Stop Looking at the Screen and Look at Me!

Look at me! Oh, wait…

There we were, in Zagreb, at the Eurocon, and at the socializing part of it: a meal at the brewery. Mediocre beer and not too bad barbecue at the affordable prices (affordable for us, the folks from UK and some other countries wouldn’t even be able to find such a cheap meal in their own homelands). And did I mention socializing, meeting new people from all over the Europe, and an American or two, too?

Well, for one thing, we all followed our natural tendencies to sit with the people we arrived to Croatia with (although, it was the first day, we had three more days to meet whoever we wanted to meet). For the other, the first question the guys I was with asked the waiter was the WiFi password. And then, one of the guys was using his tablet (he was GTalking to his wife, since that was the cheapest was to talk to someone in another country), the other one was surfing the Internet on his phone, and the third one had his eyes glued to his netbook.

The rest of us were talking between ourselves and with them.

Part of me had a wish to tell them to stop looking at those screens and to look at us. The other part of me realized we had no trouble keeping the conversation going, so what’s the problem? I mean, it’s not like we were plotting an assassination or taking over the world or planning to help someone in dire need. Yeah, it’s nice if people are not surfing the ‘net or whatever while talking to you, but if they’re still capable of responding in intelligent sentences, no biggie.

Now, I do find it annoying if people I’m trying to talk to are texting someone else or doing something equally distracting them from the conversation. But if they have no problem keeping the conversation going? Part of me still dislikes that I’m not getting their full attention, but I’m learning to live with it.

How about you? How do you feel about people looking at some screen while talking to you, and you’re sitting right there ion front of them?

Put It Away, Will Ya?

Remove those darn animations if you want me to read it!

I’ve been looking through some blogs, and it’s probably just my bad luck, but several blogs in a row had one of the most additions ever.

Animations.

I’m not talking about some discreet snow animation, or something else equally discreet and non-disruptive. I’m talking about very visible animations, such as big snowflakes falling over posts and making them difficult to read, or about those annoying Tweety wittwe biwds. You know, the Twitter bird which is supposed to make you follow the blog owner through Twitter. On some blogs, the darn blue bird was flying over posts, making them difficult to read. On some others, it was flying on the side, still annoying and distracting.

If I come to a blog to look at cute animations, then I expect some cute animations. But if I come to a blog to read it, and the blog owner made it difficult to read with obtrusive animations, well, guess what, I won’t be straining my eyes to read it, nor will I be following.

So, if, by some chance, you want me to read your blog, do me some courtesy of making it possible for me to read without a bunch of distractions.

Thank you.

Rant over.