Seven random things

Mathias Klang has tagged me with the 7 random things meme. While researching this, I found that there are some rules. These are:

• Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
• Post these rules on your blog.
• List seven random and or weird facts about yourself.
• Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

1. I like researching the origin of memes.
2. I spend one month in Costa Rica every year.
3. I've been online since 1994.
4. I love sushi.
5. I am fond of anime's narrative style.
6. I am not good at thinking about random things about myself.
7. I hate making lists.

Researching this particular meme has been a true challenge because a lot of people do not link to the person who tagged them. Nevertheless, I have explored the furthest reaches of the blogosphere, and I think that I have found the original post. In my search for the origin, I have browsed the most inane blogs in the world; looked at backgrounds that would make you want to be colour-blind; listened to such inspirational Christian Western music that I had to turn off my speakers in order to retain my sanity (free web advise: DO NOT embed music on your website); learned more than I ever want to know about scrapping, tatting, quilting, crafting, being a mom in the USA; being a quilting tatting, scrapping mom in Oklahoma; seen more pictures of children than I care to count; and in general amazed at the wide diversity that is the Web 2.0 universe.

One of the things that I enjoy about these trips around the blogosphere, is how much they say about social networks. I reckon that this meme got started in April 2007 by a scrapper, which meant that during a month the meme was self-contained in scrapbooking circles. The meme moved on to Christian mothers, then quilters, then tatters, then inspirational speakers, and somehow it made the jump to academics (I have not been able to find the missing link between quilters and academics), which is how it got to me. More interesting for me is to see how the blogosphere is made up of little islands of interests which may seem trivial to outside observers, but which appear to be self-reinforced. I noticed that there are certain themes that are shared along those clusters, for example, the likelihood of encountering a bright background or a blog with music increases if other blogs in a cluster contain such themes.

By the way, I learnt that if you name your blog "My Crazy Life", it probably means that you are the most boring person in the face of the planet.

Now, I'm tagging Jordan, Nick, Lilian, Ian, Daithí, Nic and Fernando.