A Guide to Having Fun on Twitter

Yesterday, two friends moaned on Twitter that they find Twitter very boring. It’s not surprising how it’s boring, considering how infrequent they tweet.

I have since unfollowed them. Sorry, I only follow interesting people, and I don’t need to hear you bemoan about how lousy Twitter is every few weeks.

Twitter is immensely fun. Just ask those who just can’t stop tweeting every single day. If you don’t find Twitter fun, then you just haven’t been doing it right.

So how can you have more fun on Twitter?

Follow more people

This is pretty much given, but some people do just sit around following a few close friends and missing out on some real fun.

Some people say shortly after joining, that Twitter is no fun without your circle of friends around since you can not tweet each other. That is only partly true.

There are millions of other people tweeting. Following celebrities is a great way to learn how to tweet besides knowing their personal thoughts.

When I started tweeting, I followed comic book writers and artists to keep up with their latest projects. For you it might be famous actors, or musicians, or famous geeks, talk show hosts or whoever it is you love. Most of the time, they are already on Twitter.

Get a client

Tweeting on the Twitter website is okay, but it is certainly not that fun. Once you started following some people, it gets harder to keep track of conversations by using only the web interface. This is where clients, or specific softwares to handle Twitter, come in.

If you do not follow a lot of people, a single-column client might be for you. Popular ones include Tweetie, Destroy Twitter and Twitterrific.

But if you follow a lot of people, multi-column clients is the way to go. I prefer Tweetdeck, but Seesmic Desktop is also popular. What you can do with multi-column clients is you can group people, so it’s easier to keep up with important tweets from say, friends or people you really know. I have around ten columns separating friends, geeks, news, celebrities etc.

If you can not install a client (like in the office), I’d suggest using Brizzly, a great web-based client. If you need invitation codes, leave your contact details in the comments.

That’s just for tweeting from your PC. For convenience, you might want to install a client on your mobile so you can tweet from anywhere. iPhones and Blackberrys have great clients (Tweetie, Echofon, TwitterBerry, UberTwitter), but other phones do too, with Java-based clients like Snaptu and Twibble.

You can also use services like gladlyCast. Once you sync your mobile number to the service, you can just text your tweets to a special number, and gladlyCast will tweet them for you. Dead simple.

Join in hashtags and memes

Hashtags (like #hashtags) are just tags used by tweeters to label their tweets, for searching convenience. At the same time, it gave rise to memes, where people tweet on the same theme and append the hashtags at the end.

For example, on Mondays, a lot of people will talk about their favourite music and tag it #musicmonday. The same on Fridays, where people recommend other people who they think you should follow, and tagging it #followfriday or #ff.

Every so often, you’ll find people playing and joking with other hashtags like #oneletteroffmovies or #threewordsaftersex. There are always new memes popping up every week, so keep an eye on them and join in.

What to tweet?

The beauty of Twitter is that you can tweet about whatever you like, and people won’t complain about it. Some people treat Twitter as a personal diary or journal. Some use it to share cool links they found. Some use it as a free alternative to texting with their friends.

You can ask for opinion on Twitter, and sometimes people will reply back. You can get reviews on the current happenings, or new films, or new music.

For me, Twitter lets me keep up with my friends’ lives, and tvice versa. It’s also a wonderful place to have intelligent discussions with several people at the same time.

Twitter’s biggest advantage is having access to real-time news (and nasty rumours). Nowadays, more and more news comes out on Twitter first before arriving on conventional outlets. If I want a picture of a certain topic at the moment, I’ll just search it on Twitter, and I can get what people are actually talking about it now.

Tweet more

Twitter is not like Facebook. Enough said.

 

Do you have any other ideas on how you make Twitter fun? Leave them in the comments.

I hope you enjoy this simple guide, and have fun on Twitter. Follow me @zurairi.

Telling Myths Through Graphic Novels

Originally appeared as fourth post in PopIN as PopMuda:

* * * * *

You might already know that I really adore comics. They are a great medium of telling stories through art.

Today, I’d like share some of my favourite graphic novels that can be considered radical in their deconstruction of what it means to be human, and the whole god, heaven/hell thing:

Preacher (by Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon)
This one hell of a ride is what you get when you mix a Texan preacher, an Irish vampire and a sharp-shooter hottie. Preacher Jesse Custer lived a messed-up childhood under his righteous grandma who wanted him to grow up being a man of God. When the unnatural child of an angel and a demon accidentally entered his body and granted him the “Word of God”, he made it his mission to find God across the United States.

Hellblazer (by various writers & artists)
John Constantine might be many things—occult detective, thief, exorcist, demon hunter, liar, The Laughing Magician—but he’s just really a chain-smoking Scouse bastard. Once on the brink of death, he tricked the First of the Fallen to not only save his ass, but cure him of his lung cancer. One scene that continues to give me the chills is by writer Brian Azzarello, when John cursed some Muslims convicts to pray the other way for pissing him off.

Transmetropolitan (by Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson)
In a dystopian future where humans have found hundreds of ways to live beyond our normal bodies, Spider Jerusalem is a gonzo journalist hell-bent on reporting the truth and bringing down corrupt politicians. When his stories were censored from mainstream press by the President and faced with assassination attempts, Spider continued to dissent in exile through guerilla internet-like “feedsites”. Somehow reminds me a lot of RPK.

Marvelman (by Alan Moore & various artists)
Formerly Marvelman, then Miracleman after a lawsuit by Marvel Comics, and recently Marvelman again after being bought by Marvel. He was initially a British version of Captain Marvel, but Alan Moore, master of reboots, turned it into a far more sinister story. Moore kept asking the question: “What would you do if you have the power of gods?”: Would you try to take over the world? Could you still stay with your mere human love ones? How would you remake Earth?

The Sandman (by Neil Gaiman & various artists)
Definitely one of the best tales ever made, and Gaiman’s greatest achievement so far. Sandman popularised the use of mythical characters in new settings and tales. Lucifer, for example, suddenly decided one day to quit his role as keeper of Hell, set free all its prisoners, and closed it, leaving the key in care of the titular character, Morpheus: The Lord of Dreams.

Something to think about.

My favourite story? Ramadan. Remember the enchanted Baghdad, with its palaces, flying carpets, beautiful harems, genies and wonderful creatures? Where has it gone, and why is it now a war-torn country full of misery?  The answer, as told in this story, is because Caliph Harun al-Rashid had presented Baghdad to Morpheus for safe-keeping in the land of dreams, so that its glory will never fade and be remembered forever!

You might have realised that for someone who talks about rationalism and rejecting superstition, I am very fond of supernatural fictions. Well, it’s because that’s how I feel supernatural should stay as—fiction.

Now if I have succeeded in getting your interest, why don’t you pick some of these titles up? Comics are not all about superpowers and hot chicks, you know.

Psst, have you joined Unscientific Malaysia’s Facebook fan page yet? We have some awesome discussion going on about evolution!

How to Hide Annoying Fan Check Tagged Photos on Facebook

Does your Facebook homepage look like this? Highlights bar cluttered with annoying tagged photos from evil distracting Fan Check or Pickup Friends applications?

Before: AAARGHHHH

With this (temporary) fix, you can hide them, and your bar will look a bit cleaner:

After: TADAAA!

This annoyance brings back memories of dozen stupid quiz updates appearing on your Facebook homepage. Luckily now we can hide those quiz results using filters on the homepage. The tagged photos however, are a bit harder since they automatically appear on the highlight bar, and you can’t filter them out by filtering a specific application.

Anyhow, I achieved the above by installing the Greasemonkey extension on Firefox, and using this handy script which will enable you to set what to show or hide on the highlights sidebar. After installing Greasemonkey on your Firefox, simply click the “install” button on the script page to install the script.

(I’m aware that Opera supports the script, and you can install scripts in IE7/IE8 using IE7Pro or iMacros, and in Chrome there are some tinkering you can do, but I’m afraid I don’t know the exact details since I use neither of these other browsers exclusively, sorry.)

After installing the script, there will be a tiny “Edit settings” link on top of your highlights bar, and clicking it will open the settings menu:

Just click on “Hide tagged” and those tagged photos are gone! You can click “Show tagged” to bring them back on.

Of course, the downside is all other innocent tagged photos will be hidden too if you click “Hide tagged”.

You can also just collapse the whole highlights bar by clicking the tiny arrow beside “Highlights”.

That’s why this is great as just a temporary fix if you can’t stand all those tagged photos (I know I can’t) until Facebook bans the applications, regulate the apps’ sidebar manipulation or until the hype dies down and people stop using the apps. Considering people still do quizzes up until now, that might be a long time coming.

You can also use this script to hide any other annoyances on your highlights bar! As you can see from the snapshot above, you can also hide certain friends from it.

Good luck! =)

Note: Greasemonkey is an awesome Firefox extension that lets you manipulate a lot of things on the internet with different scripts. Lifehacker has a feature on how to use it with  Top 10 Greasemonkey User Scripts.

Coffee Over Comics: 26/08/2009

Batman and Robin: always AWESOME

Here’s what I got last week:

• 28 Days Later #1
• The Last Days of Animal Man #4
• Avengers: The Initiative #27
• Batman and Robin #3
• Blackest Night: Titans #1
• Buck Rogers #3
• Dark Avengers #8
• Dark Reign: Elektra #5
• Dark Reign: The Sinister Spider-Man #3
• Dark X-Men: The Beginning #3
• Detective Comics #856
• Fantastic Four #570
• Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink #4
• Green Lantern #45
• Justice Society of America #30
• Madame Xanadu #14
• The Flash: Rebirth #4
• The New Avengers #56
• The Red Circle: The Shield
• Runaways #13

The story of The Red Circle intro issues comes full circle (heh) with The Shield. It’s pretty much the same super-soldier story: a bit of Cap, a bit of Magog and bit of Gauntlet (from Avengers: Initiative). The Red Circle titles are starting next month with The Web and The Shield. Inferno or The Hangman will be the backup stories for each of them.

You can go no wrong with zombies, and Boom! Studios did well by picking up the 28 Days Later franchise. The original film was one of the best “nu-zombies” (haha that’s what I’ll be calling these new breed of zombies/infected that can run fast as hell) film ever. This new title will tell the story of a group of hardened journalists covering the infected UK with the help of a lone survivor. It has a strong female lead character, and a good setup—hopefully this will excel, just like all other Boom! titles. Having me reading Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and re-playing Left 4 Dead, it’s gonna be a zombie fest all over again!

Let me just say here, that as always these titles are awesome: Batman and Robin, Detective Comics, Green Lantern, Madame Xanadu and Runaways. So I’ll be reviewing these other outstanding titles below.

RECOMMENDED READS:

Fantastic Four #570: Marvel was promoting the hell out of this new run by Jonathan Hickman, and I decided to pick it up after such strong praises from other comic writers and artists. I thought that Dark Reign: Fantastic Four, written by Hickman as a lead-in to his arc was fairly decent, not exactly mindblowing. There were some cool moments with Franklin and Val, but the bit about the alternate universe versions of Sue, Johnny and Ben was a bit gimmicky.

However, after reading this one, I’m pleased overall with the story. Hickman is definitely borrowing from DC on alternate earths, especially the gathering of Supermen part in Final Crisis. It’s nice to see Marvel exploring these concepts too, and I’m curious to find out who the three founders of The Council are, and what our Reed will think when he found out that he isn’t the first Reed to make an initiative to save the world.

The art looks superb, except for Eaglesham’s drawing of Reed as the bulky hunk. I’m quite used with him being the skinny old nerd (with glasses and all), so seeing him look like Tom Strong just felt funny. Other than that, hey, tip-top start to a new arc!

Avengers: The Initiative #27: Christos N. Gage took a different approach to Initiative this time, and refreshed the tired title. Since being taken over from S.H.I.E.L.D. and now led by Taskmaster and The Hood, a lot has changed in The Initiative. The Shadow Initiative is no longer what it used to be, and this new reality was told from the perspectives of really-minor characters Johnny Guitar and Dr. Sax.

Dark X-Men: The Beginning #3: The main story sees Emma Frost peering into the mysterious mind of Namor, and finding things she didn’t expect in there. The pair Paul Cornell and Leonard Kirk are charming as ever, delivering great dialogues and nice art.

There was a particularly clever panel where Emma found the three doors symbolising Namor’s strategies to cope with the surface world. The three doors had “Attack”, “Negotiate” and “SUE” engraved on them. Then we had Emma saying, “Odd. I never imagined you’d be one for legal action.” I couldn’t stop smiling remembering the cleverness of the whole thing.

For backup stories, we get one story where Wolverine was supposedly rampaging through the middle of the desert. Of course, we found out that it wasn’t actually Wolverine. But who was it? Finally. the most interest story is at the end, about the now almost forgotten Aurora dealing with her schizophrenia and disassociative identity disorder.

Coffee Over Comics: 19/08/2009

A quiet moment in the cinema for Power Girl and Terra

On the list last week were:

• Batgirl #1
• Batman: Streets of Gotham #3
• Blackest Night: Superman #1
• Dark Entries
• Dark Reign: Mr. Negative #3
• Dark Reign: The Hood #4
• Ex Machina #44
• Filthy Rich
• Final Crisis Aftermath: Dance #4
• Hellblazer #258
• Invincible #65
• Jack of Fables #37
• Justice League of America #36
• Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers #4
• Power Girl #4
• Project Superpowers: Meet the Bad Guys #1
• Superman/Batman #63
• The Mighty Avengers #28
• The Red Circle: The Web

The big mystery on everybody’s mind was who the new Batgirl will be. The ending of Oracle confirmed that it was not Barbara Gordon, and early teasers definitely didn’t suggest Cassandra Cain (having her smiling and the big rack just didn’t look right). There were little choice left, and finally it turned out to be…Stephanie Brown a.k.a. Spoiler a.k.a. girl Robin a.k.a. one-time Batgirl. While I have no extreme feelings whatsoever for that choice, I just couldn’t enjoy Batgirl #1 that much: the story wasn’t quite engaging, the art wasn’t spectacular…but if Babs and Cassandra make enough appearance for “handing down the mantle” moments, it might work.

One more title from The Red Circle was released, and so far this is the best yet. The Web is not a particularly a noble guy. Taking a twist from Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark’s book, The Web’s alter-ego designed a special suit more for the fame than doing good. That is until his saint of a brother’s death, and a huge change of heart…

I was very excited with the launch of the Vertigo Crime imprint. Depending on the people, it might have looked like they were riding on the wagon of Marvel’s Icon imprint, or they’re stealing its thunder. In any case, the first two books have not been particularly stellar, coming from the accomplished Vertigo. Having Azzarello write Filthy Rich does not make it stand out from other run-of-the-mill noir series. You have the token don-on-his-luck guy, this time injured football player stand-up guy Richard “Junk” Junkin, you have the femme fatale, socialite Victoria, and her imposing rich guy dad.

Dark Entries, the second title, fares slightly better. In an imprint of crime stories, you surprisingly get a John Constantine story. It started out as a decent whodunit (written by Ian Rankin, author of the Inspector Rebus series), but the moment Rankin decided to test his supernatural chops out, the story spiralled down to awful incongruity. In any case, it’s a decent debut for the sub-imprint, and let us hope the next books are much better.

RECOMMENDED READS:

Batman: Streets of Gotham #3: Batman and Robin might be an exquisite story, but Streets of Gotham is an exquisite Batman story. Previously, Thomas Elliott a.k.a. Hush has escaped from his cell, and has been carrying the Bruce Wayne’s identity. In an act of revenge, he squandered Wayne’s wealth, and basked in the adoration for his newfound generosity. That was until Dick and Damian called in The Network to keep an eye on him. In the Manhunter feature, Kate Spencer battles against Jane Doe without her suit.

Invincible #65: Conquest is finally dead, Eve gets a bigger bust during her reconstruction…all seems to be well in this epilogue for the Conquest arc, or are they? We see Rex’s funeral, nemesis Angstrom Levy’s rehabilitation, the impending rise of the Martian parasites…and the preserved head of Conquest for the Reanimen project!

Dun dun dun!!!

Power Girl #4: PeeGee is getting really really goood! It has achieved the perfect balance of action and comedy, mixed with a bag load of girl power. This issue has PG spending some quality time with Terra, bonding over movies and bashing an eco-terrorist with powers over fantasy creatures. Cue self-mocking quips about secret identities, superhero costumes, “manga monsters” and more boob jokes! After the wild Saturday night is done, Karen gets on with her apartment-hunting. She found one just perfect for her, just to have the day spoilt by more monsters…