Tomyamaguchi’s Weblog

It’s the end of the year as we know it (and I feel fine).

It has been six months since I have posted to this blog. My last blog posts were at the time of my housemate Bob Berry’s death. Poor Bob missed the End of the World–twice. The second was actually a rescheduling of the first that was supposed to happen on May 21. That one on October 21 turned out to be a dud, as well. Maybe the Mayans can pull off a better show in 2012.

Bob would have also enjoyed the political theater of Occupy Wall Street and the various Occupy camps that sprang up locally. He was a big fan of Adbusters, the organizing force behind OWS. I know he would have spent a fair amount of time at the camps.

I enjoyed how OWS took advantage of the new media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Ustream. For all the mistakes OWS has made, we have to give them credit for getting the attention of the mainstream media and redirecting the national dialogue to the inequality of our economic system. I hope this leads to something positive in 2012.

So here is my Tech Year in Review: how I use the various social networks.

Thanks to Twitter, my WordPress blog and Tripod website have not been totally quiet. My tweets are displayed on those pages, as well as on my Facebook page. I have noticed that those posts to Facebook from Twitter get more responses on Facebook than on Twitter. To me, it indicates that Facebook is the more social of the two. I do spend more time on Twitter, however, using it mostly as a news source. When I see something that interests me, I like sharing it with others by retweeting.

I am also slowly warming up to Google Plus. I don’t share much there since there are not enough people I know on G+ to share it with. Most of the people I know are on Facebook. Occasionally someone asks me to network with them on LinkedIn. I approve the request if I know them. Otherwise, I am never on LinkedIn. Same with MySpace which I joined in 2006. I never got into it. Facebook was the first social networking site I actually found useful. Twitter was the second.

More disappointments in 2011:

For awhile I had my hopes up for a high speed train linking the Bay Area and Southern California. Those hopes are rapidly fading. Maybe someday, people will realize it is worth the investment to get people out of cars and airplanes for distances of 500 miles or less. Unfortunately, it won’t be in 2012.

The Fukushima Daiichi meltdown frightened people away from nuclear power again. The truth is that the real disaster was the tsunami. The only workers that died at the plant had drowned, except for one who died of a heart attack. The radiation exposure to people outside the plant was minor. The risks from nuclear power continue to be quite small compared to the risks from climate change. Maybe we will be able to generate enough power from wind and solar so that we won’t need nuclear power, but it has to be affordable. So called renewables are still too expensive for the poorest people of the world.

On the bright side, the bicycling community continues to grow and get stronger. A new bike crossing in South Berkeley makes it easier to ride into Emeryville and West Oakland. I am happy to be healthy enough to continue to enjoy the rides.

So goodbye 2011. Goodbye Steve Jobs. Goodbye R.E.M. Goodbye Bob, Betty, Bick, Rich, Sandra, and all the other folks who were bright lights in my life who are gone now.

Hello 2012 and the Mayans. See you on 12-21-12.

December 30, 2011 - Posted by tomyamaguchi | Uncategorized