Archive for June 2005
June 28, 2005
Stuff
5:46 pm | Thoughts | Comments: 28
With a killer title like that, no doubt you’re wondering where on Earth I might be taking this post. Good for you. There’s lots of things you can do when you’re walking down the street listening to your music. You’ve got your mp3 player, tape player, turntable, portable radio, laser disc, Victrola, or whatever portable medium you’ve chosen for the day, and you’re walking down the street with the headphones on. It’s cool to kinda move with the music. You know, a little head nodding, mouthing the occaisional lyric where appropriate, and so on. Two things you should not do: attempt singing out loud, and air drums. The singing is not welcome, and the air drums will make you look ridiculous. Trust me.
I am bemused to announce a highly-anticipated addition to the ever-stranger ARP Webrog ring. Josiah Gentry has entered the Webrogosphere (probably the first time “Webrogosphere” has ever appeared in print). Note to Josiah: this is the kind of pub that you will only be able to get from SIO.
June 25, 2005
SIO News in Review
9:32 pm | My Life | News | Relationships | Comments: 10
Normality Restored: Several days after the first-ever SIO Weblog Hooligan alert, we are pleased to announce that thanks to the Nuclear Option disaster was averted. All readers are reminded that although we are in a lower state of alert, all comment spammers and malicious imps will be given a 1-week ban from SIO. In a related note, the 1-week ban given to Kevin (a.k.a. Camouflage) has been lifted.
Medical Breakthrough: New levels of cool were reached today as James invested in contact lenses. Reports indicated that everybody involved was “stoked” about the results. Research is being done into who the first person was who decided to stick a piece of glass in their eye in an attempt to see more clearly.
PDA Condemned: Eye-witness reports from the lakeshore have noted frequent PDA among couples of varying ages. This is the sort of activity up with which decent people should not put, especially when the offenders are 50+ years old. That is just wrong. Said a SIO correspondent, “if women weren’t allowed to date losers, women wouldn’t date.” It has not yet been determined exactly how the statement applied to the context.
Soda Wars: Vault, a new soda from Coca-Cola, has been declared the official SIO soda beverage. The SURGE-reminiscent Vault beat out Mountain Dew Code Red, Vanilla Coke, and Fanta for the top spot. We highly urge all those interested in soda and specifically SURGE-like soda to try Vault. As of this date, the official SIO adult beverage is Warsteiner.
June 21, 2005
Halfway There
11:56 pm | News | Sport | Comments: 14
Congratulations to the Detroit Pistons on their win in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. After the crappy loss in Game 5, this was quite a relief. The Pistons took the lead early and didn’t relenquish it. San Antonio, on the other hand, had nothing in final minutes when it mattered most. This is the way basketball should be.
June 20, 2005
An Exhaustive Review of Weblogging Part III: Comments
11:13 pm | Weblogging | Comments: 18
Having discussed the generalities of weblogs, it’s about time we got down to some of the keys to successful weblogging. Let’s talk about what a successful weblog actually is. Strangely enough, weblog success has nothing to do with popularity. There are those out there who crave comments above all. The more comments, the “cooler” your weblog is, so say they. This idea is incredibly flawed. The first flaw with the comment-seeker’s plan is that you should never, as a weblogger, get caught up worrying about readers. Once you start worrying about readers, they will own you. Unless you want to be owned by a bunch of random foolios, I suggest that you make weblog posts on your own terms. All that being said, here’s some great tips on how to get more comments on your posts:
1. Make provocative posts - this always gets the quibblers in a rage.
2. Leave comments on other peoples’ weblogs - this is the number one way, in my opinion, to drum up support for your weblog. Shameless plug or legitimate feedback? Your choice.
3. Links - put a link to your weblog in your email signature, AIM profile, Facebook, anywhere you get a chance. This is not only just to get comments but simply to let people know about your online presence without calling them up to tell them about it (which would be pretty nerdy, would it not?).
4. Weblog Tracts - leave them in gas stations, bathroom stalls, what have you.
5. Brute Force - threaten to slash people’s tires, egg their houses, anything that you think might coerce people to comment your posts. Be aware that SIO does not take any responsibility or liability for any person’s actions in relation to this, and you are warned that much of this activity is in fact illegal. But hey, you gotta have comments, right?
Comment Nazis. They’re real, folks. Comment Nazis are the ones who alter or completely remove comments that they dislike or disagree with. I don’t have much respect for this practice; if people have taken the time to put a comment on your post, whether it be humorous or contentious, it should be allowed to stand. When you get a comment you don’t like, you have two options: you can act like a baby and run from the situation by deleting the comment, or be smart and find an appropriate way to respond to the comment. I’m not saying you can’t censor certain vulgar, obscene, or blasphemous words within the comment; just make sure the original intent of the comment is left intact, awaiting your witty and gracious response. If it’s really a stupid comment, why not let it stay, thereby allowing the commenter to make a fool out of him or herself? Aside from all this, maybe you get pleasure from being a Comment Nazi. My response to that would be, “It’s your weblog, do what you want with it.” There are situations when comments ought to be completely removed, such as when the comment is malicious in nature and/or made under false pretenses (pretending to be somebody else, etc.). Comment spam can also be removed without any moral dilemmas.
To sum things up, we have learned that 1) comments, though often entertaining and enlightening, are also often completely meaningless; 2) comments are neither the journey nor the desination of a post, they’re the bugs that get squashed on the windshield along the way*, and 3) Comment Nazism is to be frowned upon.
*If you didn’t pick up on what this means, think about squashed bugs as being a natural outcome of driving. Comments are a natural outcome of posting. If you have many bugs squashed on your windshield, it simply means you’re in a bug-infested area and/or have been driving for a long time. I’ll let you apply the analogy yourselves.
June 18, 2005
This is a SIO Special Announcement
11:16 pm | SIO | Comments: 30
In the light of recent attacks by weblog hooligans, the SIO staff has enacted the Nuclear Option. The Nuclear Option consists of all comment spammers being served with a 1-week ban from all SIO resources.
Comments are to be responses to the post, or to other valid comments on the post. Once again, we would like to encourage all random spammers to put their nonsense in RandomChat(tm). If you have random nonsense to spout, do not spout it in valuable comment space or you will be banned. Thank you, and have a great day!
An Exhaustive Review of Weblogging Part II: Breaking it Down
6:39 pm | Weblogging | Comments: 15
Continuing with our relentless persuit of the strange, we move onward, ever onward to a classification of all the weblogs in the known universe. There may be those out there who would disagree on how I am shortly going to break it down. Tough bananas.
All weblogs in the universe break down into two main categories: professional and personal. Professional weblogs are defined as those weblogs authored by (surprise) professionals and field experts who get paid to do whatever it is they post about. When I say professionals and experts I mean legitimate ones - not some guy who happens to think he is an expert. Let’s say you have two weblogs about the goings-on at Mircosoft. One is written by Stan Vanderonderdonkensma, a recent graduate of Dordt College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Dutch. The other is written by Bill Gates. Which one is the professional weblog?
Professional weblogs can come in many as many different forms as there are professionals and experts - technical, historical, theoretical, political etc. etc. These are the really useful weblogs. Ones that you can actually learn from. Personal weblogs are a whole different story.
Personal weblogs have already been defined: a random joker who feels like burning some time by spouting his or her random nonsense onto the internet. Ain’t the Internet great? Generally, it’s not wise to categorize things by subject, i.e. politics, computers, and so on, as there are far too many subjects out there on which random jokers are weblogging these days. They’re easier to split into sub-categories of style because it seems that random jokers are not very diverse in the style department. Here’s your primary types of personal weblog, in alphabetical order.
Crappy: This is about 75% of weblogs out there. Plain and simple. A good example of a crappy weblog would be one which deals with a 17-year old’s sexual fantasies. That’s just wrong.
Itinerary: the daily goings-on of the author, sometimes in step-by-step detail. I have said before that all weblogs generally have merit. This type of weblog is no exception, assuming you’re interested in the daily goings-on of the author in question. These weblogs tend to attract the attention of the author’s network of friends and not much else. This is perhaps the simplest form of weblogging, as all it requires is a bit of short-term memory and mediocre typing skills.
Link-n-Think: Easy to do, assuming you’re into the whole thinking bit. It also requires reading stuff and contemplating issues and other what-not. Once you’ve found something interesting, be it an issue or an event or some other random news item, just link to it and give your take. The average weblogger has a really easy time with this, as his or her only two takes on the news are either 1) “Dude, that’s pretty [expletive] lame.” or 2) “Dude, that’s pretty [expletive] sweet!”.
Musings: Some people don’t bother reading the news, opting to simply give their take on whatever they feel like. Again, this style of weblogging involves some degree of analytical thought, which the average weblogger seems to avoid like the plague.
Soap Box: Have you ever run into one of those people who have seem to have a blunt object lodged in their rectal area and seem to be taking their frustrations out on a particular issue or individual or what have you? Those people have weblogs, too.
Random: The Catch-all; the 5th; the Card Blanche; if it’s a weblog and it’s not anywhere else, it’s here. This involves weblogs about alien invasions, ductape, and rare types of tea.
Ocular: We can’t forget about Picture Blogs.
Zippidy-doo-dah: $10 if you can find me one of these weblogs.
Many personal weblogs will mix-and-match styles, varying their posts according to either the Chinese Zodiac or pure chance. Others will be very consistent, abiding by the 42nd Law of Weblog Physics, or as I like to say, Webloysics, which states, “A Crappy weblog tends to stay Crappy, and so on.”
June 16, 2005
Records are Dropping like Flies
9:38 pm | SIO | Comments: 12
Say hello to the first ever SIO spam! Thankfully it targetted the RandomChat. Spam makes me angry. Remember folks, if you make me angry you will be banned.
June 15, 2005
An Exhaustive Review of Weblogging Part I: Ideas
12:11 am | Weblogging | Comments: 4
Undoubtedly one of the largest phenomena within the phenomena of the Internet, weblogging has spread across the information superhighway like Kudzu vine across the South. When I first encountered it, it didn’t seem like anything special. Just type random stuff on a regular basis - the concept is ridiculously easy. That’s the nature of the internet, though. Something as mundane as a daily journal becomes exciting when combined with the Internet.
It’s been said of the Internet that whereas on T.V. you are famous to a large amount of people for 15 minutes, on the Internet you are famous to 15 people for a large amount of time. Weblogging is the best example of this. It took me a while to jump on the average-joe weblog bandwagon as I was apprehensive about inherently egotistical nature of personal weblogging that I percieved. “What’s the point of YOU having a weblog?” everybody would say. It was in the face of this criticism that I decided to do it. “The point is that I jolly well can” was my ultimate response. Don’t let anybody talk you out of a weblog if you want to do one.
Weblogging has ups and downs just like everything else in life. The ups can include catching up with friends old and new, engaging in lively discussion, providing nearly endless entertainment, stimulating your thought processes (very important, mind you), and the discipline of maintaining a daily journal. Downs? Your weblog might be hijacked by bickering and argumentation. Actually, that’s not a problem: just ban the old bitties with a .htaccess file. You might get carried away with posting and waste all kinds of time reading other peoples’ weblogs. I suppose this is more a problem with your time management, rather than the weblog itself. Actually I can’t think of any other downs.
Some of what’s coming in this post series might seem like slams on other weblog styles that I don’t like. This is not so; the only weblogs that I really slam are ones with negative redeeming value. I say negative because having none at all is perfectly fine - just random stuff that nobody cares about, no big deal. Negative redeeming value means it’s a constant stream of profanities, descriptions of lewd behavior, bad jokes, and/or pictures of Lyle Lovett. I can’t figure out who would win the ugly contest: Lovett, or Michael Phelps.
June 10, 2005
Set It Off 2004-2005 Year in Review
5:24 pm | News | Comments: 17
June 2004
- Set It Off
- Death of Ronald Regan
- Detroit Pistons win NBA National Championship
- Black Hat retires
- Berlin 2004
July 2004
- Greece wins Euro 2004 Championship
- Katie Porter graduates
- Martha Stewart convicted and sentenced to jail time
August 2004
- James purchases first MP3 player (later to be stolen from his car)
- Governor of New Jersey admits to having homosexual affair
- Blogger introduces the Randomizer™
- Women’s Olympic Beach Volleyball
- First SIO Music player implemented
- Senior year at GVSU begins
September 2004
- Marion gets engaged to Justin
- SIO achieves 3000 hits
- James switches to Gmail
November 2004
- George W. Bush elected to second term as President
- Mass liberal Democrat exodus to Canada
- Old Microphone retires
- Bird Flu first gains international attention
December 2004
- Marijuana discovered to be bad for mental health
- SIO slams Christmas
- MusicMatch Jukebox 10 released to the horror of all
- Earthquake, devastating series of tsunamis hits Southeast Asia
January 2005 – February 2005
- First Unoffical SIO Sabbatical
- Crickets heard chirping
March 2005
- Bird Flu ravages Vietnam
- Michael Jackson trial begins
- Bird Flu ravages North Korea
- SIO switches to StatCounter
April 2005
- New SIO Music player implemented
- Pope John Paul II dies
- SIO moves to jameswlanning.com and WordPress
- D’ni/Riven Information Source resurrected
- First post removed from SIO
- Government of Idaho passes legislation commending makers of the film Napoleon Dynamite
- Charles W. Krahe Jr. dies
- Senior year at GVSU ends
- SIO introduces RandomChat™
- Post “Schule” produces comment record of 51
- Mozilla Firefox achieves 50,000,000 downloads
May 2005
- RandomCam briefly implemented
- Bird Flu ravages Thailand
- 05:05:05 05/05/005
- Frank Oz discovered to not be dead
- Star Wars Episode III released
- Bird Flu ravages China
June 2005
- SIO 1st Anniversary
Life According to James Lanning
12:54 am | Thoughts | Wisdom | Comments: 4
Some priceless bits of wisdom collected from the pages of SIO.
Accidents, scientific explanations of:
“Due to a freak accident which involved gravity and possibly a tear in the time-space continuum, the RandomCam has been put out of service.”
Anger, management of:
“When you’re upset, there’s some things you shouldn’t do. Welding, target shooting, and weblog posts come to mind.”
Animals, disadvantaged:
“Street pigeons have a rough life.”
Comfort, dispensing of:
“Stay with me, people, everything’s going to be alright.”
Conspiracies:
“Remember back when the zipper on every piece of clothing used to say “YKK” on it? That was weird, man. Like some kind of secret society or something.”
Eating, strategy of:
“If you need to slam something in the middle of the night, chips and salsa is not your best bet.”
“Research is being done into how to eat a Korean meal without eating seafood, and Accounting 213 is just as boring as it was last year.”
Excitement, status of:
“I am stoked about this.”
Facts, establishment of:
“This, folks, is the proverbial it.”
Firearms, keeping and bearing of:
“Personally, if I had the money, I would be bearing arms as we speak (naturally, being a college kid, I am so broke I can no longer pay attention).”
“If you live in a state which infringes on your right to keep and bear arms, you’re being repressed in a very real way.”
Health, substances that might detract from:
“Apparently, smoking Marijuana (sometimes referred to as hemp, cannabis, weed, pot, dope, grass, or Mary Jane) is bad for your health.”
Infinitives, Splitting of:
“This is the sort of nonsense up with which we should not put.”
Life, reality of:
“Quite often, life is no picnic.”
Love, overcoming the influence of:
“Don’t let love get you down, baby. It’s going to be alright.”
Parents, waking up of:
“One of these days we’re going to spike her wine with Red Bull.”
Parties, most crazy-go-nuts:
“We were completely rocking it out with FOX News, Pepsi, and strange pieces of shrimp wrapped in Italian ham.”
Personal Finances:
“I don’t consider buying stuff to be an expense.”
Politics, participants of:
“There aren’t enough completely stupid morons out there to elect John Kerry… or are there?”
Pop Culture, usefulness of:
“Now that I mention that, most of Hollywood is worth adding to the Hall of Goofballitude.”
Questions, important:
“Answer me this. Why do guys have nipple hair?”
“You know, the guy? At the place? With, you know, that thing? Well, anyway, forget about him.”
Relationships, appropriateness of:
“Casual dating. It’s just no good.”
Relationships, inner workings of:
“I think getting married has alot to do with disillusionment as to the other person’s nature, personality, essence, whatever you want to call it.”
School, diverse student body of:
“The glory; the passion; the kinda-longhaired flipflop-wearing second-generation hippie wanna-bes: PREPARE YOURSELVES!”
School, effort required for:
“A good thing to remember about college: don’t bust it when you don’t have to.”
School, status of:
“I suppose I should make an official school-is-over post. School is over.”
School, useful testing methods used in:
“It’s a monkey-loving scantron, dang it!”
Statements, obvious:
“While I’m not considering this a new era, I have lots of random, senseless, and egotistical things to say which will doubtless be said at some point.”
Statements, random:
“As a matter of fact, when it comes to things that really matter, I would say that Wubble would have to be at the top of my list.”
Statements, piratey:
“AAARRRRRRGH!”
Statistics, helpful:
“The good news is that the Flip Flop Index showed an all-time low.”
Sympathy, general:
“I mostly feel bad for those types, by and large.”
Technology, eternal state of:
“Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all her microphones away.”
Traditions, useful:
” The tradition of Cardinals spontaneously combusting goes way back to the ancient days when robes were doused in crude oil.”
Vocabularly, diversity of:
“That reminds of how useful the word “buttcrack” is as an adjective.”
War:
“War, though regrettable, is a necessary fact of human life.”
Women, traits desirable in:
“Truth be told, I find the ability to establish a premise and support it to be incredibly sexy.”
