What Makes a Good Blog

I added a new post over at Where's Adam's iPod, it has been a while. Merlin Mann from 43Folders.com (and various other endevors) wrote about what makes a good blog. I applied his thoughts to Where's Adam's iPod and rated the site (no surprise- it scored low).

Regardless, I thought Mr. Mann's points were good, and worth repeating:

1. Good blogs have a voice
    
2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things.
    
3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go...There’s a story here.
    
4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated.
    
5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect.
    
6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s.
    
7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog.
    
8. Good blogs try...A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
    
9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules.
    

Spell Check Limit? Please...

I really don't get it. I've used web based e-mail from Yahoo, GMail, Comcast, even Netscape back in the day. Why oh why does Hotmail (aka Windows Live Mail) have a 2,000 character spell checking limit?

Advocacy for Good Enough

"Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please."
-- Pythagoras

Minnesota Summer

After work on a summer day.

Debugging Quote

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
-- Brian W. Kernighan

Ambitious, for what...

"To the ambitious, for whom neither the bounty of life nor the beauty of the world suffice to content, it somes as penance that life for them is squandered; that they possess neither the benefits nor beauty of the world, and if they are unable to perceive what is divine in nature, which is all around them, how will they be able to see their own divinity, which is sometimes hidden?"

-Leonardo da Vinci

Defining the Vatican

The Vatican at Large: Mysterious, secret, even slightly paranoid, but at its heart, a place of simple beauty & piety.

- Me.

What makes a good committee

"To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent."

-- Robert Copeland

Separated at Birth?

I don't do the celebrity gossip thing, but this is some eye-catching stuff.

Caption: Christina Richie has a twin.

Where resistance comes from

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

-Thomas Jefferson M. deStael, 1807.

Monkey Business

There's this whole "Monkey on your desk" concept going around and I'm not sure I'm on board with it. The concept is to not let anyone leave a monkey on your desk. The translation is that if someone comes to you with a problem make sure they leave with it.

The undertone is that this applies when people shouldn't be shifting their problem to someone else. Sometimes the monkey really belongs to another person, and the situation is probably more of a case of "I'm returning your monkey, you left it down the hall". The think I'm not pleased about is the temptation I see for people to ignore the undertone, and just go with a "No Monkey Parking" philosophy. I can actually see it now, little signs that have a silhouette of a monkey with a red circle and slash through it.

Maybe I'm just jealous. The chant is a simple to remember (and appealing to enforce), but in my current assignment I'm pretty much a monkey nanny. I can't just tell people to take care of their own damn monkey when I'm being paid to clean up monkey poo. So while those around me act like primate-haters, I'm knee deep in…well, you get the picture.

Universal Goals

Having a goal is described as a good way to get motivated and stay on target. In thinking about goals, I came across a quote from the white House press secretary describing the President's message to the Pope during his visit to America. This 'goal' is interesting in that it is simply the President echoing the Pope's goal-- the pope says "X", the president says "America needs to hear X".

So X marks the spot, and this X seems like a universal one a lot of people could adopt:

"He will hear from the president that America and the world need to hear his message that God is love, that human life is sacred, that we all must be guided by common moral law, and that we have responsibilities to care for our brothers and sisters in need, at home and across the world," said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

When things go really wrong

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." -- Douglas Adams

Not an Opera Fan, but this might be worth investigating...

From MSN (yeah, I know, what ever...)

Illnesses Cause 2 More Debuts at Met

March 23, 2008, 4:57 PM EST

At this rate, the surgeon general could issue a warning that singing at the Metropolitan Opera can be hazardous to one's health.

Illnesses have knocked out stars at dizzying speed, with six singers making unscheduled debuts in leading roles over 13 days.

Three tenors appeared as Tristan, one of whom stopped the show when a set malfunction sent him tumbling into the prompter's box. A soprano took over Isolde in mid-performance, and two other sopranos were thrust into Verdi operas on short notice.

Some singers spend years waiting a chance to sing on the Met's stage, working their way up at regional theaters with the hope they can become the next Luciano Pavarotti or Birgit Nilsson. Various viruses have catapulted those waiting in the wings into the spotlight, usually with not even a single stage rehearsal.

Angela Meade, a 30-year-old soprano still in vocal school, hadn't sung a single professional performance before her debut Friday night as Elvira in Verdi's "Ernani."

A little more than 16 hours later, tenor Robert Dean Smith sang Tristan in a performance simulcast to theaters worldwide. He jetted in from Berlin on Thursday, had a few piano rehearsals Friday and planned to head back to Europe on Sunday. Even Met General Manager Peter Gelb joked that the revival of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" was "cursed."

More at MSN Entertainment, probably Topix.net too.

Quit Procrastinating

While procrastinating doing some MBA research, I decided to quit procrastinating copying the pictures from last week's robotics competition in Milwaukee. Most of the photos were blah, but this one seemed to sum things up nicely. It is an action photo showing the Eagan Blue Twilight (Team 2220) Robot reaching for a ball on the overpass (blue robot to the right in the photo, arm extended upward) while the Edina Green Machine takes a dive backwards. The Green Machine ended up disabled and laying on the ground, but the team made repairs and the robot recovered nicely in later matches at the competition.

Naked City writer Malvin Wald Dies

Original Line: There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.

Updated to 2008: There are 8 million blogs on the Internet. This has been one of them.

Malvin Wald dies

Six Word Stories

A book of thousands of six word stories has been published. The book's title, "Not Quite What I Was Planning" (by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser) is an example of the kind of stories in the book. Some others...

"For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn"

"Bring it to a boil. Often" - Mario Batali

"Revenge is living well. Without you" - Joyce Carol Oates

"Wasn't born a readhead; fixed that." - Andie Grace

- From the Kindle Daily Post, Feb 13, 2008

From the editor of the newsletter:
One Life. Six Words. What's Yours - Molly

On Economic Forecasting

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

It's time for Carnival- Winter Style

Look up the Winter Carinival in Wikipedia and you will find:

In 1885 a New York reporter wrote that Saint Paul was "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation" in winter. Offended by this attack on their Capital City, the Saint Paul Chamber of Commerce decided to not only prove that Saint Paul was habitable but that its citizens were very much alive during winter, the most dominant season. Thus was born the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.

It's still pretty cold out there, but the sprit seems right and the storyline, with the winter king boreas being banished by Vulcan, thus allowing summer to come is pretty fun.

(fyi, the photo credit for the ice sculpture goes to Gregg at Metro Blogging)

Charlie Rose on Why Bloggers Blog

In an interview with Jeff Bezos (founder and ceo of amazon.com), Charlie Rose mentioned a quote he (Mr. Rose) has apparently said several times on his show:

How do I know what I think until I see what I've written.

This could be the Blogger Mantra.