rianjs.net

I've been neglecting my personal blog lately, opting to use it as a dumping ground for random stuff. This isn't to say that I've not been doing anything. Rather, I've been pouring much of my time and effort into polyscience.org, writing two and three posts per day on average. For the last two days I've written closer to four and five. This brings me to why WordPress rocks so much.

WordPress rules because it allows you to save drafts and whatnot, and it gives you a preview of what your entry might look like while you write it. When you're done writing it, if you set the posting time to some point in the future, when that time comes, WordPress will auto-publish what you've written. This allows me to, for example, do some writing about science news and information that isn't exactly time-sensitive, like a breaking story, to save for a later day when I might not have the time to write two or three quality entries. I did this for tomorrow: I have 3 entries queued and ready to go. The first will publish at 6.53am, the second at 7.53am, and the third at 8.53am. I do this because I've noticed over the last few days that my page views are much higher if my fresh content is ready to go in the morning. Spacing it out over three hours gives an appearance of actively working on it, despite the fact that I'll actually be at work when the entries are published.

WordPress also rules because of the plugins available for it. For instance, here on rianjs.net, I get an average of about 300 spam comments per day. Naturally you don't see any of them because Spam Karma 2 catches them all. One comment in about 2000 slips through, but since I get an email notification anytime a comment is posted, I nuke it as soon as I check my email. And I've never had a false positive. I've been meaning to write up a list of the plugins and things that I use with WP, but I just haven't gotten around to it. I'm thinking of making it an article for polyscience.org about polyscience.org and why I use it for a publishing platform.

So basically all of the effort that I used to put into rianjs.net has gone toward polyscience.org (plus a huge amount of extra effort that I've never put into anything here or anywhere). My personal blog still gets more page views than does polyscience, but the pendulum is beginning to come back the other way, and I suspect that traffic will continue to increase, particularly due to the inordinate amount of effort that I put into the writing there (compared to here, or anything else I do in my personal life). For once, I've actually been able to consistently put in effort on something long-term. Not that this is "long-term" — but it's certainly past the "first gear" stage that I excel so much at. Basically if you want something to get off the ground quickly, I'm your guy because I can pour an enormous amount of effort into something very easily, just don't expect it to last. In the case of polyscience.org, my effort has actually increased with time, which is something that has never before happened in my life.

In addition, I've found that writing on myriad topics broadens my horizons and makes me curious about a great deal more things than I would have discovered otherwise. The comments left often elucidate some aspect of a story that I may not be particularly familiar with, further making the whole venture more worthwhile. I've been talking to Ken at Ars, and he's considering moving Science.ars to a Journal format, which is cool. I've asked to write for him, but the more I work on my own, the more I want to keep building my own thing. The downside is that polyscience is not profitable, and I'd be paid for writing for Ars. The other thing is that if I were writing for Ars, I'd have several orders of magnitude more readers than I do currently, which certainly appeals to me. The downside to writing for Ars is that I would have to give up writing for myself, which I'm not sure I want to do.

What do you guys think? Some advice would be appreciated.

On a financial note, I paid off another bill today; one from my hospitalization back in February. I have one last bill and then I'm off Scott-free! As soon as they send me (another) invoice, I'll pay it off since I have the money sitting in my bank account. So other than student debt, I'll be free and clear. Woot!

:dance:

I was cruising Planet Mozilla today, and I came across this, and thought it was hilarious (and cute).

It's a 9MB .mov file.

There's also a game to go along with the song.

I went to my dad's today, and he took vids of me riding around on the motorcycle/scooter because he's a camera nut.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

I was reading an article today in the paper (a real honest-to-goodness paper newspaper) about workplace feng shui, and how it boosts productivity and morale. So I decided to do something that I should have done many moons ago: I cleaned my room. Not just my room. My desk, my bookshelf, my floor. I remove all the clutter. I must have thrown out 75lbs of shit — or 1.5 garbage bags full.

Apparently one of the principles of feng shui is to only have around you that which you actually use, love, or need. So I got rid of just about everything. I have a glass desk, so I cleaned that, too, with Windex. I think my mom's going to have a heart attack when she comes home.

I also made a pot roast and did my laundry while I was working on my room. All-in-all everything took about three hours. Now all I need's a new mouse pad. This one's several years old and has grease and shit embedded in it. It's nasty.

Anyone know if there's such a thing as a single-drawer file cabinet? I need one for my papers and stuff. Preferably something elegant.

Right click -> Save as

It looks schweeeeeet.

…for having the balls to do what it took to take care of business. I don't normally do this, but I'm going to quote the whole thing.

HOUSTON — Thousands of refugees of Hurricane Katrina were transported to the Astrodome in Houston this week. In an extreme act of looting, one group actually stole a bus to escape ravaged areas in Louisiana.*

About 100 people packed into the stolen bus. They were the first to enter the Houston Astrodome, but they weren't exactly welcomed.

The big yellow school bus wasn't expected or approved to pass through the stadium's gates. Randy Nathan, who was on the bus, said they were desperate to get out of town.

"If it werent for him right there," he said, "we'd still be in New Orleans underwater. He got the bus for us."

Eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson jumped aboard the bus as it sat abandoned on a street in New Orleans and took control.

"I just took the bus and drove all the way here…seven hours straight,' Gibson admitted. "I hadn't ever drove a bus."

The teen packed it full of complete strangers and drove to Houston. He beat thousands of evacuees slated to arrive there.

"I t's better than being in New Orleans," said fellow passenger Albert McClaud, "we want to be somewhere where we're safe."

During a long and impatient delay, children popped their heads out of bus windows and mothers clutched their babies.

One 8-day-old infant spent the first days of his life surrounded by chaos. He's one of the many who are homeless and hungry.

Authorities eventually allowed the renegade passengers inside the dome. But the 18-year-old who ensured their safety could find himself in a world of trouble for stealing the school bus.

"I dont care if I get blamed for it ," Gibson said, "as long as I saved my people."

Sixty legally chartered buses were expected to arrive in Houston throughout the night. Thousands of people will be calling the Astrodome "home," at least for now.

*emphasis mine, because that's a "seriously, wtf" statement.

Someone should give this kid a medal.

This is a 5.5MB video of an interview by Anderson Cooper of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. It's 4:42 long, and it shows the frustration with the people with their politicians. It's nice to see someone in the media not pandering to the political back-patting.

And before you hate on me for being anti-conservative, Mary Landrieu is a Democrat.

Right click -> Save as

Quicktime format.