LornaJane

I am a big fan of pretty much anything Nintendo, particularly Zelda and Mario Kart. I loved mario kart doubledash and this was the first driving game I really got into (I still can't do technical driving games, only kiddy ones). So when Mario Kart was launched for Wii, we got it on launch day.


When we first got the game, it seemed like I couldn't play as my favourite character from the other Nintendo games, Princess Daisy. I grumbled a bit and played as peach instead, similar character but pink dress instead of yellow dress. It is actually way more than that of course - Peach is pink and blonde and a bit mainstream. Daisy is sassy and usually unsuitably dressed, I love her :) I looked round for reviews and discovered I could unlock Daisy - she's in the Special Cup on 150cc.

Well, I'm not a brilliant gamer, but I really really wanted Daisy and off I went, time trialling each course to get myself up to speed, and then working through unlocking all the tracks on 50cc, 100cc, 150cc ... along I went, taking more and more preparation and attempts each time, until finally I had the cup I needed. Except, its not that simple. You have to win that grand prix to get it, whereas you only need to be placed (1st, 2nd or 3rd) to unlock the next race. Well that was about 8 weeks ago.

I was coming 2nd in the cup pretty consistently but just couldn't nail that top spot. I time trialled, tried to sort out manual sliding, played against the ghost data, and tried the cup over and over thinking that if I was lucky I'd do it, to the point where I'd pretty much stopped playing completely. And then, today, after a long sleep last night and Sunday Lunch in the pub, we had a quick game on Mario Kart and I beat Kevin on all 4 tracks ... so I gave that special cup another shot - and won it!! So now, I finally have Daisy and shouting "come on Daisy" at the TV works so much better when it really is Daisy in the car :)

I've been using twitter for quite a while now, around a year. And so far, its not going brilliantly.

The problem really is that I don't "get" twitter. I am not online 24/7 so I often only look at my feeds once per day. The conversation in twitter moves faster than that so I rarely reply because usually I've missed the moment. Friends in various timezones also don't help that situation. I haven't really worked out what to do with twitter ... I linked my facebook status to it so that updating one would cause the other to update, thinking I might eventually understand what it was all about.

The only thing that's really changed since I started using it is the number of followers I have, there are more than I really expected. To put this in perspective, I follow twelve people. But seventy people follow me! Not many are complete strangers, some are colleagues, others are online friends. Some of them I would like to follow myself but they are too noisy and since I don't keep up with updates in real time, that doesn't really work for me. I do rather feel like I'm addressing an audience though, slightly spooky.

My twitter timeline is public - this is the point of twitter, its a mass collection of one-liners. It allows clever tools like Summize to show you all posts with given text in it, and things like that. Which is useful if people are talking about you, as I discovered when I was a conference speaker. But it does feel a bit, well, public.

The bottom line is, I'm fed up with twitter, I don't know what to do with it and having more audience is actually making me post less (a bit like being syndicated on the php-planet feed really!) and its so unreliable that half the time when I remember to update, I can't. There's lots of talk of moving to a rival but nobody seems prepared to make the jump. I am completely prepared but I can't find anything to jump to! I looked at Plurk but I have accessibility needs and it doesn't come close to being usable for me. At the moment I think my favourite is FriendFeed - which has the added advantage of being configurable to be private other than to people I approve. It also syndicates people's blogs, flickr accounts, and all sorts of other things, including twitter - so if we all moved to friendfeed then everyone can choose their own twitter replacement, or change it every month, and nobody needs to know because each user manages what goes into their feed that other people see.

I'm not sure if I'm moving away from twitter, stopping using it entirely, or what. Suggestions/comments/experiences are all very welcome!

Whenever I attend a conference or other geeky gathering (GeekUp for example) I'm often asked for my card ... but I don't have one. I don't have work business cards, because only sales people need those, and I don't have personal ones because I don't freelance (or not usually). I finally cracked though and ordered cards from moo.com as recommended by many many people. Here they are:



On the other side I put the angel motif made for me by Gretchen from www.girlscantwhat.com, which I love and use as my online persona in a lot of places. She didn't quite fit and I didn't want to shrink her so instead she peeps out at you:



So if you see me around, and you'd like my card, try asking me again if I have one :)