LOVE, has no boundaries or judgements. It embraces the totally of all things born and still unborn. It waits patiently for us to take her hand and follow her to our greatest potential, it forgives our shortcomings and speaks quietly to us when we need her most. Love creeps through our life often unnoticed but catches us as we fall. Love is our only true friend, our faithful companion that walks with us from age to age, beyond the graves.

Love is what we truly are

Tony Hogan 2007

Yesterday I posted an article about blog addiction.

These are some of the responses I got from a discussion that I posted at Blogcatalog:

QUESTION: How do you know if you have a BLOG ADDICTION?

• When you put people on hold on the phone so you can jot down quotes for your blog.
• Not tonight honey, I have a blog.
• If you post things on your blog like…”I had to go out for an hour but I’m back now”
• When the question “Are you a blogging addict?” makes you blush, like I am right now. 
• In your dreams, do you create a new post for your blog?
• When you shout your blogs name out during sex?
• When you keep eating pizza and drinking coke, continue sitting in front PC blogging!!!
• When you spend almost half a minute squinting at the screen before your eyes can see clearly enough for you to see what you’ve just typed, and you still keep going for another few hours!! (I think I need glasses??)
• When the the print is completely worn off of your F5 key from the zillion times you have refreshed to see if you have a new comment
• When your outgoing message on your phone has your blog url and any urgent messages should be left as a comment on your blog.
• (If you didn’t have to blog on the run you’d ditch the cell phone all together)
  me im now addicted to blog…it has many useful articles 

Lately I’ve found myself spending more time in front of the screen than I actually like.

As a musician and lover of some of the visual arts, I find it a little frustrating when the virtual life takes over the artistic. 

 So I thought I’d run the issue past drNerdy, and he came up with this question

Is scripting and computer programming an art form?

Blogs, have you got an addiction or what? 

With every wonderful new invention enivetably comes a number of issues to be dealt with.  

I started blogging a few years ago because I could see the potential of Blogs for IT students that wanted a web presence that would be a bit of a no-brainer to set up,  providing they had good instructions.  I stepped out of the blogosphere for a while. Meanwhile I have been living my life doing other virtual things which keeps me on the computer about 60 hours a week.

Stepping back into the Blog universe a few weeks back has been quite a shock; the technology has changed, numerous widgets and tools to drive traffic have appeared, lots of people using blogs as affiliate doorways…it really is a new world that is changing while we’re staring at it.

And like all areas of Info Tech, when you’re concentrating on one area, a whole new technology emerges. Or, a pre-existing one morphs into a monster.   

Now there is a whole new digital generation living their lives online, sharing their worlds with strangers, sending messages/comments to people that they pass in the digital street.  I guess it had to happen.

• Forums were too black and white and not pretty or customizable enough. 
• Rebuilding a web page each day was too nerdy and impracticle. 
• Email a bit too too spammy.

So enter the blog, the land where you can add pictures and build /shape your virtual personailty, tell people your woes and break throughs, and tell others what you think about the way they view the world.

But after having a little bit of a dig around the blog lands I’m seeing the foundations of a potential issue. Over the past few years I’ve been exploring computer addictions a little. Our education systems and the business world is pushing everyone into the world of computer technology in a manner that really divides the community. This means:  you know or you don’t, like it or lump it it’s coming anyway.  And there are many people that have a lot of trouble just locating the on button…and mind you…many that can’t find the off button.

 A few of our common digital addictions that really need addressing are

• young teenage guys at LAN parties
• teenage girls that spend hours chatting
• downloading endless amounts of MP3’s that there is not enough time to listen to
• people in jobs that spend all day checking their emails

So what I’m starting to see know is the foundation of a new addiction the BLOG ADDICTION

So how do we know if we have an issue?  (Please note this is a bit tongue in cheek)

• If you create comments on your own blogs
• If you get upset when no-one comments
• When you ask people to comment
• If you get depressed when your blog stats are down
• If you check your blog before breakfast
• If your blog friends out number your physical friends
• If changing your avatar is a stressful experience
• If you post things on your blog like…”I had to go out for an hour but I’m back now”

Ok let’s watch this phenomena closely, its upside or downside.

I spent the weekend at one of the most inspiring events of my life.  I will be updating this blog within the next two days with an overview of the event. I will discuss ‘what you missed out on’ if you weren’t there.

From Carlos Castaneda: “Don Juan’s Teaching”

Don Juan said:
Anything is one of a million paths.
Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path;
if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions.
To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life.
Only then will you know that any path is only a path,
and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do.
But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition.

I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately.
Try it as many times as you think necessary.
Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question.
This question is one that only a very old man asks.

My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it.
Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is:Does this path have a heart?All paths are the same: they lead nowhere.
They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush.
In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere.
My benefactor’s question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart?
If it does, the path is good; if it does not, it is of no use.

Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart the other does not.
One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it.
The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.

A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it.
On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have a heart, or on any path that
may have heart. There I travel… and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.

And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.

Don Juan, a Yaqui Sorcerer

I’ve posted this in response to a comment about  ‘the possibility of  Technology and the heart being an oxymoron’ listed under ‘Another Digital Fathers Day’, I feel that it is extremely thought provoking.

Hopefully I haven’t breached copyright.  It comes from one of the books by Carlos Castenada. My favorite was ‘The Journey to Ixtlan’…buy the book.  Many people mind find the word ’sorceror’ confronting.  The original word was ‘Brujo’ and doesn’t translate properly. 

TH – alias drNerdy

Sunday morning is often the time when we are most likely to tell the world to go away.  “When I woke up this mornimg..” sounds like a blues song.  I don’t think I’m ever going to do what I did this morning ever again.  I got out of bed and thought I’d just configure a couple of email forms for some sites that I’m building.   Two hours later my head was hurting, things that I’ve used in the past that have always worked…didn’t, same web host, same form, minor edits…’she no go’. 

When frustration reaches a certain level there is a  tendency to throw plates, (and I don’t mean in a joyous fashion like you would at a Greek party).  It wasn’t until I walked downstairs away from nerdville and put some music on ‘Eric Bibb -Diamond Days’ the awesome acoustic blues singer, that my mood changed.  Once there was an external influence I could then look at the problem from another perspective.  So I tried plan B and guess what, it didn’t work either but at least I was happier and I had eliminated something that could have been a waste of time and would throw fuel on the frustration fire.  So I then forwarded an email to someone else to have a look at, regardless of the fact that it was something that I could fix mysef at some point in the future. 

I guess the bottom line hear is to know when to turn the computer off, step back a little and something that brings joy.

Have you ever heard that each of us has an identical double somewhere in the world? A bit of a scary thought..I guess we could play with the idea a bit. Imagine if  our double had a sense of design or dress taste very different to our own…and even further, imagine if we saw them in the street somewhere just for a brief moment and we thought they looked just terrible…imagine wearing a shirt like that, yuk what an aweful color… the mind boggles, how confronting.

What led me to that idea was, I was very curious whether my guitar blogs were displaying on Google or for those that wish to save energy, Blackle.  So I Blackled for”tony hogan guitar” and then I tried “tony hogan” without “guitar”, and started wondering if any of my long lost friends or music associates could find me.  So yes, I Googled, Blackled and Yahooed myself for a couple of days (sounds like some sort of party trick) to see the results.  And what I thought was interesting was that there is a Tony Hogan faith healer and also a Tony Hogan artist.    Why this is intriguing for me is because at some stage in the future I’ll be completing my cartoon book and I’ve always been very interested in faith healing because I have seen and  experienced so much evidince of it. 

 So why not Blackle, Google or Yahoo yourself and see what other YOU’s are out there.

Now as for dopplegangers, there are some absolutely ridiculous intepretations out there, anyone that has ever seen one will know exactly what I am talking about.

 I’m new to this wordpress blog and accidently deleted two posts the other day while  I was quickly trying to fix an issue.   Normally I backup everything and assumed there would be a simple way to recover something I deleted in a WordPress blog.  Well I couldn’t find one, so I waited a few days thinking it may have been cached by Google, and it wasn’t because I had deleted it soon after I created it and the Google bots didn’t drop in during that period of time. 

I waited and waited, then this afternoon I thought I’d check and see whether I could recover it and yes!!!, there it was cached somewhere else in the Digital Universe and it was found with WPfind search tool.  So I’ve had another digital fathers day.

Nothing is lost forever, it’s always out there somewhere in Cyberspace.

It’s fathers day in the country that I live in.  That day when your children look at you with bright eyes and do their best not to be their normal selves.  They’re queueing up to make me breakfast (a queue of two) and are organizing outings.  Like most dads I wish everyday was fathers day. There’s a weird similarity between technology and wanting the eternal fathers day.  The digital fathers day is when your go to your workplace and the network is running well, the phone cable carrier doesn’t have vans parked around the corner with men climbing down into holes in the ground ( and for some weird reason your Internet  isn’t working), and there  are no software conflicts that suspiciously emerged after a software upgrade (which was never mentioned to anyone until after it happened). Many times, things like what I’ve mentioned above are beyond our control.  It’s how we deal with things that really counts. As well as good software tools, we also need a number of emotional tools to get us through our days without too much pain. A number of my friends have been working with some emotional problem solving techniques and are getting fantastic results. I guess what we need is something that is simple, universal (meaning no religious or denominational strings attached), with proven results and either free or not very costly.  I have a bit of a dislike for a lot of the new age material that is costly, promises a lot, delivers little and preys on peoples vulnerabilties. If you want some good tools to work with, I highly recommend THE WORK of Byron Katie,  no she’s not from Byron Bay (click on the THE WORK link for further info).  Seeing the changes in people I know that have used her methods has made me realize that regardless of what turmoil presents itself in your life, it can be managed

And I must finish on silly note:  A few years ago I arrived at work and people were running around the building from room to room, looking for the documents they had printed.  Somebody, and that somebody could only have been a couple of people, had changed the printer setup so all documents would be sent to a printer that wasn’t on the same floor that people were working on.  And it wasn’t even April Fools day…. (disclaimer: I take no responsibility for planting this idea in the heads of any employees that have administrator rights at their place of employment)Check out the WORK. Here’s link to her acrobat reader file. I recommend that first yoiu go to the link above and then later come back to this link for more info. http://www.thework.com/pdf/BK_BOOK4_web.pdf Published by :drnerdy 2007-09-01 20:07:31.0