Cooper tagged me with the Your Blog is Fabulous Award/Meme, even though I don’t look a bit like the picture shown thereon.  I never, ever wear a yellow dress.  OK, maybe I do look a bit like the dog.

First I am bound by the terms of this meme to list five addictions.  Is one of the qualifications for this award that you’re a psycho sicko?  I mean, five addictions?  Isn’t that a little over the top?  Let me see…

1. Coffee.  Cooper already used that one, but it is my one true addiction.  I have quit coffee at least twice in my life, only to take it up again with the vengeance of a long physical deprivation.  I try to keep it under four cups a day now, but at one time I drank more than 20.  My mother got me started when I was only three, although that was watery Maxwell House overloaded with milk and sugar.  These days my wife brews it strong, and I take it with only a little whole whipping cream.  We used to go for Seattle’s Best or Tully’s, but the recession has coaxed us into Costco’s Kirkland brand — which isn’t half bad.  It’s certainly better than its price suggests.
2. Walking.  If I don’t get my daily walk outdoors, I’m not right all day.  It’s not only the physical exercise that gets my brain going, it’s also having some quiet time to myself that isn’t dedicated to any particular topic.  That’s when I have my best insights — or at least, the ones that seem best to me.
3. Reading.  I especially enjoy the classics, and I’m currently working my way through Shakespeare’s complete works.  Cooper mentioned War and Peace — that was probably my all-time favorite novel.  I like to read each morning while eating breakfast, which leads me to:
4. Eggs.  My wife tires of eggs quickly, but I could eat them for every meal.  Sunny-side up, over easy, scrambled, omelet, or something completely crazy — as long as it has eggs in it, it’s good.  Especially if it is loaded with hot peppers.  Habañeros are my favorite, but jalapeños will do.  Even red chiles are better than nothing.
5. Writing.  Especially blogging.  If I only had more time…

This is kind of a strange award for a guy to pass on.  But I’ll single out Teeni.  Not only is she an entertaining writer, she has also created a whole little social network over at the Vaguetarian Tea Room.  And from what I see, she’s still getting better.

Teeni (she of the Vaguetarian Tea Room, frequent purveyor of humorous search terms, and all-around nice blogperson) has awarded me the Superior Scribbler Award – even though I compose my posts without so much as looking at a pen, pencil, or any other scribbling device.  Thanks, Teeni!

Somehow, by the time the award got to Teeni, it had become separated from its motherpost and its rules.  The latter are as follows:

That satisfies all but the first rule (Teeni, I think you still need to do the fourth one) — to nominate five more recipients:

1. Cooper of Wonderland or Not
2. Paul, of the Velcro City Tourist Board
3. Preston L. Bannister
4. Adam @ Dusk
5. Stu, of Eunoia

These five always have something interesting to say.  I naturally would have included Haizum, but she’s on extended blog sabbatical.  There are a lot of others I’d add, but I’ll follow the rule and limit myself to five.  So if you weren’t on this list, it isn’t because I don’t love your blog.  You know I do if you’re in my blogroll near the end of the right sidebar here.  And if you’re not, tell me why I should read your blog, and I’ll have a look.

Teeni, in her infinite generosity, has awarded me the Arte y Pico award, which roughly translates to “the peak of art”.

Here’s da rules:

1. 1) Choose 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award based on creativity, design, interesting material, and overall contribution to the blogger community, regardless of the language.
   2) Post the name of the author and a link to his or her blog so everyone can view it.
   3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award.
   4) The award-winner and the presenter should post the link of the “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.
   5) Please post these rules.

I don’t really think of my blog as artistic except in a utilitarian way, but heck — I’ll take any award anyone wants to lavish upon it.

Now to choose five blogs that meet the criteria in rule 1 (in no particular order):

1. Eric, of // Internet Duct Tape.  Besides sporting a clean WordPress Template Design, Eric provides tons of free software tools.  My favorite is the Auntie Spam plugin for WordPress, which makes Akismet manageable even when you have thousands of spam messages to review.
2. Cooper, of Wonderland or Not.  Whether or not you agree with her “left of most lines” stance, she always makes you think — and her writing style is quite engaging.  You’re also guaranteed to see some change to her WordPress theme every few weeks.  She helps out the blogging community with her site Should be Famous, which promotes bloggers who are relatively unknown but deserve better.
3. Pisces Iscariot, of The Far Queue.  Thought-provoking poetry and essays for the 21st century, complemented by well-chosen photos and artwork.
4. Paul Raven, of Velcro City Tourist Board.  Flash science fiction stories, Friday photo blogging, and some of the most interesting links on the web.  Paul also writes for Futurismic, a blog about “Near-future science fiction and fact”.
5. Yvonne Tran, of nektros.  Site design is her strong suit, and her writing is witty and pointed.

Thanks for the award, Teeni!

Tish slapped the Thinking Blogger Award on yours truly.  What an honor for my humble little collection of HTML tags infested with text — thanks, Tish!

Before I pass this award on to five more bloggers, I couldn’t in good conscience call myself a Thinking Blogger if I didn’t ask the question, “what is a Thinking Blogger?”  I would be willing to bet that nearly all bloggers have at least some neurons firing in their brains when posting (Twittering excepted), so apparently the mere existence of brain activity does not qualify.

In his original post on this subject, ilkers called it 5 blogs that make me think.  Triggering thought within the minds of your readers is quite a different thing than thinking yourself, although I suspect a correlation between the two.

Thus, I give you five bloggers that make me think in ways I hadn’t thought before (and who, as far as I know, have not yet received this award):

1. Shelley Powers, author of Burningbird.  Shelley has a captivating (dare I say “engaging”) writing style, and she talks about a wide range of topics, especially web development, blogging, and the role of women in technology.  Shelley speaks her mind without sugar-coating anything, a trait that has often placed her at or near the epicenter of some pretty spectacular blogostorms.  I think differently about a lot of topics since reading Shelley.
2. Chad Perrin (aka apotheon), author of SOB.  Whether it’s about programming, security, philosophy, or politics — each of Chad’s posts will give you at least one perspective you hadn’t thought of before.
3. Assaf Arkin, author of Labnotes and bytesized.  Assaf perfects the laconic style:  he says a lot in few words, with a healthy charge of humor.
4. Maximillian Kaizen, author of Hunter of Genius.  In search of creativity and innovation, and asking great questions – you gotta think for that!
5. Hrafn Thorisson, author of Think Artifical.  Hrafn researches and blogs on artifical intelligence.  Metathinking!

Da rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme (and also to give ilkers lots of link-love).
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Link blogging, lazy blogging, or blogging lite — it’s the practice of creating posts that contain a series of links to other posts, often with brief commentary. If done well, it can be quite interesting, covering a lot of ground while tossing out pithy insights along the way.

Some bookmarking services like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia can be configured to automatically create daily link posts from your bookmarks, if your blogging platform supports a common API. On the other hand, some bloggers prefer to hand-craft their link blog entries.

Randy Charles Morin uses del.icio.us bookmarking in conjunction with FeedBurner‘s Link Splicer to add link blog entries to his feeds only. This means that you won’t find Randy’s links on his blog pages, so you can’t comment on them or trackback to them. I learned about automated link-blogging from Randy when I was editing his Ten Steps to Professional Blogging. Randy perpetuates his reputation for laconism by often just providing links without commentary, but they’re usually pretty interesting links.

The Armchair Anarchist at the Velcro City Tourist Board uses del.icio.us, but posts directly to his blog. Following his standard intro “Fresh from teh intarwebs…” you will find a daily serving of links that could fill your whole day. Even if you don’t feel like perusing them all, AA’s one-line commentaries are entertaining in themselves (although he sometimes falls off the edge of del.icio.us’ “Notes” field character limit).

Tara Hunt (aka missrogue) uses FeedBurner’s Link Splicer, but from ma.gnolia. Her lists of links include a thumbnail of each page linked, which is cute but annoying — takes up too much space for not much benefit, IMHO. However, the links and Tara’s comments are always interesting. Hmm, looks like ma.gnolia doesn’t have the same character limitation on those comments as del.icio.us…

Signal vs. Noise, the 37Signals blog, occasionally drops in a link blog entry, which they conventionally title “Sunspots: The ___ edition”, filling in the blank with some thread contained in the post. They usually follow each link with a full paragraph of commentary. This blatant lack of laziness almost disqualifies them as “link blogging”, except for the fact that the links are largely unrelated to each other.

TDavid only rarely posts a “Hmm quickies” entry. I think he prefers to write in depth on most topics, so these bulleted posts seem like he’s more short on time than on potential content.

Doc Searls and Dave Winer blur the line between link-blogging and regular posts by dumping all their daily content into a single post.

Kent Newsome gives us his daily “Morning Reading” in an easy, conversational style. You can almost hear his South Carolina accent (with maybe a little Texan creeping in?) as he comments on each link. You might not agree with everything Kent says, but you’re guaranteed to get it served straight up.

Last but not least, Assaf at Labnotes regularly posts his “Rounded Corners” entries. Not sure, but I think there’s a double entendre between the rounded corners found in a lot of “Web 2.0″ design and the metaphor of “rounding a corner” on the web’s streets. Like Kent, Assaf embeds the links in his discussion for a more natural flow. But Assaf achieves the higher punch:word ratio, teasing you into clicking through with ambiguity and subtle humor.

I didn’t mean to leave anybody out. With Shelley in mind, I specifically looked for female link-bloggers in my feed reader, but found only Tara among the excellent female bloggers that I read every day. What, if anything, does that say about the effect of gender on blogging style? Some psychologist should write a paper.

In any case, I’ve decided to change my link-blogging style. I’ve become disenchanted with del.icio.us. The character limit on the notes has become too restrictive for me, especially since embedding a secondary link usually eats up quite a few characters. I also like Kent’s and Assaf’s style of embedding the links within the commentary. So, for a while at least, I’m going to switch to collecting my links for a daily post that I was going to call “Chip’s Clips”.

But that’s taken.

Then I thought of “Sterlinks”, but that’s probably trademarked.

So, I’m looking for some help. Any ideas on a name?

Uh, I need it today. Thanks.

It’s been a few months since I last posted on this topic, and during that time I have come across several blogs worthy of attention that I hope to feature. Today I’d like to introduce you to nektros, by Yvonne Tran. Okay, I’ve already led you to Yvonne by linking to her a few times, but she deserves more than a handful of one-liners.

Yvonne is an 18-year-old student at the University of Queensland, down under. Her age surprised me, because her writing contains insight, intelligence, humor, and poise that belie her years — if the years be not a lie, in truth. Perhaps her easy style comes from her studies in journalism, or a natural talent that led her to study it. Or do Australians just wise up more quickly than us yanks?

Subtitled “Cynicism in a Hot Dish”, Yvonne refines the art of subtle attraction. From the simple but appealing header graphic, to her dimmed gravatar, to the casual interjection of intriguing details, she knows how to keep your interest by staying just beyond your ken.

But as in all of my favorite blogs, the best part about nektros is the content. Always thoughtful, often self-referential, and guaranteed to provoke a laugh or at least a smile. And having gone through a bit of a blogging crisis, Yvonne has lots of good advice for fellow bloggers. She also engages commenters, spinning off some great conversations from the original posts. All this, and she’s only been blogging since last June.

Happy early birthday, Yvonne, even though I know you’re “over traffic“. Keep up the great work — I hope to be reading you for a very long time.

Did you ever subscribe to a feed just because it’s one of those blogs you’re supposed to read…only to wade through several days of posts with your eyes glazing over before saying “who needs this soporific” and unsubscribing? I’m not naming names, or hurling urls. You know which ones they are.

Then you come across a blog that nobody has ever heard about, but it grabs your eye. Yes, it’s got you by your vitreous humor and it’s not letting go. You find yourself wasting precious time reading all of the recent posts. You can’t really say what attracts you about the site — there’s something in the writer’s style — is it engaging? surprising? Who knows. You end up subscribing, against the protests of your bulging feed reader.

The next day, and the day after that, you eagerly seek the author’s new posts in your aggregator. You wonder if your initial assessment of the content will prove hasty — but you aren’t disappointed. It’s still good stuff. Better yet, you get into a comment/trackback banter with the author, and you find that entertaining as well.

Of course I’m talking about Look! Tracy has a Camera. Tracy has offbeat, humorous thoughts about the most mundane things — with pictures! Like this one. And this one. And especially this one. And I see that today Tracy is Randy Charles Morin’s Blogger of the Day. Congratulations, Tracy! Nice choice, Randy.

What is that essence of humor anyway? That ability to sift through all of the normal to find the deranged? Part of it is in being able to give voice to what you really think inside. Most of us were taught to suppress that, to be polite. Hanging on in quiet desperation and all. You gotta let your desperation have a voice. Get in touch with your inner psycho. For instance, a boring blogger would say something like:

I have a dentist appointment this afternoon, so I won’t be blogging again until tomorrow.

Thankzzz for the update.

But interesting bloggers reveal more of what is going on inside:

I have a dentist appointment this afternoon. I often wonder what would happen if the dentist’s office experienced a power surge while the drill is buzzing through my tooth. Would the increased RPM’s drill right down through my jaw? Or would the voltage spike cause the current to jump from the device and into my fillings, sending me to “ride the light” mouth-first? What if my dentist has an epileptic seizure and carves up my mouth like a jack-o-lantern?

OK, I’m off. If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow, I bequeath my blog to the research lab of the Centers for Applied Paranoia.

Holy Letterman-like link-love, Batman! Randy Morin lists me in his “top 10 sources for finding stuff to blog about when my brain has gone numb and can’t make up any crap myself”. I’m quite honored that Randy regards me as a high-quality crap provider. No, seriously. To find myself on any list that also contains the controversial father of blogging, the Rubel (with or without a cause), and all seven of the others on Randy’s list — kinda makes me dizzy. Plus, to get an endorsement like that from Randy — well, I just hope I can keep the illusion going for him. Randy is one of my favorite bloggers. I subscribe to four of his blogs (Besting Adwords, Destroy All Malware, IBLOGthere4iM, and The RSS Blog). Randy’s posts always pack punch. He gets right to the point, usually with a twist of humor. I like my humor twisted, and I get a lot of information quickly and easily from Randy.

Then today I also got a “welcome back from the long weekend” from Kathy Sierra. Yes, the Kathy Sierra. I might have just wet my pants. While I emulate many bloggers, Kathy’s content consistently achieves a level of “wow” unto which I have not yet aspired. She gets me thinking in new ways about business relationships in areas where I thought I had thought it all through thoroughly. Unlike Randy, her posts are usually pretty long, but as I said to TDavid the other day, an entry can be just as long as you can hold the reader’s attention. Once I start reading one of Kathy’s posts, I can’t click away until I get to the end. Her rank in Technorati’s top 100 is well-deserved. I’m honored to have her as a reader of my humble blog.

My buddy TDavid noticed my moment in the sun on Techmeme the other day, and shouted out his congratulations. Part of my comment on that post is worth repeating here:

Yeah, I was pretty jazzed when I started getting referrals from that Techmeme entry. But not any more jazzed than the first time that you linked to me, or the first time Randy did, or apotheon. It’s cool that I got my Google juice pumped up to the point that Techmeme noticed what I wrote about, but it means more to me to have someone who I read decide that my content is worth linking to.

Gosh, I’ve only been blogging since January. Advice for fellow newbies: just lay it out there. Write what’s on your mind. No holding back (except truly sensitive information). No pretensions. You don’t have to plan and craft each entry, just let it pull itself together as you write. It’s jazz. Genuineness counts more than anything. Playfulness writes the material for you. Don’t take yourself seriously. Have fun, and your readers will have fun, too.

A big thank you to all of my readers. I love dishing this stuff out, and I’m glad you keep coming back for more.

TDavid celebrates the third birthday of MakeYouGoHmm.com.

Independence Day seems like an appropriate date on which to start a blog, doesn’t it?

Brown paper packages tied up with strings…

I was hoping that apotheon would take the bait on my scripting challenge to create a mailing list merge, sort, and uniq script in the minimum code space. He prefaces his attempts with a few points I’d like to confirm:

1. apotheon rightfully takes it as a compliment that he’s one of my favorite bloggers. A lot of what I read doesn’t even make my blogroll. Anything on my blogroll gets at minimum enough attention from me to scan its headlines daily. The blogs that made my “sweet sixteen” list are the ones I usually read in their entirety. Out of those, there are only a few that I religiously read top to bottom. SOB is in that final group.
2. “contemplative ponderings on programming, and programming languages” — that’s a lot of what I like about SOB. I also enjoy apotheon’s serene command of the English language, and the way his concepts apply consistently across the boundaries between programming, philosophy, and politics — sometimes erasing those boundaries. I might not agree with everything he says, but I love to hear him say it.
3. I expect that I do have more programming experience than apotheon. I even suspect that I was programming about the time he was born, although that’s just a hunch. I started programming for hire in 1978. Almost immediately I acquired a taste for learning a variety of programming languages. In recent years, though, I had gotten a bit lax in learning newer languages, focusing on existing clients who were, for various reasons, tied into “established” technologies.
4. It was indeed the eloquent eulogies apotheon lavished upon Ruby that drove me to flirt with her (I mean, experiment with it). If I know the language better than he does now, that’s only a testament to how easy Ruby is to learn, since I started in January and have only devoted small chunks of time to it here and there.
5. Yes, I am working cross-platform, and therefore I stuck with an all-Ruby solution that would work on that “crippled OS” to which apotheon alludes. However, I also do have cygwin installed, which comes with bash. And since I didn’t set any requirements on platform or language when I laid down my challenge, mixing in some shell programming is entirely acceptable.

“CNSSTSV format”, I like that. AKA “YKWIM” (You Know What I Meant) format.

apotheon selected Perl as his weapon of choice, and hacked out two instructive examples. Both of them benefit from Perl’s ability to automatically create a keyed array (“hash” in Ruby) on first reference, whereas Ruby needs you to assign a hash to a variable in order for the object so referenced to support hash methods.

It didn’t take long (about five hours after apotheon’s post) for sosiouxme to provide a one-line solution using Perl. Brilliant! Can anyone condense this further?

I’d still also like to know if there are any ways to reduce the Ruby example further, even if it relies on help from the shell. If you can do it, speak up! I’m all comment area.