From the Orient

I seem to have fallen off the weblogging horse and I’m having trouble getting back on. However, with a bizarre “free period” at work (lets see if this lasts until the end of this entry) and no next actions (GTD, I’m waiting for other people on a number of projects), I’ll attempt to kick start the process.

Two linked links. Tom Coates on search engine optimisers and Anil Dash on “Nigritude Ultramarine”:http://www.dashes.com/anil/2004/06/04/nigritude_ultra. I couldn’t muster the energy to write about “Nigritude Ultramarine”:http://www.dashes.com/anil/2004/06/04/nigritude_ultra which was about gaming a game and in the end utterly pointless. However, Tom is the one talking a lot of sense.

bq.:http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2003/06/against_search_engine_optimisers.shtml Search optimisation isn’t really about optimising for a search engine at all. It’s about making good quality, cleanly designed, semantically-constructed sites that people want to read, that people can link to and which people can get the gist of in a few seconds.

And search engine optimisation companies are not really about making a site better, but about making money.

“OneLook Dictionary Search”:http://www.onelook.com/ [via "Ned":http://www.nedbatchelder.com/blog/200311.html#e20031108T123705] is a very useful resource. Particularly interesting is the “Reverse Dictionary”:http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml, but one wonders how Victoria Beckham is better related to Manchester United than David Beckham, and why Fabien Barthez is the first return (Answer, Wikipedia thinks he is the “current goalkeeper”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabien+Barthez ).

Nice to see Altrincham on the list. My gran told me she met Ryan Giggs in Altrincham Marks and Sparks the other day. She also told me this in 1990 when it was more likely to be true. Ryan, scorer of two goals against the “The Dirty, Cheating Scousers”:http://icandy.ohskylab.com/archive/2003_11_01_index.htm#106847201291034200 . And you can buy all the flash cars you like, but Emile Heskey will always fall over in front of goal.

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Anyone who likes Sean Hughes and the Rubberbubbers will know what this says.

It’s only nine hits per week, but “a Polish blogger”:http://cathy-m.blog.pl/ has been stealing my bandwidth, and “the eyes of my cat”:http://www.dellah.com/vent/experimental_images.shtml so they had to go. It’s the principle of the thing. What if she (I’m guessing she) got slash dotted (okay unlikely) but on past results, it would crash angel again. Now she has a broken image on her weblog. She could just copy it and I’d never know.

What links David Beckham and XML? Well, the phrase “deep instead of broad”. The Guardian “points out that Galactico Ball’s talent is deep rather than broad”:http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1032150,00.html and I couldn’t agree more. “George Best summed it up when he said”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/618154.stm :-

bq. “He (Beckham) cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn’t score many goals. Apart from that he’s all right.”

Now, that may be over the top, but is more or less right. He can run all day, and pass the ball to perfection. He can pass it so hard into the net, he scores goals. I think it is exactly what Real Madrid need (unfortunately) and I’m pleased he has started to do well.

John E. Simpson points out “what I should be doing in relation to XML”:http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/08/27/qa.html considering I’ve become a bit out of touch with it in the last year or so.

bq. Select a speciality. Go deep instead of broad.

Aquarionics - Writing - 4 oh 4

Something like Marvin the Randy Paranoid Web Server.

So, why the big furore about “World of Ends”:http://worldofends.com/ as I briefly commented on before?

Admittedly, I commented in the five minute window I had on a busy Friday, and I did rush read it, but my thoughts essentially remain the same. I read it with a “Yeah, good read, I feel good about it all” reaction, and no, it doesn’t make a jot of difference to me one way or the other. File under “nice”, I suppose.

So, why the bad reaction? Those in the know get a so what reaction, those not in the know get a “huh?” reaction? I don’t know. As ever, I think I sit in the middle of everything, not knowing enough to be clever about it, but knowing enough so that it doesn’t pass over my head (this could be my personal manifesto for my life)

I didn’t read it as a manifesto, or a call to arms. I didn’t even see it had it’s own domain. I read it as a weblog entry actually.

And the Internet is simple. If, a knowledgeable user of the Internet, sat down and got a book on how the Internet works, they could learn it. Thing is, it isn’t interesting, it doesn’t help you unless you wanted to learn more complicated stuff. It doesn’t help you learn how the web, or e-mail, or usenet works, you know the complicated stuff that sits on top, So the average user doesn’t have to learn it, and so doesn’t.

I think the essay works as a weblog entry, but fails if it was intended to be a manifesto. If that was the case, then my reaction is “Nice. But so what?”. And there are problems. If I could connect to the Internet without having to pay an ISP for the privilege, then there would be a point, but as I said, this is a limiting effect.