Anybody?

If you are reading this then that means you’re still subscribed to the RSS feed after, oh, three and a half months of nothingness. Either that or you’re me in which case I’m basically talking to myself. But that’s cool too, everybody does it weather they admit it or not. Anyway, if you are still out there I guess this is a hello but really, don’t flatter yourself because I’m not writing this post to say hello. I’m writing this post because I need to write. I don’t really care if you read it or not. In fact, that’s going to be the way things go around here from now on. If I write something it’s because I had something to say and if someone other than myself reads it, so be it, if not, well that’s cool too.

So there it is. The new blog manifesto if you will. I’ll update it when I have something to say. Could be tomorrow, could be next year. If you want to stick around and say hi, be my guest.

Anyway, I was looking through the logs to see if there were any interesting search terms being used when it came to my attention that just about every single one was an interesting search term. Check this out (and beware of excessive of narcissistic adulation):

The first search, female nude male gaze, and the second to last search, objectification alba, both lead to Female Roles and the Male Gaze. It’s actually an essay I wrote while in college about the use of the male gaze in film. I posted it as a response to an article I read on some website. I guess a lot of people do research on the male gaze or are looking for easy ways to finish a paper because this is the most “found” article on my site. Maybe people just like Jessica Alba.

The fact that someone searched for snuggie drives some to drink is pretty funny in and of itself. But when you add that it results in my thoughts on the Snuggie as the number one result, well that’s downright hilarious. Maybe if they pop in some Polyphonic Spree they’ll feel better.

There was a time that Shannon’s review of the final episode of Dawson’s Creek was the most visited page on this site; it still has more comments than anything else nearly six years later. While it’s popularity has died off quite a bit, there are still some people out there interested in Joey and Pacey, as evidenced in someone searching for who does joey end up with in dawson’s creek. So who did Joey end up with after all? Answer: Tom Cruise.

The search for fallout 3 ending continue is another popular one. The Fallout Ending Controversy is probably the second most “found” post here. Evidently people aren’t very happy with not being able to continue playing after completing the Fallout 3 storyline. Maybe once the final download content is released this post will fade into obscurity.

One thing I find interesting is that while some of these pages, namely the Fallout and the Male Gaze ones, receive a ton of search engine traffic, no one leaves a comment. They’re practically response free. It’s a little odd. Maybe I’ll ponder that one some day. Or maybe people are afraid I’ll make fun of them again. Who knows. What do you think about that?

Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps

The Olympics were two of the greatest weeks of 2008 and there were dozens of amazing moments ranging from the incredible Opening Ceremonies to the unforgettable I Love Beijing theme song. There were so many great moments this year it’s hard to choose just one that stands out. Ok, that’s a lie. There’s one moment that was far better than any other and is, quite frankly, the greatest moment in aquatic sports history. The Justie for the Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps goes to Jason Lezak’s amazing comeback in the 4×100 relay which won the USA a gold and created one hell of a story. There has never been a comeback quite like that nor has there been an instance of shear determination. Way to go Lezak, way to go.

Greatest Thing on TV

All in all, it’s been a pretty crappy year for TV. The Writers Strike cut a lot of seasons short and seemed to affect the quality of TV for this season as well. So the pool to draw from here is obviously pretty slim. But there were some stand outs. The Office and 30 Rock have been stellar and new shows Fringe and Life on Mars have been entertaining. But one show has been better than the rest, so the Justie for Greatest Thing on TV goes to Chuck. Chuck is consistently entertaining and just quirky enough to be endearing but it was “Chuck Verses Tom Sawyer” that pulled it in. Twin Galaxies, arcade games and Rush? Can’t get much better than that.

Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic

People search for funny things on the internet. Some people spend tons of money and time trying to figure out the best combination of Julianne Hough, Will Smith, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, the Jonas Brothers and Wil Wheaton to get their search engine ranking high enough for people to notice. Around here I do things a little different. I write things and then see how people find them. If a Miley Cyrus mention gets slipped in, well, so be it. It was earlier this year while perusing my site logs that I came across this category’s winner. The Justie for Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic goes to this post about Chinese food and Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I’ll let you figure out what people were searching for.

Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me

A lot of crappy things happened in 2008 including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires and a new Rambo movie. I jumped off a cliff and blacked out in the water, but I’m exempt from this category for obvious reasons. No, there was one crappy thing that unfortunately deserves this Justie; the Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me Justie goes to the economy. Sure, I’m affected indirectly, but whatever. The economy pretty much sucked this year and have put hundreds of thousands out of work. Unfortunately it looks like it may get worse before it gets better but one thing is for certain, it will get better. Here’s to hoping that the economy earns the 2009 Justie for the Greatest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me.

Most Addicting Social Media Outlet

Hello my name is Justin and I’m a social media addict. This year there were plenty of social media sites begging to earn an addiction: Facebook, Shelfari, Strands, and Last.fm just to name a few. But there was one that stood out far above the rest — possibly combined. The Justie for the Most Addicting Social Media Outlet goes to Twitter. I wasn’t the only one addicted either. Not only did twitt rank as one of the years ‘buzzwords’, but now CNN even takes comments — and in some cases breaking news — from Twitter.

Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To

This one is a tough one to call. I’ve been a number of places this year including Seattle, The Bahamas, New Orleans, Key West, North Carolina, Georgia and Utah. In those various places I’ve seen a fair share of strange things, like the odd traffic lights on the highway in Seattle, but by far the Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To goes to Utah. Why Utah? Their numbering of streets is absolutely ridiculous. Everything is laid out in a grid, which makes sense, but that grid is far too large. For instance, we had to turn from S 700 E onto E 10600 S. Does that make any sense? Then, thrown into the middle of that was State St which does make sense. I don’t get it. Way to earn that Justie, Utah.

Coolest Thing of the Year

Despite all the crappy things that happened, 2008 had it’s share of some pretty cool things. Myron Rolle won a Rhodes Scholarship and I read Snow Crash, both pretty cool. The Dark Knight made a ton of money while the Devil Rays won the American League without any. Tiger Woods had the comeback of his career and Bill Gates ended his. All of these things are pretty cool, but only one can win the Award. The 2008 Justie for the Coolest Thing of the Year goes to The Olympics.

It was going to be pretty hard to beat the summer games. They began with the coolest Opening Ceremony ever performed (no video links available, stupid NBC) and included some unforgettable moments, a lot of which occurred in the pool. Michael Phelps won a record setting 8 gold medals, which will probably never happen again. Countless records were broken, smaller countries shined and for a few weeks in August the world actually came together and enjoyed each others company. You can’t really get much cooler than that.

All the Justies have been handed out and I’ve got nothing left for 2008. The ball will soon drop and bring in 2009. Let’s see what happens.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been testing the design in a number of browsers to see how it looks. I stuck to Webkit (see Safari) and Gecko (see Firefox) based browsers. I did not test on Internet Explorer. Today I decided to render a few screenshots to see just how bad it looks. Follow along, if you will, a tour of how different web browsers render the exact same page.

Safari 3.2.1 (2008)

Camino 1.6.5 (2008)

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 (2008)

Internet Explorer 7 (2007)

Internet Explorer 6 (2001)

The worst is obviously Internet Explorer 6. It’s a piece of garbage yet still roughly 20% of the internet is using it. People, wake up! It’s now nearly 8 years old and there are two newer versions. IE7 handles the page, and web standards, much better than IE6 and the IE8 Beta is exactly what a browser should be.

If you’re still using Internet Explorer 6, it’s time to upgrade. If you can’t do it, get your IT department to do it for you and if even that isn’t possible, at least start using something else, like Firefox or Safari. You’ll realize how much better the internet is once you stop using a nine year old piece of software.

Internet Explorer screenshots were rendered using NetRenderer.

On the 2nd of October my inbox rang in a new email from someone named Rebecca. The spam(?) that was contained is basically an attempt at viral marketing with absolutely no apparent purpose. The email, in its entirety, now follows:

Hey Justin,

Thought you might be interested in checking out the latest in bacon mania making the rounds…

BaconMan!

YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZC_CYJcnEA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FAw5k96LJw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twpIu_tQlnE&feature=related

You can check him out on Twitter too if you’re on there… #baconman

Giving you any Halloween costume ideas? I was thinking this or Tina Fey as Sarah Palin

Rebecca

I can’t tell what the purpose of this is at all. I can’t tell if it’s a product or someone just trying to get internet famous. While I was at PAX, there was a guy in a bacon suit that looked a lot like this one hocking Bacon Salt, but I’m not sure if this is related.

I’ll let you be the judge. If you’ve got any idea what this is all about, let me know in the comments. And if you’re Rebecca, please tell me what is up. Thanks.

What I find pretty funny is the search terms people use to find the article. On the right is a snippet from the site stats here showing 18 recent search engine results that lead to articles on this site. Out of the 18 search terms shown, 14 involve the words “new Facebook sucks.” I guess people are searching this exact phrase looking for people to agree with, or maybe they’re looking for reasons why people think this way. One thing I know for a fact is that no one in the Facebook office searched these terms to find out exactly what people are thinking.

Since the new design has gone fully live I’ve noticed a few other things that bother me. The first is the implementation of Applications. When the design switched over I noticed that there were two applications on my profile that I didn’t know I still had installed. So, I pulled up the Applications page to remove them. Before, there was a simple “remove” link to click. Now, the Applications page has numerous tabs with labels that don’t really make sense. Clicking “remove” on one tab doesn’t remove the application from the other tabs. In order to remove the application in question I had to click half a dozen times to get through all the options and actually remove the app. What a joke. This is probably the single worst effect of the new “design.”

Another thing, that I found more funny than anything, is the updated “People You May Know” box on the front page. I like that they’ve added a line to tell you why you might know the person, but what gets me is how broad the qualifier is. For example:

First of all, I don’t know anyone named Armando but the qualifier here is that we both live in Orlando. According to 2007 statistics, Orlando has over 277,000 people. Evidently because we both live here Armando and I should know each other. This new feature has potential, if Facebook can narrow the qualifier down to something like graduating class. However, based on Facebook’s lack of attention to input from the first go around, I’m not going to hold my breath.

All in all I’ve found myself visiting Facebook less over the last few days and opting more for the iPhone version, which now makes more sense then the web version. Are you visiting Facebook less? What is it that still irks you about the new design? Let me know in the comments.

/gen took me to /2008/generation-kill/

/aug took me to /2008/august-blog-o-rama/

/fresh took me to /2003/freshmen/

It looks like this only works with the actual post slugs and not the post title. For example, the Freshmen article originally had a slug of /forums-flashback/. Typing in /fresh returned a 404 error. When I typed in /forums it worked. After changing the slug to freshmen the /fresh shortcut found the article in question.

I’ve also tested this on Two Slashes and it works there too. We’re both running WordPress 2.6.1 so I don’t know if it goes further back, but I have only noticed this since upgrading a few days back.

Find any other cool ‘shortcuts’ around here? Try out some word combinations in the URL bar and let me know what you come across in the comments below.

Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Now, after reading her blog post a second time — it was all about me the first time — I realized that Seven had given it to three bloggers (myself included) and her brother had given it to four (Seven included). Here comes the problem. I don’t really know who to pass it on to. You see, because of this award I realized why I’m such a bad blogger: I don’t read other blogs.

I mean, sure, I read a ton of topical blogs — things like Destructiod, MacUser, and TV Squad — but I don’t really read people’s personal blogs. It’s not really that I’m too self absorbed to be concerned with other peoples lives (maybe it is, what do I know?), it’s really that I find it odd reading about other peoples daily lives. It seems a bit invasion of privacyish — which is why I don’t really talk at all about my own life here. It’s all observations and topical things, because that’s what I read and find interesting.

It’s funny. You see, back in April I asked what blogging is all about. Who would have thought that my August Blog-O-Rama challenge would bring that answer. Warning: introspective content ahead.

For me, blogging is all about topical issues and not about life events. Life events are private things that don’t really need to be shared with the whole world. I call this site Mindless Chatter because it’s my incoherent ramblings about topics that interest me. It’s why you’ll find plenty of posts about Apple and not many about what I did yesterday. It all makes sense now.

But this touchy feelly crap doesn’t get me out of passing this award along. No, that’d be too easy. Instead, I’m going to pass it onto two topical blogs that I do read and enjoy that aren’t owned by a giant media conglomerate (since Seven’s brother went with four and Seven went with three, I figure I’m supposed to give it to two):

Two Slashes
Two Slashes is written by Nick Tabick and is basically his views on tech related issues. They are always interesting and I find myself commenting more there then anywhere else on the interwebs.

Hummer Guy
Hummer Guy is written by Brian Dooley, my college roommate. It’s about, you guessed it, Hummers: industry trends, new products, racing, everything. I don’t know how Brian gets all his information and it’s possible I don’t want to know, but it’s well written and deserving of a read — if you’re into Hummers of course.

So there you go. It was a long road to get to the point where I could share the award with others, but I learned something along the way. Did you? What defines a good blog to you? Topics, personal stories, jokes? Let me know in the comments.

The first such vacation took place during the holiday weekend. It started with a screening of Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which was awesome. Our idiot water moved about a slow as a elephant who was glued to the ground and caused us to get to the theater right at showtime — which meant seats so close to the screen you couldn’t see the whole thing at once. Despite that fact, the movie was a lot of fun and well worth anyones money.

From there it was off to Atlanta for two baseball games featuring the Braves take on the Diamondbacks. The DBacks took the first but the Memorial Day game was all Braves. It was great. I’ll be going back for July 4th to see the Braves go head to head with the Astros. Nothing quite says Memorial Day weekend like Braves baseball and Indiana Jones!

On another note, since updating the design here my little blog has been featured at the illustrious CSS Drive design gallery as well as We Love WP, which showcases WordPress designs. It’s pretty cool to be showcased on the same sites I use for inspiration.

Also, as noted in the comments section on my last post, I am going to try and rework the original Corked into a public release and put it out under Creative Commons licensing. Things are about to get really busy, so I can’t say exactly when, but it is on my to-do list.

You know how in grade school when you were taught the hamburger method of writing, where the top bun was an intro paragraph, the meat was your descriptive paragraphs, and the bottom bun was your conclusion? Well, consider this hamburger bottom bun-less because I got nothing.

One of the biggest comments was that the colored stripes, while interesting, distracted from the content of the site. TVDinner said it best with this comment:

to me it is a little to much, but that is just me. I guess my question to you is that I am not sure what it accomplishes as far as your site. I assume you want people to read your words, thoughts, posts, etc. I am all for creativity and use it on my sites, but also understand that there has to be a balance in design that will be attractive to viewers and keep them wanting to come back time and time again…

After about a week of going back and forth, and toning down the color of the stripes, I came to a conclusion: the stripes were distracting from the content. Unfortunately my stubbornness prevented me from actually hearing it from the good people in the forums. I came to the realization that I didn’t like pulling up my site. Considering that I am my sites most frequent visitor that says something. So the design that I was all to excited about quickly became a lame duck design and the search was on for a newer and sexier design.

I don’t know exactly how I originally found Mostly Lisa, but it happened sometime around my unrest with Coloured. I really liked her use of objects at the top of the page. Thinking about that lead me to an idea for a design:

I’d create a sort of virtual table where you, the viewer, were looking down directly at the table. Scattered on the table would various objects that the blog content features (video games, DVDs, camera, iPhone, pens, etc.). The content would then be found on sheets of paper on the table.

I thought it was brilliant. I quickly sketched it out, played with how the objects would interact with the content, and then set up a tri-pod and took pictures of various objects to be placed in the design. I started laying things out in Photoshop when I hit a snag, I couldn’t figure out how to integrate the site name into the design. I started cruising the typical inspiration web sites when I came across this. It was sort of what I was thinking about doing, enough to get me going at least. But after a little more searching I found this, this, this, this, and finally this. My idea was officially unoriginal and actually overused. I thought about trying to put a unique touch on the idea but decided that I didn’t want to create something that would feel, to me, just like a cheep knock-off.

I went back to the drawing board, again. This time, instead, I started looking at my previous designs. After a brief look at Mindless, I decided to return to my favorite design for this site, Corked. I had the idea for Corked literally for years before I made it a reality back in late 2006. The problem with corked, however, is in mid 2007 I accidently deleted all of the Photoshop files to make the design a possibility. Unfortunately for me they weren’t uploaded to the server and while announced, Apple’s Time Machine had yet to be released. I was officially boned. After all the work that went into this design, everything related to it was gone.

With nothing to start with other than the flattened .png’s and .jpg’s I decided to re-invent Corked, to give it a more modern and cleaner look. Instead of the entire site being a cork board, I’d create a virtual cork board complete with a wooden frame and I’d hang it on a textured virtual wall. I’d make sure that all of the site elements fit with the overall theme; if something is on the cork board it’d be “attached” in some fashion. Using only the original corked background and the BittBox paper vectors I created what you see here today, Corked 2.0.

While as a designer I’m never completely satisfied, I do enjoy the journey from one design to the next. I never know exactly where or how I’m going to get to the end point, and as you can see there are often many detours along the way, but in the end it’s all worth it and hopefully results in a quality and unique design.

However, even though I’m my biggest visitor, it doesn’t mean I’m the only one. What do you think of Corked 2.0?