Category: Blogs & Blogging

Ken is a verb — a blog worth linking to if only because he says his “dream job has always been Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction.” Mr. Wolf I think he means.

A year ago today NewMexiKen reported on General Wesley Clark’s increasing numbers in polls and the return of Joe Gibbs to the Washington Redskins.

Largehearted Boy: 52 Down, 0 To Go

Blogger read 52 books in 52 weeks in 2004.

Vernon is back, now at Beats Per Minute:

Outside my professional life, I try to define the world around me through photography, drawing, and painting; and through poetry, prose, and sometimes seemingly senseless ramblings. I love to write and as my web log evolves, I’m discovering that a lot of the more creative entries are becoming ideas or story-starters for actual finished works. Other than a short story that was published in the early 90s, I’m not published anywhere else. I may decide to change that situation, but it isn’t important to me at this point in my life. I’m happy just recording some of those thoughts on this site.

In response to a common question I’ve been asked since starting Beats Per Minute, my first blog was titled Ei Baa Hashne’ (I’ll Tell You About It). I started that site in February of 2002 when I first discovered blogging. The site was featured in USA Today in July 2003. As expected, I raced out and grabbed several copies of that edition to memorialize my fifteen minutes of fame. The publicity was both a godsend and believe it or not, it was also a burden. I ended that project around March of this year for several reasons, but mostly, I felt that it was time to move on.

I grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and I currently live in New Orleans, Louisiana. Beats Per Minute reflects my experiences in these two culturally rich parts of the country.

Thanks Jess.

As you may notice, NewMexiKen is having some issues with MovableType and WordPress. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Update Saturday 4PM: All should be OK. Please let me know if you discover any problems. Decided to stay with MovableType.

Jason Kottke is worried:

Things may be a little quieter around here in the short term as I deal with some stuff going on in the real world. One of the reasons for the silence is that my legal difficulties with Sony about the whole Ken Jennings thing have yet to be resolved. I can’t say too much about it (soon perhaps), but it sure has had a chilling effect on my enthusiasm for continuing to maintain kottke.org. As an individual weblogger with relatively limited financial and legal resources, I worry about whether I can continue to post things (legal or not) that may upset large companies and result in lawsuits that they can afford and I cannot. The NY Times can risk upsetting large companies in the course of their journalistic duties because they are a large company themselves, they know their rights, and they have a dedicated legal team to deal with stuff like this. In the current legal climate, it may be that the whole “are blogs journalism?” debate is moot until bloggers have access to a level of legal resources similar to what large companies have. I’m certainly thinking very seriously about whether I can keep this site going in this kind of environment.

In short, Sony got on Kottke for publishing an audio clip of Ken Jennings’ final Final Jeopardy (in advance of the broadcast). That seems like copyright fair use to me. No? If someone acquired the recording inappropriately and passed it along to Kottke, my understanding is the issue is with the person who made the recording not the person who published it. Anyone?

1. NewMexiKen learned a few things during my self-imposed hiatus. One of those is that I want to keep doing this. Another is that Johnny Carson had the right idea — if you’re in it for the long haul, take lots of time off.

2. NewMexiKen, like Emerson, believes that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I reserve the right to change my mind.

3. It’s time to upgrade the underlying blog software from MovableType to WordPress. Most of you won’t care, but while I fool around with the migration there may be some odd looks to the page(s) and possibly a few disruptions. Please bear with me.

4. Thanks primarily to Ken Jennings and Google (and to a lesser extent the other search engines), yesterday was by far the busiest day ever here — 1,494 visits. The previous best was 1,191.

Based on your online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2004 was:

Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999): a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

Merriam-Webster Online

The other nine:

2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration

In November there were 21,256 visits to NewMexiKen from 12,906 different IP addresses in 85 countries, Guam and the European Union.

And I took ten days off.

As you can see, NewMexiKen gave in to the blogging jones today.

And probably will again soon.

No, I’m not changing my mind — at least not for a while.

But I did want to publicly thank those bloggers and others who have expressed kind words about NewMexiKen during the past few days. The cockles of my heart have been warmed.

NewMexiKen is suspending new posts for an indefinite period.

The more than 4,000 entries in the NewMexiKen Archives remain.

All commenting is closed.

There were more than 1,100 visits to NewMexiKen Thursday, but only nine ten commments (from six individuals, four of whom are related to me).

In October there were 21,211 visits to NewMexiKen from 12,289 different IP addresses in 82 countries, Puerto Rico and Guam.

Almost 1,200 visits to NewMexiKen yesterday. Amazing what a little story about a post turtle can do.

NewMexiKen passed 10,000 visits for October early this morning. They’ve come from 69 different nations.

Just a good half-hour for Kos perhaps, but a long way from the 25 a day I was getting last winter.

Thanks to links from Body and Soul and The Mahablog, we hit 897 Saturday, usually a slow day.

Hey, “Blogs” was a category of Jeopardy! — last Friday during the Tournament of Champions. Here’s the answers; click on each for the question.

Link via Kottke.

Pierre Omidyar, $10.4 billion

George Soros, $7.2 billion

Mark Cuban, $1.3 billion

Pointer from kottke.

8,172 unique visitors (or at least unique IP addresses) from 63 different countries visited NewMexiKen 14,862 times in September, looking at 59,815 pages.

Which means that “largest college stadiums,” “Agador Spartacus” and “Ron Howard’s brother” are what this corner of the Internet is all about. They seem to be the big attractions.

Update: Some perspective — Kos is getting more than 32,000 hits an hour.

Visit often today folks. It looks like we have an outside chance at 15,000 visits and 60,000 pages in September!

Largest (or biggest) college stadiums has edged out Ron Howard’s brother as the leading search phrase at NewMexiKen; Bush on tribal sovereignty is third.

A year ago today NewMexiKen linked to The Digital Journalist and Life’s 100 Photographs That Changed the World.

Functional Ambivalent is lamenting that he only has nine readers and Kos has a half-million. FA’s commentary is very good lately — thoughtful, provocative, occasionally even clever. You should take a look.

Let’s see if we can’t boost his readership to 11 or 12.

In case you’ve missed it, Heather has a new look and a new outlook.

The about page is interesting, too.

A year ago NewMexiKen wrote about —

The historian John Alexander Carroll.

The San Luis Valley and Great Sand Dunes National Monument.

An electrician survives drill through head.

Rating the Presidents.

Greatest and worst figures from history according to right and left wing bloggers.

And an encounter in 1998 with a grizzly bear.

NewMexiKen found out an ugly secret by looking at statistics for the site since September 1. On Thursday, when there were no new postings whatsoever, NewMexiKen had a record number of visits — nearly 20 percent better than any previous day.