Category: Personal

Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Add Your Blog!.

This posting is a community experiment that tests how a meme, represented by this blog posting, spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The dataset from this experiment will be public, and can be located via Google (or Technorati) by doing a search for the GUID for this meme (below).

The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet (Permalink: http://novaspivack.typepad.com/nova_spivacks_weblog/2004/08/a_sonar_ping_of.html) results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawst (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google (or Technorati) for all blogs that participate in this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post (see URL above). (Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.)

INSTRUCTIONS

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and then answer the questions below, substituting your own information, below, where appropriate. Other than answering the questions below, please do not alter the information, layout or format of this post in order to preserve the integrity of the data in this experiment (this will make it easier for searchers and automated bots to find and analyze the results later).

REQUIRED FIELDS (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

* (1) I found this experiment at URL: http://www.zylstra.org/blog/archives/001379.html
* (2) I found it via Newsreader Software or Browsing the Web or Searching the Web or An E-Mail Message”: Newsreader Software
* (3) I posted this experiment at URL: http://www.mcgeesmusings.net
* (4) I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03/08/04
* (5) I posted this at time (24 hour time): 11:10:00
* (6) My posting location is (city, state, country): Chicago, Illinois, USA

OPTIONAL SURVEY FIELDS (Replace the answers below with your own answers):

* (7) My blog is hosted by: olm.net
* (8) My age is: 51
* (9) My gender is: Male
* (10) My occupation is: management consultant
* (11) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: Radio Userland
* (12) I use the following software to post to my blog: Radio Userland
* (13) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 22/10/01
* (14) My web browser is: MyIE2
* (15) My operating system is: Windows XP Pro

[Ton’s Interdependent Thoughts]

Now here’s a first for me. I’m sitting on the tarmac at Boston’s Logan airport in a United 737. Chicago is on a groundstop and we won’t hear anything new for awhile. They’ve let us turn on laptops, cellphones, etc while we wait.

Turns out I have connectivity via wi-fi somewhere over in the D terminal off to my right. I figured I had to post something just because I could. Ain’t technology grand?

We’ll take his word. We’ll take his word: Peter Carlson, the WaPost’s “Magazine Reader” columnist, reviews some nudist magazines and comes to this conclusion:

“The best thing about nudist magazines is that they give you a newfound appreciation for clothing.”

(via mediabistro.com) [rexblog: Rex Hammock’s Weblog]

I am definitely going to need this app over the next few months.

Friday Fun: The Killer App. Friday Fun: The Killer App —

Now that’s a menu for a power user. [Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance Blog]

Truly awesome pics. Maximize your browser to get them to fit.

Best SpaceShipOne Pix. Awesome job.

Thanks to Sandy [Due Diligence]

I’m now mostly back. A week without any net or cellphone access at all was a very interesting experience. My spam filters caught 99% of the 1300 spam launched in my directions. I no longer look at my junk mail filters. I just delete the stuff.

I had also accumulated 4,500+ entries in my aggregator. No way I was ever going to make it through that all of that, so I did a bit of triage by date to get down to under a hundred recent items I want to look at.

Just for fun

Programming Languages.

Kieran Healy provides a pointer to how to understand different programming languages, and warns against upgrading:

Crooked Timber: Don’t Upgrade : APL is a pithy language…. A full explanation is available, but not from me. I recommend this page which contains opinions about APL and better-known languages like C ( A language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language ), C++ ( an octopus made by nailing extra legs onto a dog ) and FORTRAN ( Consistently separating words by spaces became a general custom about the tenth century A.D., and lasted until about 1957, when FORTRAN abandoned the practice ).

[Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal (2004)]

I won’t have access to the net over the next week, so I won’t be posting. Scarier, I won’t be staying on top of the incoming information flow. As it is I’ve still got 150 items backed up in my aggregator that I want to think about and possibly comment on. More when I get back.