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 Tuesday, December 03, 2002
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So why has Geodog started blogging again?
Given all those good reasons for stopping blogging, why am I starting up again?
I like being part of a community that includes people like Cory, Joe, Josh, Jeremy, Phil R, Phil W, Robert, Scott, and Tapped. I have the eerie experience every time I read A Work In Progress of finding my twin in cyberspace. It is very unusual to find somebody with the exact same sensibilities as yourself, and it is even stranger to find them in cyberspace. I like being part of the this community, and to be frank I was flattered by some of the "What happened to your blog I miss it" fan mail that I have received.
Blogging is a way for me to keep in touch with what is happening with technology. When I write, I read more and learn more, and isn't learning what it is all apart?
I almost got my dream job because I was reading someone else's blog (more later).
I like to write, and I'd like to learn how to do a better, faster job of writing. Practicing is the best way that I know to do that.
Finally, I find that I usually spend at least an hour every night reading stuff on the net, and I am constantly sending email to friends, relatives and colleagues with fun, scary and serious stuff that I find. Why not blog it?
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| Sunday, December 01, 2002
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What happened to Geodog?
First of all, thank you everybody for the nice emails inquiring if I was OK, and inquiring as to what was going on. I was surprised and touched that so many people who I only knew online were concerned enough to write, and I apologize for not writing back to everybody. Thanks for your concern and support.
I took a break from blogging at the end of the summer, and said that I would be back after Labor Day, fully intending to do so, but I haven't publicly blogged a word since. So what happened? A bunch of stuff all at the same time. The first thing that happened is that I got really busy. With the start of school for my child and his mother the teacher, I had a lot more responsibility for taking care of our child, and I couldn't stay up late at night blogging without paying (or unfairly making my kid pay) a much bigger price. Also, I decided that it was time to get very serious about job hunting, and to put the hours into contacting old colleagues, scanning job listings and crafting individual cover letters and sending in resumes. I just didn't see where the time to blog would come from, other than sleep, which usually makes me grumpy.
One day I did I fire up Userland's Radio to use the RSS reader, but then it crashed and screwed up my data yet again. That, plus reading yet another attack on someone by Dave Winer, was the last straw for me and Radio. At that point I decided that I had finally had it with Radio's crashes and its megalomaniacal developer, and that I would switch over to Movable Type, where I have had a very stable and pleasant family blog for months. But doing so was a half day project that I never found the time to do.
Another thing that happened was that somebody whose opinion means a lot to me saw my blog for the first time, and reacted negatively and harshly, asking me why I was spending so much time documenting the opinions and the reporting of others, instead of trying to a make a difference myself. I responded defensively, but after thinking it over a bit decided that he had a bit of a point, and resolved to spend more time trying to actually effect change, and less time reporting on the idiocies of the Bush administration. To that end I spent lots of time before the recent election writing congress critters, contacting people I know personally to convince them to do the same, and encouraging people to vote for the right people in the 2002 elections. The end result? Disappointing, to say the least.
It is funny -- something in my upbringing as the son of a player in the political arena convinced me that political action is the way to effect positive change, and that being very well informed is crucial to being able to effect change. However, I've come to the conclusion that the evidence doesn't support this belief, or at most that it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. I've found that knowing all the idiotic, selfish and scary things that are going on doesn't make me happier or more effective -- it just creates a sense of powerlessness. So I have been trying to avoid wallowing in the news, and avoiding blogging.
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| Friday, August 16, 2002
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| Thursday, August 15, 2002
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Scooped by Tapped
I had the experience tonight of spending about an hour writing up my thoughts about Judge Doumar and the Hamdi case, because I feel strongly about it. Then I start my nightly troll through news sources, and what's the first thing I run accross? A write-up on the same subject, but better written, exceprting even more of the Post article, and calling Doumar a hero, by Tapped. Today's issue of Tapped is really good.
What does this mean:
- Great minds think alike?
- I should apply for a job with Tapped?
or
- I should just go to bed earlier and leave the journalism to professionals?
Feedback (email is fine) wanted.
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| Friday, August 09, 2002
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Now for an optimist's point of view
While I am a naturally pessimistic person who does see our civil liberties under siege from an administration that loves secrecy and power, I loved this post by Eugene Volokh appraising the state of of civil liberties today, finding them very good, and concluding about how to look at future, "optimism is just more fun." Touché. Recommended. I often don't agree with the man, but his reasoning is good and he can write. A good antidote to a pessimist.
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People are getting creative!
I had one of those fun browsing evenings where I was pointed toward one thing on the web, which lead me to another, which lead me to another and so on. I have concluded that there are some really creative people doing fun political stuff on the net these days. I wonder if it is a function of all the unemployed web designers? In any case, we partisan political junkies are the beneficiaries.
Joe Conanson of Salon pointed to this both funny and pointed advertisement for the Democrats, done by some creative webbie with Flash skills, to the tune of Pink Floyd's Money. If only the Democrats had enough spine to run ads like this.
I decided to look around www.blah3.com and see what else was on the site. There are a fair number of Flash ads, most of them accurate but with a strong message. Then I followed the top link to http://www.stolenelectioncoin.com/, where I found these coins:  
Then back to www.blah3.com where I found this wonderful poster above, cited as being originally "From Barney Gumble on the BartCop Forum".
So off to see what BartCop was, where I  found this TIPS button, as well as a hilarious and terrifying doctored picture of Ashcroft that I wouldn't want to show on a family friendly blog. Then I decided to call it a night, happy with the treasures I found on the net tonight. I hope that you enjoy them too.
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| Tuesday, August 06, 2002
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Radio eating my links again.
Links gone again. Trying double link voodoo. Didn't work. Shut down and restarted Radio. When will I learn - never never edit links outside of Radio.
Well, an hour spent screwing around to no avail. I keep on doing things, editing this post, then reposting. When will I just bite the bullet and make the move to Movable Type. Robert K. Brown has just done so and seems happy with the result.
I can't beleive that I am still screwing with this.
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I want to blog the New Yorker: Not
I just read two fascinating articles in the New Yorker. The first, in the August 5, 2002 issues, is by Malcom Gladwell. It is a look at the work of a researcher, Paul Ekman, who studies how people read other people's faces. It is a great old style New Yorker article -- take an obscure subject and research it and write about it in enough detail to show people how fascinating it really is. Gladwell explains how Ekman has come up with a system, The Facial Action Coding System, that can be used to teach people how to read facial expressions. He profiles a couple of policemen who score in the 99th percentile for ability to read people's faces, and tells how that skill has effected their lives. Aside from an abrupt and unsatisfactory ending, a great article (and I can easily see a book coming out of it). However, you can't find the article on the web. If you want to read it, you'll have to go buy the New Yorker or wait until Gladwell puts it up on his personal site, www.gladwell.com For now, the best you can do online is go Paul Ekman's personal site and download one of his academic papers.
The second article was from the July 29, 2002 issue. It was an article by Jerome Groopman on the current medical fad for prescribing testosterone, and it revealed how much of the fad has to do with marketing and subsidized research and promotion by Unimed, a division of Belgian conglomerate Solvay, makers of AndroGel. It also exposed how unreliable current tests for testosterone levels are, and how little research has been done on the effect of testosterone replacement therapy on prostate cancer, and how possible it is that in the long term testosterone replacement therapy will lead to an epidemic of prostate cancer. A very interesting article that should be part of the current debate over hormone replacement therapy. Is it up on the New Yorker's web site? No, nor could I find it anywhere online. Presumably, it will eventually find its way onto Groopman's personal/book site, www.jeromegroopman.com, but right now I couldn't find it online anywhere.
While I understand the New Yorker's reluctance to provide content for free, and it has yet to be shown that there is a viable business model for making profits from putting content online for general readers, I think that the New Yorker and its authors are missing a real chance to start and be part of a conversation. So much of the conversation about ideas today starts online and continues online. If I can't blog it, if I can't link to it, how likely am I to talk about it online? I don't want to read a 10-15 page article online, but if you aren't online, if people can't link to your content, your ideas don't get passed around, discussed and debated, and spread. And that's a shame.
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| Monday, August 05, 2002
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| Friday, August 02, 2002
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The state of the Bay Area economy
Articles like Silicon Valley mood worsens seem designed to depress job hunters, especially with quotes like"For the grizzled, experienced CEOs in Silicon Valley who have seen every downturn, this is by far the deepest. Time will tell if this is the longest" and "the job market resembles one with 12 or even 15 percent unemployment. He's seen laid-off engineers applying for jobs that pay $8 an hour, and people in their 40s competing with teen-agers for entry-level positions".
The Economist has a more balanced article, Still Fizzy, with different conclusions. The bust is real, as are the Bay Area's three biggest problems: astronomical housing prices, mediocre to terrible public schools, and traffic. However, the Bay Area still "has an unusual number of America's most productive industries; it also has many of the better companies within those industries; and it boasts the best-educated workforce in the country...it would be hard to describe the Bay Area's mood as disconsolate. Most people seem to realise that the dotcom extravaganza was not going to last."
I find the Economist's article truer to my own experieince. It can be pretty depressing if you are looking for work now. Anecdotal stories abound of hundreds or even thousands of resumes sent in reponse to job ads. One person told me "I heard that nobody will post jobs on Craig's List any more because when people post jobs, their servers go down from the load of email that they get in response." (Not true, although there certainly are a lot less jobs posted on Craig's List than there used to be.) I always thought that the dotcom boom was too good to be true, I just didn't realize how far the economy had to fall.
I find that I need to remind myself that some companies are still hiring, startups are still forming, and that there is always a demand for people who are good at what they do, and I'm very good. The company that needs my services is out there, I just have to find it or create it.
In the meantime, I am having a blast being a father, learning by teaching myself Perl and PHP, and amusing myself acting as an amateur journalist here at www.geodog.us. I am putting some of the energy I would normally put into working into weblogging. It's fun and blows off steam. I always wanted to write -- now I don't have to worry that it doesn't pay much :-) And the Bay Area is still a great place to live, except for the fog.
Thanks (I think) to Scott Loftesness for the links.
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| Thursday, August 01, 2002
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Added the Blog Hot or Not link
And feel like an idiot for having done so. What the heck, if I get good ratings I'll keep it on, if I get bad ones I'll dump it. I'd be much more interested in getting comments on the postings than a numerical rating.
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Revised template
I changed the template around a little bit to get something not as Radio specific. The blog doesn't look as designed any more (I am not a designer), but it also doesn't look like a billboard for Userland and Radio. Any and all feedback welcome -- I have only seen it on IE 5, 5.5 and Mozilla 1.0.
I have to say (cross my fingers), Radio didn't barf on me once. Yeah!
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| Tuesday, July 30, 2002
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Number 1 Tim Bishop in Google!
I was browsing John Hiler's article on google bombing when it occurred to me to put my name in Google and see what came up. To my great surprise, my lame personal and family website, TheBishop.net, came up on the top. I've had that site for a couple of years, mostly so that I could play around with HTML, Linux, Perl, etc, and so that I could share pictures with family members. As far as I know, it has never shown up on Google before. I wonder what it is that jumped it temporarily to the top of the Tim Bishop heap? Blogging on this blog? I assume that top ranking will quickly head over to my namesake who is running for Congress, but I will enjoy my 10 minutes of minifame while it lasts. What a hoot.
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A fitting commentary on the blog wars
As a newcomer to the blogging community, I've been amazed at the little wars that rage through the community. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since I saw the same thing on usenet and the WELL. Still, I find it disappointing.
Today I found what seemed like a fitting commentary on the wars, funny as hell as well. A picture is worth ... 
And if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is flash movie worth?
This site, http://emptybottle.org/ is really funny. The guy, whoever he is, has lots of goodies. Recommended.
Tip o the hat to the Winerlog for the link.
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© Copyright 2002 Tim Bishop aka Geodog.
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