Stuffleufagus

I started getting some hits from Alltop.com a few weeks ago - not many, and never seemingly from the same URL.  I dismissed them.  Of course, I follow Guy Kawasaki in Twitter (and he follows me) - so I know well what Alltop is.

Alltop aggregates RSS feed - "the best of the blogs" but they also sort them by category - and they have a lot of categories.

Today I got a dozen hits from http://life.alltop.com before I wondered what was up.  So I went and looked.  If you scroll down a bit, there is my blog, on the left.

I think the "life" section is probably where my blog belongs - because I talk way more about personal stuff than tech - and when I do talk tech, it’s normally personal!

About an hour later I got an email from Guy Kawasaki telling me they added me to Alltop - a canned email, but that’s cool.

So how did my blog make it?  My Technorati rank is ok - I’ve been in the top 100k often.  My subscribers via FeedBurner isn’t huge - averages 115 people/month.  So how did I get any attention?

I can only guess it was via Twitter.  Depending on who is online and active I may or may not Twit about a new blog post.  If I think it fits the (current) audience, I will.

Twitter gives you a huge voice.  But I’ve found I moderate (usually) what I Twit about depending on who is online, and active.  My Twitter friends online in the daytime are mostly different from those online at 1am.

And I appreciate that Alltop included my blog - it is just another way to make a new connection.

written by rob tags: Alltop, Guy Kawasaki, Twitter

I was in a Texas Hold ‘em cash game with about 6 other people and I had won 7 straight hands - three of them on the bluff. On the eighth hand I was caught in a really bad bluff. I lost 20% of my chips.

The next thing I did was ask, “OK, what’s my tell? Seven hands I had the top cards and I try a bluff and you see it?”

Nobody said anything, but they were suddenly all wondering if this guy who beat me had seen something. So I started changing slight facial expressions and moving my chips differently. People were looking for tells, and I was giving them to them.

Two hands later I had doubled-up and later I ended the night the big chip winner.

All I did was disrupt their rhythm.

Disrupting rhythm can be a very powerful thing.

written by rob

Besides my earlier post where I complained about the Widget/Sidebar interface, I have also found three people now who did not have their upgrades complete for some reason. It appears some files, specifically in the wp-admin folder, are NOT getting copied over on the first attempt.

If you see something flaky in the Admin Section (missing buttons, garbled screens, etc) then download WP 2.5 again (to make sure you had a “good” copy of the files) and then re-copy the files to your blog.

Also, Windows Live Writer, which was working fine before the upgrade, now gives me an error when I post. My post IS published to my blog, but WLW makes it appear as if it hasn’t been. I’ll look into this more later.

written by rob tags: Windows Live Writer, WordPress 2.5

  I had an idea over 20 years ago that was very similar to this - except I had an additional twist - when the car was actively accelerating (ie, gas pedal being pushed and not just coasting) a small segment of the tail light glowed a faint green.

That would give followers the ability to know everything you need to know about the momentum of the vehicle in front of you.

In any case, it is about time we update brake lights.

It’s only taken about a million years, but someone has finally decided that improvements are possible in automobile braking lights. Students from Virginia Tech have developed a new system that can show not just whether you’re stopping, but if you’re slowing down, when you’re about to stop, and how quickly you’re pressing the pedal. The concept uses an array of horizontally arranged LED lights — when you begin to slow, lights in the center glow orange, after a certain threshold side lights turn to red, and if you’re slamming on the brake, they’ll all flash red.

Virginia Tech students create "smart" brake lights for cars | My iStop

written by rob