Author Archives: Steve Mays

Twitter growing on me

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It started working for me when I stopped thinking about what I was doing and turned my attention to what my friends are doing. I’m only “following” a few people so far (Jamie, David, Andy, Kevin, Jackie, George). For me, this works a little like the Buddy List in iChat. Knowing that George is attending a conference in California or that Kevin is looking for interns, is useful or –at the very least– interesting.

I’m still getting the hang of Twitter but if you are a Twitter-er, let me know so I can “follow” you. Trust me, it’s not as dip-shitty as it sounds.

Blogs = Google Juice

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In January I posted a video clip of a guy bouncing a nail on the head of a hammer. Actually, he was juggling the nail on the head of the hammer. Just watch the amazing video.

Yesterday I received notification of a comment on the post. It was from Scot Nery, the man in the video. The clip had been pulled from YouTube and he provided a permanent link to the video.

I assumed he found the post with a Google search but since it didn’t include his name or any identifying data, I wondered what he searched for. When I tried “nail juggle” (without the quotation marks), my post was number one out of 213,000 results. If I’m clear on how Google works, those two words would give you every hit with either “nail” or “juggle.”

Think about that. Those are two pretty common words. And a lot of the results pertained to Scot Nery doing the nail thing.

Just one more example of the sweet google juice generated by blogs.

The ravages of time

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Stevethennow

When I showed this "then-and-now" photo to my life-long friend John, he posed the following questions: How are these two people different? How are they the same?

Are we essentially the same person at 60 that we were at 25? Or does a lifetime of experiences change us? I seem to recall reading that our personalities are fully formed at a very early age. So most of the changes are physical (and inconsequential)? The "me" in my head feels exactly like that younger version. And maybe that’s the answer to John’s question. The differences are all positive. If I had to pick one, I’d say I’m a little wiser. But only a little.

Larry David on Hillary Clinton

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Hillaryimages

“A few weeks ago, I started to feel sorry for her. Oh Christ, let her win already…Who cares…It’s not worth it. There’s not that much difference between them. She can have it. Anything to avoid watching her descend into madness. So I switched. I started rooting for her. It wasn’t that hard. Compromise comes easy to me. I was on board. And then I saw the ad.

I watched, transfixed, as she took the 3 a.m. call…and I was afraid…very afraid. Suddenly, I realized the last thing this country needs is that woman anywhere near a phone. I don’t care if it’s 3 a.m. or 10 p.m. or any other time. I don’t want her talking to Putin, I don’t want her talking to Kim Jong Il, I don’t want her talking to my nephew. She needs a long rest. She needs to put on a sarong and some sun block and get away from things for a while, a nice beach somewhere — somewhere far away, where there are…no phones.” [Full post]

Tiny dancer

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A couple of posts back there’s a little animation depicting life and death in five seconds. A little depressing and dark, even for me. But it reminded me of a more life-affirming animation I posted a few years ago. If this blog remains “alive” for 100 years (I’ve got a plan), it’s fun to think about this little lady dancing away, hour after hour.

Look for an exit, I gotta pee!

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HighwaysignsMy friend Kay shares Barb’s knack for picking really good cards. She points out this one features three lanes and that she and I are in the middle. We left our idealism a couple of rest stops back. And we’re not ready to think of ourselves as bitter.

Had she designed the card, she would have put Idealistic Youth in the left land –the fast lane– and Bitter Old People in the right lane where they could drive for miles and miles with their turn signal on.

NFL: Radio and TV okay, the web…no way

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I’ve posted a couple of times on the restrictive policies of the NFL and the MLB regarding audio, video, still images and other content on websites.

Green Bay Packer QB Brett Favre is holding a news conference to officially announce he’s hanging it up. First words out of the Packer media guy’s mouth: You can broadcast on radio and TV, but no streaming from websites. Except for one: Packers.com.

Hardly a mystery. The Packers do not –as far as I know– own radio or TV stations. But they DO have a website and and it’s got lots of sponsors. Just one more example of how the web is changing –if you’ll forgive me– the playing field. Once upon a time, the teams and the leagues needed the media to reach their fans. They still need them, but maybe not as much and not for everything. As more and more fans –and advertisers– move to the web, this will be a big issue.

Update: Lost remote reports that traffic at Packers.com was so heavy, they had to switch to a breaking-news layout.