Month: February 2005

I didn’t follow Battlestar Galactica last season but the bits I did happen to see were of astounding quality. It really was very well produced. This view is supported by those of my friends who did follow it and by everyone else I’ve heard mention it. It’s a pity then that what Slashdot refered to as a free download of the first episode is only a streaming video in Real Media format. Hint: If you want people to go the legal route to getting your material you have to make it more appealing than BitTorrent.

Phil Ringnalda has piece on advertising in blogs and one piece of it led me to develop an old idea just a little further than I’d seen before.

I do think, though, that the people who farm Google searchers for money by only showing ads in their old archives, where most of the viewers are people searching for bizarre terms that they are a horrible result for, have a much better idea than trying to show ads to the people who subscribe to an RSS feed because they want to know what you say.

All the way back in February of last year (though I thought it was longer ago than that) Aquarion announced that he was selling out by putting ads on posts more than three months old. The point was to give some value to those people stumbling across old posts that aren’t really relevant anymore. The trial must have worked, since the ads are still there.

So here’s the extra bit: It’s trivial to see when someone is coming to your site from a search engine. Some sites do it all the time, listing recent search terms that led to the site, tracking what search terms lead to the site most often, even highlighting the searched terms (that last one is a favourite of mine). Why not fine-tune the ad serving a little more and only serve ads on pages reached from searches? That way links from newer posts to old ones, links from outside sites that specifically refer to the contents of your post, and links from systems like SoylentRed’s own nostalgia list ("This time last year") will continue to point to ad-free content. Meanwhile random search-engine traffic can continue to generate revenue or, in Aquarion’s altruistic view, Google can at least give people something relevant if they’ve stumbled across an old post of yours that lacks current applicability.

Aunty Beeb is carrying a piece on protecting children from the abusive effects of ‘child exorcisms’. On its face this seems to be just another case of cruel acts committed in the name of religious beliefs. We don’t need another example of that; everyone just uses the crusades or the middle east or Northern Ireland as their primary examples of evil in the name of God. The counter-argument from theists—and a valid one at that—is that those situations are essentially political and/or ethnic at their root and that the various religions involved are used as a more convenient Us-versus-Them dividing label. Theists argue that people will divide themselves by any available label, be it race, colour, class, or religion. They’re right.

In contrast, the situation described by the BBC piece is one that can only have the fairy-tale-like mythology aspect of religious belief at it’s heart. It can not be the result of using religion as an excuse or as a convenient delimiter. This is an evil that only exists because of the wonky world-view of its perpetrators. Whether that constitutes an argument against religious belief per-se is left as an exercise for the reader.

I hope that those involved are not let off lightly in the name of religious tolerance.

That took longer than I expected. It’s just taken me over a day to get my unread items list down to zero. I spent most of Wednesday away from the ‘Net so my blogroll was going to stretch a little longer than usual anyway. Combine this with a couple of new high-content blogs in my subscriptions, the fact that many people are giving their take on Kottke‘s new venture, and the fact that Dave Shea’s new book is out (and the reviews are in) and you’ve got several hours worth of reading. I’ve improved my methods of keeping track of what I want to mention here, so unless I lose my motivation really quickly there are going to be a few more posts later today.

Unforunately my dad has been ill for the last day or two so all this is going to have to wait until after the shopping is done. There really isn’t as much time in a four-day weekend as you’d expect.

Via Leslie Orchard at 0xDECAFBAD, I’ve just discovered the previously unsung complexity of the iPod’s notes facility. Apple’s developers’ site has a PDF describing the extended functionality, including support for basic HTML like <br> and <p>, the ability to link to other notes and songs, and most interestingly the ability to link to temporary playlists identified by artist, album, genre etc. This is all aimed at making it easy to develop custom applications for the iPod.

I’ve been peripherally aware of Jason Kottke for the last couple of years. He’s always trotted out as an example of a blogger who everyone reads; he’s the prototypical A-lister. Struggling to keep myself off the bandwagon, or simply through inertia, I’ve never subscribed to Kottke.org. If you read the same blogs I do you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m the only person that doesn’t subscribe (well, you too because you read the same blogs I do…)

Anywho, I’ve just done the unimaginable and added Kottke’s feed to my Bloglines subscriptions, because Jason has done the unimaginable and quit his day job to work as a full-time blogger. No advertising, no memberships, no subscription-only content, just a request to pay what you think he’s worth. That’s pretty ballsy, and I can’t wait to find out if it works.

What explanation can anyone offer for the Google Image Search results for "Rory Parle" (without quotes)? Specifically, where did this rhino come from?

When Homer Simpson was shown to be innocent of sexual harassment based on the evidence presented by Groundskeeper Willie, TV magazine show Rock Bottom broadcast a list of other corrections. Thanks to the wonderful invention that is freeze-frame, you can see the list at SNPP.com. Be warned though. One of the items is "If you are reading this you have no life".

Carnegie Hall is on the corner of 57th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. It’s reasonably easy to get to, being within walking distance of Central Park and Broadway. Juggling five balls, on the other hand, takes practice. The method I use is a pyramid method (not to be confused with a pyramid scheme) which goes like this:

• Let n equal, say, five.
• Juggle ten runs of n catches, eight runs of n + 1, six runs of n + 2, four runs of n + 3, two runs of n + 4 and one run of n + 5. At each stage record how many times you failed to get a run of the prescribed length, including false starts, drops, and premature gathers.
• Total the number of failed runs. If it’s more than 31 (10 + 8 + 6 + 4 + 2 + 1), just write it down so you can track your long-term improvement and try again another day. If it’s less than 31, increment n by 1 for the next time.

I’ve been using this method since mid January, not at all regularly but on average about once every two days. I’ve got pretty close to pushing n up to 11 which—as well as being an easy Spinal Tap reference—means I qualify more often than not these days. I remember my first qualifying run was only at the beginning of January. It’s this fast rate of improvement that makes juggling such a great hobby.

It seems tha Gmail may finally be opening to the public very soon. They originally predicted the beta period to end last autumn, but it has remained invitation-only well into this year. A few weeks ago members received 50 invites each, to allow more people to join the decreasingly exclusive club. When Gmail was announced last April I signed up to receive news of updates; today I got an email from the team inviting me to open an account. There doesn’t seem to be a signup mechanism on the site yet, but the signs are pointing to an iminent opening.