HW2

Google Reader. It seemed like such a good choice in the beginning. Or to be brutally honest, it seemed like the easiest choice. Oh, how wrong I was. Maybe that was a little harsh. Getting in wasn’t difficult. Neither was signing up for sites that looked interesting. All that seemed to be simple enough. I admit that having all the things I looked at on a regular basis in the one place is brilliant. Or it would be, if it actually worked.

If, for the sake of this argument, I were to attempt to log in to my reader 10 times a week, I can confidently say that 7 of those times I would have difficulties. It may open to the main page, and give me little snippets of all the article that have been published since I last checked. But, the minute I try and click on each subscription individually I get an error message asking me to try again shortly. It doesn’t seem to matter if I am on either of the home laptops (one runs Windows7 and Mozilla Firefox, the other Vista and internet explorer) or the uni computers. It refuses to let me in. My supposedly convenient port of call is no longer convenient. In fact it is downright frustrating. I’m angry damn it.

The most disappointing part is that when the reader does work, it does exactly what I want it to. I toyed with the idea of finding another reader, but to be honest I haven’t bothered. I don’t think I could take the disappointment. I’d much rather just automatically open all my bookmarks in their own tabs, and flick through them. At this rate it is less labour intensive that fighting with my reader.

And yet the feeds come through fine on my blog. Just another of life’s little mysteries.

While we are on the topic of frustrating things (it's all coming back to me now) I did eventually manage to edit something on Wikipedia. It took several attempts to set up my account, and multiple error messages (I seem to have been attracting them) but I did get it to work eventually. I made a few small edits.
I can't say that I found it a particularly engaging experience.

I have no issues with the thousands of people who do contribute, or anyone who becomes intensely passionate about its content. It just isn't for me. Perhaps I am a little dismissive. I admit that I do use it as a starting point for general information, but I certainly would treat it as definitive. I think it does have a place for anyone in the quest of knowledge, but I'd take most of it with a grain of salt.