i am indisposed

I had high and mighty illusions that I had the time and energy to develop this sight in Drupal. I thought that I would create a more varied range of content types and maybe that would have been the case eventually, but not now. I'll keep the Blog2 site open so I can dick around with drupal if I want to, but I'm going to devote more time to writing and posting here and bringing back the Snake in the Road story thread and initiating others.

I'll also be focusing on video more. I'm experimenting with TallcanTV, and will be starting a backcountry skiing podcast as soon as the snow starts to fall and I get a video camera.

There are also a lot of compelling reasons to stick with Wordpress as I found out in my interview with Matt Mullenweg and the talks @ Wordcamp Utah.

So I'm back with what I know and love. Vivi Las Wordpress!!

-Mike

Or when to say Good night and Gofuckyourself,

photo by Stephen Mcleod

I recently found a web app called Qwitter that alerts you when twitter followers drop you and what was the most recent tweet that presumably promoted them to click the expunge button over your face.

Here are my first two:
"misterperry (misterperry) stopped following you on Twitter after you posted this tweet:

Interesting to get reports of when and who is dropping you on twitter: http://useqwitter.com/ i guess @zekesaysso doesn't like fart jokes?

Check out misterperry's profile here:

http://twitter.com/misterperry"

I’m pretty sure I was never following MisterPerry anyway.

"Zeke (ZekeSaysSo) stopped following you on Twitter after you posted this tweet:

list of things to do while waiting for outlook to deliver search results #1 walk to @robgaedtke's office to fart Whats on your's #outlooksux

Check out ZekeSaysSo's profile here:

http://twitter.com/ZekeSaysSo"

Question: Is this a way to find out who your true friends are or a tool that helps you find and cull your Twitter Love Connections?

I think it’s great. Not everyone is meant to be followed by everyone. I definitely want to be careful about being negative and douchey on Twitter, but if I need to drop an Eff-Bomb for a laugh, then I’m sure my friends will understand.

I know there are a bunch of people who I follow that I don’t necessarily want to offend, but I’ll refrain from religious, racial and socioeconomic burns, and I assume they’ll forgive my occasional (hourly) gaffs of good taste in deference to transparency and personality.

Either way, not everyone likes you. Not everyone who likes you wants to follow you on twitter. Not everyone who likes you wants to see you naked. Some do, for everything else, there’s Twitter.

Peace out,

-M

Blog Comment Spam can be a nightmare, but sometimes it's just a joke...

Photo by Big Fat Rat

Just got an interesting spam comment on another of the blogs I write for. It's a bit of a head scratcher, cause there isn't a link in it or an add for anything. But it was vaguely funny, though completely inappropriate for the post it appeared on, so I'll post it here and see what people think it means.

"There was this guy see.
He wasn't very bright and he reached his adult life without ever having learned "the facts".
Somehow, it gets to be his wedding day.
While he is walking down the isle, his father tugs his sleeve and says,

"Son, when you get to the hotel room...Call me"

Hours later he gets to the hotel room with his beautiful blushing bride and he calls his father,

"Dad, we are the hotel, what do I do?"

"O.K. Son, listen up, take off your clothes and get in the bed, then she should take off her clothes and get in the bed, if not help her. Then either way, ah, call me"

A few moments later...

"Dad we took off our clothes and we are in the bed, what do I do?"

O.K. Son, listen up. Move real close to her and she should move real close to you, and then... Ah, call me."

A few moments later...

"DAD! WE TOOK OFF OUR CLOTHES, GOT IN THE BED AND MOVED REAL CLOSE, WHAT DO I DO???"

"O.K. Son, Listen up, this is the most important part. Stick the long part of your body into the place where she goes to the bathroom."

A few moments later...

"Dad, I've got my foot in the toilet, what do I do?"

-M

ps I'm finding these images by doing a Flickr search for Creative Commons photos...

This image comes from the Flickr profile of the Library of Congress. I'm doing some research on the use and potential use of social media for governmental organizations and found this.

The Commons on Flickr seems like a great way to harness the categorizing power of the social web. I imagine that you get some outliers, but just like with Wikis the self regulating power should even things out.

"The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer."

I'm going to try not to spend the next 10 hours glued to the Commons...

-Mike

I have over 200 followers on Twitter. Some of that is useless chatter, some is people I don't know and probably have nothing in common with, but we follow each other because of mutual friends, some of it is spam, some is business contacts, and some are real friends whose comments, observations, witicisms, links, rants and happenings I am interested in.

Yesterday I found a tool that helps you visualize yout Twitter useage. http://tweetstats.com/graphs/mehwolfy TweetStats.com is a cool tool that shows your tweet frequency by month, by day / time of day, hourly, daily, and who you most reply to. It also shows a cool tag cloud of frequently tweet terms.

A few facts about my Twitter usage: I tweet 350 times per month, my usage ramps up from Monday to top out on Friday, I tweet mostly by text, followed by Digsby, followed by web, I love @edadkins.

I'm not sure what that says about me, BUT I was just lamenting the fact that I don't have remotely that many followers on Google Reader. Pretty much just Jerz, Jim, David, my sister, James Ball, Moser. And the only ones who ever recommend anything are Bobzien and Jerz. I use Feedly a lot too and have a gob of other friends there, I think because I have it hooked up with friend feed. But most of them I don't know and most of them only recommend tech, social media, business, financial crap. There's an article there about how to make good powerpoints. I tagged that #whothefuckcares.

So What blog reader are people reading? What are you reading? I use Google Reader and Feedly. FRIEND ME!

I'm frankly tired of reading the Alisters. I don't care what Scoble has to say about how he gets the first alert on new Google products and how lame I am for not jumping on the bandwagon as soon as he did. I'm tired of Godin's not helpful, semi-motivational generalities. There's so much crap about SEO on the blogosphere that it isn't worth looking.

I didn't get into this for that. I love creativity. Interest. Creativity doesn't flow from info. Technology isn't a means to it's own end. SEO means nothing with out good content. None of that matters if you have nothing to say about the world that isn't self referential. I want to read about the hike you went on. I want to read tweets from the NKOTB concert. I want to see pics of your beat up face. I want to read about your troubles and your positive outlook on life. I want to see the web videos that keep you sane. Tell me about your day, your life, how awesome lunch was, your favorite beer, your search for love (or your flight from it)...

WHEN DID BLOGGING GET SO FUCKING BORING!?!?!?!?!

-M

The dirt road crossed the wide valley for miles, and the boy stopped his pick-up truck right in the middle. As he set the brake and opened the door he watched something lying ahead of us in the dirt. He got out and left his cowboy hat where it was on the dashboard. He pulled a shovel from the bed which was littered with ropes, tools and containers all stuffed in the cracks and spaces with hay and dust. Still fixed on something in the road, he walked around to the front of the truck. I don’t know how the kid spotted it, but from the passenger side of the cab I could just make out a rattlesnake stretched out in the middle of road. It was still morning and cool, and the way it was reposed there blocking our path looked to me like it was basking in the sun that only a few minutes before risen over the mountains that contained the valley.

The boy stood holding the shovel out in front of himself with the blade pointing scoop down and looked at the snake. I watched as he waited a second. The snake recoiled from the boy and, as if obligated by ancient treaty, began to rattle. A burst of wind swept dust across the road, and for a long moment the boy watched, and the snake’s agitation grew. He glanced into the cab for a second at me then back at the snake. His look was hard to read, but I knew how ranchers treat rattlesnakes. This must happen a lot, I thought. Why not just kill it with the truck? Still the boy hesitated.

With one quick movement he swiveled the shovel to digging position, slipped it under the standing body of the snake, lifted it like a load of manure and tossed it off the road into the brush. Then he walked back around to the door and swung the shovel into the bed and hopped back in also in one solid movement that was as much like dancing as simple work with blunt and rusted hand tools. The snake then was gone. Completely. Hidden, as it was, by the way the brush and gravel of the countryside matched so well the odd markings on its back.

photo by senecar used under a creative commons license.

Note: this is a repost. more to follow in this series...

There was a debate today. One for the upcoming presidential election. It always amazes me that such things are necessary in such a polarized political environment. Liberal and Conservative. How can someone need to know the ins and outs of a platform when they are so ideologically different. Almost everything we do leads up to vast relief between platforms, and yet comparisons are inevitable. But when you open up that mess it just gets annoying.

Next up in my list of notweorthy interviewees,
Wallstrip Chat - Matt Mullenweg - Free videos are just a click away

I've always been a PC guy. There was a time in college when I was about to go into debt on a powerPC mac, which still sounds like a pc to me. But I didn't. Last spring I got a Lenovo Thinkpad T-61 14 inch laptop. It's small, black, and tight as fuck, Nice keyboard, 5 mouse buttons, nice wireless antenna, webcam, 4 gig memory, 2.5 or something dual core intellamajig thingey. I specd out a Macbook Pro with similar capabilities @ 2600. I paid 1400. Tough decision...