Sorry for the light blogging (again)

Work has been hectic, and house projects have taken up the remainder of my free time. On another note, the bookshelves near completion.

X-Sql, welcome to the Blogroll

I have recently discovered that my friend Naim has recently started blogging about software matters and such at http://xsqlsoftware.blogspot.com/

Welcome to the blogsphere!

A Hoffer appearance

It seems that ZenPundit is a fan of Eric Hoffer too, as well as Mises and Orwell. Interesting.

Sound off

Wow, hits are up massively today, who are all you people?

I did notice that Google Images is indexing a fair amount of my photography, perhaps that's the cause.

A sad day

I just read Mike Hendrix' (of Cold Fury.com) wife Christiana passed away in a motorcycle accident over the weekend. I first met Mike in the late 90s at one of his Belmont Playboys shows. They remain the best rockabilly group I've ever seen. I don't think I ever met Christiana.

A sad day.

This is cool...

I just checked my Technorati profile, and see that someone added me to their BlogShare account. How cool!

An odd correlation

For whatever reason, the hits to this site, and my other major public site, JargonDatabase.com move in inverse correlation to each other. Odd.

Eight random facts

Subadei tagged me with the eight random facts meme a couple of days ago. With no further ado, here are the eight.

1. All dogs, no matter what temperament or breed, like me, at least a little. I can't recall a single dog that has been at all hostile to me.
2. I am immune to fleas and mosquitoes. They simply don't bite me.
3. When I was 20 I fought in a toughman contest and got knocked out in the first round by a tough redneck about 25 pounds heavier than me. For the record, I was up by eight but the ref declined to let me continue. It taught me two important things, namely that while I can take a punch, I can't take eight punches, and to be very careful about making promises in front of women you're trying to impress (namely that I would fight in a toughman contest.)
4. I earned the permanent enmity of a boss of mine with an artful quip. He once remarked "I'm pushing forty" to which I replied "yeah, from the North." I found out later he was 54.
5. While my speaking voice is abnormally low and quiet, my singing voice is abnormally loud. I present a challenge to the sound guy. Luckily for them my guitar style is loud too.
6. I think Thomas Sowell's theory of the constrained vs. the unconstrained view of human nature does more to explain Western intellectual history than anything else.
7. I think "Bonaparte's Retreat" is pound for pound the best song ever written. While the original Irish version is seldom played, the melody is simply more suited to acoustic instruments than anything else in the traditional catalog. The version on the first Doc Watson family album shines in it's harsh minimalism, while his later more fleshed out renditions work almost as well. Norman Blake and John Hartford have good versions too. Doc's version of "Lone Pilgrim" still has the most primal impact on me though, I'm not sure why.
   
8. The life and writings of Eric Hoffer are a source of endless fascination to me. Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken are close seconds. All three of them managed to unload their thoughts onto paper with a minimum of distortion. All three were also solitary and dispassionate observers of human nature.

I now tag Dan Tdaxp, CodePoet, Purple Slog, and Dave Henson.

Sony VAIO customer service - an exploration

Jane Galt vents most eloquent on her frustration with the Sony Corporation, specifically Sony Vaio tech support. Short version; it's lame.

In the post she states

So instead, I'll try to change the cost-benefit analysis. With your help, I'd like to make this little incident as expensive for Sony as possible.

Let's remind Sony that sometimes, the dumb bitches have blogs. And friends with blogs.

So if you're reading this, and you have a blog, if you wouldn't mind linking to this post, preferably with the words "Sony VAIO customer service" in the link, I'd appreciate it awfully.

Sure, it's revenge. But revenge has positive social uses. If it gets expensive enough to screw over their customers, they'll stop doing it. To all of us.

We'll see what happens. It creates an interesting exercise in feedback, i.e. an advancement in the first of of the OODA loop.

That would be a good company to start - a service that monitors the blogosphere for mentions of a product and somehow differentiates the positive and negative threads so one could track the source and find hidden problems with the business process.

I blog from the old country

I finally make it up to Kentucky, after a detour into the ugly side of Chattanooga. Surprisingly there was very little Bonaroo traffic.

Stigmergy and signalling

Stigmergy is defined as a method of communication in emergent systems in which the individual parts of the system communicate with one another by modifying their local environment. My Digital Tool Factory project has been evolving in that direction lately and it occurred to me that the internet is evolving that way too.

In the political blogsphere one can draw conclusions about an author from the use of the phrases "The fall of the Soviet Union" vs. "The fall of Communism". In the corporate realm the use of feathered graphics is a good indicator of the age of the designer and the focus of the company.


Food for thought.

A new addition to the Blogroll

Everyone welcome Pacific Empire, from way over in New Zealand.

Too insulated

While lately I've become a follower of next-generation warfare theory (there's lots of them) the tenor lately has become similar to discussions Ayn Rand followers have.

No larger point here, just a minor observation as I think over my Brave New War review.

Blogger is back!

It's been hanging on posts for the past few days. Now it's working again for some reason.

A telling point in the Boyd biography

I'm currently reading Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War and I read a telling passage that stated (approximately) that autodidacts crave approval from conventionally educated academics and professionals. For those who don't know fairly obscure word, it's Google defines the word as

Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) is self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact is a mostly self-taught person (also known as an automath), or someone who has an enthusiasm for self-education, and usually has a high degree of self-motivation.

(tip, if you type in "Define:Word to be dined" into Google it defines the word for you.

This seems to be a good explanation for a lot of the tensions in the blogsphere. It also seems to be a natural healthy thing. As I put it in a previous post, science advances funeral by funeral. It follows that if left to their own devices, any field of thought or industry will spend it's time polishing the corpse of some grand new idea that is mutually agreeable to all (think of the US auto industry before the Japanese came along.

1000 posts in just over two years

This is the 1,000th. Not too shabby I suppose. Traffic is finally starting to reach "trickle" status.

An odd mention

Matt Yglesias asks "How many moody loners are there" in this episode of Blogging Heads.

I make the big time

And get meaningfully quoted and answered by another blogger. Thanks Subadei! I'll have my response soon.

A useful meme for ideological bloggers

I think it would be useful to list the downsides of your own ideology, specifically, who would be hurt if all of one's policy ideas would be enacted. I don't mean the left saying that rich people wouldn't like paying their fair share of taxes, or social conservatives saying that adulters wouldn't like jail (or whatever), but more along the lines of the isolationist saying that tens of thousands of Iraqis would be killed if there were an immediate pullout from Iraq.

I'll have my list soon. I dub the meme "Napoleon's Sink".

Best characterisation of Iraq

From Winston Churchill "An ungrateful volcano"

via Andrew Sullivan on BloggingHeads

Everyone should read this

Dan Habbot over at TDAXP has the single most informative article on the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam I've ever read.

An odd fact

Yesterday was the highest traffic day this blog has ever had.

My blog rule

As some people have asked; my profanity rule is that I only speak profanities, never write them. I think it works rather well.

Blogger is finally recovered.

Or so it seems. The Blogger site has been out all day.

The big news of the day is that happy occasion of al-Zarquawi's demise. CNN actually has video.

John Robb has an interesting post about the event, and the meaning of Zarquawi in general. Short version - Zarquawi was more venture capitalist than general or cult leader. RTWT. It provides a lot of perspective about the nature of the conflict.

Web video is on it's way

In particular there is Video Egg. Very cool.

I stumbled across it via Pamela of Atlas Shrugs. I do have to say that pro-Bush apparachiks with strong New York accents give life a new horror. Hot Air does a better job with both the video and the vitriol.

Granted, I think partisan bickering is a sign of strength and self-esteem, but at some point it gets silly.

A nice feature

The Knoxville daily newspaper has an interesting feature, called Random This, where they send a correspondent out with a video camera to document some feature of life in Knoxville. It's not hard news, but it is much more detailed than a column would be. 800 words about a visit to a tattoo parlor or shooting range would not be terribly interesting, but the video version is. It's a good example of something that could only be done online.

An unusually quiet day

Definitely one of the most quiet on record, I guess everyone really is on spring break.

On another note, I just visited this blog's Technorati profile and I find that I'm linked under "a loner's temperament" and experpted on a Malaysian blog.

Most surprising of all though is being linked from the Columbia Journalism review. They picked up on my Cheney - Abu Ghraib theory. It's quite flattering.

Now, back to taxes.

Of minor interest

I'm in danger of receiving my first payment check from Google Adsense for the ads on Jargon Database. I've almost cracked the 110,000 page view barrier as well.

The new venture reaches beta

The Blog Squad. Thoughts anyone?

A lovely new liberal site to replace the others

BloggingHeads .tv, a video dialogue, between Mickey Kaus and Robert Wright, two New Republic style liberals. Very well done and informative. It's basically a lot of video files with the two principals on splitscreen.

An interesting concept and well executed.

This is an interesting concept

Splitscreen conversation on Blogging Heads.

A blog for Dave

New Donkey, a Democratic blog that avoids most of the thing I dislike about democrats. It even reads a bit like it's written by Dave Henson.

Christmas a day early

David Friedman is now blogging! Now if we can only round up Michael Sheaur we'd have a very thought provoking internet.

A good interview

With Markos of the Daily Kos. It seems his personal style is a lot like his writing style.

Via Althouse.

A cooler part of the blogosphere

Mountain Runner- a good design and a lot of information. Where else can one find out about Somali Piracy, as well as more current info about the region?

Looks interesting

Another good tech podcast. It's with Leo Laporte and someone I've never heard of. It's called "Inside the Net" and it's about the so-called Web 2.0 thing happening right now. Quite a lot of potential.

I start using Google Adsense on the blog

I found a format I like. It's the one above.

Any thoughts?

Is anyone there?

I haven't had any comments in a while, is anyone there?

Weird Site

The Blog of Death

The first podcast

Well, I just got done with the first podcast. It took me quite a while and isn't very good, but it's a decent first effort I suppose.

Testing the condenser mic

I just recorded the old warhorse "Whiskey Before Breakfast" with myself on the lead and rhythm. On the whole I'm liking the new mic. It seems to do a fine job. I need to educate myself a bit on the whole recording process, but I do like it.

USB mic review

For those looking for the review, let me say I'm not done experimenting with it (or the podcast) yet. I still need to record the music (which I'll be creating) which will be a flatpicked version of Saint Anne's Reel.

And, of course, religious podcasts are called "GodCasts".

The other Moody Loner

I recently reviewed my technorati profile and noticed a link from Electronic Darwinism, whose proprietor also blogs as Moody Loner (I tend to use it as one word, with the M and L capitalized, whereas he has it as two distinct words.) I noticed he has a disambiguation section listing me and Moody Loner Records, which I thought was a fine idea, so I added a disambiguation section as well.

When doing the spell check for this post, the Blogger spell checker wanted to replace technorati" with "degenerate".

I'm hooked

On podcasts. It's like talk radio but good.

Water bleg

Do any of my vast legions of readers have any thoughts on water purifiers? Comments are open. To my knowledge there is the Pur filter system and one other brand, but I don't really know anything about the topic.

We welcome Dave Henson to the blogosphere

At DaveHenson.com. He is one of the few folks I know who actually has a print following.

UPDATE - just added Dave to the Blog Roll (on right)

Impressions

I finally got around to seeing Charlie Rose's interview with Ariana Huffington. I was very underwhelmed. Somehow she missed the often expert nature of the commentary. Also she neglected to mention the speed that information is processed, but I guess one shouldn't expect too much from a 15 minute interview.

Speaking of the Huffington Post, I read Jim Lampley's current rambling of

Some esitmates for friendly fire casualties in Viet Nam exceeded forty percent. So what happened to Tillman, sadly, isn't very surprising. Unfortunately, the implication that the Pentagon fudged the information to boost the heroism impact of Tillman's sacrifice isn't very surprising either. Tillman's parents deserve bravery citations for telling the truth about their feelings.

Two things of note:

1. Why do they have no spell check on that blog? Note the use of "esitmates".
   
2. The phrase "Some esitmates for friendly fire casualties in Viet Nam exceeded forty percent. So what happened to Tillman, sadly, isn't very surprising" is the lamest phrasing I've heard in months. Why not cite the sources? Why go out of your way to appear weasely?
   

Sunday link smorgasbord

• ChicagoCrime.org - a wonderful marriage of Google Maps and publicly available crime stats. Now one can see where the bad neighborhoods really are. Hat Tip: Defense Tech


• Arnold Kling on starting a business instead of going to college.
  


• From one of the Jane Galt Commenters:
  

  "Warning: the author of this piece is completely absent in any training in mathematics, science, or any other discipline involving rigorous thought that might qualify them to form a decent critical opinion. Read with caution."
  

• Very good thoughts over at the Belmont Club, particularly "We live in a strange world where the Beslan story vanishes in weeks while Abu Ghraib lives on for years."
  


• The Daily Pundit's has come up with a very good blogger's kit.

And please join me in welcoming....

Leland-Nation to the blogosphere.

Thoughts on the media

First is this article from Virginia Postrel,

Some people say they want "just the facts," and fault reporters for introducing too much analysis. Others complain that stories do just the opposite, treating all sides in a conflict as equally valid. The news-buying public seems to want contradictory things.

But one person's contradiction is another's market niche. Those differences help answer an economic puzzle: if bias is a product flaw, why does it not behave like auto repair rates, declining under competitive pressure?

In a recent paper, "The Market for News," two Harvard economists look at that question. "There's plenty of competition" among news sources, Sendhil Mullainathan, one of the authors, said in an interview. But "the more competition there has been in the last 20 years, the more discussion there has been of bias."

The reason, he and his colleague, Andrei Shleifer, argue, is that consumers care about more than accuracy. "We assume that readers prefer to hear or read news that are more consistent with their beliefs," they write. Bias is not a bug but a feature.

In a competitive news market, they argue, producers can use bias to differentiate their products and stave off price competition. Bias increases consumer loyalty.

I've always though that the media should admit to having a side instead of pretending that they follow some conceptually impossible standard of objectivity.

The other is this very cool map of where all the news is coming from, called Buzztracker.

Very Cool Blog

75 Degrees South, life in Antartica.

HT Instapundit.

I join the rest of the blogsphere

I join the rest of the blogsphere in condemning the current Newsweek crap.
Cox and Forkum put it very well here.

And it's over shadowing reports of over 700 deaths in Uzbekistan.

Stuff you could not find any other way

Where else but the blogosphere can one find this strategy theorist's explanation of terrorism, not to mention the often troubling but always interesting Belmont Club thoughts on the nature of modern social networks and numerous other thing, not to mention Asymmetrical Information. Really this information is not available at any price in any other form. It's truly remarkable and I wonder where it will go as the technology improves to include more live events. The function really is everything.

Wow

Due to he technological miracle of DNS pointing and server to server FTP, this site will now be available at www.moodyloner.net

This is really quite a robust and mighty tool.