Big Friendly

So my big announcement of last week that I’m deleting my Facebook account has come to naught. Not that I was weak of character, or couldn’t bare to be without my voyeur fix for the day. The truth is that I’m in the web business and more and more of my clients are wanting to be on Facebook and Twitter all the time and for me to advice them and assist them I have to be on it. So, I’m still there and will remain there for now.

I still think that we are being handed candy by strangers while all kinds of molestation takes place, but for now I’ll just have to take it and keep my info to the bare minimum. If you don’t drop your drawers they can’t slip you a fast one.

I’m on the couch with flu (or just a bad cold). I hate being sick, but seem to have exploiting it down to a fine art. I’ve watched two Super 14 matches, one very kak movie and been trying to do some work (NSFW). Winter has come to Cape Town and it’s nice and warm here under the blanky with Annie on my legs.

I’ve had my finger of the red button for a while now. I’ve been close to the edge a few times now, knuckles white and sweat dripping off my brow but time and again I blinked. I’ve read how Facebook changes it’s privacy policy over and over to suits it’s partners and own interests. It’s reached the point we are lining up at the Rohypnol vending machine so that Mark Zuckerberg can have his way with us. We don’t resist. We don’t object. We just till the fields while our homesteads are plundered. No more. Deleting my Facebook account makes no difference to the numbers, but every drip ads to the corrosion.

So, from today I will be visiting this site every time I feel the urge to visit Facebook.

For the handful of visitors to this blog, do yourself a favour and read “Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative”. Enough said.

Breaking up is hard to do. The relationship is stale and has become one sided. I seem to be the one doing all the work and investing all the time, and all it does is try and find new ways to fuck me over. I’m reading daily how it is finding new ways of exposing my most intimate details to a bunch of couch farmers. I’m tired of the friend requests from people who I don’t really know or even care about. The sum total of people of value in my life is about 20, not the 122 I currently seem to have. If people want to know me they do. If all the effort they are prepared to put into finding out how the hell I’m doing is opening a web browser then bollocks to them I say. Pish on them and their friendships.

Not that I’m exactly living my life on Facebook mind you, I do the occasional Like (why the fuck can’t I Don’t Like or Hate or Disagree or Love or Agree or Sneer?), make the occasional “clever” comment. I do post the occasional link though, like this one that has given rise to this rant. And I try and warn people off the scams that I’m aware of, the current one is “Disney’s Most Shocking Hidden Message! All of You Have Never Seen Before!”, don’t click on it people and don’t Like it, or Fan it. It puts Brooklax in your coffee, hides all your toilet paper, roller towels and tissues and sits in the corner sniggering at you.

I’m tired of all the apps, games and causes that you are asked to join. If you want to save the Whale or Lesser Known Rainbow Snoek or Kill Malema and/or Obama or protest the fact that Riaan Cruywagen has changed his hairstyle for the first time in 45 years of presenting the news, then get active. Do something! Joining a Facebook page isn’t going to change one little thing.

So, I’ll be harvesting the email addresses of the people who I really want to be in contact with this weekend and then it’s time to start removing my stuff off Facebook. I’ve read that the best thing to do is slowly removing your info before you deactivate your profile.

Update: Habibti has posted a “different” perspective on the whole Facebook thing. I still think Riaan should be allowed to do with his hair as he pleases.

I’ve just installed it and I’m already  impressed. One of the default languages is Afrikaans, which means you could have the Administrator interface in Afrikaans. Very cool, now if only we could get Zulu and Xhosa language files as part of the default package I would be very happy. The down side of this is that I’m going to have to pitch all my clients on the upgrade, but will wait and see what happens with all the modules and components that I use by default.

There is also a new version of WordPress out which I must apply to all the blogs I host. I have to find a way to make money off this.

Habibti has just asked me to register a domain a deploy WordPress for a friend of hers. I really must get my head around how to make use of WordPress MU.

I must also admit to feeling like a bit of a hypocrite. I’ve just turned my sister on to Facebook while I’m trying to get my act together to remove myself from it. Maybe I’m just get a little paranoid, but I can’t help but feel they are gathering too much information on me that I can never get back. Who knows, someday in the near future I could be sitting here with a tinfoil hat on and a can of Doom next to my mouse because the cockroaches are trying to control my mind.

I’ve removed the theme I was using because I’ve decided to create my own look and feel. As I’m just starting, and I’m by no means a designer, the site will probably look like this for a while.

When I started hosting and supporting blogs for others I was always on the lookout for good free themes to recommend and use. After reading how templatesbrowser.com were inserting malicious code and redistributing the free themes I started becoming suspicious of everything I came across. You can read more about it here and here.

Blogs that I host and provide support for are Megan’s Head, ToingToing!, Love Bucket and Asendle Trust. So that’s four other blogs I’m going to have to create designs for. Sorry for them guys and lady guys.

So, if you have downloaded a theme or template for either WordPress or Joomla! from templatesbrowser.com rather remove it and see of you can find the origination of this theme/template to download for use.

And this morning I was reading this piece regarding a Facebook widget that installs spyware on the user’s computer. So if you have a crush on somebody rather pick up the phone and tell them, buy them a card and write:

Violets are blue
Roses are red
I have a crush on you
So how about going to bed?

send them some flowers and invite them out for a meal. Make it personal and look them in the eyes. You will both get a lot more out of the whole experience ….. even if they do tell you to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut. At least your computer is safe.

Don’t be so quick to trust everything you find on the web, and with a little effort you can do better anyway.