OMFG.

And I've spent the last 11 hours dealing with it, and getting over it. So, whatever.

The good news is...uh...

I'm meeting a load of new folks and their kiddos tomorrow! Very excited to see:

Tara Cain - responsible for "The Gallery" (this week is "Ugly". I might post my legs.)

Rosie Scribble - Seems super lovely. She may wonder what planet I'm from.

Jo Beaufoix - Sassy and bloody pretty. I may wear a large hoody and baggy jeans.

Muddy no Sugar - great photographer. So I'll take my camera, and never get it out.

And then I'll seeing for the second time:

Bumbling Tweets - she's SOO lovely, down to Earth. The exact opposite of me.

porridgebrain - one of the best people I have ever met. Annoyingly amazing. Dammit.

So of course, I'll spend the whole time feeling IMMENSELY intimidated, while they all talk about amazing things, and people they know, and how awesome their kiddos are, and I'll do everything I can to pimp Isaac and his fucking adorableness, not mention Occasional-Spawn-Of-Satan-Child Noah (Not in a bad way of course, you know he's obviously still cute, but as he'll be at nursery {OMFG THE CHILD IS AT NURSERY} I can just pretend I have one adorable child who doesn't pound the shit out of his older brother).

(Lately Isaac totally pounds the shit out of his older brother. But it's ok, because Noah gives as good as he gets. So all is good.)

So yeah! Really looking forward to it! I'll distract everyone from me and they'll be all "Ohhhhh do you remember that gorgeous baby boy Isaac? Ohhh he was ADORABLE!! That's right, he was there without his mum wasn't he? Ahw bless him. Hmm...who was that random dark shadow in the corner?"

Etc.

It'll be a great day, I'm pretty sure.

Because Noah does his first "real" half day at nursery and Isaac is 1 year old in less than a month.

Omfg.

In terms of twitter, you'll get more feedback and conversation going pending on the number of followers you have; more followers subjects you to the public a little more, and of course, the more you interact with them, the more interesting an experience it becomes.

Supposedly. For some.

In terms of blogging, I understand that the ideal is to blog regularly, whatever "regularly" might be (several times a day? Several times a week? Once every month at exactly the same time?). It also helps to make yourself accessible; having an easy to read blog and being able to comment freely should you choose to do so.

Lately I've raised the question of profiling (in a fashion) through a blog. What does it take to raise blogging stats? What does it take to get hundreds of comments? How do you appeal to the public? How do you get the public to respond and/or relate to you?

When I asked the question on twitter, the feedback was interesting, and I could see what they were saying just by looking at my own statistics on my blog. Some people lurk and choose not to comment. Some people comment when they only want to bitch about something. Some comment all the time because they don't have any where else to say what they want to say. And then some comment often because they just genuinely have something to feedback on, or whatever. There are obviously more, but these seem to be the general categories.

I'm thrilled that the visitor figures for my blog have risen lately, however I've noticed the drastic increase in spam and anonymous comments as well; you may have noticed lately that your comments take a while to appear. After having received several racist and extremely inappropriate spam comments, I had to lock things up a wee bit. Disappointing, yes, but expected at some point.

Interestingly, many have said that blogger was not particularly friendly to commenters; there are so many formats out there; for me, Blogger just seemed to be the best place to start, way back when. But for a while I've been toying with the idea of Wordpress, or some other format. Not just because I would like more people to comment on my blog (which would be nice, you know, let me know ya'll are out there), but also because I'd like this to be as approachable as possible to all readers. I feel a bit...like...this is for everyone, you know?

At the end of the day? Would like to hear your feedback.

Just sayin'.

As a result of twitter, in this last week I have spoken to Andi Peters, Philip Schofield, Jonathan Ross, Alyssa Milano, Robert Llewellyn, Rob Brydon, Gia Milinovich and Krisnan Guru-Murthy. And in doing so, I've raised £800. I have £200 to go (two more celebrities to make £1000, as sponsored by @makesmilk).

And of course, who can forget that Twitter is responsible for my epic stalking of Stephen Fry. Quite possibly one of the best 10 hour stints of my life.

Also thanks to twitter, I'm now into my 32nd hour without having gone to bed for proper sleep. I've accumulated about 3 hours sleep in this time frame, and I feel like shit great! Added to that the Universal Case of F.O.F going round myself, Noah and Isaac, makes for a very happy household indeed. Not. But anyway.

Twitter is also responsible for some very awesome friendships with people I probably would never have met otherwise. If I haven't listed you, it's because I'm too lazy to post more links into text. Sorry. But you know who you are, and there are so many of you. And I'm in love with each and every one of you.

However there were plenty more people on twitter who helped me find my beans. And rejoiced with me when I found my beans.

There are also things which might and/or will happen, because of Twitter. Lovely things. Great things. Pretty cool things.

Like Blogher10 (OOOOOMFG) next August. I watched everyone tweet their way through it this year and it looked like one of the most awesome gatherings EVAH. Right down to the after parties, all through conferences, and, uh, Sparklecorn. There are people I CANNOT WAIT to meet at Blogher 10, and I'm wondering if there are ways to meet up with people who can't get there.

Also cool, is recent sort-of almost maybe-it-will-happen conversations with Karl Erikson, and his hilarious talk show, Secondhand Radio (I have no idea why it's called Secondhand Radio. I must ask him sometime).

I know some of you hate it. Some of you are Facebook whores. Some of you even go to the dark side and worship MySpace. But that's ok.

Twitter has shown me some good times. I heart you, twitter.

And after a lovely friend of mine (and I do mean that) said this:

And I got to thinking this:

It pretty much progressed into this:

At this point I noticed he WAS at twitter, tweeting away.

Desperation made me tweet this:

I wondered if the truth might be this:

But figured part of the truth was this:

And annoyingly I noticed I miss-spelled this:

And so I got pissed off and said this:

After about half an hour, I felt the need for this:

And still tweeting darts and ignoring me lead me to this:

My follower numbers prompted this:

In case he thought I was whacko, I said this:

And honesty is responsible for this:

And desperation is responsible for this:

I decided he WAS mocking me with this:

But then suddenly, this:

I was so pleased I couldn't help this:

And all? For this.