WordPress Site Cheats Search Engines?
Posted: March 31, 2005 Filed under: Blogging Leave a comment »Andy Baio of has written an interesting piece, detailing how WordPress.org is using their high Google PageRank to profit from hidden links using AdSense. I’m not an SEO expert, but I figure if you can glean additional revenue from your site’s popularity to attempt to offset the costs that it would take to get that kind of PageRank, more power to you. It’s Google’s responsibility to fix their search engine, although I do admit what they’ve done is a bit shady. I certainly sympathize with their plight, and I hope this doesn’t taint the image of the software too much, because I love what they’ve done. Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone else stepping up to the plate to pay them for their software, so they’re sort of in a position where they need to get revenue in any way possible. Thus is the plight of open source. It’s hard to give away your work and make a successful business at the same time.
My heart goes out to Wil
Posted: March 29, 2005 Filed under: Blogging 1 Comment »My heart goes out to Wil Wheaton today, who just put his beloved cat Felix down. As my wife so eloquently put, if you have animals, they are members of your family. While it may seem silly, losing an animal is like losing a beloved friend. All our animals are unique and have their own personalities, and no animal is a substitute for them. Wil, I wish the best to you and your family, and I hope the memories of Felix bring smiles to your face for years to come. I know my departed animals still do.
Lessig on NYTimes Editorial in MGM v. Grokster Case
Posted: March 29, 2005 Filed under: Copyright Leave a comment »I tend to agree and disagree at the same time. On one hand, I am firmly in the camp that content creators have the right for their intellectual property to be protected and for them to be compensated for their work. However, I think in the particular case of Grokster, who is merely creating the forum for people to do the copyright infringement, I don’t see how they can be held liable. They have no ability to control the content which is shared on their network. The content creators are prosecuting the wrong parties because it’s easier to go after one entity than thousands.
I mostly take issue with the NY Times saying that the Constitution establishes copyright. It doesn’t, at least not by name. The NY Times says “The founders wrote copyright protections into the Constitution because they believed that they were necessary for progress.” However, the clause of the Constitution which establishes the ability for Congress to create laws such as copyright, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, states “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The Senate’s own website states “Copyright and patent protection of authors and inventors are authorized by this clause, although it uses neither word.” Shame on the NY Times for misappropriating the Constitution. The Constitution is held in high regard by all Americans, and I doubt nearly so many people would rally to the cause of the Copyright Act of 1976.
Is Blogging Like High School?
Posted: March 25, 2005 Filed under: Blogging 1 Comment »I suppose as I read more and more blogs (and especially more and more of the popular blogs), it seems that bloggers are mainly interested in blogging. OK, that’s probably a disservice, and I suppose it’s the pot calling the kettle black since I’m blogging about blogging. I guess most blog about their own subjects. It’s just that when you read enough blogs you hear a shitload about blogging. Deborah Branscum has written a somewhat insightful post as to how blogging is like High School titled “High School and the Blogosphere: A Consideration”.
I’d like to add some comments to her thoughts:
1. In high school, girls rule, boys drool. In the blogosphere, boys rule, girls drool.
Perhaps that’s because we can’t see your breasts? Seriously, women’s power in high school is the same afterwards. I don’t think you could possibly be implying that girls in high school were revered for their intellect. If you’re not telling us you’re a woman on your blog, how are we supposed to know? Blog as a man. See if that makes a difference.
2. In high school, it’s jocks vs. nerds. In the blogosphere, it’s wonks vs. nerds.
I’m not sure there was ever a contest like this in high school. Did the dorks, geeks or nerds ever win out over the jocks? I think the only person having this kind of conflict were the nerds, the geeks and the dorks. I think the jocks were just largely oblivious.
3. In high school, there are the popular kids, then everybody else–and it really, really matters. In the blogosphere, there are the popular kids and then everybody else. And so what? We’re adults now and this is blogging, not serious business. (Um, except when it’s serious business.)
I don’t know if this is written from someone who’s not really moved around in business circles or not (EDITED: She’s written for NewsWeek, Fortune and the New York Times, to her credit). This description of the way the high school and the blogosphere works I think could be generalized fairly effectively to the entire world. I only see the blogosphere (I really hate that word, I should come up with something better even if only I use the word) as a microcosm of the real world.
4. In high school, there’s plenty of foul language. In the blogosphere, there’s plenty of foul language.
What the fuck? Why the fuck is this a goddamned issue?
5. In high school, teens can’t wait to enter the real world as independent adults and escape their adolescent misery. In the blogosphere, adults can’t wait to start blogging to escape the real world and its misery.
The grass is always greener. People consistently change careers to find a better one and people switch jobs to find a better job and people switch spouses to find a better one.
Maybe Deborah’s point would have been more insightful but less catchy if she was comparing High School and the blogosphere to the real world. As much as I hated High School, and believe me my life is much improved since then, the real world works much like it. Some people are popular and some aren’t. Luckily, in the real world, as in the blogosphere, it’s often times deserving. Thankfully, unlike High School, It just so happens that I have the upper hand in the real world over the jocks. I feel very sorry for the jocks, as I’d hate to live the rest of my life realizing the best had already passed me by.
Best Indie Movie of the Year
Posted: March 25, 2005 Filed under: Boredom Leave a comment »In the words of Kyle Brovlowsky, “I’ve learned something today. Film festivals shouldn’t be about what celebrities are going to show up. Film festivals should be about people getting together and watching movies and appreciating art. Film festivals should be about people having a chance getting their movies seen, if only once.” Well, it’s not an exact quote, but it’s close (it’s from the Chef’s Salty Balls episode). I have found the finest independent film of the year, available, on the Internet, for free. Ready?
It’s not for the easily offended. Also, it’s most definitely not SFW without headphones, so beware.
I think I’m going to wear this to my next interview
Posted: March 25, 2005 Filed under: Default 1 Comment »I’ve ordered this T-shirt, as suggested by Tom, my old boss. I think it’s outstanding. The Onion can do no wrong.
33 Feeds and Nothing’s On
Posted: March 23, 2005 Filed under: Boredom Leave a comment »So obviously if you’re reading this, I probably don’t have to expound upon the benefits of RSS. If you don’t know what RSS is, I suggest you read up on it and subscribe to an feed aggregator like Bloglines. That’s not really the point though. The point is, even though I’m consistently subscribing to more feeds, sometimes I’m still just finding myself with nothing to read. How depressing! All the stuff I read daily is over at the right on my blogroll, but as I sit here staring at Bloglines, nothing is in bold, meaning I have nothing to read. I’m obviously missing out on someone’s witty and insightful comments out there. Someone tell me what I should be reading but aren’t.
We’re splitting up
Posted: March 22, 2005 Filed under: Default Leave a comment »There comes a time in your life when you realize things just aren’t working out anymore. And for Melanie and I, that was tonight. Luckily, it was all fairly easy. All I had to do was setup a second directory, export the wordpress database, replace typhoon_ with mel_, update some inserts into the options table and it was done. In case you’re curious what this has do with the divorce, fooled ya! Basically, we’re just not blogging together anymore. So, I’ve moved all her old posts over to her blog and removed them from here. You can find her musings here.
Shirley Heights, Antigua
Posted: March 21, 2005 Filed under: Default Leave a comment »
So, I’m going to start blogging with more photos, because I think it makes my site look pretty. And since this is one of the pretties photos I’ve taken, I figure this is a pretty good start.
The main point of this post though, is to tell you about Flickr. Flickr rules! Basically, once I got WordPress up to 1.5 to where xmlrpc wasn’t broken, Flickr now posts directly to the blog without me having to do anything. It also lays things out very pretty, which is nice. Also, a third party user has developed a plugin for Flickr from iPhoto to export photos directly to Flickr! This is badass! This makes photo blogging a brain dead affair. Export from iPhoto to Flickr, and then blog from Flickr to the website. Awesome! I’m going to take a look at the source for the iPhoto exporter and see if I can do something similar for Gallery to eliminate the Flickr dependency, but seriously, it rules. Check it out, it has other cool features like being able to define certain areas of your photos to have mouse overs, so that if you have a group photo you can label who each person is, etc. It also is a big photo-sharing community, which is what I think people are drawn to it for. Personally, I like having the stuff on my own website, but still these guys are rocking. I guess Yahoo got them for a teal at $30 something mil.
Is there such a thing as too much music?
Posted: March 15, 2005 Filed under: Mel 1 Comment »This is a common problem. I sit in front of my computer trying to find something to listen to for what seems like hours. I’ve got plenty of music on iTunes, at present, I could listen to music for over 8 days and never listen to the same thing twice (except for all 17 versions of numerous DMB songs courtesy of my husband) It would seem that there should be no problem finding something to suit my mood. It should be a simple process – am I in the mood for something deep and reflective like Elliott Smith or Radiohead…. or something fun and upbeat like John Mellencamp or Three Dog Night? Maybe I want blues like Robert Johnson… or poppy like The Beatles… maybe it’s sunny and The Eagles would be a perfect fit. Sometimes late at night when I’m almost ready to go to bed, surely The Shins would be a better choice than Guns ‘n Roses. Or just maybe, Clint has been out of town and I have an overwhelming urge for some Dave Matthews. See – it shouldn’t be that hard. But it is – as I type this I’m listening to Radiohead’s “Hail to the Thief” and it took me over 10 minutes to make that decision. It might help if I could browse by genre – I know iTunes has this feature but if you’re an itunes user go browse by genre right now and you’ll see what I’m talking about. According to iTunes, the only Alternative Rock music I have is PJ Harvey, Pete Yorn is classified as Punk, and while I agree that Michelle Branch (my husbands, not mine) is pop, I don’t think Mark Knopfler would be too happy to know that he’s stuck there too. In fact, most of my music is placed in no genre – you would think it would be easy to assign Sarah Mclachlan and Aretha Franklin (pop and R&B respectively), but iTunes places them in no category. I know I could assign all the albums appropriate genres but that is too damn much work. So my problem remains. I honestly think that I might just have too much music to choose from. It could also be the way I listen to music. I don’t know what other people do but unless I’m putting on music as background noise to clean or sew or something, I rarely listen to entire albums. If I’m listening to “listen to music” I want to skip around and hear all of my favorites. And yes, I’ve got a million playlists. The problem is that the 25 songs I wanted to listen to yesterday aren’t the same 25 songs I want to listen to today. Sure there are some songs that I’m almost always in the mood to listen to – but the key word is “almost”. There are circumstances under which I just don’t feel like hearing “The Origin of Love” from the Hedwig and the Angry Inch soundtrack – I know it’s amazing that anyone could say that. Also I don’t want to go strictly by these playlists because I forget about music I love. I can go months without remembering how much I love Elton John’s “Goodbye” or Radiohead’s “Climbing up the Walls”. So I have limited choices. I can choose to jump around and listen to a bunch of stuff – the downfall being that this requires constant attention and I might forget a song I love. I can choose a playlist, but this is going to end with me skipping a lot of songs because I’m simply not in the mood to listen to Ani Difranco sing “Shy”. Or I can listen to entire albums which is difficult because there are few albums that I truly like every song on them – Radiohead’s “Kid A”, The Beatles “Abbey Road”, Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water”, U2′s “Joshua Tree”, and right now REM’s “Around the Sun” are the only ones I can do it with. Many albums come close and I suppose I could uncheck “No Surprises” on OK Computer and such and have a few more. Actually, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I actually just realized that might be a good solution. Ok, but I know that I’m still going to end up switching albums after the first 3 or 4 songs because what always happens is that track 3 or whatever reminds me of some song I like and I have to listen to right this minute and it does no good to finish whatever I’m listening to right now because now anything short of Jackson Browne singing “The Pretender” is just crap. See, as we speak I remembered how much I like that song and I’m going to have to switch over to it – except that for some reason Jackson Browne always makes me think about Broadway plays so now I think instead I’ll listen to the West Side Story Soundtrack and I ask you – How in the hell can someone who is listening to Radiohead suddenly get a desperate urge to hear “I Feel Pretty”?
I hope I’m alone in this, because if I’m not….. I’m scared for this world.
Mel
