Question: How do you top off a 2 week period of ridiculous workload and a horrendous cold, both of which stop any enjoyable activities (like blog posting or blog reading) in their tracks?

Answer: You top it off with what is likely a fuel pump that gave up the ghost while driving home through the country, 5km from home at 11 o’clock at night.

There’s no where to go from here but up…. I hope…

I just noticed after my last post (minutes ago) that when I go to my blog site in Firefox it brings up a dialog box with something about ‘spam-uk’ in the prompt. If you cancel it, all else appears normal. It does not appear if I go directly to a particular post, but if I go to http://jack-of-all-tradez.blogspot.com it brings up this dialog. Also, the same behaviour occurs in IE6 but NOT in Opera.

Anyone else had this problem when logging onto my site directly?? Please let me know.

(Followup - the source site for a clip art image in a previous post started requiring users to log on. So when the blog tried to load that image, it brought up the dialog box. - the image is now gone, and so is the dialog box apparently… )

Some follow-on discussion about the linking question by Justin Peterson who makes a very good point in that while I want the viewpoint of the writer on a given subject, it’s likely not the only view I want. Moreover, I prefer to own my own judgements on things. So linking me to supporting material is valuable to me (maybe not to the blogger) but to me.

Seth Goldstein writes:

Strong web bloggers no longer link.

Somebody better tell Seth Godin, Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, Mike Arrington and many others about this so that they can catch up.

Seth also writes:

They recognize their power to shape thought and would rather take the risk of losing attention than the certainty of letting it flow onto others.

So that’s it… It’s attention driving all this. Reputation, attention, influence, all of them are built and earned - much like respect. The question is whether or not linking makes earning those things easier or more difficult. To be honest I really don’t want you to shape my thoughts. I’d rather you provide me the material to shape my own. The quality of the material you provide and the way you provide it will define your reputation in my mind and hence will define the attention you will get from me. Remember, attention is something that you get from me, but you don’t get it for nothing, you have to earn it. In my mind, linking helps you earn it, not linking doesn’t.

There is something about the interconnectedness of blogging and the web in general that makes information silos seem unnatural. You’re feeding off the web for information but not necessarily feeding back into it. You are utilizing only a portion of the power of the medium by not linking in order to forward your own goal (being a thought shaper I guess..), which is fine - to each his own. I guess the gist of it is that information silos are a bad thing, unless the silo is me. Bah.

[Follow up: I should have (and forgot to) pointed to the post about the Gillmor Gang podcast that started all this.]

A while back I saw a post about ZBrush, which is a 3D modeling application. I’ve dabbled a little bit with 3D Studio in the past and use AutoCAD quite extensively for work (although exclusively in 2D). So I thought I’d check out their demo (10 day runnable demo I believe). The things it can create are just amazing. Taking a brief look, it’s completely obvious that I would need a ton of spare time (something I don’t have) to even begin to fiddle with this thing properly. But what really blew me away was the GUI. It’s completely non-standard as compared to any other Windows (or Mac) app I’ve seen and appears to be almost laughably complex (to a newbie anyway). It took me a good 30 seconds of scanning the screen to figure out how to even open a file! It almost harkens back to old versions of 3DStudio. I’m sure the interface gets the job done properly, but if you’re the type of person who thinks that standardized/simplified interfaces are the way of the future, then definitely DON’T check out ZBrush. The zoom menu alone almost gave me motion sickness! Here’s a screenshot.

Listening to Steve Gillmor’s latest diatribe against linking during the recent Gillmor Gang podcasts (part 1, part 2, part 3), I’m left just scratching my head about exactly what it is he’s trying to get across. What I hear back from the other side of the argument is a list of practical, logical reasons why linking is a good thing. As always, I side for practical and logical - such is the nature of an engineer I guess. It appears that Steve thinks that by linking out to someone else (or ‘sending them away’ as he put it) in fact hurts more than helps your reputation. Here’s my take:

1. By linking out to referenced work by others, you can back up the statements you are making. It tells me that you’ve done at least some homework. It tells me that you may have considered more than one side of the issue. To me, it builds your reputation (provided the links are useful to me).

2. By linking out to other sites with other views on the topic (either competing views or shared views or both) it tells me that you’re not afraid to let your argument stand out there to be tested. Again, to me, you’re building not diminishing, your reputation.

3. By providing links (good, useful ones) you are providing a practical service to me. You are making it easy for me to follow up on issues that interest me. You could be generating other ideas for me to explore. You’re expanding my horizons.

4. If you honestly think that forcing a link to open up a new browser window is good thing you are sorrily mistaken. You should give the readers of your blog a choice. If you don’t, you become a pain in the ass and everyone knows a pain in the ass is something users will not (and should not) put up with.

5. Your readers aren’t idiots. If they want to explore the links placed in a blog post they’ll middle-click the link in Firefox or Opera so it opens up in a new tab. I’m sure IE7 will support similar functionality (I don’t use IE6 so I don’t know what those users would do). When I read a blog post (in an aggregator or on their site) I routinely middle-click the links that interest me and go read those posts while keeping your site open. This is what you’re trying to accomplish Steve, but by not giving me the choice to do it your being a pain in the ass.

6. I could be wrong and maybe you’re stating this whole thing just to be a pain in the ass and generate traffic for yourself. But of course the ‘page view model is dead’ - sharing a grave alongside Office no less…

7. Steve, it actually doesn’t really matter what you do on your blog. Your reputation is being carried and built by, and on the podcasting medium anyway.

8. Doc Searls provides a very valuable service to me by providing such good links. Providing good links is key of course. By the way, providing shitty links is probably a faster way of degrading your reputation than not linking at all.

9. On a slightly unrelated note, I’m begging for mercy here. Please someone stop it with the ‘o-sphere’ references. Blogosphere, podosphere and now linkosphere. Gimme a fucking break-osphere. After a while, the terminology becomes not only annoying but actually starts to diminish the significance of your discussions.

10. And finally, just to piss you off, I’ll link to you directly: Steve Gillmor

Window’s venerable Notepad application is normally the subject of derogatory comments whenever someone critiques Microsoft’s OS. But one thing I do like about Notepad is a little known feature that I use quite often for creating log files that track conversations or lists of tasks relating to a specific project: The Log File Trick (there is probably some other more proper name for it, but thats what I call it).

The trick is this:

Step 1: Create a blank text file by right-clicking inside an open folder and selecting New…Text Document.

Step 2: Open that text file and enter the following in the first line of that file: ”.LOG”

Step 3: Save the text file.

So where’s the magic? Well, if you open up that text file again in Window’s Notepad it will automatically add the current date and time to the text file. So each time you save and open the file, it will add another current date and time stamp automatically. This makes it very useful for things like logging phone conversations regarding projects.

There you go, a quick hack for Notepad for those of you who prefer to have many sharp well-defined tools under their belts.