Selective Amnesia There was a point to this. But I forgot.

Vote for a change.

So, this year’s edition of Indibloggies is out. As expected, I wasn’t nominated. Much like Seema Goswami, I have a theory. But unlike Seema G, I shall not subject you to it. Instead, I will say this. Most of this year’s indibloggies nominees are all my shoulder lifted growing babies wonly. Talking of which, August 28 marked the 6th year of Selective Amnesia. I am a fossil. Funnily, also an archaeologist in training.

Anyway, if you feel up to it, go and vote for the nominees. I wholeheartedly support and endorse Negha maami, Anand, Ashok, Ideasmith, Nitin, Gopal, Akshay and Shripriya. Since Anand and Ashok, and Akshay and Gopal are nominated in the humour and photoblogging categories respectively, each of them have offered to perform special favours and guest-blog on SelAm if only I stop endorsing the other one. I shall let you folks decide which man deserves to win.

Talking of vote, I urge you all to stop doing what you are currently doing (except finish reading this paragraph) and vote for my photo to be included in the December issue of JPG Magazine. I’ve submitted it to the theme ‘Decay’. Vote now. For me. And then for the others.

Tezaa – over a million opinionated folks.

A long time ago, I’d come across a smart service called Tezaa - a cool website that made sharing opinions easy. I wrote about it back then, after which Shalin, the guy behind Tezaa and I got talking over mail and chat.
Last week Shalin told me that Tezaa was fast approaching a a landmark – million opinions (on as many subjects?). Great going Shalin. And folks, if you haven’t yet used Tezaa, now is the time to do it.

Going social. Getting creepy

So, flickr just went more social. It now lets you import address books from Y!, Gmail or Hotmail accounts and add people you think you know. In other news, I signed up to FriendFeed and Spokeo last week, after chatting with a bunch of people. And am amazed at the number of people I’ve had email conversations with and who have picasa/flickr/youtube accounts and the stuff they put there. I felt not unlike a stalker chasing victims down. Now with Twitter, Flickr, FFeed, Spokeo, Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and a few dozen other things tagged on to my gmail id, I doubt I’ll ever get a moment away from people’s monitors and keyboards.

Also in other news, I think I might have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. My fingers have been numb for 10 something days now, with a little prickly thing every few hours at the tips. I have not been typing much, more so after I fell from a bike (I was not riding. I was minding my business in the back seat) and I expect the blog silence will continue for a few more days.

The second coming – a poetry+coffee event

Second coming is the second open-mic poetry reading session in Chennai. Second coming is also on Good Friday, Jesus’ second innings. So, on this day (which incidentally is the World Poetry day), we hope you’ll come with two poems. One – yours. And one – a translation. You see, we (that’s Sharanya, Meena and I) spent a lot of time on the pun and would be a little sad if you aren’t there to appreciate the pun.

So, for the second time, I invite you to come to the second poetry session in Chennai – Second Coming.

Dumble – Auto tumbling Delicious links

Deepak wrote a little (but awesome) script some time back for his tumble-blog. It pulled bookmarks from his del.icio.us account and converted them into a page of super links, with commentary. He called it Dumble – Delicious + Tumble-log.
I liked it and asked him if I could borrow the script for SelAm and my delicious bookmarks. The dude not only gave me permission to do it, but he did the whole thing himself, and that’s how we come to SelAm/Dumble.

The beauty of Dumble is that it not only links, but it automatically converts links to a flickr photo or youtube video into the actual media. Right there on top of my Dumble page is the photo I shot a little while back. On delicious, it is just a link. Here, it’s a photo with the commentary. Brilliant, I say!

I post something or the the other every day to delicious. So you might want to keep a tab on SelAm/Dumble.

The best blogger contest.

It’s been decided. Journalists win. So says the Mail Today paper.

Journalists are the best bloggers because they write well, write often, and write for a living. Others who open blogs realise they run out of ideas in the first week itself.

Right. OTOH:

The best bloggers write better, reason better and – this is the most important point – are more intelligent and knowledgeable than the average journalist. I would also say that they are better on all those counts than even the best journalists, but that is debatable.

There ought to be no mystery about why bloggers are more knowledgeable. Journalists often claim that bloggers are amateurs, but then, journalists are professionals only the art of writing, while bloggers are often professionals in the subject they are writing on. I would wager that it is easier for a professional to pick up writing skills than for a professional writer to gain an understanding of a subject well enough to write a 1500 word article about it.

[Mail today link via K. Examined Life link via C]