Year: 2015

am ambivert?

I enjoy being part of a group and happy to take the lead in meetings so I’ve never considered myself to be a strong introvert. However the definition of strong extrovert isn’t a definition that I would say describes me either as I’ve gone days with talking to anyone, and enjoy peace and quiet.
I’m a little from column A and a little from column B, thus always struggling when completing things like the Myers–Briggs Type test, as the side of the Introversion (I) / Extraversion (E) fence I fall on, seems to change based on environment, mood and even the wording of the question.

The term ambivert is nothing new, it was first used in 1927 by Kimball Young, the ‘ambi’ meaning ‘both’ in Latin.
In his book Young states “The ambivert is a combination of certain features of introversion and extroversion” with the bulk of the population (now believed to be around two thirds) fitting into that category. I only heard of the term in the last few years and thought it was suitable, although not really clarifying the whole switching side thing.

continum
Source : http://dsmartins.com/2013/10/07/the-link-between-introverts-extroverts-and-visuality/

However rather than placing you on an exact point on the spectrum halfway between introvert & extrovert and featuring traits of both, now the suggestion is that many ambiverts may shift within that range, sometimes being closer to one side of the spectrum than the other and vice versa .
This makes far more sense to me as I can become overwhelmed when interacting with people for prolonged periods and need to break off, seeking activities that require less interaction like reading a book or  painting some miniatures.

I guess it feeds nicely into my MMOs, I enjoy being part of a guild yet often find myself not wanting to be involved in group activities or even use Voice Comms. Somedays it’s just me and my character.

Like not my favourite

5 Days before my 8th Twttr birthday they announced that they were rebranding Favourite to Like, apparently it’s part of “the company’s latest effort to simplify the user experience as it looks to attract new users”, which translates into what?
We want to be like Facebook so people can sign up and find out it’s nothing like Facebook.
At least the introduction of the Twitter Poll avoids the stupid “If you agree like, if you disagree retweet” Facebook style polls.

Maybe the star is confusing or misleading, perhaps some people were making a wish when they clicked it.
Anyway someone should tell Google that Chrome is the odd one out now.
favourites

The sad part is that I would often use the favourite feature to mark tweets I wanted to reply or discuss later, often it was to remind me to visit a link that had been posted to a blog or game. Almost in the same vein as bookmarking the Tweet.
That said in the early days I used to go through them on a weekend and clear the favourites off the tweets. Maybe not so easy now as I tend to Favourite more frequently.

Maybe Like doesn’t convey the usage just the fact I’ve seen it or maybe it will evolve to become the same thing as Favourite did.
However the strange thing about Twitter Likes versus Facebook Likes, is that Twitter makes it a big visible part of your profile, “Come and look at all the things this person favourited but now they are listed as likes and have a different meaning”.

Maybe that part of my frustration is that they altered the meaning, now it implies that I like and support everything, rather than just favouriting it for later.
I suppose I can just look back and find interesting items completely out of context like this.

This verge articles closing statement sums it up really :

The newest mode of engagement on Twitter is a bit less versatile, a bit less powerful, a bit more compressed.

2015 part 4

Happy November everyone and good luck to those of you attempting the NaNoWriMo this year.

It’s been a busy few months, the unrelenting stream of work which I had hoped would die down has naturally done the complete opposite. The winter months tend to be more relax so fingers crossed on that front.
Additionally I am on the brink of starting an ILM course that will take place over 18 months. I’m still not sure I’m completely comfortable being a line manager of people, it’s a rather alien concept to me.
Hopefully I’ll muddle through it in the correct manner.

Gaming

In PC gaming news the clan has been playing a mixture of Dirty Bomb, ARK: Survival Evolved and WaitingForBlizzardToSendOverwatchInvites.
Despite my original lack of enjoyment in playing Dirty Bomb I’ve enjoyed it a little more since the recent updates and expect to continue playing for so time to come, of course when OverWatch drops there is likely to be a sudden drop in players trying the new kid on the Team-based FPS block.

I’ve been chipping away at some of my game backlog on Steam, I recently completed the Super Sanctum TD story and then worked through the achievements. I’m please that it has been completed as there are many games whose achievements are either impossible or require multiplayer elements. Or in the case of CIV 5 require countless play-throughs to even attempt them, maybe those can go on my 2017 list 🙂

In table top gaming news, we have been playing quite a few new titles, we have attempted to make the two-monthly Counters event which I encourage you to go and visit if you enjoy game and live close enough to Pontypridd.
Additionally we have started attending a local board gaming club on an adhoc basis, which is nice to get to play with some other players outside of our usual circles.

New ink

In August I got my first new tattoo in 17 years the design had been on my mind for about 5 years and I’m glad that I got it finally done. Of course it’s a dangerous hobby and last week I ended up getting another one , this time it was the logo of one of my favourite bands. Again I was very pleased with the final look, there was more shading than I first thought but it really does work very well.

#Tattoo #aboutme

Meanwhile … (3 months)

So seeing as I’ve not really been posting properly for a few months I have likely skipped a few bits and bobs, so here a recap of some key things that have happened this year so far:

  • I bought a car, the one I had before was having electrical issues so I bit a huge bullet and bought a 3 year old replacement.
    • I’m also now completed the round trip to Yorkshire to visit the in-laws
  • The company I work for had the remaining 50% bought by the 50% stakeholder
    • There was a large number of “leavers” at work, in the 7 years i’ve worked there many had became good friends
    • I’ve been part of a Windows 2003 server upgrade that nearly killed me due to the amount extra work needed to get it rolled out in time
  • Two of my Kickstarter rewards arrived

Musical Interlude

ResonanceVNV Nation are an alternative-electronic group and they happen to be one of my favourite bands. In the Summer they release the album Resonance: Music For Orchestra Vol. 1.
It has some of their favourite tracks, rewritten for voice and as the title suggests for an orchestra. I had been keen to see this album created after videos of the bands set as part of Gothic meets Klassik in 2012.

The album great as the rewritten songs are recognisable yet hauntingly different thanks to the Babelsberg film orchestra. I’ve embedded a player for both versions of the same song incase you are curious.

Original Album:

Resonance Album version:

#Kickstarter #aboutme

4.3 update

I updated to WP 4.3 yesterday and found that one of my plugins ceased working, it also stopped the website from loading, both the blog and admin pages.
So I decided that I would raise a ticket to let the developer know there was an issue with the plugin:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-redeclare-get_language_attributes?replies=2#post-7315181

I’m very happy that the problem has been fixed, but can’t say that I was ecstatic with the developers comment, seeing as my feedback was the first one posted after I’d checked to ensure there wasn’t one already raised. (The post ID’s give it away).

Perhaps I’m just in a grumpy mood today, as I often have to deal with many cases of people not reading things correctly, getting the wrong end of the stick or just ignoring the facts in-front of them. Normally these are my customers so it’s hard to rant at their complete lack of understanding or attention to detail, and you just have to point out their mistake.

I felt a little dissuaded from raising feedback in the future.

#software #sitenews #wordpress #plugins