Tag Archives: Bloggers

A Week's Worth Of 50-Word Posts

It’s tough when you know you’re not going to allow for the necessary word count to fully explain a thought or idea, but it’s a fun challenge to say as much as possible, as clearly as possible, in a limited space.  The most attractive piece being the lack of pressure to completely fill the empty space.  Being tied to a maximum amount of words, created a more inviting environment for jotting quick thoughts.  I guess that’s the intent of micro blogging, except you only have a 140 characters, which isn’t quite enough to get 50 words.

A couple of the posts were worse off than the rest (There were only four or five, right?).  My Book Meme post not only left off Leah Culver’s Book Meme post , but should have instructed the reader to post the sentence in his own blog; a result of my shrinking the instructions to leave room for my own comment at the bottom of the post.  There just wasn’t space to say all I wanted.  Anyhow, a Book Meme search is pretty neat.

The second suffering post was that of my Google’s no good at social media post, and shouldn’t bother with acquiring Twitter.  Clearly, a point of view that requires a bit of elaboration supporting the claim.  Which is to say, that it’s work to write a full entry for such a topic.  I’ve put it on my follow-up list, and it involves things like Orkut, Lively, and PicasaWeb.  We’ll get there, don’t worry.

I enjoyed it.  It was an interesting exercise.  I had a handful of short posts I meant to write, but never got around to (as usual).  I’ll now be less concerned with my word counts, be they more or fewer.

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A Week’s Worth Of 50-Word Posts

It’s tough when you know you’re not going to allow for the necessary word count to fully explain a thought or idea, but it’s a fun challenge to say as much as possible, as clearly as possible, in a limited space.  The most attractive piece being the lack of pressure to completely fill the empty space.  Being tied to a maximum amount of words, created a more inviting environment for jotting quick thoughts.  I guess that’s the intent of micro blogging, except you only have a 140 characters, which isn’t quite enough to get 50 words.

A couple of the posts were worse off than the rest (There were only four or five, right?).  My Book Meme post not only left off Leah Culver’s Book Meme post , but should have instructed the reader to post the sentence in his own blog; a result of my shrinking the instructions to leave room for my own comment at the bottom of the post.  There just wasn’t space to say all I wanted.  Anyhow, a Book Meme search is pretty neat.

The second suffering post was that of my Google’s no good at social media post, and shouldn’t bother with acquiring Twitter.  Clearly, a point of view that requires a bit of elaboration supporting the claim.  Which is to say, that it’s work to write a full entry for such a topic.  I’ve put it on my follow-up list, and it involves things like Orkut, Lively, and PicasaWeb.  We’ll get there, don’t worry.

I enjoyed it.  It was an interesting exercise.  I had a handful of short posts I meant to write, but never got around to (as usual).  I’ll now be less concerned with my word counts, be they more or fewer.

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Web 2.0 Ridiculousness And A Dopey Spat

I’m sure, on some level, that’s in deemed inappropriate for me to be seen laughing at the situation.  I don’t know whether to throw my hands up or hang my head.  Sure, they’re the same thing, but one requires more energy, and I’m in too much pain to do either.  So let’s to a quick low down on what’s been going down.

Calacanis sends out one of his emails saying it’s over for start ups everywhere.  Leaves me jumping for joy.  Ever since that Yammer debacle from TC50(2), the start up world has been a disappointment.  Not having money to throw at every new idea that pops into someone’s head, is probably an okay thing.  Which leads (by correlation, not causation) the VCs to start crying “the sky is falling, don’t throw money at every lamebrain idea.”  Can it be, our wishes are granted.  No more online banking sites for people under the age of double-digits.

So there’s no start up VC money for the new guys, but a bunch of the old guys (late twenties, tops) still have a bunch of money and they decide to take a lavish vacation to Cyprus where they stay at Wall Street power broker Bob Lessin’s get away home to do a very low quality lip dub set poolside to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” which is later released online (surprise) and stirs up a flurry of emotion from the have-nots.  Sorry new start-up kids, you’ll have to wait for the next bubble and, maybe, create a _useful_ service.

Rounding out the senselessness from people who have nothing to complain about is TechCrunch’s very own Michael Arrington throwing a tantrum over rival blogger Dare Obasanjo’s post calling Arrington a horrible name.  Not sure what the name was, but it must have been really bad because Arrington was pissing all over the Twitter stream late Sunday night, shouting at Scoble and Barnes.

I’m left to think this is all a joke of a farce, or something similar, that doesn’t mean much to anyone who isn’t living the Web 2.0 Internet.  But be not afraid, regular people, there is some good to come from all of this, and that’s the Mr. Feldman’s video spoofs to make us laugh.  Head on over to his site and check out some of the humor that’s being passed around via his videos.  Or completley ignore all of this.  The Silicon bubble is of very little consequence to most of us.

"Impression Of A Normal Guy"

Jake and Amir from JakeandAmir dot com nailed it in their most recent video "Impersonation" where, after first bickering about whether or not it would be better to have an infinity amount of chicken nuggets or an infinity amount of money, Amir goes on to give what he calls an "impression of a normal guy".  I don’t want to ruin it for you, so you should probably give it a view before reading on.  You’ll want to form your own opinion about it before I prattle on.

Fair enough.

I don’t know what it is about normal that I find so uninteresting, or what it is that makes it so easy to poke fun around.  (Unless we’re talking about the normal vector, which is a line perpendicular to a plane.  That’s not easy to poke fun around nor is it uninteresting.  However, it is completely off topic, so save your advanced math questions for another time.)  And in finding it so uninteresting, it thereby becomes very interesting.  Strange how that works, right?

It’s true, though, as Amir displays it — normal people give boring monologues and aren’t terribly great for dialogues either.  Reminds me of a conversation I was having with a woman just the other day, where I was going on and on about this and that only to realize I was talking nonsensical circles about life in a far away future, so when I finally paused long enough for her to respond all she could ask was, "what are you doing in the woman’s restroom?"  Seems I was too busy talking to notice I’d lost track of the person I was following.

Not the point.  Watch the video.  Throw these guys in your feed reader.  Enjoy the show!

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“Impression Of A Normal Guy”

Jake and Amir from JakeandAmir dot com nailed it in their most recent video "Impersonation" where, after first bickering about whether or not it would be better to have an infinity amount of chicken nuggets or an infinity amount of money, Amir goes on to give what he calls an "impression of a normal guy".  I don’t want to ruin it for you, so you should probably give it a view before reading on.  You’ll want to form your own opinion about it before I prattle on.

Fair enough.

I don’t know what it is about normal that I find so uninteresting, or what it is that makes it so easy to poke fun around.  (Unless we’re talking about the normal vector, which is a line perpendicular to a plane.  That’s not easy to poke fun around nor is it uninteresting.  However, it is completely off topic, so save your advanced math questions for another time.)  And in finding it so uninteresting, it thereby becomes very interesting.  Strange how that works, right?

It’s true, though, as Amir displays it — normal people give boring monologues and aren’t terribly great for dialogues either.  Reminds me of a conversation I was having with a woman just the other day, where I was going on and on about this and that only to realize I was talking nonsensical circles about life in a far away future, so when I finally paused long enough for her to respond all she could ask was, "what are you doing in the woman’s restroom?"  Seems I was too busy talking to notice I’d lost track of the person I was following.

Not the point.  Watch the video.  Throw these guys in your feed reader.  Enjoy the show!

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Link Juice And Other Stuff

Last week, before I disappeared into the real world to deal with things that have nothing to do with my online persona, I changed the site’s commenting policy.  Previously, all comments here were labeled "nofollow", but now after you meet the minimum number of on-topic comments you’ll get the link love you deserve.  Which is also to say, if your comments are completely off topic I will have to remove them.  And while I understand the reasons for leaving the "nofollow" tag, I can’t stand when bloggers don’t share the love for thoughtful and worthwhile comments.  Total bummer.  (Don’t worry, the minimum number here is very low, and the criteria is not terribly strict.)  The policy is retroactive, so some of you may already have the new status.

In other news, while migrating my employer’s web site to a new hosting company as well as switching registrars, I accidentally, and somewhat embarrassingly, created a DNS redirect loop that ultimately resulted in this blog appearing on the presentation screen in our board room while trying to demonstrate the company’s new site layout to a group of colleagues.  Which is to say, my very large face was up on the wall when it shouldn’t have been in front of people who have no idea I keep a blag.  I was shocked, to say the least, but quickly put this site into maintenance mode until I could correct the DNS issue for their company site.  Thankfully propagation times are much faster than they used to be.  Still, hearing a co-worker unexpectedly shout, "Hey, Justin, it’s you!" during the middle of a presentation, is kind of a strange way to start the day.    I chuckled.

Continuing on, I noticed that my writing here is directly related to the amount of journal writing I do with pen and paper in the real world.  (I’m a fan of ink on paper.)  Which isn’t to imply that I outline my ideas before I bring them here, just that if I’m not actively keeping my writing mind working, then all my outlets suffer.  Just ask any of the people I email on a regular routine — last week was quiet across the written board.  But we’re back.  I spent a good portion of the morning putting pen to pad and, not surprisingly, here we are.

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My Blog Post Was Stolen

Honestly?  Yeah, it’s true.  I’ve had a post completely republished on another site without my consent and without any credit.  I’m not sure how to feel about it.  Initially I was shocked and upset, but what does any of that matter?  I went through a brief bit of flatteredness, then back to being upset, then off to do things in real life.  It’s all very funny.

I think it’s great that anyone would want to re-post something I’ve written.  Heck, I read some of my stuff and I want to re-post it.  But to re-post without crediting me or my web space is kind of silly.  Especially since I offer the re-use of my content for free under the creative commons license.  Why not throw back a little love?

But what really gets me riled up about all this is that the villainous site is ranking higher for my post in google searches for specific search terms.  Which shouldn’t bother me, because those search terms were not the point of my post, but I don’t like being out ranked — anywhere!

So I’ve written the site owners through the comments, as it seems that’s the only way to contact these people, and if there’s no reply then it’s a formal written complaint to the site owners citing sections of the DMCA and then another letter to the site’s hosting company citing more sections of the DMCA.

It’s tiresome.  All I really want is my name on the post; I took the time to live through the experience and then spent the time to write about it.  In any event, I’ll keep creating and they can keep stealing.  But no, I’m not saying where my post is published.  I don’t want to send them any more traffic.

You’ll want to read it hear first!

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It’s Being Done Differently Now

It was time.  I had to do it.  I changed the site layout, or “theme” as it is referred to in the loop.  I’m announcing this obvious fact for the folks in the feed-readers; they can’t see a layout change.  For the most part, at least.

Anyhow, like I was saying.  It was time.  The previous layout was too dark and difficult to read (look at.)  I’m not a fan of sites that use light-colored text on dark backgrounds.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the _look_ of it, but it does not read well.  If you’re planning to have anyone read your stuff, it needs to be easy on the eyes.  I don’t want to get into a long UI discussion (although, maybe I should), but trust me when I say that this new layout is much better.

I’m not sure if the spark for change came from a talk I had with a fellow blogger, or a conversation I had with a colleague about her business’s web site.  Probably it was a combination of the two and, either way, it sent me out tinkering with all sorts of pre-developed WordPress themes.  (An added bonus to using WordPress is the many site layouts that are freely available for personal use.)  After several hours of working with Gimp and creating my own CSS from scratch, I decided it was a better idea, and also much quicker, to mash together a bunch of already existing lines of code.  (Why re-invent the wheel, just make it more round.  What?  I mean make it roll farther.)

This was only half my problem.  I spent a bit of time this evening, searching for a reason as to why my PHP was not working with WordPress 2.6, which I had hesitantly upgraded the site to late Monday evening after trying it on another site I host.  2.6 was working great everywhere I used it, with all my plugins in tact and new features working flawlessly.  But then I loaded up my new layout, which, silly me, I was testing locally on a linux box running WordPress 2.5.  (Imagine that!  It was working in one set of conditions, but not another.)  “Warning!”  “Error!”  “the function() requires a string at line 18.”  Oh my.

What I’m getting at, is that there are going to be some kinks for a few minutes, and I’m doing my best to work those out of the mix.  So, if you would be kind enough, bear with me a minute or two, and, if you notice any errors, please draw them to my attention so I can remedy the situation.  I’m just getting back into the old smell of PHP and, honestly, I was never a CSS fan.  However, it’s proving to make a whole lot of sense now that I’ve plopped myself in the world of web site development. (Is it still a client if you do the work for free?)

I’ll leave you with it so I can get back to it.  My next goal is to clean up the tags and categories.  Both of these are useful tools when used correctly, but we’ll have to let that sit a moment.

It's Being Done Differently Now

It was time.  I had to do it.  I changed the site layout, or “theme” as it is referred to in the loop.  I’m announcing this obvious fact for the folks in the feed-readers; they can’t see a layout change.  For the most part, at least.

Anyhow, like I was saying.  It was time.  The previous layout was too dark and difficult to read (look at.)  I’m not a fan of sites that use light-colored text on dark backgrounds.  It doesn’t make any sense to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the _look_ of it, but it does not read well.  If you’re planning to have anyone read your stuff, it needs to be easy on the eyes.  I don’t want to get into a long UI discussion (although, maybe I should), but trust me when I say that this new layout is much better.

I’m not sure if the spark for change came from a talk I had with a fellow blogger, or a conversation I had with a colleague about her business’s web site.  Probably it was a combination of the two and, either way, it sent me out tinkering with all sorts of pre-developed WordPress themes.  (An added bonus to using WordPress is the many site layouts that are freely available for personal use.)  After several hours of working with Gimp and creating my own CSS from scratch, I decided it was a better idea, and also much quicker, to mash together a bunch of already existing lines of code.  (Why re-invent the wheel, just make it more round.  What?  I mean make it roll farther.)

This was only half my problem.  I spent a bit of time this evening, searching for a reason as to why my PHP was not working with WordPress 2.6, which I had hesitantly upgraded the site to late Monday evening after trying it on another site I host.  2.6 was working great everywhere I used it, with all my plugins in tact and new features working flawlessly.  But then I loaded up my new layout, which, silly me, I was testing locally on a linux box running WordPress 2.5.  (Imagine that!  It was working in one set of conditions, but not another.)  “Warning!”  “Error!”  “the function() requires a string at line 18.”  Oh my.

What I’m getting at, is that there are going to be some kinks for a few minutes, and I’m doing my best to work those out of the mix.  So, if you would be kind enough, bear with me a minute or two, and, if you notice any errors, please draw them to my attention so I can remedy the situation.  I’m just getting back into the old smell of PHP and, honestly, I was never a CSS fan.  However, it’s proving to make a whole lot of sense now that I’ve plopped myself in the world of web site development. (Is it still a client if you do the work for free?)

I’ll leave you with it so I can get back to it.  My next goal is to clean up the tags and categories.  Both of these are useful tools when used correctly, but we’ll have to let that sit a moment.