All Sux dot Com

Due to other changes in my life completely unrelated to a happenstance of our invented Western calander, I’m planning some changes around here. For starters, as you may have noticed, I’ve been flip-flopping on a new design/layout for the site. Also plan to post some halfway decent content again for the first time in a while. Trying to organize myself in general due to some changes in my personal life and it seemed like as good a time as any to start making this site something worth (maybe) reading again, despite the ever-ominous URL.

http://view.break.com/417206 - Watch more free videos

… I post three times in two days on Allsux!

So what happens when a blog goes ‘mostly silent’ for a while and the primary traffic comes from strange sources? Well, in this case my biggest hits these days are for ‘porn’ and ‘hate homeless’ - neither of which are things you’ll really find out about on this site. The ‘porn’ part comes from a few articles discussing porn on the internet and tagged with the category ‘porn’ on the site. The ‘hate homeless’ is in an article that has nothing to do with hating homeless, which I don’t. Strange, eh?

I seem to post to this site only when I’m really annoyed, so I guess the wheel has come full circle: this is a place for everything that sux after all! At the same time, though, I’ve never been much of a blogger in the traditional sense of blogging about oneself. So, I’ll just say that work is going well and getting less stressful, I’m finally starting to organize my life a bit better but there is a big nagging glitch that just hit. I guess there is bound to be one of those whenever the rest is rolling smoothly, right?

No one likes it when people steal an idea and republish it. In the world of blogging, a’via’ link at the bottom of a post has become the norm for crediting sources. However, this phenomena is getting way out of control and many people link to the latest source in a long chain rather than the original. I found out first hand just how bad things had gotten when I started trying to track the actual source of an article today, only to be plunged into a seemingly endless list of links.

It all started with a blurb on EcoGeek about a 007 Solar Pen Camera spying device. I wanted to submit the link to Digg then noticed their blurb was via TreeHugger, which in turn added two new links: ChinaVision and Dvice. The latter link traced to UberGizmo, which linked to UberReview that in turn linked to 7Gadgets (an appropriate 7th link in the ongoing chain). Most of these sites didn’t link to the ChinaVision (original) site, and only one linked to 7Gadgets where this information apparently first hit the blogosphere.

The fact that this last source didn’t link another source doesn’t even mean, of course, that it is the last source in the chain. Maybe this is just where the chain got broken because one author didn’t cite his source. So where did this come from? Which one should you link to or submit to Digg? Who knows. What does this mean for the blogosphere? Is it natural and healthy sourcing or a sign of things getting out of control?

via allsux

Now, I’m not from Seattle … I’m from New York an Minnesota, and snow’s nothing new. Still, it’s fascinating to watch how Seattlites react to a sudden dump of white stuff from the sky (not the same white stuff they’re snorting in front of the house right now) I’ve come to take for granted over the course of my life.

Other thoughts … let’s see here … Gil has to be one of the hardest-working bloggers I know, and a great guy to boot … he’s building up real momentum on his site and I highly recommend checking it out. There are a lot of nifty Diggers (yup, been spending a lot of time on Digg) I should call out as well but I’ve been thinking of saving that for a future post that highlights Diggers by niche.

Oh, yes, I just got back from Chicago where I flew in a small plane for the first time - with my brother (of all people) at the wheel. There’s also nothing quite like going from Seattle to Chicago to remind you just how big a big city truly is, but I digress. There’s also nothing like going shopping on Black Friday to stir up images of the opulent Roman Empire before its collapse!

I found this thread overall fairly hilarious, but I’ll excerpt the best bits for you:

Description Includes:

Established blog with prime keywords that appear on major search engines. First page of Google, Yahoo and MSN for the keyword make money and how to make money.”

I was skeptical, checked, and he’s not on there … others were too, criticized him, and he responded:

I am still on #1 page on Yahoo, MSN and Google. If you don’t see it, maybe you just need to look for the word Make$ Money$

Someone then responded to him:

Very good point. I am on page one on google for the term:

£($&^(MMORTGAGE)”^(*”

You know, I’m not sure what I would have guessed if someone had asked me what I thought the most viewed video ever on YouTube was going to be. However, this certainly wouldn’t have been it. The Evolution of Dance is funny, yes, but … I’m not sure if I would have stuck it out long enough to be entertained if I hadn’t known ahead of time it was the most watched thing on YouTube, ever: