Twitter Cops
stupid in a really funny kinda way.
i should clarify what i meant in the last post concerning twitter and excessive self-aggrandizing and the like:
i love reading the personal posts! seriously! but i hate excessive monopolization by a few people. i’ve even ditched a couple professional groups because of this same thing. if you’ve got that much time on your hands as to be a “professional twitterer” (thanks, @duebber), more power to ya. there’s obviously an audience out there for you, it’s simply not me.
and again: i’m not bitching here about Twitter or specific Twitterers – but the nature of Twitter grates on me as it is (sometimes) and this type of behavior only serves to make it worse.
the solutions are obvious:
i love technology. i love that we’re struggling to figure out how to continue to integrate technology into our personal and professional lives even as the pace of technological growth far outpaces our ability to keep up with it. i’ve even set up a second twitter account and am trying to figure out how to incorporate it into my classes next year.
fear not, friends! i’m not weeding my twitter following list because you mention the fact that your dog likes to eat its own poop, or that you love The Bachelor.
just don’t mention it 25+ times a day, eh? :-)
lots going on, lots coming up – time for another stream of consciousness, eh?
be well and take me to task on some of this stuff, ya hear?
heard about the new browser from google? it’s in beta right now and i’m giving it a run. it’s intriguing at this point and it gives me a couple reasons to consider it over firefox (my browser of choice for many years now).
here’s a good article about it in the washington post.
here’s the link to download the beta version.
here’s google’s cool comic book format explaining why you should switch (and the specifics on the technology behind the browser).
in conversation with fellow blogger SWNID the other evening, we enjoyed discussion on the zany search strings that lead people to our writings.
for the uninitiated, when you go to google or yahoo or dogpile and enter a phrase that you want the search engine to find matches for, this results in a search string – the search engine then uses this to determine which websites most closely hit all aspects of your search… and sometimes to hilarious results.
google has a little program that i use called Google Analytics – it looks at traffic on websites and shows very specific information that can be a HUGE help for folks who are trying to track and analyze who and how and why people are visiting their sites. it also shows the specific phrases used in search engines that brought these people to my writing. now, my blogging exploits are mainly fun and entertainment for me (and you?) and hardly warrant in-depth analysis of who’s reading and who’s not…
but it IS fun to see some of this information! it’s even more fun to think, “how on earth did this search engine figure that MY blog matches THIS string of words?!?”
so some of the search strings that have landed people at rustypants.net in the last 45 days include:
and my personal favorite of the last 45 days…
certainly, some of these i can somewhat fathom how they related to my writing. anything with “poop” in it must relate to dolby’s poop-eating past. church-going-to-hell would be the sign along the highway. longest toes must be the fehrman sisters. the peter furler search was because of my hatred of the newsboys.
but turkey t-shirts? junk in trunk? nudist spy cam?
and there are about a dozen that i can’t even list on a family-oriented blog such as this (har har).
what has gotten me the most traffic in the last thirty days has been my post referencing stretch armstrong – five to ten people a day are searching for a picture or information on stretch and land here.
useless, mindless information but still a good laugh for the blogger.
hey, maybe if i blog about paris hilton or amy winehouse, i can really get the number of visits up!
our school does 4 20-minute focus lessons daily in the areas of writing, math, science, and reading. teachers are given the focus for each week, then left to their own devices on how they’re going to teach and what materials they’re using.
this week’s focus for reading is synonyms – words that have similar meanings. i put together a couple pages on my SmartBoard (interactive projector that shows the entire class what’s on the computer) talking about synonyms, asking them for their definition, then using the definition found on dictionary.com. i then had them give examples of synonyms and we were having a grand old time.
i made sure they understood that it’s easy to say something like, “Mr. Rust is happy.” but that taking it to the next level, making it interesting for our readers, you need to drop the mundane and use synonyms. i gave an alternate word for “happy” then said, “hey! let’s get on to thesaurus.com and look at all the different words we could replace happy with!”
and i did.
and some of the words made the kids scratch their heads. others made them laugh, like when i said, “if i said, ‘Mr. Rust is chipper!’ instead of our boring sentence using ‘happy,’ wouldn’t that make this sentence more exciting?”
“what does ‘chipper’ mean, Mr. Rust?” was the response.
and being the intelligent teacher i am, i said, “we’re on dictionary.com – let’s check!” and the result was this:

well, this is all cool, right? we’re having a great, entertaining LEARNING experience! woo! mr. rust RULES!! OH yeah!!
so i’m explaining chipper, acting the part, etc. and one of the kids says, “what does ’sprightly’ mean?” and i begin to explain, but then, in my massive intelligence, i thought, “wait!! you’ve got dictionary.com right here!”
so i plug in “sprightly” and this is what i and the whole class sees on the SmartBoard:

and i hit the word “gay” and the class was like…
OMG!! you’re GAY?
haha. i quickly moved on and thought it was over. but then at lunch a student came over and said, “Mr. Rust, someone said you said you was gay.”
and i realized: teaching on the fly is fun but potentially costly.
but i’m still chipper and sprightly.