This is a “podcast” or audio recording where I’m trying out doing an audio recording of my thoughts.

What I notice is that when I was staring at the computer it was very hard to talk, as I kept getting distracted by the machine.

Some things I talk about:

• idea for an article on Webmaster tools and Google analytics
• working on editor reviews and my plan to create a video of my favorite web editors
• thoughts about a new(-ish) category of web editor—the WYSIWYG editor so people don’t need to know HTML at all
  • should I create a separate evaluation of these editors?
  • do customers make a distinction between WYSIWYG editors and “development” editors?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

It’s stupid how I fall for giveaways so often. When the reality is that they are done solely so that the blog or site owner can get more readers and more comments. They have no interest in you as a person, and are most likely going to give their products away to people they know (either IRL or because they’ve posted lots of times before). They may also give away to people who write the most “heartwarming” response. But of course, they say that they’re giving them away to a “random” person. The nice thing about Goodreads is that they don’t say it’s random. They even say that people who read and review books of a similar type are more likely to win.

Unfortunately, giveaways end up making me feel bad. In one case, I commented for the first time on a post because I wanted to tell the author that I really liked her post. Then I realized it was a giveaway post as well (I hadn’t read that far) and wanted to remove my comment, as the fact that the post was a giveaway made it seem like I was posting some lame “I like your site” post just to get the crappy lavender chatchkies she was sending to “one lucky reader.” Whatever.

In other cases, I think I have a good chance of winning something, either because there are very few posts, or there is a large number of prizes, and when I don’t win I’m disappointed.

I’m reminded of the contests About would have where the person who wrote the most content in a month would win. The first one they did, I was on fire and submitted like 20-30 new pieces of content. This was easily 3-4 times as much as I normally did in a month. Of course the winner a) didn’t have another job and more importantly b) wrote about 20-30 glossary entries A DAY. In terms of word count or character count, I probably wrote just as much as s/he did. But because s/he spread it over 600+ one sentence pages means that s/he won. This was over 10 years ago, but it sticks in the head.

Of course, staff saw this contest as a huge success and so held another a few months later. And no one in the computing channel competed. We all (or nearly all) had other jobs and couldn’t waste our time on contests we had no chance of even coming in third or fourth for. At least that was the reason I didn’t bother. Our editor was very disappointed.

I’m sure that another giveaway will come along tomorrow or next week that I’ll really hope to win. And maybe I’ll have the strength to think “no, don’t bother” as I don’t need more stuff anyway… But I suspect that my willpower will be weak or the thing given away is sooooo cool that I can’t stop myself.

All commenters to this post will receive a FREE copy of my eternal goodwill. Of course, you’d get that if you comment on any of my posts.

Every dog I’ve ever owned came from the pound or a rescue organization (okay, Homer might not have, but my parents got him before I was born, soI don’t think he counts). But wow, trying to get another dog now that I’m not likely to burst into tears at the though of Shasta has become, ahem, challenging.

Some of the challenges:

• every rescue I’ve found lists their available animals on Petfinder. This isn’t a challenge by itself, but it means that you have to use that system to find a suitable animal. And because most of the rescue organizations at best make guesses regarding breed, age, health, training level, whether they like kids or cats, etc. The data is, ahem, suspect. I can’t tell you how many dogs I’ve looked at after searching for “cat-friendly” dogs, narrowing it down to 7 or 8 animals, and having the description say “this dog cannot, under any circumstances, go to a house with cats”. I finally gave up using that search parameter, as it was useless. Same goes for the “young children” parameter.
• just like when we adopted McKinley, there is a huge “application” you have to fill out to even meet these dogs. It’s annoying to me, as I’m sure I’m instantly put on their mailing list (well, instantly in the form of whenever they get around to reading their mail. They don’t let me see any animals or even answer my mail, I just get added to the mailing list. (I’m betting on this, I have no proof, yet)
• but the rescue places are all staffed by volunteers so they don’t have a lot of time to read or respond to email, even if their site says “you’ll get a reply within 72 hours” I figure this must mean hours on Jupiter or something.
• the aforementioned application includes tons of questions about your home, lifestyle, vet, trainer, groomer, etc. which is fine, but so far 2 out of 3 have required references, one required four references – including how long they’ve known you and in what capacity, and they can’t be relatives. (because, I suppose, we all know that Aunt Mary who has been with me and my dogs all my life might be biased and give me a good review, while my co-worker Sarah, who barely even knows I have a dog wouldn’t be… <sigh>

I just wish it were a little easier. I mean, when we got Shasta, we just walked into the pound, saw him, decided to play with him and his brother, then decided to adopt, filled out the form, paid the fee and went home with a dog. When we got McKinley from Rescue Pup, I found him (on Petfinder), asked to see him, met him, filled out the application, they came and visited our house, and we adopted him. It took more than a day (because of the home visit) but definitely no more than a week.

I’m currently on week 3 of trying to find out more about Hope, Darla, and another dog who’s name I’ve now forgotten. I got an answer immediately about Darla, saying “you sound perfect, please fill out an application” so I did, and then nothing. I didn’t get an answer about asking to see Hope until today and all it said was “please fill out an application” when there was nothing on the Petfinder site about an application or anything. I had to dig around to find what I think is the correct application. And finally dog #3 they haven’t answered yet (that’s the one that said I’d get an answer within 72 hours – Jupiter hours, I’m assuming).

I would go and adopt from Rescue Pup again, except that all they have are blue heelers, which they won’t place with kids. Since I remember what Brendan’s pant cuffs were like (they are called “heelers” because they bite the heels of the cattle they are herding, and if they don’t have cattle, they bite the heels of the children they are herding), I don’t blame Rescue Pup, but it is annoying because I understand that about that breed.

What’s sad to me is that the difficulty I’m having makes me want to go to a breeder. Do you know of any “mutt” large dog breeders I can visit? Luckily the pet store that we go to only gets drop-kick dogs in their puppy consignments, so I’m not tempted to go there to get a dog. But man, if they had any large dog puppies (great dane, mastiff, great pyrenees, akbash, shepherd, wolf hound, etc.) the only thing that would probably stop me is that their prices are insane.

So, hopefully my application for Hope will be considered, and maybe I’ll be able to go visit her later this week or this weekend.

But I’m not holding my breath.

So, I just finished reading 1632 by Eric Flint last night (from the finalists list). This was a book I saw on the shelves when it came out but I passed it by for several reasons, including:

• I’ve never been a fan of alternate history
• The idea of knights mixed with pickup trucks seemed ridiculous
• And I just didn’t think I would like the book

But I couldn’t have been more wrong!

This book was very fun to read. The characters were engaging and I cared what happened to them. The fact that it was set in 1632 was an interesting historical backdrop, and I wanted to learn more about the 30-years war. For example, I didn’t realize that Cardinal Richelieu was a real person. I just thought of him as the villain in “The Three Musketeers” (yes, the Errol Flynn version, I haven’t read the book).

The stated goals of the people transported to 1632 Germany were ones I could completely get behind. They seemed like people I would enjoy having as my neighbors. I loved that they decided immediately to draft a constitution and that they did not immediately wall themselves off from the rest of the world. I’m not confident that is what would really happen, but it’s nice to think that it could.

Some of the things I didn’t like:

• many flat characters
  There was the aging hippie—she was the most developed of the flat background characters, but still had very little to her personality beyond being a liberal.
  There were the “evil CEO” and his (non-existant) wife—these characters were introduced almost immediately and then had nearly no part in the story
  And several others
• weak premise
  This was introduced as SciFi, and there was a whole reason given in the prolog about how they ended up in 1632, but it was really flimsy. I would have preferred if it were left out completely, and we just followed the main characters on their journey.
• I struggled with the politics
  I just had trouble with the idea that there was only one liberal in the entire town of 3,000 people. I can totally believe there are liberals who use guns—I had no problem with that. But it seemed odd to me that everyone always excoriated the “aging former hippie” and there was no one who took her side. Really?

But beyond that, this was a fun book. I stayed up until after midnight to finish it. And I’m going to start looking for the next books in the series. I don’t know why I was reluctant before. I’ve read other books by Eric Flint and enjoyed them a lot. I guess it’s true that you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Next book to read will be 1984 by George Orwell. Or maybe Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

I was reading an article yesterday about how facial recognition is getting so good that there are apps being built for cellphones that can identify random strangers from photos (taken as you walk along with your cell phone).

The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing we do would be private.

I then moved on to another article that talked about how Google(?) was working on an algorithm that could evaluate the writing style of someone online and make a good correlation as to who actually wrote it. Even if the author had posted anonymously or with a pseudonym.

The article was bemoaning the fact that this was a “further invasion of our privacy” and that pretty soon nothing that we do online would be private.

But is this idea of “privacy” such a good thing? Ultimately, what it really is is the idea that we can go out in public or online and be anonymous.

And some people see anonymity as the same as the freedom to do anything they want. And as we saw in London over the past few days, anything they want seems to cover a wide swath of things that most civilized societies consider wrong.

Some examples of things anonymous people do:

• looting and destroying property
• verbally harassing people
• generally behaving like boorish trolls

And people who are willing to stand up and say who they are, thus taking responsibility for their actions, tend to avoid these actions, not necessarily because they don’t want to do them, but because they know that they are impugning on their good name if they do so. Because they are not anonymous.

I think of the (moronic) individuals who went looting in London and then posted photos of themselves and their spoils online. With face recognition software, they are no longer anonymous. And they can be held responsible for their crimes.

Internet trolls who write hateful comments on forums and blogs just because they are anonymous might think twice if they knew that their comments would be identified as being from them. And even if they didn’t think twice, their friends and family might have a better idea of what thugs they are friends with or related to.

I wish more people would stand up for their actions, and stop hiding behind anonymity.