t'interweb

I use the internet a lot.

I don't think I use it excessively. At work I rummage around blogs and web sites when I can. On evenings I browse through medical/mental health sites that interest me. A few times a week I'll pop on to Facebook but I don't use it a lot. I'll email* at work several times a day, mostly to managers.

I've a 'puter at home we use for online gaming on evenings, but rarely use it through holidays or weekends.

My mobile 'phone can do email and Facebook and stuff but I've not configured it to do so. I'm quite happy using it to call or text or occasionally take photos.

If I want to communicate then I still like face to face contact. At work I walk to offices to meet folk, I hardly ever use my 'phone. At home I drive to friends and family and hardly chatter by 'phone or texts or Skype or emails. One friend texts* loads, which works fine, since we meet up throughout the week too. To have a real relationship, where you can relate to people, supported by texts/emails works for me.

I'm aware that I'm practically prehistoric in how I interact with the big wide world, though. My wife, who loves gadgets, thinks that although my mobile 'phone can do loads and I use it for just texts/calls/photos, the only reason I have a modern 'phone is because they don't do rotary telephones any more so I was forced to move on.

I recently was reading through work by Kruger (2005) on computer mediated communication. Apparently we're all not very good at it.

Published work shows authors believe they're understood much better than they really are. Folks communicating face to face accurately assessed how often their meanings would be understood. Folks communicating electronically incorrectly thought meaning would be understood about 80% of the time, when it was just a little over half the time. 44% of the time the important meaning (such as sarcasm) simply wasn't got.

Contextual meanings such as sombre or sadness or humour were poorly conveyed. What of smilies and emoticons? They were used and didn't help improve the outcomes. Even with such cues, anything (other than facts) such as sarcasm or emotion or attitude or irony or humour aren't meaningfully conveyed almost half the time.

This comforts me, knowing electronic communication is but a small part of my world. But, gentle reader, just in case you read anything I generate within this blog or comments on other blogs and take issue, can I play the "it's through using t'interweb" card and claim it was meant sarcastically, ironically or humorously? :-)


* email, electronic mail, is it just a noun or is it fair to use is as a verb? Texts, text messages, is it just a noun or is it fair to use is as a verb too?

Writing Style

Dr Shock invites us to consider our writing style. Copy and paste some of your text here and see.

Going through my last few posts, I get results either of David Foster Wallace or of Dan Brown. Curious!

Zarathustra's musings

Well, he has me intrigued!

Clouds

Thanks to Dr Shock for this Wordle thingy, which shows a cloud of what my blog's about :

Clicky.

Well, it amused me :)

Epiphany

Christmas snuck up on me, this year.

I know, I know, it's still on December 25th this year so I could still have planned for it all in good time, but I didn't. Somehow it was upon me rather more swiftly than planned (erm, because it wasn't planned) so has all been a bit of a flurry. Ho hum. Or ho ho ho.

It's been healthy blogging for a year then taking some time out, but now I'm bored so it's time to start waffling on again, as is my wont. Thank you kindly for the comments and emails, which were surprisingly positive.

Just a brief aside. As folks will have gathered, I'm more than happy to be challenged on clinical opinions, indeed it's welcomed. What I think is a reasonable plan of action someone else may quibble with, the discourse that ensues is helpful and either helps me feel that my view is rational and sound, or that it isn't and helps me shift. When to give ECT, how long to be on an antidepressant for, what section 5 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 should be used for, at what age to formally diagnose personality disorder, when to use a Supervised Community Treatment order . . . I'm happy to have offered views and chew the cud 'til the cows come home. What unsettled me wasn't when what I was saying was being challenged, but how I said things was being challenged.

Tricky one, that.

It's something I'm not easily going to change. Also, even if I stopped just posting on whim, and thought through and edited stuff, no matter how assiduously I tried I'd still cause affront to someone, somewhere, some of the time. One author of another blog rightly pointed out that a goodly number of their readers are patients (so things need to be framed in a suitably benign and universal way, presumably because patients are too fragile to exist in the really real world) which gave me food for thought. It'd be wrong for me to be saying things on other sites that could be taken as unhelpful.

I'm not a politician. I'm often wrong. Thus, I've never aspired to be "politically correct."

Medical blogs and medical student blogs I frequent seem to be liberal minded and haven't had issue with how things are said, so it seems sound to largely confine myself to such waters. And what better place to start than my own icy waters of Lake Cocytus . . .

. . . time to start blogging again.

Illumination

2008 will hopefully be a fine year in the blogsphere.

Although sadly Maple Leaf Medic has stopped blogging, Dr Brown has returned with patient experiences and keen insight in equal measure, Mousethinks waxes lyrical with thought provoking clinical contacts, Cal's accounts remain as stimulating and entertaining as ever, Milk & 2 Sugars is back from her soujourn after exams and thankfully continues to deliver her antipodean perspective and humour as does Polly with The Girl giving more medical student perspectives.

It's a shame that The Psychiatrist Blog remains silent since even those not enthusiastic 'bout it would say it generated stimulating and animated discussion. Shiny Happy Person continues to write 'bout psychiatry far better than I ever could, succinctly conveying what I'd spend pages waffling over, giving a pithy and somehow more real account of both postgraduate medical training and of psychiatric clinical practice that's always engaging to read.

What with retired nurses and the vibrant Mental Nurse site keeping me both pondering and entertained, there's a lot to look forward to reading through 2008.

What I'm really looking forward to is the illuminating discourse from Zarathustra (gah, the link's old, he's not still a student) 'bout the text Al Azif penned by Abdul Alhazred. A true treatise on sanity, hmmm! ;-)