DISQUS

Ohhhhh! I hope they expand this to Seattle! Customer reviews are a wonderful idea ... health is more important than home improvement ( etc ), so much that we tend not to look at doctors and dentists as "service providers" who "work for" us, and entirely fail to do the kind of diligence that goes into buying a car. Even though the stakes are so much higher.

Great find!

Forrest's last blog post..Ghostly Photographs

... and what about "g-dropping?" Or maybe that should be droppin'?

You're a writer, yes? Spend an hour following the results Google will show you for natural language processing (NLP). Google uses their own in-house algorithms, but, the exercise will give you a much better idea about the state of the industry, and what's possible.

There's a "maximum entropy" model, which doesn't seem to be widely used in search engines. If you wrote "Mr. Goldman spent $46.87 this morning to park his car." your readers would see this as one sentence; the period following Mr, and in the dollar amount, don't terminate the sentence, or even the lexical term. Plenty of other examples.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, search engines generally ignore stop words: the, of, in, etc. Google seems to have that one both ways, at least in their search index, but anchor text is an open question: is "dentist in Wisconsin" treated the same as "... dentist. Wisconsin ..." in your example, if it showed up in a text link?

Forrest's last blog post..Ghostly Photographs

Interesting ... I know a lot of people struggle with host reseller accounts; planning to have a hundred of your own sites is a new twist, at least for me. I hope it works out for you!

How many of your sites are WordPress based? I'm guessing QHO has never given you trouble over that? My own web host caps CPU, etc, and apparently has notoriously low caps, so I've been thinking about moving.

Forrest's last blog post..The Joys ? and Pains ? of Moving

I think there's something essential missing ... and even if I'm fascinated with linguistics, I'm usually not this nit-picky. But I think in this case, you need to include how it's used in the definition. By the definition you have, above, any music file on any bit torrent network would be a podcast ... I don't think any 'casters would agree.

I'd add something to the definition to explain the word itself. "[...], usually in MP3 format" might be a nice start. That tells savvy users it will work on an iPod, and explains half the word. The 'cast or 'casting part, I'd connect somehow to talk radio. At least that's what it reminds me of.

Podcasting is essentially audio blogging; I'm not sure how you're going to put that into words and sound eloquent. But that's really the most important thing to communicate in the definition.

Wikipedia's introduction starts this way ... and is public domain. :D


A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added.

Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast", the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred from a personal computer to a mobile device after they are downloaded. As more devices other than iPods became able to synchronize with podcast feeds, the term was redefined by some parties as a backronym for "Personal On Demand broadCASTING".

Forrest's last blog post..The Joys ? and Pains ? of Moving

I'm not a fan of Michael Moore; my impression is that he tends to do more harm than good.

You're right about the timing of this release ... and I think he did the same thing for the last election? I hope it helps. Maybe it will rally the faithful, excite the base, and get people who don't want McBush, Term 3 out to the polls. On the other hand, M&M preaches to the choir. Bringing a million more voters to the polls in Washington won't change the fact that Seattle overpowers Yakima and we're going to vote blue, regardless ... the state-by-state Electoral College is fairly anti-democratic. But now I'm starting to rant on your blog ... sorry!

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

Interesting ... thanks for pointing this out. I've been looking to do a little bit of moonlighting in my spare time, and while I'm still evaluating this place ... I like that the first thing I see is writing tips on their front page. Their advice really strikes a chord; "read everything" has contributed as much to my career as actually working.

Somewhat off topic, but do you read Language Log?

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

Have you used gmail? It's a lower tech solution ... but a better one. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I'm not sure why anybody uses Outlook? I use it, at work, because I'm forced to, and have to admit the calendar integration is pretty nice. Gmail has the same feature, but when an entire office coalesces around a particular system ... it's hard to change that.

Anyway, gmail has the best spam filter I've ever seen. I've been using it for close to five years, and have only ever seen one false positive ( legitimate email flagged as spam ), out of countless thousands. This includes email from random members of the public, as one of the comments above me is worried about.

It's also much faster than Outlook running on the desktop.

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

You had asked:

If you haven’t signed up for my list, please let me know why. Is the incentive too lame or are you just avoiding extra email? I would really appreciate any feedback you can give.

And the interesting thing is, you touched on the main answer in your question. I don't want the email. I have two addresses: one for personal correspondence, and the other, which seems to be down, is more of a honey pot. My Excite email address gets hundreds of messages a day, and has become useless, apart from having an address to give out at will.

The other reason - and I mean no offense by this - is that, as you mentioned, the reason for building these types of lists is to sell them. I have respect for you, based on everything you've expressed in your blog. I wouldn't be offended in the least if you decided to write me. But that respect doesn't carry over to partners you may have ... again, I'm not trying to single you out, but this general line of thinking is why I don't join lists at all.

In terms of incentives, I've joined the Union of Concerned Scientists' mailing list a few years ago, when my best friend stood to win a nice prize by recruiting enough people. I guess that's really the only type of incentive that would convince me ... making a personal friend happy.

I hope that reasoning and feedback is even a little bit useful?

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

Exact computer specs probably don't matter all that much ... certainly not enough to lose sleep over. I think most of it falls into two buckets: good enough, and not good enough.

I've run plenty of AMD and Intel chips, and write pretty intensive server software for a living. Both are up to snuff. AMD has some great technology. The new Intel chip is fantastic, too. I wouldn't hesitate to get either one of them.

I'd recommend Vista, mostly just because the writing is on the wall. There's Vista only software, and without knowing your personal and professional life very well, all I can say is that in my line of work, knowing how to use new software is a good thing. But, if you go the Vista route, make sure you get a real graphics card. I've never needed one before, but the difference between my home and work laptop is pretty amazing, and it all comes down to this reason.

For a hard drive, they're pretty cheap at this point, and you shouldn't have a problem with any of them. I'd highly recommend getting ~100 GB in a laptop drive, with an enclosure and USB cable, so you can carry it around, for example to client sites.

Feel free to shoot me an email if I can clarify anything.

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

I love The Economist ... I don't know that many people who subscribe, but I find the unique perspective, different choice of what to cover, and their semi-poetic writing style are almost music to my ears. I'm sure part of this is being British, with an air of formality ... but other than The Economist, the last time I read a sentence that began with "Your correspondent ..." must have been Dickens.

They say good writing shouldn't be noticeable, like good acting. But that's one thing that draws me repeatedly back.

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

I don't suppose you have any advice for ad hoc situations? I'm finding myself in one, taking on a site project to raise money for a very worthy charity ... not because I want to or feel especially capable, but because it needs to happen.

Sorry for the largely off topic digression! A friend of mine found a kitten on Bainbridge Island who'd been drop kicked, and I've agreed to help raise money for an MRI and whatever treatment the cat winds up needing. It's not what I'd choose to be doing, but the cat is suffering, and my friend, who found it, needs help. I've tried this once before, but if you have any advice, I'll be eternally grateful.

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

A friend asked me if I'd be able to write an application that will take a text file or dump of some sort, scrape an online thesaurus, and then replace some of the words in his document with synonyms. I think I just figured out why...!

Forrest's last blog post..4th of July Fireworks on Lake Union

Tread lightly, my friend! You're completely right ... but you're also dangerously close to the third rail.

I think when a person advocates a belief, that should stand on its own. Religion can be a powerful force ... but it's not so much of a justification. And it's also not as monolithic as people make out. If somebody wants to discriminate against somebody else, and claims religion as their reason ... chances are everybody else in that faith doesn't agree about discriminating against people. Still, whether it's because of a sacred book, or because of something they read on the internet, people need to evaluate the idea on its merits. And if we manage to do that ... people will have no choice but to become more tolerant, because that's the only thing that logically makes sense.

Forrest's last blog post..Talapus Lake in June Snow

This is a lot bigger and more complicated than I had expected! But ... I've been meaning to read this article for a few days now, and procrastinating. If that isn't a sure sign I could use some help in this area, I don't know what is!

I hope you don't mind, but I just sent this to a friend who's been talking for years about building a consolidated knowledge management system. The workflow you described is almost exactly what he's been talking about, but in far more general terms ... I think this will be tremendously helpful. ( Clearly, it must be, if you're able to write this blog on top of a full time job. )

Forrest's last blog post..Talapus Lake in June Snow

If you ever get a chance to work with a piece of software called Autonomy, give it a shot. It's not free or open source ... not even close. But Autonomy, and other software like it ( Lexalytics ) give strong hints into what can be done with software. There are a lot of seo myths about different ways Google might punish a web site; most of them are obviously not true, because it would be impossible. But it's almost frightening what's possible these days.

Forrest's last blog post..Talapus Lake in June Snow

It's funny; the four traits post seems to agree with your own advice, about my own blog's biggest weakness: posting often enough, consistently. I don't think many readers are going to accept it being summer, and finally nic out, as an excuse...

Forrest's last blog post..Talapus Lake in June Snow

I think this is much less of a big deal than you seem to ... I'm not sure how most people feel these days, but I'm curious?

We all know we should save money, and we all know a bank account isn't a very good way to do this. There are any number of "socially responsible" mutual funds. I read about these when The Economist covers them, but that's not often enough.

Anyway, I think most people can agree on most political "issues." Your whales post helped prove that, and it's wonderful how many people went out of their way to get involved! As long as you stay away from the third rail, I think most people really do agree on the basics. We all want to make the world a better place; we might disagree on some of how to do that, but common sense ( hopefully! ) pulls most people together on most questions, other than the very controversial ones. SIDS seems to be another case where everybody agrees we should do something...

So: thanks for doing your part in the world! And good luck, as far as integrating this into your blog without changing your focus too much, or alienating everybody. I have a feeling you'll manage to do both pretty well...

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams

I don't actually use Linux at the moment, apart from my web hosts. I'm not doing much, at home, in the software industry lately ... the weather is, at least sometimes, too nice to be indoors. But Linux is one of the reasons Google was successful out of the gate, and we can all take advantage of that.

For most, IT is a cost center. Software and computing are "enabling technologies," or stuff we need ... but nobody buys your product because you use Excel 2007. That contributes to a business, but isn't the cause for its success. On that note, if people are able to get the same work done as efficiently, but spend less, they have more profit, or can lower their prices to be more competitive, or ...

Google needed a lot of computing power, so they gathered a lot of cheap computers, and ran free Linux instead of expensive Windows on each of them. If I had dozens of servers, I'd be looking to do the same. I prefer Windows on the machine I do my work on, but for specific reasons that don't apply to everyone else. That means I'm burdened with a cost others don't need to take on.

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams

When did creating avatars become an example of an "interesting feature?"

A white-list can't work. No amount of distributed, volunteer effort will be able to cover a per cent of the sites on the internet. New web sites are being created faster than they can be reviewed. More troubling to an initiative like this, there's a market for people to build a web site, attract a reputation to it, and then sell the thing. Which means a previously acceptable web site may stop being acceptable...

@Monavie;

Two things:

(1) Japan isn't trying to drive whales extinct. How would it benefit whalers to kill off the last of their pray? Extinction is one possible outcome of whaling policy ... but nobody in their right mind thinks Japan is trying to drive whales out of life. To say they are, is to set up straw men.

(2) The Yangtze-River dolphin is probably extinct ... in China! You can't say "Japan is trying to make whales go extinct just like their Yangtze River dolphins."

If we want to be taken seriously, we need to start by clearly speaking the truth. The #1 thing people can do to derail an effort like this, is to make the people behind it look ignorant. We all need to be careful not to provide good sound bites for anybody who has an interest in whaling.

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams

This is incredibly sad. "Research" seems to be a code word, the one thing a lot of people won't complain about. I sent Canon a letter about the matter, as a faithful customer, since they advertise about 'shoot it with a camera' ...

Stephen Pinker is one of people who's been talking about moral progress. In the Dark Ages, in Europe, they used to burn cats to death in public for peoples' amusement. Today, it's a struggle, but a lot of people in the world believe it's wrong - immoral - to inflict suffering on another creature if it can be avoided. That seems to apply more to people like everyone reminding this, than the people who decide that whaling for "research" is ok. But the more of us believe it, the more that belief spreads, like a positive feedback loop.

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams

Very very interesting. I just sent this on to a friend who's fallen in love with Outlook - I think she could benefit from the Jello Dashboard. I seem to have a pretty strange workflow, between not using RSS readers, Outlook ( gmail does everything I need ), and the like ... it's hard to personally see the appeal of a lot of the software other people fall in love with, but that doesn't change the fact that most people do.

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams

I keep a spare to my car in a jacket pocket, and then try my best to forget about it. Obviously, I haven't done such a good job forgetting... I was driving through the Cascades with some family, on one of the ( dirt ) forest service roads, when we lost the car key for a while, and the experience stuck with me.

So you aren't very impressed that Scott McClellan started telling the truth either, huh?

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams

I'm curious ... which bells and whistles of Photoshop do you find missing in The GIMP? Other than the GUI ( which is pretty sweet in CS 3 ! ) I haven't really found it lacking. There are even some things that it beats PS in, hands-down. They're probably all esoteric ones, but true 16-bit histograms, and the like, can be invaluable in challenging photography. In CS 2, the curves adjustment was a dialog box with a spline; in CS 3, they seem to have borrowed the idea to show a histogram in the background from the GIMP.

You might give Paint.net a try. It's open source freeware for Windows, designed to mimic Photoshop Elements. It does a decent job ... this one really is missing a great deal, but it has the basics. The two things it does better than GIMP, in my ever so humble opinion, are resource utilization on the PC, and having a user interface that doesn't intimidate.

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams

It sounds a bit like one of the recent changes to either wordpress hosting, or at least some of the hosted blogs I read. They're starting to show links to related posts at the bottom, near the comment form. It's ... interesting ... to see the chain. A lot of them are only tangentially related, but, still, you can find things you'd never read otherwise.

And I think "that's the rub;" finding new information, on the edge of your niche, can be a huge asset. New ideas, new inspiration, new sources of raw information, can break you apart from the pack. You mentioned everybody writing exactly the same thing, just rewording what everybody else is writing ... it's a sad state of parts of the blogosphere, but it's also the opportunity to stand apart from the pack.

Ironically, I really don't have much use for the software itself, and yet I'm very curious about how it works internally. I've been doing a lot of work along similar lines, with term extraction, Bayesian inference, and the like. I doubt that's how this works, but there are some fascinating ways to model relevance inside the computer. And learning technical details on this stuff makes you put a lot of thought into the basics of writing, that most of us haven't even considered since third grade.

Forrest's last blog post..God Beams