Realizing that daily updates from those I follow on Twitter outnumber my total number of updates, I logged in and glanced over at the public timeline. Someone mentioned how saddened she was to hear about Ingmar Bergman. Saddened? Did Bergman die? Sure enough, a couple of clicks later I found that Ingmar Bergman did indeed die earlier today.
Bergman is considered to be one of the most influential film directors of the 20th century. Before being drawn to computer science, I used to want to make my mark in the world as a film maker. I can still remember first mentioning my film making aspirations to a mentor and being referred to Ingmar Bergman’s movies. The Seventh Seal and Through A Glass Darkly quickly made it to my own list of movie recommendations. Using creative outlets to explore dark themes has always been something I’ve been drawn to, and the works of art I admire most seem to reflect the most tormented of souls as creators.
Now Berman is dead. With all the different methods of news delivery methods, I heard about this event through Twitter. Not newspaper. Not CNN. Not the streaming news ticker at the bottom of my local news channel. Definitely not radio. Not from my RSS reader. Not even one of the Twitter members whose updates I follow. I first heard about this through the Twitter public timeline, which refreshes regularly and shows the updates of all Twitter members who elect to keep their updates public.
This got me to thinking about how often I now first hear of something through a social networking site. Obviously, some of the more personal (i.e., not newsmedia-worthy) events are better suited for sharing via Facebook or MySpace. But other happenings which do get covered by more traditional forms of journalism are slowly gaining my attention more effectively through new channels of communication. A bulletin may ask me to sign a petition in support of a Congressional bill and this is what alerts me to a particular debate. A link to results of a study in a scientific study could be shared. Someone running from a steam pipe explosion in New York can provide me with instant firsthand accounts.
Of course, I don’t consider MySpace or Twitter to be credible news sources. When I saw mention of Bergman’s death on Twitter the first thing I did was check another source. I also still rarely see news for the first time on a social networking site. Major news outlets certainly shouldn’t worry about being supplanted by these sites. News obtained through these new avenues of communication don’t happen often enough to change the news industry, but just a handful of occurrences would be enough to get noticed.
If you are like me, you enjoy the plethora of services offered by Google. From email to calendar appointments, to simple word processing documents, quite a bit of data can be accumulated in these various applications. That is a whole lot of data to entrust to Google’s servers!
Adam Pash from Lifehacker has written a thorough post describing backup strategies on the Google services most often used.
My calendar gets synced with Plaxo and my work email already gets downloaded to Thunderbird, but the Lifehacker strategies would greatly strengthen my comfort level in those backups. Also, thought of resubscribing to all those blogs makes me shudder. It’s time to backup those subscriptions!
There are undoubtedly other ways of backing up Google Apps data. Have you found a way to back up your data? Are there any other Google services not covered in the post for which you have found a backup solution?
Things do certainly change but it is amazing how much actually stays the same. I spent the weekend going through some old letters, cards, and personal journals. Among the journals found was the first one I wrote in regularly at the age of 12. Entries proclaimed groundbreaking revelations like discovering that I was no longer the only girl in class who had begun menstruating. Posts on boys at the time seemed to center around disgust at the sheer number of times they passed gas. Most of the letters I read were also from when I was aged 12 until about 14. Even those from when I was a few years older were with the same people I had met during those formative years. Sheer nostalgia at revisiting those times soon gave way to another revelation. Insights into personal life experiences may differ quite a bit now and I may respond to situations differently, but the essence of who I am has never changed.
“Don’t think so hard,” was a recurring mantra to me by various friends. Yes, I will readily admit that I am a thinker. I pride myself on continually learning whenever possible. A struggle growing up was sometimes overanalyzing a problem or idea to the point that action was hindered. Although I can’t say I’ve done a complete turnaround, over time I’ve learned to rely on the constant research and trust my gut to instantly make a choice when the time came.
Just the other day I took a quick survey and found that I am the Enneagram Institute Investigative Type.
Several other Enneagram Types also ranked highly for me. All of us can at times display qualities of any one of those types. But yearning to learn more, perceiving minute details, envisioning a world of possibilities – those are all things I do now and have always done.
How about you? Think back to your adolescent days. What qualities about you have changed since then? What continues to be the same? Are you surprised?
