Ah, I remember the good ol’ days of blogging. Well, actually the days when the contraction ‘blog’ hadn’t yet been widely used. Blogs were just ‘weblogs’ back then (for me, circa 2000) and I took quite a big of loving (at least to my face) ridicule as I tried to spread the word about the coming phenom. I knew that blogging (or weblogging) would change the face of journalism and the way we communicate forever.

No, that’s a lie. I never thought that. I thought blogging was a kind of fun thing I did on the web, primarily of interest to computer nerds like myself. When it entered the mainstream, I was less surprised than my formerly ridiculing friends, but not by a huge margin.

The interesting thing about those days, is the traffic you’d generate with a mostly uninteresting collection of your thoughts. Sure, my blog was occasionally interesting and I’d get the occasional bit of flow (traffic via links) from the A-list, but for the most part, it was of little interest to readers who didn’t know me.

Didn’t stop me from getting hundreds of visitors a day, however. But, sadly (or maybe happily), those days are over. To get a lot of traffic blogging today, you have to both write really compelling content and publicize it well with an assortment of tools, good design and SEO. And for me, that’s revitalized the industry and makes it even more interesting.

If your object is to make money with your blog(s), here’s a great post from DoshDosh about how to do that.

The Fox television show House is the one show I was pining for during the writer’s strike. I’ve got the whole series on DVD/iTunes Download and am really looking forward to new episodes. I realized early on that the reason for my love of the show isn’t that it’s a medical drama - I’m not a fan of those, but rather that it’s a re-imagining of my favorite fictional hero, Sherlock Holmes.

They’re not shy about this, either. Holmes’ famous address is, of course, 221b Baker Street. House’s address is “221″ and his apartment is unit “B.” Like Holmes, House (see the naming similarity, too? “House,” “Holmes” - a house is, after all a home) is a lonely bachelor with a lost love, his sidekick is Dr. WILSON (Holmes’ is Dr. WATSON). Of course they’re both addicted to Opiates, as well - Holmes the straight Opium which was a real problem in turn of the century England while House has his Vicodin, an opiate based analgesic. I could go on. But I won’t. Even the creators of the show admit House is Holmes.

Growing up in the 70s, I couldn’t have cared less for Marcus Welby or Dr. Gannon of Medical Center. House/Holmes though? It makes medicine interesting, even if the show plays fast and loose with the facts. Like House, I don’t really want to get involved in the human stories of medical treatment. I like the puzzles.

So, given all that, and the fact that given the natural process of aging in myself and my parents, medical treatment is becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life, I realized this morning that I’ve learned 4 basic things from House.

1. Opiates can be really, really bad.

2. Doctors make mistakes.

3. Everyone lies.

4 Opiates can be really, really good.

Oh, and by the way, I took this quiz, and “stuck that primo! How rad am I?”

True fans will get the reference.

Here’s a really, really good reason, from one of my favorite illustrators, Brad Fitzpatrick:

Right on.

Technorati Tags:
Election, Funny, Obama, Ron Paul, Truth

Well, I guess Guy Kawasaki’s found the ticket.

Into Thin Air: How I spent $5,000 on Air and Made 50-year Old Women Swoon.

Good to know.

Interesting, that through all the computer replacing and swapping, an Apple guy like Kawasaki ended up with a consumer iMac “base computer” and a light-on-the-features MBA as his traveling machine. The pro machines (Mac Pro desktop and MacBook Pro laptop) now gone from his arsenal.

Interesting. Completely understandable, but interesting.

Technorati Tags:
Apple, MacBook Air, Guy Kawasaki

Saw the movie Jumper last night, and was one of the throng who made it #1 in the weekend box office results. All in all, it wasn’t the worst movie I’d seen recently (I gave up watching Ocean’s 13 DVD about 2/3 of way through. Ridiculous movie.

But Jumper was far from the best I’d seen recently. In fact, it didn’t come close to matching up to the excellent pair of books written by Steven Gould it’s “based” on, Jumper and Reflex, both of which are simply really, really good books, and recommended to me, by the way by new Dad Cory Doctrow. But I’m not all that disappointed in the movie either, since it should prove to be a great earner for Gould, provided his agent got a decent rights deal for the movie and the television spinoff the movie sets up.

Oh yes, no doubt about that. The Producers have set up a Highlander, Buffy style spinoff that may well be successful. The Highlander comparison was one I sensed just from the trailer, and confirmed in the mostly empty, with scattered 24 year old men sitting here and there, theatre. Here it is:

Highlander: The Series (of which I’m a fan, by the way): Immortals, secretly among us and pursued by an equally secret sect of “Watchers,” who track and in some rogue cases, kill the Immortals. The Immortals have a weakness. Being beheaded ends their lives, permanent-like. The main character, Duncan MacLeod, has as a close friend, Watcher Joe Dawson, who secretly helps MacLeod, at risk to himself and his standing in the Watchers. Action ensues. And a successful catalog as well.

Jumper: The Series (of which I may well become a fan): Jumpers, secretly among us and pursued by an equally secret sect of “Palladins,” who track and in some rogue cases DON’T kill the Jumpers. The Jumpers have a weakness. Being shocked with electricity disables their ability to jump. The main character, David Rice, discovers his mother is a Palladin, who secretly helps David, at risk to herself and her standing in the Palladins. Action ensues. And (probably) a successful catalog as well.

I think the people behind Highlander: The Series have made a lot of money, and I’m glad, because for the most part, it was a very good show with a lot of depth. It extended the film nicely, with the exception of the most recent movie, which is apparently without merit.

Technorati Tags:
Television, Movies, Highland, Jumper

Penelope Trunk is an amazingly brave blogger. She writes about both personal and business issues and has a book about career development that’s probably pretty brave too, but I haven’t read it yet. Her latest blog post about dealing with her post-partum depression is, as one commenter says, “breathtaking in (its) candor.”

Boy, is it ever.

Then, one night, the baby was screaming and our three-year-old wouldn’t go to bed and my husband was telling me that I needed to get the three-year-old some milk and I was saying that he should and I’ll get the baby and he rolled his eyes, and then I took a knife out of the dirty dishes and stabbed my head.

I don’t actually remember doing it. I remember my husband saying, “Oh my god. There’s blood everywhere.”

The vast majority of people who make their living giving advice would never in a million years spill a story like Penelope did (and has in the past with other issues by the way) because doing so makes her look vulnerable and lots of people don’t think vulnerable people can help them, because they’re…well, vulnerable. Misguided souls who are looking for a Superman or Wonder Woman to offer them quick fixes don’t want flawed heroes. The irony is, every hero is flawed, but in real life, what “saves” you isn’t the hero swooping in to catch you in mid-air, but rather the reminder that you’ve got an emergency parachute strapped to your back, or a helpful tip about how to grab a branch as you fall past a big tree. Okay, the being saved from falling metaphor is a little weak, but you get it, right? Superheroes, if they existed in real life would probably be pretty useless, because they’d have a lack of empathy for us normal humans. Say you’re falling. Superman, who all his life has been able to effortlessly fly, run faster than trains, etc… would probably just say “jeesh, all you have to do is FLY, you moron!” Little help there. After a while, saving us weak, helpless mortals would get pretty old.

Penelope Trunk can help precisely because she understands what it is to need to find a creative way out of a problem. She’s done it, so I know I can do it too, and that makes her much more valuable than Wonder Woman.

Technorati Tags:
Post Partum, Depression, Career

The show that CBS couldn’t kill, Jericho, returned for a short season last night. Good episode, if a little awkward and missing a couple important characters. Great to see an excellent show back on the air, though.

If you haven’t seen Jericho, it’s the story of a small town in Kansas dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear strike that brings the U.S. to its knees. The only question is who did it? Was it Iran and North Korea? Or an inside job?

The evidence points to an inside job, and it looks like the show has shifted from dealing with the loss of the outside world and all its comforts to the drama of a new, reformed government that the citizens of Jericho aren’t sure can be trusted.

Oh yea, and a little revenge side story as the main character, Jake decides whether or not he wants to kill the man who killed his father in a clash between Jericho and a neighboring town.

Technorati Tags:
Television, Jericho, Armageddon

Great episode of House about change. Can people change? Ever?

But holy crap, what’s going on in the Garden State?

Barstool Sports - The dangers of over-spray-on-tanning. Honestly, what’s the deal? This page has pic after pic of bad spray-on tans. So, are they going for the bad spray-on look? On the one hand, I hope that’s the case, but I’m afraid they just don’t know how bad it looks. Are they going for a cross-racial look? If so, it’s not working.

Maybe they just don’t have the money to go to where it’s really sunny. And what’s with the grim expressions? Are they still pissed about the Sopranos finale? Were they Patriots fans?

Are they just unhappy to be from New Jersey? If that’s the case, come on. There are much worse places than Jersey. There have to be. But man, they look unhappy.

Maybe they don’t like having their picture taken. Maybe somebody just told them how bad the spray-on tan looks.

I don’t know.

Technorati Tags:
Funny, New Jersey

Love this…

WordPress Dash.

Handy.