The Dogs of the Highland Games

     We spent the weekend at the Central Virginia Celtic Festival and Highland Games .  They have competitions like the Caber Toss and Hammer Throw, as well as a lot of great bands, bagpipers, vendor exhibits, food vendors - with foods from both sides of the Atlantic - whiskey tasting, beer trucks that sell beer from the British Isles and the Colonies, axe throwing, a Britsh Car show, and rows of tents for all of the different Klans and families.  There are lots of guys walking around in kilts and women in Renaissance-style dresses, as well as lots of other Celtic-themed outfits, and a few that are just . . . well, different.  This year, we spotted a Storm Trooper in a kilt.
     One of the things that makes this event different from many others is that everyone is allowed to bring their dog.   It's one of my favorite aspects of the event.  The dogs are as varied and interesting as the people, and they all seem to be enjoying themselves.  I give you a small sample of the Dogs of the Highland Games.




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Keeping Up With the Technorati

Technorati (n) - the class of people who create, and are quick to adopt, new technology (I just invented this term, so if you see it somewhere else you know where it came from).

      MySpace was the first social media site I had. Initially, I created an account to read someone else's blog. Actually, it was so I could follow my Niece's trip to France. Since then, I've created accounts for Facebook (then closed it, then opened it again), Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and probably a few others that I've forgotten about.
      I thought about starting a Tumblr or a WordPress blog, or even having my own hosted web site, but I'm not sure what I would put on it that I couldn't put on one of the existing social networking sites and avoid all of the maintenance and cost of a hosted site. MySpace seems about the most comprehensive offering of it's type; you can have your own 'page' with basic information about yourself, make 'friends' with other people, and post a blog. Google+ gets just about everything right, but it doesn't seem like people have rushed to start using it.  Twitter is great because everyone is limited to 140 characters.  I wish that were true in real life.
      My prediction is that all the jumping around from one service to another will level out as people decide how they want to use social media. There will be different niches to accommodate the different ways people want to use it all, becoming a little less fad-driven and a little more of a practical decision by the users. Having different options is a good thing and no one is tied to only one option.
      I'm counting on MySpace to be around for a while so future generations can go back and look at my blog posts and say "Wow, he was really ahead of his time. Too bad he wasn't recognized for the genius he was during his lifetime!"  But just in case, I'm posting this here, too.