One of my friends and favorite writers, Hollis Baker, blogs over at Blogger’s Blogspot. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way his site content was flagged as offensive, which makes no sense at all as his writing is strictly apple pie. In fact, he publishes many of the same stories in his hometown newspaper. I’m sure this mistake is fixable, however we decided to move his blog to his own domain, www.hollisbaker.com to avoid any future issues. So, we set it up in WordPress, imported the entries from Blogger, and now he’s good to go. I look forward to more enjoyable reading. Check it out for yourself by reading one of his best entries.
30
Jul 08
Shallow versus deep
Despite my desire at times to be otherwise, I am a shallow thinker – in the sense that my normal thought pattern is more lateral and connective than deep and focused. There are few things that I know deeply, but many things I understand superficially.
I hate not knowing something and yet feel satisfied once I have understood something sufficiently well to connect it to everything else I have stored away. Like most things, it is probably best to have a foot in both camps: the ability to process large amounts of information while capable of ‘going deep’ to focus when necessary.
In my experience, most people are in one camp or another. Yet, which mode is the most ideal?
A few things I have noticed:
- Shallow thinkers tend to be more social relative to their deep thinking peers. Many deep thinkers are even frustratingly asocial.
- Deep thinkers are rare whereas the world seems to abound in shallow thinkers.
- Both shallow thinkers and deep thinkers get something from the presence of the other. There is a certain excitable state that emerges when capable shallow and deep thinkers get together.
- Shallow thinkers seem more practical and action-oriented, while deep thinkers seem drawn more to the theoretical, or at the very least, they seem more content with the thinking versus the doing.
Which type of thinking are you most comfortable with?
I started thinking about this after viewing my Google Reader Trends:
From your 203 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 8,077 items, starred 491 items, shared 1 items, and emailed 45 items.
I am also reminded of the (humbling) description of the socionics type, the ENTP at Psychological Types uncovered from the Socionics people:
ENTps are very curious and process a lot of information, similar to a gold digger washing out the soil looking for gold. And ENTps know where the “gold” is. They are often well aware of some new and unusual discoveries. Such information is usually available to everyone who is interested enough to look for it, but not many people are that bothered. ENTps ideas are often based on these discoveries and for someone who didn’t know that these findings are already in existence, ENTps ideas may look very radical and original.
29
Jul 08
How to royally screw up your Google PageRank
A week or two ago, I fiddled around a bit with the inner workings of this blog, as I do from time to time. In trying to improve the search-engine-friendliness of the site, I made a few changes to the permalink structure in WordPress, but after a couple minutes I changed it back and forgot all about it.
Turns out Google had a big PageRank refresh over the weekend and I went from PageRank 4 down to PageRank 3. In trying to find an explanation for the drop, I realized that a large part of the site content was unreachable and generating 404 Not Found errors. Between upgrading WordPress and messing with the permalinks, the URL rewriting got hosed, which made nearly every post unreachable.
After much lamentation and gnashing of teeth, I did some research and found a nice solution in the form of the WordPress Permalink Redirect Plugin, which would resolve the issue and also help redirect some even older broken permalinks.
Now, all I need to do is keep blogging every day until I get back into Google’s good graces.
28
Jul 08
No vision: A missed opportunity with Flickr
As someone who occasionally needs to find stock photography for various design projects (stock photography is like design shake and bake), I’ve used several services ranging from free to painfully expensive (Getty Images). For some Getty Images photos, you might pay a few hundred bucks to borrow a high resolution print-ready image. Considering they might pay the photographer a couple bills and then get to resell the images as many times as they can at no additional cost, I imagine it’s a pretty high-margin business at the top end.
Unsurprisingly, as low-cost microstock photo providers like iStockPhotos.com and Stock.XCHNG have emerged onto the scene, in true reflection of the actual costs involved, they’ve been quickly snapped up by larger companies like Getty Images and Jupiter Media. As soon as iStockPhotos.com was acquired, the prices went up dramatically. With most of these microstock sites, the initial service is attractively priced and contributors are compensated adequately, then as they scale, prices increase and payouts decrease, as one would expect.
11
Jul 08
Free Wall Street Journal: Part Deux
In the previous entry, I explained how you could read full articles at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) by tricking wsj.com into thinking you originated from Google News. Basically, any WSJ traffic from Google News is allowed to view the full article.
My previous solution was awkward kludge, but it got the job done. Of course, I should have known there was an easier way to do it. The problem is two-fold: the Journal site checks the referer and the URL parameter. So, if you can change the referer and rewrite the URL’s to include the URL parameter, the entire site will be in subscription mode.
Step 1: Change the referer to appear as if traffic is originating from Google News. This is easy with the RefControl extension for Firefox. Just install the extension and set the referer for any traffic to “http://online.wsj.com” as coming from “http://www.google.com/news”. See screenshot below.
Step 2: Rewrite all URL’s on the WSJ site so that they include the Google News parameter. In other words, take all links on the site and add “?mod=googlenews_wsj” to the end. With the referer set manually and the modification in place, you should be able to view the full articles. So, how do you rewrite the URL’s on the WSJ site? I recommend creating a Greasemonkey script to do this, which should be pretty simple. When I get some more time I might do it and upload to my defunct userscripts library.
18
Jun 08
How to view full WSJ articles for free
The Wall Street Journal is a pretty good resource for business news. I say “pretty good” because it has an annoying pay wall and it’s now owned by Rupert Murdoch, who I find tacky (Fox News, regardless of its politics, is lowest common denominator viewing). I do have to wonder about the profit margins on newspaper advertising if a business like the WSJ can’t reliably make enough money selling advertising on its own site that is relies on a subscription model. Maybe this is just a testament to the success of its subscription model?
17
Jun 08
Radical minimalism is modern asceticism
Apropos of my last post, I came across two very relevant pieces. One on the success of paper as an interface (we forget that paper is a successful technical achievement) and one in Time on radical minimalism.
This flight from materialism seems to be part of the national zeitgeist. Many of us are overwhelmed by modern life in all its complexity and ambiguity. At a certain level, has modern life become opposed to our basic nature? Partly due to temperament, I look back and wonder if we lived better lives a few generations ago when the tendency was to stay near family and to live simply with more humble expectations for what life had to offer. Aside from advances in prosperity and medicine, have we improved the quality of our lives?
14
Jun 08
Free books for the Kindle
A while back I broke down and bought the Amazon Kindle, which I love. I have been waiting for a perfect ebook reader since I would like to get rid of any material possessions that are not necessary. Let’s face it, books are pretty useless unless you’re actively reading them. Books are an inefficient medium in that they are heavy and take up a lot of space.
One of my goals is to reduce my material possessions to the absolute minimum. Like many people I no longer own CD’s for music (having sold them several years ago), but I have also been scanning in all paper records and photos and have sold a lot of furniture and junk on Craigslist. I would eventually like to get to the point where my possessions consist of: a car, some clothing, computing tools, and a few personal effects.
01
Jun 08
Out of the live oaks at twilight
In the past I have speculated on other animals that have adapted to the human environment. Here in the Hill Country north of San Antonio, deer should be included in that group. In the absence of wolves and mountain lions, they have no natural predators and, unlike in rural areas, people will not hunt them near homes.
Deer are perfectly suited to the wooded, exurban enclaves where they can melt away into the shade of nearby live oak groves. They breed in prodigious numbers and are the subject of countless vehicle collisions. With their crepuscular lifestyle and effective dull camouflage, they live beneath our notice. Unless they eat up your flower beds or run into the road in front of you, you have little reason to notice them, which is odd given their ubiquity. Around here they keep the buzzards busy and fat. Buzzards are another animal that do well near humans. They clear up roadkill and tend to keep their distance. Although, when I was down on Broadway Avenue a few weeks ago I saw a pair of Black Vultures roosting in the courtyard of Sterling Bank, so they can be a nuisance.
The deer around here come up to the house in the evenings to see if we will throw out any corn, which we do on occasion. They are both tentative and bold. I have noticed something interesting. With respect to getting a handful of corn, does are more bold than bucks. The does and fawns will come close, but the bucks always stay farther out and sniff the air, interested but dubious. What accounts for this difference in behavior? Territorial-ness? Aggressiveness? In humans, do we find something similar?