Funny people: Jim Obradovich

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Jim Obradovich was high on my Unborn Blogs” list and he somehow discovered this (could he be reading this very post?). He hinted that he might be willing to take run at blogging and offered to send photos from his new part-time job.

“…beginning tomorrow evening at the Iowa State Fair Parade I will commence my duties as “Fairfield” the State Fair Mascot. Fairfield is a 6-foot blue ribbon of merriment. I will be undertaking my “Fairfield” duties for 2 to 3 hours a day, while the rest of the time I’ll be writing press releases on everything from sheep dog trials to the heaviest pigeon competition.”

 

Me Laugh Hard.

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Don’t know why I’ve never heard of David Sedaris but I caught a short segment on today’s This American Life and he is one funny guy. From an Amazon review: “He thwarts his North Carolina speech therapist (“for whom the word pen had two syllables”) by cleverly avoiding all words with s sounds, which reveal the lisp she sought to correct. His midget guitar teacher, Mister Mancini, is unaware that Sedaris doesn’t share his obsession with breasts, and sings “Light My Fire” all wrong–“as if he were a Webelo scout demanding a match.” As a remarkably unqualified teacher at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sedaris had his class watch soap operas and assign “guessays” on what would happen in the next day’s episode.” I’ll read one of his books and report back.

War & Peace

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“Peace is best. You should make every sacrifice to secure peace. When you absolutely must go to war, however, you must try to kill all the enemy you can as quickly as you can, holding nothing back, until they have surrendered or you have been defeated utterly. It is a great fraud to think otherwise and it prolongs the agony. It would be better if people said, if we fight, we are going to boil babies in their own fat and blast the skin off nice old ladies, so they die slowly in great pain, and we are happy to do this, because what we fight for is so important. And if they conclude that it is not as important as that, then they should fight no more.”

— Robert K. Tanenbaum, Act of Revenge

Tom Daschle blogging

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Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader and South Dakota Democrat, “will post a daily diary on his official Web site as he drives around the state next month during Congress’ annual August recess, he said Wednesday. The diary is modeled on the growing phenomenon of the online journals known as Weblogs, or blogs for short.” More on the Argus Leader website. [via Steve Outing]

John C. Dvorak on blogging

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I’d forgotten how much I like (and agree with) John C. Dvorak. He was one of the headliners at Gnomedex and poked some good natured fun at “the Blogging phenomenon.” (Note to self: Try to have something useful or interesting to say). Dan Gillmor was on the opposite end of the spectrum regarding the importance of blogs and gave some powerful examples.

Gnomedex: Slashdot.

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“News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.” Slashdot creator Rob Malda (CMDRTACO) gave the geekiest presentation I’ve heard to date but it was perfect. “One of the largest, self-moderated discussion groups on the web,” Slashdot generates 2.4 million page views per day. Learned a new expression: “Daddy Pants” The guy responsible for getting up at 2 a.m. to reboot the server is wearing the Daddy Pants.

Gnomedex: Google

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Nelson Minor is a software engineer for Google and he gave a fascinating presentation to kick off this two day conference. Starting with the Google mission statement:

* Work on things that matter
* Affect everyone in the world
* Solve problems with algorithms
* Hire bright people and give them lots of freedom
* Don’t be afraid to try new things (According to Minor, Google News was the idea of one guy who said, “Hey, wouldn’t this be cool?”)

Average search time on Google: 1/5 of a second. He even explained how Google works…in a way that even I could sort of understand.

Gnomedex: Des Moines, IA

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Opened up the windows on the 4Runner…cranked up the XM Radio…and headed for Des Moines and Gnomedex 3. Hundreds of geeks (and one wannabe) from all over the country descend on Des Moines for two days. Much more fun than the big computer/technology shows. Dinner with O. Kay Henderson who has great new hair cut (yeah, I know that sounds gay but I can only admire, not do it, so…). She’s interviewing John Kerry today and asked if I had any questions she wanted her to ask him. I couldn’t think of any.

Google News advanced search

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Google News has added an advanced search page. Search for articles from specific news sources; search for articles from news sources located in a specific state or country; and perhaps most useful, search for articles published within a certain ranges of dates. [via CyberJournalist]

Jakob Nielsen on PDF

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Usability expert Jakob Nielsen on PDF: “PDF is great for one thing and one thing only: printing documents. Paper is superior to computer screens in many ways, and users often prefer to print documents that are too long to easily read online. For online reading, however, PDF is the monster from the Black Lagoon. It puts its clammy hands all over people with a cruel grip that doesn’t let go.”