Category: Blogs & Blogging

… is getting tired of politics, sports and Ron Howard’s brother. I’m thinking of making the site into something more like this.

NewMexiKen is moving. Ultimately this should be transparent to you.

NewMexiKen may be unavailable briefly while the domain is transferred. Do not fret. Like MacArthur, NewMexiKen shall return.

When this entry is no longer at the top you will know you are at the new server. It may be a day or two or three.

In the meanwhile, everything works fine including comments.

NewMexiKen is tired of what appears to be inconsistent service from my host provider.

Anyone care to recommend another provider?

(For those who don’t know, the host is where the files and database that generate NewMexiKen reside.)

Some of my six or seven loyal readers tell me they care.

OK, prove it.

NewMexiKen and Dad have arrived in northern Virginia to visit some of The Sweeties. We will remain here for a few days. During that time I will try and catch you up on some of the other sites we visited along the way — and, maybe, do some regular-type blogging. You know, stupid stuff.

NewMexiKen is taking a couple days off. No computer. No blogging.

Back Sunday or Monday.

The theory: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. …

The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth — extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes — but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.

The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.

There’s nothing here to imply that one type of blogger is better than the other. There are literally thousands — OK, hundreds… OK, at least a dozen — of both kinds that are valuable additions to the on-going conversation/food-fight/furry-cuddle that is the Internet.

Greg Knauss writing at kottke.org.

Walter Mossberg has a PC buying guide. Key points:

• I believe every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.
• If you want a new Windows PC, my best advice is to wait until January and buy one with Vista preinstalled.
• Running Vista with all its features enabled will require a major increase in hardware power, and that means a costlier PC.

… it was just an April Fool.

But I did go to Durango, Colorado, for fifteen minutes (figuratively) over the weekend, and left all computers behind. (Well, not really, I did check my email at the hotel business center.)

Colorado Luis has decided to close up shop. Luis has been a NewMexiKen favorite for two years (which is forever in blogdom). His acute and informed political analysis will be missed.

Fortunately, Luis promises to return in some way sometime in the future. We can all look forward to that.

The URL newmexiken.com is two years old today.

A couple of blogging heroes — together: Jason Kottke (kottke.org) and Heather Armstrong (dooce).

Kottke has been at this eight years!

… is away being a full-time grandpa. There may be sporadic posting these next few weeks, but real blogging, such as it is around here, will return on or about April Fool’s Day.

Feel free to comment among yourselves.

In the meanwhile, here’s a good line from Conan O’Brien:

“The makers of ‘Sesame Street’ have decided not to have Russell Crowe on as host of the show because he is not a good role model. Crowe was disappointed because he wanted to host an episode that was brought to you by the letters F and U.”

Oh, and Justice Antonin Scalia is 70 today, and NewMexiKen’s one-time boss’s boss, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, is 52.

According to some, there are two types of bloggers — linkers and thinkers.

NewMexiKen is primarily a linker’s blog. I find it. I think about whether you might find it interesting. I post it.

Hey, it worked for Reader’s Digest.

And there were 31,345 visits to 137,912 NewMexiKen pages during February, so I guess it’s working here, too.

$60.05 in three months including the Christmas shopping season.

You sure the web is the way to big bucks?

The audience for Web-logs, or “blogs” had an auspicious start, going from practically zero to almost 20 in a very short time frame (20 being the percentage of Americans today who report reading blogs on at least an occasional basis). However, according to recent Gallup data, it seems the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative in the past year.
…

To put blog readership in context, the December survey found that checking online for news and information is done regularly by 72% of Web users. Fifty-two percent regularly shop online, 40% pay bills, and 28% play games. At 20%, blog reading is on par with downloading music and participating in online auctions such as eBay.

Gallup

The hottest search term here in the past day has been variations on “Isabelle Dinoire.” More than 300 visits to NewMexiKen have originated with searches on her name. Ms. Dinoire is the Frenchwoman who had a facial transplant. NewMexiKen linked to the first photos last week.

The weird part is that about 10% of the searches were for “isabelle dinoire labrador.” It’s Ms. Dinoire’s Lab that attacked her and caused the injuries that led to the surgery.

Here’s a link to an article in yesterday’s New York Times covering Ms. Dinoire’s press conference — and yes, there are photos.

But none of the Lab.

Functional Ambivalent has a great new look — and last night’s entry promises more changes and has a wonderful image of a vintage television test pattern.

I think I’ll take the day off and go get my throat blessed.

There were 38,167 visits from 21,197 unique IP addresses viewing 150,906 pages at NewMexiKen in January.

NewMexiKen needs to be away for a few days. The computer and I have decided to use the period as a trial separation.

(I think the Toshiba laptop knows there is a new iMac about to enter our happy home.)

Blogging, such as it is, should resume by Monday, January 30.

You won’t find NewMexiKen or any of the fine blogs I nominated among the finalists (sigh), but take a look anyway — and vote for your favorites — for the Sixth Annual Weblog Awards — the Bloggies.