me 2.0
i used to have this elaborate personal web site where i hosted my own worpress blog, my own photo gallery and links to all my friends sites, my resume and so on. then i slowly realized what a big and unnecessary stressball this was that all this was because i had to maintain all these things myself. this led to eventually taking stuff down, and pointing to most of my other content which was hosted elsewhere (and hosted better as well). so now my web page is one glorious page. better huh?

these are the things i do/am involved in/got sucked into/waste time with online. most of them involve some sort of social feature, so if you use them as well, we can been buddies/friends/stalkers or whatever the fuck they call it on the site. also, if any of them seem like something you'd like to try, but don't feel savvy enough to tackle, i might be able to help set you up. The icon is a link to the rss feed of that particular item. If it has one. Am I the only one that thinks there are way too many things to be involved in online?

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<My YouTube Videos>
Videos that I have been uploading to YouTube. Right now it's mostly just unedited videos straight from my digital camera, but there are several up that are longer video's I produced for different events.
<my new photo albums>
recently, i've been annoyed at the amount of comment spam i seem to get on gallery, and i've never been happy with how much updating, configuration and maintenance required to keep it running. so i've been playing with picasa web albums recently and although it doesn't provide me with nearly the same amount of customization, it's so much easier to use. maybe i'm getting old. anyway, it works wonders with google's desktop photo application picasa which i would also recomend.
<my old photo albums>
this is where i host my large collection of digital pictures. i don't update this as much as i would like, and there is always a delay between when i actually take the pictures, and when they show up. i use an open source piece of software called gallery to sort and display the pictures, and graham is nice enough to continue hosting it on cernio even though i haven't paid him in months.
<my blog>
the blog that i occasionally write longer more thoughtful posts at.
<my blogroll>
these are all the blogs i read regularly. if you think there is something else i should be reading, let me know. i've tried google reader, but i still prefer bloglines.
<my flickr pics>
these are pictures that i take with my camera phone. for the longest time i found camera phones to be the most useless thing, especially considering how hard sprint makes it to get the photos off. then i discovered the ease that is flickr and can now upload pictures immediately after taking them. although i tried to upload at least one picture everyday, i end up putting up more like 2 or 3 a week. if you have a camera phone you don't use, i suggest looking into it.
<my del.icio.us links>
for most of my bookmarking needs i use del.icio.us. if you haven't heard of it, it's a great service for social bookmarking. i don't use the social part of it very much, but i find it much easier to use than even firefox bookmarks. plus anyone who is interested can check out what i've found interesting online.

follow andyvw at http://twitter.com
<my twitters>
so phil got me into twitter which a little hard to explain, but basically it's a more casual blog where instead of posting longer thoughts or essays, you simply post quick messages about what your up to. the key is that because it's mostly done from your phone, there is a 140 character limit. it becomes more useful if you have other friends on it as well that you "follow", meaning there twitter messages can either be sent to your phone of viewable only. don't worry, you can turn the option to sms your phone off if you want. i just started using it, so i can't really recomend it yet, but i can imagine it being really fun to use if i can get others on as well, and potentially incredibly useful for things like aranging meeting times and places.


i'm also on myspace, friendster, was (and may soon be again) on netflix, found a new site chow that i want to get involved it, want to become active in yelp, metafilter and wikipedia because i love the ideas, but don't really expect to put much energy there for the time being. if you're a good friend, i'll even share my google calendar with you.

<peoples of the world>
As a good friend of mine says:
"Get off your hairy ass and make a difference in the world."