One-third life crisis

Sat, 15 Mar 2014
1 min read
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That's all, folks!
That’s all, folks!

Upon meeting someone for the first time today, he says, “Yes, I’ve heard a lot about you. Your (Facebook) status updates are very funny.”

Thoughts that immediately entered my mind:

  • Is that going to go on my tombstone i.e. “Here lies Laremy Lee. His Facebook status updates were very funny?”
  • Is that is all I am known for??
  • What have I been doing with my life, if I am defined by funny Facebook status updates???

#KNN #onethirdlifecrisis

BONUS: Cruel or irrelevant comments – as seems to be the norm – from my relations and friends.

  • Fool, revise your privacy settings. Strangers are reading you?!!! (This one, from my sister, received 11 likes on Facebook.)
  • Weren’t you a nominated member of parliament?
  • Haha your this status update is very funny.

Privacy settings

Tue, 27 Nov 2012
2 min read
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Speaking in hushed tones

While at the dentist yesterday, the patient before me was speaking so loudly that the entire waiting room could hear what he was saying.

In other words: he needed to tweak his privacy settings.

What was he saying? These were some choice quotes from him:

  • “You all only work 5 days a week; I work 8 days!”
  • “I’m a divorcee!”
  • “So you’re doing this with your dad? (Dentist says dad passed away.) Oh I’m so sorry doc! (Dentist says dad passed away 16 years ago.) Oh I’m so sorry doc!”
  • “I’m 56 years old!”
  • “I like skateboarding… I’m a cowboy… I’m a rocker too.”

I thought it was hilarious so I posted this on Facebook.

In his defence (for whatever strange reason), my friends responded:

  • “Anaesthetics as truth serum.”
  • “Nervous lah – it’s the tension that’s making him talk!”
  • “It’s probably the nitrous oxide. You should try it sometime.”

I still felt he was talking too much without filtering what he was saying, though.

Not long after, I received this text message from my sister:

“Eh you’re at the dentist? Can help me buy Dr Tung’s Dental Floss, please?”

-_-

I think I need to tweak my privacy settings.

P.S. I posted my sister’s message – along with my opinion about my own privacy settings – on Facebook.

My sister hasn’t scolded me yet about posting up her orthodontic habits online for all and sundry, but if she does, I’ll blame it on the tension and the nitrous oxide.

Crystal gazing

Tue, 27 Dec 2011
3 min read
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I can’t sleep so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone by dashing off a quick post.

I’m hoping the writing will tire me out enough for me to sleep, and also because I thought I’d share what’s on my mind – which is, coincidentally, the same thing that’s preventing me from sleeping.

—

Hand with Reflecting Sphere by M. C. Escher.

Since my last prophetic success (LOL), I’d like to make a few more social media predictions (which aren’t so far removed from my own technological wish-list, actually):

  1. Tit for Tat:
    A Facebook app that goes through your friend list, discovers what privacy settings people use on you and apply those same settings back on them.

    Sounds like childish pettiness, I know, but look at it his way: we’ve reached an age in which information can be valued – or priced.

    Hence, if Entity A has more information about Entity B than the converse, Entity A has greater leverage and Entity B stands to lose out.

    Now, answer me truthfully: would you rather be Entity A or Entity B?

    Precisely.

    And knowing how some of our information on Facebook has the potential to make or break us, it’s only fair for information to be shared in as fair a manner as possible.

    I’m as sure as hell not going to trawl through my Friend list to figure out privacy settings for each individual ‘Friend’, so an automated process to do this would be nice.

  2. Mute function and Timeline for Twitter web client:
    These are actually quite low-level ideas, but I think they’d really make Twitter better to use in the long run.

    • When I’m using my Mac at home, I have Tweetdeck which works great in terms of muting stupid people who tweet about inane things.

      However, I don’t always use a Twitter app that has this function which means there’s a lot of noise I have no way of filtering out.

      I’d unfollow these people, but I think it’s rude, so I’d rather just mute them – similar principle to that of Tit-for-Tat, I guess.

    • Twitter needs a timeline in the same way Facebook has one, just so we can re-discover all our ‘old-but-gold’ posts and marvel at how intelligent (or alternatively, how juvenile) we used to be.

      Until we started working and turned into our parents.

  3. Google Tunes:
    This is different from Google Music in that it works like a normal Google search.

    Instead of a textual input, however, you SING or hum a tune to your computer or Siri or what have you.

    The Google Tune search then scours its ginormous database to find the name of the song you’ve just hummed, thereby saving you many sleepless nights of having an earworm run through your head endlessly.

    This is especially helpful when you can’t Google the lyrics because you don’t, for the life of you, know what the lyrics are – but you know the tune to the chorus very, very, very well.

    Tragicomedy aside, it’s possibly the highest-level idea of the lot, because it’s very close to the concept of what Web 3.0 is envisioned to be like.

Let me know when these things come about, or better yet – if similar products already exist.