...more recent posts
Well, I finally had the dream. I've been dreaming a lot lately (or remembering them in the morning at least) and it's seemed like it was coming, but somehow always just out of reach. Some people call it lucid dreaming. Anyway, I had a few almost experiences lately where I would be in the dream and something would happen which would make me think "hey, this is just like in a dream" at which point I would try to figure out if I was awake or not. What had been happening to me at this point is that I would either decide a) I really am awake (wrong answer Jim) or b) I'd just sort of forget what I was thinking and wander back into the dream.
Anyway, the other night it finally happened. I was talking to someone about some numbers and every time we would decide on something the numbers would change. Finally I thought "this is weird, the numbers won't stay put - it's just like a dream." And I think because I'd been talking a lot with MB about this event, and about how it might come about, I immediately realized, "I am in a dream right now." Nice. Except then I wasn't able to stay in there. I've read all these accounts of people getting to this point and then being able to take control of their dream narrative. Like you can just start flying around, or whatever strikes your fancy. All while being aware that you are in fact dreaming. I've always been a little suspicious of these accounts, but I'm sure it's possible for someone. Just not me. At this point anyway.
In my dream, after I realized I was in a dream, my surroundings just started to fade out. Everything became grey, blurry, and low resolution. I remembered reading something about trying to spin your dream body around in order to stay in the dream (like the sufi kind of spinning) and I even tried this, but it didn't work. In another moment I was awake. Still, I'm happy to report I got that far.
Do you ever wake up inside a dream and get to stay there? How do you do it?
I can't believe Kermit the frog is shilling for AIG. It's just not right.
My phone is not receiving calls. I think they are all going right into my voicemail, but honestly I haven't listened to all the messages. Sorry if I've missed you. Write me email until I get this straightened out.
Holy cow. David McCusker mentioned me, although I think he only saw the links page and not this one. I guess some internal navigational links would be good for that link page. Anyway, I couldn't agree more with him about being in awe of Matthew Rossi's writing, as well as his fonts being basically unreadable in Netscape 4.7. On the Mac I just turn off javascript and this makes CSS not work, so the fonts just default to my (much larger) setting. Works O.K. plus it defeats almost all pop up adds.
Very glad something here was of some interest to someone.
The searching zeitgeist
Google now has a cool page of statistics about what people are searching for. (via /.)
Bust? What bust? Douglas Rushkoff explains the history of the web, and why it's doing better than ever, despite what some would have you believe.
Nothing very original, but that's never his point. He's more of a summing it up for people on the outside kind of writer. And I think he gets the general feel correct. The internet stock crash was a good thing for the web, because the web is not about making money off of people, it's about communicating with them.
Note to self: you don't really want to stand directly downwind of the fireworks.
Looking for more guinea pigs, err I mean people who want a weblog type thing. Need a place for your blog? (with full comment system, automatic archives, picture uploading, etc....?) Drop me a line: jim at datamantic.com.
While talking yesterday about my recent flurry of dreams I realized that while I occasionally (like yesterday morning) have dreams where I am in a fight with an animal, that animal is always a shark. For as long as I can remember. Maybe 20 dreams over the last few years (that is a complete guess) and never once with an animal other than a shark. Weird. And I hadn't ever noticed this. I can't even think of any other animals that have ever appeared in my dreams. Maybe bugs.
Why can't I send google the pages that have changed on my site? The point is they wouldn't have to hit my site so much with their robots. Plus, the updates would be live. Who wouldn't push their content to google one time rather than take all the hits? (where each hit to a page that hasn't been updated is wasted bandwidth.) Win-win as they say.
I'm not suggesting google change their ranking criteria. Just because you send them pages doesn't mean you'll return higher in searches. Maybe you'd sign up to send them pages, and then if they are already indexing you, they would send you some sort of password to authenticate that your pages are from you. If you're not being indexed they just note your interest, and then send you the key when (or if) they ever start to index you.
Actually, couldn't this be a revenue model for google? Have the service, but only let people send updates once every n hours (or days.) But, it you pay a little, you can send them more frequently. Or if you pay more, in real time. So their model could be free for what they do now, but with the addition of a temporal aspect, so people could search (at least among sites pushing their updates) for things using a very recent time criteria (for instance, you could search for news stories in the last 6 hours about thunderstorms in New York City, or any other sort of recent news event.)
Or am I missing something?