Daily Archives: March 19, 2011

Stop me before I buy more books! And other complaints when it comes to running a blog.

Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

For some reason, I’m a glutton for books. I buy them even when I don’t need them. Case in point: Today. I was at Barnes & Noble just wandering around, minding my own business, when out of the blue BAM! Another book came at me from behind and forced me to buy it. I didn’t even get to the cash register before another book, hiding behind the greeting cards and magazines jumped out WHOOSH! and there I was at the counter with two books I didn’t need. But no matter how hard I tried to get them out of my hands, they wouldn’t leave, and I ended up having to shell out another forty some bucks to the evil cash register lady for the purchase of said books.

I had actually gone into B&N looking for a specific book on Twitter information. I recently realized I had this Twitter account that I never really did anything with, so I decided I would see about optimizing Twitter to see if it might actually benefit my blog. My blog has been one of those underperforming vehicles that has been driving me nuts for some time. I write posts constantly, and I seem to have a massive amount of phantom traffic, but I’ve never really been able to do anything with my blog to make it worthwhile to me. I’m not talking about making money, like others try to do with their blogs. I’m more interested in just getting people to read my stuff, and I’m constantly struggling to do so.

Some months back, I joined Open Salon and started blogging there, and what I discovered was that if I didn’t spam the crap out of people, I really didn’t get any real traffic to my blog. And that bothered me. I decided to stop emailing people every time I wrote a post because I started to feel that it was bothering people rather than letting them know that I had more posts for them to read. I know that I have started to get annoyed at the amount of emails I get from people who post every day (and then email me every day), so I decided I didn’t want to be one of those kinds of bloggers. Unfortunately, the alternative is even worse. My blog is practically invisible as a result.

It’s partly frustrating because it kind of falls into the same paradigm problem I have with my writing career. I know I’m good at writing, but I can’t get a career jumpstarted no matter what I do. So I end up writing for myself or for the wind (or whatever other dorky metaphor fits the situation). My main blog site has been active for years, and it’s almost like I started it yesterday, judging from the amount of communication that comes across it. It’s a lot like my life these days. I get the idea no one even knows I’m alive, even though I’m still kicking and screaming. Just screaming in silence with the volume turned way down so as not to wake up the neighbors.

What a No-Fly Zone Really Means

Politics, , , , , , , ,

I really shouldn’t have to write this post, but it bothers me that so many people don’t understand what it really means when they advocated for a no-fly zone over Libya. It’s like we’re playing some kind of video game where America (or the west) is so powerful that we have all of the cheat codes enacted, and there’s no way anything bad can happen. Well, we just declared war without actually declaring war again, so in case anyone thinks this is something less than that, you’re wrong. We’re now at war with Libya for as long as it takes to scare a dictator into surrendering, backing down or something equally improbable. In reality, we’re demanding he step down, which then means he either escape to another country that might take him, hope his own people won’t kill him or put him on trial, or that some other equally undesirable event doesn’t befall him. In other words, we’re asking someone to take a path of worse consequences than the one he’s actually in right now. We did the same thing to Saddam Hussein, who held out until we had to put troops on the ground, decimate his country, kill LOTS of his own people, and then finally capture him hiding out in a cellar somewhere, hoping he might not be caught.

Right now, the French have attacked with aircraft. It’s possible one plane has already been shot down. Details are hard to come by this early in the war. But they have engaged the Libyans on the ground.

Which means people are already starting to die. So, no amount of posturing, pretending or ignorance gets us away from the fact that our entrance into this war means people will now die. Yes, people were dying before, but we’re going to be killing people ourselves now. We don’t get to paint over that with new paint and then put up a new car fragrance ornament to hide the smell. We’re killing people now. And we may lose some of our own. This is war.

I’m not against a war. I just want people to know and understand that they’re in one now. Sure, we’ll all go back to the mall on the weekend and buy videogames, dresses and other crap, but it doesn’t disguise the fact that we have aircraft in the air right now bombing people we don’t know anything about, and probably never will, especially since they will be dead soon. Hopefully, it won’t be as bad as some previous wars, and hopefully the survivors won’t grow up to hate anyone from the west, planning our deaths decades from now while we’re celebrating  a holiday or just going about our usual business.

This is war. It sucks. Don’t let anyone try to pretend it’s anything more pleasant.

But they will. Because that’s what spin doctors do with these sorts of subjects. Just hope that we don’t end up having to send soldiers over there to “finish what we started”  because someone in power who will never see combat can’t see any other way around the “dilemma”. War sucks, and it rarely turns out the way you plan, intended, or desired.

Now, back to American Idol and whatever we were doing before I so rudely interrupted with reality.

Finally, Pornography Will Have a Presence on the Internet

Business, Politics, Religion, Social Networking, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Yes, after years and years of nothing but clean, wholesome information, pictures and overt religiousness, the Internet is FINALLY going to be able to show pornography. Up until now, as we all know, there’s been a huge dearth of porn-related information on the World Wide Web, but thankfully forward-thinking individuals have figured out how to bring us smut, sex and all things of the prurient interests. It seems that the .com addresses have made it so difficult for pornography to make it way to the mainstream, so entrepreneurs designed what’s called the .xxx address to showcase specifically porn-related information.

In all seriousness, what’s interesting is the current debate over whether or not the inclusion of this address for online pornography will just provide an ability for companies and nations to just block the .xxx site completely, which will lead to x-rated content being pushed right back to the .com and whatever other addresses they can think of to circumvent the censors of various governments and private individuals.

However, what’s also significant to point out is that those who advocate pornography on the Internet are also quick to mention that by adopting the .xxx address feature, this will allow adult websites to operate in an area where they can circumvent a lot of the negativity that also tends to migrate aongside pornography sites, like trojans (be nice…you know what I mean), pop-ups and a lot of other illegal activity.

Years ago, when I was first designing web sites, back in the days when there weren’t a lot of web sites yet created, the first group that moved onto the World Wide Web was the adult industry. A few of my early clients were tied to that industry, ironically enough attracted to my work that I had done designing a few church sites (the porn people came from those churches, seeing the advantages of this new technology). Ever since those days, there has been a tendency for unsavory types of tag alongside the adult community (not necessarily because they were part of it), and it has been very difficult to separate such folk from those who were just interested in providing adult content without the illegal activities as well (the gangsterism, not the illegal stuff that is deemed bad because of moral beliefs).

Personally, I don’t see the .xxx feature being all that productive, as that industry is constantly mired in bad behavior from the lazy criminal elements that see it as easy money. Believe it or not, there are two groups of individuals who make up that industry, and quite often the good people who are just interested in providing material for consenting adults get overwhelmed by the illicit behaviors of those who are out to separate people from their money at any cost. Unfortunately, that unsavory element is the one that always provides a bad name for those who are not like that, and no matter what the good people do, they’re always tainted by the crap pulled by those who have no qualms about cheating, stealing and doing whatever it takes to make a fast buck.