National High Five Day

Someone actually came across J’s Notes with a Google search for cliffnotes for starshiptrooopers. Starters, it’s “Cliff’s Notes” and “Starship Troopers”. Second, the book’s only a hundred and fifty pages long and quite good. Why would you need Cliff’s Notes? And is this really for a class because, if so, neat!

So good luck to whoever did this search.

Every Sunday at 8pm we do this Under The Covers thing at WVCW. Shall you join us?

Awwwww yeah.

A little while ago there seemed to be some chest thumping about site visits and how popular some Virginia blogs thought they were and all that jazz. Well, in the interest of waking up that sleeping dog, I looked into the web rank of a sample of Virginia’s blogs according to Alexa:

Website - Traffic Rank

Virginia Conservative - 400,494

Waldo Jaquith - 538,488

Raising Kaine Blog - 787,372

Not Larry Sabato - 2,358,447

750 Volts - 2,919,089

Shaun Kenney - 4,435,780

Save Richmond - 5,080,153

Unfortunately any blogs on BlogSpot have their rank listed as Blogger at 18. What does all of this mean? Absolutely nothing, really.

The Global 500 most visited sites on the web.

A little ego Googling finds J’s Notes now shows as the second result when you search Jason Kenney (without the quotes, with the quotes puts me third).

That Canadian guy’s still number one. Not only that, he’s number one with my old domain, jasonkenney.net. BAH!

Also, it seems some misguided souls are under the assumption that the only Jason Kenney worthy of being mentioned in a Wikipedia entry is the Canadian one. I feel snubbed. This must be rectified!

We not return to your irregularly scheduled blog.

Zunafish is a site where you can swap books, movies, cd’s, games and more with other people.

Times-Dispatch Considers “New Form of Journalism”

It seems that the Richmond Times-Dispatch thinks local news outlets — including itself — have failed to provide the kind of journalism that Richmond needs. The T-D, owned by Media General, recently posted a help-wanted ad for an “Alternative Weekly Coordinator,” saying it wants to develop the kind of journalism that’s “sorely needed and long overdue” in the Richmond area. What kind is that?“Not going to give you much elaboration there,” says Frazier Millner, Times-Dispatch promotion manager, speaking for President and Publisher Thomas A. Silvestri. But Millner adds that the T-D is seeking “new ideas,” “fresh approaches” and “new energy.”

In the help-wanted ad, which is no longer online, the T-D says it’s exploring the launch of what it calls a “downtown suburban alternative newsweekly” (it’s unclear whether that means downtown-style suburban or suburban-style downtown).

…

Traditionally, alternative weeklies are fiery competitors to a market’s mainstream news providers and are independent from the market’s media conglomerates, according to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (of which Style Weekly is a member).

Local alts include Style, whose parent company is Norfolk-based Landmark Communications, the Richmond Free Press, the free monthly Wadi and the monthly RVA Magazine, which costs $30 for a year’s subscription.

I think the TD’s seen the success of Style and RVAMag and see a possible money-maker and a way to lure in new potential readers to the daily rag. But I think their target audience won’t really go for something that’s just an extension of a newspaper they already don’t want to read.

- Seems “doubleshot” is a Starbucks trademark. Looks like I won’t be using it on my show anymore. Or will I? Hmmmm…

- How many words are in the English language? Global Language Monitor says 988,968.

- How to write a thank-you note.

- Copy and paste between computers with Cl1p.

- Lieberman won’t rule out an independent bid for President.

- Why is the ground brown?

Happy Birthday, RVAMag! To celebrate, they’re throwing themselves one heck of a bash at Gallery5 this Saturday. All souls 18 and up can attend and for only five bucks ($5USD) you get The Gaskets, Prabir and the Substitutes and more. Toss in the fact that the whole thing is sponsored by Yuengling, beer of choice of J’s Notes, and this looks like it’ll be one fun night.

Now this is messed up:

The three men, arrested March 30 in their rented house on Peace Mountain Road, were appointed lawyers on Monday.

Bill Jones, a former assistant prosecutor, will represent Michael Mendez, 60. Roy Patton, a former district attorney, will represent Richard Peter Sciara, 61. Bill Leslie, a former public defender in Buncombe County, will represent Danny Carroll Reeves, 49.

The men are charged with felony castration without malice, felony maiming without malice and misdemeanor practicing medicine without a license.

If convicted, they could spend 15 years in prison on the felony charges. The misdemeanor charges would mean probation.

None of the men has criminal records.

Investigators say the men lived together and are lovers who have a master-slave relationship.

Haywood County sheriff’s investigators said they believe the suspects castrated at least six men from across the nation and abroad from June 2004 to November 2005 in a room off their carport that the participants called the dungeon.

They said they believe the victims willingly participated.

And as messed up as it may be, well, if they willingly participated, is this really a crime? I mean, I guess it’s practicing medicine without a license, but if your pal can give you a piercing or even a tattoo without any sort of paperwork, can’t one remove your boys? At the very least, if it without malace and permission was granted, does it need to be a felony? Weird, on so many levels.

(geistweg had this first.)

A while back I said, “Wow, what a great album!” about The Blue Van’s “The Art of Rolling”. And I meant it. It’s a great album that harkens back to ’60s pop-rock, a little bit of The Who, a little bit of everything else, just great stuff.

Don’t believe me? Take a listen for yourself.

The Blue Van - Word From The Bird
The Blue Van - Coeur De Lion (perhaps my favorite song off the album).

Blogosphere suffers spam explosion

While technology and legislation may have made spam in e-mail manageable, there is still some way to go when it comes to keeping it out of blogs, people in the industry said. There is some software dedicated to blocking unwanted posts, and there are efforts under way to reduce the economic incentive behind them. But at the same time, spammers are coming up with ways to trick filters or to fool bloggers into allowing the spam.

Keeping out unwanted messages costs bloggers time and bother, at the very least. If it’s a commercial blog, it may also cost money for a filtering service. And beyond that, there’s a cost to the blog services, which have to develop spam-blocking technology.

This has been a growing problem for years and companies are still trying to adapt to the spammers. I think Blogger has done a good job of providing assorted options to its users for filtering. Requiring a login and the verification code seems to do the trick, but it prohibits the full range of commenting that could and should occur. Honestly, I think this is a problem that will be around for a very long time, it’s just a matter of creating a better and easier method to remove it.

VCU’s basketball head coach Jeff Capel is expected to be announced as the new head coach of Oklahoma’s program:

Capel was scheduled to meet with his team Tuesday morning to tell them he has accepted the Sooners job.

Capel was the stealth candidate Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione had been working the past 10 days. Earlier Monday, Wichita State’s Mark Turgeon and Miami’s Frank Haith, thought to be front-runners for the position, both made it clear they were staying at their respective schools. Regardless, Capel was a target of Castiglione’s since Kelvin Sampson announced he was leaving for Indiana two weeks ago.

…

VCU finished 19-10, 11-7 in the Colonial Athletic Association this past season.

After the season, Capel agreed to a two-year contract extension that gave him six years on his VCU deal. His record at the school was was 79-41.

Good for Capel. Guess it’s wait and see for how this will be for VCU.