Skype has apparently been fixed, after being down and out since last week if I recall correctly. Of more interest to me, at least, was the cause of the crash - Microsoft and its notorious Patch Tuesday.

The topics of obsession and addiction were raised by the inimitable TB and da boss man this morning, and a short trawl on the MyDL site revealed two recent blogs - 'I am an addict' and 'Drugs: Drowning in a world of addiction' - which were perhaps the inspiration for the discussion. There is lots we can add on this topic, but for starters I'm going tackle addiction from the addict's point of view, obsession will be covered elsewhere, and Internet addiction in yet another blog.

I'm probably going to by lynched for this, but hey, what's a nice winter's day without a good lynching? Anyhow. I've decided that blogging is not, in fact, da bomb. There, I said it. Sorry TB et al, but it just doesn't do it for me.

I've been on this site, for reasons described in my debate with The Source some time ago, since it was launched. I've blogged a few times, had some nice hits, had some nice comments, had at least one domestic. And ja. Quite frankly - it's not gripping me.

I guess blogging, for me, is work. I write professionally, and when the times comes for me to relax and do something fun, blogging is not it. It just feels like writing a column for one of the titles I work on, but without having to deal with Sergeant-like sub-editors (you know I love you guys ;-)), and impossible deadlines (whoosh - there goes another one, with apologies to Douglas Adams).

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is I fail to understand all the fuss about blogging. And I'm willing to bet that in a year or so the fuss will have died down to the extent that maybe two or three big sites remain, along with a few niche ones catering to targeted audiences, and most of today's blog sites and bloggers will have moved on to the next best, greatest, coolest, most awesomest Web thing. I will, no doubt, see you all there, before we all tire of that and move onto the next, next, big, biggest thing.

For those of you who're siding with the bloggers in the 'bloggers are changing traditional media' debate, I am afraid to say I think you're going to lose. Why? Three words - infrastructure, support, overheads.

Before I get myself into real trouble I'm going to toddle off and research something. Probably something about how to survive a lynching.

Have fun... ;-)

greenwitch

Along with the weather and sport, telecommunications has to rate up there as every South African's favourite complaint point. We moan and groan endlessly about Telkom, or the mobile operators, none of which have any concept of service, or any desire to offer fair pricing for their respective products.

My beloved other half, bless him, gave me the 'flu this weekend. Oh yay. *sigh* Can anything else compare to that head-thudding, eye-burning, snot-filled sinuses, hacking, wheezing and groaning experience? And let's not forget the aching muscles, complete sense of humour failure, and total thinking facilities shutdown. *double sigh* And I'm on deadline...

Most of the men I know occasionally get to wondering exactly what is up with women and our love of receiving things like chocolates, flowers and jewellery. 'Chocolates get eaten,' they say, 'flowers die, jewellery is expensive - here, have a vacuum cleaner.'

Well this is more a note to everyone rather than a note to myself but it was the first headline that sprang to mind so I went with it.

flexible.