I’m about to go through my GReader and check in with what my friends have been up to. Talented fucks all, so no doubt there will be interesting stuff to link to.

First up though I should really mention that The F Word is looking for donations to help with its redesign. As I’ve been one of the most vocal attackers on its current soviet gulag style it’s only right that I throw some money their way and point you guys in their direction. I know that one of the reasons the F Word looks a tad old fashioned is that all involved are too busy actually doing stuff to worry too much about the online upkeep. That they’ve got the very cool folk from Quilted to fashion them a new site is wonderful news.

Out of all the blogs and online magazines I subscribe to I have to admit that The F Word is one of the few that would actually leave a hole behind if it folded. The work its co-operative of bloggers and feature writers do is incredibly important and I know that it’s not only a source of information and inspiration for women of all ages, but also provides a home for new writing talent. If you’ve only ever dipped into the blog then you should really dig into the features archive. One of the great things about the proposed redesign is that it will help bring all that content to the surface and hopefully encourage more writers and activists to join in with the ongoing work that the site champions.

Full disclosure: The current editor of The F Word is my partner, Jess McCabe, so I’m horribly biased, but also know first hand how much time and effort goes into the site. I honestly believe both the readers and the writers deserve this new design so if you can help with even a small donation that would be very cool. Thank you.

Quick heads up. I deleted my Facebook account. Not because of privacy reasons or worries over the thing being made of pure evil or even the stress of the upkeep of a small farm. No. I deleted Facebook because it’s a fucking idiot magnet*.

If the people I know on there only use Facebook to interact with the online world then I’d rather keep them contained and as far away from me as possible. Those that need a Facebook account for some other reason (I only ever signed up because it was work related) will already be online properly and I’m easy enough to find out here.

Slingers and other projects will, I’m sure, continue to use Facebook. They just won’t have any direct involvment from me.

Twitter changed the way I use the Internet and the way I work. It’s a forward facing platform and even though I believe its creators still don’t really understand what they’ve achieved it’s the best thing to happen to the place I call home in years.

Facebook is the exact opposite and turning my back on it feels right. It’s not important enough to rail against, but it certainly deserves ignoring.

* Plus there was that South Park episode where Stan was forced to poke his grandmother.

I wish these were real:

Created and uploaded by jennyrusks to Creative Review.

The new Sleepydog website and blog launched today. I’ve been working with Sleepydog for maybe a year now. First with the social media stuff and more recently with the TV stuff. I consider myself lucky to be part of a team who has had so much success in creating so much cool content. Best of all, whether its working on Amplified, joining in at CreativeCoffeeClub or figuring out the perfect crime for our new show there’s never been a day I haven’t enjoyed.

I only work on a couple of the projects that come out of the office – in lots of ways it reminds me of the Googleplex setup, just without the creepy Stepford Wives atmosphere – but there’s always a lot more going on than I know about. Well worth adding the new site to your RSS reader to keep up – these guys tend to move fast.

Oh and I’ll be blogging over there too.

Also a good place to see some Slingers concept art:

Our heroic Mech Five, Junior, does his best to protect Marti
from a next generation Mech in episode 1.10 “Six“

I still dip in to Boing Boing from time to time, but only when I get the same sharp pang I get when I realise it’s been ages since I saw my grandmother. Then I realise she died in 1999 and go back to shooting people in the face on GTA4. Likewise I look at Boing Boing and think that while the old girl isn’t quite ready for a toe tag she may be better off in a home.

But that’s fine. Cory and co are as big as you can get online – which was recently underlined with the kerfuffle over Xeni unpublishing stuff – and they obviously still fill a gap or two. Warren even went as far as saying we should leave them to do all the curating for us, like they’re WALL-E and we don’t get enough exercise and er… ok I see his point:

They have the time, they have the money, they have the setup, they have the audience and they have the momentum of nearly a decade in the job. Nobody needs another linkblog like that. There are already thousands of them. The job of curation is being taken care of. Look ahead.

I couldn’t agree more with the second part. Go read the whole post, it’s worth chewing over.

But I like keeping my hand in with the curating from time to time and to be frank since I started using g-reader the stuff that finally pops up on Boing Boing seems maddeningly dusty. For example, there was this recent find to tie in with the Bat. Great stuff… but also pointed out by The Ephemerist almost exactly a year ago.

Now it’s great that more people are finally tuned in to the more lyrical version of Back to the Future‘s theme music, but because so many people still feed their own link blogs from Boing Boing, Jill with the jack hammer is actually helping to populate the blogosphere [*spit*] with cloned posts. In my mind it’d be better if Boing Boing just went away.

Then Cory and co. could concentrate on their own stuff and maybe a bunch of fresh geeks will pick up the gauntlet. Right now there’s no real point because what Warren sees as a benefit (time, experience, money) can also add up to the equivalent of picking up your first baby sword in World of Warcraft only to run straight into some level 1006 bastardfuck who whittles you down to your virtual underwear and forces you to marry a chicken.

Note. I’ve never played a MMORPG. Or even typed it before.

Plus not everyone wants to or can create original content. And the flipside of all this is that I have quite a few readers each week who are brand new to this Interweb malarky and have not yet had the pleasure of being spoon fed by the Boingers. Or anyone else. Or had a go at the handle end of the spoon for that matter.

I dunno. BB just seems a little like season seven of a five season show.

Original xkcd comic here and used under a CC license. Isn’t it ironic?