Since I can’t find the time or the energy or the desire to blog much anymore, I decided to give microblogging a shot. I’ve always been against it, sillifying it whenever I can, but as with other trends I sillify, I end up trying them anyway.

I added a Twitter widget to The Box, it’s at the bottom of the right column. This will be where I post my rubbish and other vital stuff you absolutely need for your spiritual and intellectual well-being. I imagine it will mostly be trivia, the kind I don’t need to tell and you don’t need to know, but is totally publishable just because I have a Twitter account.

What actually motivated me to start tweeting is this following mockumentary about Flutter, the new Twitter. It’s hilarious in a creepy realistic kind of way, because I can definitely see something like the stuff in the video happening in reality. I mean let’s face it, 140 characters is a lot of talk and nobody has the time for vowels any longer. Watch this, it’s good:

HERE’S A LINK TO MY TWITTER. CLICK ME! …or just check the right column in this blog. I should totally drop my caps, and stop saying totally.

I’m still not sure why I decided to pick up blogging again. When I made the decision to take a break, I was pretty sure I will not revive this blog. I had many reasons to think so, most of which still stand now.

One of these reasons was/is my getting tired of what I call the gang mentality which plagues the Jordanian blogosphere. Everyone knows everyone else in person, it seems, and these connections develop into cliques which reproduce Jordanian society at large — complete with its social-economic-political-cultural maladies. I suppose you can argue that that’s exactly what social networking is about, connecting people, but wait a minute, I thought technology would empower us to think outside the box, not to bury our heads deep inside it.  I thought technology would help us to craft a better model for our society to follow, to grow as individuals. That, to me, means no favoristic semi-exclusive gangs.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m back.

Now dance.

1…2…3…Testing.

If you can read this, then Tololy’s Box migration has succeeded and my obscure technical abilities are, once again, validated. Hurrah!

This is a technical note, and not a regular post. I am still on a sabbatical –the sabbath never ends for lazy people, you see. Hurrah!

Dear you,

I have found that I am too absorbed in my own condition to deliver much of value to the world, and for that reason I decided to take a break and reorder my priorities. Lately, I have been feeling that the quality of my posts has deteriorated, that I have lost my focus (if I ever had any), and that I yearn for something that I have not delivered yet. Some restructuring, shuffling, condensing, or toying must be done to pacify these feelings.

I will not be blogging for some time, so the box will get a bit rusty. If you want to communicate with me, drop me a line.

Do not despair though (hah!), I haven’t quit blogging yet. I’ll be back like the devil that I am.

Until we meet again, adieu!

The Box got reviewed at Araby Blogs, a new Arabic social network which I believe revolves around blogs for the most part. Here’s the rave:

We would like to introduce you to one of the most intriguing and articulate bloggers in the Arab world, Tololy. She is a Jordanian-Circassian woman living in Amman, Jordan who is always speaking her mind and sharing her criticisms on various topics.

Moreover, Tololy earned her status of being the first reviewed blogger on Araby Blogs due her artistic talent, articulation, and feminism [sic]. “The Box”, as she often calls it, is a mesmerizing and informative site.

Sweet! I am flattered and I wish Araby Blogs success and prosperity and everything nice. Thanks Araby Blogs!

Fear not, I can still blog in English.

Who would have thought that two consecutive Arabic posts would cause such a scare? I certainly did not see that coming.

This post is to announce that I have not switched entirely to Arabic, and that I do not have an intention to write exclusively in Arabic. Now relax, foreigners, and rest assured that you can always expect to find English posts in Tololy’s Box.

Now rejoice. Buy yourselves something pretty.

Hi,

I have a question for you: are you having trouble commenting on my blog lately? If yes, please let me know by sending me a short note using this form or by leaving a comment and I will look into it right away. Thanks for your help, anonymous internet readers.

Right about now, I was supposed to be at the University of Jordan’s Center of Strategic Studies presenting my opinions on “The Internet and Socio-Political Life in Jordan,” conveniently the title of the workshop I was invited to participate in. Obviously, I did not attend.

The reason I did not attend was primarily to preserve my partial-anonymity. The invite came in my nickname “Tololy,” which was something I found very interesting because there I was, receiving an official invite not in my official name but in the name I chose for myself. I thought this was a very interesting alteration of traditional boundaries (call yourself a name long enough and you will get official invites from institutions addressing you by it).

As I was saying, I wanted to preserve my anonymity by not attending. I normally respond to emails asking for my opinions on issues, and I even meet up with people whose cyber-personalities interest me, and many people who read this blog know me either in person or at least know my actual name. Therefore, my anonymity is a puzzling concept; very blurry around the edges.

However, this invite to appear in person in front of a crowd and introduce myself as “Tololy” was definitely a break in my cyber-life routine. It meant that I would have had to discuss issues with people who saw me right there in front of them but did not know my name, indeed, could not know my name. The situation as I imagined it in my head would have been bizarre, or at least pretty uncomfortable.

This is one disadvantage of being anonymous online. It is easily surmounted by temporarily revealing your true identity in such occasions, a thing I would have done had I not been entirely busy today and technically unable to attend that workshop. So, yes, there were other reasons why I did not attend. But for future reference, I will have to design a way to appear in person in speaking-engagements without trespassing on my anonymity. Speaking-cat hologram maybe?

I am so excited to announce the launch of the New York Times Middle East blog, which I participated in launching as the person in charge of Al Bawaba Blogs. The blog is in Arabic, and it features a number of New York Times articles translated into Arabic and revolving around life in the Arab region.

The purpose of creating this blog, as its description details, is to make NYT articles about the Middle East accessible to people from the region and in Arabic, and to initiate discussions about them and learn people’s opinions.

ترغب جريدة النيو يورك تايمز في معرفة ارائكم حول سلسلة مقالاتها عن الشباب المسلم في انحاء الشرق الأوسط، كل من هذه المقالات قد تم ترجمتها الى العربية وارسلت الى هذا الموقع لغرض النشر والمناقشة. إن سلسلة المقالات هذه قد رتب لها ان تنشر بصورة دورية لتستمر طوال العام ونحن نتطلع لسماع ارائكم.

It feels so good to be a partner in such a beautiful initiative, and I am ever so proud that I actually got to work with New York Times people! I read the New York Times all the time and it’s this larger-than-life idol to me in a way, so the chance to get a bit closer to it is enormously flattering.

Check out the New York Times Middle East blog and leave your input and opinions there, and I am sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Via Frankom, I am apparently only 68% addicted to blogging. Another useless quiz, another useless guess.

68%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Click on the button to take the quiz.

It seems I have tilted lately towards personal-reflective type posts, and that can get annoying and make me lose my focus and join the ranks of “them bloggers who are female, maintain personal blogs, and think everything is right with the world when they go shopping.” I have always resented that stereotype because female bloggers add as much, if not more, value as their male counterparts and especially so in the Arab blogosphere (we’ll argue over the validity of calling a group of blogs a “blogosphere” later).

This isn’t a post about bloggers and their stereotypes and all that jazz. Nor is it about women and their undeniable contributions. This is a post about my own demons and how they relate to and affect this space I call my blog.

Last night, I had a reading marathon of sorts. I had stopped reading extracurricular books almost since the start of this semester under the excuse that I barely had time to finish class readings and work. That was a lie I told myself to make myself feel better about spending hours chatting online or thinking of my future, which are all good activities, but ones that have consumed me with an appetite lately.

So as I was saying, yesterday I started and completed Amin Maalouf’s In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong, which prompted, or re-fueled, a number of questions I had and also answered many I was challenging myself and others with. Maalouf articulated my thoughts for me, clearly and precisely, and that lifted a load off my brain. But, like any good argument, it also left me with other questions.

In the Name of Identity is a book about identity and how it plays a role in our behavior, reception, and perception of other people and of changes in the world. The book looks at things historically and logically (as Maalouf has an affinity with history) and attempts to dissect the current situation of the world, yes –the world, what a big arena!, from that perspective but also with an inevitable touch of evolutionary rhetoric. It does so using a personal tone and it explains the obvious which most of us cannot quite put our fingers on.

I enjoyed reading Maalouf immensely, and I wondered how come I never read my father’s copy of hisThe Crusades Through Arab Eyes. I suppose it was because when I was younger, history was synonymous with things long gone that I should not bother with, events which are both dull and draining to remember, and names of dead people. But not anymore do I think that way.

According to Maalouf, with whom I agree, our current plague as a global village is the holding-on to tribal identities. At the sight of the word “tribal” people will imagine tents and camels and an atmosphere strictly Arab, but that’s not an accurate picture. What he means by tribal is the idea that we must be belong, that we do belong, to one tribe almost exclusively and above all others: religion, nationality, gender, you name it. It is when this “tribe” is most threatened that we resort to classifying ourselves under its flag with vehemence. This classification changes according to the various threats, actual or fictional, that we observe, and it leads us to stress points that were once negligible, and it leads us to close ourselves up. It’s reflex supreme.

Lest this post turn into an analysis of Maalouf’s work, I will stop talking about it here. It has influenced what I am about to say, though: this blog was started as an attempt to fight stereotypes (mainly of veiled women, Arab women, and Arab people and culture). Now I know why it was so. Because when I started this blog, I felt threatened as a veiled, Arab woman and I felt greatly marginalized both in the Arab world or what I received of it, and in other places where I had been where people would either look down at me with disgust and mistrust or with sheer pity. Nobody, not here or there, could pierce through my appearance to know that I liked piercings, fine arts, and modern languages, or that I had severe doubts about what set of beliefs I had which kept secretly yet dramatically changing over time. Nobody bothered, and nobody knew who I was.

That was the thesis of this blog: to show “them” that I can think and even excel at it, use English extremely well, and have discussions with whomever I want about whatever subject. Thus, I thought, I would achieve balance between upper and middle class Jordanians, and between the West and the Arab East, and by that I would have acted as a bridge and resolved conflict within my capacity.

So since that was the driving force behind my entering the blogging scene, and I continue to adhere to the same principles, what new do I bring? Why does the not-so-occasional personal rant sneak in here if this is a strictly serious and mission-oriented space? My ideas have changed, why do I let myself be confused with someone I was and no longer am? How come I can’t express my opinions as bluntly as I shoot them when asked about them in real-life? I mean, my real-life opinions have earned me quite a reputation and a load of problems starting with family and ending with school, so why can’t I risk having that reputation and those problems through this blog? Why not transmit the same issues I worry about and fight over on a daily basis through here? What do I fear?

I don’t know yet. It could be a distant relative suddenly realizing I am someone they know and then telling my parents I am sharing family issues online. It could be an ex-acquaintance realizing I didn’t portray them as perfect and leaving me angry comments. It could be a stalker, old or new, out on the hunt for anything that can be turned into abuse. It could be futile dialog that takes an unpredicted turn in the comments section. It could be anything. I really, and honestly, can’t point it out.

Still, this uneasiness makes me want to stop blogging. If I bring nothing of value and nothing new, unlike others who obviously do since they enjoy a lot more popularity (and I keep my opinions of their contributions to myself), then why bother? If the people like chirpy entertainment junk-food-for-the-brain type things or hardcore extremism, would it matter if a moderate rational tried to sell her stuff? If I can’t affect change like I set out to do, then why sit idly by and watch my blog become filled with little quirky tales about my eccentricities and other trivia? If I do not have a distinct voice amidst the masses, what’s the point except satisfying my own ego? And isn’t that petty?

The constant pressure to produce something of value and/or novelty could kill you, fellow bloggers. Read more about it here and consider taking a break.

I came across an article that discusses blogging in the Arab world. It is conveniently titled ‘Blogging in the Arab World’ and yet it only discusses the Egyptian blogosphere as if it is the only active, significant, prominent blogging scene in the region. Hello? The Arab world is made up of 21 other countries.

This sort of fallacy seems to be pretty dominant in traditional media reporting on, and paying attention to, Arab blogs. I have noticed that it is almost exclusive to Iraqi, Egyptian, or Lebanese blogs. Understandably, these blogs hail from areas unique in their political situation, but shouldn’t media reporting on the much-baffling and troubled Arab region also recognize blogs from other countries, which after all, make up an integral and vibrant part of the Arab blogosphere?

I believe that by lending attention to blogs from the less ’stable’ areas in the Arab world, media, specifically European and American media, sculpt an idea of a continuously troubled, challenged, chaotic Arab world — very much like what the movies and other media portray. In turn, what this does is further perpetuate negative stereotypes of either Arabs or their lifestyle. There is seldom any portrayal of regular, non-violent, non-chaotic, non-religious life in Arabia.

I wrote about this before when I noted that it is only when there is significant trouble that Jordanian bloggers garner international media attention. I think that is truly sad, because in each and every country in the Arab region there are bloggers who make change with every post, bloggers who have distinct voices rarely heard in mainstream media, bloggers who humanize Arabs and who affect, even if slowly, public opinions in their countries. It is such a waste not to listen to what they say or to cram them all under the category of one country and yet ignorantly stamp that piece ‘Arab blogging.’ It is a shame.

I emailed Reset asking them to change the title of that piece to ‘Blogging in Egypt,’ and I will keep you posted if and when they reply. Never lose your voice.

I spy with my little eye…
…EVERYTHING you do online!

Do you use: Flickr? Facebook? MySpace? Amazon? Buzznet? imeem? iLike? Flixter? Picasa? Windows Live Spaces? Hi5? Pandora? Digg? PictureTrail? Multiply? Twitter? Stumbleupon? Friendster? etc.?

I have just discovered a way to basically spy on everyone you know online. How, O Wise & Paranoid Tololy, you ask me? Just join Spokeo and it will tell you exactly what everyone you know is doing online by tracking their activities across tens of social networking sites.

The site’s name is eerily similar to SPOOKY, and for good reason. I have just joined, because you know how I am like paranoid and so I am attracted to paranoia-related things, and Spokeo has made me ultra paranoid but also more careful. You’ll only find me on Flickr because I am anti-Facebook & Co. for security and privacy reasons, obviously.

Just remember, you are being watched and you don’t even know it. Chew on that when you socialize online and always be careful. Nobody likes to get punked.

I don’t know exactly why crap just keeps on happening to me in all its possible forms, but it does. I emit, attract, and absorb negative energy.

When I woke up this morning, I mistakenly selected a HUGE chunk of the sidebar design and it got deleted and I did not pay attention to it (because I had just opened my eyes), and then I clicked ‘Update’ and BAM! — that chunk was gone. You can’t undo after clicking on ‘Update.’

To fix the mess, I installed WordPress locally. Of course, I had done that on Windows but had no idea how to do it on Ubuntu. So I found this useful page Install WordPress locally with NanoWeb Server – Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10, and it took me approximately two hours to figure out how exactly to change file permissions or edit files as root. The author basically assumed I knew how to implement commands as root and his layout of the commands was plenty confusing. This page helped me get over my illiteracy, especially the gksudo command at the bottom of it. That command enables you to open and modify files and folders which are exclusive to root while at the same time not jeopardizing your security. I am putting these resources here for the general good of mankind, no actually, I am gambling for some positive karma. Or something.

So, Tololy’s Box is back now. I am sure there are some minor glitches here and there but hopefully I can fix those too.

P.S: Did you notice the new TinyMCE comment editor? I killed that RTF editor which was ultra buggy. Now I have to go back to ALL the comments that have been posted since January and clip out any formatting commands used in them, because if I don’t do that, they will all look very very bad and nobody will want to read them anymore. How fun is that?

Update: How does everyone like the new editor? Is it less of a pain in the arse than the old one?

I kinda messed up the sidebar of my blog just now. I am working on fixing it, so in the meantime, please bear with me as I offend your eyes with WP default theme.

Moral of the story: Never, ever, touch your blog design files when you’re half asleep.

Thanks!

Thanks to Hani, I have now installed a plugin that will let you post comments without having to wait for me to approve them. All you have to do is answer an easy math problem before submitting your comments, et voila! — they will be published as simple as that. Take care not to swear though, because I will get you. Grrrr.

I am excited that I won’t have to delay approving comments anymore, and I think this will help whatever discussions we have going on. If you’re interested, the plugin is called Peter’s Math Anti-Spam for WordPress and you can download it by clicking here. It’s extra kewl because it can also TALK! Wohoo!

Exciting news from Discovery:

Blogging’s Good For Your Health

Blogging can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face, new research has found.

…

“We found potential bloggers were less satisfied with their friendships and they felt less socially integrated, they didn’t feel as much part of a community as the people who weren’t interested in blogging … they were also more likely to use venting or expressing your emotions as a way of coping,” Moore said.

…

All respondents, whether or not they blogged, reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking.

“So going onto MySpace had lifted the mood of all participants in some way,” Moore says. “Maybe they’d just made more social connections.”

But we already knew that, didn’t we? I know that blogging has helped me express myself in ways that were not always feasible in face-to-face situations. I know that it has pushed me to transfer what’s on my mind into words and points of view that I can support in real-life. I know that it has shaped and reflected some aspects of my character. I also know that it has provided a channel of communication between me and like-minded people, as well as others, which would not have been possible otherwise.

Tololy’s Box is four years old, and there is no telling just when I will close shop. Bottom line: blog on!

I did this quiz in the past and my blog was worth 3,387$, and now:

I’m not impressed. After four years of hard work and spilling my brains out on this page, I made a meager 14,678$. Good thing I kept my day job. But on the bright side of things, my blog’s worth more than quadrupled in a little over two years. Not bad, businesswoman Tololy, just keep the job.

Lately, I have been having a presistent urge to change how I write and/or what I write about. I am a mercurial person; meaning I change a lot, in personality, style, and moods. That’s probably why I love costumes and roleplaying and chameleons.

So in this light, I want to see how far I can go and I want your opinion. I would appreciate it if you could answer these questions, maybe leave a comment on this post or drop me an email:

- What posts are your favorite in Tololy’s Box?
- What topics I write about that you enjoy the most?
- What topics I don’t write about that you would like me to write about?
- Any ideas, suggestions?

You can answer any of these questions or all of them, whatever you have the time and mood for. Thank you!

I am thrilled to unveil the new look of Tololy’s Box. It’s simple, usable, and very “me” right now. I chose a black and white theme and edited it heavily to finally achieve this style. I am very happy with the final outcome and SO very proud of myself for being able to pull this off on my own (although Sk8erboi helped me frequently when I got stuck for days trying to figure something out, thanks Sk8erboi).

This new look is a huge departure from the previous flamboyant RED design which I have outgrown. I did not design the previous look and this is particularly why I am very pleased with myself for launching this one. I spent days upon days editing styles and adding things and fixing errors and checking compatibility with different browsers and consulting WordPress support forums and mixing colors and photoshopping headers and installing WordPress locally and decoding the previously coded footer and whatnot. It was really exhausting for a Modern Languages student to play amateur web developer and do all that on her own.

Now I realize it will take you some time to get used to the new colors and the less-frilly sidebar, but to comfort you I have kept some design elements from the previous look. Things like the wording and some sidebar elements are still here so you don’t feel like complete strangers. Also, the Tololy’s Box “logo” is still here and some red is thrown in so you know you are in the right place. I still have some more tweaking to do but this is the new feel of The Box.

I was supposed to launch the new look on New Year’s Eve but I am too excited to hold back until then so, you have it now. I do hope you will like it after the initial shock, I hope you’ll enjoy the few new things I added and keep on reading Tololy’s Box. Let me know if you have any suggestions, comments, or errors you want to report. Thank you!

The posts I publish under “Personal” always get me the most traffic. Do you like observing me? Does it answer some questions you have?

I like reading other people’s personal blogs as well, by the way.

I’ve also found out that some of my older posts are so very extremely lame. What was I thinking publishing that stuff, and why did you read it?!

I am sure I will think this post is lame in 2009.

Update at 1:31 PM: I really like the word “voyeur” disregarding its meaning. I think it rolls off the tongue smoothly. Very sensual vocab.

He’s handsome. I like:

Jorn Barger

Wired ran a feature about the 10-year anniversay of blogs. Everyone interested in blogging, citizen journalism, and communications should read it.

“Blogging at its best is deeply personal, and once readers get used to that kind of connection to a writer, it’s hard for them to accept anything less.”

Happy birthday blogs. Keep changing the world, one post at a time. ¡Viva la Revolución!

I upgraded to the latest Word Press 2.3.1 and the process went well. However, the sidebar elements in the blog no longer function. I am not sure why that happened exactly, but since I cannot fix it I’ve chosen to accept it.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Extremely disappointing logic behind two instances of internet censorship in Jordan, reported in today’s Al Ghad newspaper. I could not find the articles in English:

“Al Qaeda Poet” sentenced to 18 months in jail. According to the Al Ghad piece, this person was sentenced to jail based on poems he wrote and published in online forums praising Osama Ben Laden.

President of the Jordan National Movement, Ahmad Oweidi Al Abbadi, accused of several charges. According to Al Ghad, Al Abbadi also published his opinions, deemed offensive to the state and the royal family, on the JNM’s website.

So basically, the reasoning of the Jordanian Big Brother is to jail any locals who publish materials online that do not sound like the talk of any given state official. Authorities seem to believe that this strategy will be effective in changing people’s whispered opinions, improving the public mood, and eradicating poverty and corruption. Free speech and cyber openness topped with a jail sentence.

But what about the people who live abroad and have a lot to say?

A few days ago, Mahmoud Rimawi had a good article on the latest decision of Jordanian authorities to subject online publications in the country to the same press law that governs normal publications, newspapers, and whatnot.

Are these subsequent incidencts an indication of the government’s tilting towards less openness and less tolerance of different opinions? Or are they steps on the way towards more cyber-intelligence (which could either serve the General Intelligence Department or free speech) aimed to understand the booming business of Jordanian online self-expression?

What say you?

Someone did send me the contact information of Pulp magazine when I asked for it in July, after the magazine gave an inaccurate (and supposedly humorous) description of my blog in that month’s issue. Since I obviously am too serious for broken jokes in print, I called the magazine and I was pleasantly surprised by the editor’s reaction.

The man was very friendly and he listened to my complaint (read:bitching), apologized several times for having offended me unintentionally, and explained the joke. I demanded a correction and I was promised one. Then I ended the call with what can only be described as a mafia-inspired touch by saying “I will follow up on this. You won’t miss me.” I have no clue why I said that, I guess I wanted to sound dangerous and mysterious.

Hilarious, I know.

But I never got around to calling again because I was entirely busy packing, travelling, and unpacking. Rinse and repeat. And because I never called again, I figured the editor will not really publish anything. So much for my Sicilian threats…

Two days ago I bought the August issue of Pulp to check. Lo and behold! Page 15, under “Blogs Flog Pulp”:

“We’ve learned in the past month that bloggers take their blogs VERY seriously. Even when we tried to compliment one of Jordan’s bloggers by putting her on our “most popular” list, we were scolded for the description we used to describe the blog. It was supposed to be humorous, but that apparently did not come across. Our apologies. Tololy’s Box is not, in fact, “mostly about Tabuleh.” It’s a great blog about culture, entertainment, day-to-day happenings, fashion, quirky news pieces, and much much more. It’s quite good, and that’s why it was on our list. The creator is currently in New York, so she’s bringing us the best of that part of the world. She did admit, however, that “Tabbuleh is a form of salad that I worship.” So we weren’t so off”

I love the title of the correction. My mafiosa phone-persona must have been intense.

You can sense from the choice of words that Pulp people weren’t very excited that I “didn’t get the joke.” Still, they respected my right not to like what they published, and they corrected their mistake. For that, they have also gained my respect. I might even do what a friend suggested: send them a bowl of quality Tabbouleh.

Hello,

I’m interested in knowing just how much you rely on feed readers in accessing my posts, so I would appreciate your cooperation in doing the following poll.

Update: Thanks to everyone who took part in this simple poll. Here are the results:

I read Tololy’s Box through a feed reader

No 62.1% 18

Yes 37.9% 11

total votes: 29

Since most of you who have participated do not read my blog through a feed reader, I will spare no effort in trying to make it load faster for your convenience. And thanks to you who have subscribed to my feed, hope it tastes good.

Via AndFarAway and Subzero Blue, I just learned that Tololy’s Box was mentioned in a Jordanian magazine titled Pulp as one of the most popular blogs in Jordan.

Very awesome. I like. Thank you Pulp.

But there’s an itsy bitsy problem.

The brief description about this Box says that “this blog’s got everything, mostly about Tabbuleh.”

Tabbuleh is a form of salad that I worship. But my blog is not mostly about Tabbuleh. My blog is not mostly about anything, really.

The Tabbuleh part is hilarious and extremely inaccurate, unless it’s a joke. Then Ha-Ha.

Otherwise, do your research people! Look at more than the 1-2 pictures I posted of Tabbuleh once upon a time. READ for the sake of everything sacred and precious!

What’s next? “Tololy’s Box is really not a blog. It’s an EMPIRE!” … Wait, that could be accurate in a stretchy kind of way, so we can’t possibly publish it. Write: “Tololy’s Box is about butterflies and merriment, but mostly about lost candy.”

Thanks to Roba for uploading a scan of the mag page, you can see it over at her blog. Click here.

Also, could someone please send me the contact information of Pulp Magazine? An e-mail or a telephone number would be great, thanks a bunch. I would like to get to the bottom of this drama.

I love boxes. Square, round, pale, colorful, artistic, locked, open, boring, enticing, practical, luxurious; I love them all.

You never know what is inside a box until you open it, and it can have anything inside. Just thinking of the possibilities is arousing. I enjoy this type of suspense and I indulge my senses in an anticipation fantasy every time I see a box.

Did you guess why I call my blog Tololy’s Box?

I came across a poem titled The Box via Slate Magazine, and I just had to share:

The Box

So I remember the hidden: every night my zaydee
at the ballet watching Zizi
kicking her petite leg above the outstretched claws
of the chorus line as they moved in perfect ruby unison
through third position and then spun
their tulle skirts into a twirl.
All that I know of the interior paramour
I learned from patient zaydee sitting shirtless
off-stage in his old pajamas,
waiting for his crop-haired Zizi to flick
her gypsy fan onto his lap in a mighty crescendo
of leaps and bounds and how could I not love this
and him and all his knowledge of the carnal
life inside the box and so it is
for his sake alone I placate the lovers shaking their fists
in the park, pitched in battle over all the new thinking
outside the box they call their lives
and the faces they make as I pull from my coat
the Lobster Ballet I can never remember
because always I am too busy abandoning their hearts
and engaging the subtle mechanisms of dance
and pointing and blabbering in my delicious nervousness
so that I even forget to tell them they should hum
something Iberian or Basque
and that even “April in Paris” will do
as I gently shake the scarlet dancers of Carmen
to stockinged attention and then the watching,
the blessed watching of lovers
rediscovering the pageantry of the interior.

By Tomás Q. Morin

A Bosnian friend of an Indian friend of mine could not sleep the other night. She somehow knew about Tololy’s Box through the Indian friend, who reads my blog whenever he gets the chance. She came here and read, and read, and read for two hours, and then fell asleep.

I had a chance to chat a little with this new Bosnian friend of mine and I could not wrap my mind around the greatness of the whole situation. I write here because I feel like it, and I write about anything that crosses my mind. Sometimes I make sense, sometimes I don’t. And even when I don’t write about things personal, I write in a personal way because this is the reason why I write. Even when I am serious, it is personal because it is my writing.

Talking to my Bosnian friend, I realized that whatever it is that I type here has potential to go everywhere. It travels and walks into the minds of the people who read it. It is dead unless you read it, in a way like a book. In another way, I do not write to become popular and I feel that this enables me to remain true to writing about anything I want. So even if nobody reads Tololy’s Box, I would still write about the same things. I might curse though.

During our brief chat, I also came to understand that Tololy’s Box can qualify as entertainment. This was a revelation to me because I have never thought of it as such, somehow “entertainment” just did not make the cut for me. But my Bosnian friend talked about her impressions of the box and seemed to have enjoyed reading it almost as much as I enjoy watching Craig Ferguson. Go figure!

So I am entertainment. I open up to strangers I have never met and will probably never meet. I welcome them into my Box and sometimes bore the hell out of them. Go through The Archives and you can easily trace my growth (or the opposite thereof), the changes in my language, and my various attitudes. This is Reality Blog and I am your hostess. Make yourself at home.

Hallelujah!

I love that I can ask for help and get it, and I love that you care about Tololy’s Box. I can safely announce that TB loads faster now. It’s alive…

In the past (yesterday), I used a stopwatch to monitor loading time. Then a nice person suggested I use Pingdom… It feels good to step into the Light.

Here are the stats:

Website information

Total loading time:
1.9 seconds
Total size:
499.4 KB
Total objects:
40
External objects:
5
HTML (X)HTML:
2 (38.3KB)
RSS RSS/XML:
0
CSS CSS:
2 (5.3KB)
Scripts Scripts:
3 (30.5KB)
Images Images:
33 (425.2KB)
Plugins Plugins:
0
Other Other:
0
Redirected Redirected:
0

I still need to do a couple of things to reduce the loading time, but it’s all good because I learned a lot since yesterday. I would like to thank Sk8erboi, Firas, and Ash for their doctor-like awesome help. I really appreciate that and thou shall get cookies.

And of course everyone else who was concerned about the health of the Box gets a virtual cookie…

Hello! This is Tololy from, you know, Tololy’s Box. I’ve been receiving complaints lately from you dear readers that this blog is heavy and slow. You don’t like that, I don’t like that. The glitch here is that I lack the technomagic to fix it.

Upon the advice of a buddy, I removed that banner from the sidebar (nobody signed up for SiteGround through here, therefore I did not get the bonus 3 months of free hosting, thank you very much) and I reduced the number of posts that appear on the main page. That cut down on the loading time of the Box, but not enough.

So…

Dear Gods of technomagic and everything wonderful and IT-like, do you have any suggestions on how to make this place load faster? Help, advice, suggestions, and volunteer work are all welcome. If you have a good idea or want to flex your cyborg muscles, then you’re my man/woman!

P.S: Will reward with cookies.

“Aren’t blogs great?” — That’s what I was thinking today while browsing some really useful blogs. Maybe the only thing that’s hotter than a single blog is a blog aggregator and a link directory in one place. That’s where you feel you’re in an all-you-can-eat-yummy-yum buffet.

One aspiring blog aggregator/link directory is Adiga Psatha. The name literally means Circassian Talk. What the aggregator does is simple but very important: it aggregates the feeds of blogs maintained by Circassians (or hybrids like myself), classifies them acording to country, features links to Adiga-relevant sites, and even has pictures and designs made by/about Circassians.

Blogging is certainly one way to salvage the remains of a great culture and to connect its people together. Adiga Psatha was launched in December, 2006 by Jad Madi. And thanks to the help of Zaid Dodokh, it now features the largest Adiga music library online. There is also an Adiga Psatha flickr group where pictures of the dances, costumes, and families are published.

On top of all that, there is a very cute logo of a man wearing a qalbaq and holding a pen in his hand:

I get asked about my name quite often by people who read my blog. I have always been asked about my name online, but increasingly so ever since Tololy’s Box was born. Tololy is not the name that is written down in my birth certificate and other official documents, you see.

I also remember that when Tololy’s Box was born, many people asked me why I chose to blog under this name and not under my official one. At that time, the heated debate on anonymous bloggers was popular in the Jordanian blogosphere, and I remember posting some comments on people’s posts which considered blogging anonymously as a form of “cowardice.”

Generally speaking, I am never in favor of extremes in judgment. In ways, anonymous blogging is beneficial to the people who choose it. In other ways, it is not so. The same goes for blogging under one’s real name, it has its pros and cons. To judge someone as cowardly simply because this person did not reveal their overestimated “real name” is simply ridiculous – in fact, anonymous blogging may be a necessity.

This brings us to the core of this post, I really am not anonymous. The guise people imagine that I wear by blogging under the name Tololy (family name: Tutunai) is extremely relative. I have met several of my readers, a number of fellow bloggers, and a group of employers through this blog. I even have a profile picture and another full-figure picture in The Visuals. Let’s say I reveal my real identity when I deem it fit.

But before bothering to criticize anonymous blogging, answer me this: what does a “real name” mean, really? Is it the name that your parents call you when you are born, or is it a name that you call yourself and have people call you and that, after time, becomes more real that the one scribbled in your passport? The flexibility of naming one’s self is simply too powerful to be ignored. Very few people call me anything but Tololy. Even my two-year old nephew calls me Toly (his version of the name).

Recently, I have been having an urge to unveil my “real name.” I am still thinking of the matter, but I must say I think it is a temporary whim and no more. I guess I need some changes around The Box and that then the temptation will be gone, as if they ever do.

(Toothpaste For Dinner is the comic of Drew, husband of Natalie Dee, whose comics I love)

This day just cannot possibly be more, umm, challenging. Between WordPress and YouTube, I had myself completely confounded. Around three weeks ago I was going through the options and whatnot in WordPress and out of curiosity enabled the Visual Rich Text Editor. That is the reason why some of my posts since that moment of doom featured weird-looking and utterly undesirable fonts.

Ever since then, I have been trying to disable the Visual Rich Text Editor — obviously to no avail. I normally assumed all along that the option exists under Options >> Writing, because it has everything to do with writing. Makes sense, doesn’t it? This evening, equally frustrated once again, I went through the Options under the Writing tab (for the 100th time) and read:

Formatting: Users should use the visual rich editor by default

The option was unchecked, which drove me even closer to pazzia than ever. But fear not, this story has an ending for all who wander are not lost. I looked under Users >> Your Profile and voila! there was my holy grail right under About Yourself! This is how the culprit looks like:

Personal Options: Use the visual rich editor when writing

Now, being your average (such a demeaning word, I resent it) user, I have been looking for this one sentence for three weeks. I have suffered, my blog has suffered, and my readers have suffered as well (cue: three revealing posts in one day). Could ye who speaketh in ones and zeroes explain why this option is located under Users >> Your Profile and not under Options >> Writing ?

Source: Natalie Dee (http://www.nataliedee.com/062806/fortune-cookie.jpg)

“Today is the second anniversary of tags”– this is what the Technorati newsletter announced today. The newsletter also said:

The beauty of tags is that they’re metadata: data about data. What does that mean? Tags actually describe (or categorize) their subject, as opposed to, say, keywords, which just occur within them.

We think tags are becoming popular because on the Live Web, categories and topics are just as, if not more useful than keywords for describing and finding content, especially when that content doesn’t contain lots of text (photos, videos, songs and the like).

The folks at Technorati are celebrating the day and the achievement. It’s only natural to express joy at such grand success — after all, tagging goes beyond blogs. It’s Web 2.0 meets usability meets The Users.

I admit it, I am a little late. The International Blog Day was August 31st but I was engaged with so many events that day that I could not celebrate one more thing.

I owe Teo all the information I have about this day. What you basically have to do is link to five blogs you like and read often, and write a little about them. It’s a move to promote your favorite blogs or blogs you think deserve to be read.

My list:

1- Il cuoco d’artificio

This is Teo’s blog, he’s an Italian chef in Parma. He runs a game every now and then on his blog, asking his readers to translate a recipe he posts in a foreign language. I got tipped about this by Topozozo (I recommend Topozozo as well – great guy and a great friend) , and I miraculously won something for the first time in my life! Look here for details.

2- Natalie Dee: Huffing it up, every weekday.

This is one of the most creative sites/blogs I have ever come across. Natalie Dee adds one drawing a day,and her drawings are simple but impressive. She has a blog section in the site as well. You must visit Natalie Dee.

3- Alb Sayed

A brilliant blog by an Egyptian living in the US. This is a great moderate voice that we need to hear more often. Alb Sayed does not like exposure, but this is not entirely about what he likes, now is it? I recommend his blog to everyone. His views make sense and make you think.

4- The Black Iris

A Karaki blog that is also moderate, reasonable, and speaks to your mind. I enjoy the Black Iris tremendously and I have no doubt you will.

5- The cabinet of Miss R.

As announced “A Compendium of Sorts”, I adore this blog. The design and theme are engaging, and the pictures are beyond captivating.

One last thing remains to be said about celebrating this International Blog Day, you need to send an e-mail to each author of each blog you list and to notify them. I think this is a good idea. I received an e-mail this morning from Deb, who lives in Israel and has just linked to my blog. Fun, no?

It’s been a year since Tololy’s Box was born and I can’t believe it’s been that long.

Last summer I decided to start a public blog, this was some sort of “phase two” of my blogging life. I had read that to perfect your writing you need to write on a daily basis, so I grabbed myself an account at Blogspot.com and announced the birth of Tololy’s Box like this:

Hello anonymous readership!
I think I should share some basic info about myself with you…just to let you form a mental image about the person behind the words.

Back in 1984, I celebrated my coming to life with a cry and a slap on the butt.
I think I’m as human as they come. A humble balance of good and bad, saint and sinner…
I am a Jordanian/Circassian young woman…and I study Modern Languages (namely Italian/English/Hebrew/Japanese) … I chose this major simply because it was,at the time that I got to pick,the most reasonable option. I had had a notion some four years earlier that I would like to study Italian… well when I got squeezed I chose it. I am ever so glad I did, this major is culturally enriching in ways I never imagined possible.

I am currently in the states but I’m heading home soon… and it’s odd how much I miss home. It’s true what they say, you don’t realise what you got till it’s gone.
Enough of all the puffed up talk. I love animals. I just terribly adore them, mainly felines & reptiles… chances are I’ll have a cat or a reptile pet any time of the year.

I have a taste for the finer things in life,I love art history and mythology and I always try to read up about them..but you can never read enough now can you? Literature interests me and some of it affects me deeply, I read Arabic and English literature…Oscar Wilde and Khalil Gibran being my all-time favorites.
I must also confess that I enjoy intelligent people immensely…A good brainy conversation is such a rare thing , I’m both blessed and lucky because I came across some extremely intelligent people in my life… and they just keep me going.

Now my blog will probably contain entries that deal with issues on the personal level,be they inner thoughts and/or feelings or some events that I find personal and would like to share with you, my readership. It will contain entries that deal with life in general and others that quote articles or link to websites… I might even post some of my writings here! Just about anything and everything….

I started blogging in January,2004 on a different site. This was the right time to move my blog, I thought, a week ago, and here I am. On a last note,this is an introductory entry so don’t quote me just yet!

The first two comments I got on that entry were from Roba and Lina, and that was such a nice gesture from them.

What’s very fascinating to me is how I have come to grow and document that growth, so to speak, through my Box. I could physically feel the changes my personality and my writing, as well as my choice of topics, have undergone in the space of this year. This is my social experiment.

Do you remember how the old Tololy’s Box used to look like? In case you’re not old school, or you have a poor memory, this will help refresh it for you:

Ah, the scent and feel of the old days, it’s pure beauty. Today I celebrate with you year one of Tololy’s Box’s life, which will extend until I run out of ideas; a highly hypothetical situation like I told Kinzi my friend.

I have been committed to posting one entry a day throughout most of the past year but now with the new pace my own life has taken, the Box will follow a new routine. I will try to blog twice or three times a week, but that is not a rule. I will no longer limit myself in posting rules, that challenge is over and won.

What’s left for me to say is to thank each and every person who has taken the time, at any point, to read into the Box. Your time is a great gift, one I would never have dared ask for. That is not to forget your support and the amazing exchange of knowledge that you afforded me. I am much obliged to all who read my mind, all who commented on it, and all who dropped me their minds.

Welcome to Tololy’s Box, dear anonymous readership.

Through Pandemia, who is an Italian blogger I follow, I got introduced to a delightfully interesting little notion.

Pandemia says that in the USA every 60,000 people have one serial killer living amongst them. This he links to the possibility of having a serial killer in the Italian blogosphere and he even suggests bloggers try to spot that person through potential fishy blog entries or behaviour. (Read Pandemia’s entry here, if you know Italian)

This idea is fascinating to me personally because I am fascinated by the working of criminal minds, especially those of serial killers. So why don’t Jordanian bloggers start hunting for the Jordanian serial killer whose blog they could be reading and commenting on? Eyes wide open.

As absurd as this may seem, I have six mosquito bites on my left arm. They seem fresh, but I cannot really tell – I am not the mosquito bite expert.

This little introduction is anything but relevant to the core of this entry. I am about to unveil the items you seem to be most curious about in the Box, it was an entertaining hunt this one, really. I sometimes wonder and I always am more amused at things. How delightful! Search meter data for the past 30 days:

- Sex
- Aryans
- Marx
- Nature morte a la Charlotte
- Alaa
- Aqaba
- Brave
- Circassian
- Devil’s mind
- Farzdaq
- Grand house
- Haggard
- Karak
- Marxism (Tololy’s note: why, oh why, do I see a pattern?)
- Mechanical bride
- Salon
- Southern
- The self
- Un segreto

What does that tell me? Let me think.

Possibly.

That depends largely on the type of job you are on the look-out for and the tie it has with what you blog about and/or how you blog. A good example of a blogger who was contacted with a job offer is Dervala. Her distinctive writing style, highly-personal prose, and beautiful diction when handling technology landed her a job at Stone Yamashita. Surreal, isn’t it?

There are several businesses that would offer you a job writing a blog for them, although this can be limited to technical blogging. How this works is quite simple; your employers would first assign you an application to monitor and your task would be to stay absolutely up-to-date with anything related to it. Employing your unique blogging style, the one that got you the job in the first place, you compose blog entries that are attractive to readers and beneficial to the company in that they drive traffic back to base and could result in downloads/purchases, etc. -a win-win scenario if you will, and it’s becoming a trend faster than you think.

If your blog concentrates on certain fields of knowledge then that helps, in some cases, boost your chances of getting hired through blogging. Employers are often specifics-oriented, meaning they would hunt for someone they believe is an expert in his/her field and this expertise should be reflected in this person’s blog. But at other times, having a well-rounded personality and a myriad of interests present in one’s blog could speak up for a colourful and informed character, and they certainly do not dismiss specialization.

The most important factor of all is devotion to quality. If you are passionate about blogging, and you add a bit of your creative self to it then you will not only stand a chance at attracting the attention of potential employers, but will also bring your experience of blogging to a whole new level – something priceless.

It often happens that a blog author gets invited to join a blog directory, or a portal leading to specific blogs, and this is somewhat a win-win scenario since both the blog author and the directory would benefit from the probable exchage of traffic, should the author consent to linking back to that website.

But that’s not always the case.

Since odd things tend to occur in cyberspace, a blog author might also receive fishy invitations that could, as an example, ask for a phone number or detailed and obviously unncessary data in return for linking to the blog. I have received such an invitation and, to tell no lies, I was uneasy about sharing my information with an anonymous body that, despite having a website, also put me under an obligation to respond in 48 hours.

Anonymity has been a big issue in the blogging world, and it will probably always pose the same questions and theories, the same arguments and counter-arguments. But in the case of an invitation, from an unfamiliar body, requesting critical information like a phone number, a blog author ought to be cautious.

I have just stumbled upon a quiz concerning weblog ethics and etiquette, and I previously had no idea such a game existed. Nevertheless, taking the quiz was interesting enough for me to dedicate an entry for it. It relates to several aspects of blogging that one sometimes seems to miss out on, such as linking, commenting, proper discussion policies, and so on.

If you would like to try it out, and I suggest you do, click here. Oh and I scored 90%, is that not something to be proud of?

Blog-related tales have it that a decent number of individuals have been fired due to keeping blogs about their bosses. The why and how behind such stories are not what this entry deals with.

How does one post boss-friendly entries, and at the same time prove one’s ability to criticize one’s boss? I make no claims that I have any clear solution but I say, avoid mentioning names or, alter names if you have to.

If your blog runs under your birth certificate name (also known as a real name, as opposed to an alias), then you might want to cut down on excessive blog URL sharing with colleagues, particularly when your superior is not exactly nice.

Let me be a bit democratic here for this instance, I would like to learn of readers’ views and suggestions about boss-friendly content; how does a blog author deliver sharp observations and not get sacked? What do you think?

Useful links:

Metablog: Exposure

Metablog: Up close and business-like

Metablog: Blog fashion

Unveiling Metablog

There is always the issue of comment moderation, as opposed to the “total” freedom of the so-dubbed self-expression on blogs, to reflect on. Questions such as: “Why would anyone enact comment moderation?”, and “What ends does this facility meet?”, are naturally valid. But no less valid is the question: “Can you trust people enough not to moderate their comments?”.

Blogger has a comment moderation system, that is not precisely timely. Nevertheless, it is a useful tool in the hands of blog authors who do not wish offensive language – for example- be posted in the tails of their entries, thus depriving them from achieving their desired degree of seriousness or from impacting their targeted readership as they intend.

Offensive language aside, some times comments just “don’t fit”. This is yet another reason in favor of moderating comments: Why publish a remark debating, say, apples, when one’s entry is about cars? No reasons I can think of can satisfy this question’s answer.

A wise function in Blogger’s comment moderation system is the inability of the blog author to modify or alter comments in any way; comments either get published, or they don’t. A possible outlet, or an exception, for this case is when anonymous comments exist. In this case one can modify and re-post the comment as an anonymous person, certainly with a difference in the clock at the end of the remark in question. Still, this trick is not entirely safe, since anonymous commentators are not all blind to the time they posted their comments.

“Can you trust people enough not to moderate their comments?”

The answer to this question relies laregly on one’s own perspective of matters, and one’s experiences. From personal experience, I have to announce that I do not trust people enough not to examine their comments before having them related to my entries. This is not to say that any are inferior to some, but to simply state that there are no guarantees as to what irrelevance or medicore quality one can have glued to a certain post, should one be too tolerant in this regard.

It’s quality that one should be concerned about. If one is positive that the readership is perfectly aware of the importance of a topic, or even remotely aware of it, and that this same readership is operating on a relevant wavelength that will not overshadow the content of a post, then there is hardly a need for any such a step as “monitoring”, or “control”. But the odds of having a person all too sure of the anonymous eyes reading a blog is so marginal it is almost non-existent.

Enabling comment moderation remains a personal choice of the author. Some work well with it and are able to take in numbers upon numbers of absurd, and mostly off-topic comments, while others cling to the principle of quality and do not wish to have to be put in a situation where they manifest their control by deleting improper comments. It is a waste of time and energy, essentially.

The issue of exposure and audience is one of the most tackled in any given conversation about the expansive blogosphere. Aspiring blog authors, who are in fact writers, would certainly like to test the impact of their writings over readers. A writer who wishes to publish a book at some point of her life, would care to explore the merits of her writing via comments left by readers. That is but to cite one example of how a blog can be a helpful tool for individuals to assess their work.

A blog may serve to promote a product, rather than an abstract idea. Think of someone who wants to start a small business and yet does not have the means to obtain, nor the need for, a domain name. Free blogging services would provide the perfect outlet for this rookie business affair, and if done properly, it may attract the desired customer base the business owner wants to target.

For these reasons, and many more, exposure has become a strong tool in the hands of blog authors to reach out to the public. Imagine the sheer empowering a blog author, who receives thousands of hits a day, feels. The prospects of affecting the opinions and even the lives of the people who read the blog are enormous, and at this point exactly comes the tricky affair.

Is exposure a good thing?

Not in all cases.

If a blog author wants to deliver a message of some sort, or to promote a product or a line of thought, then she would probably be looking for the blessing of exposure. Reaching a larger number of people would help spread the idea. In this case, exposure is good.

Some may argue that perhaps the idea in question is “corrupt”, or “unworthy”, therefore it should not be divulged. But since there is no single authority to issue verdicts over what people think, and consequently what is pleasant and worthy is relative, very little can support this claim.

Exposure throws a tremendous amount of responsibility on the blogger. Channeling people’s thoughts in a certain way is never uncritical, and is rarely safe. Failing to understand and to feel the weight of what exposure brings with it is an error. A blog author ought to be cautious what she puts out for people to quote and to learn, and since all things written have a way of escaping oblivion, extra care ought to be taken to ensure one gets the message across wisely.

Useful links:

Metablog: Up close and business-like

Metablog: Blog fashion

Unveiling Metablog

With what revolution self-publishing is facing the world, and innovating it in the process, a valid inquiry would be: When is a blog too personal, and when is it too business-like?

Bearing in mind the different tastes of readers, and the different aims of bloggers, it would be easier to understand what choices to make and how to make those choices when self-publishing. A set, not fixed -mind you-, idea ought to be the starting point for any individual desiring to express something. This idea, call it intuition if you may, is what would spur that person to keep on blogging, and to keep that blogging experience both enjoyable and informative. It may fall under promoting a business, saluting Sushi, accounts of mall hang-outs with buddies, or supporting human rights. You name it, there’s a blog that talks about it.

So when is a blog just too personal?

Who could tell? It may be the person behind the blog’s intention to post journal-like entries and to focus on placid everyday details. This is an option that is empowered online and that has found supporters worldwide. It could attract readers, particularly if the blogger enjoys a special political or a social status in her society.

Yet the more profound and cosmopolitan value of the so-coined “personal” blogs may lie in just that; being personal. Imagine a person blogging from a distant African country, about the everyday misery and hunger she sees in her neighbourhood. Any such an account would be, I daresay, louder in appeal and impact than you choice of numbers of sophisticated full-of-words-nobody-understands documentaries. It would be more plausible, because the voice behind it is someone like you and me – someone we relate to.

Minding your business?

One of the most important roles blogs play is enabling those distant, almost inhuman, figures behind business projects and firms to appear a bit less like the huge, sometimes metallic, money-generating machines, and a bit more like human beings that can actually talk and (catch) sometimes be funny.

Establishing that blogs offer that option to business people, it would be logical to deduce that, by appearing rigid and all too professional on a business blog, one is quite losing the point.

There is no written code to write a blog successfully. That adverb may not be what the blogger is after in the first place, and is, in its criteria and definition, highly debatable. A blog is in essence a personal experience, even if it talks about your upcoming project, your company’s big night at some award ceremony, an intimate encounter, or your aunt’s cat Whiskers.

Useful links:
Metablog: Blog fashion

Unveiling Metablog

The Online Etymology Dictionary defines Meta as a prefix meaning 1. “after, behind,” 2. “changed, altered,” 3. “higher, beyond,” from Gk. meta (prep.) “in the midst of, among, with, after,” from PIE *me- “in the middle” (cf. Goth. miþ, O.E. mið “with, together with, among,” see mid). Notion of “changing places with” probably led to senses “change of place, order, or nature,” which was the principal meaning of the Gk. word when used as a prefix. Third sense, “higher, beyond,” is due to misinterpretation of metaphysics (q.v.) as “transcending physical science.”

The definition above need not interest you in its essence. It is alluded to in this introductory entry to make clear what is meant by Metablog, yet another series to be featured in Tololy’s Box. It has become a habit of mine to found a nexus of entries, as you might have observed.

What interests me in the etymology of meta, and what is in verity the meaning I will be using in Metablog, is that which states that Meta is a prefix meaning “after or behind”. To dilate matters a bit more, and depending on my own understanding of the prefix in terms such as, say, meta-theatre or meta-linguistics, the prefix is used to indicate a species of knowledge that discusses its own principles and theories.

As for blog, that word still has not found a proper meaning that convinces me, because the variations are so wide and amazingly hypnotic. This word I leave undefined, and you may outline it as you please. Now Metablog will, as I would like to design it to be, handle issues related to blogging in general, and not the Box in particular. I may start from the Box, but the scope is always larger and the outcome could be applied to a number of blogs, hence the naming of the nexus Metablog. Tololy’s Box, in its Metablog chain, is a sort of a blog that talks about blogs, now Meta is almost certainly clearer to you.