17 posts tagged “blogging”
Joyful Equator originally uploaded by Ikhlasul Amal
Back, back, and back in blogging!
I promised several times, but many times also it was not easy to keep my promises work well. Consistent, commitment, and mood were so fluctuative enough to push me to the top, but also to bring me under pressure. Photoblogging is nice – I love taking daily photos; microblogging is also fun – SMS-size expression is short, need tiny amount of time, and provocative.
But blogging the classic way, the previous way I did, is still in need to revive. For sentimental reasons, good exercises, and surely funs!
Blogging calls me, and I respond for today using spirit of "Hari yang Cerah" (brightful day). This is quoted from Bandung's very famous band, Peterpan. The last part of their quotation, "hati yang sepi" (lonely heart), is cut to keep optimism alive. Also, why distributing bad mood to others, while we can smile together, embracing world!
Take my words: Brightful day for happy soul!
Next eight hours to turn into 2008.
Time passes by, frequently felt as superquick, and I can not distinguish between one day to others – really. They are workdays, weekends, beginning of week, month, year – or whatever, end of week, month, year – or whatever. I move from one to next, dig inside sometimes, with all of any events I celebrate or let them gone.
But for the beginning of 2008, I have a wish, a simple one: my blogging activity must revive again, must be waken from a long hiatus. I have to write more and more entries, even things that seems a bit unimportant or less noticed.
Happy New Year 2008.
Pesta Blogger (Blogger Fiesta), an Indonesian blogger party, will be held next week, Sat. 27 Oct, in Blitz Megaplex Jakarta. I had received an invitation from Chairman of the party, Enda Nasution, replied as "CONFIRMED" and passcode for the party came two days after. Several serious movements had been marked in Indonesia blogosphere, either in quantity or quality enhancement as well. Blogging is nowadays a popular keyword connecting various interests. Individuals, mainstream media, organizations, and even commercial entities are in competition provide blogs to achieve goals, to embrace audience, and to promote into public. Even Vox as a brand comes into Indonesia displayed on many Nokia's advertisings.
In Pesta, first I would love to meet many well-known bloggers vis-a-vis, talk and have fun, and the rest... I will follow commitee of Pesta's plans. Great expectations about bloggins are okay, but still stand on realities are also important. In a large area like Indonesia, it is very difficult to achieve national-wide goals furthermore by grassroot movements like blogger. So, keep going in the first time, and hope it will be able to continue in the next occassions.
Amen...
I was mandated to write about blogging on Asia Blogging; actually that was a choice among many, and I was agree to handle for "blogging."
But what will it be different? Regarding to my topics in this Vox which is also about "blogging as a lifestyle", I had to consider it may not go overlapping. In quick decision on my trip to Jakarta, I thought about Asia Blogging mission to "explore" Asia. Short conclusion: I will blog about Asia culture and lifestyle charged to blogging.
Second, I need to be aware about "developing nations". This is not about fund or something as real incentives, instead an education in all and broad meaning. So this comes to blog: to educate, to empower people in some kind of ways.
I hope this will not be a bombastic buzzwords. Other than writing, I would love to meet people, talk to them about some possibilities to enhance their life using new media.
So let's get blogging, in some other kind ways.
At the same time scheduled soft launching reached any last minutes "checksound", we gathered in monthly IT community meeting in Bandung. Right, on 1 June Asia Blogging Network did hardly completing various posts, finishing acessories, about this and that, scripts, and also themes to conform to milestones listed before.
On Thursday, 6 June, official announcement was declared and team members wrote their own "individual announcement" on each blog. We decided that words of mouth is potential enough to create snowball effects, the way many of Web 2.0 start their services, and – most important – reduce promotion into less-expensive one. Because Budi Putra, the CEO of Asia Blogging Network, still has many friends working in mainstream media, his network helped launching since the day one.
Yes, Asia Blogging Network – I admit this posting is also one kind of promotion written by a team member of this initiative, so Harry Sufehmi told that it would be potentially biased. Okay, no early review; it is better to go directly there rather than judged by [biased] reviewer. Finally, this means I must write double, take care of its members, and share more passions about blogging.
Thank you.
As several times happened, I was busy creating new layout replacing old one that made horrible extra space in Internet Explorer. Thomas Arie Setiawan helped me guiding simple-but-useful trick for IE regarding to its handling floating div. It works well mostly because all I need is minimalist and extreme simplicity layout. Still, I needed to spend extra days to move front page, archives, individual entries, and about pages. Other worth things: I managed revisions of layout using Subversion on my Ubuntu, resulting experience of better approaches that will be used to handle various software development projects in my office.
Other interesting experiment I had done in April was photoblogging. Having exceeded my limitation for Flickr's free account, I bought pro account. Never let it be only a status labelled by Flickr, I push myself to take many and many pictures, store them in my local hard disk, and choose the best one I can have, then upload to Flickr. I do that daily or during events, raw captures by hand or handled by extra tools like tripod. Either using my old, secondhanded Olympus camera, or quick capturing by my Sony Ericsson mobile phone are all well-done. My current target is documenting almost all situations I meet and experimenting to tell using photos. That is photoblog inside my mind for now.
So, do I really miss April?
Take my shameless promotion: visit my Flickr's photostream.
After attending Telkom's (Indonesian state's phone company) blogging happy hours in Landmark Building, Bandung, West Java [pictures], I and Kuncoro spent some minutes in Braga City Walk for dinner. They had music and dance for visitors inside, but we were not so interested.
We left and saw Braga Street was crowded with pupils from various high schools bringing fire in parade. That Friday evening, 23 March, was special for Bandung to celebrate moment of National Revolution. Quoted from Wikipedia – where I found English translation, "Sea of Fire",
An ultimatum was given by the British commander in Bandung for the Indonesian combatants in Bandung to leave the city. In response, the southern part of Bandung was deliberately burned down in an act of defiance as they left on March 24th 1946; an event which came to be known as Bandung Lautan Api (or Bandung Sea of Fire). The revolutionary song "Halo-halo Bandung" was sung by hundreds of Indonesian nationalists in Bandung.
So, happy "Halo-halo Bandung!"
[update, 30 March] Kuncoro also wrote about Sea of Fire (in Bahasa Indonesia) and provided some pictures he took.
So you want keep in touch to blogging but dislike writing too much – will it be a strange thing?
Quote Ruttherford,
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
Wise word: collecting.
Beginning in Bloglines, their feed reader has provided a way to mark "shared items" and fulfiled with our own note, so we do blogging by "completing" others' items. I ever tried this way of blogging around some weeks, then stopped to continue. One of primary reason was I got bored to Bloglines' user interface.
Now come Google Reader. I love its interface and soon after, I use Reader for my feed reader. Beside Google's famous star-important mark, Reader offers "share items". All shared items can be seen as a collection on a webpage, and nice-look. Though you can not add your own note like in Bloglines.
So, you still stand close to blogging. Here is: do continue blogwalking and on every interesting entry (judge with your own preferences), mark it as "shared". People will be helped reading nice collections you provide.
One of Indonesian journalist who finally decided to leave his media and started blogging full time was Budi Putra. I met him for several occasions, talked about his decision, before and after announcement, and appreciate to all things he had chosen.
But I would like to not talking about his steps to be a full time blogger this time – for several reasons below.
First and important: for anything he does it is up to him to do, that is his personal choice. Today is his early step – or even a first step – to next important steps. Unfortunately, Budi does not expose something as "his plan" after his decision, so I think we have to wait for his real actions. He "whispered" some about his raw plans. But to be safe, it is better to "wait and see" not only about how nice the plans will be, but how reliable it can accomodate many things.
Other than that, I personally have few differences in meaning of blogging to Budi. He emphasized blogging closing to journalism and practising some of its ways around, while I see blogging is a way to ease everyone to expose his/her expertise or experience.
I notice on many media in Indonesia that blog is now exposed increasingly. Bloggers, blogging (the activities), blog definition, and howto blog are talked in several sessions. Sometimes it is embraced with other issues such as Web 2.0, social networks, and new media/journalism. I talked with several older people and they confirmed me that they had ever read several articles about blogging by step. Perhaps they do not yet come into "big picture", but a preview taste does.
Mainstream media also uses notably well-known figure to bridge this kind of new media into well-accepted prespective. I was also informed that there was indeed a few resistance inside mainstream media facing this new wave. I think that is very normal as people needs attention between something that has been established enough to something new.
So, get blogging! There will be more people watching.
