robglazebrook.com

Data sure is fun. I found a new site today (allconsuming.net) via my stats that collects information on what people in the Blogosphere are reading. It hourly scours recently updated weblogs that ping weblogs.com (as any self-respecting blog should do, sayeth the… me) for links to books on Amazon.com (as any self-respecting blogger should do for the books they’re reading, with a very slightly possible exception for M’ris, because I’m afraid she might make the smoke come out of Amazon’s servers). It then aggregates this data, and posts most popular links for who’s reading what. They also allow users to keep a “What I’m Reading” list on their site, which I’m considering doing. Novel ideas, no? And yeah, that pun was pretty much intended.

This was published a couple of days ago, so I’m likely the 8,000th or so blog to link to it, but Anil Dash recently posted a nice entry on the motivation behind his time spent in “the blogging industry.” He’s also joined the sixapart team (makers of MovableType), so I’m all hot and bothered now. :)

I find Anil’s post interesting because there are many times when I forget how good I’ve got it here in the middle of the state in the middle of the country that likes to beat up other countries smaller than my state. :) Forty years ago, his father lived in a village in India that had no running water or electricity. The majority of the population was illiterate. His father immigrated from that situation to 1960’s USA, because he’d read of all the self-improving possibilities offered here. Wow. Try as I might, I can’t think of anyplace I could move foreign enough to fully empathize with such a change. Anil suggested the moon, but I don’t think that’s drastic enough. Sure, it’s far from home, but you and I know damn well that when (and I’m going to say when, because I’m an optimist that way) we humans colonize the moon, it’s going to be a Western or at the very least a Westernized country doing the colonizing, (I’d prefer to think it will be a collection of countries working together, but you get the idea) and we’re going to bring our culture and our everyday technology with us in our carry-ons. Anil can move to the moon, but he’s going to bring an awful lot of the States with him when he goes.

I signed up at wander-lust.com today. It’s a website for those of us that like to find new blogs. I’ve posted a link alongside my site badges, so check it out. You click the link, and it takes you to a random blog. Fun stuff. Their servers are a bit slow, which is annoying, but I’ll just hope that will improve over time for now. I’m going to design a badge similar to the ones I’ve already got and submit it to them (a frustrating, sure-to-be-slow step. I prefer Blogshares’s method of allowing people to create their own links), in hopes they approve the thing for use. It’d speed up site load times, for sure. And it’d fit my site a whole heck of a lot better.

I fiddled with my Blogroll a bit today. I dropped Raging Platypus because his bi-weekly updating frequency and general lack of new content were bugging me. I’ve clicked his link at least once a day since I added him to my blogroll, but aside from the nice badge idea and a new link or two, it hasn’t done much. In recompense, I’ve added MemeMachineGo! to the blogroll. That’s the weblog of the Zed M’ris refers to so often. I clicked, I was amused, I scrolled, and I continued to be amused. Therefore, I linked.

I need fewer Californians on my blogroll.

I’d like to make a couple of things regarding my “Ethos in the Blogosphere” post a bit more clear, just so you, Dedicated Reader, don’t get the wrong impression. I’ll go in order of comments. :) First, in case anyone was thinking such, I’m not complaining that I’m not popular (I’m not sure if this was the intended insinuation or not, but I thought I’d mention it). Content comes first, acknowedgement second, so forth, so on. I’m just trying to figure out the rhetorical bases for ~how~ the popular weblogs gained the ethos they have. I’m planning on doing my Rhetoric final paper on it. It’s actually an idea spawned from a conversation between myself and my Rhetoric teacher regarding the insta-popularity of Where is Raed? (which I’ve never linked to, first because of his insane level of popularity for questionable reasons, second because he’s stopped updating, for whatever reason) at the onset of the war. Want another scary Google search? Google ‘Baghdad’.

Second, I understand that being gay, Asian, and Bayside doesn’t make someone special, unique, or instantly better than the rest of us. It does, however, make them different enough from who I am that I can gain insight and glean humor from the similarities and differences found within our individual perspectives on everyday life. I consider Ernie’s life to be not-like my life in many ways, making his perspective of interest to me. Also, the ways that my life is-like his are of interest, for the same reason. His life is not in any way inherently more exotic than mine is, and his perspective is not inherently more interesting than mine. But the differences ~between~ our perspectives… now THAT is interesting.

Read here long enough, and you’ll come to find I’m obsessed with the idea of perspectives. Assuming I’m writing coherently, which I’m working on. :)

I found out yesterday that the hot girl in my Media class knows about my website now, and that she’s checked it out a time or two. One of the perils of mentioning my website in a homework assignment, I guess. Which means I probably shouldn’t talk about the hot girl here, or something. You know. So the hot girl doesn’t see it. [wonders how many times he'll be smacked for this paragraph. And by whom. Experiments are fun, no?]

That’s about it. I plan to go out tonight, assuming I can find someone to go out with. To places that cater to those of us over 21, so Megan isn’t an option as an escort. That, and she’s down home (in Suthe’n Eye-wuh), so she wasn’t really an option regardless of my destination.