I Love The Series Of Tubes

The series of tubes known as the Internets by our nation’s educated leaders, never ceases to amaze me.

Today I learned that there have been over 485 user comments and reviews of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz on amazon.com, a fact that amuzed me. The way people latch onto things like this, then spend a lot of creative time and effort to contribute to its longevity, make the Internet such a novel piece of human existence. Take, for example, this quote from the Tuscan Milk reviews:

Jug of Milk, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, & bid thee feed
The children & lay o’er the cereal;

Gave thee whitest of white color;
Softest velvet taste, smooth, and soothing;
Gave thee such a pleasant after-taste,
Making sleep to soon over-take?

Jug of Milk, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Jug of Milk, I’ll tell thee,
She is called by her name,
For she calls herself Elsie.
She is meek, & she is mild;
She is as dumb as a box of rocks.

I a child, & thou a bowl of cereal,
We are called to use her milk.

Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz , God bless thee!
Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz , God bless thee!

Buried

If I haven’t responded to an email or a phone call you have left me, it’s because I have been working around the clock trying to meet a deadline. I’ll respond soon…

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

bush

The Coming of IE7

It was announced yesterday that Internet Explorer 7 will be coming in the fourth quarter of this year, and will be pushed out as a critical update for Windows XP users. This is pretty good news, as it means that the bulk of Internet Explorer users will be upgraded to the much-improved browser automatically, and IE6 marketshare will quickly drop.

The main reason this is a good thing is that IE7 fixes a whole lot of CSS bugs, and when creating web sites, one will no longer have to worry so much about catering to these bugs and providing workarounds. This is because IE7 closely follows web standards, and attempts to be a legitimate player in the web browser market in this regard. At the same time, it’s going to break a lot of web sites that unaware developers created which rely on proprietary IE6 ‘features’.

It will be interesting to watch this all unfold.

Farked

Yesterday was an exciting day. One of my project sites, The Best of Youtube, got Farked by the popular news site Fark.com. Someone posted a link to my recent Star Wars on a Banjo video.

By the end of the day, I received over 32,000 visits to my site, which witheld the onslaught of traffic with grace (thank you, Dreamhost).

For a while, I was featured at Youtube on the “Most Viewed Today” page, rising to the 35th spot, and my video received an “honor” for this status. Strangely, my video suddenly vanished from this listing though, and the “honor” vanished, which I have yet to figure out.

The second comment on the posting at Fark.com was from none other than Drew Curtis, the creator and owner of Fark.com:

“This video pretty much sums up the entire Internet”

The rest of the feedback I received, through comments on fark.com, youtube.com, and thebestofyoutube.com, were mostly positive and funny. A few people didn’t seem to be able to hear the melody in the banjo picking, which is difficult sometimes for an untrained bluegrass ear.

I’ll be eagerly watching this over the next few days to see how much traffic I continue to get.

Yea Bob

So I have neglected this site lately, mainly because I have been putting all of my attention into work. When I do have free time to mess around, I have been updating TheBestOfYoutube.com, which is starting to really take off. One of my other project sites, Dumpworthy.com, got its first review published by someone other than myself today, which is exciting. I am still seeking help in writing/submitting to these sites if anyone is interested.

In other news, I have added a new gallery to the photo gallery part of this site, with pictures from June and July 2006. Check it out.

My New Music Site

Ladies and Germs, introducing ChathamMusic.com.

I finally took what used to be http://music.www.willchatham.com and created a separate site just for it. Now that it has its own space to live, I will hopefully be able to generate more traffic for it, and I will be able to keep it better organized. Since it is running atop WordPress, it will be a lot easier to update as well.

I figured that with the generic Chatham Music name, the new site could server for any of the Chathams who decide to record music in the future. For now though, you will find the usual Crain, Cerebellum, Undermine, Second String, The Modlins, The Merle, and music history stuff that has been there for a while. Hopefully I will have more to add soon.

Dots What I’m Talking About

Having always been a big fan of cool scientific and mathematical things that make you go, “Whoa”, I have been enjoying Getting a feel for big numbers.

Start by taking a look at what 10,000 dots looks like.

Next, take a gander at what it looks like when you have one dot for every second of the day.

Feeling overwhelmed? Wait until you see what one million dots looks like. That puts in perspective exactly how big one million really is.

So what about a billion? Billions and Billions puts this impressive number in perspective:

“To visit every web page on the internet would require a page a second for thirty two years with no time to eat or sleep(1).”

“A billion dollar bills laid end to end would circle the globe at the equator four times.”

“A trillion dollar bills laid end to end would stretch from the Earth to the Sun.”

Wow.

Fun With Google

Google never ceases to amaze me. I am now a GCal addict, having organized my life for the next 55 years, WITH text messages being sent to my phone to remind me of upcoming events. I have been smitten with Google Adsense, I am a big fan of GMail, and I cannot get enough of Google Earth.

So maybe Google really is trying to take over the universe, but doggone it, I am OK with that as long as they keep the steady supply of geek toys flowing. And if they offer me a job some day.

While revelling in my little Google stupor, I discovered a cool, free PDF called 55 Ways to Have Fun With Google, which to my amazement, introduced me to 55 entirely new reasons why Google rules. If you care anything about the next hour of your life, you will read this PDF.

The book is offered by 55fun.com and can be purchased in print from their site.

And for those of you who still can’t find something on Google, come tell me about it.

Two New Sites Launch

I have finally put the finishing touches on Dumpworthy.com. If you want to help me write magazine reviews, contact me now and I will set you up a login. I can offer no money right now for your help, but if it works out, we may start getting offers for free magazines.

Additionally, I have been working on another site in my free time for a while, and I am pleased to announce The Best of YouTube, a site where I will be selecting and reviewing some of the better videos available from YouTube. After trying to dig my way through tons of uninteresting video clips, I decided it might be useful to have a site where the cruft is filtered out for you, and you get only the good stuff.

If you’d like to help me write for either of these sites, give me a holler. It’s easy and it makes you look cool.

clicky