am not sure what I can do to change what happened in Egypt. I need to do something. It does not look like this situation is about to change right now. I am not even sure what our government could do to help him out. It is important to try.
This is a quick note to the RSS feed readers of Sad Salvation. (Like those of you who read my Live Journal Feed) Blogger has added a new tagging feature. (They call it labels for some dumb reason) I have been using this feature and even tagging some of my old entries. The problem is that when I publish my old entries with tags, they have been showing up in my RSS feed. It used to not work this way. The RSS feed would only update if I updated an entry on my front page. I am not sure why blogger made these changes.
If you see old entries come up on my RSS feed, you know why it is. You might want to see it as a best of Sad Salvation as I add the tags.
For some reason I find it hard to blog from my parents house. My parents do not have WiFi or DSL. I am stuck using 31200 bps dial up connection back to my provider. It is not even a quick connection. None of their neighbors have a wireless network I can see from their home. I thought it would be a bad idea to wardrive their neighborhood looking for an open network.
What surprises me is how hard it is for me to blog using dial up. The computer is the same, it is just the connection it different. I am so on line and connected when I blog. It is hard to do it with a slow connection. It takes me forever to find a link. I takes me forever to look at other pages to get an idea of what to write.
The weird thing is the connection speed effects my attention span and my writing. I should be able to just open a text editor and blog at the same speed. For some reason it is not that simple. Blogging has become a connected event for me.
I went to the San Jose Weblogger Meetup on Thursday. There were not that many people there, but we had a good time.
The writer of épanouie was there, but I cannot remember her name. I do remember that she has only been blogging for a week and she is an Astros fan. I am not sure how long the average blog lasts, but I hope she keeps it up.
Stephanie was talking about all the attenion she got about her entry How to explain RSS the Oprah way. I think this is more of a sign if you use Oprah's name to something it explodes. I am wondering if people my age are naming there daughers Oprah.
At the meeting that asked for people to think about topics that would get more people to show up. Here we go with a few things
Conversation Topics: How do LJ, MySpace, and Vox fit into the blogging world Guest topic: Demographics of Blogging -Who is writing and reading blogs Blogging Tool: Technorati What has worked well for me: Guest Bloggers and Sweeps Week
Last Wednesday the Metro had a cover headline of Mommies Vs. Feminists. I was excited when I saw the headline. I was very disappointed when I read the story and found out it was a story about how Mommybloggers and Sexbloggers don't get along and how it played out at blogher. The story makes it sound like two groups of narcissists don't like each other. I am so surprised.
I was disappointed because there is a real issue about a school of feminists saying that this generation of stay at home Moms betraying the cause of working women. Linda R. Hirshman and her book Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World are an example of that school of thought. I think stories about feminists who are stay at home moms and feminists that think stay at home moms are bad for working women would be an interesting story. Those are the conflicts that I want to read about.
I was at a party a few weeks ago with a woman who railed against stay at home moms. She told us if this kept on happening women would lose their seat in Ivy League schools. I cannot agree with her, but she was confident about that. I told her that many of my friends left the work force because for many people corporate jobs are soul crushing. Many of them found out that they are not going to get to get to the level of an vice-president. She is a vice-president, but she did not agree with me about working being soul crushing for people. It was a crazy conversation.
I have 30-something friends who have decided to be stay at home moms. The ones I know enjoy it at least as much at they enjoyed working. I think they are pretty lucky they the can afford to be stay at home moms. Most people around the country cannot do that. If you can afford to stay home with your kids, more power to you.
On some level these arguments feels like the feminism of the elite to me. These arguments will do nothing for the women who cleaning hotel rooms, getting poverty wages at Wal-Mart, or working illegally house keepers. These are the people who could use feminists working for their advancement.
I am really falling behind with blogging about my vacation. I will catch up later. In the mean time you can see some of my moblogging at vox and my photos at Flickr. I will catch up later.
I just signed up for a Vox account. I am not sure what I am going to do with it. I already have a blog, a backup blog, LiveJournal, myspace, and Yahoo 360 account. You would think I already have enough places to blog. I guess I feel like I always need more. I know it is because I want to be there before it becomes big. If it turns out to be the next big thing, I want to be there before it is over. I had a Flickr account for almost a year before I started using it.
Vox has a lot of cool features. I can hook it right into my flickr account to make uploading photos easy. It also makes it easy for me to blog about music. I could make this my blog about music. That would be pretty cool.
I am not sure where all of these blogging services are going. I am not sure if I should cross post things or use every post for a different reason. I just wish I had enough time to keep all these blogs up to date.
I have an invite to share if anyone wants to try Vox. Just let me know.
I realize that I have a handful of break up post in me. I know that bitching about relationships is one of the things people like to make fun of personal bloggers for. Oh well, one of the reasons I have a blog is because it is a space I control. I do it for myself first and for my readers second.
I will try to limit my posts to interesting insights or things that help me learn about myself. I think that is the essence of Sad Salvation. The things I write here may have been written a million times before. I think it is still good to write these things and share them.
I am blocked. I cannot find anything to write about. I know the most boring thing in the world is to read about a writer complained to be blocked. I also know that writing about being blocked has helped me in the past. I am not sure if it will help me now. I just cannot find anything worth writing about. I could just be bitching about having nothing to say.
The bad part is that I do not have nothing to say. I just cannot blog about what I have to say. It is always a bad thing when I cannot get past the things I cannot blog. I need to find my way pass those things and find things to write.
It feels strange, but I am just about the only person posting to Superkaratemonkey.com. I might have to rethink my whole plan for the site. For now I think I can post something every other day there. If I had the time, I could post a review just about everyday there. I think that every other day will have to work for now. I would like to see more people post there. I want to get people interested. It seems like a hard thing to do.
I am finding that it takes more time to write a review. I have to have some pretty good ideas before I start writing. It is not enough for me to pick a movie or a song and let the words flow. I need to be mapped out before I start. If I don't have a good idea before hand I seem to end up not writing.
My other frustration is my writing. I am not sure that I am always getting to the ideas in my head. I have an idea that I have something worth writing about. I am not sure that I am sharing that special thing I see. I feel that my writing is falling short in places. I do not know how to make it better.
I am trying to decide what kind of things I should write about on Sad Salvation. I feel that I am bogging down on too many ideas that are personal. I am writing about things that would not interest people who do not know me. I want to write things that are more universal. I want just about anyone to come to my web site and be able to read it.
The problem is some of the best web logs I read are sprinkled with personal posts. I am just not sure where that line is. I am not sure how much I can write about myself without making this boring. I wonder how other people do this. Do other writers think about this at all.
I am trying to use Sad Salvation to improve my writing. I am not sure if I am doing that or not. I am not sure if I am taking the time to make my writing better or if I am just writing what ever comes to my mind. I have been disappointed by some of the things I have written. I just do not have the time or energy to re-write them. This is something that I will have to deal with in the new year.
My fears about writing about work have been compounded. I read on the weblog of Mark Pilgrim that he was fired for comments that we wrote at his web log. The worst part is that it was not even comments he was making about his job. He was just writing about his life in general.
This makes me think about my weblog and my web site. I have been telling the people I work with about my web site. I have been trying to show off my Dreams about Bill Gates Site. I know that I have only told about a dozen people at work about the site, but that is going to spread. I am not saying that everyone at work is going to spend all their time reading my web page. I am just saying that someone might check in on it from time to time. I am not sure what they are going to say if they read some of the things I have written.
Part of my problem is that I have so many conflicting ideas about work. There is part of me that really wants to go and find a new city to live in. There is another part of me that want to stick it out at TiVo until the company either goes under or goes big time. I feel that I am working a job that is taking me nowhere, but I have a pride in the job I do. All of these conflicts make me think that I am going to stay at TiVo for a while. When I am faced by conflicts like this, inactivity usually wins out.
This adds to another part of my life I am going to hide from this web log. I already knew that there are a lot of little things that I will not put here. There are things about myself that I cannot tell my closest friends about. I know there are lots of little parts of my that I am not ready to put on the internet. I wonder if I will be able to give people a good idea of who I am without showing those parts of myself.
For the most part I am going to try to put this fear behind me. I am not going to worry too much about what I write here. I am probably kidding myself to think anyone is reading this web log at all. It would be nice to hear from anyone who is reading this.
