Leaving the comfort zone

I hate reminders that I live in a very insular space. I try and make my interests as wide as possible, but I keep hitting language barriers and that’s down to me to fix. I hate learning new languages and yet it’s obvious the pay off would be huge.

I saw some interesting statistics earlier today while doing some research and what jumped out at me was this:

the Japanese language is the most used language in the blogosphere (37%), with English following closely behind at 33%… While this is impressive, research efforts by JR Tokai Express, however, have indicated that almost 67% of respondents worked in companies that did not have corporate blogs. The majority of Japanese blogs online then must be credited to individual content providers. (via)

Can you imagine all the good stuff I’m missing? Drives me nuts.

The biggest value that Google Reader now gives me is the ability to see just how many blogs do nothing, but feed on the exact same carcass. Something I’ve also been guilty of in the past. The same old same old, or as Beckett put it The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Accept we have an alternative. Sort of.

Anyway while I’m talking about language barriers here’s a video by fellow STAB TRUCK devotee, Fred, in Paris. This is his first video in English. Can you imagine me even attempting to do something in French? Thought not:

DATE: March 12 HOMEWORK: Do something…