blogging Archives - Page 16 of 22

Dammit, Dan, I’m a librarian, not a meteorologist!

Did you know I have linked to EVERY SINGLE POST you have written?

(Title inspired by We can’t see DeForest for the trees.)

Dan from albanyweblog.com griped:
Okay Roger… How come it’s so damn hot right now?
I want a thorough answer.

Sure.

I went to Google and put in why is it so damn hot. Unfortunately, all that got me is why certain types are hot, e.g., “Why are Canadian girls so damn hot?” Or vegan girls, gingers, emo guys, biracial guys, Norwegian people, bad boys, werewolves, rugby players. And Justin Bieber. I also found the lyrics and the video to You’re So Damn Hot by OK Go.

Meanwhile, Shooting Parrots jumped in:
Ditto: why is it so damn cool in the UK? And wet. Can I feel a climate change answer coming on?

Well, for that question, I went to the only reliable source I could think of, Al Jazeera:

“As the sea ice melts at an alarming rate, the Potsdam Institute points out that the albedo (the reflectivity) over the Arctic Ocean continues to decrease and more heat is absorbed by the waters creating a positive feedback.

“As the polar winter sets in over the upper atmosphere, the warming at low levels causes instability in the atmosphere. The resulting low-pressure systems at sea level disrupt the normal circulation.

“This circulation is measured by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Arctic Oscillation (AO). The Institute believes that such low-pressure systems enhance the NAO and AO early in the season but that, later in the winter, there is a delayed opposite effect. This would give rise to cold late winter spells across Europe.”

But the most thorough answer for both Dan and SP came from Jennifer Francis, who is a “research professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, where she studies Arctic climate change and the link between the Arctic and global climates.”

“Does it seem as though your weather has become increasingly ‘stuck’ lately? Day after day of cold, rain, heat, or blue skies may not be a figment of your imagination…

“Arctic amplification describes the tendency for high Northern latitudes to experience enhanced warming or cooling relative to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere. This heightened sensitivity is linked to the presence of snow and sea ice, and the feedback loops that they trigger… [since] World War II, Arctic temperatures have increased at more than twice the global rate. A dramatic indicator of this warming is the loss of Arctic sea ice in summer, which has declined by 40 percent in just the past three decades. The area of lost ice is about 1.3 million square miles or roughly 42 percent of the area of the Lower 48 United States. “

Then there’s a detailed description of the jet stream and its “waviness;” read it yourselves. Point is that we need to limit the carbon pollution that causes global warming, if it’s not too late; the jury’s out on that.
***
Steve from Life Crits asked:
If you could pose God just one question, what would it be…aside from the meaning of life, the universe, and everything in it?

So it would have to be mundane, yet something I really want to know. Got it.

When I was a teenager, I was walking down the street, when suddenly something hit the top of one of the lens of the pair of glasses I was wearing, creating a fault line. Fortunately, it didn’t hurt my eye. It wasn’t hailing. I never found anything such as a BB that would explain it. What the heck WAS that?
***
GayProf from some university in a Decaying Midwestern Urban Center wrote:
Here is a tough, but fair, question: How did I get to be your favorite blogger?

Assuming the premise is actually true – it is the quality of your pieces. Did you know I have linked to EVERY SINGLE POST you have written since July of last year? Of course, that’s only two posts. But still…
***
Alexis, who I know personally, and who USED to blog, wants to know:

If you could have a conversation with any famous person, dead or alive, who would you pick?

I’ll choose Ben Franklin. I’d be quite interested to see what he thought of the current state of both technology and government. Could I bring him back to explain what the Founders meant by the separation of church and state? Or to explain the deadly effects of turtle sex? -I’m sure he’d find that fascinating.

A Solstice Tradition: Ask Roger Anything

This is actually the one time in the year when your responses are vital to my blogging.

OK, so the solstice was actually yesterday at 23:09; this is close enough.

This is one of those times of the year when you get to ask Roger just about anything. Did I suggest “just about”? Nay, I say, anything, ANYTHING. Now, faced with a TMI question, I will, undoubtedly, make use of my obfuscation skills; I don’t use them that much these days, but in my 20s, I was really quite good at it. Still, I can’t out-and-out lie.

Since I now feed this blog to my Facebook and Twitter feeds, I am actively requesting folks that find me that way to participate as well. You are not limited to one query, either, but as many as you are moved to share.

This is actually the one time in the year when your responses are vital to my blogging. The home office gets a little warm, so if I get no questions at all, I’ll be forced to post summer-themed videos thrice a week, or the like, and I did a lot of them LAST summer, so all the good ones are taken, leaving stuff such as The Jamies doing Summertime, Summertime. Easy for me, of course, but probably not that exciting for you; think of this task as enlightened self-interest.

The blogs as squirrel nuts

Ah, let’s see what kind of traffic I can drive here by talking about pornography!

Shooting Parrots wrote:

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve collected ‘interesting’ bits of information. I put that in quotes because by interesting, I mean interesting to me. I can’t speak for anyone else.

I collected them like a squirrel gathers nuts, tasty kernels of facts that I then bury away somewhere because I know they’ll come in handy one day.

But like the squirrel, too often I forget where I’ve buried them, or I remember only half the story, which can be worse.

That’s one of the reasons I keep this blog. If I record things somewhere that has its own search facility then I have a better than even chance of finding it again when I need it.

Absolutely. It’s the reason I write the blog for work and ESPECIALLY the blog for the New York State Data Center affiliates, not to mention my own.

This was my response:

I was saddened when someone I thought knew me quite well said recently, “You spend so much time on that blog, and you don’t get paid!” Which, of course, misses the point completely. I do get paid – in relationships, in therapy I don’t have to pay for and in a place to store my squirrel nuts.

Mr. Parrot replied:

You’re right, of course, Roger. If people only spent time on the web because they got paid, there wouldn’t be much of it other than Amazon, e-Bay, and porn!

Ah, let’s see what kind of traffic I can drive here by talking about pornography! PORNOGRAPHY! Nah. Truth is, I don’t even look at the numbers anymore – PORNOGRAPHY! – because, and I believe I’m merely paraphrasing Alan David Doane, I do this for me. Though I DO like comments…
***
And speaking of PORNOGRAPHY, some damn filter has been installed at my work computer. One of the blogs I visited regularly was tagged as PORNOGRAPHY, maybe because it occasionally has a woman not fully dressed. I appealed it, saying it was a personal blog, but not PORNOGRAPHY.

They wrote: “You submitted the following rating request to [company]:
Rate [site] as “34.Personals and Dating”
The request has been reviewed and rated as:
“41.Glamour/Society”

Which is hysterical.

Blogging meme about blogging is a Cardinal Sin

Any number of TMI moments.

The late Cardinal Jaime Sin of the Philippines.

From Sunday Stealing back in November.

1. Why did you sign up for writing your blog?

An existential crisis of powerlessness.

2. Why did you choose your blog’s name? What does it mean?

Ramblin’ with (John) Gambling, a radio show.

3. Did you ever had another blog?

Not before this blog; a few since.

4. What do you do online when you’re not on your blog?

Limited Facebook and Twitter.

5. How about when you’re not on the computer?

Mostly tend to the Daughter.

6. What do you wish people who read your blog knew about you?

I think people who read my blog know just what I want them to know about me.

7. What is your favorite community in the blogosphere?

ABC Wednesday.

8. What is your philosophy on your blog layout?

I have none – philosophy or a particular layout.

9. Tell me about the picture you use to represent you on your blog.

It’s a caricature of me that the late Raoul Vezina drew for a friend of mine.

10. Pick 3 random blogs from your blogroll and tell us about them.

Byzantium Shores – well-read, and an extremely handy guy from Buffalo named Jaquandor who knows music.

Shores of Orion – a blog by Chris Honeywell, who’s a Christian Scientist. No, that’s not right. She’s a scientist (mathematical biogeochemist) and a Christian, among other things.

Mike Sterling’s Progressive Ruin -a comic-book-related blog I’ve been reading since before I started blogging.

11. What features do you think your blog should have that it doesn’t currently?

Big explosions.

12. What do you consider the 10 most “telling” interests that we would infer from your blog persona?

Music, religion, politics, civil rights, family, English language, movies, books, libraries, data

13. Do you have any unique interests that you have never shared before? What are they?

Yes, and I will when I get good and ready to.

14. The best thing about blogging is all of the friends that you make. Besides those folks, do you think your blog has fans?

Apparently.

15. What’s your current obsession? What about it captures your imagination?

Everything. Politics, I suppose.

16. What are you glad you did but haven’t really had a chance to post about?

I will, eventually. Or not.

17. How many people that first became a blog friend, have you met face to face?

One – Gordon.

18. What don’t you talk about here, either because it’s too personal or because you don’t have the energy?

Any number of TMI moments.

19. What’s a question that you’d love to answer?

I’m going to make you guess at that.

20. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and regretted it?

No. I think, like other friends, people come and go in your life.

21. Have you ever lost a blogging friendship and thought, “Was that overdue!”

No.
***
Most of the references to the death of the BeeGees’ Robin Gibb notes the brothers’ disco period, and especially the Saturday Night Fever, understandable given its sales and popularity. But the first song of theirs I heard was New York Mining Disaster 1941, and I for one was listening to them before Stayin’ Alive.

Blogoversary answers

What about all those OTHER blogs you do?

Let’s milk this seventh blogoversary gig: in response to questions I get about blogging all of the time, both in person and online, I decided to answer some of them.

Why do you blog?

I’ve noted that I was inspired by my friend Fred Hembeck. Beyond that, though, there was stuff happening in the world and in my life that seemed to be worthy of noting, if only because they were important to me.

Some people write letters to the editor. I have, but I’m not very diligent about it. Some people write to members of Congress. Ditto. What I realized that I can do is write something in a blog, then send THAT to a member of Congress. And I have, a few times. Plus the piece stays out there is in the blogoverse.

But mostly, it was so I could maintain a modicum of sanity.

What was your goal in blogging?

Initially, I had only two.

When my daughter was born in March of 2004, I said that I would keep a journal about/for her. But early on, that fell apart. So having the blog would be my public commitment to fulfill my promise. And I have written about her EVERY MONTH without fail, on the 26th, since I started this.

The other was to write the JEOPARDY! story so I didn’t have to repeat it all the time. The folks at J!-ARCHIVE have linked to those.

Why do you blog about THAT?

Because it interests me. I’ve said before that I write the blog, first and foremost, for me.

There’s a noted TV writer named Ken Levine (MASH, Frasier). Some people complain when he blogs about baseball; Ken’s an announcer for the Seattle Mariners and has served in the same capacity for other teams. What he (or his followers) usually say is something snarky such as, “For what you’re paying, you shouldn’t complain.”

I’m not one who does snark well. It’s not that I don’t feel snarky sometimes, but rather it seems to come off as mean-spirited. But my sentiment’s about the same.

If I write about sports or TV or politics or do a quiz, and you’re not interested, that’s fine; almost certainly, tomorrow will be something else. If I altered the eclectic balance and listen to other voices, my self-censoring would probably paralyze me from scribing anything at all. And writing this, as much as anything, is inertia. It is better FOR ME to write a quiz that you don’t like – but I do, because I usually learn something about me – than not to.

Quizzes are also quicker and easier. If I have written a blog post that’s taken two hours to put together, then I need something to cleanse my intellectual palate that I can do in 20 minutes or so.

Why don’t you link to anyone else?

Well, it had something to do with visual clutter. But I kind of do anyway. My old blog, which I stopped posting to when I got this one, is the place where I keep track of all the blogs I follow or want to refer to, and still update occasionally when I have time.

What about all those OTHER blogs you do?

They’ve all, directly or indirectly, evolved from the first. When my then-work colleague came back from a conference and said, “We need to have a blog!”, I was her firmest supporter because I had started my own only three weeks earlier; it became so. Subsequently, everyone was going to do a post once a week each, but that’s devolved to me writing something thrice a week unless I have an intern to do so. The good thing is that it’s become part of the job description.

I’m on the board of the Friends of the Albany Public Library, and since I can’t get to most of the midday events, I started that blog. I’m our office’s representative to the NY State Data Center, and at the spring meeting in 2007, someone suggested a blog, and I began Data Detectives in May of that year, probably the second favorite of my own blogs. Michael Huber of the Times Union, the Albany newspaper, I’d known for years, and he started nagging me to blog there; after blowing him off for about a year, I started Information without the Bun in January 2008.

I also participate in other people’s blogs. ABC Wednesday, which Denise Nesbitt, started about five years ago, I stumbled upon only sometime in 2009; seems longer. Huber invited me to participate in Getting There, about local transportation, in October 2011. Finally, I was doing the Flashmob Fridays comic book thing, but that, alas, is defunct.

How do you keep up with so many blogs?

Forced labor.

So there it is. 2,570 straight days of blogging. I’ve pretty much decided that when I get to 10 years, I’ll back off to thrice a week. But that’ll be 2015, and if all those apocalyptic forecasts come true, I won’t have to worry about that anyway.