The Bleeding Heart Capitalist

Pet Names for Blogger Spouses

Why do web log authors feel compelled to refer to their spouse by some cutesy derivative of the blog name? Does anyone really think that Glenn Reynolds actually calls Mrs. Reynolds "Instawife" to her face? Why did he start that trend? From here on in, I promise to refer to Ann as "Ann." I toyed with referring to her as the Red Shmoogly Boogly Cupcake, but I think "Ann" will do. Call me boring. Or Phil.

A Blog About Bad Blogs

If you want a quick giggle, check out www.shittyblogs.com, where they blog about crummy blogs. I found them when I googled Hot Abercrombie Chick, 5% because I didn't think she was for real and 95% to see if she had any more pictures up.

Hey, at least I'm honest.

Live Photo Blogging

One of my daily reads, Andrew Clem, has posted a compendium of his prodigious photographic work on his blog.

For the past few days I've been feverishly reorganizing my online photo gallery, and today added a bunch (19) of new "photos" (from video, actually) from Peru two years ago. I've set it up in a more hierarchical fashion, with mini-montages as previews, so you can pick and choose which photos you want to look at. It's all explained at: http://andrewclem.com/Archives/Post.php?2006/01/27la.html

His work is excellent. If you like good photography, by all means check it out.

Tagged for 5 Neurotic Habits

Emily of Portia Rediscovered (and if you are a single male, what are you doing reading this? Introduce yourself to her) has tagged me for this 5 neurotic habits thing. The rules:

“The first player of this game starts with the topic “five weird habits of yourself,” and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don’t forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says “You are tagged” (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.”

OK. So my five (only five?) weird habits.

1. Maps fascinate me.  I can stare at a map for a Rain man-esque period of time. I have no idea why.
2. I have a benign obsession with the lottery and what I'd do if I were to win a fortune. I have an excel spreadsheet somewhere with jackpots listed in increments of $5 million, the after tax annuity value, and a list of ventures I would undertake based on different amounts. Given our proximity to Connecticut, if we go for a "drive in the country," I'll buy a Powerball ticket, which is not available in New York.
3. Whenever I travel, I buy the local team's baseball cap. I own over 300 baseball caps. In general, I am a gigantic baseball fan and if you name a year I can tell you who won that season's World Series, over whom, and in how many games. I know so much arcane minutiae about baseball statistics that my friends will call me long distance to settle a bet at a bar. I can also study the diagram of a baseball stadium for the same amount of time as a map.
4. I can catch food thrown across the room in my mouth if you are anywhere close to the strike zone. This amuses my nephews no end. I suppose this doesn't qualify as a habit but look at all the stuff I gave you in #3. OK, fine. Here's a better one: I shave with Noxzema. Don't knock it until you try it.
5. If I go a half a day without checking my email I feel naked. I feel the same way if I run out for a loaf of bread and forget to bring my cell phone.

In turn, I shall tag:

Andrew Clem

Alex of The Noonz Wire

Zelda of The Urban Grind

Alan of Woody's News and Views

Chad of Cake or Death? was already tagged, so I'll pass it to

Dave of Soul of Wit, although I doubt he's likely to want to.

There. I have now participated in a web journal chain letter. I feel kinda dirty. Thanks to Emily for thinking of me.

Typepad Glitches

I have been informed that people are unable to comment and/or track back to my posts. I have attempted to fix this on my preferences to no avail; there is still no comment link on my posts. I have informed Typepad of this, as well as my ever growing frustration with their service, so hopefully it will be resolved shortly.

Update: Fixed!

TTLB Ups and Downs

Note: If the inner workings of blog rankings do not interest you, skip this post. I address this subject because I am a competitive guy by nature and cannot pretend that progressing in something that is essentially meaningless is, well, meaningless.

I have blogged before about the shortcomings of the TTLB ecosystem ranking system that is on my sidebar. It is something that the guy does for free, so I think it is poor form to whine too loudly about how he goes about the thing. That said, it does frustrate me a bit when the rules keep changing. I never knew what the formula was for ranking exactly, but the most recent change seemed to shift the emphasis to incoming links, or other blogs that link to you. That makes sense; if others recommend you, it means something. In theory at least, over time, that would even out any discrepancies in traffic and readership.

Naturally, people over time figure out how to "play the system" with low ranked blogs artificially raising their status by conspiring with others to exchange a ton of links. Consequently, you have people with lower readership than mine with absurdly high ranks via all types of link whoring and alliance joining. That is inevitable; there is no way to prevent it, because if you did, the same people would figure out how to exploit the new rules. It is that simple. You just learn to separate the pretenders from the contenders, as it were. The only real way to prevent people from exploiting the rules of the game is to eliminate the rules. But then you'd have no game.

Still, it is NZ Bear's prerogative to tweak the thing. It's his and he owns it. He revised the system this month, blog rankings got reshuffled, some people got annoyed, and others liked it. Earlier this month, I went from something like a 1700 ranking all the way to number 882 yesterday. I didn't see it as a fluke. On December 7th, I got an email from a really popular blog  (REALLY popular. Top 20.) telling me he liked my material and asking if we could exchange links. I was happy to. I like acknowledgment. Strangely, this blog never appeared on my referring information on my TTLB information page. Today, my ranking and link score both plummeted. I am now back to 1648. I found this curious, and read this on the TTLB site:

Excessive links from a single blog in general: Should a link from a blog with 2,000 links to other blogs be worth exactly the same as a link from a blog with only 200 outbound links? A link is a recommendation; it says, "Go look over here, and you'll find something interesting." So should a recommendation from someone who says everything is interesting be considered as valuable as one from someone who seems to choose their recommendations with more care? I say "no". And so there is now a cutoff point for total number of outbound links a blog can have, after which, each additional link causes the "weighting" of a link from that blog to decrease slightly. As I know this is a controversial measure, I've made the limit very conservative: by my estimates, less than 5% of all blogs will be affected by this limit. So unless you link to more blogs than 95% of the blogosphere, you don't have to worry about this change.

Consequently, all of the bigger blogs that link to my site have disappeared from my detail page today. Again, I appreciate NZ Bear's sincere attempts to make his metric an accurate measurement. But I think he's wrong here, and here's why. If I get linked to by a top 20 or 30 blog that happens to exceed the rather arbitrary number NZ has chosen, that should count a hell of a lot more than a link from a small blog with a modest blogroll that ran into me googling the blue guys. It's just logical. So I think that NZ has thrown out the baby with the bathwater to a degree. If you do a good job and get noticed and linked to by a bigger site, that is a coup, not something that should be discounted. Are there tiny blogs with big blogrolls? Sure, but no system will be perfect, ever. Moreover, a counterproductive outcome is that some of my very favorite sites, A Stitch in Haste, Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit, and the Blue State Conservatives, have withdrawn from the ecosystem entirely.

Frankly I could give a rat's rear if I am ranked 880 or 1650. It really doesn't matter, and is certainly not my reason for writing. I have no ambition to be "discovered" so I can quit my day job. It's just cheaper than calling 1-900-TOPURGE. This is my mental recreation. It's more like a friendly poker game. Last week, my 4 of a kind beat your full house. This week, your full house beat my 4 of a kind. I just don't know what to expect. Believe me, it is just as gratifying to be on KipEsquire's Elite 11 as it is to improve from 1650 to 1575, or 950 to 880 for that matter. I say let's just decide what the rules are once and for all so it can be fun again. Isn't that the point?

Wikablog

Someone has come up with an idea to index all blogs in a format along the lines of Wikipedia. It is called Wikablog. There are very few entries thus far, but a clever idea nonetheless.

Bonfire of the Vanities CXXIX

This week I am happy to host the 129th version of Bonfire of the Vanities, where the bloggers of the world poke fun at themselves, or, as the sponsors at Wizbang! put it, we carnivalize the Worst of the Best of the Blogosphere. It is a celebration of excellence in mediocrity, and the Superbowl of lame posts from those who are typically better. All submissions were nominated by the authors themselves in a collective show of candor and, perhaps, contrition.

Each post shall be introduced in the authors' own words so as to give them every opportunity to dig their hole deeper. Since this is the last edition of Bonfire before December 25, Merry Christmas & Happy Chanukah to all-unless you are a striking MTA employee.

Lucky Bamboo. "Houseplants are always good story fodder, right? no? Ok, overzealous coworkers, they're funny, right? got your own, eh? Hmmm. I almost had my own pocketknife stuck into my thigh. I knew you'd like that." Mike eulogizes his desk bamboo.

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! "As always, I'm submitting this article to the Bonfire because it contains vitally important information and not because it's another lame attempt to jack up my hit rate by talking about a more popular blogger." What did you expect from a cat?

Heh...he said "Boobies".... "I always knew women were dangerous, but...." Hey Jack, how do you feel about the ellipsis?

Spot the error? "What me being petty?" -Andrew. No Andrew, you aren't.

Podcast: Christmas on the Talk Shows. "Bigger bomb than KING KONG ." -Don

Christmas Fun #5. "Santa's big behind belongs in the Bonfire!"-Free Money

Sloth: I Confess. "Meme bad, post bad... " -Sinner. Also: Lust: Glenn; " So I make a snide comment about Prof. Reynolds... big deal... No only does he see it, but he links to another post of mine. Shame on me."

Response to a Response. "My lame and poorly executed attempt to continue a debate with a few readers. I'm just not smart enough to figure-out a solution to this dilemma using Blogger."-Early Riser

Step right up, 5 steps for financial success. Submitter: TT "uhm.  not sure what I was thinking, i added no value to this post. I was tired... yeah, that's it."

Nerd Alert. " Nerd Alert! Taylor at Fresh Politics laments his decision to skip studying in favor of rebuilding the Penn Indy website."

Ta da! Finished! Maybe? From mensa barbie: "I think I may have come across a new painting style...(by being too busy.)"

Recreating "Siege & Capture" And Stratego. "Wherein I pat myself on the back for past triumphs under the guise of giving someone a pat on the back."-Digger

Breakfast for Dinner. "I had a Friday of many gloomy posts. I needed to post something light hearted. Why not do a “What I had for dinner” post? Well, I did, complete with pictures."-Mike

No Relation. "Playing with Google Video I found this... yikes!  I hope I'm not related to this guy!!"-Peakah

The World's Best Pun. From Todd Smith, aka The Punsmith -"What could be more self-serving than judgeing your own pun as the 'World's Best Pun', especially if you're 'The Punsmith'.  "I judge, I jury" now turning to 'You judge, you jury'."

What would PeTA do? Kipper offers no explanation.

Real Poo. From Josh: "On boycotting shampoo."

WORK."I was working...duh."-David

On Humor. "There is something infinitely troubling about crossing Aristotle with Ren & Stimpy -- or so has my classicist wife informed me."- The MaryHunter

Dammit, I Wanted to Be First. "Why can't I think of the good jokes first?"- Brian

I hope you got a kick out of this week's edition of Bonfire. Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful Holiday Season.

NYC Blogger Party

Thursday evening was a Christmas Holiday party thrown for NYC-based bloggers hosted by Flip, Karol, Scott,  & The Man. They were kind enough to unofficially stretch the borders of New York City up to my neck of the woods for the invite. I'd say that about 50 of us attended and I had a pretty good time (I parked for free too). It was nice to attach some faces to the blogs and of course I love to get out of the house meet people. The always animated Pamela of Atlas Shrugs was there, as was my buddy Chad of Cake or Death. Urban Grind has a far more exhaustive recap of the evening, so check her out. Thanks to the hosts for the invite, and it was good to meet you all.

The Imperfection of the Ecosystem & Other BlogThoughts

No, this is not a post on biology or evolution. If you look in the sidebar about halfway down, you'll see that NZ Bear, webmaster of The Truth Laid Bear, has developed a fun way of ranking blogs via his "Ecosystem." I am a marauding marsupial, which is better than being a slimy mollusc but not as good as being a primate. Currently, I am ranked at 1115 numerically, just below the Baseball Crank and just above Ben Witherington. The ecosystem seems to rank blogs mostly on the number of blogs that link to them, with controls put in to prevent playing the system, such as through open track backs and other link whorage. However, it is imperfect, and here's why: The Baseball Crank has a readership that dwarfs mine (7780,000 hits in 5 years. Do the math). Moreover, KipEsquire's A Stitch in Haste quadruples my readership and he's ranked something like 2000. Dave Friedman's Soul of Wit also blows my readership doors off and he's still trying to reach dry land. Now, it may be that there is a Pythagorean wisdom to all of this, in that sooner or later the blogs with a higher link score gain a larger readership than those with a lower one over time, in a dollar cost averaging sort of way. However, at this snapshot in time, it doesn't seem equitable. This is not to say that I don't appreciate what NZ Bear is doing; hell, it is free and gives us all something to relate to. I would just say that if you see a blog that has "evolved" to a high rank (like mine, relatively speaking) take it with a grain of salt.

I should take this time to thank those of you who read this blog, especially those who have commented, emailed me, and even added me to your own blog rolls if you have them. My readership has broken the 100 per day mark in recent weeks, which means that there are multiple dozens of people who are quietly interested in what I have to say. While I classify myself as a conservative, I remain a New Yorker with sensibilities that are contrary to what other conservatives espouse, especially with regard to religion, lifestyles, and other lightning rod topics. I am therefore hard to classify in one word. I have been called a right wing zealot, a libertarian, a fundamentalist, and many other things that are on both sides of flattery. At any rate, to those who do read this daily exercise in therapy, I appreciate that you visit and feel free to shoot out an email (as some of you already have) any time. I'd love to hear from you. And thanks again for reading.