Still on Facebook? Get Ready…

Any longtime readers of this blog know I have little love for Facebook. However, I realize it is sometimes a necessary evil on the Web. Perhaps the day is coming when that won’t be true, but for now, we’re stuck with it. And if you’re on FB and have not checked out the new Timeline, you need to do it before it’s thrust on you next week. Yep, FB is once again making a major change which compromises privacy. Aren’t you weary of this? I am and was a long time ago. When I heard about this on Mashable yesterday, I groaned and decided I wasn’t even going to talk about it. But a FB post from Grati prompted me to say something.

In my original daft of this post, I started listing the issues with the new timeline and became so irritated, I chucked it. I’m going to cheat and let someone else tell you about it:

Facebook Timeline mandatory rollout: You have 7 days to scour your past
By Mike Wehner, Tecca | Today in Tech – 21 hrs ago

The time to edit your online persona is now

Facebook is the virtual home to more than 800 million active users, so any change to how the network operates is a big deal. And nothing could be bigger for the social hotspot than completely revamping everyone’s front-facing profile page, and that is exactly what is happening today. Starting this morning, the new Timeline feature — that up until now has been an optional switch — is now mandatory.

The Timeline differs from the default profile pages we know and love in several ways. Now, rather than showcasing only your most recent posts, your personal front page can be scrolled back months or years at a time. Most importantly, this change can offer visitors a glimpse at your entire social networking past, all the way back to the day that you joined up. The revamp can be both a blessing and a curse for seasoned social networkers, as it can produce a bit of pleasant nostalgia, but also drag up some of your less proud public moments.

Left untouched, your Timeline may remind of you of breakups, job troubles, or even a few unfortunate party photos that you have long since buried. Depending on your settings, these black marks on your digital past could allow new followers — including friends or business associates — to see a side of you that was better kept tucked away.

Read the rest here

Isn’t Facebook fun? But hey, if you really want some of the old stuff back, there is almost always a way. If you read that link and say, “But Frenz, I use Internet Explorer?!!” we need to talk.

Of course the usual comments will be made, “you shouldn’t have posted there in the first place,” “or I don’t use Facebook [with the implication being how smart they were to avoid it in the first place]”. No offense to those potential commenters, but this post is not for you, and those kinds of comments do nothing to repair someone’s timeline. Although I heartily agree with you, and it should be common sense by now that anything posted on the Web (no matter how secure it supposedly may be) is subject to being publicized. If someone doesn’t agree with this, you need to know that Mark Zuckerberg considers the age of privacy over (interesting how the video where he said that is no longer).

Do you think this might be one very good reason Richard Armitage has avoided social media? Smart boy.

Felled By The Sexy Back

The best laid schemes… Oh how they can blow up in our faces. Thankfully, since I’m not a man, I must be a mouse. Not sure yet, but for a few minutes a couple of nights ago, I could have put my fist through a wall. This morning I’m still a little unsure of myself but less so as the clock ticks. And the clock ticking is what started all of this here. You thought it was Richard Armitage? Hang around, and I’ll disabuse you of that notion although there might be some confusion when posts like this appear.

I still can’t look at that picture without blinking my eyes and shaking my head to clear it. Ironically, that really might be his sexiest picture.

And since I usually muddle up the paragraph breaks in my posts not to mention all of my other grammatical sins, I might as well do it up right and just place them wherever I want and hope you understand my convoluted mind. Honestly, I never have known the best way to place paragraph breaks; topic sentences mystify me. So glad that hasn’t stopped me. Now for the awkward transition.

Sometime last weekend an item from RAFrenzy inadvertently posted on my personal Facebook wall, and if you need to heat some coffee or tea, you can place it next to my head where the steam is coming out. Previously I just disliked Facebook, now I despise it. This has jeopardized my anonymity to a degree it has never happened during the life of the blog. Yeah, I know some of you know who I am because I’ve let you know, and for all of you other RA fans who may have guessed, I’m not concerned about you. It’s the family I don’t want reading. SO and the kids are not so much the problem. I mean the extended family. They would not get it, so I don’t want them reading and possibly giving input. If I did, they would already know about it. Wait! Some of them now do. Damn Facebook.

So how did this happen? Oh, I’m going to tell you so I can give this rant full vent and also give you a heads up. It happened on my phone where I haven’t mastered the ability to control scripts so I only have running the ones I want. For the uninitiated, scripts drive the web page you’re on, and sometimes scripts include all sorts of nasty things that you don’t really want running. For me Facebook is nasty, and especially so when the Facebook mobile app will not let me log out, and I have to clear my data every time I want to make sure it’s not logged in, and even then it’s not a sure thing. Can you see that steam now?! Let me make this really plain. If you’re logged into Facebook, and you are on a site that has a link to Facebook, you can inadvertently post a “Like” to your wall. Given that links to Facebook have wormed their way onto virtually every site on the web, there is a vulnerability you might be posting things to your FB wall that you never intended [waves hand vigorously in the air while saying ‘choice’ words]. Same thing with Twitter, which I still like, but I may ended up despising for the same reason.

And I wouldn’t have been on my phone if I hadn’t been determined to work on my blog post about Richard’s back. Okay, enough of that rant, but just know that despite my irritation, I’m not letting this keep me from blogging. On to the good stuff.

I did promise some more pictures, which I really was about to post a couple of nights ago before I got rattled.

His size and vantage point scream masculinity, but that’s not enough to make these pictures so compelling. His attentive nature is still evident. Man, I really have a bad case of CWS. Who woulda thunk a set of pictures of his back would bring on such a bout?

This one really does make me think I can reach out and hug him:

This one almost looks like a kid trying to get the lay of the land:

It is amazing to me how he can still convey a purity without using his facial expressions. Yep, I have a raging case of CWS.

More candid shots coming, but no more backs.

Tangent — Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, What am I going to do with you?

I guess I should have made a Facebook page before this week. My hit count has gone up quite a bit from that link! So welcome to all of you who have come here from Facebook. I love you! It’s just Facebook that doesn’t thrill me. It’s a pain in the ass to get around on, and they (the guys who run that place) make the functions one way. There is no back out plan on some things unless you’re technical and have a crystal ball or you’re a bulldog. I’m technical but don’t have a crystal ball; however, I am a bulldog. Even though this is what you have to be if you’re going to run a “page” on FB, I hesitate to go into that mode. But for RA and all of you, it’s worth it. Hope you enjoy the blog. :D

Hmm. I almost hate to associate RA’s picture with Facebook, but I did post his picture over there several times now, and this is really in honor of all of you. So I’ll post one that some of you might not have seen. OH, and since snaffling seems to be the order of the week ;-), I snaffled this one from Mulubinba. Over here. Be sure to thank her! and frankly, she has a wonderful blog that’s thoughtful on several levels. Definitely one of my favorites.

I also need to say thanks to WordPress or whomever it was that wouldn’t allow me to embed that Strike Back Viral video on my first attempt. Yes, good can come out of bad. I’ve always known that, but Facebook had me doubting it.

edit:

I’ve added snaffle to the lexicon. I didn’t learn it from the RA fandom but would have never used it in a sentence if not for the British ladies I now interact with on a frequent basis. The context in this blog entry makes the meaning pretty plain, but hey, you need to read the lexicon if you haven’t already.

MC864RTMW5AG

Oh, The Places You’ll Go

So I just created a Facebook page for RAFrenzy. I had sworn off FB and still can barely stand being on it. But I know it’s a necessary component for really making something viral, and I wanted to do my part with the video that a Motion Designer/Video Editor named Sean Pruen recently uploaded to Vimeo. I would have simply embedded it here, but WordPress doesn’t love Vimeo, hence the FB page. For some reason WordPress wouldn’t let me embed it yesterday, so I made the damned FB page. Then I come here this afternoon and realize it was pointless to make that page. I think Facebook is behind this. ;-) But without further berating of FB, here it is:

Now I can go on and on about this on my blog. :D

I love the computer graphic look to this. His head doesn’t quite move like a normal head. Wouldn’t it be something if he were playing a CGI. LOL!! Well, it’s probably altered, but I can see RA playing something like that. He’s that good. Whatever the case, he still looks fine, and if Richard Armitage ever deigns to read all of the crap I’m writing on this blog, I hope he does get that amid all of the bs, I really do admire him as an actor. Making a Facebook page is absolute proof. Sorry, I can’t let it go that I was dumb enough to make up that page.

As if that’s not enough, I’ve been researching comic book heroes. At this point, I’m almost intimately acquainted with the Invaders of Captain America fame and yes, some comic book fanboys on a few sites. I hope SO never finds out. Never mind being jealous; he would never let me live this down.

But I can’t think about all of that now. What I really want to know is if our lovely Richard will be wearing this get up:

It seems a significant number of people in the fandom think that he will. See here and here.

Stay tuned.