Whatever I find interesting
My folks are in town today so I am taking a breather from posting. If you are at all interested in history (either WWII or Civil War) go check out today’s post at Where is Basil?
I’ve got links to several cool sights with lots of information and more than a few cool photos there today so head on over and get your click on! Poke around a while.
Enjoy!
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Anyone interested in a really cool idea of a travel blog should go check out Where is Basil?
The premise is silly – a fictitious donkey named Basil (accompanied by a Fawlty Towers DVD set – Read the explanation page for more.) is visiting different people who have signed up on The List. When Basil is visiting that person, they write about what he sees in their fair city.
They even have a cool map of all the places that he is visiting. In addition to a whole bunch of places here in the states, list includes places like
Right now Basil is with Gorgeous and I in Savannah. So if you’d like to learn a few tidbits about Savannah from someone living here, check it out! I’m even throwing in lots of photos from around town!
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Well my little experience with 25 Peeps has come to an inglorious end. At the end of the day I lasted a little over 24 hours up there. Not bad really when you consider most of the folks are trading skin exposure for clickage.
And then when you add in the inconvenient fact that my host server went off line for about three hours right at the start of Monday morning, one of my peak traffic times… Ah, well.
From my perspective was it worth it?
Well there was definitely some entertainment value for me as I checked throughout the period to see if I was still hanging in there.
But what about traffic?
The main way the site entices us to sign up is by holding out the carrot of a potential river of traffic as folks click on your photo to check out your site. In my case it was a wash. I referred to their site almost exactly as many people as clicked on my photo to come to my site. Which seems to me to mean that I had a lame photo which didn’t stir up much interest.
But it also means that I gave them some traffic (not much mind you) that they may not have otherwise had. The net traffic flow definitely went in their direction.
Now I don’t begrudge them getting some traffic from me. It’s not like they stole it or anything.
I figure it is pretty smart marketing on their part to play to our own personal vanity. I say good on them. They seem to have a pretty good little business going there. But I probably won’t re-submit even though they sent me the email encouraging me to try again with a more enticing photo. Right.
It was fun. But no thanks.
Unless maybe…
Of course if I were smart, I’d listen to these words of wisdom
Everything is so weary and tiresome! No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.
History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.
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They’ve put me on 25 Peeps.com!
What is it? Here’s the blurb from the site itself
see the 25 peeps above? click on someone you like and we’ll send you to his or her weblog. peeps are sorted by popularity, which is based on clicks and referals. when a new peep enters the roster, the least popular peep gets pushed off the site. with a bit of luck, though, it may end up in the big 25peeps.com hall of fame. go ahead and try it yourself!
It will be interesting to see how long I stay up there with all the various exposed body parts vying for clickage…
If you want to help a fella out, go on over and vote for me by clicking on my photo. (I’m the fully clothed guy in the upper left photo below.) 😉
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Well I’m heading home this morning. Finally. It’s been a weird trip.
Interestingly enough it turns out I’m going to miss Basil here in Chicago by about an hour.
Who is Basil? Well he’s the Code-Writing-Party-Donkey, of course.
But that’s not the right question.
The right question is really Where is Basil?
And that will take a little bit of explanation.
You see there are a bunch of us Bloggy type folks who hang out on Tuesday nights over at Successful-Blog for Open Comments Night. It is just a time of sharing ideas. Some of us do get more than a little on the silly side, though.
Ben Yoskovitz is one of the folks who usually hangs with us. Ben has a tendency to show up late and even when he’s able to spell his own name right he often makes excuses about how he’s trying to keep an eye on the donkey that writes code for his web site. Well we’re a naturally curious lot so folks wanted to know more about the donkey.
And Ben is very creative and would throw in little anecdotes about the donkey and what he was up to. Ben really should have been one of the Stooges — really he’s sillier than I am, at least to my way of thinking.
Anyway we all decided we knew the donkey about well enough that he should have a name. We went round and round about it. I lobbied long and hard for Jack. I thought it was a perfect, if unimaginative, name for an”¦ um, I mean a donkey.
Fortunately, in the interest of family friendliness, I was resoundly overruled. Somehow we were on the subject of Fawlty Towers we got talking about the characters. Basil is the name of the main character in that show played by John Cleese. Ben suggested Basil as a proper name for a code writing party donkey and it stuck.
Well in honor of a successful donkey naming Ben decided to run a contest with the prize being the DVD set of the Fawlty Towers show. His creative juices got flowing and he thought it would be really cool if the prize could be enjoyed by more folks than just the winner. A prize in perpetuity, so to speak.
Did I mention Ben is creative?
Anyway he pushed Basil out the door along with the DVD’s with the idea that they would spend a week with a winner then move on to another location to spend the next week with someone else.
I think Ben just got tired of cleaning up after the donkey.
But Ben started up a web site to track Basil’s progress. And he has invited anyone who would like to participate (and get a chance to view the Fawlty Towers DVD’s) to join the list.
Since I was there from the beginning, before Basil knew Jack so to speak, and since I like to laugh (I remember Fawlty Tower being totally hysterical) I signed up as soon as I got wind of the whole thing.
At the moment Basil is on a train from Stanford, Connecticut up here to see Liz in Chicago. They say his train should get in before my flight leaves.
It is all very silly, but it is going to be a very good time. Lot’s of laughs. And a chance to learn about new places as people report back on what Basil does when he visits them. In fact Basil is heading to Savannah to stay with us next.
Oh. I probably should let Gorgeous know that we are going to be having a quadruped houseguest in the next week or so. We’ll need to stock up on our hay and other fodder (especially carrots). It is a good thing she’s still got her Veterinary Technician certification. We may be needing it!
Anyway I’m off to the airport myself this morning. Check out Where is Basil? to keep up on his progress as he travels around the world donkey style.
Enjoy!
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Gorgeous and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean last night. I don’t often go to see movies on opening weekend because I’m not so much into crowds but a number of factors converged and out we went.
The original idea was to catch a matinee and then some dinner. But even with 6 or so screens showing the movie here in Savannah shows were sold out about 3 hours in advance so we bought our tickets and then went to the Macaroni Grill for some eats.
The movie was fun. Not great. Not quite as good as the first one, I thought. As we were walking out Gorgeous asked me what I thought. On a ten scale I gave it about a 4.5. It looks like they are planning on making three movies in this series. The first one stands on its own but this one needs the third a little too much. I suspect the third film will be a much more satisfying movie going experience than this one was.
Gorgeous said that the movie was a bit too “slimy” for her tastes. Looking at the way they chose to portray Davy Jones and his crew, she’s got a good point.
The second movie didn’t have as much of the great dialogue and banter that the first had. And it seems they tried to make it up with more action scenes. Fortunately they kept the humor flowing only they used the context of the action and sight gags more than the dialogue.
That may work better for some, but I’m a word man. I go for the witty dialogue.
The best exchange that I remember from last night is when Elizabeth tells Captain Jack that, “There will come a moment when you will have the chance to do the right thing.”
To which Captain Jack responds with his usual Devil-may-care attitude, “I love those moments. I like to wave at them as they pass by.”
And that seemed to be the central theme of the movie to me: Doing the right thing. Several of the characters face decisions through out the film. Some make good choices and others don’t. Some stay true to our expectations of them and some surprise us.
Sort of like real life.
Most of us face moments when we struggle with that very issue our whole lives. Even Paul struggled with that sort of thing himself. He said
I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.
From that perspective he had quite a bit in common with the characters in the Pirates of the Caribbean. I think most of us do too.
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OK. So Ken seems to think I’m thinking too hard on a holiday weekend here. I can dig it.
Since I’m on call today and have to do some work, and Gorgeous and I agreed to paint the study in what time I do have available today, I’m just going to leave you with a little levity to make you smile.
Dilbert is one of my favorite comics and Saturday’s definitely was right down my alley. Before you click on the link, you should know that it involves a new character named “Stinky Pete”.
OK. Here’s the link to the Dilbert strip from Saturday.
The fact that I found it totally hysterical says something about the twisted nature of my mind.
You have been warned!
Enjoy!
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Steve Remington is going about finding a logo for his blog, Why My Blog Stinks, in an interesting and fun way. He’s having a contest.
Steve offered up $100 of his own cash and a permanent link to the winner. He ended up with 18 submissions. I think some are definitely better than others. Some are really good. Some are a little stinky, if you know what I mean.
Before you go check out the logos, take a couple of moments to read his About page. The premise behind his blog is a little different. I’ve been following the blog since shortly after it started up and I’ve found tons of great insight on the subject of blogging there.
Then you can help pick Steve’s new logo! Just go to the poll on the right sidebar and click on your favorite.
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Well, it seems I’m not the only Superhero out there. A few of the guys have taken the quiz. (And why is it just guys? Hmm…)
Here’s what we’ve got so far:
Kevin Bowman is Green Lantern (and where I first saw the quiz.)
And as we all know, it appears Spiderman is my alter ego.
So it would appear that folks can rest easy because we have the Superhero spectrum covered.
Enjoy!
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Goof off online during my lunch break and I find out I shoulda been Spiderman. Who’da thunk it?
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You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.  |
Click here to take the “Which Superhero are you?” quiz…
With great power comes
great responsibility.
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