Moonlit Minds

Well, I do not write here as much as I would like to. But nevertheless – I would like to wish everybody a calm, peaceful and above all – insightful! – New 2009 Year.

We all are probably under strong influence of news about economic crises and wars. I have always believed that no matter how difficult matters look, there is a brighter side… Try focus on it, and try also to focus not only on yourself.

We have so many amazing and wonderful tools those days, I am thinking about technology – and especially – communication technology, but did it make us happier? Did those things really improved our communication? I beg to differ. We spend more and more time inside not only our houses but – inside our inner worlds. Paradoxically, the technology made for improving our relations with outside world and others, instead of reaching the goal very often destroys the connections. I am far away from blaming the technology for it. I suspect that the reason, why it is so, is hidden in our personalities. We all are more or less narcissistic and all those new “social web” tools facilitate our narcissism.

I am not saying it is wrong. I just wonder if it has to be so. How many of us use Twitter only because we want to have more and more “followers” ? How many of us share a real knowledge and not just the news about some shiny, new “toys”? How often did you comment on blogs or FriendFeed just to be noticed or – hm – sell your product not having anything to say on the subject?

No, I do not say it is wrong – I have no right to it. I just want to point out that this way we, in the same way as mythological Narcissus, become slaves instaed of mastering the tools.

There is, of course, the way to turn the things in our favour. There are probably even more ways than one. But let me point out that one – if you take part in social game as I do, try to think what is your higher goal, your mission. How would you like to improve the lives of others by sharing your words?

You see, perhaps this way you would become less “popular” but maybe in the same time you would teach at least one person something valuable. And as a bonus I hope a useful tip: if I am sharing something here on the net I have in mind one person – my 22 years old son…

Let’s make this New coming Year really happy – for someone else.

So, we have spent Christmas holidays in Poland – Warsaw (my home city). It was very cosy. I took some pictures and now – when we finally landed back home in Oslo – I hope to upload some of them here. Perhaps they will be of an interest for some of you. Polish Christmas is slightly different than in other countries. Some more info soon

Well, as some of you noticed – I changed the theme of this “bloggie”, which is now featuring Tarski Theme. I was playing with thought to make my own theme and I even made something based on Sandbox and style by Demetris of op111.net – I really like style of op111… But displaying pictures was not working correct
So, now we have Tarski here – and I like it – kind of refreshing minimalism… and it suits perfectly the moods around… Mini is especially beautiful in the more difficult times. Don’t you agree…?

I managed – following instructions from WordPress Codex site here, I manged few minutes ago to upgrade this humble “bloggie” of mine.

The upgrade was painless and relatively quick. My host, one.com , worked without the glitch – big thank you to One!

Everything seems to work so far. What’s next than? Well, I suppose that it’s the time to play with the new Hybrid theme, based on Hybrid theme framework  Child Theme – “Old School”.  It looks quite amazing (especially “under the hood”) but – it will take some time for me to adjust it to my vision of the site (a bit “gloomy”, greyish, personal blog). Anyway, new version of software deserves “new clothes”  .

My first impressions of WordPress 2.7? It’s great – I like new administration interface a lot. It seems much more “user friendly” and the overall look suites my taste. I also hope that the new feature – automatic upgrade – will work in the future. Not that the upgrade was too complex or difficult. It was just… stressful.

And as the last note – apologies to myself and others who visit occasionally my place here. I did not update Moonlit Minds lately because of few reasons. One of them being learning how to use social web applications like FriendFeed and Twitter (yes, it takes some time…) another – being busy with real life matters.

I hope to share some of the things I’ve learned about “social web” in the near future. Perhaps my sharing my experince and mistakes will help some other people who, as me, are new to this stuff.

I wish everybody nice day (remember: weekend soon!)