• Make You Go Hmm: » Look more forward than back, two million in the distance
  TDavid provides meaty advice for bloggers new and old
  (tags: tdavid blogging advice)
• Memorial For Association Members
  Found this previously unknown (to me) on-line reference to my Dad, Sterling Camden III, via ZoomInfo (thanks Read/Write Web)
  (tags: sterlingcamden)
• Real Geek : Trace – Blogger of the Day
  Congrats, Tracy!
  (tags: linklove)

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.

Does the guy on the left look familiar? To help you out, on the right is a picture of yours truly when I was a little younger.

I think the fellow on the left could be a long lost relative.

His name? Raymond Camden.

His occupation? Software Developer.

It’s in the genes, man.

Spooky.

• Parliamo Scots?
  Guide to the langugage of Scotland (thanks Armchair Anarchist)
  (tags: funny language slang words Scotland scots)
• Velcro City Tourist Board » Blog Archive » The language of secret science
  The Armchair Anarchist outlines the limitations and requirements of the scientific method, and offers good reasons why it must remain open and public, despite the ravings and abuses of the ignorant masses.
  (tags: science theory proof openness)
• Dead2.0 » Ask Skeptic’s Mom: “What’s RSS?”
  It’s truly funny now — in five years it will seem trite. But hey, dead, ride it for five, man!
  (tags: humor web2.0 rss)
• Dead2.0 » Dead 2 Goes Epsilon!!!!!!!!
  Turn me on, dead man.
  (tags: linklove web2.0)
• To Plastic Package Makers ~ Chris Pirillo
  Chris says it almost as many times as I’ve uttered a similar but less polite phrase.
  (tags: humor plastic)
• Creating Passionate Users: Ignore the competition
  Avoiding the Featuritis curve and focusing on users (surprise!). You can tell Kathy writes well — I was thinking of the same unnamed company while reading the whole article.
  (tags: design development philosophy marketing programming usability)

Fitted sheets are part of an alien conspiracy to weaken the human race through frustration.

Over-sized mattresses and sock-eating washers are other items on their languishment laundry list.

I would have simply commented on your post, Tracy, but I couldn’t hear your audio CAPTCHA. Don’t feel alone, though — my wife says I never hear anything. Especially regarding laundry.

• Velcro City Tourist Board » Blog Archive » Don’t fear the future
  Optimistic thougts on AI and posthumans. I’m tempted to agree. After all, people of the nineteenth century would probably consider *us* “posthumans” if they could see us with all of our gadgets and communication.
  (tags: futurism ai posthuman)
• amperspective » Css Crib Sheet
  Good advice for CSS — we need it!
  (tags: css reference webdesign)
• TimesDispatch.com | Richmond Virginia Obituary
  Fred Clarks’ obituary
  (tags: death humor obituaries life)
• Google PageRank Checker – Check Google page rank of any web pages
  Simple
  (tags: SEO pagerank google statistics)

Lone Ranger: Don’t worry Tonto, we can take on all of these Apaches!

Tonto: Who’s “we”, white man?

I’ve never been one to say that public (much less international) opinion should guide policy. I think governments should take whatever course of action best defends the liberties of their citizens. But it’s becoming difficult for me to see how continuing this nascent World War III fulfills Perrin’s Principle of Inclusion, except as a negative example.

Hell, I didn’t just write a political post, did I?

To a fellow Virginian! I never met him, but I’ll raise my glass to Fred Clark tonight. Thanks, Kent.

• How to Get Information to Flow Backward (David Louis Edelman’s Blog)
  Proposals and dreams for increasing two-way communication on the web (thanks Armchair Anarchist – http://www.velcro-city.co.uk/links-for-20-07-2006/)
  (tags: internet web twoway)
• Seth’s Blog: Blogging is the new poetry
  Seth has an interestingly different take on the Pew report.
  (tags: pewreport blogging)

apotheon’s offering a free book, too.