UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

I learned this morning from Daring Fireball that Google has temporarily restored their earliest available index from 2001, allowing you to see what was available back then for your searches.

Kind of cool. But a little depressing for me personally, to see that back then my site was the first result you’d get when searching for John Coltrane. Now it’s 7th, but I suppose I should be glad it’s still on the front page, given my lack of attention to SEO. (Of course, I think SEO is at least 75% snake oil anyway.)

I’ve been reading Daring Fireball for a while now (long enough to have noticed and be relieved at the eventual removal of the questionable tagline, “Gay for Macs”), and I’ve enjoyed John Gruber’s pithy insights and diligent distillation of the daily deluge of Mac (and other stuff he’s, apparently, “gay for”) related news into a single useful stream of relevant information.

I’ve also been reading it long enough to know that its primary source of revenue is via a single weekly sponsorship, which culminates in a post touting the greatness of whatever it is you’re promoting via the sponsorship, and a link in his sponsorship archive. And for this he charges $1750 a week. That works out to $91,000 a year. Just for hawking someone else’s wares once a week. Not bad work if you can get it. But how can you get it? Well certainly not by describing your own writing as “blather” and then justifying that description by indiscriminately posting whatever prose crawled out of the dank, cobwebbed recesses of your brain. Trust me, I know.

I get it though. His insights are often brilliant. Case in point, today’s dismantling of my dreams of Flash for the iPhone. OK, I haven’t really dreamed of it. It would be nice, I suppose, but it’s been clear for a while that Apple had reasons beyond their spurious claims of poor performance for keeping Flash off the iPhone.

If you doubt that assessment, please do yourself a favor. Read Daring Fireball and then shut the hell up. I will now heed my own advice.

Shady high-stakes gamblers using other people’s money Investment bankers getting their comeuppance is one thing. Global economic collapse is something else. This is only a Panic if we make it one. Fear begets fear, which leads to the populace en masse taking drastic steps we normally would not. Hyperbolic news reports become self-fulfilling prophecy.

Just say no. Kill the collapse by refusing to give in. And whatever you do, don’t give the swindlers another $700 billion to play with.

I’ve just started working on a new track for the Bee LP entitled “Drones.” Appropriately enough, it is (mostly) in an ambient style, with droning synthesizers.

A rough version is posted now on the album page for your interim enjoyment.

OK, I guess I’m spoiling the surprise with both the title and the accompanying screenshot, but that’s only to get you to take the time to wait for slow-loading Flash on what is apparently a Dutch e-commerce site. It’s worth the wait, if you’re into this sort of thing.

Geniet van het!