laremy.sg

(via Ansen’s Formspring.me page)

For those without image suppork:

Question: how to do lit ):
Answer: dunno i havent do:p

Question: What kind of lit rep are you?!
Answer: errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr r u mr laremy pretending to be my classmate?

Eh… Not me lei *makes whale sounds*

In any case, I have decided to get my own Formspring.me page too!

Something I’ve been thinking about recently – it’d be nice if developers at Facebook, Twitter, etc. came up with options to allow users to streamline their messages so that users can decide which messages they want to broadcast (general audience) or conversely, narrow-cast (specified audience).

I know someone is going to attempt to rebutt this idea by saying something along the lines of “But Twitter allows you to protect your feed” or “But Facebook allows you to create privacy settings”.

Well, that’s not what I’m talking about.

The features I mentioned above are very ‘all or nothing’ in that we only have the options of saying something to everyone or saying nothing at all, when in essence, we might be in situations where we want to say a particular something to a certain group of people at a certain point in time.

Let me illustrate with the example of my Facebook profile. My profile is protected in the following ways:

• Only ‘friends’ can see my entire profile, so you’ve got to add me as a friend before you can view my profile, and
• Only people who aren’t on my Limited Profile can see my status updates.

Now, let’s say I want to post something about work on my status. The colleagues whom I’ve added as friends can normally see my status updates. However, this time round I might  feel that this particular status update isn’t something I want my colleagues to see, perhaps because I’m afraid they might ‘view’ me in a certain way after they’ve read what I’ve said.

At this point, I’d like to be able to have an option whereby I can decide: alright, let’s publish this status message, but let’s exclude this person and that person from knowing about it, for the reason I’ve mentioned above.

Think about my idea this way – it’s the digital equivalent of speaking in hushed tones in the office, so that you get to control who gets to listen in to what you want to say, and who doesn’t.

At this point, someone else is probably gonna ask: “What about using private messages then?”

Well, private messages are precisely that – private. They have a different social connotation from status messages i.e. we’d only use private messages if the information was strictly meant for private consumption. In a face-to-face context, it’s the equivalent of whispering – and whispering to a few hundred individuals at one go doesn’t really make sense, does it?

So I think it’d be nice if social networking tools could start to reflect some of the nuances in face-to-face communication/social interaction that haven’t been duplicated in the digital arena yet. It’s probably one of the issues that will mark the next step forward in the evolution of the Web 2.0 landscape.

Based on my newfound conviction that the Internet is a giant brain, I’d like to pose the above-mentioned question to people who have travelled more than I have.

The rationale here is simple: you’re an expert, I’m not. I can trawl the Internet for answers, but the most efficient solution is really word-of-mouth, then research to confirm.

Some considerations I have:

1. It’s a writing vacation – I’m not really going to do the tourist-thing; I just want to escape to somewhere peaceful where I can indulge my writerly instincts (yes, yes – I am romanticising quite a bit).
2. The environment needs to be significantly more inspiring than that of Singapore’s. I’m sorry – I really love Singapore but it can be a really uninspiring place sometimes. This will, of course, change when I am in charge.
3. I’ll be going in December, probably for the first two weeks or so.
4. I’d like to go to somewhere in Southeast Asia, like Thailand (I’m thinking Phuket or Pattaya) but if anyone has a better suggestion, please let me know.
5. I’d like a chalet/villa kinda gig, where I can wake up, open the door and see the beach, then make breakfast for myself before hunkering down to write.

Do let me know if anything comes to mind – I’d really appreciate your advice

Since we are all aware that:

1. There is imperfect knowledge in the world,
2. The Internet is a gigantic brain, and
3. The Internet helps to smooth out the imperfections in knowledge,

I decided to pose the above-mentioned question to the almighty Facebook-verse and Twitter-verse. These are the findings on Facebook:

And on Twitter:

People generally seem to think that Jaben Network is the best. Funan Centre comes in second and Epicentre and City Music are tied for third. Brands recommended are V-mode, Sennheiser and Bose.

The conclusion? Well, if you really want to know… ask your own Internet brain!

In case you didn’t know, all the geography in Full Tank! is real. (It has to be; I wouldn’t sell you a lie.) So the route that the tank takes is one that can actually be mapped out.

I’ve saved everyone (i.e. scholars who might want to study my works next time, LOL) the trouble of mapping the route by using Google Maps to show you how the tank travels. I’ve included placemarks in the map, so please click on them. There’s some very valuable information in there, including pictures, which might help you visualise the geography a bit better.

For those inclined toward academia, you may want to think about how geography is mediated in literature. Or perhaps how Web 2.0 tools might be used to bring literature/drama a bit closer to everyone?

View Full Tank! in a larger map