technology and life

I chose a blog by a woman using the name knotty grrl. Her most recent post struck me because it was about the loss of her mother. Apparently, her mother had died about seven months ago, but she was still feeling the effects. It was a short, simple post, but it jumped out at me because I can relate. While I (fortunately) have not lost my mother, my grandmother passed away just over two weeks ago. She had been sick, but it still hurt us to deal with, especially my being away at school. So I feel this woman’s pain.
This is a rather short post. In fact, most of her entries are short. They are usually just a random post to inform readers of the latest thing bothering her, or to share a funny quote. She writes about things she learns in her classes, and how they affect her life. She always usually includes a Question of the Day for us to think about, and she provides us with what her answer to that question is. There are very few postings up on this current blog; however, the first post says that she has moved and this is now her third blog. I’m looking into finding the other two, but it’s rather difficult due to her anonymity and the hundreds of blogging sites now available. As soon as I find it or learn more, I will be sure to update. For now, though, you can check her out at: http://knottygrrl.vox.com/library/post/missing-my-mom.html.

I love my RSS feed. I just used the basic Google Reader feed, since I already have a gmail account and use it regularly. I customized it to what I am interested, which includes sports (college and professional), food (hey, I’m Italian), thinkers (for that nerd in me), fun stuff (news-like things but they usually aren’t serious), real news (I love the New York Times) and, of course, all of our blogs for this class.
http://www.google.com/reader

Some other interesting sites:
http://www.littletoncoin.com/html/Quarter_Release.html

It really doesn’t have anything to do with our class, but it is the release schedule for all those state quarters. Being the nerd that I am, I collect these quarters, so I like knowing what is out and when.

http://www.wordsmith.org

It’s a site dedicated to languages, and how they come to be. There are posts daily involving new words, words that come into a language from another language, and so on. I even have the Word-a-Day option selected. They send me a fun new word via email everyday. I usually try to find some way to use it in a normal conversation during that day. Hey, I told you I’m a nerd.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)

This is the wikipedia article about RSS feeds. It explains the history, things that work or don’t work, and gives an example. I found it rather helpful.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1463

This is an interesting article I found regarding social networking sites like myspace and facebook. It mentions some of the main things we know, like the privacy issue. It also describes some of the trends of these sites, and how it is affecting the world, now and in the future.