There has been a restless drift inherent in most of my blogging since the beginning. (I still remember the greymatter interface fondly.) I started up Lost Pages in the summer of 2001 and shut it down around 2004 when I switched to textpattern and was far more interested in writing about comics. I cut down on the number of non-comicblogs I followed, and later, even more as I stopped writing in English all in all. When I did this, I also lost track of many other people whom I loved to read.

I have no real explanation why, I just know that it happened. I still feel a bit bad about it. I lost contact with people I liked. I still haven’t found everyone — the easiest one’s that still cling to the same domains was easy when I dug up the old link-lists. But the others? I feel as if I abandoned them. This guilt make me both try a bit too hard at interacting here I think, as well as keeping the distance. Yeah, those two shouldn’t work together at all but they do. I don’t want to miss everyone. Not again.

It’s a bit surprising that I now and then I’d stumble over a few of these wayward people here. The Internet is only as large and vast as one makes it — it can be a very small place. I like that. And even if you might not remember me, I do remember you. I hope. It would be a bit awkward otherwise, but I’m all for that as well.

For some reason there are a bunch of Hungarians following my Tumblrs, reblogging my posts and commenting on them in Hungarian, using words that Google Translate can’t decipher.

pikkutiikeri:

But it’s kind of like whispering in company though, isn’t it? And I suppose [Finnish and Hungarian] are about as much related as Swedish and Dutch.

That’s not fair. Dutch is the combined nonsense of all the Germanic languages given corporeal form. (I like Dutch. Both the language and Wagenbach.)

Relating to the original post: that’s how Tumblr works. I’m huge in the Philippines. (Pun not intended but appreciated.) I think it’s the Philippines any way. Don’t know why, but possible there’s some kind of assignment about which part of the world you’ll be popular — and it can’t be in a place where you understand the language because that invalidates the Tumblr license agreement.

Tumblr meet?

Two, or more, with tumblrs shall meet for beer at Wirströms, Stockholm/Gamla Stan, Friday 26th February around 18-ish. We can not promise LEGO, sadly, but wouldn’t it be great if there were?

I’ve been thinking about how to read people. Not in the real life then, even though I admit I need to work quite a bit on those skills too. But here, on the Internet. There are times when I’m asleep and times when I’m not by the computer — if you have to bring it up, I can agree that there’s an overlap in those two — and stuff just pile up.

Sure, there’s Google Reader but things tends to hibernate in there too. This has more to do with not missing things on the tumblr dashboard that I want to read. Be it the latest beautiful stanza from Magic Molly, the words on words of Rag Bag, the drawings of Nik or Mimisaurus or Biostar, the irrelevance of Elizabeth, the randomness (but not puritanical) of Pikkutiikeri, comic talk from Vinh, the photos of the Wet Shirts (want to find/found a photo group myself now), the displacements of Taylor, or the fun of Avery or Nostrich. To name a few. (I also miss the awesome insanity of Sara McP.)

Not to talk down on the rest of you. I like you too, otherwise I wouldn’t follow. I don’t want to play favourites, only sometimes there’s no option not to. When flooded with text and images before the first cup of tea? That is one of those moments.

Sometimes I hate Tumblr

pikkutiikeri:

And when you are sad I get sad. Sometimes I just click the little heart in the corner of your post, because it’s the best thing I can think of, to show you that I care. Or the only thing I can think of. Even if, really, I’d rather hug you. Or bake you a pie or give you a dry pair of socks.

Sometimes I don’t even click the heart, just because it seems like such a fucking inadequate thing to do. And I hate Tumblr because it doesn’t have a I-really-care-about-you-and-I-want-to-be-there-for-you-even-if-I’m-in-another-time-zone button. And it’s not like you care, if you just moved some random stranger to tears.

So damn true. There are also the times when the like-button feels so fucking wrong that it’s mind-boggling — and there’s no other way of sending something as a reblog-to-comment would be far far too public. Some sort of 140 character private—dashboard-note would be, in my mind, awesome.

(Which is why I today took the time to embed the google spreadsheet-form properly and not just a link. Because I’ve been thinking that private thoughts are a bit more valuable than the public disqus alternative.)

But something built into the tumblr structure would be nice.