Revolutionary Minds
An outstanding blog : Revolutionary Minds.
Bringing together emerging thought leaders of our scientific culture—people who are influencing the way we see our world, our selves, our minds, and our universe – the Revolutionary Minds Think Tank Blog is a place for lively, dynamic discussion of the most pressing issues in science today. Topics will include: the specific issues that would most benefit from being brought under the scientific lens; the problems most ripe for cross-disciplinary research; and the cross-disciplinary approaches that have succeeded. Over the next three months we will share the opinions of these thought leaders and allow them to connect with the tens of thousands of people who read ScienceBlogs daily.
Posterous
Posterous is the dead simple way to put anything online using email ! I will try this out one of these days. Having a blackberry, this looks like a very good tool to keep blogging while I’m travelling. Are you using Posterous ?
Morbid Anatomy
Surveying the Interstices of Art and Medicine, Death and Culture. An interesting blog.
Blogster fired over blog post
Blogster Nathalie Lubbebakker posted on Nov 18 a story about a visit of the Belgian minister of Defense in the pub where she works in NYC (in Dutch). Apparently the minister was somewhat ‘tipsy’…
On Nov 24 Nathalie posted another article on her blog to tell her readers that she got fired (in Dutch) by her boss at B. Café… or she got dooced so to say.
Two remarks:
- The fact that the Belgian minister was doing what he was doing at B. Café is relevant news and yes, it was probably questionable behaviour.
- The fact that Nathalie got fired for posting about his behaviour on her blog seems correct to me. As an employee (which is stated clearly on her blog) she needs to be discrete (although I am not sure this is legally correct). If a newspaper or a blogger not related to B. Café had revealed this, than this was perfectly ok (see previous remark). I also wonder if there were no journalists present at B. Café. Politicians are usually followed by some I would think.
Update: the minister Pieter De Crem answered questions in the Belgian parliament today and called blogging a dangerous phenomenon…(on which planet does he live ??)
Update 2: initially the minister denied that there had been contact between his department and B. Café. Today he admitted that there had been contact following the Nov 24 blog post… And he considers bloggers a dangerous species ? What about ministers lying to the press ?
Update 3:The Belgian blog world is ‘campaigning’ against the Minister. Not clear if it’s because he called bloggers dangereous, or because he lied, or because Nathalie got fired, or because he was drinking, or any combination of this.
The Oracle
Lauren Collins has written an extensive article on Arianna Huffington in the New Yorker. Arianne is the founder of The Huffington Post, a liberal online news and commentary website and aggregated blog.
F*ck
WordPress changed the Journalist theme without notice which makes that the changes I made either disappeared, looked clumsy, or… This is the first time I’m upset with these guys. Never heard of good communication ?
I made some quick changes, but will need to spend more time to get it back as I want. Why did I pay for this css upgrade anyhow if you guys change things without notice ???
UPDATE: I like the guys again at wordpress ! They uploaded the ‘old’ version of this theme again, and so my own modifications are back to normal. Thanks.
A Plan
Lately I have been thinking about starting a science blog. Not a blog for phd’s, but for ‘ordinary’ people. A blog with the objective of showing the beauty of science, where complicated subjects are explained in words that most people could understand. I’m not there yet : I need a name (‘Science for dummies’ sounds a bit disrespectful), I need to decide if I’ll be the sole author or if I should get some other guys/girls involved, should I report ’science news/gossip’ or should I limit this blog to explaining more general subjects, etc.
I definitely need a plan !
New CSS
I am changing the design of Random Knowledge. The general theme is The Journalist. Some minor modifications still need to be done (e.g. I don’t like the RSS button in the sidebar to be underlined, etc.)
Zen rules !
Carnegie Mellon algorithm identifies top 100 blogs for news
Using a problem-solving method called the Cascades algorithm, Carlos Guestrin, assistant professor of computer science and machine learning, and his students compiled a list of the best 100 blogs to read to find the biggest news on the Web as early as possible, blogcascades. It includes well-known blogs, such as Instapundit and Boing Boing, but also some more obscure ones like Watcher of Weasels and Don Surber. The original paper, a ppt presentation and a video presentation are available at blogcascades, but you’ll need to be familiar with optimization problems and complexity classes. Remember Pareto ? (via)
RK sez: I love it when people make a decent analysis.
Begian Site of the Year Awards
Every year Clickx organizes a Belgian Site of the Year Awards (Dutch link). One of the categories is personal blogs. As you can imagine this is ‘hot’ in the Belgian blog community. Let me start by saying: I couldn’t care less. Eh… this is perhaps not entirely true as I am posting about it… so let me explain. A (my) blog is not a short way to fame. I do not seek high visitor numbers nor lots of reactions. The purpose of this blog is to write down things that I consider interesting, things I want to remember. It’s an easy way to take notes. I have no specific subject (‘random knowledge’!). The only topic that I exclude is diary type posts. I have no need to tell the world that I had cereals for breakfast or that I have a very busy life. If some visitors find something interesting on this blog, well, good for him/her. Some asked/criticized the fact that I’m writing in English. They have a point. Dutch is my mother tongue and my English is not perfect. But again, this is a choice I made. It’s an opportunity to improve my English writing. So this blog is just a hobby that beats watching a reality show on tv and it’s my playground.
But for all those Belgian bloggers who consider the awards the topic of the year, enjoy yourself. By all means do what you like to do. And yes I also had a look at the nominees and the ones I find worth a visit are: Tales of Drudgery & Boredom and Volume 12 (Dutch links). Not nominated but on my reading list: Pietel (Dutch),although not a daily visit anymore (it’s the photography info I like here), and Veerle’s Blog (English), a good blog for people interested in (web) design. That Veerle’s Blog is not nominated is actually a mystery to me as this is one of the most professionally run weblogs I know.
And all of this because I was reading some posts about these awards in my feed reader.
CSS
What happened to my CSS file ?? This morning all changes I made to the standard CSS file stopped working. My upgrade is still valid as far as I can see. A trick to make me pay again ?
Update: I paid again 15$ and now all is ok again.
Quote
(…) things invariably appear more important on the Internet than they are in the real world. (…)
- Alex Ross in the New Yorker (from an article where he argues: “The Internet may be killing the pop CD, but it’s helping classical music.“)
RK sez: amen to that (and please stop blogging that you had cornflakes for breakfast and that it’s raining outside and that you have such a busy life…)
Update – RK sez: eh… no, by all means, please continue with the diary blogging; after all nobody forces me to read it.
Update 2 – RK sez: previous statements have nothing to do with Alex Ross who has a very interesting blog !
Good luck
Giornale Nuovo, one of my favourite blogs is coming to a halt. What a pity. This was not another “Here’s what I had for breakfast. Here’s what I did at school” blog (as Jessica Hagy stated in this interview) or “Listen, I have an opinion” blog (not bothered by the slightest knowledge about the subject of course), or a “10 best x and 86 worst x, …” blog, but a world of wonderful things, well documented and always interesting. The content which spans 5 years will remain on-line ( 
). So go on, and explore.
Blog design
I have changed the design of my blog somewhat. Not being a specialist at all, on the contrary, I am not unsatisfied. It has a simple and clean look. I will however study CSS a bit more in detail with some books I recently bought and aim for a more professional design.
BibliOdyssey
Added to my daily reading list: BiblioOdyssey about (and I cite) books, Illustrations, Science, History, Visual Materia Obscura, Eclectic Bookart. Via (tx).
And another recent discovery of mine is : Curious Expeditions, (and I cite) devoted to unearthing and documenting the wondrous, the macabre and the obscure from around the globe.
xkcd
Via I came across a link to this excellent Electromagnetic Spectrum drawing.
What do you do next ? Search a bit of info on the net and Wikipedia writes this about xkcd :
xkcd is a webcomic created by Randall Munroe, a former NASA roboticist, and a native of Chesterfield, Virginia. It calls itself “a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”
Although the characters are usually stick figures, the comic occasionally features landscapes, intricate mathematical patterns such as fractals, or imitations of the style of other cartoonists (as during “parody week”). The subjects of the comics themselves vary. Some strips feature simple humor or pop-culture references, some are statements on life and love, and some are mathematical or scientific in-jokes.
The comic is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. New comics are added at midnight Eastern time on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, though they are occasionally updated more frequently for special events.
And the result ? A new feed in my feedreader !
Update : ‘art’ tag is justified in this case if you wonder
Good Idea
TagsAhoy lets you search all your tags, across different sites, from one location. Supported sites include del.icio.us, Flickr, Gmail, Squirl, LibraryThing and Connotea, with more coming soon (well that’s what they say). I understand the ‘mind’ behind Tagsahoy is a certain John who works at LibraryThing.
RK sez : with all the tagging going on, this is a fine idea. Would be nice if you could also include searches on your harddrive.
Project
I’m working on a web site with a proper domain name where I can centralize my online activities. A few basic requirements :
- Content : a text blog with an ecclectic mix of cultural history, math and music which are my main interests – a place for my pictures and photography tutorials – a ‘library’ with an overview of my books and reviews – a wiki about jazz
- Technical : WordPress or ExpressionEngine – MediaWiki – Zenphoto (?)
- Design : Zen rules !
The domain name (more about this later) I want is free. I just need to select a hosting service however and that’s a bit difficult. Well it’s not. Lots of choice. But I want a decent service ! Dreamhost looks ok, but one as well. Bluehost perhaps ?
Update : this blog will remain my dump of eh… random knowledge.
