Am getting carried away with the whole "virtual services" thing, I think. In my post-trackback haze I have signed up to post to Linkfilter, (like that's going to happen) as well as enrolling with blog explosion.

Now blog explosion is a new version of the old "reciprocal banner links" malarkey that I experimented with on Geocities so long ago. Only this time, you can choose to either browse after logging in to the service, with the banners, and earn reciprocal visits to your site each time you visit another member, or you can load a page conventionally with the regular URL, earn no credits, and surf banner free. So, freshblog is banner-free 'til you open a blog explosion account.

I have yet to decide whether the blogs are worth the banners, so to speak, but the experiment continues. In Mozilla, my trojan-free browser of choice, the whole browser hops to the left when loading a new "explosion" banner-bearing page, and doesn't want to come back. This makes it troublesome to visit multiple blogs through the service, but if it will drive traffic my way, I'll certainly try it.

The best "local" blogs help you to feel like you've paid a visit to the neighborhood. This view of Runyon Canyon Park at blogging L.A. (click the thumb for a larger panorama) makes the east-coast in the snow suddenly seem like a poor choice of residence. L.A. always looks so good from the hills.....

via BoingBoing:

Thankyou, Haloscan. My trackbacks are being found by search engines & helping freshblog to colonise the front page of Google. Excellent.

via Yahoo Buzz-Log:

A reality show warhorse has decided to change directions. Trading Spaces has dumped long-time host Paige Davis. One of the original spunky doyennes of reality programming, Davis became as much of a fixture on the show as the ill-conceived paint jobs that kept viewers enraptured. Searches on the home-swappin' hostess were up 1,210% over the last day and it'll be interesting to see if the formerly buzz-worthy program can effectively renovate itself without a host. Queries on Trading Spaces were up 151% in the wake of the news, but a look at its searches over the past year shows a steady decline in interest.

Sounds like Paige might be on to bigger and better things, though... via Reality TV World:

According to a recent Daily Variety report, Paige's "future endeavors" may include a syndicated daytime program of her own. The trade paper reported on Thursday that Paramount Domestic TV and King World Productions, the distributors of The Oprah Winfrey Show, are said to be considering giving Paige and interior designer Nate Berkus a new show their own. Both Paige and Nate are regular guests on Oprah, and according to the report, Winfrey plans to "incubate" them in the same manner as she did with Dr. Phil. If developed, the show would premiere in Fall 2006.

1. Google must have crawled blogger today, FreshBlog (all one word) is up there at the top o' the pile. Google Freshblog, go on, I dare you..... (finally...)
   
2. I have added the technorati searchlet, with some help from Jason at Gribble. Not quite the search of each individual post that I was looking for, but maybe that will come eventually.
   
3. I have asked Feedster to track my technorati watchlist to see who is linking in.
   

"When the alarm chimes in the morning, you must reach up and tap the Sfera to silence it. Which triggers the snooze function and makes the alarm rise higher. As it slowly rises away from your reach, you must stretch higher each time to gain another ten minutes of snooze."

via we-make-money-not-art, Core77 & Linkfilter

I always wanted one of those baseball alarm clocks myself, where you got the satisfaction of hurling it against the wall to turn it off. This does seem, though, to be the optimum combination of sound, light and forced movement for a soothing but insistent wake-up.

via Boing Boing, a collection of images from Eyecontrol. Boingboing links to all the Vegas sections.

Too late for me, of course, and I'm sure your average investigator doesn't look like Marg Helgenberger anyway, but if you're in the market for a career change, check this out, from MSN Careers:

Do you think of naming your children Gil, Horatio or Warrick? Are songs by The Who frequently playing in your head? Chances are you are a huge fan of CSI, the TV phenomenon that has spurred three hit series and has a hot syndication following. Thanks to the popularity of the hit series, there's a growing curiosity in careers in forensics and criminology.

Lest you think that is the only contributor to the growing interest in a career in crime scene investigation, other factors include population demographics, increased awareness of forensic science by law enforcement, increased numbers of law enforcement officers, database automation in several categories of physical evidence, jury expectations, legal requirements, accreditation and certification requirements of laboratories and personnel, and the impending retirement of a large number of currently practicing forensic scientists... [read the whole thing]

This site came my way through a work recommendation, viz:

An excellent web site for New Year-related information and lore as well as
many other China/Chinese matters is chinapage.com

Oh my... so anonymous, so public, so arty, so naughty, all at once. Check out Postsecret, via Linkfilter.

See the nominations, at Yahoo.

According to Samizdata, Battlestar Galactica, the mini-series, rocks:

Wow. A show which truly, truly, truly does not pull any punches and proffers a middle finger to the sugar coating of so much of Hollywood's offerings that are aimed at the mainstream. We see nothing less that genocide: the steady nuclear annihilation of the human race. We see men women and children (yes, children) killed pitilessly on one of the darkest bits of sci-fi drama I have ever seen: the Götterdämmerung on 12 planets. Moreover we see the handful of dazed and traumatised survivors on the Galactica and the refugee fleet which forms around this last remnant of the human military, act like, well, people who have just seen their entire civilisation and 99.9% of their species exterminated by an implacable enemy.

Pretty damn good, huh? Haven't seen it. Of course want to now. I wonder when the new series will be on, & whether I get the network?

I'm feeling template-frisky after my new addition of trackback. I have monkeyed with the formatting of the comments so that they appear in the same style as the posts. I have very few comments, of course, but a couple of examples can be seen here. I couldn't make them appear in their own boxes, but I did manage to make them appear together in one box. Check out a permalink page to see....

Well, pending anyway....

"Searching 1051 sites. There are 383 sites waiting to be validated."

Holy validation backup, Batman....

So, Philly v. New England.

Brady and the New England Patriots (16-2) seek their second straight NFL championship and third in four years when they meet the Philadelphia Eagles (15-3) in Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, Florida on February 6.

After losing three straight times in the NFC championship game, McNabb ended the frustration for the Eagles, who beat the Atlanta Falcons, 27-10 Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field to earn their first Super Bowl berth in 24 years.

Brady improved his perfect postseason record to 8-0 as the Patriots posted a 41-27 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship game on Sunday night at Heinz Field.

via Allsports.com.

I'm behind the curve, it seems, but in trying to add some permalinks that can search aggregators to my template, I have discovered Technorati tags. I will be checking this out....

I am also interested in linking from each individual post to the aggregators that discuss it:


In the meantime, in a big new addition to freshblog that lets me do more with interactivity and inbound linking, I have added Haloscan trackback. I kept the blogger comments because the last time I messed with the comment HTML I screwed up the whole template, but I did manage to make the trackback link look the same. Excellent. I doubt anyone will trackback my posts, but I will be able to leave my mark elsewhere & bring some more readers.

via Boing Boing (where there's a pic) : "Kryptos is a sculpture that artist Jim Sanborn created in 1990 for the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia. The artwork contains four cryptographic puzzles and only three have been solved so far." Keeps the CIA busy in their lunch breaks, anyway!!

See also Wired News.

Check it out..... http://gribbleblog.blogspot.com/

Collision Detection has a post about the new CBS cop show Num3ers. It turns out that the pattern prediction science is real. Here's another pattern that I think is pretty unpredictable though. How come all these new shows are on CBS? Wouldn't you expect other networks to want NCIS or Num3ers as a challenge to CSI?... & wouldn't you expect CBS to want a couple of other non-forensic secretions dramas on their books?

"A Conservative parliamentary candidate has been dismissed after he was pictured on the internet with a range of guns, rifles and a hunting knife. Robert Oulds, the prospective MP for Slough in Berkshire, appeared with the weapons in the camera phone images. Tory deputy chairman Andrew Mackay said the party had faced no choice but to remove him from its candidates' list.

"This was a serious error of judgement which was unacceptable in a parliamentary candidate," he added."

But which was the error? the guns or the photographs? There's the real question.

BBC via Natalie Solent

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Legendary television entertainer Johnny Carson has died of emphysema at age 79, the NBC television network reported on its Web site on Sunday.

Carson hosted NBC's popular "The Tonight Show" for nearly 30 years, long dominating late-night television with an estimated 12 million viewers each night. He did his final show on Friday, May 22, 1992, seen by 55 million, and was replaced the next Monday by the current host, Jay Leno.

Sidekick Ed McMahon introduced him nightly with the rallying cry of "Heeeeeeere's Johnny!" Carson's blend of humor, music and conversation was the last thing millions of Americans heard before drifting off to sleep.

"I am one of the lucky people in the world. I have found something I liked to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it," a teary-eyed Carson said as he closed the show for the last time. "I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight."

See images on a fansite here.

Update 1/24: See images and video at MSNBC.

A photoblog of Sesame Street's "these are the people in my neighborhood," held up Bob Dylan video stylee by the actual, honest-to-goodness people in your neighborhood. via Blogging.la

.. drive a Badonkadonk. For sale on Amazon.com, but it has to be a prank, right?

• Carries cargo or a crew of up to five internally or on the roof.
• Piloted from within the armored shell or from an exposed standing position through the hatch.
• 6hp Tecumseh gasoline engine, top speed 40 mph.
• Includes head/tail and turn signal lights, trim and underbody lighting.
• 400 watt premium sound with PA system, plush interior, and external camera.

via WWdN.

Buzz Log's interested: "With the possibility that Pierce Brosnan has downed his last vodka martini, rumors are ramping up as to who will be the next smooth operator to don the super spy's dinner jacket."

well, yeah!!!

ABC News: CARDIFF, Wales Jan 23, 2005 — Headline acts including rocker Eric Clapton, pianist Jools Holland and The Manic Street Preachers drew more than 60,000 people to a charity concert raising money for Asian tsunami relief.

Fans packed the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Saturday for the seven-hour concert featuring 20 British bands and solo artists.

The concert has been billed as Britain's biggest charity show since the 1985 Live Aid concert, which drew stars from around the world to raise money for African relief.

The madness of King George, at BoingBoing.

Sorry for the cuss-word, but I'm sick of this "which tellytubby is gay?" garbage getting so much air-time and setting the boundaries of public debate in this country. Dobson is inflamed because

SpongeBob's creators had enlisted him in a "pro-homosexual video," in which he appeared alongside children's television colleagues like Barney and Jimmy Neutron, among many others. The makers of the video, he said, planned to mail it to thousands of elementary schools to promote a "tolerance pledge" that includes tolerance for differences of "sexual identity."

What's so wrong with tolerance? Does Dobson want Laramie from sea to shining sea? Objecting to the sexuality of cartoon characters is so ridiculous that it should be funny, but as Maud Newton says "This would be far more hilarious if Dobson and company weren't so powerful, and so filled with fear and hatred."

Ah, how delightful organised religion... Love thy neighbor... so long as he looks like you, thinks like you, and loves a female woman of the opposite sex and alternate gender.

See also: Censoround, Instapundit.

From NPR Weekend Edition Saturday: London Transport are apparently using soothing classical music to keep travellers calm & reduce the abuse of staff. This also has the added effect of keeping marauding teens out of the stations after dark. Sounds good to me.

Playoffs this w/e, and it just might be Eagles v. Steelers in the big game. See Superbowl.com:

First look: Conference championships

New England at Pittsburgh: The Patriots have to be feeling strong and confident as they return to the scene of their first loss of the year. Remember, they didn't have Dillon against the Steelers last time, and it made a huge difference. But these are two good teams with the best record. The Steelers may be at home, but that guarantees nothing. It'll help, and that will make things difficult for New England, but it's still going to be a very interesting game.

Atlanta at Philadelphia: The Falcons are showing signs of being stronger than I previously believed. If the Eagles avoid the press about how they can't win the NFC Championship Game, that will help their sanity. I think the Eagles will benefit from the fact that Atlanta was so dominant. It tells them that this team isn't going to lay down and they better take them seriously. I think Philadelphia will prevail, but when you get this far, any pick is basically a guess.

Like something from Star Wars. It should uncoil with a reassuring hiss as people approach. See pics at Brian's Culture Blog.

Virginia Postrel: As a member of the Village People donates his gold disc to the Smithsonian NMAI, Postrel notes that "Rose's story is a great example of the unpredictable ways in which American culture actually evolves. Any true representation of that culture, including the lives of American Indians, has to include just such quirky stories, and the artifacts that represent them." Absolutely, and this donation has far greater and more positive cultural reasonance than a roomful of costumed toffs.

So Prince Harry is impersonating a uniformed fascist. Catastrophic choice of fancy dress, certainly, but as Natalie Solent points out, here's the bigger issue: In a twenty-first century in which much of the world is struggling deperately to recover from nineteenth and twentieth century imperial entanglements, how is it possible that members of the influential "ruling class" can get away with a "colonials and natives" themed party? What was the entertainment going to be - a re-enactment of the siege of Mafeking? the Battle of Lake George revisited? Culloden for dummies?

We should demand a much more sophisticated world-view and cultural perspective from these people.

via Boing Boing & Natalie Solent. See also Blogging.la, (watch for f-bomb)

It is a messy move. I score big on Google with a search for blogfresh, but nowhere yet for Freshblog or Fresh blog. It is not, however, as messy as the move going on at the end of my block, which has resulted in a large pile of furniture in the street, and it is a rainy day in my neighborhood. I am assured that the mess will be cleared out by Monday. Hopefully Google will respond with the passage of time too.

I am four years late on this, obviously, but I am discovering CSI on DVD & liking it very much. I am 1/2 way through the 2nd season at this point. Thanks to the internet, I can get into it in a big way should I choose to, at Elyse's CSI site. I think the episode guides will be useful once I try to figure out which DVD's I've missed....

Core 77: "Captured fugitive was living in stores - Friday, January 07, 2005 - A prison escapee who was apprehended in Charlotte this week had been living in a Toys "R" Us and vacant Circuit City building for months, eating baby food and watching DVDs, police said Thursday. He lived off the bounty of Toys "R" Us, police said. He decorated his secret room with posters and model toys, played hoops with a mini-basketball net and watched "Spider-Man 2." He routed water from Toys "R" Us to his new home, police said, and even installed a smoke detector."

In another "smart move, Dummy" consequence of the URL flip, I was a "flippery fish" in the TTLB ecosystem, & now I'm an insignificant microbe again. Lovely!! Well, the longer it goes, the more inbound links there'll be.

Update 1/12: It is only the 12th & I'm a lowly insect already. Moving up in the world!!

AP via Fark: "OKEMOS, Mich. - Imagine having a dream home in a private, peaceful, bucolic setting - and being unable to sell it because it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Some owners of one-of-a-kind houses conceived by the iconic architect are discovering it's not easy selling them in an era when cathedral ceilings and easy commutes are on the wish lists of many prospective purchasers. But the sellers are also concerned about finding the right Wright buyers - ones who will cherish, not demolish, his creations."

I wonder if this is on Wright on the Market? er, yup!! Galesburg & Okemos both...

Our home – The ultimate setting for family and entertaining, your visit would confirm its added value. Two separate living quarters, five bedrooms, four full baths. A very efficient, comfortable, warm house to totally enjoy and be proud of. In addition, the property includes a swimming pool and a hidden steel 40-foot tower with a 16 x 16 room on top. Every service is only ten minutes away. Near the State Capitol, Michigan State University and the new Cadillac Motor Cars plant facility. Five acres plus a vista of 100 clear acres. Eric Wright quotes, "It's a wonderful house."

MSNBC has a collection of Tsunami links, including:

Photo gallery

• Daily slide shows from MSNBC.com
• Photos courtesy of the Navy
• Blog: The weird things people donate
• Before and after photos of Banda Aceh, via Wikipedia
• Satellite photos from DigitalGlobe
• Vakaruge.com
• Pbase.com

• NBC News producer Marisa Buchanan's photos

Update: This site at Redlands University also has a huge collection of links.

Temporarily for the worse google-wise, I'm sure, but hopefully for the better in the long-term, britblog has been rebranded. The idea is that I can now justify the broader scope of my posts and will feel less pressure to unearth hard-to-find nuggets about the country of my birth. Instead, if it is cool, fresh, funky, or otherwise interesting to me, it will be here. I lose a bit of focus in the brand identity, but I'm not defrauding my readers any more, and I might be re-energised to post some more stuff. My blogroll is also rebranded. Less politics. More cool stuff. Thusly, I give you:

I agree with this journal entry from Japan Window:

The Matrix is the Internet. The real world is the place where I live and breathe. And the only real relationships I have exist in the real world. The man I talked to right here (next to my table in Starbucks) yesterday, with his false front teeth, ill-health and honest smile, amounted to more relationship than all the "visits" recorded in my web stats.

Christmas unplugged has me thinking that I will stay unplugged a while longer, and only post when I have something to say, instead of searching for & linking to work that already exists. So this first post states a new philosophy, gets me a "January '05" archive page, & opens the new year at a calmer & less frantic virtual pace. Here's to spending a bit more time in the real world.