#followfriday is like trekking to the stars, but…

Wow, look at me , writing up a blog post two weeks in a row about #followfriday. For this installment, I bring you a lovely lady that I have never met in person, but feel like I have gotten to know virtually via Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. I have attempted to get together with her when I lived in San Francisco but we lived on opposite ends of town and you know how that goes.

I also want to point out that I picked her as this week’s choice BEFORE the Wired article “100 Geeks You Should Follow on Twitter. Yes, I am that good. Plus, as you can see from my comment on that site, she is one of four people out of 100 that I actually agreed with.

I don’t want to distract from the awesomeness, so without further adieu, I bring you, Bonnie Burton (@bonniegrrl). There are so many reasons I like Bonnie, but most of all because she constantly flatters me. Ha! No, seriously, flattery gets you every where. Alright alright, putting my ego aside, she finds the most random articles and scifi stuff and it’s like a gift, 24 hours a day. I don’t think that grrl sleeps. Plus, she is always positive and upbeat, just look at her avatar, how adorable is that?

She was so humble when she got the nod from Wired, stating that she isn’t a web celebrity. Whatever!! She is totally a celeb in my book. She is an Editor and Content Developer at Lucas Film, has a Vlog “Ask Bonnie”, writes for Geek magazine, etc. etc. etc. Just look at this grrl’s resume!

OK, I don’t want to get too carried away here, it’s not like she is a goddess. OK, well maybe she is. Anyway, if you want to follow someone awesome on Twitter or wherever else online that she is (because I don’t think there is anywhere that she isn’t) that you need to go to http://twitter.com/bonniegrrl and click on Follow.

Carry on. Namaste.

Filed under: twitter , #followfriday, @bonniegrrl, bonnie burton, twitter

Can serious classes be fun?

At this very second I’m attending my second CERT class in Silverlake. I decided to attend because I want to be able to take care of myself and the people and critters I love when disaster happens.

The class instructor is a fireman who has been on the force for 15+ years. He is a very nice guy and has a ton of patience and experience. The problem is that I am bored to tears.

I realize this class is free and important but dry material is covered, but there has to be a way to make it more interesting. It is even more difficult to concentrate because the class is after work and held in a stuffy church room.

I don’t have any good ideas on how to make it more interesting other than perhaps making it more hands on as opposed to reading from slides. The class Sean took – Urban Escape and Evasion was all hands on and you were forced to learn skills and then utilize them. For me personally, I prefer a demonstration and then try to practice the same skill. There must be classes where they can mimic fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. and you have to try and stay alive. That would definitely keep me engaged.

Alas, that is not this class so I’m going to post this and then put my head back down on the table until Sean wakes me up so we can go home.

Namaste

Filed under: life , CERT, class

I don’t believe in #followfriday, but…

I don’t believe in #FollowFriday on Twitter because no one ever gives me a quality enough reason in their tweets to take their advice. I spend quite a bit of time reviewing who I follow because I need to manage my valuable time on this planet and I’m not going to click on someone’s name just because you say so. If I notice some intelligent interactions going on between someone I follow and someone I don’t, then I will check them out and see what they are all about.

That all being said, I deeply value the people that I do follow, and want to do more than a trite shout out, so I am going to write up thoughtful posts that explain why I follow a particular person or company. I’m going to try dang hard to do this regularly but don’t hold me to it because I suck at blogging. Most of the people I will post about I follow on more that one network or service, or yes, IRL, and my main hangouts include Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, various music blogs/aggregators, and Facebook. I have been known to hang on 4Chan, but that’s like Anonymous. Hmm, maybe I can post about him.

On this maiden voyage, the person that I am going to let you know about is Anthony Volodkin or @fascinated on Twitter. Anthony is behind Hype Machine, which is my favorite music aggregator. Most of the music I tweet about includes a link to it on Hype Machine. I recently met Anthony in Austin at SXSW after a virtual connection over Twitter. He put on an excellent panel “Help! My iPod Thinks I’m Emo” which was one of my favorites, and later I had the chance to chat him up some more over lunch. In addition to working on cool shit, Anthony is a very modest, cool and chill guy. When I send Anthony bug reports (via Twitter) he is always quick to respond and very appreciative of input even though I probably annoy this shite out of him (I still want my Songbird integration back!!). I work at Topspin and many of my coworkers are also acquainted with Anthony as the music + software services circle is pretty small, and all of them think he is pretty cool and admire his work. So ya, I’m a fanboy and became even more so when I read a tweet of his that he was hanging out with @moot. OMG! Lastly, he has decent music taste which I am pretty particular about and if you know me, you know I wouldn’t follow a poser.

To sum it up, if you are into music, like someone that is modest and down to earth, smart, travels, and travels in interesting circles, Anthony is your dude. I hope that I gave some good reasons as to why I follow Anthony around virtually and consider that connection valuable.

Namaste

Filed under: twitter , #followfriday, @fascinated, Anthony Volodkin