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A day or two after posting my very informative and inspirational article about how to bathe a dachshund, I got a funny comment on it. It was from a dog, from a dachshund mini at that.       It appears that the little fellow has a blog written from his perspective, here. The title says it all, "Archie - long body, short legs". He talks about many subjects, not just to the ones relating to his life as a dachshund but other items is regards to dogs at large. It's a funny site and given my like of dachshunds, I enjoyed it a bit. I think they're in England somewhere. So, if you like dogs and reading about things from their point of view, this is your blog.

It's a fact that the vast majority of the information on the internet is written in English. Even a site that pulls together all this information like Global Voices still uses English as its main language. This is a shame. It's not a shame because it's using a single language, but that English has become so dominant on the web. It was somewhat inevitable as the vast majority of the components that drive it are in English. I mean, if you look at the code driving any page, you'll see all these English words in there. So, it's a given that to be able to set up sites, you'll need to be able to understand some degree of English.       I think it's this last point that really was excluding a great many people for a good long time. But now that there are so many packages you can use where you don't need to be a native English speaker to have a blog. Tossing up an installation of Wordpress or using a pre-fab system like Blogger or even Livejournal is possible by a great many more these days.       Unfortunately we still come back to the point that English has become so dominant in the world and if you're a native English speaker, you're bound to not know very many if any other languages. So, what do you do if you want to be informed about the rest of the world? Simple. You revert to the method of our ancestors and use pictures. Yes, it's primitive, but still quite effective. It's on this point that I'd like to point out a few blogs that are either wholly or partially photo-based and something that most native English speakers can follow. If not, fire up a little BabelFish and get a funky translation that might see you though.       Фотографоманство ('fotografomanstvo' in the Latin alphabet, which I think just means, 'photomanie') is a very compelling photographic journey by a girl living in Minsk, Belarus. The media is extremely controlled and the people there live under what amounts to an autocracy, so being able to see someone's daily life from the area is really interesting. The girl also has a very good eye and she was the winner of the Best of the Blogs.       A Best of Blogs winner for French, Cédric Kalonji is the life of Cédric in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Again, this is a nation without a free media, so his view from inside the country is quite interesting. Unfortunately for English speakers, we need to either dust off our crappy French skills or hit the Fish as most of it is in French.       Lastly, a friend named Timothée Rolin documents his life in Paris, France. Tim's site is almost completely photos and quite thorough about his life, so anyone can appreciate it and the partying that he seems to do non-stop when he isn't eating at La Fée Verte. If you're any kind of fan of The Real World or other crap reality TV shows, you'll probably get hooked.       Of course, there are a great many more blogs out there that people can follow. These are just some that I got turned on to which you may or may not know about and will hopefully enjoy.

Well, the moment that was bound to happen has finally happened. This, right here and now, is the site's 1,000th article. Yeah, I know, some might say, "Astounding!", "How'd you do it?", "Zads!", or "Where's the the naked pictures?" Obviously the most important thing to say at moments like these are that the naked pictures are in the Bay to Breakers sections: 2006 and 2007, as well as the Folsom Street Fair.       With cheap thrills out of the way, it's probably time to look at where the site is now, which is what I feel to be in a good shape. As mentioned before and probably will be mentioned again, there are 1,000 articles. I'm guessing that there are about 10% that are really good, 20% that are decent, 30% that are something to read if you're bored, and then 40% that are pretty bad. I tip my hat to those that have been with me the whole time. I looked back at some of the older articles and they're nothing more than my blatherings. In fact, I have been going back to re-tag older articles, and have been adding in ramblings as a tag. I might even make it so that some point in the future, if you prefer to only read the writings that I feel are prime, you could stop seeing these. And yes, I know that reading posts about the Academy of Art or how much I don't like certain haircuts can get old.       Despite all this, there were a few articles that I really liked, which if you are in an office somewhere, stuck in middle management, you might enjoy wasting some time to read:       Hey, what's up with the pole?       Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik Re-Visited, and Dubrovnik Re-Re-Visited       Balkan Buses Love to Die       Everything on Praving       How Do Budget Airlines Make Money?       Seven Rules for Contract Web Developers       That's probably enough to choke anyone. As you'll see in this list, most of these articles are relatively recent. There is a reason for this and it is my Number 1 Fan who challenges me to write articles that are more substantive and interesting. Without her, there would undoubtedly be more "80 Year Old Man" posts and really, the world of the blog needs no more of those.              Beyond the articles though, it appears that I've posted 1630 photos to the site. This is something of a bigger deal than the articles because a) I think my photos are a lot better and b) I've only been putting them up for the last two years with most of that focused on the last year and a half when I made the switch to a proper SLR.       Much like the articles, my shots have been readily improving with time. I must admit that while the vast bulk of these shots are mine, there are some from Number 1 Fan in there as well, since we travel and do just about everything together. So, if you see a wide shot that's particularly cool, that's most likely going to be hers. But, looking over all of these, I originally thought that my favorite gallery as of late was going to be Sarajevo. I do like that gallery a lot, but the one that I think is the most interesting is Belgrade. Both are wild places, but the haphazard collision of multiple empires in Belgrade really made for some interesting shots.              Well, enough of all this. Back to my day job that allows the stories to unfold. (That happens to be recounted in The Sometimes Office from time to time...) Oh, and leave a comment, so I know who is out there! People hardly ever comment and that makes me feel sad.

For those who don't know, Blog Action Day has come and gone this last Monday. It was a novel idea about trying to get everyone in the blogosphere to chat about a single topic; in this case, the environment. I wrote a post for it because I blather endlessly here and figured, hey, why not?       It seemed like it might do... I don't know, something. Well, in looking at the statistics that they amassed and my own site, it really appears to have done nothing. I think the post on Slashdot summed it up pretty well:              You can almost hear the sound of the vacuum created by bloggers thinking that their words matter when the people with control don't even know how to read the tubes. Lick a stamp or march- that's harder to ignore.              They're right. A great deal of us write just to hear our own voices and blogging is in general something of a reference system as opposed to an action system. And because of the ubiquity of blogs and email, using them for any kind of campaign doesn't really have the impact that we could hope it would.       But, back to the stats thing for a minute. Did I see anymore traffic on my site because I was one of the 20,603 bloggers posting about the environment that day? No. In fact, my traffic was a bit lower last Monday. Sure, I'm just one of thousands and a minor voice in a vast cosmos of bit and bytes that are running around the planet and I don't mind being overlooked. What I do mind is that this hasn't really brought any new faces in to the game. All the big posters that you can see on the Blog Action Day site were already big posters. The Technorati authority ranked blogs are pretty meaningless because to get up high in that list means already being high in that list. In other words, it's a joke, like getting in to something by having experience doing that something.       Maybe in the future, some juicy tidbit that someone wrote will surface and lead to a change in how we do things. But really, we're all bloggers and that was bound to happen with or without this event. So, in a nutshell, what has this really done except use up more electricity that's going to have an more of an impact on the environment?

I love launching new sites. I would use some over-zealous phrase like it's "giving birth to a new child", but that's a bit over the top and smarmy. Still, it's fun to release them on the world and see what happens.       The new site in question is www.elia.ws. Why .ws you might ask? Well, try and find elia dot something that isn't already taken and you'll be hard pressed to find one that's free. So, this was the best choice and it's rather fitting since Ms. Elia who writes there is a world traveler and the .ws extension was originally supposed to mean world site. While it was just one of the countless new domain names that ICANN has released in recent years, I find it quite fitting in this instance.       But, who is, Elia? I'll let you read what she says in her own words. Oh yeah... one other thing I might want to mention... the site is completely in Spanish. This proved to be a bit of challenge, but one that was worth undertaking because you have to get creative with things like month names (MySQL only outputs in English) and non-English characters (UTF-8 is a wonderful thing). Beyond those little stumbling blocks, as long as you have the lovely Spaniard with you to work on the site, it will all come up roses.       So, dust off your Español, or get out your BabelFish and get reading. She happens to have a delicious photos section if you're feeling linguistically impaired at the moment.

I have recently been shown the exploits of one, Rune Monstad, otherwise known as Viking Biker. The premise of his journeys and blog sounded fun, being that he's a Norwegian biking around all the continents for a couple of years and documenting it. Naturally, images of some blond, tall, long haired wild man popped in to my head as he tore around the open road on a Harley or something. But, no, this guy is pedaling a mountain bike everywhere. Thusly, it's taking him quite a long time to get places.       Probably the best thing about his site are the videos. They show that yes, he is indeed insane with frozen ice clinging to his face while riding his bike from city to city in Canada and refusing rides from people because it would destroy the premise of what he's doing. The videos also show that he has one of the thickest Norwegian accents I've ever heard.       Pretty crazy guy and in fact crazier than the one I had originally envisioned. A good read for anyone who is happy being wherever they are and not freezing while pedaling along a highway somewhere.

I just noticed that it must have been in the last batch of photos I put up where the number of photos has outpaced the number of articles. As of this article, I have 825 of these "nuggets". In Photos, I've got 831. Probably doesn't seem like a big deal to most, since we all know how many photos we take these day (I've got several thousand from just the last two years.) But, I've been writing since 2003 and only adding photos since about 2005.       I'm not really sure if this has any particular merit or proves any important math theorems, but it was rather inevitable given how much photography I do these days. Anywhere that I go, my Timbuk2 with a Lowepro and my 30D tucked safely inside go with me.

By now, if you read this puppy on any kind of a regular basis, you've realized that there is the ability to give feedback on any article. Yes, that's right, you can now school me or anyone else who might write here, if you think it's deserved.       The reason for this sudden change was for a couple of reason. One was that it was something I had been meaning to add in for a long time. This site isn't built on Movable Type or any of the other blog platforms. I built it myself, which means that when something new needs to be here, I have to add it. Another reason for adding this was that it had been requested. Most recently by a visitor from Europe, which brought me back to point one in that I really meant to add it and this was just another push. The last thing I'm hoping with this is that as I practice my Croatian on my own, due to my new lack of a class, I'm hoping that if I ever enter a blog article in the language, that those I know who speak the language will "gently guide" me in the direction needed so that I don't sound like the Croatian equivalent of Borat... Oh yeah, the site version has been upgraded to 5.3.1 as of now. It was a nice even 5.3.0 and then I realized I made an ugly boo boo after I pushed all this out.