House of Eratosthenes

So, not that I care, since nobody reads this blog anyway. But among the nobodies who don’t come by to actually read it, what do you think of the new look?

We’re still in a state of transition. Much thanks to Terry for offering this platform on Webloggin, and to Phil for pointing out some of the obvious bugs that I could have seen for myself, but was a little too distracted to do so. We have a few places we can go from here. We can…get the frame content and the archive content ready for “prime time,” meaning all cleaned up so that advertising can be done. That way we can keep using Webloggin’s servers and pay (kinda sorta) for what we’re taking up. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. All the other projects hither and yon, both on the computer and off — I’m not sure how to word what’s coming next. I think they’re breeding. Every time I turn around, there are more of them. Running a few loads of dishes seems to be pushing my limits lately.

Nobody is coming by to magically do this stuff for me. Something’s wrong with the way I’m doing my wishing.

What Is It? At this point you can stick in the tired old “pardon the slow posting on the blog lately, folks” meme. Whatever you choose to pick up and paste in, will fit nicely. Real life has been beckoning. The Honey and I went on a drive and she re-introduced me to that big place out there with the fresh air and the big blue thing up above with that bright yellow ball in it. Hey, just for fun, what’s that off to the left?

So what other alternatives do we have. We will probably be moving to another domain, and from there continue to be part of the Webloggin’ crew, exchanging pointers and traffic. That has turned out to be a win-win. We’re certainly going to keep running on WordPress, although I’m going to be sluggish in climbing onto the “bash Blogger” bandwagon. Hey, trust me, I know how frustrating it is when Blogger’s having one of it’s little episodes. I’m the guy on the other end, actually writing this stuff. But the deal is, it’s free. You get what you pay for.

Of course, WordPress is free too. And zowee. It’s every bit as sweet as everybody was saying. Dashboard’s just as nice as I knew it would be.

So when I update the sidebar next time, I want to be sure and include this guy. I thought this was especially priceless:

As a very young man I silently swore to pursue a life that someday would be worthy of a biography. Boy, was that naive. For one thing, many biographies aren’t even worthy of being read!

Yeah, ain’t that the truth. That’s the cool thing about blogs, they’re written — mostly — by people who aren’t worthy of a biography, and just say stuff. Each blog by itself…is a guy just saying stuff. Altogether, they’re a raucous din of ordinary people saying stuff; but now and then, someone will say something worth repeating. This is in contrast to the traditional guy-who-says-stuff, which would be someone worthy of a biography, whose every word we’re supposed to honor in some way. The traditional figure has the glaring weakness that comes up when he says stupid stuff, which is nevertheless thought to be worthy of attention, as contrasted with the blogger who says stupid stuff, who is simply ignored.

So bloggers are better. Not because of the way we treat them when they bring us things worth reading…but because of the way we treat them when they bring us things that are not. Somehow, in the 21st century we’re just beginning to figure out how to ignore people who say stupid stuff, and pay attention to them again when they say worthy stuff. We’re just starting to translate that elementary and vital concept into action. Fifty years after color TV, Eighty years after air conditioning, 110 years after the car, 130 years after the phone. Kinda sad.

You might call the blogger the “Anti-Cronkite.” Not that we pay some kind of penalty for our stupid stuff that Cronkite escaped when he uttered his…but at least we’re properly ignored.

Back to the subject at hand: Anchoress has a few thoughts worth pondering on what exactly a blogroll is. She, and several other bloggers, have what I have come to perceive as kind of an “umbral” blogroll. It’s a list of resources she actually reads on a regular basis, and she feels she’s falling behind if she starts to neglect any one of them. She still has quite a few. I see a lot of other bloggers have a similar philosphy about adding other blogs to the roll.

Then again, many other bloggers have a criteria more like mine, where we maintain “penumbral” blogrolls. If you said something interesting, or simply showed promise that you might say something interesting and I wanted to bookmark you somehow, in you go. The notion that, by listing certain blogs, I’m implying “hey this guy says some really good stuff you should go read it” and you can get properly peeved at me if you so peruse, and end up disappointed…I’m just not buying into that. It’s not necessarily an endorsement. I just see the blogosphere as 99% static, and maybe, a lot more than 99%. I want to keep track of that 1%. Whether my “bandwidth” for overseeing what I’ve staked out has been exhausted, long before I’ve surveyed a hundredth of that 1% — I don’t care. I’m not really claiming responsibility for it, the way I see it. It’s just something I think is worth another look, and I’ll give it that look when I get time, and you’re welcome to take a peek yourself if you choose to do so.

So my blogroll is a lengthy thing. I use “metals” to keep it all straight, just like the Olympic games. There’s a reason for that. If you meet two athletes and one of the won a gold “medal” and the other one won a bronze, you would feel very highly honored. There’s a lot of stuff going on there, though. One one level, you would feel equally honored to have met either one of them. The honor that has been bestowed upon the bronze athlete, is just as great as that bestowed on the gold athlete. They are on par, because when you think about the staggering number of other athletes that have trained all their lives, and never win any “metal” at all, either one of those two encounters would make you feel very fortunate. It is only on a rather arcane level that the “gold” athlete’s surplus achievements are worth additional attention. And yet, on some level, they are.

I have an informal policy of linking to people who link to me, although I’d be setting myself up for failure if I were to pledge 100% follow-through on that. That is supposed to be the intention. Folks who put out things worth reading, maybe have an interesting way of phrasing things, might catch things I’m going to miss during my frequent lazy spells. That’s worth a bronze. Some of those resources, like Anchoress herself, have extremely high visibility in the blogosphere and are considered “major” players. Others are just plain old folks like me, whistling in the wilderness, but I like what they’ve had to say. Now if you’ve done something to indicate a very frequent checking-back is a worthy thing to do, and I’m pretty sure I won’t have the time to look at you as often as I should be doing, you might be worth a silver. Examples of this include the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, IMAO, and News Blog Central which has a group of people contributing content, including me.

If you are a household name that even non-blog-people might recognize, such as Pajamas Media, Malkin and Little Green Footballs, you might get a gold medal.

And if I have had to take special steps to not look at your blog, like I’m curing some unhealthy addiction or something, that is worth a platinum. There are only two platinum blogs on my roll, and that is FARK and Neal Boortz. A lot of times left-wingers say interesting things, make good points, link to me. It is a surprisingly frequent occurrence that when they link to me, they do so non-sarcastically and are genuinely nice about it, as is the case with Alan and the Dreamer, and a lot of them like NYC Educator and Rude Pundit have some interesting facts worth pondering, and/or creative ways of wording things, and are worth perusing. They get a liberal hippy turqoise gemstone.

Don’t be mean, I consider some of them to be friends.

Note to self, Alan has moved, change the sidebar to point to his new address.

All for now. Time to jump in the shower and go vote.

Update: Want to be sure and get this guy.

The new look, the new look….

Well, of course, the main reason I don’t come here to not read the blog that nobody reads (besides the fact that I decided that I must be “Nobody” himself — remember the song from Sylvia?) is that I enjoy and respect your perspective on things, and it helps me to grow as a thinker, such that I am in the first place. I’m trying to grow. I suck at expressing myself verbally (with vocal cords, real time) and I figure if I’m better read I’ll eventually get better at the speaking part of political and philosophical discourse.

Um… the look? As long as your latest post is on top, I’m good. Personally, I my preference (for me, on my blog) is to keep links to a minimum. When the presentation gets unwieldy, people’s eyes glaze over. For few people that do come to my blog, I like to leave a very few links to blogs I have a lot of respect for, and websites I think are excellent resources. I figure if I offer too many, the inclination of the reader will be to skip all of them rather than to follow any of them.

That being said given your explanation of the way you see your blog and blogs in general, your layout makes good sense.

Also, I don’t have anybody “saying” anything about my blog, since I am, in fact, Nobody anyway.

I certainly read more than I have posted links fore. But you’ve got to have (completely judged by me, of course) a consistently level-head to get a link from me. I feel my recomendations reflect on me. I’m trying to think of a way to categorize my links so that I can put a few more in that I like in there. I actually started on that. Oh, and I recently changed the look of mine somewhat as well.

I may have to consider something like the metals motif.

But that will be another day.
- philmon | 11/07/2006 @ 18:03
I do love the new look, and wanted to tell you, but can’t find the “Contact me” button. Where’s THAT hiding?
- muttley | 11/07/2006 @ 19:38
Good idea. I’ll get on it tonight. Thx.
- mkfreeberg | 11/07/2006 @ 19:47
[…] Last week I posted a cropped photo from the outdoor adventures I had with my gal down in Monterey, and made the invitation for some of the nobodies who don’t read my blog, which nobody ever reads, to guess what the thing was supposed to be. Well, the response has been overwhelming. A lot of people think I bought her a fur coat. Someone thought it was a porcupine, and one guy was sure I’d somehow pointed a camera down the throat of that thing Jabba the Hutt wanted to throw Luke into…possibly a nod back to a metaphor I had admired earlier. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/11/2006 @ 15:03

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