I’m not certain why but it’s been on my mind. Mainly, I’ve been considering its future and wondering if it has much of one. Certainly, half a billion users is nothing to be sneezed at and few could argue with Facebook’s current clout in the Internet world but still I find myself wondering.

Perhaps this is all personally coloured and biased because I grew, quite a while back, to hate Facebook immensely.

Perhaps…

I’ve been feeling for a number of months now, however, that Facebook may have plateaued and might even be due a turn.

It’s the geeks, you see. The geeks tend to be the early-adaptors and social media is no exception. The geeks also tend to be among the first to move on though, and – I think – that’s begun to happen. Whether they portend or cause the demise of Internet giants, the geeks are frequently a good indicator.

Of course, a lot of people have a lot invested in Facebook but I wonder if a sea change isn’t coming over the next year or two. If nothing happens, I’ll quietly delete this post in two years but, if Facebook gets MySpaced, well, I’m going to look like some sort of Internet savant and will probably make millions on speaking engagements as a technology pundit.

If you’ve been considering closing your Facebook account, therefore, it would really help out my plans.

In a massively unoriginal fashion, I’ll be using it as an attractive bucket for dumping some attractive (or freakily random) things I’ve found while wasting time that would be better spent working – what did people do to avoid work before the early ’90s? I just want somewhere to shove this stuff so it doesn’t clog up things here, making the place even more muddled and mental.

Anyway, if you like looking at, or reading about, pretty things or weird things or, occasionally, interesting things (though mostly pretty as I like to play an aesthete), do feel free to drop by for a look-see or even to follow me if you Tumbl (is that the correct verb, it’s so hard to keep up).  You can find me here: Gerry on Tumblr.

Thanks must go to Astrid for, unknowingly, nudging me to get back on the Tumblr horse. Why not follow her spanking, Tube Tales too. Just do me first though, yeah?

For completeness’ sake, I’ve also got a Posterous thing but really only use it as a middleman to get stuff to this blog while I’m out and about. Anything there ends up here whereas I like keeping the Tumblr stuff separated.

Clear?

Christ, I hope so.

People want to have a say in the plots of the TV shows they watch.

What?

Really?  But that’s…  I mean…  What?

In the good old days, the airing of opinions was confined to your dad ranting about some, barely existent, slight over the dinner table while the family avoided eye-contact.  If someone wanted to voice their opinions to a wider audience, they either stood on a soapbox with a loud-hailer and got pointed at or scrawled their poorly spelled, poorly considered, non-thoughts on the nearest wall (like the artistic effort in the photo).

Now though.  Now…

The internet has given people the idea that their opinions matter.  Worse still, they have the idea that others must be made aware of those opinions.  Instead of harrumphing behind their newspapers, morons can now post comments at the bottom of Daily Mail articles online so the entire world knows how correct they really are.  Instead of sitting down the pub, bellyaching about immigrants eating cats out of wheelie bins, idiots can start Facebook groups calling for the stoning of cat-eating foreign people.

It’s not just the internet, of course.  Simon Cowell and his ilk have their culpability in the public’s erroneous inflation of its self-importance.  Look at fucking Jedward for proof that democracy doesn’t work.

Instant, opinionated, gratification is already buggering up politics.  How many tough decisions get made when the decision makers (who, in the kindest terms, care only about covering their arses) can see real-time disapproval?  Don’t get me started on the democracy that put most of these idiots in power in the first place – that’s a whole other can of educationally subnormal worms.

And now they’ve set their sights on TV.  Sweet Willmott-Brown, I pray the big TV cheeses don’t hear of this.  Plotting by massive, public, moron-committee?  No good can come of it.

Mark my, opinionated, words.

And yes, I’m aware of the irony of blogging these opinions.  The difference is that I’m right but feel free to tell me I’m worse than Hitler in the comments below.

Why do you say ‘Mayday?’ It’s only a bank holiday. Why not ‘Shrove Tuesday’ or ‘Ascension Sunday?’  Ascension Sunday! Ascension Sunday! The fifteenth Wednesday after Pentecost. [That's how to get geeks on-side - quote Red Dwarf.]

My site is doing something a little odd. While I’m somewhat au fait with the basic tweakage of the stuff that makes my ones and zeros appear as beautiful works of aesthetic wonder that travel down your internet pipes and splatter onto the back of your screens, the deeper intricacies of the dark CSS and PHP arts are hidden from me.

If, therefore, you have any idea why some single pages of this site seem to render what should be a sidebar as a bottom-bar, I’d appreciate your advice. For reasons unknown, some pages shove the sidebar right down the bottom, under the comments. This doesn’t seem to be related to the post length or number of comments. Nor does it seem related to whether comments are closed or not.  I haven’t been able to figure out a common factor.  Which sucks, really.

This one, this one and this one, for instance, are doing it while this one, this one and this one aren’t.

What’s going on?

The site runs on WordPress. It’s version 2.9 as I haven’t gotten around to going to 2.9.2 yet but, let’s face it, it’s relatively unlikely that’s causing the issue.  A few plugins installed – nothing too odd, I should think – and all at current versions.  If anyone is so bored they want to help and would like a list of plugins or any source files, feel free to shout.

UPDATE: All better now.  The luminescent brilliance of Golden Boy has, er, brilliantly located the problem and it should now be rectified. Brilliant. As you were, geeks. You can go back to installing Linux on everything and porting Doom to run on your mum’s teapot. Thanks.

Facebook, while it served a bit of a purpose for me two or three years ago quickly began to get a bit tedious. From the outset, I hated most of the apps and never used them. I balked at the virtual greetings and the messages reading ‘Barry took the What Sort Of Stool Are You quiz with the result: SOFT’. I never used the game apps either. That others were happy to use them is absolutely fine but I tired quickly of hearing that someone’s virtual cow needed a virtual vet’s arm up its virtual arse.

Along came Twitter and, for now at least, it remains largely free from the worst of the who-cares apps. I checked in on Facebook less and less and became more and more annoyed when I did. I put off the termination for months, reluctant to do so, afraid I might miss something. Reading of the many privacy issues lately had all but convinced me to bite the bullet and when, a few weeks ago, I logged on to be greeted by some annoying systems glitch, that was the straw that broke the mixed metaphor’s back.

Facebook is dead to me.

If you happened to follow me over there, please feel free to hang around here or check in with me on Twitter. I promise scintillating and erudite conversation. Or, at very least, some poor quality knob gags and news of what I had for breakfast.

It was a scone.

Seriously though.  It has been too long.  In my defence, I’ll simply say that I’ve been busy/lazy.  Only one of these is a half-lie.

It’s the Twitter, you see. The Twitter is taking up my time and, more importantly, taking the tiny kernels of ideas, thoughts, whines that I might have and allowing me to express them in tiny, tiny, 140-character chunks.  They get tweeted and never gestate sufficiently to allow an actual blog post of more that 140 characters.  Don’t hate me. All the cool kids are doing it. I’m not strong enough to go against the crowd.

And, worse still, now that I’m used to thinking in 140-character bursts, I don’t think I can sustain anything longer. It’s like our ADHD society took a giant leap away from any meaningful, significant discourse and instead chose to blurt evertything in staccato bursts instead.

I’m not doing a good job of selling this, am I?

It’s not really like that at all.  The truth is, I really like the Twitter. I like the communication with people I know in real life, people I already know virtually and with some people I’m just getting to know. It’s all good but it’s a get-it or don’t-get-it sort of thing. Some people like it and some don’t. That’s ok. Incidentally, if you get it, or want to try get it, I’m here.

Soon I will post an actual post.  About actual stuff.

Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. I’ve been drinking.  Mmmmm, beer.

“Hiiiiiiiii, Gerry.”

“Errrm, yeah, hi… Right, My name is… Oh right, done that.  I have a problem.”

“That’s the first step, Gerry.  Now all you need to do is to accept that you’re merely a helpless puppet in the palsied, control-freak hands of a higher power and you’re well on the way.”

“Wooooah, woah.  Higher power?  I’m pretty high on the atheistic scale.”

“That’s ok.  We just want you to turn your will and your life over to the care of god as you understand Him.”

“As I understand him?  But I understand him to be a wholly imaginary construct, only valid in the ignorant infancy of our species and utterly superfluous to any reasonable, rational and non-stupid civilisation in an age where science and, lets face it, common-sense prevails.”

“What?  But… That’s not the way to wellness.”

“Huh”

“Well, can’t you just pretend – like all the losers forced to come here by the courts.”

“Arse. ”

“But the steps?”

“Arse to the steps.  Arse, I say.”

While I may be on my fifth pint as I write this, I’m relatively certain that I don’t have any sort of serious alcohol problem.  I can stop any time I want, honest.  I do, however, seem to have developed a weird addiction for Twitter.  I’ve been ‘tweeting’ for a while now and I realise that I’ve been neglecting this blog for ‘The Twitter‘.

Sad?  Probably.  Truth is, I am relishing the ‘micro’-blogging that Twitter allows.  And, oddly enough, the last couple of months have seen a spate of celebrity Twitter incursions. Twitter has hit the mainstream.  Perhaps that’s reason enough for those of you reading this not to bother with it.  If, however, that hasn’t deterred you, do feel free to ‘follow’ me – Gerry Hayes on Twitter

I know it’s sad.  I have no defence for that.

.

*A prize (well, more kudos really) to the first one that recognises the reference.

Welcome to Stare Into Space.

All new domain name.  All new, and completely original, look (see how it sparkles).  Same old dull content.  I am style above substance; form above function.  I am the lipstick on the pig.

Basically, my old blog was of a bygone era.  An era where I was anonymous and whinging about my day job.  Not actually having that (or, strictly speaking, any) job now, I have no further need of anonymity.  Quite the opposite – now I want people to know who I am.  To that end, I came out, so to speak, on my old blog a while back and, as I try to get people to take me a little more seriously at this writing lark, I began to feel a little embarrassed by my old blog’s name.  I didn’t really want to have to mutter ‘Jimmy Page’s Trousers‘ under my breath when people (and by that I mean important people who might give me money one day) asked for email addresses or the like.

So, I did what anyone would do when a good and loyal friend is considered ‘uncool’ by the in-crowd – I pretended I didn’t actually know Jimmy Page’s Trousers and went off with the cool kids to smoke and drop rocks from the overpass.  Sure, I felt a pang of guilt but, you know, they had beer.

Jimmy Page’s Trousers is no more. From now on, when people think of Gerry Hayes, they will think of staring into space.  Pretty apt really.

I’d really appreciate it anyone who linked to jimmypagestrousers.com could update their sites, links, blogrolls, or whatever to link to www.stareintospace.com

Also, you can click the subscribe icon (if you have one) in your browser’s address bar or click here to subscribe to new posts in your favourite RSS reader/aggregator thing.

Comments and suggestions are (genuinely) welcomed.  There will be some more tweaking of things that vex me with the design, so feel free to add to the list.  Really.

Thanks everyone.