Cookie Blog Burning

Is My Blog Burning is a culinary event. There's a theme and everyone makes something according to that theme. The "entries" are then presented by one sponsor. I usually don't partake in such events, too busy (I did once when I grilled lamb). It's neat because it's a uniquely bloggy type thing. It's an event that just couldn't exist as successfully in any other media form in the same way.

This month's was sponsored by Jennifer, The Domestic Goddess. It's a great collection of cookies. Just in time for cookie season too. Worth a visit if you have some time.

By the way ...

Our Francesca Rose is, according to Google, Yahoo! and MSN, the most popular Francesca Rose in the world.

Aside from a goofy sense of pride over this, it's actually fascinating because these search engines use different algorithms according to Web Search Garage. It's a great book.

The New National Enquirer

I recently had an exchange about the so-called merits of Wonkette with a Columbus area blogger. Wonkette is one member of a suite of sites created by Gawker Media. Most of the sites, including Gawker, Defamer, Wonkette, etc. (not including Kinja, that's actually pretty neat) are little more than substrates for advertising. These sites share critical features:

1. They slam popular people.
2. They have a 2-3 column format to maximize advertising real estate.
3. They are written in an extremely similar style; lots of short sentences and bullet points.
4. They all provide ample coverage of Lindsay Lohan's breasts.
5. They all brandish public displays of popularity via their sitemeter icons.

I can't apologize for what may sound like a harsh criticism. These sites are published by Nick Denton; he assembled the best talent for their design and function and are fantastically popular (go ahead click their sitemeter icons).

With such rich, free writing on the web (my recent favs: Yankee Pot Roast, Maisonneuve and Black Table), it's amazing these Gawker things have done so well.

Oh - the other reason Nick won't care about this criticism - he's busy trying to launch a new PR campaign blogethics committee. A blogethics committee.

Olsen twins? Help is on the way.

I Confess, I Liked Dumb and Dumber

Between Frankie's bath and subsequent nighttime routine, I was able to catch a few minutes of the 60 Minutes interview with Jim Carey. It was a great piece (and, fortunately, Lesley Stall did not do the interview). I saw Dumb and Dumber (and actually enjoyed it!); I even own his version of The Grinch. I think Carey's a genius.

High Street

High Street is the North-South divide in Columbus and always shaking with activity. A project underway that we're looking forward to is a unique urban redevelopment project/retail venue that will occupy a couple blocks just south of Chittenden. It's called the Gateway Project. Campus Partners has this update (its target completion date is Fall 2005):

Construction at the South Campus Gateway site continues to proceed on schedule. Dry wall installation for the residential units in the five-story Building B is proceeding rapidly. Installation of the exterior skin and interior framing of the residential units in Building A is well underway. Steel erection for Building C is complete and the framing of the exterior wall has begun. Foundations for Building D are complete and over one-third of the structural steel has been erected. The parking structure contractor has completed all of the horizontal concrete pours for the entire parking structure, which continues to run slightly ahead of schedule.

When they start talking drywall, you know they're close. The Drexel is going to run a theater there as well. We can't wait; it's a short bus ride away or a pleasant summer evening's walk. On the Campus Partners site, they have regular updates, go visit.

Like Minded

This morning on NPR, I heard a great interview with John Waters. Worth a listen. At one point, he describes himself in high school and says "boredom ... leads to anger and hatred of all authority".

He's a brilliant guy. We've seen him once at the Maryland Film Festival. He hosted a B movie. It was dreadfully bad.

Blogging Evolve$

You won't see it on Monster.com (the site that gives you hope you may actually be able to use the internet to find a job and then crushes your spirits with each passing day) but blogging IS a profession. You just need: 1. a blog, they're cheap. 2. an audience (ca. 20,000 unique visitors/day would be nice, more is better); 3. For mostly text, a 60 Gb bandwidth/month allowance (that could be costly but, if you're popular, you can get free hosting); and 4. advertisers.

If you're curious, go to blogads.com and see how much some of the high traffic sites (not porn, not casinos, etc.) are charging for their "above-the-fold" ads. For example, Daily Kos, a liberal politics site charges about $9,200/week for their top spots and the site that I believe is as useful as Monster (I'm just jealous), Instapundit, gets $3,375/week for the topspot ads.

Per week.

Don't even bother with Drudge (technically not a blogger but he's close enough). His 12,000,000+ visitors a day would cripple an advertiser for his blinking, popping-up-and-under-ad circus. And for what - disclosing Monica and the whereabouts of the Monkey Man in India?

There are a ton of sites like these. Gaining this popularity isn't as unlikely as becoming an NBA star. You just need to find a niche and maintain an audience.

The phenomena fascinates me. But, the real issue: when these individuals started out, they wanted a voice. Now they want money. This can't help but effect their content. They'll stop swearing to keep their traffic numbers up, they'll swear more, they'll post more frequently whether they have something to say or not, etc. Blogs could become vanilla - or worse - blogging could turn into a JOB.

And blogs might just die (and the journalists do a wave).

POTUS, It's The New Vanity Plate

During this election season, I pondered the next person to take two years off of his job, receive full salary with benefits and take another job funded by gobs of federal tax dollars - like, say, run for President of the United States of America. This in mind, I probed a popular domain registrar for a few names. It's kind of fun to think about when these domains were created and the possible ramifications.

Most of these domains are parked. This means someone purchased them and left them at the domain registrar. You can play this game too by going to, e.g., godaddy.com and typing in a name. They'll direct you to who registered the domain and its nameservers. If you find any interesting ones, leave a comment or email me and I'll add it to the table.

domain (.com)	date created
jebbush	19-Nov-97
hillaryclinton	22-Oct-01
hillaryrodhamclinton	29-Jun-04 ... just missed
colinlpowell	23-Apr-04 ...recent, hmmm
colinpowell	28-Oct-97
robertreich	29-Jun-03 (4'10" - too short - although not as swarthy as Dukakis)
johnashcroft	15-Feb-04

By the way, POTUS is a pretty cool site.

Hovering

This image was supposed to be 5 floating balls on the vortex machine at COSI, our new favorite place in all of Columbus. Why is it 1 floating ball instead of 5? Kids kept running up to the perfectly staged shot and stealing them. I figured it wasn't worth chasing them down and wrestling the little orbs from their hands. It was still a fun day.

Leaves, Perking Away

Remember those leaves I raked?

Inspired by a neighbor's gardening results this year (they kindly shared their bounty), I thought I'd give the composter another shot. Didn't have such good luck last year.

First, I emptied it out and used the partially composted stuff in other areas of the yard. Then, I tossed about 1/6th of the leaves in our composter with a bunch of fermentable kitchen waste and stacked the other bags beside it (to continue fueling as the season proceeds, layering kitchen waste with leaves).

Right now, the ambient temperature is in the 60s. I have this long probe thermometer and checked our fermenting pile today and it's in the low 90s! The individual plastic bags of leaves are only in the 70s. I think we're getting some serious fermentation (composting) from the kitchen waste.

You didn't expect election commentary here did you?