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Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Phillies Playoff blog Rundown

The 700 Level

The 700 level is a great site for everything Philadelphia sports. They are funny and they love Philadelphia. They even have a Flickr Group.

Macho Row

What says Phillies more then a blog named after the core of the 93 Phillies. They do very good summaries of the games and good info before the game.

The Fightins

The Fightins is a blog that really feels like a Philadelphia sports fan. These are the kind of folks I used to hand out with in the Greater Northeast and play fantasy football in their basement.

Philly Sports Cast

I really love the Philly Sports Cast podcast. These guys are real fans. I feel like I know them without knowing them.

Phillies Nations

Good info and good writing about the Phillies

Labels: blog, list, philadelphia, Phillies, rundown

- Rich, 12:45 PM

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Taking the summer off

I feel like I have no good ideas to write about this summer. I have been spending my time working on other projects. I have been working on Jeremy's Aught Music Blog, My Costume Checklist blog, and my Twitter feed. For now that is all I got. I think I am going to take the summer off Sad Salvation. Maybe I will be ready to write come September.

Labels: Aught Music, blog, Costume Checklist, sadsalvation, self, Twitter

- Rich, 6:06 PM

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Wrapping up the decade

I have been taking part in Aught Music blog. It is an music blog put together by Jeremy Bushnell. The point is for people to write little love notes or appreciations for the songs of the last decade. The project is broken up to be done year by year. We have just finished up 2000. I am sending my posts for 2001 songs that will be posted over the next couple of weeks.

If you like you can see my posts. I would suggest looking through all the posts. There is a lot to look at there. I would recommend it all.

Labels: 2000s, Best of, best of decade, blog, music, song

- Rich, 3:36 PM

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Pulled away fro a while

...or So much has happened, I have not had the time to blog

Sometimes your life just has too many things going on. I got married in March. That pretty much took me away from my blog for a month. I did not have the time or the mental space to sit down and blog. I was either too busy, too tired, too stressed, too focused, or too distracted to just sit at my computer and type. When I did use my computer I was either working on wedding things or vegging out. I seemed to have no mental space to work on my blog.

Now that I am married I have to find a new approach to work on my blog. I need to come up with the time to work on it and the will to not screw around on the web when I find that time. When I started this blog I had all the time in the world to work on it. I would often spend four nights a week doing nothing but my blog.

Now I have to be more selective. I see and hear lots of things that I want to blog about. The problem is that I do not have the time to work my thoughts into something that I can easily post on a blog.

Of course there are other ways I can get things out. While I have been working on this post I have sent three tweets and posted three links to del.icio.us. If you like you can follow all that on Friends Feed.

Postdating

I am going to do some postdating of blog posts. There are notes that I took during the week before I was married so I would remember things. I know that I am using my blog as a journal trying to keep track of things, but deal with it. It is my blog and I don't really care

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, self, wedding

- Rich, 7:34 PM

Saturday, February 28, 2009

New Blog

I have created a new blog called Costume Checklist. This blog is all about Costume Photos. I have like a thousand costume photos on my flickr account. They account for 150 of my 200 highest viewed photos. Everyone loves a good costume photo.

I have decided to blog just to costume photos, costumes, and whatever else fits well here. I am trying to see if people will view a blog abut something thy are already viewing on Flickr.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for this blog.

Labels: blog, Costume Checklist

- Rich, 7:19 PM

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Is Blogging Over?

I know that I have been falling down lately when it comes to writing in this blog. I do not have the time and I cannot seem to make the time either. I sit down to write and my mind draws a blank. I am not reading my friends blogs all that often either. I read some blogs, but it is not important to me.

I am keeping my twitter account up to date. I can always find a few minutes to use twitter and read other twitter posts. Twitter is where I go to find out what is happening. During the election I used it all the time to find the latest news. I rarely found news by reading blogs.

I have some blogs I read in Google Reader, but most of them are Professional blogs like Gizmodo, or Engadget. Those are not really tools of the masses. Blogs have good from tools of the masses where anyone can be heard to the domain of professional writers and journalists. I think this is a big shift.

The web is a weird place. There is this constant battle between communities of users and monetizing the web. In 2002 I felt like blogs were giving the internet back to the people after the dot.com boom gave it to companies. Now user content has gone away from blogs and has gone to Twitter and Facebook.

I enjoyed when Blogs where king. I remember when I went to my first blog meeting in 2002 people were asking of blogs where dead or not. That was before most Americans had even heard about blogs. Maybe I am asking the wrong question.

Blogs will not go away, they are just being knocked off the top of the internet food chain. Twitter, Facebook, and other mobile apps will be taking over. That is what people will be looking at first. Blogs will just be coming after that. Who knows where technology will take us after that.

Blogging must be dead. I cannot pay attention long enough to make this post make the point. 140 characters would have been better.

Labels: blog, engadget, factbook, Gizmodo, self, Twitter

- Rich, 6:51 PM

Saturday, February 07, 2009

My Comments are dead

The service that was providing my comments feature, YACCS, is gone. I knew this was going to happen. I started using Blogger before they provided built in comments. I even had the site designed by a friend before the comments feature came on line. This means I need to get the Built In comments working.

For a long time I have felt like my blog needs a redesign, but I do not enjoy web site design. I also cannot find someone to redesign it for me. This might be what it takes to get me off my ass to get the site redesigned. It might be months before it gets done because of the wedding. For now it will have to stay how it is.

Labels: blog, comment, sadsalvation

- Rich, 3:15 PM

Friday, October 17, 2008

I've been missing

The blog has been a little dark lately. Between planning the wedding and starting a new job, I have not had time to sit in front of the computer and blog. You might want to check out my twitter feed to see what is happening in my life. After second thought that might not be so great of an idea. It might not tell you that much about my life. With Nano coming soon, I am not sure I will be back to the blog all that soon. One day Sad Salvation will be updated regularly again.

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 6:34 PM

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Messages of All Lengths

I have been thinking about Twitter, Plurk, email, and blogs lately. I have been using Twitter and Plurk a lot lately. I know that they are mostly chatter, but it is easy to fit chatter in with everything else I have to do.

I remember use to love e-mail. Back in 1996 I used to get up first thing in the morning and read my e-mails. If felt exciting, like waiting for letters in the mail. I was sharing e-mail with people all over the world, at least the English speaking world. When I logged onto my computer I could not wait to see what was there for me. It was new and exciting.

Now a days I mostly ignore my personal e-mail. I check it all the time to see is anything good is there, but I rarely write anyone. I rarely get any good e-mail from anyone. If I get an email the correspondence will go on for two or three days before it dies off. There is a lot of reasons this is true. I do not have the attention span for e-mail anymore. It might be because I am so attached to e-mail every day at work I do not want to be attached to it at home.

Twitter and Plurk are interesting because of the short aspects of both these services. Twitter is amazing at how much can be shared in just 140 characters. It has the ability to make me feel very close to some people because it is so casual. Plurk is amazing because at how quick the communication it. It is really communication in the now.

I know that I need to be willing to put times into communication. I would love to e-mail my friends again, but it is more effort than I have to give right now. I hate to think that these forms of communication are making me lazy.

Labels: blog, email, Plurk, Twitter

- Rich, 4:59 PM

Monday, July 07, 2008

Broken Links

I have been trying to label all my blog posts. With over 2800 blog posts it has been taking me over a year to do this. I am not really sure how many more I have to do before I am finished. Doing this I have found a lot of broken links. Lots of the stories that I posted blog entries about are no longer on the web.

This has effected my writing some. I am not trying to write entries that stand up even if the person does not follow the link. I need to be able to write entries that always make sense even if the links go away.

If the link does go away I might clean up the broken link, but I am not going to find the story someplace else. It is not worth my time.

Labels: blog, broken link, label, sadsalvation, tags

- Rich, 4:58 PM

Monday, June 30, 2008

I am becoming an image

I was looking in the referral logs of my blog. Most of my search referrals are currently image searches. I used to get all kinds of crazy searches that would find Sad Salvation because of written content. Now random people find me because of images. I am not sure why that is. Have Google text searches got better? Are people searching for fewer crazy things? Are images really what my blog is about?

I do know that I blog a lot of photos. I have been blogging a ton of photos for a few years now.

I am not sure if this is good for my blog or not. I am not sure how to attract people who have never read it before. I am not sure that people that do not know me would even like reading it. I would love to be a big time blogger, but I am not sure this blog is going that direction.

Labels: blog, flickrpost, google, image search, referral logs, sadsalvation

- Rich, 3:54 PM

Monday, May 05, 2008

Date it forward

Blogger is finally adding a feature that I have been wanting for year now. I now can schedule future posts. This means I can write a post on Sunday to have it appear on Monday. This feature makes me so happy. Why would I want this feature. Right now I am working on a daily series about flickr views. Before I had to go back every day and post if I get the post done early. Now I can set it and forget it. I am very happy with this.

Note: This was my test post to make sure it works correctly.

Labels: blog, blogger, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 5:23 PM

Friday, April 11, 2008

The web around me

Gapingvoid did a webcomic about why he deleted his twitter account. This is interesting to me. Lately I have been less active on my blog. I know this has to do with being engaged. I spend a lot of time with Kate. Even when I am sitting at my computer, I cannot just whip up a good blog entry. It takes time and a lot of effort. What I want to say is just not on the top of my head. It takes a little drilling for me to get to.

I have a twitter account. It is an interesting communication tool and it is worth using for me. It just not the same as a blog. I spend much of my time just deleting messages. Most of the time I am using it on my phone. While it is entertaining, it really makes the rest of text messaging less useful to me.

Twitter at its best feels like a really good short blog, cutting through all the crap. The problem is that is rarely feels that way. Most of the time it is just people talking too much. It seems like less worth my time than reading blogs.

I am not sure if I stopped twittering I would write or read more blogs. Twitter is like a lot of web 2.0 things, I like it, but I will it was more useful.

Labels: blog, flickrpost, gapingvoid, Twitter, web, Web 2.0

- Rich, 8:07 PM

Sunday, February 17, 2008

What do blogs mean now

I was looking at an old blog entry from back in 2002. Back then someone had the idea of doing a peer blog review. At that point the idea seemed fresh and new. Now I am not sure this idea would mean anything at all.

I will admit that when I started my blog and when blogs started to get well know, they seemed like something really important. Blogs seemed like a way to get the internet that seemed to go away as part of the Dot.Com boom. There seemed to be something special about the information you could get from blogs.

I am not sure why I keep this blog going. I like to write and it is good to have one place where I can collect my thoughts. Sad Salvation is a good place for me to collect those thoughts and share them with other people. I am no longer trying to drive traffic to my blog. If people find it okay, if they do not I am not going to worry. They can do what they want to read me, more power to them.

I am not sure what kind of response you would get to a Blog Peer Review project right now. Would you want MySpace blogs included? Would you want to include blogs where all people do are cut and paste memes? Would you exclude personal blogs? Would you only include blogs that have big reader bases? I am not sure how I would answer these questions.

Back in 1996 I remember a watching TV and seeing an "expert" talking about the future of the internet. The news reporter asked him about the future of web surfing. He said that he was not sure web surfing had a future. He said that the web was still new and we could not be sure what would happen. He was not sure that people would still be staying up all night surfing the web, going wherever links take up. It look he was right.

I am not trying to say that blogs are going away, but they are not as powerful as they were a few years ago. They seem to be left in the past some. I am not sure what I will think about blogs in the future, but they are not as important to me as they were in the past.

What do blogs mean to you?

Labels: 2002, blog, Peer Review Blog Project, sadsalvation

- Rich, 4:29 PM

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Photo Blogging

Maker Faire: City Van
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I would like to list this photo under deserves more views. I know the truth is that I should file it under: not as good at it could be.

I am thinking about starting a Photo Blog up. I am not sure if it is worth my time or not. I already have a flickr account. What would it mean to also have a photo blog? I am not sure it would be worth the time.

Labels: blog, flickr, flickrpost

- Rich, 1:58 PM

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Blogging goals

My Table
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I am trying to figure out what realistic blogging goals for 2008 would be. I know that I will not be able to find the time to blog everyday. Between work and relationships, it is just not a good goal to set. I would fall behind and just about give up. That is not really what I want to do.

Should my goal to be to make three posts a week? Should I be looking for posts that will really be worth my time. I should be making posts that say something I want to say.

I will have to figure this one out. I would like to make a goal and meet it for at least 40 weeks next year.

Labels: 2008, blog, goal, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 8:47 PM

Monday, November 26, 2007

Photo Blogging

Puffy
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I made a hand full of resolutions in 2007. I have been successful for most of them. One I just finished was blogging 150 photos. I think that blogging photos makes my blog more interesting and it makes me think about photography. Both of those things are good things.

If you want to see all the photos I have blogged this year they are in one place, you can look at my set on Flickr. They are in roughly the order I blogged them. I think it is cool to just look at that set.

Tell me what you think.

Labels: blog, flickr, flickrpost, photoblog, sadsalvation

- Rich, 4:45 PM

Saturday, November 24, 2007

back of the hand

back of the hand
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

Some days I feel this blog is nothing more than me looking at the back of my hand. I must admit that is what Twitter feels to me. Most of the Twitter messages I get are people saying, "Look How Cool I Am." I like some of them, but if you are twittering more than once hour every day you might want to rethink your twitter policy.

Labels: blog, flickrpost, sadsalvation, self, Twitter

- Rich, 3:20 PM

Friday, November 23, 2007

My blog

February 22: Hands
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

My blog has been feeling lonely lately. It is upset with me for treating it so poorly. It wants me to keep it up to date. It wants me to visit every day. It wants me to think about what I am posting. It wants more from me. The problem is that everything wants more of me. I only have so many hours in the day. I can only blog so much. I have to work, and live. Blogging seems far down the scale of things to do.

I am wondering if I should start over. Should I get rid of San Salvation and start a new blog. Maybe it is time to start something fresh. There are lots of things that have change about my life in the second half of 2007. Maybe a new blog should be one of them.

Labels: blog, flickrpost, sadsalvation

- Rich, 4:00 PM

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Back Dating

Christmas In the Park
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

Yes, I am backdating again. You know how that is. I cannot let the past be the past and just blog now. Just enjoy it and look at the pretty pictures.

Labels: back dating, blog, flickrpost, sadsalvation

- Rich, 8:55 AM

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Close up

Close up
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

Is my blog a reflection of me? If so, what is it saying about me? Is it something I should be proud about? What should my blog say about me?

Labels: blog, flickrpost, question, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 8:57 PM

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Back dating the Clock

May 8: Clock
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

If you have been playing attention to my blog, you will notice I have been backdating for a while now. You will notice that most of my post are photo posts with very little content. I will admit to this. I have been backdating. I see nothing wrong with backdating. This is my place and I get to make up the rules. I know some people see this as dishonest, but I do not really care. I am only a K-list blogger and this is all about me.

To be honest, I have been very wrapped up in living my life. Finding things to actually write about would be very hard. I just do not have that much to say right now. Everything is about my job or my relationship. I really do not want to blog either of those things here.

For right now I will be backdating. The pain here is that my archive system is broken. Things do not show up there correctly. This change happened when Blogger added labels. I could ask Jeremy to try to fix it, but something tells me my $60 did not cover this.

Labels: back dating, blog, flickrpost, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 9:09 PM

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Honest

Honest
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

Yes, I am back dating again. I know that some people do not like the idea of back dating in blogs. Why do I need to go into the past and back date entries. For some reason I really like to. That is why all these old entries are popping up.

I am not sure what backdating really means to me. I am really thinking about flickr and photos right now. It seems like the right way to get across what I am thinking about.

Labels: back dating, blog, flickrpost, sadsalvation

- Rich, 4:28 PM

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

The blog grave yard

The other day I did a search for how many dead blogs are there? I am interested in this because I have been looking at old Sad Salvation entries. There are lots of blog entries I point to blogs that are no longer there. That made me think about dead blogs and extinct blogs. The difference between the two are is that dead blogs are still sitting there in cyberspace not being updated, extinct blogs are missing from cyberspace. I know I am making up these terms. I feel that dead blogs and extinct blogs are different from each other and should be seen that way. If you have better terms for these things let me know.

I found an blog post about dead blogs that points to an article about dead blogs. I think that both of these things are pretty interesting. There is no shame that the rate of growth of blogs has slowed. I think we have not entered the second phase for blogging yet. I think the story of blogs and the impact on society is far from over. I think that is the important thing. Even if there are a lot of dead blogs out there, what matters is that readers still find blogs to read.

Everything on the web should be permanent, but it is not. There are hosting fees and URL registration fees. If you do not keep those things up your blog will go away even after it is dead. The information can be lost. Now my blog points to sites that are no longer there.

Now, everything comes with a blog. Almost Every social network site has a blogging feature that goes along with it. Sites from MySpace, Last FM, to OK Cupid have blogs. I cannot create enough content for the blogs I already have. There is no way to create a new blog for every site I sign up for. As web 2.0 kicks in, a new phase of blogging is going to start. I think that this blogs are going to different than the last generation off blogs. I think the users will be less invested in them and they will go dead at a much faster rate. I also think there will be a lot more private friends only blogs with social network sites.

I think we will see more changes if micro blogging like Twitter catches on. I think we will see a different level of blogging. I think we do not know what changes that will bring.

Even if there are a lot of dead blogs, blogs are not going away. Even if the rate of growth of blogs have slowed, it does not mean the change created by blogs is going away. The promise of blogs is that anyone can get their message out there. If you are good enough people will read you. I think the Huffington Post is a great example of how blogs have changed the world. Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer did not have to create a magazine or get a show on a cable network to get their message out there. I think this revolution will not end even if the trend of everyone having a blog ends.

Labels: blog, dead blog, web, Web 2.0

- Rich, 3:41 PM

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Who is Reading Sad Salvation?

On the Sunday edition of the Mercury News there is a tease banner of 'Who Is Reading Your Blog?' The story is in the Perspective section. The column is about how people are obsessed with who is reading their blog, looking at their photos, watching their video, and visiting there myspace page. Views are one of the main currencies of the web. The numbers of views you get is the amount of attention we are getting.

I do not worry too much about who is reading Sad Salvation. I figured out a long time ago that I am a not going to be an A, B, or C-List blogger. I have always seen myself as a K-List blogger. My technorati rank is around 400,000 and I do not see it going up anytime soon. For whatever reason, I do not appeal to a mass audience. I know that people are reading it because I am getting comments from time to time.

I am obsessed about views when it comes to Flickr. Views are my main driver. I care that my median view does not drop. It has been slowly climbing this year. It seems to be stuck between 40 to 38. I have a group for photos that I think should have 100 views. For some reason I get the most reward out of people looking at my photos.



There is one quote in the story which I found interesting.

One concern, however, looms on the horizon for all those creators: In a world where everyone is busy churning out videos, blog entries, and podcasts (and counting the number of people who tune in), do we run the risk of having no one left to watch?

Yes, I spend much more time working on Sad Salvation than I do reading blogs. I spend much more time working on my photos than I send on looking at other people's photos. I am more focused on me than I am on other people. I guess that is part of why I like being a blogger.

Labels: blog, flickr, flickrpost, sadsalvation, technorati, views, web, Web 2.0

- Rich, 4:25 PM

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Content and Conduct

Blogs are just like the rest of the world. In the same way they give us the chance to communicate with the rest of the world, they also give people the power to be jerks.

Outsiders often make the mistake of viewing blogs as the online equivalent of newspapers or magazines with newsrooms of reporters and managing editors reviewing copy, said Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and associate professor at the City University of New York's graduate school of journalism. They are not. "No one edits the Internet," Jarvis said. Traditional "media are things you sanitize, control and put a bow on." The Web is not.

The internet is like a huge cocktail party. Every once is communicating, telling stories, having fun. Of course there are loud jerks that want to shout everyone else down. If those jerks are not careful, other people will leave and they will just be communicating with each other. That is what bloggers have to be careful about.

Labels: blog, bloggers, conduct, internet, jerk

- Rich, 10:22 PM

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

RSS Feeding

I think it is time for me to turn my RSS feed back on. I turned it off because of a problem I was having with old entries. I am adding tags (Blogger calls them labels) to old entries and those old entries are showing up a new in my RSS feed. I turned off my RSS feed thinking I could pound out the old entries in a few weeks. With over 2400 entries, it was a larger job than I thought. I have not idea how many entries I have tagged, but it is less than half. The people who use my RSS feed will just have to put up with the Greatest Hits aspect of my blog for now. I will never everyone know when it is over, but it will be a while.

Labels: blog, blogger, rss, rssfeed, sadsalvation

- Rich, 11:44 AM

Friday, April 27, 2007

Image Search and blogging

March 31: Flower Tattoo
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I have been looking the Sad Salvation referral logs. When I first started to blog I looked at them all the time. I even did posts about crazy ways people found my blog. There used to be a lot of crazy searches that pulled up Sad Salvation.

Now looking at my referral logs, 80% of the searches that find my blog are Image searches. Most of the images they find are old images, before I used flickr for my blog. It seems that some images are more popular than others. That is why I picked the flower tattoo for this post.

I know that many people do not link to my blog. Many of my readers have gone away since I turned off my RSS feed. It just wonder what it means that images are the most found thing about my blog. I have the feeling this is saying something about how people use the web is changing.

Labels: blog, google, image search, rss, sadsalvation, search

- Rich, 7:52 PM

Monday, April 09, 2007

Blog Manners

Today in the New York Times I see an article that asks, Is it too late to bring civility to the Web? All I can say is that some people need to get over themselves. It is sad that this question even needs to be asked. I would hope there is not a need for a code of conduct. I would hope that bloggers can conduct themselves, but if they cannot we might just need a code of conduct.

I want to say that if you comment on a blog, the person who owns that blog has the right to delete your comment, no matter what. The owner of the blog can delete your comment if they do not like the comment, think you use too many comma, or just don't like your last name. The blog owner is not stepping on your right to free speech. Your right to free speech is your right to link to that entry and make your blog post. that is where your right to free speech is.

I use a system where the comments only last three months anyway. I have always thought that comments are extra. They are an add on to the blog. If a comment is really good I will add it to my blog. I know that lots of people disagree with me.

Labels: blog, comment, conduct, manners, New York Times, web

- Rich, 7:59 AM

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Do Zines still matter?

Zines
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

On a friend's flickr post I saw a link to San Francisco Zine Fest. I have been thinking about zines for a while now. I wonder if zines still matter. Part of me think that zines are nostalgia or an anachronism for the most part. I get the feeling that the time for zines are past.

I am not usually someone who thinks that the internet has killed print media. I think that that it has changed the place in the world for some print media. Newspapers seem to be the most displaced. I think it has to do with the timeliness of the information. Newspapers seem old by the end of the day.

I feel that zines have been displaced by Blogs and Websites. When I was reading and writing zines (yes it was much more reading than writing) back in the early 1990's it felt like zines were the only way to get these messages out. There was no other way for people making zines to be published to the world.

Zines were a whole world of people expressing themselves that you have to look for. People had to put effort into finding zines they liked. It was not something like TV which is there no matter what you do. Zines seemed to be about finding voices like your own is a world that was filled with people who are not like you.

With blogs I guess I am not sure why people still make zines. I think it is much easier to connect with people who are not right around you. With the effort and money it takes to make a zine, is it really worth it. Are the people who wrote the good zines writing good blogs now?

When I went to the Seattle Central Library they had zines in the Teen area. Seeing these zines made me think about doing a zine. The problem is I am not sure how a zine would be different that just a mash-up of my blog and my flickr account. Could I make a zine that is worth reading? I am not sure what I would make a zine about.

Tell, do zines still matter?

Labels: blog, flickr, flickrpost, media, newspaper, zine

- Rich, 4:53 PM

Friday, March 16, 2007

The feed is off

I am turning off my RSS feed for a little while. I want to use the blogger label function to add tags to a lot of my old entries. The only way I can think to do this is to turn off my RSS feed. You will have visit Sad Salvation to get all of my blog goodness.

Labels: blog, rss, rssfeed, sadsalvation

- Rich, 7:44 PM

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Dial B for Blogs

I have been reading all the archive post from Dial B for Blog. Dial B for Blog is no longer active, but it has a big archive. The writer has taken the character Robby Reed from the Dial H for Hero comic as his pen name. The blog mostly looks at old comics. At the start he did a lot of funny comparisons of different comics, but as it goes on the blog becomes more sincere.

I have been thinking about comics lately and the internet has just been making it worst. Wikipedia has a lot of good comics information. I have been able to find just about everything that I have been looking for there. There is a lot of good writing about comics on the internet. Most of the stuff that interests me right now is looking at stories about old comics.

Looking at Dial B for Blog made me look for the list of Public Domain Comic Book characters. There is part of me that would love to write a story with an old public domain comic book character. I would love to mine those old storied to make new stories. I think that is one of the powers of comics. I would love to write a story like that.

Labels: B for Blog, blog, comic book, Wikipedia

- Rich, 7:12 AM

Monday, February 26, 2007

Don't Jail Bloggers

The story of the Egyptian Blogger getting jail time is very disturbing to me. Freedom of speech and freedom of press is the most important freedom to me. I understand that laws are different in different places. I understand not every culture is like my culture. I can see why people want their rules to fit where they live in the world.

My problem is I think speech is the most important thing in the world. Speech is the basis of thought. What is free will without free speech? It is meaningless without free speech. There is no other way I can put it. It is more important than I can even say.

I am not sure what I can do to change what happened in Egypt. I need to do something. It does not look like this situation is about to change right now. I am not even sure what our government could do to help him out. It is important to try.

Labels: blog, blogging, freedom of speech

- Rich, 7:19 AM

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Goals 2007

January 7: Arm's Length
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I did not make any resolutions for 2006. It seems like I take some years off. I am not sure these are really resolutions. They are goals. I know that these are not that challenging. It still stuff I want to try to do this year.

Take a photography everyday
Post at least 200 pre-2005 to Flickr
Use my text messaging more.
Use up all 500 of my monthly text messages at least once
Blog at least 150 photos.
Be open to the changes that come

Labels: 2007, blog, flickr, flickrpost, photography, textmsg

- Rich, 12:22 PM

Friday, January 26, 2007

Writing Slowly

I see things happen in the news and it takes me a few days to write about it. I wonder if the moment is already past by the time I get around to writing about it. It is really hard to know. I know that blogs are at the type of instant communication, but it takes me a while to come up with ideas. If I was not working full time I might be able to sit around and blog all the time.

I think there can be too much instant opinion in this day and age. I need a day or two to think about my arguments. I need time to write those arguments out. I need to time to think about events and what those events mean.

The problem is that the writing can stretch out why past the point where the event I am writing about is in the news. I find myself writing about things after everyone else has moved on. I wonder if anyone cares by the time I get to write about things.

I should not be too worried. I am not sure anyone cares about what I write about anyway. I should just try to say focused and write whenever I can.

Labels: blog, news, writing

- Rich, 5:12 PM

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Me

Me
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I want to blog more photos this year, but I am not sure I have taken photos worth blogging.

Labels: blog, flickrpost

- Rich, 9:26 PM

Monday, November 06, 2006

Go check my archives

I know that I should be putting more effort into my blog right now. I am getting a lot of extra readers from National Blog Posting Month. A lot of them are getting to by blog from the NaBloPoMo Randomizer. If my blog is not interesting the people finding my blog will not come back again in the future. I am just not sure I have anything interesting to say right now.

I just have no idea what to write. Since I do not know what to say, I will ask you to read my archives. I swear back there I have something worth reading back there. I am just not sure what you will find worth reading. Just give it a try. I have to go back to working on my novel.

Labels: blog, nablopomo, sadsalvation

- Rich, 9:59 PM

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Oh Crap

Oh Crap
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

Oh Crap I only have 25 minutes left to post a blog entry. I do not want to run out of time. I know that NaBloPoMo is getting me a lot of attention. I should be doing better posts. The problem is my novel is using all of my mental real estate right now.

Labels: blog, flickrpost, nablopomo, nanowrimo

- Rich, 11:37 PM

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Five Years Of Sad Salvation

As of today I have been writing and publishing Sad Salvation for five years. I am not sure if publishing is the right word for it, but I do not have a better word for it. It is hard for me to get my mind around the idea that I have been doing this for five years. It has become such a big part of my life while I have lived in San Jose. It is hard to remember living in San Jose and not writing Sad Salvation.

The funny thing is that much of my social scene is connected to Sad Salvation in one way or another. I have a whole collection of friends I have meet because of blogs and the internet. I think that is why Sad Salvation has lasted this long. I keep on doing it because it is easy for me to see the rewards.

A few things you may or may not know connected to Sad Salvation

- Invisible City had the first blog I ever read.
- Sad Salvation started as a result of the 9/11 attacks
- The End Of Summer Party was a blog my friends started to keep in touch with each other. It is long past gone.
- The Zines I helped publish were, Senseless Banter, Read Our Minds, and Baggage. I was also published in a few other zines.
- Super Karate Monkey Fist, Is my backup blog that I keep doing different things with.
- Jeremy designed my current Sad Salvation look.
- Vox, and LiveJournal are my other blog

If you want to know what is different now than five years ago you can read the archive. I know it has changed over that time. I should go back and read those entries to see who I have been over the last five years. It is not always easy to keep track of while you are living your life.

Here is a reprint of my first Sad Salvation entry. I hope you enjoy it.

--------------

Welcome to Sad Salvation

I looked at my life a few years ago and thought about something. I was sitting at a coffee house thinking about starting a new zine. I was trying to rack my brain trying to figure out what I could personally publish that would be interesting for people to read. I was thinking of the zines that I had read recently. There was nothing that I was reading at the time that really excited me. Most of it was pretty meaning less.

I had read a decent number of zines. I have even published about a half dozen issues. I looked at what other people were writing. I found something incredibly personal in zines. They were a place where people could try to construct some kind of story about their lives. The zines I was reading at the time where unlike any of the other stories I was finding in the rest of the world.

Being 23 years old there was something really empowering about zines. I was right out of college and I seemed to be going nowhere in the world. All of my friends were facing the same situations. We were working at bookstores and restaurants. We were clerks and temps. We spent our time watching clocks and find ways to slack off. Zines seemed to be the best way to work out our artistic frustrations. Using the office copy machine to cut the cost of a zine was a natural thing to do.

I was sitting at this coffee shop and I was not 23 years any more. I was 27 years old and my friends were starting to find their way into careers. They were becoming teachers, designers, and engineers. It was my day off from a dot.com start up. The way my life was happening was slowly sinking in for me.

For most of my life, my friends have been the artist type. Growing up we would tell stories, dream up comic books, and talk about the kinds of movies we wanted to make. We were all writers at heart. As I went through my life, these were always the kinds of people that I became friends with. We were people who dreamt about making our impression on the world. We thought about big ideas and big ways to express them. The problem was that we were becoming regular people.

There is a whole generation of people that are just like me. People that in their heart see themselves as writers and artists, but their job does not reflect that. We are sitting around playing in bands for recreation. We write zines and web sites as an artist outlet. We keep on thinking that someday we will be able to break out and become a true artist.

In this light, writing a zine is Sad Salvation. It is not only our artistic salvation, but it is also salvation because it is what we value most in this world. I am not speaking about everyone. I am just talking about a type of person I seem to be close with. We are not starting families, we are not growing roots in a community, we are not working toward building specific lives for ourselves. I wonder if we will ever find that Salvation we are looking for.

(I have the feeling this needs a re-write)....

Labels: blog, End of Summer Party, list, sadsalvation, San Jose, tag overload

- Rich, 8:20 PM

Sunday, October 01, 2006

You are never sure where your photos will end up

Comic Con 2006: Somewhere around Thunderdome
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

It appears that that my photo, Somewhere around Thunderdome ended up on the Flickrotica blog. I find this to be funny. I am not sure if I could have got a photo on this blog if I tried. By not trying it was very easy to accomplish. I am not sure if I should hold this as a badge of honor or not.

Labels: blog, broken link, flickr, Flickrotica, flickrpost, photo

- Rich, 5:28 PM

Saturday, September 30, 2006

San Jose Weblogger Meetup

San Jose Weblogger Meetup:
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I went to the San Jose Weblogger Meetup on Thursday. There were not that many people there, but we had a good time.

The writer of épanouie was there, but I cannot remember her name. I do remember that she has only been blogging for a week and she is an Astros fan. I am not sure how long the average blog lasts, but I hope she keeps it up.

Stephanie was talking about all the attenion she got about her entry How to explain RSS the Oprah way. I think this is more of a sign if you use Oprah's name to something it explodes. I am wondering if people my age are naming there daughers Oprah.

Steve Slone and CA McCune were talking about how blogging effected the outcome of the SJSU v. Skype. They were talking about a possible academic paper on the whole event.

At the meeting that asked for people to think about topics that would get more people to show up. Here we go with a few things

Conversation Topics: How do LJ, MySpace, and Vox fit into the blogging world
Guest topic: Demographics of Blogging -Who is writing and reading blogs
Blogging Tool: Technorati
What has worked well for me: Guest Bloggers and Sweeps Week

Labels: blog, blogging, CA McCune, flickrpost, Steve Slone

- Rich, 3:10 PM

Monday, September 18, 2006

Bit Torrent for the Mainstream

I read some blogs and blog columnist say they were disappointed at Apple that iTunes 7 does not have HD support. They want shows and movies in at least 1080i resolution. Whenever asked about download bandwidth and time constraints, they say that Apple should use BitTorrent or a system like it. I hear people all the time talk about BitTorrent like it is free bandwidth.

Could a commercial service like Apple's iTunes Music Story use a shared distribution system successfully? I am not sure what the technical barriers to this would be. My guess is that it would not be as easy as it seems. Even if it was really easy, I am not sure what kind of customer experence it would be. I am not sure a technology like BitTorrent would support the kind of business Apple or Amazon wants to build.

Labels: bittorrent, blog, download, HDTV, iTunes, video

- Rich, 8:23 PM

Saturday, September 09, 2006

My Music Blog

I am not sure if anyone cares or not, but I have started a mostly music blog over at Vox. I can upload MP3s and they stream from the Vox site. I like being able to share music with other people. I was telling my sister Kathy that the internet has made me more interested in Music. I like it not because I can read things like Pitchfork media. I like it because I can read what people like me think about music.

Labels: blog, music, pitchfork media, vox

- Rich, 4:11 PM

Friday, September 01, 2006

blogging this

August SV Flickr Meetup: blogging this
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

I am so blogging this. I always love this shirt. It is like telling people that the security camera is recording their every move. Yet I did not read one thing on Daemonlip blog from this meeting.

Labels: blog, Daemonlip, flickrpost, t shirt, web

- Rich, 6:15 PM

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Vacation - Back to the real world.

Traffic
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

My vacation has been over since Wednesday. I have still been recovering with all that time. I think after this weekend I will be back to my normal self. I still have some Comic Con photos to sort through and post. I am really behind when it comes to posting photos to Flickr. I have a lot of non-Comic Con Vacation photos to sort through. For right now you can check out my Comic Con 2006, Women in Costume, and Summer Vacation 06 Sets.

I still have a lot to write about from vacation. I will apologize now to the people who expect my life to be up to date in my blog. I am going to write a lot of entries about what has been happening over the last couple of weeks. I know that my writing will not totally be in order. That is just one of the things you will have to put up with.

I think I am going to blog as many photos as I have good stories for. I took over 1000 photos at Comic Con and over 1000 photos on the rest of my vacation. I think I need to put some of those photos to a little more use than just posting them to flickr.

Labels: blog, comic con, flickr, flickrpost, sadsalvation, vacation

- Rich, 2:50 PM

Friday, July 21, 2006

Vacation - Falling Behind

I am really falling behind with blogging about my vacation. I will catch up later. In the mean time you can see some of my moblogging at vox and my photos at Flickr. I will catch up later.

Labels: blog, blogging, flickr, vacation, vox

- Rich, 11:38 PM

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Vox

I just signed up for a Vox account. I am not sure what I am going to do with it. I already have a blog, a backup blog, LiveJournal, myspace, and Yahoo 360 account. You would think I already have enough places to blog. I guess I feel like I always need more. I know it is because I want to be there before it becomes big. If it turns out to be the next big thing, I want to be there before it is over. I had a Flickr account for almost a year before I started using it.

Vox has a lot of cool features. I can hook it right into my flickr account to make uploading photos easy. It also makes it easy for me to blog about music. I could make this my blog about music. That would be pretty cool.

I am not sure where all of these blogging services are going. I am not sure if I should cross post things or use every post for a different reason. I just wish I had enough time to keep all these blogs up to date.

I have an invite to share if anyone wants to try Vox. Just let me know.

Labels: blog, blogging, flickr, livejournal, myspace, sadsalvation, vox, Yahoo 360

- Rich, 8:49 AM

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Flickr: Quantity v. Quality

Say Cheese
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

As anyone looking at my flickr account can see, I have been thinking a blog about photography lately. The newness of my new camera has not worn off. At this rate the newness may not go away for months. It is so cool and I love the kind of pictures I can take with it.

Having this camera makes me want to take lots of photos. I have been averaging 50 photos a day since I got it. That is a lot of photos. Some of them are good, some are no better than my old camera, and some of them just stink. I am taking a lot of photos so I can learn how to use this camera.

I also take a lot of photos because I am looking around more. I spent some money on this camera (and camera accessories) and I want to get the most out of it. It is also very enjoyable to use the camera. In cases where I used to take just one or two photos, I am now taking ten photos.

Now that I am taking so many more photos, I am not sure what I should do on flickr. Up to this point I have seen myself as a journaling photographer. I was just taking pictures of my day to day life to share with everyone. I was not worried about the limits of my camera or my skills. I was just working with what I could.

With my new camera I can take some better photos. One out of every 50 or so look really good. I have noticed that most of my flickr friends who are really good post very few photos. To make those photos stand out you limit how many you post. Maybe you post everyday but you only post one photo.

But there are thousands of really good photographers on flickr right now. There is only one person living my life. If I quite posting the photos of my everyday life, I might lose what makes me special on Flickr.

I guess I need to figure out what I want out of flickr. Do I want it to be about my life or do I want it to be about my photography. I can keep on posting the good pictures, but they will be lost amount the flood of all the other photos I am posting.

I know that my good photos are not what get the most views. Views are about lots of funny things. All of the sudden all of my photos of laptops have over 1000 views.

I have no idea how to messure what people like about my flickr photos.

Labels: blog, camera, flickr, flickrpost, photo, photography

- Rich, 5:14 PM

Monday, January 16, 2006

Blog Sweeps Week Idea

For Blog Sweeps Week I would like to have some guest bloggers on Sad Salvation. It would be cool if other people would write some entries for me. If anyone out there is interested please let me know. I have a couple of people lined up, but I need some more.

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, sweeps week

- Rich, 10:32 PM

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Sweeps Week Idea

A friend of mine suggested that I kick off Blog Sweeps Week with a redesign of Sad Salvation. That is a good idea. The problem is that I really do not know enough about HTML or graphic design to do a good job. I got this design by paying a friend a few years ago. I do not have the cash to do that now. At that time I was lucking because I was on vacation when I paid him and I just took the money out of my vacation budget.

I do not have the skills or the money to get Sad Salvation redesigned. That means that I would have to depend on the kindness of others to get my web site redesigned. I really do not seeing this happening in the next couple of weeks. I guess I will have to just keep the design that I have right now.

Labels: blog, design, sadsalvation, sweeps week

- Rich, 5:00 PM

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Blogger Meetup

Smile
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

We had our first South Bay/Silicon Valley Blogger meetup of the year on Tuesday. What sticks out in my mind the most is that Elke announced that she turned off her RSS feed. I admire her for that. Some people gave her a hard time because they only read the blogs that show up in their RSS Reader. She wants people to come to her website. If the medium is the message, the message changes when it goes thought an RSS reader.

Labels: blog, blogger meetup, Elkit, rss

- Rich, 11:14 PM

Monday, July 21, 2003

Reason

I was at the San Jose blogger meetup and Antwon had the bet line I heard in a long time. "That is why I have two boxes next to my bed. One for condoms and one for affidavits. I wonder what we were talking about.

Labels: Antwon, blog, blogger meetup, Courtney P, meetup

- Rich, 12:17 AM

Saturday, July 05, 2003

Archive

My archive is currently broken. I do not recall making any changes that would brake it. I do not remember any changes at all. This pisses me off, but I am not sure how to fix it. Anyone have any ideas?

Labels: archive, blog, blogger, sadsalvation

- Rich, 1:39 AM

Friday, July 04, 2003

New Blogger

I was switched over to the updated blogger interface a few days ago. I have been trying it out with all supported Mac browsers, IE, Safari, and Mozilla. I have to say that Mozilla is my favorite. I did not have that much of an issue with the old interface. The Mozilla interface keeps much of what I liked. This most likely will make Mozilla my default browser for most things now.

Labels: blog, blogger, blogtools, IE, Mozilla, Safari

- Rich, 5:21 PM

Tuesday, July 01, 2003

Blog v. Journalism

I do not concede myself a journalist. I do not think that there is a bloggers code of ethics that people try to stick to. I know that I try to not state anything as fact unless it can be backed up. I am happy that I do not have to offer Right to Reply on my web site. I do have comment boxes, but I do not think that is enough. I think that I agree with Declan McCullagh on this issue.

Will bloggers replace journalist?

Labels: blog, bloggers, journalism, journalist

- Rich, 1:26 PM

Sunday, June 08, 2003

Back

My back has been turned on my blog for too long. I have been thinking about other things. I have not been taking the time to ground myself here. I have been missing something important in my life.

It is time to turn it back around. I need to reconnect with what I love about writing. I have to put aside the barriers I construct. I want to find a way to put aside the things that get be away from here.

I am sorry if you have come here for the last couple of weeks to find nothing. I have rededicated myself to writing. I will write for at least 260 hours between now and the end of the year. I am sorry if you feel that you have missed anything. I will backdate some entries and I will bring some old stories up to today. I think I will cover most of the important things.

Labels: blog, pledge, Resolution, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 11:25 PM

Friday, April 25, 2003

I will shout until they know what I mean

This is currently one of my favorite musical quotes. It is from a Neutral Milk Hotel song The King of Carrot Flowers Part 3. I want to link this quote to Sad Salvation. I want this to be the attitude that I take with Sad Salvation. I do not think I am doing this right now. I do not think I am shouting loud enough. I do not think I am trying to be understood. Maybe I need to make myself understand first.

Labels: blog, music, Neutral Milk Hotel, quote, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 5:25 PM

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Fix it Damnit

My blog had been acting funny ever since the weekend. I had edited the template while I was using my iBook. Something I did screwed it up. Thanks to the power of copy and past and a not deleting e-mail messages, I was able to fix it. This makes me happy. I never figured out what was broken, but I got it back to a usable state. There is nothing that is as bad for my motivation to write as no good way to publish.

Labels: blog, iBook, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 11:34 PM

Sunday, April 06, 2003

Slogan for the new me

I am not sure that Sad Salvation needs a slogan. You can try a random slogan and see if you find one you like. Tell me if comes up with anything good.

Labels: blog, cgi, sadsalvation, slogan, web

- Rich, 11:54 AM

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

What does Blogging Mean?

Blogger now has over 1 Million Registered Users. I wonder what that means. I would love to see the break out of those numbers. What is the average number of Blogs per user? What is the total number of blogs? How many of those registered users visit every week or every month? How many people care about the idea of blogs as a way to publish websites? I think all those numbers together might mean something.

Labels: blog, blogger

- Rich, 11:42 PM

Sunday, July 21, 2002

What we are doing

Quick! Before you get a chance to think about it. Why do you keep a weblog? Give me the off the top or your head answer.

Now take a moment and think. Think about what you keep on logging on everyday. Think about why you keep on updating things. Think about why you even have a web page to begin with.

I was reading a web article that made me think about all these things. My off the top of my head answer is because I have to write something. I might as well put it on the web. If I do not write things I start to feel hollow inside. I would like someone to read it.

After I think about it, I have a weblog because there has to be something good one the web. I do not want the web to be just a mall I can shop from at work. I do not want every web page to be owned by a company. I think it is important that people are out there. Right now the most interesting thing I can do is weblog. I think that is true for most people.

Check out Meg Hourihan's weblog. She seems to understand what we are all doing.

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 9:39 PM

Thursday, July 11, 2002

Abuse of Image

I am looking back at the picture I posted an hour ago. I wonder if I am abusing this woman's image. There are two arguments. The first is that she posted her picture on the internet. She should know that when you post something like this you are releasing it to the whole world. The second is that she put her picture up for a specific purpose. I had to dig pretty deep to find it. I am out of bounds to use it for my weblog.

I want to know what other people think. How would you feel if you found a picture of yourself on someone else's weblog? Someone you do not know?

Labels: blog, image, photo

- Rich, 12:52 AM

Monday, July 08, 2002

Decision

It is 2:20 AM. I have been sitting at my computer for about two hours not writing. I am not even starting to get tired yet. I feel that I have at least another hour or two in the tank. I have ideas to write about and focus. I have a sense of the world, that is something that I have been missing a lot lately.

The problem is that it is 2:20 AM. I need to be in work in 7 hours. I need to get some sleep tonight. If I go much longer, I will not be able to get up tomorrow morning. It is sad that I need to choose work over writing. It is sad that I do not have this kind of focus earlier in the day. I will have to work on improving my focus. It is the biggest thing missing from my writing currently.

It is 2:30 right now and I think I will be going to bed.

Labels: blog, self, writers block, writing

- Rich, 2:20 AM

Sunday, July 07, 2002

New Blog

I love clicking on the 'The 10 most recently published blogs' on the Blogger home page. Some of them have just great titles. One of the recent ones I saw was He Said, She Said. Nothing has really been published on this blog yet. I see new blogs from time to time and I wonder if they are ever going to turn into anything. I want to keep my eye on this one. I want to see if they do anything with it.

I really like the idea of doing a blog with a small number of people and discussing subjects. Does anyone out there like this idea. Do you think you could write something at least three times a week that we could kick around. Tell me if you think we could start one.

Labels: blog, blogger, dead blog, reading

- Rich, 11:33 PM

Monday, July 01, 2002

Backdate Hell

I am finally out of backdate hell. I have caught up to real time. I no longer have to worry about getting entries from the past in before going forward. We will see if I can pull that out. In the last two days I have caught up from June 7 to today. You will have to hit a couple of archive pages to not miss anything.

I want to try to write an entry everyday in July without backdating any of them.

Labels: back dating, blog

- Rich, 1:51 AM

Thursday, June 13, 2002

New Archives

Blogger has improved its archiving system. I am no longer limited by the week I used blogger. It will not publish archives going as far back as I want. I am importing all of my old Blog 5.0 entries to Blogger now. All of Sad Salvation can be in one place. If you give me a while everything will be in one place. I can work to shut down my old web site. It is nice to have everything in the same place. I wonder if I should put any of my pre-blog journal on-line.

Labels: blog, blogger, sadsalvation

- Rich, 11:23 PM

Wednesday, June 12, 2002

Travel-Blogue is no More

I have decided to get rid of my the Travel-Blogue. I needed to clip a little disk space and I have not been using it. It seemed like it was just going to waste. All of the entries have been folded back into Sad Salvation. I would think about doing it again if I was planing on traveling with another person. Are of my travels in the near future will be solo. It was a good idea, I just was not keeping it up.

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, travelogue

- Rich, 7:19 AM

Saturday, May 18, 2002

Site Changes

I moved all my pictures to a new location. it should not make a difference to anyone viewing Sad Salvation. Tell me if any of my pictures turn up blank.

Labels: blog, meaningless, photos, sadsalvation

- Rich, 6:19 PM

Thursday, May 09, 2002

Blind Date Blog

BlindDateBlog

I am not sure what to say about this. Just that it exists at all is really strange.

Update: I removed a link from this entry because the blog is no longer there

Labels: blog, broken link, dating, missing

- Rich, 10:41 PM

Thursday, May 02, 2002

Googlewhacked again

a site that translates english into french


Regular Inverse Ego Surfing

I no longer come up number one for patty herst (2)

edward hooper nighthawks (2)
"1988 plymouth reliant" fast
the picture of a sad person
"playmate centerfolds" (2)
"the saturn l100"
sad songs for drinking and driving to make you want to stop
wedding skits
cheech and chong Santa Clause
What does GWAR stand for?
GWAR stand for
ex hare krishnas (2)
buy +a computer" "san jose" payment
Netural Milk Hotel
"etymology of the word love"
dsl stealing apartment
"stealing cable" broadband
homesickness cures
debunking six degrees of separation
"Ain't Nothing Going To Break My Stride"
"los vegas convention center"

Labels: blog, ego surfing, google, sadsalvation, search, tag overload

- Rich, 10:56 PM

Monday, April 29, 2002

I have been reviewed

As Part of the Peer to Peer Review Project Sad Salvation was reviewed by the writer of eclectica. Here is the review:

special review: sad salvation

As part of the The Peer-to-Peer Review Project, I was assigned the below weblog to review.

Sad Salvation:
Rich Thomas, a self-described "nearing 30 gadget head and phone monkey," says about his weblog: "Day by day by day by day....this is my attempt to make sense of the world".

I'd say that his title, Sad Salvation, pretty much sums up the feel of the 'blog. It's somber and kind of tedious.

This is just my opinion; and personally, I tend to like weblogs that are more about commentary on other web sites and the news than about day-to-day activities. Rich's weblog is definitely more of a journal: He talks about his job at TiVO, his travels, how much he drank that day.

You might find the fact that he works at TiVo interesting. I did; but he can't write about it too much, for fear that one of his bosses or coworkers would read it. A quote from Rich from October 5, 2001:
"I know that I cannot write everything that I want to write about work on this Web Log. I want people who I work with to be able to read it. I want to mention the name of the company that I work for, TiVo. I also want to mention my name. The problem is if I have these two things in this web log, who knows who will be able to find it. Some one might be able to search for it. I could cause some bad times for myself."

As for his weblog layout/design, I'm pretty sure it's a Blogger template. It's blue, uncompelling. It's easy to navigate though, and that's more important than the look of the design.

Main content: Journal, travelouge, personal musings on life, etc.

Personally, his content didn't resonate with me, cause me to think or want to come back to read more. I probably won't visit again, but that's just me. I urge you all to go check it out. Who knows, you might like it!

I think this person hits my weblog right on. There are a lot of things here I can improve on. I have to think about making Sad Salvation better or not spend less time on it. I want this to be about my life, but I think I can make it a better read.

Labels: blog, Eclectia, Peer Review Blog Project, review, sadsalvation

- Rich, 12:29 AM

Monday, April 08, 2002

Weblog Peer Review

As part of the part of the The Peer-to-Peer Review Project I was assigned to review (and the ink goes on.) Here is my review.

(and the ink goes on.) is a journal from a girl who had recently lost her mother. She writes little bits and pieces about recovering from that. There is not much I can say other then that.

The entries are attributed to 'l0vie :o 'round.' Besides the fact that her mother passed away and her picture, you do not learn much more about this person. She has posted a couple of poems. I am not a big fan of poetry, so I do not want to comment on them other then to say they are not stunning. There is just not much content. There are only three weeks of entries and it has not been updated since March 5th.

I am not a fan of the visual style either. The type is extremely small. Even bumping the text size to the largest, it was still hard to read. Part of that had to do with an overuse of italics. I do not like black web sites. I find them to be visually dull and most are hard to read. This one is no different. I do not have anything against the spotblog templates, but too many people use the dark ones.

Unless you know this girl, you are not going to get very much out of this weblog. Is seems to be targeted at an extremely small audience. I think her real life friends enjoy reading it.

Labels: blog, Peer Review Blog Project, project, review

- Rich, 9:05 PM

Wednesday, March 27, 2002

Back Date Warning!!!

I just want to warn people that many of my travel notes will be back dated. I do this because I actually write the notes on the day listed. It just takes me time to post them. I feel no problem backdating those notes. If you have a problem with it, start your own blog.

Labels: back dating, blog, sadsalvation

- Rich, 11:35 PM

Saturday, March 23, 2002

Blogging and Not Blogging

Earlier this month I found a blog that looked really interesting to me, No:TV. It is all about someone trying to live there life without TV. I would like to see what kinds of things people write about when they are trying to do this. The disappointment is this blog has not been updated since I first saw it. I wonder if the person has forgotten about it.

I keep on seeing blogs on their first or second post. I wonder how many people start and never find the time to keep it up. I guess weblogs are not that different that everything else in this world. I know that I let Sad Salvation go un-updated from time to time. I will not just let it fade away without putting up a fight.

Labels: blog, blogging, dead blog

- Rich, 4:24 PM

Tuesday, March 05, 2002

Comments

No one uses my beautiful comment boxes. Is there something else I need to do?

Labels: blog, comment, comment box, sadsalvation

- Rich, 10:16 PM

Thursday, February 28, 2002

I have been googlewacked

Sad Salvation comes up one of one when you search for "ain't nothing going" "my stride" +lyrics on google. I know it is more then two words, but it is still pretty cool.

Labels: blog, google, googlewack, sadsalvation, search

- Rich, 12:27 AM

Sunday, February 24, 2002

Reading Around

Blogger runs ads on there home page. The ads are right above the the log in. The ads are cheap enough that regular people can buy them. The last time I looked it as $10 for 8000 impressions. It was a good enough rate that I even bought some for Sad Salvation. I think I might have gotten 20 visitors for that $10, but I know my readership is going up.

If the ads sound interesting, I click on them. I want to see what is going on with other web logs. I feel I should click on these ads if I expect other people to click on mine. Many times the web logs are at the same level as Sad Salvation.

Recently there was an ad about a girl describing boredom. I clicked on the ad to find an entry about why she weblogs. She admits that her weblog is not great or even good. The point is that she does it for herself. She know that people she knows and people she does not are going to read it. What does it mean that you are going to do something for yourself and other people are going to read it?

Something about the entry really speaks to me. I want to keep reading this web log more often. I want to see what kind of things she is going to say that might upset people. It might inform me about what I am not saying about my life.

Labels: advertisement, blog, reading, sadsalvation

- Rich, 3:08 AM

Sunday, February 10, 2002

Web logs

There have been articles about web logs in Time, PC Magazine, and Fortune. They are all talking about this new and growing web trend. The pro-journalist have all these ideas why this trend is popular. Sometimes I think they miss it.

I thing blog are easy, fun, DYI, and what we been wanting from the web for a couple of years now. E-mail is still the killer app of the web. Many web logs are like e-mail to the world. I have an idea and I want to tell everyone about it. Instead of sending an e-mail to 20 people, I can just post it.

I think the DYI aspect is important. I think people that might do a zine fine web logs to be a little easier to do. They are a lot better then web zines. There are a lot of web logs out there that I would never read. There are some that I come across that I cannot get enough of. There were cool personal pages in the past, but people did not update them enough. You can read most web logs a couple times a week and always get something new.

There was a time in 2000 that I thought companies has really taken over the web. I thought that people where no longer interesting in content from other people. The Dot.com bust and Blog explosion makes me happy. It looks like people have an idea what they want from the web. I agree with people who want more personal content.

Labels: blog, PC Magazine, Time Magazine

- Rich, 12:42 AM

Sunday, February 03, 2002

New Blog

I have started a new web log just for travel writing. I have started it because there will be another person on at least one of my trips this year. I want her to be able to post to it. I really do not want anyone else ever posting to Sad Salvation. The new web log is Travel-Blogue.

Part of me wants to have the people I am visiting post to this web log also. I am not sure if they are would get it. I have been trying to do projects where other people post. Most of the time, I have a hard time getting people to post to these web logs. I know that people just do not have the time to sit around and write. I am not sure I could convince them to spend the time it would take.

I know that I am starting another project. Between Sad Salvation, I work on Super Karate Monkey Fist, End of Summer Party, Like Sand Like Leaves, and Quirky Alone on Live Journal. That is a lot of writing. I might be spreading myself a bit thin. I might not give enough time to any of these ideas. I will have to just live with it.

I am going to cross-publish some entries on both Sad Salvation and Travel-Blogue. I really am not worried that I am going to put the same thing in both place. I really want Travel-Blogue to be more of a solo archive with some of its own content. I am not really sure how going to use it right now. I know that it is something that I wanted to set up.

Labels: blog, broken link, sadsalvation, travelogue

- Rich, 11:00 AM

Saturday, February 02, 2002

Travelogue - New Web Log

I have started this new web log just to log the movements of life and travel. I traveled very little last year. I plan to travel much more often in 2002. I want a single place to write about all my travel ideas. I am going to post some of these ideas on both Travel-Blogue and Sad Salvation. I think there are some Ideas that I am only going to post here.

I think that travel is important. It gives us the chance to see things outside of our lives. It is important to try to get away from your day to day life when you travel. I do not think people should take there work with them. Too often people cannot get away from the world that they are in. I think it gives people a small vision of the world. We have to step back from our lives and our visions of the world to really recharge.

Other people are also going to be posting on this web log. I want the people I travel with and some of the people I visit to be able to post here. I would love to see what they think about this trip. There are still a ton of things to do before I actually hit the road.

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, self, travel, travelogue

- Rich, 11:49 AM

Saturday, January 26, 2002

Going Pro

I signed up from Blogger Pro yesterday. Today my account kicked over. The options are okay. I am happy to have the spell checker back. The drafts feature is great for Super Karate Monkey Fist, since in theory, other people post to it.

Currently it is $35 a year to sign up for Blogger Pro. I think this is really worth it for me. I am not sure that I am going to use the pro features all that much. It is worth it because I really like the service at it is. I know I can use it for free, but it is worth $35 a year to me. I want to see blogger succeed. I think that using their Pro features will help. I will have to see how it goes.

Labels: blog, blogger, blogtools, sadsalvation, superkaratemonkeyfist

- Rich, 7:01 PM

Tuesday, January 15, 2002

Superkaratemonkeyfist.com

It feels strange, but I am just about the only person posting to Superkaratemonkey.com. I might have to rethink my whole plan for the site. For now I think I can post something every other day there. If I had the time, I could post a review just about everyday there. I think that every other day will have to work for now. I would like to see more people post there. I want to get people interested. It seems like a hard thing to do.

I am finding that it takes more time to write a review. I have to have some pretty good ideas before I start writing. It is not enough for me to pick a movie or a song and let the words flow. I need to be mapped out before I start. If I don't have a good idea before hand I seem to end up not writing.

My other frustration is my writing. I am not sure that I am always getting to the ideas in my head. I have an idea that I have something worth writing about. I am not sure that I am sharing that special thing I see. I feel that my writing is falling short in places. I do not know how to make it better.

Labels: blog, blogging, dead blog, self, superkaratemonkeyfist, writing

- Rich, 10:59 PM

Monday, December 31, 2001

Writing and the Sad Salvation

I am trying to decide what kind of things I should write about on Sad Salvation. I feel that I am bogging down on too many ideas that are personal. I am writing about things that would not interest people who do not know me. I want to write things that are more universal. I want just about anyone to come to my web site and be able to read it.

The problem is some of the best web logs I read are sprinkled with personal posts. I am just not sure where that line is. I am not sure how much I can write about myself without making this boring. I wonder how other people do this. Do other writers think about this at all.

I am trying to use Sad Salvation to improve my writing. I am not sure if I am doing that or not. I am not sure if I am taking the time to make my writing better or if I am just writing what ever comes to my mind. I have been disappointed by some of the things I have written. I just do not have the time or energy to re-write them. This is something that I will have to deal with in the new year.

Labels: blog, blogging, sadsalvation, writing

- Rich, 9:35 AM

Friday, December 21, 2001

Joy and the Sad Salvation

I was talking to my sister about Sad Salvation and writing. I told her the name and I had to explain it to her. I had to give her the disclaimer that web log is a lot more depressing then my actual life. For some reason I seem only to write about depressing things. Depressing writing seems to be what I excel at.

My sister thinks this is a bad sign. She was asking me why I cannot write about my happiness. This is a hard thing to explain. I seem to be able to deconstruct my unhappiness. I can pick it apart and look at each of the peices. I cannot do that with things that make me happy.

Labels: blog, family, sadsalvation, writing

- Rich, 10:00 PM

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Not.So.Soft

Not.So.Soft might be the best weblog on the net. There are few things that makes me laugh out loud when I am work. Everyone should read this.

Update: This blog has gone away. I cannot remember what was so funny. I decided to retire the link.

Labels: blog, dead blog, Not.So.Soft, reading

- Rich, 3:23 PM

Monday, December 17, 2001

An Empty Mind

There is nothing worst then drawing a blank. I look at my computer screen and I cannot think about anything to write. There are a whole bunch of ideas that I can think about when I am not sitting in front of my computer. I have a couple of ideas that are just out of my reach. It is bad when you have a weblog and nothing to write about.

Just in case you are wondering, www.drawablank.com is web site and it is strange.

Labels: blank, blog, broken link, writers block

- Rich, 3:32 PM

Sunday, December 16, 2001

Playing with Blogger

I am spending my time this evening playing with the Blogger template I am using. I will admit that I do not know all that much about HTML. I know just enough to make a sorry looking web site. It is just enough to know what bad code looks like, but not good code.

Now I am trying to muck around with the template. There is all this code that I am not sure what it does. I am just trying to nip and tuck to make some small change. I am not worried that I will make any large screw-ups. I just hate it when I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong. I am typing something and it will not show up on the page.

Labels: blog, blogger, HTML, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 10:47 PM

Moving to my new site

For some reason it is hard for me to start using this new site. I feel that there are a lot of things that I need to do. The worst thing is that none of those things are coming to mind right now. I am not sure what I need to do so people look at Sad Salvation. I am not sure how many people have been looking at it to begin with.

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, self

- Rich, 10:19 PM

Changes, Moves, and Domains

Sad Salvation is moving to its own domain. I have purchased the Domain www.sadsalvation.com. That will be my homepage and this web log will be moving to its own section of that site. I will not move any of these pages right now. I will just link back to them from the new site.

I am going to try to use Blogger for my new web log. It gives me different options that Blog 5.0 does not give me. I think that going to Blogger is a step up. I hope you enjoy what you read as sad salvation moves to its next step.

When I thought about writing this entry I thought I would be have a lot to write about how big of a step this is. I thought I would have words about they way these change occur and how my web log will be different now. Now that I am sitting here, I do not seem to have any words for those things. I am not even sure that any of those ideas are worth writing about.

Labels: blog, blogger, sadsalvation

- Rich, 10:05 PM

Friday, December 14, 2001

Moving in a Virtual World

Welcome to my new/moved weblog. For months now I have been using Blog 5.0 to publish my web log. I have decided to purchase my own domain and place my web log here. I am going to move all of my old web logs entries over here. I feel that this is a good move. I have enjoyed my web log and I hope that this makes it better.

Labels: blog, blogger, sadsalvation

- Rich, 5:34 PM

Thursday, December 06, 2001

Another look at work

My friend Stephen, who I had a dream about a few weeks ago, showed me a web log he did from his first two weeks at TiVo. It is interesting to read. He talks mostly about how busy he is. He started to work a TiVo just weeks before the product was released. As long as I have known Stephen, he has worked 60 hour weeks. Those were the short weeks.

I wonder if anyone else I work with have web logs. This is a hard question to ask people. There seems to be a line between work lives and private lives. There are very few people who I have been able to step over that line with. You can find out things about people, but only in a work conversation way. I have no idea how to find this out about most of them. I tell a lot of people I have a web log, but most of the just look blankly at me.

Stephen comment was "I read a lot of your site. I always thought there was an awful lot going on in your head that you didn't share, and felt that you should have an outlet. Now I know that you do have an outlet, and it's good work. Reading about your perspective on the layoff was very interesting. You're right about a lot of things, particularly about how you're regarded.

The comment is interesting to me. The line about "awful lot going on in your head that you didn't share" really strikes me. This is a level of perception that I cannot gage. Most of the time I fell that I wear my life on my sleeve. I guess people can see me, but not see through me.

Labels: blog, Stephen Mack, TiVo

- Rich, 10:31 PM

Wednesday, November 07, 2001

I should write something

I feel like I should write something today. Everything I can think of seems a bit lame. I have a couple ideas that I have been kicking around in my head for a few days, but none of them have really come together. I cannot focus one writing. I cannot focus on the ideas in my head.

This has always been one of my problems with writing. I cannot focus on what I should be doing. I am told that writers should write everyday. Even if they do not have anything to write, they should still write everyday. The point of Sad Salvation is that I will write everyday. I have a list of ideas to write about, but I just cannot lock onto any of them.

I think that I am filling my mind with too much garbage. I watched at least two hours of television tonight. That cannot be any good for me. I am always watching too much TV. I work for a company that makes it easier to watch TV.

I am just going to pack it in tonight. I hope I can avoid this in the future.

Labels: blog, sadsalvation, television, writers block, writing

- Rich, 10:35 PM

Sunday, November 04, 2001

Back Dating

The program that I use for this web log, Blog 5.0, allows me to back date entries. This means I can publish a few days of entries at the same time. I will admit that I back date entries a little. I think it is a good idea, but it is something that I could abuse. I am always taking notes for entries that I want to write. Sometimes I like the time that is needed to make the notes into something worth reading. I want to avoid abusing back dating entries.

I have decided to add back dating rules. I seem to want to keep to the rules I set for Senseless Banter. I know that no one is going to enforce the rules but me. They are still something worth trying. I think it is my pride that will have to enforce the rules.

Here are a crack at the rules I am going to try to live by.

1. When I am in San Jose, I can only back date an entry five days.
2. I will only back date and entry when I had the idea for the entry on that day.
3. I will take every attempt to write entries everyday I plan to write.
4. When I am on vacation I can back date all of those entries.
5. I will not back date before the last published entry.

It feel important for me to have these rules.

Labels: back dating, blog, rules, sadsalvation

- Rich, 3:44 PM

Monday, October 29, 2001

What Can I Write About My Friends?

I know at least some people are reading Sad Salvation. They tell me when I have typos and point out my mistakes. My guess is that most of the people that read this web log are my friends. They are the only people that I have told about it. Someone would have to come upon it by accident or by the recommendation of my friends.

Since my friends are the people that are reading this web log, I wonder how much I can write about them. The main goal of my writing is to spill out my guts on the page. I feel that the deepest darkest parts of me are the most attractive on the page. I feel that my greatest insight lies where my deepest darkest feelings are. The nasty parts of me are side by side with those feelings

In those dark places I have really nasty things to say about my friends. I love my friends, but there is something about love that brings out these feeling. As much as I love my friends, I seem to think the worst things about them. I see their weakness, failing, and problems. Some of their problems really hurt me. Some of there problems really stick out and I wish I could correct them.

I know that my friends do not know everything I think about them. I know that I do not tell them everything, because it is not my place. I really do not have the right to tell them what I think. I have the feeling that we always hide things from people we love. If we did not love them, we would not care what they thought about us.

Many times I want to frame my feeling about myself inside of things that I feel about my friends. There are interactions between my friends and myself that I want to interpret. I know that some of the things I want to write will blind side these people. I feel that I might cross a line if I do these things. There is a line between the things I can say about my friends. I know that I want to cross that line from time to time. I am not sure how the right thing to do is.

The other hard part is that most of the people that read Sad Salvation are my friends. Even if I try to hide the identity of one of my friends, the rest of my friends will be able to figure out who that person is. It will not be much of a hidden identity. I cannot protect them from my feelings if I spill those feelings on the page

Labels: blog, friend, sadsalvation

- Rich, 1:45 AM

Saturday, October 27, 2001

Color Scheme Help

I need some specific help picking out a color scheme for Sad Salvation. I am little by little changing things to make Sad Salvation look better. I need help. The current Aqua and White are okay, but I know there are better combos out there. If any of my design savvy friends out there have good ideas, please tell me. I also need a good idea for a font to use

Labels: blog, color, sadsalvation

- Rich, 10:37 PM

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

Sad Salvation Comments

I know this is a stupid little thing, but a friend of mine, compared me to J. D. Sallinger. It is stupid little things like that which make my heart bubble over with joy. I know I do not want to make too much out of this but, (happy dance, happy dance, happy dance!!) it means something to me.

Now that I regained my composure, I want to know what more people think. I want to know that people are reading this.

Labels: blog, broken link

- Rich, 11:23 PM

Friday, October 19, 2001

Writing About Work

My fears about writing about work have been compounded. I read on the weblog of Mark Pilgrim that he was fired for comments that we wrote at his web log. The worst part is that it was not even comments he was making about his job. He was just writing about his life in general.

This makes me think about my weblog and my web site. I have been telling the people I work with about my web site. I have been trying to show off my Dreams about Bill Gates Site. I know that I have only told about a dozen people at work about the site, but that is going to spread. I am not saying that everyone at work is going to spend all their time reading my web page. I am just saying that someone might check in on it from time to time. I am not sure what they are going to say if they read some of the things I have written.

Part of my problem is that I have so many conflicting ideas about work. There is part of me that really wants to go and find a new city to live in. There is another part of me that want to stick it out at TiVo until the company either goes under or goes big time. I feel that I am working a job that is taking me nowhere, but I have a pride in the job I do. All of these conflicts make me think that I am going to stay at TiVo for a while. When I am faced by conflicts like this, inactivity usually wins out.

This adds to another part of my life I am going to hide from this web log. I already knew that there are a lot of little things that I will not put here. There are things about myself that I cannot tell my closest friends about. I know there are lots of little parts of my that I am not ready to put on the internet. I wonder if I will be able to give people a good idea of who I am without showing those parts of myself.

For the most part I am going to try to put this fear behind me. I am not going to worry too much about what I write here. I am probably kidding myself to think anyone is reading this web log at all. It would be nice to hear from anyone who is reading this.

Labels: Bill Gates, blog, blogging, job, TiVo, work

- Rich, 10:24 AM

Thursday, October 11, 2001

Notes from the Road

I am currently in Chicago staying with Jeremy. I have been here for the last two days. One of the things that we have been talking about is relationships. It is a subject that both Jeremy and I like to talk about. I gave him my mundane tale of my love live a year to date. It was not a very exciting story.

I have also been reading the End of Summer Party web log. The people on the End of Summer Web log and my romantic life have been bumping around in my head. That is a pretty bad combination. They jogged a couple of ideas loose in my head.

I was thinking about the New Years Eve party where Chris kissed me. I really liked that kiss. She kissed me a couple of times when we were in college. She was a very good kisser.

This made me think about the last time I kissed a woman. I have lived on the west coast for three years now. In that time I know that I have not kissed any women. I have only had one date in all of that time. That date ended up going nowhere.

I have to think to beyond those three years. I cannot remember the date of the last time I kissed a woman. I know it had to be before March of 1998. In March of 1998 I knew that I was going to move that year. I knew that I did not want to add any attachments to my life.

I think the last time I kissed a woman was the summer of 1997. I had a face to face meeting with a woman I met on the internet. We had dinner at the King of Prussia Mall in suburban Philadelphia. After dinner I walked her to her car. She kissed me. I felt as if I did a bad job kissing her. I was very nervous about meeting her. I must have been right. She never called me again.

Labels: blog, Chicago, Chris Wass, End of Summer Party, Jerery P Bushnell, kissing, relationship, tag overload, travel, travel notes

- Rich, 6:58 PM

Friday, October 05, 2001

Work, Web Logs, and the Real World.

I know that I cannot write everything that I want to write about work on this Web Log. I want people who I work with to be able to read it. I want to mention the name of the company that I work for, TiVo. I also want to mention my name. The problem is if I have these two things in this web log, who knows who will be able to find it. Some one might be able to search for it. I could cause some bad times for myself.

I never know how people are going to react in the world place. If someone fines my bitch about my job, it might be bad for me. I can see people say to me that if that is how I feel, I should look for another job. While I have problems with my job, I do not want to get fired because I am blowing off steam. That is something that I do not like.

A lot of the web logs I read people comment about their jobs. Most of my life revolves around my job. Am I going to be able to write anything interesting if I do not include my job in the mix. Will I feel there is a wall between my life and what I am writing? This is a tough question. For right now I will be careful about what I write about my job. Maybe I am kidding myself that anyone will read this.

Labels: blog, job, TiVo, work

- Rich, 2:55 PM

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