Day: June 3, 2002

navel gazing haiku

Random navel-gazing of the day:

So am I a geek pretending to be a writer, or a writer pretending to be a geek?

You decide, fair readers, you decide…

PS – Anyone who emails me with zen meanderings about dreaming of being a butterfly will be thoroughly thwacked.

Huge response to the Blogosphere stuff today. Just as a FYI: thanks to all those who have dropped me mail asking to be included on the list. You will be, next time around, but I’m probably not going to do an update for a few days; I want to refocus my blogtime back on actual writing for a bit. Your patience is appreciated…

Hey, neat! Somebody else has a picture of the blogosphere. Check out Casey Marshall’s Picture of Weblogs.

It is an actual Java applet, so it has some cool features, it appears, like being able to search for a particular blog. Check it out!

(PS: Found out about this one via a comment from Craig Schamp over on VodkaGuy’s page).

BTW: I know Bill Quick is Daily Pundit; several folks have already pointed out that he appears twice in the list already (thanks to those who did).

Lots of folks are excited about the Blogosphere Ecosystem, it seems. Many many links are coming my way this morning. Cool.

Hmmm…. I just caused myself to get a lot of links by producing a list which showed how few links I was getting. Do I get the metablogging medal of the day?

The Blogosphere Ecosystem Part II: A Pretty Picture

OK, I alluded to a Part II coming today, and sure enough, here it is.

The picture to the right is a smaller version of a of the blogosphere that I’ve created based on the linkages which I previously analyzed to produce the ranked list. Click on the link above to see the full-sized version.

The map is a graphical representation of the relationships between weblogs in the Blogosphere; each weblog is represented by a node, with links between weblogs shown as lines. The size of a node roughly corresponds to how connected it is to the other nodes in the blogosphere.

It also uses the same data set that was used to produce the Blogosphere Ecosystem list. The full list of tools to perform all this magic is as follows:

WinHTTrack Website Copier
Spadix Software‘s Extract Link
Microsoft Excel
Pajek, a program for large network analysis & graphing from Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar at the University of Ljubljana.

I may keep playing around to see if I can generate an even-more readable version of the graph; there’s lots of fun options to tweak in the Pajek drawing program (Pajek, by the way, is the Slovene word for “spider”. So don’t go saying you never learn anything from reading my page, eh?)

Also: I’m a bit bandwidth-constrained right now, so even the big version of the map is very compressed. If anybody with a lot of bandwidth to burn wants to volunteer a spot to stick a higher-quality version, let me know, and I’ll send it to you.

Enjoy…

So I’m reviewing my referral statistics to see who’s linking to me lately, and I see the following towards the bottom of the list (emphasis added):

2 hoosierreview.com
2 nielsenhayden.com
2 uncommon-sense.blogspot.com
1 gostats.com
1 instapundit.com.
1 maxpower.blogspot.com
1 mmjp.or.jp
1 mybookmarks.com
1 salonmag.com
1 webmail.bellsouth.net
1 whitehouse.gov

“mmjp.or.jp”, it turns out, takes me to the Knife Home Page. And whitehouse.gov, well, that’s kind of self-explanatory.

Not suprisingly, neither of these pages seem to actually have a link to me… but got me interested there for a sec…

Wow. I thought the Salon piece had peaked on Daypop when it hit #14, but I think it must have bounced up into the Top 10 sometime when I wasn’t looking. It’s at 11 now, with a little downward arrow.

BTW: Am I just an idiot, or is there no actual explanation or key to the graphics you see on DayPop? Somebody enlighten me, please: I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the symbols all mean…

Worried that the Catholic Church isn’t taking firm enough action to address the current pedophilia crisis?

Worry no more, at least if you are in the Diocese of Los Angeles. ‘Cause they’ve a high-priced public relations firm.

This is a bit of a fish, barrel, gun story in terms of the opportunity it presents for bashing on the Church. But I’m going to attempt to restrain myself and step back a bit. Is there a legitimate case to be made that the Church does actually need such advice?

I think the case could be made if you believe that the Church is doing the right things, and is simply getting pilloried in the press unfairly. Picture a scenario where the Church genuinely is doing all the right things, is helping people in all different ways, but is being attacked by the press, just because the press corps is a bunch of meanies. Would it make sense for them to get advice on how to improve their image then, so that they can regain their popularity and continue to help more people? Probably.

So I don’t think it is fair to dismiss totally out of hand this kind of a move — although I do view it with grave suspicion. It comes down to exactly how you view the actions that they are taking to address the crisis itself. If you feel they’re doing all the right things now and are still getting bashed by the media, then a step like this might make sense.

But if they really aren’t addressing the core issues and are taking this action instead of true reform: then, there’s just no excuse for it. And I’d say go ahead and pull the trigger on that little fishy in the barrel.

Footnote: I originally heard this story on NPR yesterday in the early evening. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find it on their website. If I do I’ll add a link; perhaps they just haven’t archived it yet.