My Dear Hard Drive

When I first heard about it last weekend, it made my stomach turn. I had just moved to a country that I thought was perfect in most senses - if the higher broad band prices and slower connections that I had gotten used to didn’t count. Internet to me is like a life line. It helps me breath easier. And now, they want to tell me that they want to control my breathing. They want to make sure, that I don’t say anything that they don’t approve. Seriously, if this bill goes through, we’re moving to New Zealand. (Prepare for a flood NZ!)

The politicians say this is to protect the children from harmful content on the internet. They want to filter out anything that is inappropriate for a 15 year old or younger, according to the ACMA regulations. Why don’t you just pass a law that parents have to install a content filter for their own computer if you insist on the child safety issue?

And if it is a ploy to protect the children, what about us that have none? If we want to watch porn online we should be allowed to! What about non-filtered ISP’s for people who don’t have children? Should parents who have children be still allowed to access the net unfiltered if they are not concerned with the “baddies” or are capable to filter the content themselves.

I agree that it might be wise to OFFER a filtered service, but should it be compulsory? Good heavens, no. That just as a mere thought is appalling and sends the message of a 3rd world country out to the rest of the world. Even if it did bring no relevant harm to the user, the mere thought of a filtered Internet goes against everything I believe in, and while the world is getting more and more tolerable and liberal, this kind of approaches don’t really go down do well in International image of Australia. Internationally, people won’t be interested HOW Australia does it or WHAT is filtered, all they will hear is “Australia sensors the Internet just like China” and that’s it. China, I tell you. The country that forged a child’s singing voice.

Now if you have ever seen the Google keywords and phrases that your blog is picked up with as search results, you may also raise this question. If my blog is found with phrase “child nudity porn” is it then filtered out completely? Rest assured, nowhere on this site, or any of my other sites, have I published child porn, but clearly, I have used the word, child, nudity and porn in one place or another, sometimes even in the same post. HOW is this content filtered anyway?

What really grosses me out on this is having moral values forced upon me, in a free democratic country! The Internet is the place where you can find support, friends, soul mates and be free & yourself, and that should include the possibility of viewing and sharing material that some people would find objectionable. Should this filter be installed, who will then control what is filtered out? One day it’s adult content, the next day it’s anti-religious material and then political issues… Content warnings on TV are enough to piss me off, but I understand them. TV cannot be filtered on a device level, but your computer can. I think we should keep it at that.

More on the topic by politicians and by Aussie Bloggers.

Are you one of those people who add friends on social networking sites or blog catalogues to improve their exposure / readership / social status? YOU ARE WASTING YOUR TIME. Have you ever seen any rating for the amount of friends anywhere apart the number that shows how many friends you have? Have you ever considered the fact that having more than a 100 friends (depending on the type of network the number can be larger. Ie. Flickr as pointed out in the comments) on your list will seriously effect your credibility, unless you really ARE famous? Like it’s okay for Britney Spears to have 100000+ friends on her MySpace profile (if she has one) but if you’re more like Sally Nextdoor, having more than a hundred tells people that you are desperate for attention, you don’t have real friends, you don’t know the meaning of friends, and that you are currently spamming a lot of people with your personal crap.

If you think that having your profile picture displayed together with tons of other profiles will bring you traffic, you’re wrong. Do you know ANYONE who browses friends of friends beyond the Top Friends? I certainly don’t. So if you don’t have a real relationship with the person on your friend list, you won’t gain any advantage of it, quite the opposite.

This goes with BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog as well. The more friends you have, the less value YOU have to people you add. Why would anyone want to be one of your thousand friends? They know you don’t care. They know you won’t remember 15 minutes from the time you added them that you did. All you put out is negative vibes, as everyone knows you don’t have time to follow all these blogs even if it was the only thing you did in your life - and that would make you officially pathetic if you did.

The more popular you are in reality, the less you tend to make “add me” requests, because you don’t have to. You don’t have to beg for attention, and you start to clear out the bulk from your friends list to keep only those you really are interested in. That shows your real friends you give value to them, and it shows people you wish to know, that you are not over worked by the number of people you have to socialise with so that they too may have a chance to actually getting to know you.

If anyone has a real good reason to do this, and it being so popular I would imagine someone has some rationale behind it, please do share if you dare!

I was looking for an online community for people who don’t want to have children. This was because I generally feel a bit… Well out of my place surrounded with women of my age who are either having children or desperately trying to have children. I search through blogging sites and come across 10 blogs by blogging moms who rule.

I don’t hate kids or anything, just that since I don’t have one, I have none in my near family and my closest experience of kids is having been one, I really don’t feel that connection with moms - unless we have something else to talk about of course. But often, kids take so much of your time that you just can’t focus on anything else, and in all reality, why would you want to?

So I went looking for those communities and was surprised not to find any other than No Kidding, which didn’t seem to have a working online community and was really full on about the no kids stuff. I don’t want to talk about “childfree issues” I just want to talk to people who’s lives aren’t wrapped around a 1 inch little finger.

So my solution is to create a community, I know how to do it technically, but the community creation is a whole other matter, isn’t it? So first I will tell you guys that it exists and can be found here. Sure, it’s barely alive yet, but should you find the idea interesting, you could register on the forum to receive updates - I will be sure to notify you when there’s enough people not having to talk to yourself the whole time…

Feed from the forum:
Childfree
Live information from Childfree

Do you like kids?
Ok, we don´t want to have children of our own, but do we like kids in general? For example, are you godparents?

To me kids are ok, I don´t mind being in a same room with babies or children. But I´m glad that I´m not their mother 


Re: How does your family and friends fell about YNHK?
Me and my husband had told her that we don´t want to have kids, but my mother just don´t believe us... She assumes that my husband would like to have kids...

When will she believe it?
Re: How does your family and friends fell about YNHK?
How clear have you been about the fact it's your choice not to have children? Are they still assuming that you want some someday, but haven't yet tried? Did you tell her that you have discussed the topic and have in fact decided th...
Re: What are the funniest / silliest pieces of advice you've been given?
Oh that's a tricky one... Adalia's mother-in-law is suggesting Adalia and her husband should become a foster parents for abused/neglected children. It sounds like she really doesn't get the grasp of the idea of someone not wanting children. :D
Re: What are the funniest / silliest pieces of advice you've been given?
My mother-in-law has given up the hope that I get pregnant soon, so she has suggested us to adopt a child. And my father-in-law told us last week that we should give home to children, whose own parents can´t/ dont want to take care of (huostaanotettu i...

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When I moved my blog from .net/blog to just .net, the SezWho plugin stopped working. SezWho is a plugin that promotes commenting on your blog, by allowing visitors to rate each others answers which will be collected to an universal profile. You can also follow your conversations, or another members conversations, through SezWho. I contacted the support the day before yesterday when I felt up to it, and got very personal help for my problem.

People often complain about customer service especially on free services like SezWho, but I have to say that was up there with the best paid services I’ve used. I didn’t have to wait for long to get an answer, then I got help by email and was offered help through Skype but they solved the problem before I saw that message. Very cool. And in the end they were happy to have gotten some debugging experience.

Thanks SezWho, sezI. (Apparently there are some people from SezWho in the pic there.)

If you are setting up or running a forum, one of the most important things with creating a relaxed atmosphere is to select the right emotioncs for your boards. That may sound funny, but on every forum I’ve ever run, I have had a set of carefully selected emoticons, and people LOVE them. On one board, they came such a part of the community, that I felt compelled to give them a week off from work. (This was to rearrange them really, but I informed people that they have been working so hard that I’m giving them a week off.) The response was hilarious. People didn’t want to see them go, but understood their need for rest and requested post cards from their holiday resort. (And indeed got a photo with all those emoticons in front of an European church.)

When ever I’m a member of a discussion board that only allows the basic set of yellow faces, I feel kind of depressed. It tells me that this board is SERIOUS, and the guy running it doesn’t really care about the members. The set of emoticons that are available on a board, also tell me about the sense of humour on the board, and topics that area allowed. (You can get rather naughty little emoticons if you look for them!) There is a wonderful world of emoticons out there, let me tell you! They make you laughThey make you cry.. and when you’re feeling low, they give you a hug.

To help you to get started, I have collected a basic set of smileys for you to use instead of those awful yellow ones. It still comes with Mr. Green though, as there’s nothing better than Mr. Green! (What? You didn’t know he had a name?!)

Download the groovy basic smiley set

As far as I know all these emoticons have been published in the public domain. I have mainly downloaded them at Deviant Art, which has a great section for emoticons!

One word of advice though: Don’t put all the icons into the post form, but set most of them into the pop-up window, as having a lot of them clickable will slow down your forum. Put the most used icons on the form and the rest of them behind the “more” screen. Also when selecting post forum icons, stick with the standard sized icons, that won’t stretch the rows too much, or it’ll look quite messy.

Then wait to see the reactions when you put up more smileys! I quarantee your members will be stoked!