Three Years

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Today marks my three-year anniversary of weblogging. Technically, I’ve actually been at this for a bit longer than that — since sometime in 1998 or 1999 — but at that point I was just updating a static HTML page by hand, and much to my dismay, I lost my archives of those pages some time ago. So, for all practical purposes, I’m just dating back to my first archived post, from Nov. 25 2000.

I’ve been slowly working on moving all of my old archives over into my TypePad account for the past couple months, with a goal of having them all online by today. Thankfully, that happened, and I now have all three years of archives — 1,949 individual posts (an average of 1.78 posts per day) — online and available for perusing.

As I’ve worked my way through them all, I’ve highlighted a few at the top of my archives page as “Greatest Hits”. These aren’t necessarily the most-visited posts on the site. Rather, they’re posts that I find notable or especially worth visiting for one reason or another. Here’s a rundown of what I consider the highlights of the past three years:

1/9/2001: Words of Wisdom
One of the few pieces of forwarded e-mail that I’ve ever liked enough not just to keep, but to post. Just a good list of advice and observations worth keeping in mind.
1/17/2001: Things to remember while e-mailing
Another forward that I found worth saving. A good list of things that everyone should keep solidly in mind before passing on the latest virus warning, plea for help, or urban legend that lands in their e-mail inbox.
4/20/2001: About my tattoo
Some fairly bad pictures of me, but decent pictures of my tattoo. I’ve never been much of one for body modification — no piercings, and this is my only tattoo — but after finding the design years ago and giving it roughly five years of consideration, I decided that I’d found something worth permanently adding to my body.
5/24/2001: Mars needs a facelift!
Pure, unadulterated silliness. After finding some new pictures of the famous “face” on Mars, I decided to go all-out and see how well I could do at coming across as a flaming loony conspiracy theory nut. Apparently I did fairly well, as when I originally posted this on another discussion board, a few people commented that until the end of the post when I admitted that I was just fooling around, they actually believed that I was frightfully serious about what I was writing. There’s not much higher praise than that.
2/28/2002: Where were you?
A list of important historical dates, and my recollections of where I was when they happened and how they affected me. Some dates weren’t overly clearly remembered, most of the ones that really stuck with me range from the Challenger explosion to the Sept. 11 attacks.
3/2/2002: Hippies on Mars!
Another bout of Mars-inspired silliness. A false-color image of the Martian poles that reminded me of tye-dyed clothing patterns inspired this “press release” about Grateful Dead fans traveling across the plains of Mars. As far as I know it’s purely coincidental that I had two Mars-inspired bits of creative writing.
7/20/2002: Best of times, worst of times
Looking back at my experiences with people who went from being friends of mine to being roommates from hell. It’s always an odd time of my past to look back on, as it’s a strong combination of fond memories and things that at times I’d rather be able to forget.
10/28/2002: George
Much as I love cats, my brother’s cat George is the only cat I’ve ever met that I just couldn’t get along with. Completely and utterly psychotic. This is one of George’s more amusing moments in life.
3/2/2003: Sleep — from the painting by Salvadore Dali
A piece I wrote during my junior year of high school, inspired by a Salvadore Dali painting. As can be expected from something written around thirteen years ago, there are definitely things that I would do differently were I writing it now, but I’ve always liked what I came up with enough to leave it unaltered since its original inception.
3/3/2003: Just hang up
I’m not a fan of cell phones at all. I’ll only have one if required and paid for by my job, which has only happened once. One of the things that drives me up the wall is how incredibly rude many people can be when it comes to cell phones, and this rant was born from that frustration.
5/6/2003: Cynicism reigns supreme\
5/8/2003: Darwin has left the building
A pair of posts exploring one of my more cynical beliefs — that the human race is essentially throwing evolution out the window and breeding itself into oblivion. Some very interesting discussion arose out of these posts.
5/29/2003: Glitch
So far, my first foray into ‘fanfic’. Initially inspired by a dream I had after watching “Matrix: Reloaded”, it explores what might happen if someone accidentally tapped into a debugging routine in the Matrix without really realizing what was going on.
6/1/2003: Newly Digital (Back in the Day Redux)
My contribution to Adam Kalsey’s ‘Newly Digital’ project, looking back on my early experiences with computers, technology, and the internet, and some of the wierd and wonderful things I’ve seen over the years since these glowing screens first caught my attention.
7/9/2003: The Purity Test
I first discovered the Purity Tests on a BBS while I was in High School, and have always found them to be quite entertaining. Download the test (100, 500, 1000, and 2000 question versions) and find out just how morally, ethically, and sexually pure you are.
7/31/2003: Blogstop
Wordgame fun. Construct a post from the letters of the last word in the immediately preceeding post. It’s easier just to take a look and figure it out as you go.
10/29/2003: Fifteen Minutes of Fame
I look back on the first day or two of notoriety after news of my brush with Microsoft exploded across the ‘net.

I’m sure there are more goodies buried in my archives that are also worth dredging up from time to time. Some may be of more interest than these, most will be of less. These are just the ones that I find to be most worthy of calling attention to. If you’ve read any of them before, feel free to either just move along or take another look. If any of these are new to you, I just hope you like what you find.

Here’s hoping I’ve got another three years of this — or more — left in me.

Fasten your seatbelts!

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Quake shockwave (1.1Mb animated .gif)If you live in the Seattle/Portland/Pacific Northwest — or Japan — you might want to think about moving. At least, think about it if you have plans to be in the area in about 200 years. ;)

Geologists have discovered evidence of a massively powerful earthquake zone beneath the Pacific Northwest just offshore from the Seattle area.

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They made the discovery by piecing together ancient accounts of a giant Japanese tsunami and a computer simulation of a huge trembler in the 17th century.

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Thought to be inactive, the earthquake zone runs 600 miles up the Pacific Coast from Northern California to southern British Columbia. It appears to be subject to monster quakes every 500 years.

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[…]

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In Japan, Satake created a detailed computer model showing how the tsunami crossed the Pacific before crashing into Japan.

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Atwood said the geological record indicates the fault ruptures about once every 500 years and is capable of unleashing “truly giant earthquakes.”

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He said only three quakes this century compare in magnitude — a 9.0 quake in Kamchatka in 1952, a 9.5 quake in Chile in 1960 and a 9.2 trembler in Alaska in 1964.

Well, okay, so maybe there’s not great reason to panic just yet. Alaskans have been expecting a repeat of the ’64 quake “real soon now” for years without it happening, and this one isn’t due for another two centuries. Still, it’s nice to be able to plan ahead sometimes, isn’t it?

FBI monitoring antiwar protests

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.

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Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University who has written about F.B.I. history, said collecting intelligence at demonstrations is probably legal.

But he added: “As a matter of principle, it has a very serious chilling effect on peaceful demonstration. If you go around telling people, `We’re going to ferret out information on demonstrations,’ that deters people. People don’t want their names and pictures in F.B.I. files.”

The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass and discredit Hoover’s political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro, led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities.

Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event “open to the public.”

Kind of makes me wonder what might be in my file….

(via Jon)

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Special Extended Edition)

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One of the many reasons I didn’t post much last week (along with training for my new job, which had my schedule bouncing all over the place — when you’re used to getting up between 9:30 and 10:00 am every day, 6:30am is really early) was that I picked up the newly-released Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Special Extended DVD Edition).

First off, and most simply, if you’re a fan of the series, there’s no question about it. This is a must-buy DVD (as is, incidentally, the extended edition of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring). Feel free to stop reading this and just go buy it.

I haven’t even gotten into any of the special features (and there are a ton to get through) yet. All I’ve done so far is watch the new cut of the film itself, and the new cut is incredible. Around 40 minutes has been added to the movie, bringing the total run time up to a whopping 223 minutes — almost four full hours. Lest this sound like overkill, rest assured that the pacing of the movie doesn’t suffer in any way, and it only helps expand and enhance the full story. The insertions are scattered throughout the film, from quick cuts here and there that expand already-existing scenes, to entire sequences that had to be cut from the theatrical version. Every major character (and most of the minor characters) have additional bits added which do wonders for fleshing all of them out. What may be the two biggest additions (for me, at least) were a flashback sequence between Boromir, Faramir and their father Denethor which helps to flesh out their backstory (and explain why Faramir doesn’t come across as “perfect” in the films as he does in the books); and in a nod to the excising of Tom Bombadil from LotR:TFotR, the inclusion of Old Man Willow!

As was the case with LotR:TFotR, the extended edition of LotR:TTT is a far superior film (not that the theatrical release was bad at all — this version is just better). Much as I understand why they couldn’t release movies of this length to the theaters, it’s really a pity. I’m just glad that there will be limited releases of the extended versions of LotR:TFotR and LotR:TTT at the Seattle Cinerama just before LotR:TRotK is released (and that I’ve already got my tickets)!

For those of you that already have the set:

  1. Pop in Disc 1 (part one of the movie).
  2. Go to the last page of the Scene Selections.
  3. Go down to the last scene on Disc 1 (“Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”).
  4. Press down once more, to highlight a hidden Ring.
  5. Press play.

Gollum on MTV

The biggest cause of failure is success

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Mike is doing some brainstorming on how to predict and cope with bandwidth spikes when a post or page suddenly becomes a popular destination.

When a blogger’s work becomes successful enough to, for a moment, graze the underbelly of commercial publishing, it threatens the very low-cost predicate of the publication itself.

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Setting aside for the moment the absurdity of the situation, which is clear, it seems to me that over the past few years we’ve seen this exact phenomenon occur over and over again. I’m guessing, now that media people have integrated the blogosphere into their information gathering practices, we’ll see it with greater frequency and to more devastating effect over time.

My bandwidth as of 11/23/03As I recently discovered, this is a very real worry. I’d joked in the past about the “perfect post”, that one blog entry that suddenly exposes a site to the world and brings in all the traffic that so many people wish that they had — but actually stumbling upon that “perfect post” has made it very clear just how much of a double-edged sword that can really be.

In Mike’s ruminations on how things like this can be coped with, he mentioned something that sounded like a possibility…

…I think there is a proactive business opportunity for the right business to defray these transient bandwidth costs, probably in the form of short term ads on the sites that are experiencing the bolus. […] I will note that it might even be cooler yet if this feature enabled Google keyword ads. Maybe it should be an independent service, or a program that the keyword service provides for bloggers, who are currently more or less specifically discouraged from using it.

I applied for Google AdSense at one point, but they turned me down. While it was a bit of a bummer, it wasn’t much of a surprise, as Google doesn’t seem to want to accept most weblogs into their AdSense program. It seems that if you run a very tightly-focused weblog on a specific topic (such as PVR Blog or Daring Fireball) you’ve got a good chance of being accepted, but less-focused weblogs (such as mine, yours, the one you’re going to read next, or the other 99% of the blogosphere) will be denied. Unfortunately, the exact methodology or reasoning behind the approval/denial process is more than a little unclear.

There’s a far more serious problem with AdSense, though. The approval system is capricious, even arbitrary. It’s understandable that Google wants to make sure sites aren’t just ad farms, and it’s in everyone’s interest that quality be maintained, ideally by human verifiers. Nobody wants to see those sad Red Cross PSAs that take the place of house ads on poorly-indexed sites.

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The human verification process at Google, though, is uncharacteristically opaque. I’d assume they factor in the ads which would run on a site before approving or denying an application, and if I take a look at , I see some of value. Ads specifically targeted to weblog software, Manhattan computer repair, New York hotels. These all seem relevant and valuable to me, but I’ve been repeatedly rejected.

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It’s not just sour grapes on my part. Take NYC Eats, a great little niche weblog. Aaron’s brilliant little AdSense senser shows , which makes sense since the letters “NYC” by themselves cost two dollars a click. But no AdSense approval there. The problem is the wording in theprogram policies:

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In general, we do not accept personal pages, chat sites, or blogs into the AdSense program. However, if a site contains targeted, text-based content and/or provides a product or service, we may consider it for participation.

In a perfect world (well, my perfect world, that is), of course, Google would open up their AdSense program to the weblogging world at large. While their AdSense ads might be a little random on the main page of a site due to the random nature of the main page posts not giving clear, concise keywords to work with, if a site design includes individual archive pages than each individual post should have enough keywords to target a specific ad category (my Mac-specific posts would get Mac-centric ads, my political posts would get political-centric ads, and so on).

If they don’t want to do that, though, what if Google set up an agreement with TypePad (or other for-pay hosting sites) in which, in order to offset the cost of bandwidth spikes, Google AdSense ads could be (semi-)automatically added to a site when they reached a certain bandwidth point (90% of their available monthly bandwidth per their agreement, for example)? Each auto-generated template could include code something along the lines of <$MTAdSense><!-- include "/ads/google/adsense.inc" --><$/MTAdSense$> that would be automatically triggered by the TypePad servers when bandwidth exceeded whatever the cutoff point was. Any revenue generated by clicks on the ads would automatically be siphoned to TypePad and applied to offset the costs of the extra bandwidth usage during the spike.

There could even be a toggle in the TypePad preferences that allowed a site author to insert a “registration key” if they were accepted by the Google AdSense program that would enable the AdSense ads on a full-time basis. In this case, Google would send any revenue to the site author as per their usual setup, instead of sending it to TypePad.

Just an idea. Workable? I haven’t got a clue — barriers include the coding of the feature (while I’m no program-level coder, it doesn’t strike me as being too terribly difficult of a feature to enable), inclusion of the feature into already-existing weblogs (not difficult for TypePad Basic, Plus, or Pro levels using the auto-generated templates, Pro levels using advanced templates would need to add the requisite code themselves), and — most importantly (and possibly most difficult) — Google and TypePad (or, of course, whatever other hosting service that might be interested) negotiating the partnership. Still, if it could be worked out, I think it could be useful and beneficial to the blogging community at large.

Just when things were starting to settle down

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Earlier this week, I started noticing something odd. It had finally been long enough since my fifteen minutes of fame that traffic was starting to come back down to a more normal level. Oddly, though, for the past few days I’d been getting a lot of hits from the article in the Seattle P-I about my situation. Obviously, it had been linked somewhere with a decent amount of traffic — but where?

Today, the mystery was solved, thanks to an e-mail from Mike: It turns out that Blogger has posted a new tech support article entitled “How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog” which links to the Seattle P-I article.

Do you blog at work? Do you check your referrer logs and surf the blogosphere all day from your office? Do you think it might be funny to mock your co-workers publicly, or that it could be a good idea to post photos of sensitive corporate information on your blog? If only Blogger Support could have reached this unfortunate Blogger sooner. Folks, this doesn’t have to happen to you.

These days, many companies are blog-friendly because they recognize a valuable tool for communication and the sharing of ideas when they see it. However, as with any public medium, care should be exercised from time to time. Here at Blogger, we want you to keep your job and as always, ending your blog should be a last resort reserved only for woeful situations. Fret not gentle blogger, we’ve put together this document to help you keep those paychecks rolling in.

So, apparently I’ve been immortalized by Blogger’s tech support crew, which is resulting in a fair amount of traffic moving from Blogger to the Seattle P-I, and then from their article back to me. Well, hey, any traffic is good traffic, right? ;)

Additionally, I got this in my e-mail today:

From: sinta
Subject: Your blog on CNN
Date: November 22, 2003 11:53:20 PST
To: Michael Hanscom

Hiya Michael

Just want to point out to you that your blog was shown on CNN Global Business just today at 7:30 Swiss time :) It just finished a few minutes ago. They talked about that Microsoft incident you had a while back :)

Just thought you’d like to know ^_^

Bestest regards from Switzerland,
Sinta~

http://www.lockload.com
The one and only He Says, She says double blog.

Apparently, my story is (for the moment) the Energizer Bunny of blogging stories — it just keeps going, and going, and going, and going…

Update: Many thanks to Sudheer from in Beijing for sending me a link to the online version of the CNN piece: The Budding Blogs of Business! Here’s the relevant bit:

Microsoft has taken a benevolent attitude to blogging. But it balked when an employee revealed on his blog how the company had taken delivery of a shipment of Apple computers. He was quickly relieved of his duties.

Miss Digital World

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Miss Digital World

Here’s a fun idea for a new-millennium beauty contest: Miss Digital World, a beauty contest complete with virtual contestants!

“Miss Digital World” is the first beauty contest reserved for the likes of video game heroine Lara Croft, computer-cloned actresses from the “Matrix” films and new beauties tweaked to perfection with 3D graphics.

Digital artists, advertising agencies and video game programmers from around the world have been asked to send a computer design of their perfect woman to www.missdigitalworld.com, complete with date of birth and body measurements.

I think my favorite part from the CNN article is the tidbit about ethical considerations…

“They should not have taken part — not even as extras or cameos — in pornographic films, shows or plays nor have made statements…in any way out of tune with the moral spirit of the competition,” organizers said.

(via Prairie)

Human Stupidity

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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, by Carlo M. Cipolla:

  1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
  2. The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
  3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
  4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
  5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
    • Corrolary: A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

(via Jerry Kindall)

Back from the Meetup

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Just got back a bit ago from this month’s Seattle weblogger Meetup. Saw and chatted with quite a few people there (most of whom I have to admit I can’t remember names/sites of), including Anita, Scoble, and dayment, who was kind enough to give me a couple CDs (Tones on Tail’s “Night Music” and The Faint’s “Danse Macabre”)! All in all, a quite pleasant evening.