In case it got lost in the discussion about politics in the last post, I finished the book.
Rah.
Category: Burningbird
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Draft if finished, world didn’t end
In between covering our windows with plastic and applying duct tape around any cracks and crevices, I finally finished the first draft of Practical RDF tonight. I need to do some clean up and re-numbering and then will repost the chapters one more time for one final review. In a few weeks, if we survive imminent biological and chemical devastation, and if O’Reilly’s publication process isn’t co-opted for the upcoming non-UN sanctioned war against Iraq, the book will finally head towards the printers. Lots of work to get to this point.
Despite the long hours this week on the book, I still managed to keep up with the duct tape defense. I’ll have you know I treat the Homeland Security recommendations as seriously as I treat the Department of Homeland Security.
After all, terrorists took down the Twin Towers with box cutters; why can’t we defend ourselves against weapons of mass destruction with duct tape?
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Passing Notes
Two of my favorite people are having a hard time getting each other’s emails, so I offered to act as a go-between until the email problem was resolved. As I wrote them this morning, this reminded me of an incident that occurred when I was in the 9th grade.
I sat between one of the school’s most popular boys and a very pretty girl in math class. While my wonderful Russian teacher was at the board writing out his esoteric messages, I was enlisted as a conduit in an entirely different message communication process, i.e. I was elicited to pass notes between the two.
When the popular boy first gave me a note and I looked at him in pure astonishment he hastened to add that the note wasn’t for me. Of course not. I was a tall, skinny girl with long frizzy red/brown hair, granny glasses ala John Lennon, and wearing Nehru jackets. This is not the picture of a girl who gets passed notes in math class in school.
I wasn’t offended that the note wasn’t for me. If it had been, it would have shaken my world and caused me too much confusion about my understanding of the roles each of us played. When the situation was clarified, far from being offended, I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to rise to such unexpected behavior and gratified to help out in this endeavor. Though the two were popular and pretty, they were also very nice people—being pretty not being counter to being nice contrary to popularly held views.
However, in the next year when variously assorted curves all of sudden started appearing, and I discovered the shag haircut, make-up, as well as purple-red short, short velvet hot pants and see-through lemon yellow gauzy blouses, I was ready to fit into a new role. But by that time, high school was a dead bore, and I had moved on.
All of which I remembered this morning when I offered to help my friends get emails to and from each other.
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Curves and Blogs
Clay Shirky has updated his article to incorporate new data. He pointed to a new list over at Technorati created in response to his article:
I’m on the list. But then, I’m also on Technorati’s Top 100 as well as Technorati’s 100 Interesting Recent blogs.
What can I say, I’m a Technorati Blog Magnet.
Clay and I are continuing our chat in the comments attached to the previous post. However, in looking at the new power law distribution graph, and looking at the data that generated the graph, I found that it would be quite simple to get rid of the curve: Dave, Cory, shut up. You’re skewing the curve.
Sam Ruby wrote about the best summary of this whole thing:
Here’s the way I look at it. I’m listed in the Technorati top 100. By looking at the statistics there, 98.93% of the weblogs it tracks do NOT link to mine. 99.90% of the weblogs tracked have less inbound links than me.
I see no mountains here, only molehills.
Squeak.
Archived with comments at Wayback Machine
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Load of hooie isn’t in the guidebook
I’m sorry, I used a term like “a load of hooie” in my last posting rather than using some more learned discussion. I didn’t treat Clay’s article with the serious reverence due to it, and didn’t use enough words from the “How to impress people when you write” guidebook, here next to my computer.
I’ll make sure to use words of more than one syllable next time I write, so that I don’t insult my readers.
So I guess I’ll link to other more learned colleagues:
Alex Halavais Power Less
Mark Pilgrim Power Laws and Priorities
Jonathon Delacour’s Stuck(?) in the middle again
I had missed the posting Stavros did on this.
And Phil, who started all of this.
update
I gather this posting came off as somewhat defensive or perhaps even petulant. I’m sorry. I’ve let you all down.
Seriously, this wasn’t meant to be petulant. I was joking. But then after I posted it, I found I wasn’t joking. Hard to explain. However, no one’s comments, which are excellent and generous as always, were responsible for this posting. I wanted to make that assurance. And Mark’s, Jonathon’s, and Alex’s postings are good, which is why I linked to them.
And Phil: Zoe’s curled up in my lap right at the moment, and sends you purrs.
Archived with comments at the Wayback Machine