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Thursday, June 19, 2003 |
So, early Saturday morning, I am going down to the spot where Minnehaha Creek meets the Mississippi river with a thermos full of coffee and a folding chair and a fishing pole and some bug dope and I am going to catch the biggest walleye ever. And then I am going to throw it back because regulations don't allow you to keep walleye coming out of pool 2 of the Mississippi. Pool 2 is defined as the region between the Ford Dam and Hastings. Until the late 70's that part of the river was hopelessly polluted and no living fish were to be found. Then, the liberals and environmentalists imposed draconian environmental laws and the fish came roaring back. In 1993, the DNR put regulations up that allowed only catch and release fishing in order to maintain a unique urban fishery and because there are still some contaminants in the fish. There are all kinds of bugs and worms and stuff flowing out of the creek, so the fishing is somewhat hot right there. And you never know what you will catch. boots, cats, walleye, etc.
5:28:32 PM 
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Yow. That cup of coffee went to the right place.
I just had a brainstorm that I would create a web spider that scraped
referrals for blogs from places like sitemeter.com and collect the
search terms, times, and locations and organizations that initiated the
search. Then, I would display the data collected in interesting ways,
perhaps with maps. This way, I get a hint of what people are searching
for on a given day, in a given organization. Then, If I can prove that
the results are statistically significant, trends will emerge that until
recently have been invisible. The New York Times recently had an
article about how the people at Google can see trends from their
headquarters that give a picture into life on earth. For example, the
people at Google knew right away that there was an earthquake in
Washington State because they saw a spike in search terms for earthquake
from domains originating from Washington State.
blogs could make this process easier by syndicating their referral
logs.
Then, if there was a sudden spike in search terms like "fetid red
lesions" from a certain area of the country, my map would show it
instantly. This would be quicker than relying on Doctors reporting to
the CDC because people generally do a google search before going to a
doctor. It would be quicker than relying on bloggers blogging about
their symptoms. It would even capture searches that did not find
relevant information.
10:01:12 AM
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I have been writing this blog for more than a year. Here are some
observations about it:
One interesting thing I have noticed is that my personal posts get
comments and my technical posts, no matter how much work and thought I
put into them, get a deafening silence. However, the search engines
send more hits my way as a result of my technical posts, so it balances
out.
I pay a lot more attention to the world around me because I am always
looking for material.
Amazingly few people know what blogs are and even fewer recognize their
power or legitimacy. When people ask me why I am asking so many
questions and writing the answers down in a notebook and I say, "It's
for my blog", I have to explain that a blog is a web site and when I
tell them the address is radio.weblogs.com/0108008 they are like, "well
THATS a catchy domain name"
Another thing I have noticed is that every so often, someone reads
EVERY SINGLE POST I ever made. This makes me paranoid (Hence changing
my last name to McGillicuty on my bio page).
Another thing I have noticed is that bad spelling is rewarded by
google. I get like 50 hits a week from people looking for Aitkins diet
information because I spelled it wrong. (It is also rewarding to
search google using bad spelling because you find this whole shadow
realm of information)
8:39:51 AM
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I mixed up some beer batter and cooked all that walleye I caught up in lake of the woods. I put a little cayene pepper in it and vavoom. Best fish fry ever. Kate said I could go fishing as much as I wanted as long as I kept bringing home fish and cooking it for her. Then, I might have gone to sleep and I would be sleeping right now. Instead I stayed up to watch "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" Dammit. I am too old for that bullshit.
12:01:27 AM
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© Copyright 2003 mcgyver5.
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