So that’s what this new revision brings. Simplicity. The ‘blog’ link on the right brings you to the most recent blog post and you can continue through older posts from there, if you desire. If not, well, so be it. I write for myself, for the most part anyway. As such, the blog design isn’t perfect. There are some display quarks that I haven’t worked out yet — and might not — because I can’t seem to figure out how to get it to work with my intended look. But for the most part, it works.

There you have it. Simplicity and function.

In this system you can assign a priority status to your message. I chose the third option of five, pretty middle of the road. It basically said I can’t really do anything until you respond, so please respond ASAP. And they did. Within five minutes Seohee S responded with a clear answer and instructions on how to implement it. To put it into perspective, the automated response that came promising a response from a customer service agent came four minutes AFTER the response arrived. Don’t believe me? Check it out:

Needless to say I was impressed. Granted, my problem wasn’t very complicated and pretty simple to solve, but to respond so quickly that late at night was pretty cool. It’s nice to see a company respond in such a timely and effect manor.

Cheers Dreamhost.

Just like everything else here, this picture has nothing to do with anything.

So, instead of just letting 3,360 tweets go by without fanfare I decided to change things completely and launch a new site design. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, but what do you expect from me? Like the Twitterversery I had a whole post planned out to show off the new features this theme brings, like threaded comments. I was going to title it “Change You Can Believe In” and launch it on June 1st to tie in with Conan O’Brien taking over the Tonight Show — see what I did there? Instead, I decided to throw all that out and just say here it is. It’s called Limb Kulers and derives it’s name and colors from guvilla’s Kuler set. Other credit is due and can be found in the CSS stylesheet, if you’re into that sort of thing.

In light of the completely unconnected nature of this post, I’m not going to end it by asking for your take on the new design. No, instead I’m going to close by asking what is a change that you can believe in? Let me know in the comments.

So why the change? What’s the point? When I first opened Sunken Treasure I noticed that the entire book was licensed under the very same Creative Commons license that this site now shares. I thought there was something very strangely cool about that. Maybe it’s a geeky thing, I don’t know. Either way, I figured if Wil Wheaton could grant these rights to owners of his book, why couldn’t I do it with my site? I mean, obviously no ones going to want to copy my words, but on the off chance someone does, it’s not granted here. Pretty cool right?

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?

Over the next 28 days expect to see some of the most interesting and insightful posts ever published on the internet. Ok, that’s not exactly true. You should really expect a plethora of useless drivel, most of which will be utterly unimaginative and not worth the time it takes to read it. Yeah, you got me. That’s also not true. In reality you can expect 27 more posts that fall somewhere in between win and fail. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

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.

Lie down on a car accident and char do everything gigantic boobs else would take five.

That’s it. Obviously some random word generator went haywire and created a sentience to get past spam catchers. I don’t really have anything else to say about it. It just cracked me up.

What’s the funniest spam comment you’ve ever seen?