Saw an interesting post on Planet Ubuntu about whether Debian needs to be on Facebook.

Obviously a lot of people who like Linux are on Facebook, but when a large portion of the developed world is on there that's inevitable. Not that it means they are getting useful information about Linux. Whoever owns the Debian page is doing nothing with it. I've found it common that certain pages can have thousands or more people 'liking' them, but there's no involvement.

That said, there are many people for whom Facebook is the main thing they use on-line. They can see what their friends are up to and get updates from bands or other things they 'like' with none of that messy email or RSS stuff.

I'm on Facebook because enough people I know are on there to make it useful. I can reach them via it, e.g. with interesting links or automatically when I upload music I've made. They can respond there if they want without having to register on yet another site.

I don't think Facebook is perfect by a long shot. Lots of things about it annoy me and I think people who mostly use it are missing out on a lot, but for now I'll exploit it for all it can give me.

There are people working on more open alternatives suck as Diaspora, but a social site is of limited use without a critical mass of users and it's going to take a lot to get people to move away from Facebook. identi.ca is big enough to be useful, but I still use Twitter to reach others.

For most of life I haven't considered myself a singer. I did some at school when I had to and would sing along to records in private, but never really performed. A couple of years back I did some singing with the Secret Bass drum group and did a few performances that I quite enjoyed. I've also done a couple of singing workshops at the music centre my kids attend. Then last year I started going to the Plough pub sessions and performing various covers. I've not been that happy with my singing there. Either I run out of breath, can't hit notes or just can't get my voice to do what I want.

So I decided I needed professional help. I found local singing teacher Liv McNeil. Tonight was my first lesson. I spent 90 minutes doing all sorts of exercises and singing a bit of Muse. Overall I'm not terrible, but I have some bad habit that's creating a grating tone at times. She said she hadn't come across this problem before, so we're trying to work out what to do about it. It may just be that I don't relax properly. I've got a CD of exercises to try before I go back in a fortnight.

Normally when I sing at home it's done fairly quietly and at the pub I don't really project, but in the lesson I could make a racket. It felt good, even if it didn't always sound good. I don't anticipate being the next Freddie Mercury, but I think I could improve on what I've been doing up to now. You can follow my progress on my Soundcloud page. There's some songs I did over the last few months. I'll try to do some using what I've learnt.