Can I just say: I am a really nice adorable polite person and don’t engage in the sending of nasty emails unless they deserve it and I get all, “Ohhhh now you have to hear of my rage, because fuck you”. Even if the end result was pretty tame.
I first signed up at Holdfire in June 2011 because bloggers I really respect/fangirl over recommended it. I had lurked their forum for years without joining because I was so intimidated – they were my internet celebrities! ♥ I did eventually join (they said they liked my layout and I fainted), but that was right before I became obsessed with dolls and started spending all my time on DOA ajkl;sflkjfsd.
It turns out that I joined Holdfire well after its glory days, and I’d missed the part where my idols were no longer recommending this webhost. WHOOPS. In fact, they were warning everyone to switch hosts asap, but I hung on because I had faith that it’d improve. NOPE:
- Holdfire’s customers were never told about its new owners.
- We were never told that Holdfire had become Flared Host (wtf??). The Holdfire site doesn’t even redirect to Flared Host. Do they really expect us to start paying invoices to a company we’d never heard of before?
- We were never told when anything happened to the servers that might result in downtime.
- Judging from Twitter, everyone was affected by downtime. Any support tickets I’d send to Holdfire/Flared Host/I-dont-even-know were ignored.
- If I ever needed to visit my site, I’d genuinely be surprised if my website was up. That’s insane!
Whether it’s Holdfire or Flared Host, stay away from them both! I’ve been with namecheap for a couple of months now. They are amazing and wonderful and I love them.
Duolingo is where you can learn Spanish, French or German. I have picked French because of my innate fanciness, but with a click of a button I could also start studying the other two languages on the same account. There are lots (LOTS) of online exercises to work through and real world examples to translate – in fact the ultimate goal of the site is to ~*~TRANSLATE THE INTERNET~*~. Promise I’m not suddenly a paid blogger, this is just where I’m spending all my free time at the moment because learning a new language is one of my most favourite things.
Painlessly soaking a language into your head = best way to waste time. I’m finding it quite easy because of my Latin, but it’s also interesting seeing how sloppy French is in comparison with my favourite dead language. In a languages-get-lazier-over-time sort of way, that is.
That said, Duolingo isn’t a thorough way of learning French because it’s obviously more technical than Duolingo pretends it is. I often get sentences with a couple of floating letters and no idea why they’re there. Nothing’s ever explained, although you can throw a question into the wilderness and hope other users come to your rescue. Get help from other people who don’t know French? What a brilliant idea! No, mostly you must blunder along until you learn French’s rhythm. As much as I detest memorising tables conjugating verbs and stuffz for Latin, I know that I need that structure here. If only they had references to flick to whenever I wanted (WHAT DO YOU MEAN I COULD GOOGLE IT).
Plus the site looks suspiciously similar to Twitter.
Review over, I’ve gotten competitive. You can rate how well others have translated sentences and this thrills me. “NO YOUR TRANSLATION SUCKS. YOU GET A SAD FACE.” or “UGHHH THE WORD IS CLEARLY A PLURAL. PHILISTINE.” or “WELL DONE YOUR SENTENCE IS THE SAME AS MINE THEREFORE IT IS CORRECT” or even occasionally “WOWOW THAT SENTENCE IS ACTUALLY PURE GOLD“. In those situations, I may or may not use their sentence as “inspiration” in a sly act of Duolingo Translating Dishonesty.
There’s also a page that gives the top 5 users that have translated the most sentences in the last 24 hours. I’ve spent the last few hours thinking nothing but “KIMOJIMA. YOU’RE GOING DOWN“, until…
BAM. I’M #1. GOLD MEDAL FOR BECCA. TODAY I AM THE BEST AT EVERYTHING YES. I CAN TRANSLATE A LANGUAGE I DON’T EVEN KNOW BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE. Okay so translating sentences doesn’t necessarily mean good translations BUT WHATEVER I’M SO TALENTED AT EVERYTHING.
Now I just have to maintain my position as Lord of French in the realm of Duolingo! RAHH.
Secretly, I am a 15 year old girl who likes scrutinising people’s outfits.
This is why I watch Fashion Police on E!. Whenever I can. Which is whenever I remember, which is never. Though in my defence: I do not like the leathery, blond lady who thinks herself witty for declaring someone looks like a dyke. Joan Rivers? Yes. Her. After shouting everyone down with some “hilarious comments”, she and some other randoms pick apart outfits, deciding what works and why, and what should have been done to rescue the outfit (omg!). It’s quality TV, and I like it.
….Yes I “haz a dumb”, but we knew this already!
I also take this love of ~FASHION OMG~ to the internet, and used to have a couple of fashion blogs that I subscribe to. Thing is, there aren’t any that I like in particular, apart from Fashion Bloggers, Why!?, which hasn’t been updated in yonks. This is because all fashion blogs have these in common:
- Pigeon-toed (THERE WILL BE PIGEON TOEEESSSS.)
- In fact, classic pretend-model pose = Hands on waist + pigeon-toed + head down, in PIGEON TOE admiration. Laughing to yourself is optional (because PIGEON TOES are funny). Just so long as you look weak and demure! I hate this to death.
- Outfits that would look ridiculous in real life AND/OR outrageous sluttiness.
- Locations: Slouching against a brick wall, sitting in a meadow, or frolicking through a field. If you are aware you will never be a real model you’ll just be in your room or in front of your house. Or walking down a street, looking over your shoulder.
- All photos involving a meadow will have a washed-out pink haze, to trick people into thinking that your faux vintage clothes came out of the 1930s.
- For some inexplicable reason you will like typewriters, polaroids, and cupcakes.
- You’ll also post repetitive shots of silly model-esque expressions, but visitors won’t be able to see any different angle of your outfit.
- It’ll be hosted on Blogspot, despite its inferiority to WordPress. (…I am biased.)
There should really be a FASHION BLOGGER BINGO. But I’m lazy.
(Because I had WAY too much fun writing this and got carried away.)
You and your “privacy”
Opening a Facebook account is the MOST DANGEROUS THING YOU COULD EVER DO.
It’s because of the freaks you will inevitably add. (Like me.) The folks you briefly knew in primary school, now white supremacists and/or living more glamorously than you. Maybe these people will gaze upon your name in their “Friends” list, and decide it is in fact a perfect description of your relationship (whaaaat). Or, perhaps ambitiously, that’s it’s not enough.
They will be unrelenting in their pursuit of ~reconnecting~. They will bombard you on chat. They will invite you to parties. They will harass your Wall. They know you like The Big Bang Theory, and therefore consider themselves experts on you. THEY DESERVE SO MUCH MORE FROM YOU CAN’T YOU SEEEEE.
Maybe I’m exaggerating. Slightly. But the folks you’ve added, they’re probably stalking you, them and people you haven’t even added. They are smitten by your profile picture, intrigued by moments where you flitted by, and they are consumed with the need to know more. Facebook merely offers tantalizing ‘extracts’ of a person. The addiction begins. F5, F5, F5.
…It’s how my girlcrush started, anyway, in what must be the epitome of Facebook creepiness.*
Unlike every other social networking site where you’ve con yourself into believing you’re important, it’s different on Facebook. You are everyone’s celebrity and newsfeeds are tabloids.
Facebook stalking isn’t what irks me though. It’s this recent Facebook privacy revolution. Virtually every profile is now on lock down.
I’m not sure why I like peering into the lives of people I’ve only glanced at. All I know is, stalking used to be easier. You didn’t have to be friends with them. There were people that I met years ago, and I foolishly let the period where you can add someone without being a creep pass. They’ve forgotten me, I’m sure, but I still occasionally click my way over to them. Browse their photos, their Wall, their status updates. I can’t add them; it’s too late.
Facebook-related scandals have left people scared. I’ve been shut out from countless profiles. Bitterly, I mourn for the end of the golden age of FB, a time when people once thought their boss might approve of their blurry drunken photos.**
TL;DR: Don’t deprive the people! Unlock your profiles! Let them shine over this internet wasteland like a beacon of voyeurism!
* Truthfully, the FB part is only an arc to a huge story with even more staggering amounts of creepiness. I think it’s all quite romantic.
** Obviously I don’t care about this since a clever search of my full name leads you to this blog. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t want to hire a caps locking lunatic! ;D
