Yes, the title of the previous entry was a reference to He-Man, and the Masters of the Universe. Anyone who missed that had better spend a few hours studying up at He-Man.org. We’re talking basic cultural literacy here.
Take a moment to read this excellent article on why weblogs disproportionately influence Google search results. The argument, in a nutshell:
1. Google likes pages with lots of links, as well as pages that are frequently linked to by other pages. Weblogs are full of links, and are highly interlinked with each other.
2. Google likes fresh content. Weblogs are updated daily or more.
Taken together, the factors explain why weblogs have an unusually high level of influence on Google rankings. Case in point: as of today, the post I wrote last Friday on urinal etiquette is now Google’s number two result for the search term ‘urinal etiquette‘ and makes the first page for the search term ‘urinal.’ (Perhaps not the area of expertise with which I’d most want to be associated, but I take what I can get.)
The interesting point, though, is that the high ranking of my urinal page wasn’t primarily caused by the page itself. Rather, it was caused by the webloggers who linked the page from their own sites. Although the majority of searchers arriving at the urinal page might never visit any of the weblogs that linked the page, the linking webloggers nonetheless shaped and directed the searchers’ experiences.
More broadly, while many web users may never visit even a single weblog, the collective voting power of those weblogs very heavily influences how the web is experienced by the people who pass through Google more than a billion times a week.
So who’s wasting their time now, mom?
After much delay, finally located a relatively inexpensive scanner with an attachment capable of handling medium format negatives (an Epson 1650). I’ll be adding images to the gallery over the next month, although at some point I’ll need to put together a much better layout to organize them. Actually, at that point I’ll probably need to redesign the entire site.
Still, my log files tell me people are coming to the site even in its current iteration, and at the moment I barely have to post (thank goodness I gave up sleeping and going to the bathroom!), much less to rack my brain for feebly ‘creative’ design ideas. So you’re stuck with the site as it stands. Shut up and enjoy the pictures.
While I had known about Pilates for some time, I always mentally grouped the exercise along with Step Aerobics and TaeBo: perhaps appealing to middle-aged suburban women, but not really my thing. Worse, I kept coming across celebrity endorsements of Pilates (Madonna, Uma Thurman, Courtney Cox, etc.), which, given the track record of Scientology, gave me even more serious pause. So it was with great trepidation, and only based upon the strong recommendations of both my father (a sports medicine physician) and my kickboxing coach that I began to investigate Pilates.
Initially, I was relieved to learn that Joseph Pilates was an accomplished boxer himself, and that one of his earliest students, Max Schmeling, won the world heavyweight boxing championship while under Pilates instruction. Still, watching students going through the 34 exercise mat workout, my initial reaction was: this looks really stupid. People lying on little mats, swinging their legs and rolling around. How hard could it be, I thought. Famous last words.
I’ve been doing Pilates for about a month, and by now I can usually sit up without assistance the following morning. In that time, my kickboxing and jiu jitsu have improved noticeably. I find I’m standing taller (and at 5’6″ I need all the height I can get). My waist size has dropped (Pilates tightens the transversus abdominus, yielding a waspishly thin waist) and, combined with decreased body fat (current status: 8%), my abs are the most six-packed they’ve ever been.
Still, I feel a bit unsure of my Pilates allegiance. “What kind of pansy workout is that,” I’m certain people are thinking, and I occasionally catch myself thinking the same thing. But my kickboxing has improved too significantly to give up for such small misgivings. Besides, if anyone gives me a hard time about it, I can always kick them in the head. Which, thanks to Pilates, should really hurt.
A few days ago, I discussed one of my favorite formulas for a successful web site, which I’ll here dub the Bonsai Kitten technique: find a politically charged topic (i.e. animal abuse), create an utterly distasteful concept leveraging that topic (using glass jars to ‘shape’ growing kittens), then build a site espousing the idea, tinged with just enough tongue-in-cheekness to allow people to realize (or perhaps just hope) that the hole thing must be a farce.
Today, however, I’d like to highlight another, equally amusing, site genre: sites built on a bizarre fascination with the inane. The undisputed king of this realm: the Condiment Museum, featuring literally hundreds of little condiment packets from around the globe carefully collected, photographed and organized. A solid up-and-comer in the space is the Do Not Eat Page, dedicated to the eponymously inscribed desiccant packets found in electronics boxes and jacket pockets. And, of course, there’s the “this guy needs mental help” leader of the genre, Graham Barker’s Navel Fluff Page, which, regrettably, more or less lives up to its name.
So, if you’re looking for fame and fortune on the Internet (actually, not so much the fortune part, and likely not much fame either, but I digress), simply develop a fixation on something with utterly no value and build up a site to evangelize your bizarre obsession. Then email me about it; for some reason, I find these sites to be oddly compelling.
I noticed this morning that my dress shirts were organized by color. Which is odd, because I’m the one who hangs up those shirts. And I certainly hadn’t intentionally been sorting through my dry cleaning to group blues and greens and purples. Just the other day, however, I similarly caught myself reordering the bills in my wallet by denomination. And for months I’ve taken guilty pleasure in categorizing and alphabetizing my CDs.
When did this happen? Why isn’t there anything on the floor of my apartment? Whatever happened to the younger me who, just five years ago, wasn’t even sure the color of the carpet in his room due to the wall-to-wall piles of clothing, books, papers, instruments, athletic gear and other possessions covering it? Somehow I’ve become anal retentive, and I’ve got to stop the dangerous progression now, before, one day, I awake to find I’ve arranged the spice rack by the potency and national origin of each spice.
Head over to Fat-guy.com’s Guerilla Sushi Guide. The tubby culinary guru knows of what he speaks.
Here’s the scoop: While the plebeian believe Nobu has New York’s best sushi, any purist will poo-poo the idea. Like Japanese Raku earthenware, Sushi is an art form that has evolved over hundreds of years to a deceptive simplicity. Tossing in a bit of Peruvian ‘flair’ is a bit like painting a Raku vase in pastels – interesting and perhaps oddly enjoyable, but certainly not the genuine article.
True sushi connoisseurs often cite Kuruma Zushi as the city’s best, or perhaps Tsukiji Sushisay, which requires all of its chefs to train for a minimum of five years in the Tokyo branch before coming to prepare sushi here in the New York restaurant. Certainly, both are exceedingly good. Yet a relatively-undiscovered newcomer has thrown down the gauntlet. I suspect that, within the year, Sushi Yasuda will be broadly recognized as New York’s sushi king.
Chef Maomichi Yasuda, of Hatsuhana lineage, starts with one of the city’s widest assortments of extremely fresh fish. He then serves up slightly smaller than average pieces that literally melt in your mouth. (Nota bene: Along with the flawless sushi, make sure to try the nameko (mushroom) miso to start and certainly don’t miss the green tea mochi ice cream for desert.) The perfection is in the details: the chefs vary the size of the sushi pieces according to the size of diners’ mouths, and a different type of tea is served with each course. Topping it off, the minimalist blond wood decor elegantly reflects the simple perfection of the sushi itself. The place is small and increasingly popular, however, so make sure to book in advance (or, if you know Japanese, take my approach and kiss up to the Maitre D’).
Sushi Yasuda. 43rd between Second and Third. (212) 972-1001. Book now, thank me later.
It is with profound jealousy that I read Ftrain.com. Paul Ford is an infinitely better writer than me, for which I hate him. He is a better writer than you, too.
Most people think being a communist dictator is all fun and games, but it’s harder than they realize. Ruthlessly slaughtering political dissidents alone can take up most of your free time.