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On Deck Circle
ColdMarble Musings
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Tuesday, June 19, 2001For those who have been asking, my wife's sister passed away Monday at 5:30PM. Thank you from all of us for your kind thoughts and prayers. Monday, June 18, 2001Dinosaurs are not just computer-generated Hollywood creations. They were once actually living, breathing creatures that lived on the same Earth we do. Dinorama, part of National Geographic, lets children and adults alike explore the world of these long-lost creatures. It's filled with fascinating facts and interactive models to teach us about dinosaurs and the way they lived, and died. Scenic Beauty, No Sales Tax: The surprise may be out about Oregon, the formerly sleepy state in the Pacific Northwest. Now home to corporate giants Nike and Intel, Oregon is attracting people from across the country. Many of the friends I have made over the years on the Internet live in and around the Portland area. Considering a visit? This travelogue takes you through some of Oregon's no longer well-kept secrets. Goldfish are generally thought of as hassle-free pets. The bowls in which they live, however, can be potent weapons. In Britain, 26 people ended up in the hospital after a goldfish bowl set fire to a garden shed. It appears the bowl acted as a magnifying glass. If he weren't retired, I'd say it sounds like something from Gary Larson. AORTAL Link of the day: Lissa Explains It All Sunday, June 17, 2001For all the father's out there, get a tissue, this little girl has filled those big shoes just fine. Your site is a traffic magnet, but who are all those people and where are they going once they hit your site? All that information, and more, is stored in your server logs — the key is knowing how to read them. Webmonkey Mike takes a peek under the hood of a typical log file, then reviews some of the top free and for-pay log file analyzing utilities. Watch them sort through the spaghetti text in your log files and spit out nice and easy-to-read charts, graphs, and numbers. Joe has been playing again, needlessly.
I first happened upon Dan Bowman of The Time Sink right after "Kaycee Nicole died" and was reminded of his wonderful writing last week by Amber Eden. Putting in words why I too have grown tired of television, Dan opted out. It is so easy to do. You just switch off the remote and switch on The Net. If the TV moguls don't figure it out soon, they will be coughing up the dust of this numeeja*. From Dan's entry on June 15th, here are a few excerpts: "I opted out of TV years ago; I finally realized my brain was slowly oozing from my ears ... and the jokes were getting cruder and cruder, earlier and earlier in the evening, season after season ... and the presentation of society was just that of a place I didn't care to be part of. Sure, some of it was from a values thing, but some of it was from watching what happened to people in real life when their lives departed from the TV script, or they tried a little too hard to keep up, or they realized they couldn't keep up." "So here's my gripe about mainstream media: they're telling me what they or their masters want me to be told. I hear just that side of it ... with an agenda and a spin that is certainly not unbiased ... and it's all push. You want information on something that's not on the agenda, well that's just too bad. This and this are our topics du jour and you're just stuck watching this drivel until the drool runs down onto your lap." "... you can't drive ratings unless you can out-sensationalize the next station. That applies to morning news, daytime TV, and the 'prime time' sitcoms. So they push the envelope ... and the viewing public gets desensitized to it ... so they have to push it further ... and further ... to the point where I feel like I'm wading through dreck." "... and I opt out ... and come back here ... and I
can still find out how Buffy is doing ... and I can find more channel feeds than I
can link to that will give me my baseline news feeds ... and enough new sources of
information and opinion to keep me very able to grow my knowledge base ... and it's
all pull (no RPC-XML stuff here for the moment * slang pronunciation of new media, with a hat tip to Meg Pickard |
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Copyright © 1997-2004 Internet Brothers. Not that you'd want any of it.
Sunday means Bluzz of the Week. Through this feature,
I'm searching for the brightest, funniest, most controversial or otherwise intriguing
comments from the previous week's forums, journals and blogs. Sensationalism. Rush
to judgment. Carnival reality on parade. Such are the methodologies the old new media
my generation grew up with has decided to present. Television is self-immolating, and
worst for them, apparently they don't even realize it. Too bad, so sad, see ya later.
If you find a true treasure you'd like to nominate for future Bluzz of the Week, even
if you wrote it yourself,