I haven’t written in here in quite awhile. There is almost always something going on in my life, mostly with work, Jules, and friends, and there has been plenty worth mentioning. It’s true that I’m very busy, but for some reason I just don’t feel like writing things down anymore. I think I’ve developed a sort of apathy towards blogging and the internet in general, as it doesn’t seem quite as special as it once did. I remember back to a time where I was one of the few people I knew who had a blog, who had her own website, who posted photos she’d taken online. It meant a lot to me then, especially because it helped to communicate with people in my life who were far away and couldn’t be in on the action.

Things have changed a lot since then. I now have a full-time job in which I sit in front of a computer writing code 8 hours or more every day. When I come home from work I’m tired and the last thing I want to do is get back in front of another computer. My work is so busy that I have basically no time to chat to people or “surf” around during the day, so I’ve fallen behind on reading other people’s blogs and keeping up with the latest memes. It bothers me to not know what my friends are up to, but from what I’ve gleaned from casual references the memes are just getting dumber and dumber. I’m tired of hearing about LOLcats or whatever becomes the latest iteration of ORLY. It isn’t funny. I enjoyed a good meme back in the days of All Your Base, but I just find it stupid now.

I’m incredibly bothered by the influx of the “general public” onto the internet since the rise of social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook. Now everyone and their baby sister has their own space on the web, and it’s mostly pollution. It is getting harder and harder to sort through the crap to find quality design and (for god’s sake) INFORMATION online. Even sites like google have ads running along the side, cluttering up what was once a clean, accessible design. It seems like no site can survive these days without being inundated by hideous banner ads (or even Google AdWords.) It really is a shame. I find my main browsing consists of reading RSS feeds, checking my email, browsing craigslist, and looking things up on wikipedia or IMDB; most of these sites exist for a useful purpose and contain little-to-no extraneous crap (which is how it should be!)

I don’t deny my elitest stance in that I think the internet was better when it was populated by nerds, but I admit that this sort of thing is inevitable. The world is coming to rely more and more heavily on the internet, and people are expected to have knowledge of how it works. Bringing lay-people online means that the internet at large will need to cater to the lowest-common denominator, and this is why sites like MySpace pop up: it makes building your own page EASY. Anyone can create their own custom space on the web and decorate it in any way they like, no prior knowledge required. That’s all fine and good, I have no problem with that in theory, but in reality–holy crap. People with appalling MySpace pages suddenly think they are designers, and they spam their page everywhere with pride. It’s this delusion that bothers me, because designing webpages is my job, and I feel sickened when I get directed to someone’s MySpace page as an example of their “work” or their “portfolio.” I think it’s fine to use as a networking tool, to connect people with common interests, and for band promotion, but referring to it in a formal capacity almost as if it is as important as a professionally designed website is sickening to me. I am a trained designer and I am the first to admit my own designs still leave a lot to be desired; I am ALWAYS looking to people who know more than I for ideas and inspiration because I have a lot to learn! That’s the nature of this field, the technology is always changing. No one can be on top of it, least of all an amateur with no eye for design.

I’m not sure how often I’ll be updating this site in the coming days. I have many exciting things to share, but I am going to have to find a way to make the internet exciting to me again. At the moment I just can’t be bothered.

Addendum: Please stop asking me if I have a “MySpace”; at this point I refrain from joining a social networking site simply out of principle. Come find me on IRC or some flavor of instant messenger, where I’ve been for years.

Two weekends ago, Jules and I went camping with some friends at Lake Quinault, which is about a 3-hour drive west of Seattle on the Olympic Peninsula. It was my first ever camping trip, if you can believe it! We stayed at a nice campsite in a rainforest next to the lake which included flushing toilets and a large common-area shelter (which became necessary as it rained the entire time we were there!) It was nearly impossible to remain dry for any length of time, so we were unable to make a campfire, but we were successful in making a fire in a grill to cook our hot dogs and marshmallows (for S’mores.) We did some hiking, which was incredible as the rainforest contains nothing but picturesque views wherever you look!

All in all, it was a great time. The constant dampness put me in a lousy mood at times because I felt really gross (the feeling took a few days to go away even after showering) but it was worth it. I’m glad to have had such an “extreme” camping situation for my first time, since now anything else will seem easy! Our brand new REI equipment (tent, sleeping bags, thermarests, and hiking boots) withstood the elements as well, which was as good of a quality check as we could hope for!

Now that I know what to expect with car camping I’d like to try camping somewhere just with Jules. On this trip we had 5 people (all squished into my 5-person car!) and it was a bit cramped at times. Given that I had no idea what I was doing or where we were going I’m glad we had the guidance of experienced campers. We won’t have the chance to go camping this month because Ross will be visiting us for most of August! In September we’ll be heading back to the same spot with our neighbors, which should be awesome because we’re staying in the cabins there. Hopefully we’ll get another chance to car camp on our own before it gets too cold.