An interesting post on increasing blog traffic. I wasn’t familiar with SEOmoz, but I’ll be following their blog in the future. Some interesting ideas.

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

What kind of President will Hillary Clinton make? I realize this is a disturbing thought, but we must consider it as Senator Clinton remains the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. The way I figure it, with the Clintons, past is prologue.

The only big surprise here is that someone is actually writing about this. I think Mrs. Clinton would make a horrible President on several levels, but this is a major one. I have no doubt that the government under Mrs. Clinton’s leadership would be attacking the gun industry in court within months of her taking office. The Bill of Rights exists for a reason. You can’t attack part of it without attacking all of it. If they can cripple the Second Amendment, why not the first?

CBS magazine slims down Couric in photo – Yahoo! News

NEW YORK – No, Katie Couric didn’t suddenly lose 20 pounds. The incoming “CBS Evening News” anchor appears significantly thinner in a network promotional magazine photo thanks to digital airbrushing.

As I mentioned before, it’s not as if the changes weren’t obvious. I am a little surprised they didn’t hold out a little longer before the confession though. They didn’t even blame technical problems, which was my personal prediction. I’m a little disappointed CBS didn’t try something stupid. Maybe next time… and there will be a next time.

I started following this when Kelo v. New London was in the news. Things haven’t gotten any better.

Walter Williams

My response to the Kelo decision was, “See, I told you so.” For decades, Americans have been willing to allow politicians to trample over private property rights, so why should we be surprised when politicians become more emboldened?

John Adams warned, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of G-d, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist.”

This can’t be good. It looks like the guy is in custody though, so the news isn’t entirely bad. I hope the guy in custody was the only one involved.

CNN.com – 2 injured in North Carolina school shooting – Aug 30, 2006

(CNN) — A student was shot in the shoulder after a suspect fired eight shots toward a Hillsborough, North Carolina, high school, police told a local television station.

What a fascinating idea. Artists to record events. I like the idea of putting photographers like Staff Sgt. Klika into service, but this is a good idea too. A different perspective I would think. I’ll be following their blogs to see what they’re up too.

Noble Duty Milblogger Coalition – A Soldier’s Perspective – Marine Combat Artists

Sgt Battles and WO Fay are two Marine Combat Artists (only three Corps wide) serving Country and Corps creating some awesome works of art. Both of them operate blogs that I’ve read for some time now. They don’t post everyday, but you should add them to your RSS reader or check in on them from time to time. You’ll be happy you did.

Another interesting post at MobCode. It’s a strategy for learning… and I suppose life.

Chart a course

So chart a course. Look around and see what there is to know. Think about your career and what you want to be doing. Think about your skills and how you can round out your experiences or increase your depth in key areas. Decide where you are going and make a plan to get there. You don’t need a detailed week-by-week plan, but at least identify some steps to get where you want.

Brian at mediabistro.com: TVNewser has a post about CBS’s apparent touchup of Katie Couric’s official “first-pic”. With all of the money they have to spend, this is the best they could do? It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. They actually improved the overall color of the shot, but they darkened the dress way too much. I sure that her apparent loss of about twenty pounds was purely a coincidence, just an accidental side effect of the color adjustment.

Allahpundit is on the case as well.
Hot Air – Fauxtography: The incredible disappearing Katie

She’s on the Adnan Hajj diet. Try it and watch the pounds melt away from your waist and neck.

The really good part is the e-mail he received after posting:

Be careful shouting “Wolf!” because Katie Couric’s true picture is likely the thin one – the fattening on the other is likely an anamorphic (uniform single direction) expansion ordinary page layout programs do to fill the picture frame on a page. It’s the sign of an amateur, not evil.

BS, BS, and more BS. What this commenter needs need to look at in the photos is what changed and what didn’t. They narrowed her neck and the necklace, but left the cleavage line stayed the same. The points of her shoulders are almost exactly the same, but her elbows much narrower. Her waist has been narrowed, and the space between her arms and body has been expanded. Most significantly to me, her smile, her hands, and the envelope remain unchanged. The photo was definitely manipulated, and not just to improve the color.

Some humorous quotes from American humorist Evan Esar (1899-1995).

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.

Character is what you have left when you’ve lost everything you can lose.

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.

And my favorite:

Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something more insulting than if you spoke right out at once.

Jan Bussey at CascadeExposures has a series of posts on some beautiful cars. The Hottest Rods, ‘42 Studebaker, L’il Red Firetruck, The Roaring Twenties, and my favorite – Hoods.

Modern cars just have no style. These are works or art. Today they just sell transportation.

Update: More great car photos

IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch

My advice is simple: Boycott IE. It’s a cancer on the Web that must be stopped. IE isn’t secure and isn’t standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable both for end users and Web content creators. Because of their user bases, however, Web developers are hamstrung into developing for IE at the expense of established standards that work well in all other browsers. You can turn the tide by demanding more from Microsoft and by using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Macintosh only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.

I think I linked to this in a round about fashion before, but it bears repeating. I particularly like “Boycott IE. It’s a cancer on the Web that must be stopped.” I’ve added the links in the quote above. I refuse to link to IE of any version.

There’s a great ad posted at Little Green Footballs. A fake movie poster mocking the Green Helmet Guy and the fauxtography scandal. A must see.

lgf: Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

Dr. Seuss Quotes – The Quotations Page

Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them. – Dr. Seuss

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. – Dr. Seuss

I’ve been working on a number of design pieces with large volumes of text lately. Some of them had an appropriate amount of text for what they were, several should have been much more to the point. I have come up with some thoughts on the proper use of punctuation:

• Use some. – 500 word with no punctuation is not clever and catchy, it’s a bad Word Jumble.
• If some is good, more is not better. – Putting three or more exclamation points on every sentence doesn’t make them more important, it makes you an idiot.
• A comma and an em dash are not interchangeable. - Learn how to use punctuation properly, then do it.
• Be consistent. – A foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but sometimes it’s a good thing.

It’s amazing what people will supply you with in terms of text. They go on and on about how important their project is to them, then supply you with a load of incoherent drivel for text. I need to charge more.

Internet Explorer 7 v Firefox 2.0

It pains me to say it, but my initial impression is that for a lot of people, there’s no real reason to head to Firefox. Internet Explorer is such a large improvement over version 6 that it’s hard to imagine what would get you to bother downloading it, unless you’re a Mozilla fanboy or an extensions addict.

Any comparison that ends with “there’s no real reason to head to Firefox” is not worth taking seriously. How about this for a reason: Microsoft has a long record of security weaknesses. Combine this to Microsoft’s insistence on making IE an integral part of the operating system and you have to be an idiot to trust them for your Internet security.

On a completely computer geek level you need to also take into account the CSS compatibility issue. If IE 7 was intended to be such a huge improvement over version 6, why didn’t they improve IE’s CSS compliance more than 2%?

Great, IE 7 is a huge improvement… over it’s highly flawed predecessor. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

A lot of commotion over in Blacksburg while I was gone. I actually work very near where this all happened, but I was out of town when it started. I was impressed by how the police handled this. They seemed very thorough and professional. If they hadn’t gotten a bunch of false leads this might have ended a little quicker. They were drawn off to chase wild herring several times during the day, including one apparent report of a hostage situation that was completely without merit.

TimesDispatch.com | Fugitive sought in deaths caught

Virginia Tech was all but paralyzed yesterday after the armed fugitive was reportedly seen on campus.

One of the strangest things about this is that Morva was in jail on reasonably minor charges when he killed two people in what turned out to be a failed attempt to escape. Descriptions of Morva are even stranger than his behavior. He’s described variously as a hippie, environmentalist, and and some kind of survivalist. He didn’t want to spend a couple of years in jail for minor charges so he’s now likely to be on death row.

Paul Moore of Blacksburg said Morva had developed a “dangerous idealism.”

“He wanted to join an Indian reservation in Alaska and help them fight the oil drillers,” Moore said. “And he would go out to the Jefferson National Forest for months at a time for paramilitary training.

“But I was bewildered by this. Never in my wildest dreams would I think he was capable of breaking out of prison. I’ve seen him cry when someone killed a bug.”

Bizarre.

A very nice post over at Mobcode about what to put on your website.

If you are looking for development work on the web then create a web site for yourself. Very few of the developers in the market have web sites to promote themselves. So (although it is hard to believe considering how many useless web sites there are) this is a way to differentiate yourself.

And here is what you need to put on it:

Derek Powazek has an interesting viepoint on firearms in a post today. Just a Thought: Booma

Guns are loud, instant, and mean. There’s a shockwave of sound that goes in all directions you can feel in your stomach. There’s a muzzle-flash and a powerful recoil that took me by surprise. And the bullet hitting the target is instant.

I’ve often thought that if everyone would take a few rudimentary lessons with firearms they’d have a different perspective on them. Not life altering changes maybe, but at least they’d have some understanding of what they were instead of the usual stereotypes. If you’re going to hate something, at least know enough about it to hate it for the right reasons. I learned to shoot at age five and that shaped my opinions of firearms. They’re a tool, nothing more. A firearm can be used well or poorly, but it’s just a tool. Go ahead, go take lessons, you might learns something.

I was out looking over West Virginia this weekend. Spent most of the time in and around Bluestone State Park. I made a stupid mistake and ran both of the cameras I took out of batteries, but I managed some good shots before the second one died. I should have pictures up in a few days.

Craig Photography: Art does not apologize

…in no way do I think digital photography is art, digital photography is a skill that can be constantly honed and developed. Composing a photograph is the “art”…

Craig posts on the sometimes subtle distinctions between digital photography and photography. Skill versus talent. The natural gifts of the artist vs a skill that can be learned by just about anyone. A short post, but thought provoking.

Update: I started to reply to this comment in the comment section, but I felt that both the question and the answer deserved an addition to the post.

Bre from the comments: But should art be limited to those who are born with talent for it? Or should it be open to anyone who is willing to devote time do develop their skill?

Art is open to anyone. Everyone is born with some artistic talent, and utilization of that talent can and does improve it with practice, but that isn’t what this is about. Skills can be improved, cameras, and procedures learned. Lighting and focus techniques can be taught. Composition can even be taught in a starkly technical fashion. I touched on this subject in another post a few weeks ago when I wrote:

Good photos record a moment. They record a moment in it’s entirety. Looking at a good photo tells you the story of that moment. It can show you a glimpse of who a person was, or a glimpse of the world though someone else’s eyes.

What Craig mentions as an art though is that moment, “the transcendental moment” when you exceed the sum of your skills. In that moment you don’t catch a moment in time, but you catch something timeless. I’ve taken a lot of photos, I’ve even taken photos of this body of water, but I’ve never taken anything like this, this is art.

Photo by Jan Bussey