"The State of Stale blogs" written by Paul on estrip.org

Category: web

12/22/09 01:53 - 20ºF - ID#50630

The State of Stale blogs

Check out these stats from harper's index. 94% of all existing blogs
haven't been updated in four months. I blame Twitter and facebook.

A lot of people who started blogs were just excited to have a web
presense without programming. Now you can do that in so many ways
without having to think much.

ladycroft writes at 03:20:49 12/23/09 - Comment #53948: hahaha, me too!

rory writes at 12:54:13 12/23/09 - Comment #53946: As a male British IT Worker, I'm loving the second from last statistic...

paul writes at 10:31:15 12/22/09 - Comment #53944: I think a major factor contributing to this is the addition of comments on every site. Take the news for example. In order to comment on the news we used to have to write on our blogs now you can just comment on their site. Because of that blogging loses a bit of the power it gave people when it started and I think it therefore, loses a certain intrinsic value it had.

In one way the openness of news sites is awesome for the readers of the news because it assembles miscellaneous comments from all of the net together. However, for the author themselves, I think its not as nice as having everything you wrote about in one spot to look back on and search through.

I also think, people think more carefully about what they write on their blogs, versus what they comment on sites they have very little personal investment in. Just look at youtube comments.

Additionally, can anyone see yourself trolling all over the freakin web, if it even exists in the future to try and piece together all your comments and feedback? Its a very difficult proposition when compared with assembling everything in one place like you have on a blog.

I guess you could develop a system for that. Speaking of which, I promise at some point to have a feature for reading all the comments you wrote like a blog of its own.

metalpeter writes at 08:27:00 12/22/09 - Comment #53937: It would be interesting to see what that stat was over time from years ago. The thing with blogs is that there are so many kinds. You have the paid bloggers on certain cites. Then you have people who write about certain things only like sports or what ever. Then you have the day to day stuff. I think most of those people are the day to day bloggers. For example I go to see a movie as an example. If I want to write a review about it on facebook or other sites I san say in like 2 sentences what I thought about it. In the political stuff that is true to you just give how you feel and them from there if people post comments on your poll that is your form of debate.

I think all the blame can't be put on them though. I think that News being for profit now is a big factor. Because of that news has to be more shocking. But it is also about catch phrases and talking points or things that are quick and not really thought out. I think that has effected how people make points online as well.

tinypliny writes at 04:39:19 12/22/09 - Comment #53916: Huh. That is most random set of statistics I have seen.

Permalink: The_State_of_Stale_blogs.html
Words: 59
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: body

12/21/09 11:42 - 27ºF - ID#50623

Kidney Stones?

Man, I was having a great day at work, I got so much stuff done. Then on the way to the gym, bam, serious throbbing pain in my left kidney. It's weird, and it scary and painful and seems to get worse. It so isolated to that one side/spot and it not in the muscle.

So I look that up and kidney stones sound like that. Now I wonder if the milkshake for breakfast, milkshake before bed every night for six months was a bad idea. It was really helping me gain weight and milk makes my crohns better.

Someone suggested drinking lemon juice and water. I tried that. I hope this just ends easily as I am not in the mood for the hospital this evening or any evening.

I guess could be something else but what else causes kidney pain? It's givig me that impending doom feeling I got the night my appendix decided to die. Luckily, although this can be seriously painful I don't think it is at all life threatening. Who knows, maybe I will just wake up and t will be gone. I hope so because the retarded nurse wrote on my record that I am allergic to opiates after I got itchy during the appendix nightmare.

Oh great, I just found this too
[box] Kidney stones are more common in Crohn's patients with disease of the small intestine than in the general population because of fat malabsorption. Fat binds to calcium, leaving oxalate (a type of salt) free to be absorbed and deposited in the kidney, where it can form into stones. [/box]

That probably also explains my endless ability to b thin no matter how many milkshakes I drink.

Permalink: Kidney_Stones_.html
Words: 285
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: niagara

12/18/09 11:15 - 19ºF - ID#50600

It seems so impossible

I found this at

a while back when researching Niagara Falls. It seems incredible we could shut off the American falls. I wonder how huge the other falls look to the right of there?

Permalink: It_seems_so_impossible.html
Words: 42
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: art

12/18/09 03:55 - 26ºF - ID#50595

Fun experiments with CSS

I made these when I was first mixing PHP with CSS positioning back in early 2000. Now I recognize there was no need for the PHP part as it could all easily been done with javascript.

Permalink: Fun_experiments_with_CSS.html
Words: 63
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: christmas

12/16/09 11:39 - 22ºF - ID#50581

Big Christmas lights

We finally got the big ones (e:Matthew) always wanted.

Permalink: Big_Christmas_lights.html
Words: 15
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: gay

12/16/09 11:32 - 22ºF - ID#50580

Hot guys kissing

I wish I had a jawline like that.

Permalink: Hot_guys_kissing.html
Words: 12
Location: Buffalo, NY

Category: web

12/16/09 07:51 - 21ºF - ID#50578

I hate facebook

I am so sick of hearing about how everything has to be exactly like facebook in terms of webdesign.

I worked on an inline editor widget for some internal project at work and it allowed you to just double click to edit and hit return to save. Esc to cancel out.

Apparently, people "would not be able to get that" even though the title text clearly stated it so I had to make it "more like face freakin book" It has to be like facebook because that is the only thing people could possibly understand.

I through in an even stupider cancel button for people who can't handle the esc button.

metalpeter writes at 07:36:47 12/17/09 - Comment #53750: Here is the thing with Social Networking sites in my view.

Myspace exploded because of Music and Buzz and what ever. I was the first really big one that everyone was on. Myspace is all about the blogs and keeping up with bands and they have forums and all kinds of discussions.

Facebook you used to only be able to use it if you had and .edu email. It was made for college kids to keep in touch with each other. Facebook is for short little quips and nothing deep like a blog.

Ok Cupid. Yes it is a dating site. But so many people use it for the tests. I have ran into a few (e:peeps) on it in fact.

Fubar is all about Ratings Pictures and Buying Virtual drinks. Oh yeah and there is more then that because they have a paid service and you can buy people that and it is aimed to be kinda an online bar. You can set picture to private and have NSFW pictures and let everyone see them or just friends.

Yes there are other places like live journal and and friendster but I don't know how those places work.

What has happened over time is that each site has added things to try and be like the other sites. Face book quizes and gifts. Myspace has added heavy updates like face book. These sites try to be like other sites so they don't lose anyone. But myspace isn't face book and vice versa. But what they should do is stay different since they are. I would guess that I have around 7 times the number of freinds on myspace vs. facebook.

On myspace if you wanted to change how your page looked or leave messages you copy and paste code into the right spot and everything changes. But facebook it is all buttons. Everything you do is right in front of you. There are a lot of people who use it and that is all they do. So to them they use buttons. They don't know anything about code. They don't even know about right clicking or left clicking or other options.

I'm not saying everything should be like facebook in fact it shouldn't. I myself like drop down menu but that is because that is what I learned to use but some like buttons. When I was learning about windows I learned there where multiple ways of doing most things but is that true on the web. What if the mouse breaks does Tab still move you around the page? Are there ways to use alt or ctr keys to do things on line? If there where would anyone know? I know I don't. If I went on line and there was no form of mouse I would be lost.

In the end when you design something it should be made in the way that it works the best. It terms of how it looks that is your call for how it looks best to you. But user friendlyness is a key. Maybe there is a way that something can be made so the novous to the feature can use it and the andvanced person can also use it and do more stuff with it?

tinypliny writes at 01:30:29 12/17/09 - Comment #53738: Heh, check this out if you are feeling overly geeky.

Hartmann J, Sutcliffe A, De Angeli A. Investigating attractiveness in web user interfaces. In: CHI '07: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. New York, NY, USA: ACM Press; 2007. p. 387-396. Available from: :::link:::

jim writes at 09:23:38 12/17/09 - Comment #53735: Yeah that sucks Paul, instead of Facebook you should make things more like Apple!

tinypliny writes at 09:05:20 12/17/09 - Comment #53734: Hehehe, I am not on facebook either and quite possibly, never will be. Additionally, I seem to have abandoned twitter because my tweets are getting so infrequent. It lacks the personal charm of chatting with (e:Jim) here for me. ;-)

However, I would like to point out that having "Cancel" and "Save" buttons are way more user-friendly than having keyboard and mouse gestures for editing functions. If your audience is going to be mainly scientists and other non-computing staff at Roswell, it makes all the more sense because we seldom use any kind of keyboard shortcuts apart from the most common ones.

Even if the instructions are right there for a rather unfamiliar keyboard editing combination, the preference would always be to look for visual cues because are they are just more intuitive to a non-computing audience.

I don't think it's about aping facebook - its more about being the design being intuitive and universal to people who have not been trained in a keyboard intensive environment.

boxerboi writes at 07:38:22 12/17/09 - Comment #53730: If its a slight consolation, I don't use facebook and have no intention of signing up. I'd prefer the original way to wrote the widget. Bummer