Misworded Mondays: What is your Attractor?
Haven't touched on the Mondays in awhile and I wanted to change up the format a bit as I wanted to talk about the 'attractor' for a website. Quite literally, an attractor is '...a set to which a dynamical system evolves after a long enough time. That is, points that get close enough to the attractor remain close even if slightly disturbed.' I'm playing with the definition a bit to apply it to websites (blogs and non-blog alike) because beyond our initial intents, it seems that all of us end up with an prominent attractor as the life of the site continues. There is one word or phrase that brings people to your website more than anything else except maybe the literal name of your site. Let me provide a few examples culled from site statistics.
This site, Hudin enjoys the most searches for, "caucasian dreadlocks" followed in a close second by "ass". The most logical choice, "hudin" is actually #7.
#1 Fan enjoys actually having "elia" as her first and foremost attractor, but has the distinction of being the center of all things, "comida hawaiana" for the most common non-site related term.
Maneno is quite new, so these things are harder to trace, but after "maneno" and "maneno.org", "ben affleck" gets a good number of hits for my endless rants about the guy.
Other sites I run get a bit more tame, such as Belden Place which people find by many different forms of "belden" in their term which leads creates the attractor.
But others dip in to strange waters when it comes to what formations attract people to those sites. For instance, my friend Oso has a great claim to fame in that people appear to find his site through searches about "anal bleaching". Yum. Read up if you're really curious. Then of course, a past employer, Zoetrope All-Story had, for the longest time, "midget amputee sex" as its attractor.
This can at times seem random, although it almost always correlates in to a few things. One is that you have some really bizarre term or page on your site that just doesn't really exist anywhere else and so the search engines have grabbed ahold of your site as a relevant result. Two is that you have purposely decided to work on SEO to grab these terms in which case, good for you. Third is that Google is purposely doing this to you in an attempt to categorize the net.
In talking to some folks who work at Google last year, it appears that Google made a really big push to have businesses be listed as businesses among other things. This is most likely the reason why Belden Place gets the vast, massive majority of its searches for "belden place" while I'm sitting here fielding hate comments and mail from people pissed that I think their "caucasian dreadlocks" are repulsive. Haven't changed my stance on that by the way and I beat my chest with a good degree of pride knowing that it comes up as the #3 result on Google.
But is there really anything you can do about this? Should you even care? I know a number of people with blogs who write up posts from time to time wondering who these weirdos are searching for this crap on their site. Otherwise, there isn't much to do except exclude the pages altogether or maybe monetize them if you want to take advantage of the fact. The important thing is that at least somewhere near the top of the list, the attractor that you actually want people to use to come to your site is working. While "hudin" is a #7 term for being an attractor, it happens that it's #1 on Google search results and "tea reviews" brings up hudin.com in the top ten, which is good stuff.
But, I pose the question to those of you with sites out there, what is your attractor?
By the way, I was going to call the attractor, "blognate", but thought better of it after seeing this. Obviously, "blognate" is one of their attractors.
30 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: attractor, google, language, misworded mondays, seo
No, that business is flat-out Real
In worthless gossip rags that I love to read, such as WWTDD, it's usually the case that the first commenter to chime in always said, "first!". This was soon challenged for the number one moron comment spot by "fake!" whenever some hot girl was the feature of the article whose breast authenticity was being called in to question. I don't really care as either answer keeps me from delving in to the sordid world that is blog article comments.
I bring this up as when watching, this video, the natural response is to blow it off as a fake. Oh no, but it is not. It's the typical approach to Princess Juliana International Airport on St. Martin in the Caribbean. Take a look at a couple more shots from Google Image Search or look at the fellow below, where I love the warning sign about the planes coming in and everyone just sitting around staring at that hulking bird from KLM coming in.
The reason for these absolutely low, apeshit landings is best seen on Google Maps. The runway is a mere 2,433 meters long. For comparison, the runways most of us usually land on at SFO are 3,231and 3,618 meters. What this short distance for St. Martin means is that the planes need to drop in exceedingly low on their approach, prior to touchdown and you end up with what is one of the more insane things to watch.
Of course, there is apparently only one airline still flying the 747 like the one you see in that video. Most other airlines are flying slightly smaller planes these days as flights are down, fuel costs are up, and taking a plane loaded with 500 or so people down a skinny runway was probably not anyone's idea of a safe time; at airline headquarters, as I'm sure the pilots get super buzzed about it. It should be noted that there have never been any incidents at the airport. This make sense, because the weather is good, the land is flat, and if the pilot had to land somewhere other than the runway, he has nice shallow water all around to dump in to and I'm sure on every approach the passengers must be thinking that that is probably what is about to happen since they see nearly nothing except water until they touch down.
29 03 2009 2 comments
Tags: airports, travel
Ah Setrill. How did I live without you?
For those who think they have a complete kitchen, get buggered, because unless you have a Setrill, your kitchen is far from complete. Most of us in the US are convinced that when it comes to pouring oil, this fellow is all you need. This is far from the case. While the tall dispenser is fine for lathering a pan in oil, it's not a refined pouring implement. You get a bit of a glug of oil at a time and when it come to making Pa amb tomàquet with this dispenser and it does more harm than good. You know how all the famous TV chefs out there cover half the tip of one of these things to control it better? That's because they're trying to emulate the Setrill and it's vast pouring superiority.
While the Setrill may be a funny shape and exist in a format where no two look alike (they're hand blown glass), they give you all the control in oil that you could want. To be honest, I don't know how I lived without one before. Hell, even chefs, like Daniel Olivella at B44 and the new Barlata recommend picking one up in Spain. I'll let you in on a little secret in that department: they're a pain in the ass to bring back without breaking and you can buy them in the US at places like Cole Hardware on Polk for the same or less than you would in Spain. Cole Hardware carries ones that were actually made in Spain and it makes life a lot easier.
Oh and if you're thinking that the traditional type is a bit too funky for your tastes, there are more modern ones such as this or in a matched set with a Vinagrera like this. Just don't like like what one of my family members who shall not be mentioned did and buy something like this for oil. That's for balsamic vinegar. It doesn't pour right to be used as a Setrill and that's what it comes down to; having a nice dispenser to lay down the perfect bead of olive oil on whatever it is that you're rightly makin' mo better with the oil.
27 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: catalonia, food, spain
Lonely Planet Blog Awards: Free books, beer, and condoms
Mi media mandarina (english: my better half) got wind of a Catalan travel blogger who had been nominated for best non-English blog at the Lonely Planet Labs 2009 Travel Blogger Awards. He had done well prior to the finals and we had a good feeling he would win. I won't try and build any suspense with this to say that he won the category but didn't win the overall prize. That prize went to Two Guys Around the World who are essentially two American guys blogging about traveling around the world for a year and now that they are halfway through, used up pretty much all of their money and are complaining about how "Europe is gonna suck" (they're still in Asia) due to the higher costs. I'm not overly swooned to have too much sympathy for them.
Anyways, this being the first event, Lonely Planet did a quite stellar job handing out the freebies. There were LP shot glasses, piles of guidebooks, LP condoms, Jelly Bellies in the shot glasses, more Pabst beer than you could ever want, an open bar, an open buffet, LP bookmarks, and probably a number of other things that I'm forgetting. They didn't waste any time once they started and blasted through all the awards. What the awards lacked in grace, they made up for in efficiency and throwing together a good time.
In theory they'll be doing this again next year. I'm sure it will be a bigger to-do, although who knows. Obviously some things might be improved upon as the grand prize "trophy" was four travel guides glued together as a box with a beer can spray painted gold and set on top. I kid you not. Obviously technical items were a bit hit and miss, but the only really big issues was that it was in the basement room of Pete's Tavern. Holy hell that room gets hot. But that aside, as I can just sit there and take the heat if I don't have to be social (which was tricky at this as I had to be social), there was no mobile reception. That was a big problem as it kicked Twitter out of the equation and let's face it, Twitter is the shizacklenasty for these things in SF. Because of that, #1 Fan had to run outside to send twits as they happened. Naturally this then happened when the blog award for Marc, the wandering Catalan man came up and I pretty much ended up dumbassing out and not taking a photo of the screen when he was announced as the winner. Sure, I can try to go Spanish and blame the heat, the wine, or general lethargy from getting up too early this morning, but in the end, I have obviously set back my Catalan In Training program by several months that will require a lot of lot of penance in my adopted country this summer (I'll probably be on grilling duty for lunch). A Catalunya i als catalans, ho sento. Sóc un cap gros i un tros de quòniam.
Beyond all of the awards and the freebies, it was interesting to see a cross section of the travel writing community in San Francisco. Be my reckoning, it's half hipster types, half business types, and some other percentage this guy who is at every free event I mosey on down to. It was just a shame for the heat in the room as it made it tough for a lot of folks to be social it seemed and everyone kinda split after the awards were over. Oh well, there will always be next year.
Oh, if you want to see what meager live action there was on Twitter, dig in.
Also, this photo by #1 Fan of the the fellow organizing the whole thing is quite frankly, genius.
26 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: freebies, san francisco, travel
The Shill: Vote for Maneno at the HRC Mobile Challenge
For anyone hasn't heard me going on about my main project of Maneno, you obviously are new around here. Regardless of whether it is new or not, let me give the almighty shilling needed to have you vote for Maneno on the Berkeley HRC mobile challenge.
Basically, this is a contest to win some prize money to fund what Maneno is doing a bit more. We could do a lot with $15,000 in having it go towards deployment of the mobile system that I'm working on using Frontline SMS. Naturally, the only catch in voting is that you have to log in to vote as well as vote for at least two other projects. So, white I know it could take a bit of your time, winning would mean a lot of thanks as well as even the possibility of buying a beer (or wine or barack) whenever I'm in your neck of the woods as a tribute to your vote.
So again, vote here for Maneno. Oh, and do it soon as the voting closes at 15:00 PDT on Friday. Shill: out.
25 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: maneno
The Secret of the Hit Song
Does everything sound the radio sound the same to you these days? Well, there's a reason for this. There are only four chords powering just about every one hit wonder song out there:
Of course, it's not just those four chords making the beat go on. There is also the issue of ripping off classical music, which Rob Paravonian pointed out in a rant:
And so if it's not either of those bits, it's probably something that Pee Schmuck Ho Coveralls Diddy sampled and stole. So yes, everything in music really is the same. This is why we're not buying any of it anymore.
23 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: music, video
US Protesters Loves their Not Gettin' Its
I am quite a fan of this article which is an op-ed piece on that moron tree sitter from Berkeley who got shot in the face with a tear gas canister while in Palestine. That article talks about how you can protest in the US and get a light slap on the wrist for getting out of hand, while there are actual dangers when you attempt to transpose this cavalier attitude outside our national borders.
Let's face it, the US is awesome. This country kicks ass. Life here is really easy even in times when we have a down economy. If you ever doubt this, then read this article and remember that drinkable tap water is pretty good stuff.
Don't get me wrong, there are huge problems in this country and it could definitely be even awesomer, but when it comes to fools like Canister Face, while I would never wish harm on guys like this, they do have these things coming to them. It's complete vanity to go and protest Israeli aggression in Palestine areas. I'm completely against the land theft and outright military onslaught of the Israeli government, but there is no way I'm going to go over there and protest this fact. I think a much better start would be to try and stop the billions of dollars in aid that the US government sends to Israel each year. Stop the money and you stop the armaments which lead to the military incursions.
However you want to look it, it never ceases to amaze me how US citizens think that it's the US wherever they are. This article on the most worthless of travels sites, Matador Travel, talks about how to smoke pot around the world. An interesting article for people who swear that pot isn't addictive. You'd think they could go without it for a couple of week trip, but apparently that would translate in a totally bummer trip. The one rather large point that the author is rather daft to is the fact that while pot may be legal in some of the countries on that list, it's usually only legal for the citizens of that country. If you're a foreigner you will most likely spend some time in the pokey if you're attempting to do your drug thing there. Let's also not forget that bringing your own pot in with you is just about the dumbest thing you can ever do because no country in the world is at all kind with those who are appearing to traffic drugs in to their nation. I did happen to learn that Croatia's rather hard line, piss off stance on marijuana makes me love the country just that much more.
In closing, a word to all the protesters wanting to change the world by "being" wherever the changing needs to happen: work on the US first and get a gas canister to the face later. Your one voice amongst the six billion+ of us will be much more useful if you do things in that order.
22 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: politics, us america
The Car and its Carhole Cost us $12,000 a Year?
It's no secret that cars cost a lost. From repairs, to insurance, to payments, to simpler things such as gas, parking tickets, a garage, traffic tickets, bridge tolls and the like, the bastards five and twenty (sorry, it's much more than nickel and dime) the hell out of you. I was pointed to this chart which really lays out the cost of having a car versus not having a car. As you can see, in San Francisco, this savings is estimated at $12,476 a year. Other sites put this figure a bit differently, but whatever the case, it's a lot. As you can see on the chart, the savings are even more in a place like New York City, but wherever you live, it's probably the fact that lowly, smelly, untimely, full of "strange" people public transit will save you money, not to mention the stress of driving.
For those interested in seeing just how much it could save, there is a handy calculator to compute this. It's not completely accurate though as it doesn't take in to account the fact that a lot of people in SF have bridge tolls and monthly garage rentals in addition to the daily garage rentals. I also don't know if it takes in to account insurance, which is a fortune for anyone in SF. Another thing that it forgets to mention is that walking saves you even more, which I choose to do more than taking public transportation because of my central location in the city.
This happened to coincide with a chat I had with a friend who is in South Africa that told me a small family can live comfortably on $20,000 a year in Cape Town. That sounds pretty good, but in truth, it doesn't take the two of us much more than that to live in San Francisco. The secret is not having the car. I mean, think about it in terms of what else you could do with that money. If you figure that it's $12,000 a year and say that a dinner for two is $50, that's 240 dinners a year you could have instead of a car. You could literally eat out 2 out of every 3 dinners in SF if you go sans car.
Of course, there is the problem that a lot of people I know don't have the public transit option between where they work and live. And I know how hard it can be to make that option work as was shown with taking BART out to Walnut Creek from SF for nearly two years and having to swallow up that 1 1/2 hour commute each way. But then again, if we make the bus or the subway a more common alternative in our lives (like using it whenever we don't have those commutes), then maybe we'll be able to part with the car more as more routes become available. All I'm saying is that with the exception of maybe 5% (or less now that we're kinda having a rather large crisis) of this country, $12,000 a year is helluva lot of money to just be able to drive these damned cars that have become such a part of American life.
20 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: cars, money, public transit, san francisco
Mutha Ucka Just Went and Blew my Uckin' Mind
I originally saw this here and that article author was pretty blown away by it as well. It ties in well with a past article I wrote called, The Brilliance of Editing. And it all goes to show why Puffy Blow Diddy Job Pee Ho (or whatever he calls himself now) is such a worthless hack. There are saps like him and then there are true samplers like the example above. Of course none of this bodes well for the music of the future because without some original content plugged in every now and again, are we just going to keep remixing the remixes until we explode? Most likely yes and is a great deal of the reason why the hipster is such a dead end that is epitomizing this before it really even happens to a massive degree. Just imagine ten years from now. I'll only be able to stand that if the world continues to produce good wine and cheese.
Oh, if you want more of this, go here although that one above is the best.
15 03 2009 0 comments
Tags: hipsters, internet, music
BART gets the Whole Digital Interweb Thing
A little while ago, I sat down with Melissa Jordan who is the Senior Web Producer for BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system here in the San Francisco Bay Area. For those who don't know, this is one of many Metro-esque systems that allows for inter-city connections within our compact corner of California. Without it, we'd be pretty hosed as it moves 375,000 people a day. While quite small compared to other transit systems, when you think about one third of a million more cars being on our few bridges that lead in to San Francisco, you realize that the BART fills a rather crucial link in people moving.
That being the case, they could pretty much sit back, loosen the ties and just make sure the system keeps running on time (it's one of the few system that really and truly sticks to its schedules). But no, BART has shown that they are one of the few transit agencies that have not only taken a dive in to the whole social media/web scene, but done so in a way that I feel is quite successful.
One might think that this being a government agency, it is taken a staff of 50 to do the work of 5, but in this case it is actually just a staff of two. Melissa is one of those two and one of her main jobs is handling the Twitter feed--twitter.com/sfbart. She joined the web "team" alongside her boss last year in June and has been twitting along happily, filling us in lost rats and the like. Let me just add that there is already an alert system to let people know of issues on the system via SMS or email, so Twitter is mainly an added layer of usability that the BART folks thought would be part of a larger web outreach program.
The time that she joined was a rather big time as far as the web and BART went. They launched a redesign of their site that was meant to be more warm and human; inviting in the visitor to the site as opposed to being an unapproachable site which you find at other transit agencies in the San Francisco region. Don't get me wrong, sites such as those for Caltrain, Golden Gate Transit, SF Muni, and AC Transit all do the job they need to do, but that's about it. Those agencies stopped just past the bare minimum. The BART site on the other hand is one that I feel is a good Web 2.0 site. Sure, as things in the web go, maybe it's a tad dated with the rounded corners as opposed to the lifted drop shadows that are all the rage right now, but at the same time, it's friendly. It's also promotes user-involvement. As Melissa pointed out, that user photo on the front is from a rider. It's not a stock photo. Little touches like that are what make a site more than just an informational portal, taking them to the level of being truly interactive as we sorta meant this web thing to be in the first place.
The website took many years to come about to its current state and I suppose that that is one of the things that defines the approach of BART towards the web. Some might just say it's bureaucracy at work, but I think it's a result of careful thinking because they seem to be doing things right as opposed to retail companies which just keep throwing stuff at their site until something sticks. Even Google is guilty of that behavior. But this thinking at BART, while possibly aggravating to those watching the progress from the outside, is very smart. For instance they have moved in to Twitter slowly due to it working quite poorly when they first started twitting last year, as you don't want people to start relying on something that is unreliable.
You feel a bit of this slowly dipping in to the water with the blog as well. It's not heavily promoted but it is definitely there. Of course, when you don't have open comments on articles (they need to be able to approve them to have them available which they can't just yet), it does take away a lot of the interactivity and immediacy of a format like a blog. So, the articles come across more as a basic news feed than a blog like most people are used to. But it is effective in promoting news in a format that is more lasting than just having a Twitter account.
The next logical question in all of this is that if you have a website, Twitter, and a blog, then surely you must have some kind of presence on Facebook? Of course and that seemed to be approached in much the same fashion as the other digital initiatives: methodically planned for a fast moving medium. Melissa admitted that their Facebook page is rather bland and boring and I would agree. This isn't that surprising as Facebook pages are pretty lame overall and tend to exist only because companies and entities feel that they have to have one yet aren't really sure as to why. But part of the reason that the page is quite scaled back is due to a large degree on the date they launched it, December 31st, 2008. For those who might not realize the gravity of this date, let me remind you that there was an incident with a BART cop shooting an unarmed, restrained passenger on New Year's Eve. When you have something like that happen, which does nothing but engender bad will towards an agency, things like Facebook often get put on the back burner.
But as Melissa pointed out several times, BART's main goal is to run trains and run them on time. This is why they have no web developers on staff and outsource the whole technical side of the web endeavors. Some might wonder as to why there is any of these endeavors at all. Wouldn't that money be better spent on new train cars?
Some might easily say yes, but they forget that public transportation isn't such a simple thing for Americans, even in as "green" a space as San Francisco. Most of us don't just turn to it as the regular choice in deciding how Point B shall be connected to Point A. This is a good deal of the reason why BART is pushing the web and social media to work for them. They are still working on a great degree of outreach and promotion, trying to maintain a constant growth in ridership. myBART is part of this as well and they work to try and get more people in to the system, especially during off peak times. So the moral in all of this is that if you need to know anything about BART, they've put it on the web for you. Going to a weeknight event? Hit up Bart. Need to know train status? Check the Twitter or sign up for the updates via SMS or email. Running something like a BarCamp? Tell people how to get to the location using BART and other transit options. This last one is something it seems no one is willing to do for BarCamps as everyone ends up driving.
It's all there. It's just a matter of using it. Oh and get yourself a Translink card if you live in the SF Bay Area. While it isn't running on BART just yet, the day is coming very soon and it has to be one of the best things to come about in public transportation since the agencies all set up websites thus allowing me to stop carrying five different schedules in my bag. Ah blessed interweb, how we love you and your series of tubes so wellz. Oh and public transit. That's good stuff too.
12 03 2009 2 comments
Tags: bart, public transportation, san francisco
