blogging, 2015 style

So, after eons of dithering, I decided to give Social Media a try.  

Apparently blogs are completely last decade and out of fashion, which makes this post distinctively anachronistic.  Also, apparently, as of October 2015, the two hottest place to publish your thought leadership pieces are Medium and LinkedIn. Yes, the social platform for professionals and job seekers is diversifying into user-created content in a bid to make the 2-sided platform more attractive to social influencers, sales people and recruiters by retaining the eyeballs and attention of the salaried office worker who hangs around LinkedIn because surfing LinkedIn is one of the few accepted forms of loafing that can be legitimately classified as work. Both these platforms come with pre-installed reader bases, and so can help newbie thought leadership writers circumvent the first barrier to continued-writing: that of eyeballs.  

Also, apparently, according to third party interpretation of the TOCs, content posted on these platforms are no longer quite exactly your asset.  But that's, in most cases, okay since the published content is meant viewed by strangers anyway. And who knows what strangers do.

What's the subjective difference between these two platforms?

After pocking around the services a bit, my conclusion is that 

1. Medium has better publishing user-experience (UX)
2. Medium has better reading UX. It is more suitable for (on the demand side) readers who like reading long posts and (on the supply side) writers afflicted with logorrhoea. LinkedIn is better for short snippets of information since business people have attention spans of the this-meeting-is-really-boring-let's-see-how-I-can-entertain-myself-by-glancing-surreptitiously-at-the-mobile-phone type.
3. Content wise, Medium is more lifestyle-orientated while LinkedIn is (unsurprisingly) more business-centric.

Given the nature of the drivel that I wanted to post, Medium provides a better fit.

What about other platforms?

I took one look at Facebook's Notes function on the desktop browser and promptly closed the tab.  After being conditioned to the mobile version of FB, the desktop UX is visually a world of pain.

For clarification: the publishing functionality on both Medium and LinkedIn are limited on the mobile platform, hence the default to the desktop. 

Unrelated side note: whoever said the mobile has totally and utterly killed the desktop or laptop obviously hadn't built powerpoint decks (as reports) or complicated excel models. 

No, Reddit doesn't count.

Experiment setup

1. Wrote an article and stuck it on Medium. Link here: http://bit.ly/1XwphPd The use of bit.ly is also an experiment, bit.ly being the 140-character-Tweet-enabler service that shortens long links.
2. Stuck the shortened link on Twitter, commenting & hash-tagging appropriately.
3. Shared the article on LinkedIn via a post (not a repost!), using the full link for variety's sake.

Observation so far

Sufficient observation has been given to UX.

What about eyeballs? Given the extreme drivel-class of the content, I expect extremely viscous diffusion to the links.  On verra! 

Random Observations

Upon hot air, eagles soar.

(author's right to the metaphor is hereby exerted)

What a Word!

What a word!

tergiversate

New Words to add to your vocabulary

I found three new words to add to the "Little Vocabulary Book" in one article of the venerable and authoritative Economist.

They are

febrile

assiduous

dirigiste

Call me daft, but what an adventure of discovery when I can do a "Google>define: *" search on the trusty mobile phone and get a near instantaneous definition while sitting in a cafe enjoying the good read.

A very brief journey into Chinese Language and History

(Alas, the wonders of the World Wide Web! Google and Wikipedia are your friends!)

大清国国旗国歌
This is a great account of the history of the Qing Dynasty's flag and anthem The Cup of Solid Gold, and the The Tune of Li Zhongtang. More about the various Chinese Anthems here.

文悦
The famous Song Dynasty general and patriot 岳飞 (Yue Fei) who wrote the poem 满江红 (Mǎn Jīang Hóng). This is written in relatively comprehensible Classical Chinese, a beautiful language which isn't exactly the most friendly. You can read about the good general in 文言文 on 文言維基大典...

Yet there are always exceptions, and the 施氏食狮史 (The story of the poet Shi eating lions). Seriously, the poem itself (written by the poet 赵元任 to make a point) is eminently comprehensible on sight, but try reciting the poem out loud!

石室诗士施氏，嗜狮，誓食十狮。
氏时时适市视狮。
十时，适十狮适市。
是时，适施氏适市。
氏视是十狮，恃矢势，使是十狮逝世。
氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。
石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。
石室拭，氏始试食是十狮。
食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮。
试释是事。

切記: 丙戌年十二月十五 (公曆二千零六年二月二日)，萬國氣候變更會（IPCC）曰：「吾人所見氣候變更，當屬人為也。」

三字经

Full credits to this post attributed to the fantastic Gutenburg Project (Traditional Chinese B5 encoding) and here (simplified Chinese GB2312 encoding).

As with everything else, there's a bit of revision history going on there. This thing was originally written ages ago, with versions littering throughout the ages. My personal chuckle (cool!) moment came when I read this (which apparently isn't in the 宋 version)

辽于金，皆称帝。太祖兴，国大明。号洪武，都金陵。迨成祖，迁燕京。十六世，至崇祯。阉乱后，寇内讧。闯逆变，神器终。清顺治，据神京。至十传，宣统逊。举总统，共和成。复汉土，民国兴。

What? okay, so we want to add in 明 dynasty history. Okay. but why are we using 十六世? And this 复汉土... does it refer to the end of the Second World War? It has to be, because it refers to the People's Republic, 民国. The previous part about proclaiming the President, that links in with the Republic, 共和.

This is the beauty of the Chinese language. One can parse history, people, nature, literature, everything, in three-word phrases. Ah. Beauty.

Remember, Remember the 8th of September....

Remember Remember the Eighth of September
The Enterprise, phasers, and Spock
I know of no reason that Star Trek's first season
Should ever be forgot

:)

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I'm sure I've mentioned previously that Neil Gaiman's the Sandman is one of my favourite piece of literary artwork ever. I've been reading 'The Sandman Papers: An exploration of the Sandman Mythology edited by Joe Sanders Published by Fantagraphics Books' over the past few days. The Papers ran almost the entire gamut of academic discourse on the series of work: from the study of female power to the depiction of the trinity of the Crone, the Mother and the Maiden to Asian influence on Sandman's clothing and the associated cultural associations of change and supreme powers, to (perhaps the most powerful idea explored in the Papers) the concept of change. I can't do the arguments justice by paraphrasing the points here, so I will leave in their place a poignant moment that the Papers evoked in this reader.

There's a line that Morpheus spoke to Queen Titania in the Midsummer Night's Dream regarding the granting of the 'talent' boon to William Shakespeare.

But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted

This is a true statement.

The price, the sacrifice, the 'that which is left behind'. because needs and wants change, and change is the only constant in the universe.

==========================================

Indulge me, gentle reader, for a short moment (and moments are all we have, in this great river of time, each moment as precious as sunlight through stained glass murals), as Delight presents Badly Written Jingle #1

Ahem. *cues cheapo jinglistic music*

They say money can't buy you love, and
Money can't buy you joy.
But Money can buy you a glimmer of hope
bright against the dreary sky.
SSSSOOOOO........
embrace debt!
If you're confident of your ROI
embrace debt!
If your future CF brings smiles
embrace debt!
If you know money is the key part of the capitalist system
embrace debt!

Thank you. This has been a Delight Productions.

cognito

A spin on the original -

Cognito cognito cognito ergo sum -- Ambrose Bierce

Frying Small Fishes...

老子 "道德經"

60 治大國若烹小鮮。

'Governing a country is like frying a small fish', so said Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu in 'Tao Te Ching' (verse 60). Implication, is of course, that you spoil it with too much poking.

Executives, executors, executioners, take note.