Mark Sieber, the owner of the newly-opened blog,
Tartuffe's Folly, is an extremely entertaining writer with a beautiful command of the English language. He used to write short essays based on the every day occurences in human life, with accompanying pictures which are really interesting. Last time, he did this on his
Facebook profile, but now, he has finally started his very own blog! As a great fan of his writings, I felt jubilant when he announced the creation of his new blog.
Mark views life in a delicate manner, painlessly describing the intricacies of life, and at the same time, inserting some of the idiosyncrasies we face daily on our journey through this world. His works are interesting and entertaining to read, yet short enough that you could read it in the few minutes before you leave for work, school, or even for bed. They never fail to amaze me, these few words which are delicately woven together to form a tale of our lives.
Here's one of the works of Mark, describing the new Facebook and how he's adapting to it.
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I am turning the proverbial cheek, tossing my last coin, and easing out on a rather tenuous limb to offer a reluctant olive branch. The new Facebook format has finally taken hold of Marklewood. And it doesn’t seem so awful, at least not as terrifying as all the updates last week led me to anticipate. It certainly appea...rs more graphic and thoughtfully presented. The core, however, seems essentially the same. It is complex, with no simple navigation, as one must go from page to page to activate, utilize, and ultimately close its many features.
The feeds are once again modified, again merging some … yet splintering others. There’s nothing really new there except that status updates and uploads can be interfaced from the same feed. What IS indeed annoying are the countless relatively unworthy and so very UN-newsworthy tidbits of new friends, group & fan-page memberships, application gift exchanges, and photo tags. I realize some of these items can be deactivated or blocked, but frankly who ever thought they’d be relevant news morsels in the first place? Granted, as applications are thus hidden, the feed is less tainted and cluttered. But it seems as though it will never be seamless.
The navigation bar, or rather “banner”, does seem better thought out: combining preferences and utilizing icons to better enable speed-posting. Further, one can connect with either a home page or his/her profile/wall from either the left or right sided maneuvering. I rather fancy such ambidextrous options, especially when I do so post rather ambitiously and without ambivalence.
The greatest scuttlebutt appears to concern all the new locations. Where are the notifications? Why is THAT moved? Where is THAT option? Where, oh where, can my baby be?
All I can offer is: Facebook did graciously provide a map, albeit one that could easily have been presented on the tiniest of cell-phone screens. But a map is a map, regardless of its legend.
I am pleased that Facebook has more effectively used more portions of the Home Page window. Being both a Tarheel and a basketball fan, I appreciate the “four corners” strategy that it has borrowed from the college hoops theorems of “how to win at the game!” Frankly, I have long asserted that the right side has been over-utilized, especially that extremely weighted lower right corner. Now I find myself glancing quickly from NE to SE to SW to NW, in a sweep of precious information. Perhaps, my friends that is Facebook’s ironic precursor to our own March Madness!
Alas, change may not be bad thing … except of course in Massachusetts. But THAT’s an entirely different matter and an issue I will not address in this friendly forum. I will simply adjust, smile, and proceed with my obsessive and merry-posting. It’s a new era, once again, at this social networking site for sore eyes. However, it is not unlike the advent of USA Today … in its tidy look, glorification of “snippets”, and its tribute to the bland.
But this too will change … once we have all accepted and grown comfortable with this new format. That is one pitfall of modern civilization, as we endure growing pains in this, the world’s third most populous country, the Sovereign State of Facebook!
Mark Dylan Sieber
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So, what do you think? Are you, like me amazed by his power over the words in our language? If so, then head over to his blog, Tartuffe's Folly, for more enlightening topics.
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