There have been a raft of new emoticons recently. Some have been found accidentally, like how I learned of this one:
(Русский) = 
I was using my Android phone’s plurk app, PlurQ, and this was listed. I thought it was (yahoo), but it wasn’t. (I guess it means “Russian” in Russian?)
Then, I saw that there was a new emoticon for Karma 100 users:
(morning) =
When I showed these to my Plurky friends, I was told about
(code) = 
Do you have others to share?
Just in time for the finals, Plurk has enabled another Vuvuzela emoticon:
(dance_bzz) = 
Note that there is one less ‘z’ than (bzzz).
Have fun, and don’t come near me with a real vuvuzela.
Are you watching the FIFA World Cup? Want to show your plurky friends how you feel, or perhaps annoy them with vuvuzelas? Plurk has enabled a couple emoticons for the WC.
(bzzz) = 
(goal) = 
Note that the colors of the vuvuzela change randomly, so adding more than one can create a rainbow of “fun”.
Now you can have a graphically enriching World Cup experience on Plurk, or some such.
blogs they do need love
wineter spring summer autumn
share your love right now
Plurk, having recently celebrated its 2nd birthday, has opended up its blog to contributions from Plurkers and the blog now has regular posts from Plurkers from around the world. There are posts on a range of topics from the thoughts of a veteran Plurker to grand friendship networks that have developed via Plurk and, something all Plurkers will recognise – recipes!
If you’d like to contribute to the Plurk, visit this post, have a read and submit your thoughts now.
If your contribution is used by Plurk, you will get one of these on your Plurk profile:
I usually wait until n.1 of any software upgrade to actually upgrade. This tiime, with WP 3.0, I didn’t. I’ve now installed 3.0 on this and one other blog and will be installing a third and configuring a fourth later. Quite impressive, so far.
Even more impressive, though, is the sunset photo above is by Plurkfiend Dave who is also photographer Dave. Visit the flickr page of that photo, look at it at original size. Set it as your dekstop, even. It’s grand. Truly.
3.0 is less grand, though still grand in its own right. :)
The next Plurk Worldwide Sunset will be on 23 June 2010 – be sure to join in for another round-the-world sunset event.
Shoot the world around you as the sun goes down and post it to the group.
We look forward to seeing your photos for this year and hope you enjoy the slideshow as it stands to date:
The thing about Plurk people is they soon get a bee in their bonnet. Circle mania is a case in point. First seen on the timeline under the artistry of our good friend Rantz. (working in Gimp and as is his character, he duly shared the method in a tutorial.) Having played with polar distortion in the past using photoshop, I quickly realized the error of not selecting good images or the correct image area in the past! A fire was lit under my tail and I mirrored the tutorial for people using photoshop. In a very short time Amazing circles were being traded regularly and circle submissions to PPAD reached a level where a sub group was required… and so Plurk Amazing Circles was formed. At the time of posting: 14 members and already 150 submissions… Congratulations my friends!
Thanks to the wonderful Tamsie, Plurkers have started a new flickr group: Plurk Worldwide Sunset. The slideshow above contains the images from this group so grab a cuppa, enlarge the show to full-screen and sit back and see the beauty of our world.
If you Plurk and flickr and are not yet in this fantastic group, visit Plurk Worldwide Sunset and join – we’d love to have you for our next Worldwide Sunset – date to be determined and will be announced as soon as a decision has been made.
Hoomans. Funny thing they are. We have to have them for obvious reasons.
But really – they chase after us with cameras that have annoying lights on them. They call this fun.
But really – they spend more time doing things with cameras than we do sleeping.
But really – they make jokes about things called pubs.
But really – they Plurk (sounds like Ganzou being sick, that does).
But really – they take lots of pictures of food.
But really – they *travel* way too much.
But really – they write stuff called *poetry*.
But really – they *blah*g.
But really – they *code*.
I’d like my dinner now, thanks.
If you Plurk and are also a flickrer, you could well be interested in the Plurk People Photo-a-Day group on flickr. The idea is to post a photo that you’ve made each and every day.
We’d be pleased to have you join us as we begin this photographic journey through 2010 – visit the group via the link above and request membership – either myself or the Mad Poet will add you to the group as soon as we possibly can.
See you there!
One of the many things I like about Plurk is its user interface – it’s a rather grand , interactive, left-right scrolling timeline that allows user to easily see their own Plurks as well as those of their friends, including an easy way to identify Plurks that have been responded to. I’ve been using Plurk for nigh on eighteen months, having been introduced to it by my online friends that I’ve been in contact with for well over five years.
I’ve tried Twitter -and I still use that for brief contact and posting of links as well as keeping up with various services/organisations that post brief information, often including links – but it’s Plurk that is my preferrred social-networking microblog service. Plurk is easy to use, easy to understand and easy to communicate with. Having used Twitter and having had a go at a mutltitude of microblogging services, Plurk stands out way above the crowd. In short, Plurk rocks.
Like many grand things that rock, it has – unfortunately – been ripped off. Not just by any company – but by Microsoft China. A big corporation ripping off a young startup that is doing amazing work. Surely Microsoft has the resources to do their own work? One would think so – but one would be wrong.
If you’d like more information on this dastardly deed, please see the post on the Plurk blog entitled Microsoft China rips off Asia’s No. 1 Microblogging Service as well as the followup Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology.
I would like to think – and hope – that this will all be resolved in Plurk‘s favour – time will tell.
Edited from original plurk: , a Recipe by @Rantz:
1. Baked Salmon with greens 1 fillet salmon per person 1 large handful baby spinach per person light sour cream.
2. Pepper, ground 1 bunch chives, chopped olive oil’ should read “pepper gound, 1 bunch chives- chopped, olive oil.
3. Preheat oven to 230 C lightly coat baking dish with layer of olive oil layer baby spinach in pan, mix to oil evenly.
4. Place salmon fillets in pan, skin side down lighty coat each fillet with sour cream season with pepper cover with chives.
5. Bake for 46 minutes.
6. Eat.
According to the chef/cook/consumer, “This is possibly even better than the version I first made in Darwin – with thai coriander instead of spinach.“
Today I did something quite radical for me: I responded to a most interesting plurk (from PritchardDesign) regarding Megan McCain’s quote where she states she is ‘Pro-Sex‘. Normally I would stop there and say nothing more.
But this time I went on to search through the internet to determine what all the fuss was about and why it would reach top of the search-engine’s.
After reading quite a diverse range of sites, all of them above-board yet on the fringe between debauch and informative, I used Google to search on ‘definition pro-sex’. (I was led on quite a lengthy merry-go-round via numerous sites, slowly getting annoyed by often redneck definitions upon mismanaged Wiki’s!)
In the end, I landed upon a substantive and elaborate definition at UrbanDictionary. They have an interesting definition that helped explain the McCain statement a lot further. But I am really after the definition, the reasoning of putting ‘pro‘ in front of a word.
I had to laugh, but it puts it all into perspective and slightly parody’s the usage of any word that is prefixed with ‘pro‘. It is a word that helps us explain how and why we have such words as ‘Pro-Life, Pro-Earth, Pro-Redbubble, Pro-Black, Pro-White, etc‘.
It turns out this word, not only is its own definition, but it also explains (with humour) that people are grabbing words out of the air to explain their stance on many things in life.
To explain each part of the word, here is the Latin definition of each component:
“pro”… to be for
“affix”… root words that make up words, often of greek or latin origin
“ion”… the act of doing or being
and possibly
“ist”… somone who practices the preceding word
or
“ism”… an ideology
Thus suggesting that words are made up with a mix of these prefixes and suffixes so that people will be able to understand upon hearing without needing too much explanation. This would imply that the general population understand the Latin meaning of these prefixes and how they effect the usage and meaning.
If you are pro-life, you love life. If you are a pro-smoker, you love smoking. With Meghan McCain saying “I am Pro-Sex”, it is little wonder these new words reach the headlines around America!
Me, I am Pro-Plurk. But you probably figured that out.
I don’t know where I’d be in the world if I hadn’t discovered online ‘Social networking’.
Sites like Plurk (and PlurkFest Oz 2009), Twitter, Facebook, Skype and various other online social-sites have enabled one tenth of the planet to talk to each other via their computers instead of the telephone.
But I do know this: You and I certainly wouldn’t have found Yooouuutuuube.com. Not by accident, not in a million years. I only found it because someone mentioned it on Facebook. Now I am telling everyone about it!
Now I am able to view and watch a wall of ‘With or Without You’ by U2 within my browser.
Long Live the Internet!
The above image is from my Plurk timeline, which I will discuss further on down in this post but for now, let’s look at some social networking theory. First from What is Social Networking:
Social Networking – perhaps you’ve heard of it before, but are not quite sure what it means.
Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighborhood subdivision, if you will. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in schools or in the workplace, it is most popular online. This is because unlike most Networking with Friendshigh schools, colleges, or workplaces, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other internet users to develop friendships and business relationships, too.
This gives us an overview of what social networking is and tells us what it is and that it happens all around us, wherever we are, whatever we do, whether it is about the community where we live or if it is in our work or school environments.
Let’s look now to how Wikipedia describes social networking:
A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex.
Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social capital of individual actors. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.
This tells us pretty much the same thing but use words or phrases such as ‘node’, ‘social capital’ and ‘individual actors’ and goes into more detail about network theory as it relates to social networking.
Let us now move to YouTube and see a video discussing social networking in plain english:
From viewing this video, we are told that “social networking is only as valuable as the people and the connections that you can see”, which leads us directly to Plurk: a social networking with a beautiful (and customisable) interface that lets you know what people on your timeline are doing right now. Whilst there are many, many other social networking services available online, Plurk is the one that I not only use the most, but get the most out of.
I signed up to Plurk in June of 2008 and, after using Twitter and various other social networking sites, the visual and interactive nature of Plurk is what drew me in. What has kept me using it on a regular basis, however, is the connections that I have made across the world with a wide rang of Plurkers, including knitters (though knitting is not something I do, I am quite impressed by the multitude of knitters I have met online), photographers (which is something I do and something about which I have learnt much from the many Plurkers who are photographers), bloggers (again, something I do and something about which I have learnt much from my Plurkfiends: (Plurk + f{r}iend)- A term of endearment for one’s Plurk friends)), as well many other characters that I have met in my time on Plurk.
Another word that you may find me using on my timeline is Plurkfest: “Plurkfest (Plurk + fest{ival}) – A meeting up or gathering of Plurkdicts.” To date, I have had but one of those (last year on the Gold Coast) and I intend on having many, many more over the coming years.
Should you Plurk? Hell yes! How do you get started? Go to Plurk and register – feel free to friend me once you get started.