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November 09, 2003
Blog Roundup
As per the last time I managed to get this done, the rules are simple. I take a metaphorical hat, throw in the blogs that I read regularly, throw in the blogs on my blogroll and then throw in any blogs that have appeared in comments or trackbacks since the last time I did this. Ummmm. Oh yes, that means some blogs get more than one chance (lucky buggers), and the judges decision is final, all correspondance is via the comments section below. A good wine whinge should guarantee a review next time....
Oh, and I should have mentioned about duplicate drawings. I will not review the same blog twice in one week, instead I will swap in some blog that has never appeared here before.
According to my magic perl script there are 142 entries in the random draw (mainly because I have missed a couple of weeks). Drum Roll.....
First random draw: Technically Speaking. Now I could have sworn that Tony was on the blog roll but apparently not. I will have to fix that. Just a tick while I make a Newton note about it. OK. Tony is in the draw because he added a comment to one of the "Women Driver" series of pictures. His site always has a bunch of items oriented to the technical minded. I won't say "geek" because that imply only computer technology whereas Tony tends to cover a number of topics (I seem to recall some neat bike shots in the past). Currently there is a good (geek) article on CD labelling making the CDs unreadable. Basically I am glad now that I never had enough time to go around and label all those CDs! Personally I would love one of those doohickys that burns the CD and prints a label direct on the CD. Tony also has recent articles on the lunar eclipse (which can't be seen down under), the solar flares, and despite the recent problems on my home site, I have to assure you that I am not hosting Tony :-) BTW Tony has this neat feature where the trackback url appears under the article. For those of us on TypePad, this is a welcome blessing because the old MT practice of resolving the trackbacks automagically is not yet available.
Another TypePad feature that is missing in action is the "Most Recently Updated" display of the blogroll. The idea is that the blogroll should always have the most recently updated links at the top which means that older links (to extinct blogs) can safely drop off the bottom. I am have considering moving the blog roll back to my home server so I hack such a feature into it. Anyway, the second random draw is .... Technically Speaking. Hmmm. Let's try for number three. Same again. Let me go an look at the code again. Hmmmm. Static is probably not a good idea. Just talk among yourselves for a moment ....
Trying again, using version 0.2 of the random blog selection machine and we get ... Kingsley. Kingsley is also missing from the blog roll which is quite strange because I read his blog at least once a week and he often comments here. At the moment there is a well-thought out discussion about voting behaviour in India. It is worth a read even if the situation is not relevant to where you live (in my case, Australia), because he is talking about a dual house system which is like the one the politicians would design if they could. They would argue that a system like India's (which seems to be first-past-the-post) would be cheaper to run (probably true) and would better reflect voter intention (probably false). It is a regular thing in Australia for one side or the other to raise "reforms" to the system which ultimately would make it more like India's!. He also has a post written in Tamil and suggests that you need a unicode Tamil font to read it. Personally I suspect that being able to read Tamil would also help :-) Finally there is an article on 3D pictures which attracted my immediate attention. I was never able to see the 3D maps in geography (via a steroscope) and guess what - I can't do it with this wiggly pictures either.
Next please .... Tech Ronin. I came across this site after a comment posted on one of my New Zealand / Rugby Union posts. By the way I have my fingers firmly crossed for Scotland (playing Australia) for reasons that you may recall from some months ago. Of course by the time you read this (in fact probably by the time I post this), the winner will be a foregone conclusion. Anyway back to Janet's site. She is a Panther fan and in fact I passed on her details to Cindy as an example of a satisfied panther user. In fact Janet even got a set of dog tags (dog tags for a Panther?) which were available as part of "Night of the Panther" deals in the USA. Locally, there was no mention of anything. Panther was available around 9AM local time and it was juts business as usual. I guess we locals miss out. Almost makes me want to move to the US :-) Then I think more seriously about moving to Canada so that I can be in a civilised country but be close to the US for the purpose of buying Mac gear :-) Speaking of things we miss out on, there is a post about buying from the iTunes store. This is something that would appeal to me because I will not buy an album unless I like more than half the songs on it. I wander down to the store, listen to a track I like, find a track I hate and then leave without purchasing. So much of the music seems to be a few good tracks, a few mediocre tracks and some crap bundled together on a CD. Buying individual tracks not only has a lot of appeal (I would probably spend more money this way) but it also gives a far more direct feedback to the singer/song-writer about what people really liked. It may not be what they expect!
Two more to go. Next drum roll please.... Interested-Participant. This site was part of the Dead Parrot Society (in-joke that only regular readers would know about) in the dim distant past. The death of the parrot does not appear to have adversely affected any of the players.... I like this story which is not enough to get me to visit Moscow but certainly adds to the interest. There is also a neat story about reverse discrimination but it would be interesting to see if the "victims" complained.On the topic of strange rulings, there is a sensible one - apparently Illinois has decided that illegal aliens should not be allowed to drive. This is sort of interesting because I always figured the little green aliens could fly around anyhow. [Ed: Sarcasm alert - yes I know that Americans use "aliens" to refer to illegal immigrants.]
Last one for this week.... drum roll.... dramatic pause to add to the suspense.... and it is Smorgasboard. Hmmm. This is a new blog for me altogether. It appeared as a link in a comment left by 'Quizman' and I know absolutely nothing about this blog (yet) except that the comment was well thought out and Quizman reads Melodrama (still listed in my blog roll as 'When I Paint My Masterpeice') which says something positive :-) (unless of course you are Paul). There doesn't seem to be an 'About' link on the page (although maybe I overlooked it), but there is a great primer on Understanding the Blues which looks like a bit of Internet humour that I have never seen before (a trend which is becoming all too rare). I especially like the last rule:
21. - I don't care how tragic your life is: if you own a computer, you cannot sing the blues, period. Sorry.
Scrolling down through the clues articles, I note that Quizman also reads Jivha, Patrix and Kinglsey (see above). Obviously a man of good choice although I am not on his blog-roll (yet). There is an interesting post on >a href="http://smorgasbord.rediffblogs.com/2003_02_11_smorgasbord_archive.html#1067828116">liberalism which reminds me of the first post in the Parrot series which was based around the definition of 'liberal'. I think the consensus was that the phrase was tied to the underlying culture. Liberal in the US is not the same as Liberal in Australia and apparently not the same as Liberal in India either (I assume Quizman is in India because of the blogroll and the site). Then, I discover than Quizman was running in the LA marathon. Oh well, I have no idea where he lives.
Hmmm. Interesting mix. I wonder if I should disallow the previous weeks entries from the next week. Have to look at coding that and see if it makes any difference. Until then, enjoy reading these five and be sure to let me know if you find something worth reading out there....
Posted by Ozguru at November 9, 2003 05:11 PM
Comments
Posted by: Tony S. at November 9, 2003 05:11 PM
Posted by: TL at November 9, 2003 05:11 PM
