Regular readers (ahem, cough) will no doubt notice that my rate of updates has been somewhat stifled in recent times; I don’t blog like I used to anymore.

So, what’s happened? Has everything in the world stopped or have I just stopped leading a life that gives rise to interest and the need to talk about it? Well, the answer is neither really. Like most Irish bloggers who started out in the early days, I too got a little carried away with the 3 P’s of the whole social media triangle: Perusing, Posting, Peering. In that time I learned of some great folk whom I can occasionally drop a line or whom I have at least vaguely introduced myself to such that if I add them on Facebook or Twitter they’ll generally reciprocate and that’s nice because it’s a link to a learned ear whom I can ask questions of or get feedback from.

However, in learning of these folk I also became painfully aware that a journalist, I am not, nor do I have a unique angle or skill to convey material that isn’t better done elsewhere. As such, in recent months (perhaps the last year) my blog has been retired to a personal rant zone, where I can feel free to get things off my chest and with the hope of extracting some sanity check feedback from the masses. I am still a blogger (badge of honour says est. 2001) but blogging my thoughts on a regular basis would only clog up the interweb with meaningless garble that I can simply link to in del.icio.us, snip to Posterous, relay on Twitter or humourously share on Facebook. Apart from the occasional flatulence of niggling societal imbalance, political angst, or corporate discontent the world does not need my contributions and as such I don’t have the audacity nor arrogance to believe that it does.

Blogging a Dead Horse?

The whole experience has been a very worthwhile journey and occasionally I get the odd question popping in about something I wrote years previous, giving me a warm fuzzy feeling that somehow I helped somebody with a small tech problem or provided an angle of required thought – for that alone it is worth 1 post per month or thereabouts but any more would be delusional.

These days I’m more vocal within the Twittersphere, a world whose frontend applications provide a mesmerising view of constant news streams from micro-bloggers and celebrities alike, sometimes useful, sometimes crazy, always entertaining and beyond all else, as addictive and impulsive as licking sugar from donut consuming lips.

Not that I presume you are but should you be missing me or my idle banter, feel free to follow me over on Twitter/jbwan perhaps I’ll say something that will make you smile or at least get you angry enough to tweet back. If you track me down on Facebook and I don’t respond to your add then please don’t take offence. I generally stick to adding folk whom I have at least met, know well through virtual mediums or whom are co-workers of some temporal existence.

A clever and appropriate nomenclature coined by John Murray Brown of FT.com to summarise Ireland at the moment. Our Emerald Isle is looking more like a junk shop, jade dragon – cheap, useless, outdated, and fragile. On one hand our country is fighting the evil of wreckless developers and their associated debts while on the other the government and courts appear to be doing everything possible to stop these people from going bankrupt and giving them all the chances necessary to welcome them into the ba-nama republic that we have created. It’s fair to say that some great strokes were pulled over the years by unscrupulous Irish politicians but what we are currently witnessing is the equivalent of the first admiral on the Titanic persuading people to get back out of the lifeboats! Amidst all of this iceberg hugging behaviour is the persistent belief that somehow getting the public to vote YES on the Lisbon Treaty’s second time referendum will save the country, as if Christ the Financier were due a second coming. Rather than awaiting the return of our money messiah however, we should probably be more focused on crucifying the current radicals that have brought us to the water’s edge but neglected to admit that they were drowning while supposedly they were walking on the surface. Here’s a link to the FT.com article.