I’m in the midst of the most almighty spam flood at the moment – we’re talking tens of pieces a minute. I’m shutting comments off on the posts that seem to be attracting the most attention and watching my moderation and Akismet queues like a hawk. There’s not really much else I can do. I’m trying to make sure legitimate comments don’t get caught up, but if you post and your comment doesn’t appear, let me know (use the contact form) and I’ll see what I can do. Apologies also for anything unsavoury that slips through – Bright Meadow seems to be attracting some of the obscurer genres of porn-spam.
With that bit of business out of the way, on with the fun stuff of the Roast. I shall endeavor to make it far and away superior to last weeks lackluster offering 🙂
How would you classify a ‘blog’? This is a question I’m sure most of us have had a stab at answering at one time or another when we’re trying to explain to our parents or loved ones why we obsessively sit at the computer and write stuff for the edification of strangers. My answer is normally something along the lines of “It’s this website where I write about stuff that interests me. And stories I’ve written lately. I get comments from quite a few people. No, it doesn’t make me money but I am making lots of contacts! It will make some great opportunities… It will be good in the long run!” (I’m pretty much lying through my teeth by this point, but I know what appeases the Aged P’s). Basically I try not to even mention the word ‘blog’, because that gets me 1) having to say the word ‘blog’ out loud, 2) looks of blank confusion – I’m making up words now?, and 3) occasional “oh, like a MySpace right?” None of which is good for me.
You’d think however that the great and the good could come up with a better definition. Um, no. Scoble took a stab at it and got himself torn a new one. My own glee at Scoble getting trounced aside, I’d agree with most of what Stowe has to say. The ‘blog’ phenomena has too many variables to be so narrowly defined. When I’m browsing around things I don’t go “this is a blog because it has comments, this isn’t a blog because it doesn’t have RSS…” If I think on it at all I go “this site is primarily personal opinion on X topic, this site isn’t…” The former (to me) is a blog. The later a website. I’m more likely to come back to one that has RSS, or one that has comments, but it’s still a blog without them. By my definition of there needing to be a personal opinion behind it, splogs/mechanical blogs aren’t blogs at all. But enough with this whole defining malarky! I’m bored already. I enjoy reading it/I don’t enjoy reading it. Shouldn’t that be enough?
Apparently ITV is unwatchable. Well I could have told them that! I genuinely cannot remember the last time I voluntarily switched over to ITV to watch some of it’s “original” programming. Occasionally they might have a film on I want to see (very occasionally) but that is it. Not that I watch much TV anyways, but what I do tend to watch is Channel 4 (and it’s digital compadres) and the BBC channels. And Five for House and Grey’s Anatomy. Never ITV.
What is, and isn’t, news? If I knew that I’m sure I’d be the head of the BBC or something. It did surprise me that people were complaining about too much cricket being mentioned on the news. You can bet your bottom dollar the same person wasn’t complaining about football being in the news CONSTANTLY. I don’t like football, I don’t care for news about it, but I am grown up enough to realise there are people out there who do like football, and do want news about it. So, anonymous emailing person, grow up. If you don’t like something, change the channel! Then again, you’ve already been mocked on the BBC blog, so there’s really nothing I can add 😀
For some reason the David Pogue’s blog on the NYT isn’t displaying in Safari today. If anyone else experiences this, let me know. It would be nice to know that it’s not just me. Either way, I fired up Camino to find out what the story was about and had a good giggle as I re-read it. What happens when the tech in your car decides to take a holiday…
Tetris Fridge Magnets. It’s my birthday soon – anyone want to treat me?
A while back I wrote a post on why people need ‘About’ pages. (The link is in the sidebar somewhere). Turns out, it’s not just me who thinks about pages are worth the time.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more broo-ha-ha about this. Perhaps I’m just looking in the wrong places? Either way, Stargate SG1 is finished. Sad news. Even though I don’t watch the show any more – I stopped somewhere around season four/five I think when C4 started messing with the schedule and I moved into a house where an evil house-mate refused to let his TV be ‘corrupted’. I have watched the odd episode since then, but am thoroughly confused – one minute Daniel is alive, the next dead, the next a supreme being, then alive again, then dead, then alive… ARG! Back to the point of what I was trying to say. This fine show is ended. This makes me all 🙁 At the same time, perhaps the DVDs (when all released) will become cheaper. This makes me all 🙂 Every cloud…
Calling all parents out there – ever wondered how to get undying love from your children? Wonder no more.
Tea is apparently a healthier drink than water. Woot and all kinds of joy! I’d always though excessive amounts of tea weren’t good for you – they certainly put a load on your kidneys – but it turns out I was wrong. Tea is good. Yes, the Tea Council did fund the scientist’s work, but he stresses the work is independent and unbiased…
Poor Pluto, no longer a planet. For some reason when I learnt the Solar System in school, I could always remember Pluto. It was Neptune that caused me trouble. Does this mean that kids are going to go back to school in September and have to go through their science text-books with a red marker pen and cross out all reference to Pluto? What about astrologers? No longer will they be able to say shit like “Pluto is in the house of Mercury…” because I am sure a “dwarf planet” has less astrological significance than a real planet.
My favourite people are to dig in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and other royal residences. Nooooooo! I know madness runs in the family, but really, letting Time Team loose on your property is sheer insanity! They wouldn’t know good archaeology if it leapt up and bit them in the bum. Oh god… Well, perhaps they’ll do such a crap job (quite likely) that they’ll all get accused of treason and the program will be pulled off the air. Archaeology will once more be safe.
(In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not a Time Team fan. I have a lovingly crafted rant here if you are interested).
The UN has agreed the text of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Bit of a mouthful, but potentially a very important mouthful. Hell knows how it’s going to implemented, but read more here.
You know a country is getting dangerous when the archaeologists leave.
Traditionally I like to end with a funny. I don’t have a funny-ha-ha this week, but I do have a funny-you-what-now? A prison inmate sues because he fell off his bunk bed. What kind of doofus falls of a bunk bed?! I slept on a cabin bed (a bunk bed with draws underneath instead of another bed) from the age of five to thirteen. I never once fell off. I’ve never once fallen off a standard bed for that matter. What was this inmate DOING to fall out of bed?
Alrighty, I’ll be the beta tester for genuine comments…
I’d say a blog is simply a website where the entire appeal and structure is based on seeing one large piece of quality content every day/week/month/whatever frequency. Basically it’s no different than a newspaper, except that the topic, technique, and size of the post don’t have to obey the normal constraints of what would be considered a publishable newspaper article.
Which brings me to your next question, “what is news?” News is heralded as being a necessary part of a nutritious breakfast; your daily dosage of what is going on with your culture and others that may concern you. But that nobility and quality of content has really taken a backseat in the recent decades (probably moreso in America than anywhere else). You’ve got ratings-mongers running these shows, and instead of REAL news, we get crap-ass sob stories about some schmuck woman and her poor dog, or a recent survey result that says drinking 19 cups of coffee a day is bad for you. These aren’t news… they’re stories that should be reserved for old gossipy ladies sitting in the beauty salon, mostly because the stories affect about 0.00000004% of the people watching the news, but also because the quality of the information is shite.
Blogs are the new news. News is the new gossip. Nicholas Cage is the new Fonzie.
Sorry CWW, you got stuck in the moderation queue because I’ve set it to catch anything with any links now. Akismet’s not catching ANYTHING at the moment – it dealt with the 300 when I logged in this morning, and now I think it’s taking the day off in shock. I’ve installed Spam Karma to see if that is any better, but all the options are confusing me!
Ah well, i’ll just have to keep manually moderating things for now. Evil spammers.
Agree with you on the news CWW. ANother problem with it over here in the States is that almost all of the news stations are run by Liberal biased individuals and they don’t keep that bias out of their news. For example, The decision to flood the news with a drunk Gibson instead of the story about a muslim who walked into a Jewish centre and shot five women while yelling ‘I’m a muslim-american and I hate Isreal!’ And the articles in the newspapers didn’t seem to find it important that he was muslim. Not one of them mentioned it in the headline (Except Washington Post, who later changed their headline, taking the word muslim out of the headline), and most waited until halfway through the article before they just happened to mention the shooter’s race and religion. But anyways…
As far as I’m concerned Pluto is a planet. Pluto’s been a planet for 50+ years and I wonder what makes these astronomers think they can change something that doesn’t really need to be changed? Then again, it’s all just politics, the same with global warming, and any other scientific field has the same problem. Reasons why I stayed away.
Sorry about the Akismet problem, it should be all fixed up now.
That’s ok Matt. It’s the weekend – everyone’s allowed a day down the beach occasionally 😀 It certainly showed me how much I’d come to rely on Akismet. Spam Karma does what it says on the tin, but I do still prefer Akismet – it’s just so much easier to use – so I’m very glad all is happy again.
And welcome to Bright Meadow 🙂
What I want to know is when asked what “you do for fun?”, do you mention blogging?
Depends who I’m talking to. If it’s to people who know/will understand what a blog is (a select few actually) I might say something along the lines of “I blog for fun”. To most people however I go for a variation of “I write for fun. No, I’m not published in the strictest sense, I write for my website…”
As I said to Cas, I only found out today that they were digging up part of Windsor Castle, and I live there… 😮
*goes back to hermit mode*
We’ve still got 3/4 o the alphabet in a tub on the top of the fridge, we don’t have room for magent Tetris!
by the way, they’ve must have moved the page cos the CostCo link is busted.
There is always room for magnet Tetris!
And the CostCo was a good link – this amazing wooden pirate ship/tree house. I would have seriously maimed to have that to play in as a kid.