Audio Visual Junkie

Berso sa Metro posters on the MRT promotes reading and Spanish literature

Dennison Uy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:31:29 +0000

Every time I ride the MRT or the LRT here in Manila, I take some time to read and appreciate the “Berso sa Metro” series of posters. Sponsored by the Instituto Cervantes of Manila, the posters feature Spanish poems displayed alongside its Filipino translation. To compliment the mood of the poem, the backdrop features works of art or collages of beautiful scenery.

I love these posters for their artistic and poetic value. Aside from promoting the Spanish language, it also helps promote reading which is always a good thing, especially at the MRT where there are a lot of passengers, reading is definitely a good way to kill time while commuting.

Here is one poem that I especially like. I just copied the tagalog translation on my cellphone. I Googled for the original Spanish version and found a copy here. I hope you like it!

Si el hombre pudiera decir

Tú justificas mi existencia:
Si no te conozco, no he vivido;
Si muero sin conocerte, no muero, porque no he vivido

Binigyan mo ng halaga ang aking pag-iral;
Kung di kita nakilala, di sana ako nabuhay;
Kung ako’y mamamatay nang di kita nakilala,
Hindi ako mamamatay, dahil hindi ako nabuhay.

- Luis Cerruda (Sevilla, 1902 – México, 1963)

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Running Gran Turismo Portable on PSP 5.00 M33-6 custom firmware without using a ripkit

Dennison Uy — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:39:47 +0000

To make Gran Turismo Portable run on 5.00 firmware, you will need to decrypt the game’s EBOOT.BIN, patch it, and recreate the ISO or CSO file. This may sound tricky, but it is actually quite simple and easy to do.

First, you will need a copy of the original Gran Turismo Portable ISO (download it here).

Next, you will need the following tools:

Yoshihiro’s Games Decrypter v3 (download it here)
UMDGen v4.00 (download it here)

The following steps can be tricky, so read very well and understand to avoid confusion.

Run UMDGen and open the Gran Turismo Portable ISO. You should see something like what I have in the screenshot below.

Inside UMDGen’s Explorer tab, navigate to the GRANTURISMO / PSP_GAME / SYSDIR directory.

Inside this directory there is a file called EBOOT.BIN – right-click on it and choose Extract Selected…

Extract the file and copy it to the root of your PSP memory stick.

Install Yoshihiro’s Games Decrypter by copying the GameZDecryptZ to the ms0:/PSP/GAME/ folder on your PSP memory stick.

Inside your PSP, run GAME DECRYPTER Yoshihiro V3 and choose to press O to decrypt and patch your EBOOT.BIN for 5.xx.

If successful, you should now have a new, patched EBOOT.BIN inside ms0:/DECRYPTOR/ of your PSP memory stick.

Go back to UMDGen and delete EBOOT.BIN by right-clicking on it and selecting Delete.

Import the patched EBOOT.BIN by right-clicking on a blank area and and going to Add -> Existing File(s)…

Save the modified ISO as new, uncompressed ISO or as a compressed CSO or DAX file.

Finally, copy the modified ISO/CSO/DAX into your PSP, start the game, and enjoy!

As proof, I have made this tiny video showing Gran Turismo Portable on my PSP running 5.00 M33-6.

Good luck!

UPDATE (10-Oct-09): For those of you who are still having problems, I have uploaded my patched EBOOT.BIN here.

UPDATE (13-Oct-09): I have uploaded a mirror of the patched EBOOT.BIN onto MediaFire.

Download that file and extract, then follow steps the remaining steps to create a patched ISO.

Matter of Taste: Filipino eye for the European guy

Dennison Uy — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:00:05 +0000

Found this in a forwarded e-mail. Mr. Sutherland if you are reading this, please drop me a line. If a foreigner writes something good about the Philippines and does it with such a flair, I say he gets free coffee from me!

Matter of Taste

by Matthew Sutherland

I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key step on the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that’s to eat BALUT. The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and ask them to issue me a Filipino passport.

Because at that point there will be no turning back. BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg. It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like English fish and chips, by street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can’t see how gross it is.

It’s meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can’t imagine anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers, beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer just to drink the so-called ’soup’, the vile, pungent liquid that surrounds the aforementioned feathery fetus…excuse me; I have to go and throw up now. I’ll be back in a minute.

Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat.

They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, pica-pica, pulutan, dinner, and no-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge-so-it-doesn’t-count.

The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You’re never far from food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you’re driving home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without seeing food and I don’t mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it’s less than one minute.

Here are some other things I’ve noticed about food in the Philippines.

Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice – even breakfast. In the UK, I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it’s impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn’t the same without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from their house without baon and a container of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave home without his pants on.

And lastly, where I come from, you eat with a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife.

One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always ask you to SHARE their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon, they will always go, “Sir! KAIN TAYO!” (”Let’s eat!”). This confused me, until I realized that they didn’t actually expect me to sit down and start munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is something like, “No thanks, I just ate.”

But the principle is sound – if you have food on your plate, you are expected to share it, however hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think that’s great. In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further. Many Filipinos use “Have you eaten yet?” (”KUMAIN KA NA?”) as a general greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.

Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like Bicol Express (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked with coconut milk; anything KINILAW; and anything ADOBO. And it’s hard to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterolic frenzy of a good old-fashioned LECHON de leche feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm… you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive mouthful.

I also share one key Pinoy trait — a sweet tooth. I am thus the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his pizza. Try it!

It’s the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to avoid in the Philippines include pig’s blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull’s testicle soup, the strangely-named “SOUP NUMBER FIVE” (I dread to think what numbers one through four are); and the ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it’s equally stinky sister, PATIS. Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and the USA , which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than 100 paces.

Then there’s the small matter of the blue ice cream. I have never been able to get my brain around eating blue food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold.

And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that CALDERETANG KAMBING (goat) could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)…

The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of food. Here’s a typical Pinoy food joke: “I’m on a seafood diet. “What’s a seafood diet?” “When I see food, I eat it!”

Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals — the feet, the head, the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given witty names, like “ADIDAS” (chicken’s feet); “KURBATA” (either just chicken’s neck, or “neck and thigh” as in “neck-tie”); “WALKMAN” (pigs ears); “PAL” (chicken wings); HELMET” (chicken head); “IUD” (chicken intestines), and BETAMAX” (video-cassette-like blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum. Bon appetit.

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” — (Proverbs 22:1)

WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me was names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.

The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom, we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.

The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples.

Yuk, ech ech. Here, however, no one bats an eyelid. Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call “door-bell names”. These are nicknames that sound like -well, doorbells.

There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are, used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even one of their senator has a doorbell named Ping. None of these doorbell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear.

Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied, “because my brother is called Bong”. Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from “dong” is a slang word for well; perhaps “talong” is the best Tagalog equivalent.

Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the “squared” symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.

Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy.

More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are – best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).

Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip). The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great painted across your trunk if you’re a cab driver. That’s another thing I’d never seen before coming to Manila-taxis with the driver’s kids’ names on the trunk.

Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the phenomenon of the “composite” name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, believe it or not). That’s a bit like me being called something like “Engscowani” (for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland ).

Between you and me, I’m glad I’m not.

And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomly inserted letter ‘h’. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy.. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?

How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith. How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism rule the world of names.

Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the world could that really be true?

Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin? Where else but the Philippines!

Note: Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is his legal name.

Mayweather outboxes Marquez, stays undefeated

Dennison Uy — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 04:54:02 +0000

The decision was unanimous. Mayweather started off slow, but picked up the pace and dominated in the end. He was way too fast for Juan Manuel Marquez, who tried everything to break Mayweather but his defense was solid.

At the end of the day, Floyd Mayweather Jr’s record remains spotless at 40-0. Only one other guy stands in his way and that is the current pound-for-pound king, Manny Pacquiao, who already fought with Marquez twice. The first fight they had ended in a draw, while the second fight ended in a split decision favoring Pacquiao. In HBO’s 24/7, Marquez boasted that in his mind he won, and that Pacquiao knew that.

Unless a fight between Sugar Shane Moseley and Pacquiao or Mayweather happens, that could very well be Mayweather’s next big bout.

Provided that Manny Pacquiao wins against Miguel Angelo Cotto in his next fight, we may see a battle that would decide, once and for all, who should be hailed as the pound-for-pound king. Mayweather will have a huge physical advantage, having a reach that is 5 inches longer than Manny’s, aside from being a whole lot heavier. Manny in his last fight with Ricky Hatton weighed in at 138 lbs, while Mayweather weighed in at 146 lbs.

Now that would be the fight of the century.

A cappella Michael Jackson medley with beatboxing

Dennison Uy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:44:57 +0000

I love a cappella music, and a huge fan of beatboxing. Here’s what you get when you combine an awesome singer, awesome beat boxing, great video editing, and of course – awesome Michael Jackson music! Very entertaining.

Fix Soul Calibur IV: Broken Destiny “The game could not be started” error on PSP 5.00 M33

Dennison Uy — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:59:24 +0000

A few days ago I blogged about how I could not get Dissidia: Final Fantasy to run on my Sony PSP slim running 5.00 M33-6 and the steps that I took to fix it.

Today I encountered a similar issue while trying to get Soul Calibur IV: Broken Destiny to run. I got the following error:

The game could not be started. (80020148)

Okay so I went on to find a solution, and among the suggestions were to enable EBOOT.BIN in recovery mode. This is how you do it:

Go to the recovery menu by turning your PSP off and powering it back up while holding the R-trigger
Go to Advanced -> Advanced Configuration
Set the value for Excute BOOT.BIN in UMD / ISO to Enabled
Exit recovery mode and start the game

There is a better way to get the game to run without having to enable EBOOT.BIN. This involves modifying the untouched European ISO using a Ripkit. This fix was created by Daveweed, so all credit goes to him.

Soul Calibur IV EUR [346 MB cso] Fix & Ripkit By DaveWeed

Tested on PSP Fat FW 5.00m33-6

Ripped : update,boot.bin fixed & renamed to eboot.bin

Extract the ripkit into a folder,Copy your Untouched iso game into same folder,
rename your Untouched iso to original.iso and double click rip.bat

Untouched iso must be 859 GB (900,923,392 bytes)

I have edited the boot.bin and renamed it eboot.bin using the following instructions :

extract BOOT.BIN from euro game.

Open extracted BOOT.BIN in hex editor
from 0×00399AF0 to 0×00399B0B
hex with zeros MEMSTICK.IND….MSTK_PRO.IND

at 0×0039A1C9 change text SAVEDATA to PAVEDATA
at 0×0039C095 change text SAVEDATA to PAVEDATA

rename BOOT.BIN to EBOOT.BIN repack iso. approx 350 MB.

Features:

No need to go to recovery menu.

Boots on at least 5.00 m33-4 phat no deletion of mem stick files needed.

Game Saving appears to work ok.

Credits to faceless81

Enjoy

Download the Ripkit.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy alternate looks, costumes, ex modes, and mannikins

Dennison Uy — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:16:23 +0000

Dissidia: Final Fantasy is Square Enix’s entry into the action RPG / fighting game genre for the Sony PSP.

The game features characters from different Final Fantasy games and centers around a great conflict between the heroes and villains, as the god of discord, Chaos, tries to wrest control of their worlds from the forces of good.

In the game’s story mode, the heroes of light who fight for Cosmos battle against forces of darkness, who fight for Chaos. Along the way encounter weaker doppelgangers patterned after themselves, called “mannikins”.

It was released back in August and I have been playing it ever since. Similar to other fighting games, Dissidia features alternate looks for each of the fighters, to help players distinguish one from the other in combat.

Another cool feature of the game is the “EX Mode”, which allows players to deal insane amounts of damage. Each “EX Mode” features a mini-game. Perfect completion of the mini-game deals the maximum damage possible.

Back when I started playing this game I wanted to see what each of the character’s alternate and EX Mode looked like. I could not find any back then. Now that I unlocked everyone except for Shantotto and Gabranth, I have decided to capture their looks and share it to the world.

Feel free to use these images on your website, but I would appreciate a link back to this page if you ever do. Enjoy!

Update: Added Shantotto, Gabrant, Cosmos, and Chaos

Warrior of Light – Normal

Warrior of Light – Normal (EX Mode)

Warrior of Light – Alternate

Warrior of Light – Alternate (EX Mode)

Warrior of Light – Mannikin (False Hero)

Garland – Normal

Garland – Normal (EX Mode)

Garland – Alternate

Garland – Alternate (EX Mode)

Garland – Mannikin (False Stalwart)

Firion – Normal

Firion – Normal (EX Mode)

Firion – Alternate

Firion – Alternate (EX Mode)

Firion – Mannikin (Imitation Liegeman)

The Emperor – Normal

The Emperor – Normal (EX Mode)

The Emperor – Alternate

The Emperor – Alternate (EX Mode)

The Emperor – Mannikin (Imitation Despot)

Onion Knight – Normal

Onion Knight – Normal (EX Mode – Ninja)

Onion Knight – Normal (EX Mode – Sage)

Onion Knight – Alternate

Onion Knight – Alternate (EX Mode – Ninja)

Onion Knight – Alternate (EX Mode – Sage)

Onion Knight – Mannikin (Counterfeit Youth)

Cloud of Darkness – Normal

Cloud of Darkness – Normal (EX Mode)

Cloud of Darkness – Alternate

Cloud of Darkness – Alternate (EX Mode)

Cloud of Darkness – Mannikin (Counterfeit Wraith)

Cecil Harvey – Normal (Dark Knight)

Cecil Harvey – Normal (Paladin)

Cecil Harvey – Normal (EX Mode – Dark Knight)

Cecil Harvey – Normal (EX Mode – Paladin)

Cecil Harvey – Alternate (Dark Knight)

Cecil Harvey – Alternate (Paladin)

Cecil Harvey – Alternate (EX Mode – Dark Knight)

Cecil Harvey – Alternate (EX Mode – Paladin)

Cecil Harvey – Mannikin (Delusory Knight – Dark Knight)

Cecil Harvey – Mannikin (Delusory Knight – Paladin)

Golbez – Normal

Golbez – Normal (EX Mode)

Golbez – Alternate

Golbez – Alternate (EX Mode)

Golbez – Mannikin (Delusory Warlock)

Bartz Kauser – Normal

Bartz Kauser – Normal (EX Mode)

Bartz Kauser – Alternate

Bartz Kauser – Alternate (EX Mode)

Bartz Kauser – Mannikin (Fallacious Wanderer)

Exdeath – Normal

Exdeath – Normal (EX Mode)

Exdeath – Alternate

Exdeath – Alternate (EX Mode)

Exdeath – Mannikin (Fallacious Tree)

Terra Branford – Normal

Terra Branford – Normal (EX Mode)

Terra Branford – Alternate

Terra Branford – Alternate (EX Mode)

Terra Branford – Mannikin (Phantasmal Girl)

Kefka – Normal

Kefka – Normal (EX Mode)

Kefka – Alternate

Kefka – Alternate (EX Mode)

Kefka – Mannikin (Phantasmal Harlequin)

Cloud Strife – Normal

Cloud Strife – Normal (EX Mode)

Cloud Strife – Alternate

Cloud Strife – Alternate (EX Mode)

Cloud Strife – Mannikin (Imaginary Soldier)

Sephiroth – Normal

Sephiroth – Normal (EX Mode)

Sephiroth – Alternate

Sephiroth – Alternate (EX Mode)

Sephiroth – Mannikin (Imaginary Champion)

Squall Leonhart – Normal

Squall Leonhart – Normal (EX Mode)

Squall Leonhart – Alternate

Squall Leonhart – Alternate (EX Mode)

Squall Leonhart – Mannikin (Transient Lion)

Ultimecia – Normal

Ultimecia – Normal (EX Mode)

Ultimecia – Alternate

Ultimecia – Alternate (EX Mode)

Ultimecia – Mannikin (Transient Witch)

Zidane Tribal – Normal

Zidane Tribal – Normal (EX Mode)

Zidane Tribal – Alternate

Zidane Tribal – Alternate (EX Mode)

Zidane Tribal – Mannikin (Capricious Thief)

Kuja – Normal

Kuja – Normal (EX Mode)

Kuja – Alternate

Kuja – Alternate (EX Mode)

Kuja – Mannikin (Capricious Reaper)

Tidus – Normal

Tidus – Normal (EX Mode)

Tidus – Alternate

Tidus – Alternate (EX Mode)

Tidus – Mannikin (Ephemeral Vision)

Jecht – Normal

Jecht – Normal (EX Mode)

Jecht – Alternate

Jecht – Alternate (EX Mode)

Jecht – Mannikin (Ephemeral Phantom)

Shantotto – Normal

Shantotto – Normal (EX Mode)

Shantotto – Alternate

Shantotto – Alternate (EX Mode)

Gabranth – Normal

Gabranth – Normal (EX Mode)

Gabranth – Alternate

Gabranth – Alternate (EX Mode)

Gabranth – Mannikin (Warrior of Antiquity)

Gabranth – Mannikin (EX Mode – Warrior of Antiquity))

Cosmos

Chaos – Normal

Chaos – Normal (EX Mode)

Wonder Girls performs Nobody live on Mnet M

Dennison Uy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:18:31 +0000

Very good showmanship by the girls. Eye contact, coordination, and rhythm are just perfect.

Nabade nabade bachu! *swoon*

How do locals affords ANYTHING in the Philippines?!

Dennison Uy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:28:09 +0000

Probably one of the most insulting things about the Philippines I have ever read. Sad thing here is there really are people around the world who think like this.

Very entertaining post and really made (i.e. ruined) my day.

How the heck do they get through life with NOTHING inside their heads?!

Huge discrepancy: How do locals affords ANYTHING in the Philippines?!

There’s something I don’t get in the Philippines which doesn’t add up at all.

How do local people afford ANYTHING, period?

Most store workers in the Philippines tell me they make around 150p per day, or a little more. But 150p per day is not even enough to eat even two meals per day!

So WHO are the mysterious people buying those 700p chairs in the furniture store, those 350-450p shirts in the mall, those 1000p nice jeans at SM Mall, and these 1000p baby milk cans every week?! The numbers do not add up at all, not even close. There is no way that a person making 150p a day, even two people making that much, can afford ANYTHING in a store, period. Nothing. It’s mathematically impossible to purchase ANYTHING on an income of 150p per day. Thus there’s a HUGE UNEXPLAINED DISCREPANCY here.

So who keeps all the stores and expensive products in business? How does anything get bought or paid for at all, period? This is a great mystery and no one can provide any logical answer to this. I’m very confused. Dianne can’t explain it either.

I do not believe that other people here who say they only make 150p per day can afford the same expenses as me, so there must cheaper ways of living here right?

Right now I’m spending over a thousand pesos a week on baby milk, for a huge 900g can that gets used up in less than a week! I can’t believe it. A thousand pesos a week just on one product! Even an entire family making 150p a day each could not afford that, among other things. So what gives? How do they raise their babies then, with prices for baby milk being completely outside of their reach?

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only customer in the Philippines. lol Is there a big secret here that I don’t know about? (Maybe I’m in something like The Truman Show and the whole world is playing a practical joke on me, as I try to make sense out of everything? lol)

Am I missing something here? How do you account for this huge widespread mathematical discrepancy?

View original post

What is Follow Friday on Twitter?

Dennison Uy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 18:05:39 +0000

As a long time Twitter user I always see Tweeps tweeting Follow Friday but I never really understood the real concept behind Follow Friday. I always felt that it was just a bunch of people spamming some those keywords to create a “follow train” and eventually became very popular. I decided to do some research and found a good article explaining what it really is.

What is Follow Friday on Twitter
By Justin Germino

Follow Friday is a twitter meme that is used to call attention and indicate that your followers should check out and be a part of a conversation or read posts by someone who is participating in follow Friday. Tagging a tweet with #followfriday will allow it to be searched for and everyone who tags the same way can follow their own specific tweets and form a group conversation. Once engaged in a group if you want to call attention to an article, post or tweet you can simply Re-tweet something and add #followfriday to bring everyone’s attention to it.

Often when I do my Random Twitter poetry game, on Friday to get more participants to send me words I will tag my call for random words with FollowFriday so more people will play the game and see the poem that I have crafted based on random twitter words. It also allows people to see what the most popular discussions are taking place on a Friday, which is typically a less busy work day so more people spend time chatting on twitter than on other week days.

Many people feel that FollowFriday is exclusive and excludes people, but you can choose to participate anytime merely by tagging one of your tweets you wish to share. Follow Friday is one of many ways to try and draw in a reading crowd to get more people to notice what you are saying and bring people to draw attention to the tweets they wish to stand out more than others.

Many people new to Twitter can use #FollowFriday to find out who some of the most active and highly recommended people are to follow, and for people more experienced they can recommend new and upcoming twitter members who are showing very active in the community to help get them a boost in followers.

No matter how you use #FollowFriday or whether you choose not to use it, at least know that it is a popular term on twitter and you will see many people participating in it, I myself use it to bring in some notice to my call for posts and not as its original intention which was to specifically highlight and call out other twitter members, so technically I myself don’t use Follow Friday the way it was originally intended, but as more and more people participate you will probably see that the acronym becomes less and less significant over the months as it is over-utilized.

So click on a #followfriday tweet and see what all the noise is about the next Friday that rolls around you may find some interesting people to follow, or you may just decide that is a bunch of fluff.

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