The Good Stuff

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From the fees page on the Emperors Club website:

“Each model’s respective introduction fee has been placed on her page and is symbolized by the number of diamonds on her page. Beginning with three diamonds at $1,000 and escalating beyond $2,100 at six diamonds, fees vary according to individual education, sophistication and ambiances created by each of our models.”

Sounds like Governor Spitzer went top-of-the-line at $4,300. I tremble at the thought of what you get for four grand, since there’s no mention of double-jointed’ness. And props to the web designer who revealed the hos’ beauty but not their identity.

PS: I didn’t link to the website because it went down from all the traffic.

Poor Man’s Steadicam – Take 3

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My friend Jamie seems to be getting much better results from the Poor Man’s Steadicam, so I have to conclude I haven’t mastered the tool yet. In the short video above, notice how smoothly they come down the stairs and even when Jamie starts jogging, the shot remains very steady. Well done, Jamie and Anonymous Cameraman.

“They’re not talking to you”

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Herecomes

“Who would want to be a publisher with only a dozen readers? It’s also easy to see why the audience for most user-generated content is so small, filled as it is with narrow, spelling-challenged observations about going to the mall and pick out clothes. And it’s easy to deride this sort of thing as self-absorbed publishing — why would anyone put such drivel out in public? It’s simple. They’re not talking to you. We misread these seemingly inane posts because we’re so unused to seeing written material in public that isn’t intended for us.”

From Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations” This is a fascinating book that takes an academic –but easy to read– look at social networking and how it’s changing society.

Marantz PMD620

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Maranatzpmd620“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” I shrieked, as I opened yesterday’s birthday present. The only way Barb could have known I wanted the Marantz PMD620 Professional Handheld Field Recorder is… I told her.

I’ve been using the larger PMD660 for a year to two but found that a nice home with Jamie. So far I like almost everything I’ve seen and heard about the 620. The built-in mics are just so-so but I’ll plug in an external mic for most work.

The size is what appealed to me. About the size of a deck of cards. And the display is easier for me to read than with the previous model. Download this short MP3 file if you want to hear what it sounds like. I’m using a Heil PR-20 mic.

Doc’s “story none dare tell”

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Doc Searls says we need a new leadership narrative:

“…what’s “super” about U.S. superpower — a near-limitless ability to make high-technology war, backed by a fighting force of finite size with few allies — is an anachronism. I’m not sure the people of any Great Nation are ever ready to face the fact that the height of their military and economic powers has passed. Or that the leadership they most need to assert is no longer only a military and economic one.”

If we can no longer win every war we start and our economy isn’t Number One… is it possible for the U.S. to still be “super?” Let’s hope so.

This is a thoughtful and insightful post on America, leadership and journalism. Worth a read.

Political cybersquatting

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“The election has “triggered an avalanche of cybersquatter activity,” according to NetNames, a domain name management service. Speculators have registered nearly 2,000 domain names related to presidential candidates as of last week. Names related to Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy made up over half of the registrations, followed by Mr. Obama with 635 and Mr. McCain with 269.” — The Caucus (the NYT politics blog):

I didn’t see a lot of creativity in the domain names listed in the Times story. HillarysFatAss.com and UppityAfroAmerican.com were conspicuous by their absence.

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.