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The first screen cap is the test version of the new Google Image results. It feels very much like Bing – with numerous results displayed on the page and the page working on the new infinite scroll that’s becoming popular. Gone are the pieces of visible metadata attached to each image.

Click to Embiggen

Or are they? Google has moved the metadata into a lightbox, which clears up the results a bit. Not shown in the image is just how responsive the page is. The metadata boxes pop up quickly and disappear without a fuss, not something I can say for Bing.

Click to Embiggen

And Google didn’t stop with merely recreating the Image search results, they finally moved into the modern era and got rid of the top frame in exchange for a lightbox and right-side frame. I’m not too terribly thrilled with this, as the old frame merely moved the fold while the new lightbox tactic obscures content. The upshot of the lightbox is that clicking off-image immediately brings the user to the results page.

All in all, a pretty neat set of improvements.

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Like a proud parent

The above photo is notable for several reasons:

1. It is photographic evidence of me wearing pants on a weekend
2. Despite having been out of the Army for six years now, I still haven’t found t-shirts more comfortable than Army issue brown tees.
and…
3. Yes, I have the gall to hang a Doves’ Some Cities poster next to a Toulouse-Latrec print.

Oh, and that manuscript in my hand? That’s a large chunk of Project Kingdom. For those of you keeping score at home, I am currently halfway through Chapter 29 out of an outlined 40, and sitting pretty at 77,000 words written.

Formatted for editing – double-spaced 12 point Courier New – I realized that I have given birth to a doorstop. The beast is closing in on 400 pages and tips the scale at more than five pounds.

All of these details, rendered in physical form, amaze me due to one very large fact. I cannot remember starting Kingdom. It has sat dormant for the better part of the last two or three months. I like to think that those months was a period of glorious gestation, where I was somehow becoming a better writer and doing things that will better Kingdom, but honestly? If there was a Manuscript Protective Service, they would have placed Kingdom with a loving foster novelist ages ago.

Kingdom’s a survivor, though. She’s moved computers at least twice. Moved apartments. Out lasted a couple of girlfriends. I’m pretty sure that when I started Kingdom I had both a functional car and television. Hell, the beast has killed a printer and untold ink cartridges.

The index cards used for pre-writing that hang above my desk have yellowed from cigarette smoke. And I don’t even want to think about how many bottles of booze have been sacrificed to Kingdom.

Put to the question, I’d estimate that I started writing Kingdom sometime around spring 2009, but I wouldn’t swear by that.

But now, as I wait for the house to cool, and think about lining my stomach before I start throwing bourbon at it, the end feels so close. If I can crank out a measly 5000 words a week, I can wrap the first draft before September. Then, it’ll just be several hellish months of editing. But at least I’ll be able to hold the entire thing.

And after the last couple weeks, that’s damn huge.

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Image by Gabriel Oliveira

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about job titles. Specifically, I think job titles need to be re-imagined to better reflect the job’s function. To that end, I propose the adoption of what I call “The Guy Title.”

For example, Joe the IT specialist will become The Computer Guy. Or if Ted specializes in keeping the network up and running, Ted becomes The Network Guy. Fred who keeps everyone’s email up and running? He’s The Email Guy.

Of course, the Guy Title system easily extends beyond the IT department.

Photographer? Meet the Camera Guy.
Web Copywriter? Web Writer Guy.
Marketing Analyst? Poll Numbers Guy.
Package Car Driver? Delivery Guy.
Pizza Delivery Driver? Pizza Guy.

It’s a pretty simple formula, and chances are you’re already using them in conversation anyway. I think, that by taking these conversational titles and turning them into official titles, employees will have a much better understanding of exactly what’s expected of them.

The Guy Title system also makes interoffice communications easier. Have a problem and you need it fixed? Shout the name of the problem and attach “Guy” and there’s little doubt who should respond.

Now, I know you’re wondering, “But what about management?” Well, that’s just as easy. Simply add a “boss” for department heads, a “suit” for division level, a “-y” for C-level positions. Thus, the Chief Marketing Officer becomes Market-y Guy. The IT Division Manager? Computer Suit Guy. Customer Service Manager? Complaint Boss Guy.

And ladies? Don’t want to be called a “Guy”? Think about it this way, if payroll is determined by job title, there’s not really anyway to be paid less for the same job.

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And the problem with fake band names is that once you start looking for them, you see them everywhere. You start assigning genres, idiosyncrasies, member names, album art. If you know your music history – this is exactly how Def Leppard started.

Sometime over the past year, I started tweeting the band names I’d find in CAPTCHA codes at Mixx.com. And I wasn’t alone. The volume of CAPTCHA bands started to increase with new discoveries found daily. At Twitter events, I’d end up talking about CAPTCHA bands with other users – Brad Carr, Dean Browell, and Carrie Fleck being the three other local CAPTCHA band spotters.

Yesterday morning I received a DM and Facebook message from, good guy and friend of the blog, Dean Browell. He was taking the CAPTCHA band mini-meme to the next level – a Facebook Fan Page.

The idea is just as simple as the Twitter action we’d been doing for the better part of a year now, albeit in a bit longer form and benefiting from multimedia. I quickly roped Justin into the group, swallowed my rather strong dislike for Facebook, and jumped in.

So far, we’ve managed to get six CAPTCHA bands up, and I’ll include one of them below. If you’re into that whole Facebook thing, and you’d like to Fan the page, here’s a link. It’s still early, but there’s some quality stuff up there.

The Govs
Prison State

Orange County in the late seventies was known more for it’s love of disco and The Eagles than it was of the proto-punk movements developing in Detroit, London, Manchester, and New York City. But when Steve Greer’s disco-glitter band, The Lovelights, signed with Columbia Records, the teenage Lester Greer had enough.

Adopting the stage name “Butch” and teaming up with two fellow teenage ne’erdowells, the younger Greer brother launched what is arguably the first SoCal proto-punk band – The Govs. With much of the band lacking anything close to musical talent, and having spent most of their lives in the well-to-do Los Angeles suburb, the trio overcompensated with profanity and aggression.

The band’s first album, “Screw California”, was twelve adaptations of the Richard Berry classic “Louie Louie” with alternate lyrics and a tempo that clocked each track in a mere ninety seconds. But the messages, deriding the recently ended Vietnam War, the disastrous Nixon presidency, and a perceived Orwellian police state in which “the government collud[ed] with corporate interests to enslave the masses” resonated with the students of Laguna Beach High School.

The lo-fidelity honesty of the first album was quickly lost as parents of band members fronted the money for a true demo, the better known “Prison State.” Under the tutelage of a Benny Stills, a failed musician in his own right, Greer and his cohorts were put through the paces in a real studio, instructed in the use of their musical instruments, and given a basic understanding of song writing.

The experience is believed to have been detrimental to the outcome of not only the album but also the band. Produced to within an inch of its life, the Govs’ second album was derided as derivative, meritless, lacking in real world experience, and nearly causing the death of punk before the burgeoning genre was truly alive.

Several record labels professed an interest in Prison State, and it received a rather wide release. The band, however, broke up shortly after completion and thus never toured in support of the record. The impact of Prison State was far greater than any involved could have predicted, and is seen as a major influence on modern day acts such as Green Day and Nickleback.

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The Joanna Newsom is out there, somewhere

What follows is an actual conversation between myself and a long-time friend, Justin Koeppen. No spelling has been corrected.

PBR: Ever listen to “The Do”?

JK: Never haves.

PBR: I was hoping they’d sound remarkably different. But they don’t, really. Female lead is kind of like Hope Sandoval, but not enough.

JK: How much more Sandovalic does she need to be?

PBR: About a 1/3rd. What unit of measure are we using?

JK: A sliding scale of preciousness that ranges from Pink to Mum.

PBR: Nice.

JK: It can also be repesented as a “Newsom”, as in “her voice is so twee she registers at 9.5 Newsoms.”

PBR: I didn’t think 9.5 Newsoms was realistically possible. I mean, it’s been mathematically proven under ideal circumstances. But get out of the lab once in a while, man

JK: Ok. So 9.8 Newsoms is theoretically possible in a pure vaccuum at or near absolute zero, and 10.0 Newsoms reaches the threshold of current science. It’s beleived that an artist with a 10.0 rating would occupy all genres simultaneously.

PBR: The God Artist, also known as the Les-Bosson particle.

JK: That’s if you subscribe to the current model of Harp String Theory.

PBR: Which, you know, I do. I could never get behind the Zepplin Field Theory

JK: Well, yesh, the physics break down as the artist approaches the event horizon, also known as the Coldplay Line, beyond which no talent can escape regardless of the force of opposing hipster cred.

PBR: I can’t abide by any school of thought that believes that Coldplay is actually inevitable. It screams of creationism, as if the boring and uninspired of the world are preaching some fanatical version of musical religious doctrine.

JK: It’s true, the musical cosmos operates much more akin to the Rolling Stones model; it began ages ago with a bang, then over billions of years colled and evened out to form a void filled with mostly empty space, continuing it’s course until it’s eventual heat death.

PBR: I’ll stick with Jenny Lewis Wave forms, which give you a really interesting quotient when you feed Kate Nash into the equation

JK: You know that’s dangerous. They tried a similar experiment in the 90s by trying to introduce a Belly variant into a stable Susan Vega waveform. that’s how we got Lisa Loeb.

PBR: But that overlooks the Costello-Dylan hypothesis, that the universe is expanding and contracting in repetition for infinity, with each action spinning off an infinite number of variants. In some parallel universes, Dylan was actually good in the 80s.

JK: Unless you believe in the Guided by Multiverse theory, wherein each song Robert Pollard pens creates it’s own parallel universe where the lyrics actually make sensen.

PBR: Bah, that theory hasn’t been used since people started to really trumpet the qualities of The Magnetic Fields Theory – in which happy songs are really sad songs, but sad songs are really sad songs too.

JK: Ah yes, the old Grandaddy era school of thought.

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But it’s a move doomed to failure. Here’s why. Information. Lots of it. Gobs of it. Today’s media landscape isn’t measured in column inches, but rather in conversations. The content of the New York Times might be the start of many of those conversations, but they rarely (if ever) manage to keep them going at the New York Times. Instead, the stories and links get passed around, take place elsewhere, spread around the net in viral tides.

And that bothers the New York Times. Not like this is a new development. Newspapers, like books, have always been shared between readers. “Hey are you done with the sport section? Yeah, trade you for the business section.” The problem is that kind of sharing is limited by scarcity. Not so online. Neither is the competition. People who do things better steal eyeballs who otherwise would have read a section of a newspaper.

Need a new futon? Craigslist that shit.
Ditto for a job.
What’s the score of the game? There’s only a million or so sites that can tell you that right now, plus give you tons of information beyond the score because all they do is sports.
Ditto for cooking, entertainment, politics, culture, and even neighborhood news.

So, instead of competing with these specialized venues (probably a bad idea) or turning the New York Times website into a destination for conversations (probably a good idea, destinations mean pages views, pages views mean ad revenue, ad revenue means continued employment), the Times went for option C – what I like to call “Hide behind a wall.”

And here’s how Option C is going to work out. At first, a lot of loyal subscribers will sign up. The initial numbers might even look promising. People are paying and coming into the castle. “We’re saved!”

You aren’t.

Your good stories, the real winners, will leak out. Everyone will read them, however they’ll completely ignore the rest of the New York Times. Your overall page impressions will fall. So will your ad revenue. Suddenly, your only source of income will be your subscribers.

And that leads us to part two. Subscribers will stop growing. Quickly. Bringing new subscribers in after that first generation will be harder. Keeping subscribers will be harder. After you erect a pay wall, there’ll be an initial vacuum in the news market. Your brand is now focusing inward, and all your former readers who wouldn’t pony up the cash few an online subscription? They’ll move on. Someone else will get them.

Eventually, your brand loyalty will wane. Current subscribers will start to leave. Getting new customers will become nigh impossible. You’ll be forced with two options – raise prices or innovate. Raising prices will drive more customers away and make getting new ones even more difficult. Innovating, well, we’ve already seen the Old Gray Lady thinks of that.

And if you still think this whole pay wall thing is a good idea? Why don’t you talk to the folks who were in charge way back in 2007, when you ended your other pay wall – TimesSelect.

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Wow! Don’t you feel patriotic! Don’t you want to own not one, but fifty pieces of American history? Well, let’s hope not, because then we couldn’t be friends. Let’s dissect a commercial, shall we?

I didn’t want my family to miss out…

Bandwagon

Ah, an appeal to emotion. It’s so passive-aggressive. Did you see what she did there? Here’s how it works based on a faulty premise – because she cares for her family, she bought them the product in this commercial. Because you have yet to do so, you don’t love your family. And she’s a better mother than you. Better start dialing now.

on a piece of America that’s valued today…

Appeal to Patriotism

Insert an appeal to patriotism. It’s worked before, and it’s technically true. Currency is technically a piece of America. As for value, we know that, it’s $12.50. Fifty quarters. That’s like a single person’s trip to the laundromat!

…and will be even more meaningful tomorrow.

Hasty Generalization

Define meaning. If you are equating “meaning” to “value” then you’re assuming that this set will be worth more tomorrow. And true, some coins will be more valuable tomorrow, but most won’t. Not bad, three logical fallacies and we’re only 9 seconds into the commercial.

So, thanks to the Franklin Mint, I gave them not one piece of American history, but fifty.

Questionable Math
Obscure Pronoun Use

No, thank you! Wait, since this is a work commissioned by the Franklin Mint, aren’t you self-congratulating there? So, it’s not a collection, a single entity, but fifty quarters?

The grammar nerds picked up on this one right away. In the above sentence “them” implies Franklin Mint, as that was the last noun used prior to the pronoun.

This is the complete collection of fifty commemorative state quarters from the Franklin Mint, a value never to be seen again.

Contradiction
Faulty Premise

And the first contradiction. It’s not fifty pieces, it’s a collection. And here’s the first use of the term “value.” Value is a really wonderful term, it’s not fixed or provable like “cost” or “price.” Value differs on a person to person basis. That’s some lawyered up language there.

That last bit “never to be seen again”? That’s a nice bit of false assumptions there. The Franklin Mint isn’t the only people selling these commemorative collections, but they would like you to believe they are, and that one day, they’ll stop.

These coins are in brilliant, uncirculated condition, have never been in circulation, and will never be minuted again.

Appeal to Authority

A fine example of making up a word that then turns a sentence into a redundant construct. The assumption at the end is a fairly safe one, but because an “authority” was used to make it (Jay W. Johnson, 36th Director of the U.S. Mint), we’re expected to assume it’s true. Mr. Johnson was the director of the U.S. Mint for one year (2000-2001), and since went on to work for both The Franklin Mint and Goldline International.

In fact, many have already increased in value, some as much as 400%.

Questionable Math

Yikes. This one is really bad. An increase in value of 400% for a US quarter is…are you ready for this?…$1.00. Seriously, do the math.

Oh, and were you able to read that fine print? Here’s how the Franklin Mint tries to cover their asses through tiny text: Historical increases in value do not guarantee that coins in this program will increase in value. So, even if those coins had increased in value before, there’s no guarantee they’ll be worth that much in the future, or even now. Because a lot of things can change the value of an object…like increasing the supply.

Why do I own these rare quarters representing every state in America? Because they’re a value I can pass on, that’s too good to pass up.

Straw Man
Appeal to Patriotism
Non-sequitor/Gambler’s Fallacy

Asking yourself a question is poor form in rhetoric. Why? Because when you do that, you frame an easier argument for yourself in the mind of the audience. By the way, did you catch the tasty irony I just used?

The answer provided can actually go one of two ways depending on how it’s punctuated. If Franklin Mint is playing it safe, and put a comma or period in that sentence, then it becomes a non sequitur. The first sentence says that the quarters are rare, and implies value. The second sentence asserts that the value would come from the ability to pass the quarters on.

If we remove the comma, than we fall into the Gambler’s Fallacy. By passing these quarters on, the speaker is saying that these quarters will eventually be worth money.

In today’s economy, who needs uncertainty? This is a solid, all-American value.

Appeal to Fear
Appeal to Patriotism
Questionable Math

Yeah, the economy sucks. That solid, all-American value? If you bust those quarters out of the case and take them to the store, you can buy $12.50 worth of groceries. Unless the economy collapses, at which point, they won’t hold any value beyond the usefulness of the metal. Have fun trying to eat quarters.

Call now and ask how you can be eligible to receive the first ten quarters absolutely free. We will also tell you how you can attain the remaining forty coins to complete your question, as well as a free display, this special collectors booklet describing each coin, and a certificate of authenticity. As a bonus, you’ll receive “Hidden Treasures Around You” a guide to valuable coins that might be in your home right now.

What a sick block of text. Here the Franklin Mint is trying to sweeten the pot by promising free things. If we take this block at face value, that means that the customer is only paying for the quarters. All fifty, you’re paying $12.50. Get ten free and the price drops down to $10.00.

Call now because many of these mint condition coins are scarce and many have increased in value, some as much as 400%.

Questionable Math
Unfounded Premise

Ah, that 400% number does sound impressive, doesn’t it? And you should call now, because many of these “mint condition coins” are scarce. Scarcity is the source of value in physical goods, isn’t it? But we’re presented with this claim without any proof. How scarce? Which coins?

Today, it’s almost impossible to find a complete set of these quarters in mint condition and they will never be minted again.

Contradiction
Appeal to Authority

First thing’s first. Impossible to find? Hardly. You’re contradicting that claim by selling these sets. And the second bit? Now you’re just repeating a second fallacy. Repetition of a falsehood does not make it a truth.

If only I had bought that back then, look what it’s worth now. Now I say, if only I had bought two or three of these collections.

Hasty Generalization
Appeal to Emotion
A double whammy!

The first fallacy is implied. The argument is as follows, “Some coins rise in value. These are coins. These coins will raise in value.” Or not. You never know. But statistically, they won’t.

The second is an appeal towards happiness, or more correctly, away from regret. Don’t regret not purchasing these coins, buy them and be happy instead.

Less than 1% of Americans will ever own this complete collection. Will you be one of them?

Questionable Math
Snob Appeal

Less than 1% of all American’s sounds really small, doesn’t it? I mean, since it’s “less than,” it could mean like thirty people. However, it could also mean one person less than 1% of the American population. Taking a recent round U.S. population number, 330,000,000, that means no more than 3,299,999 people can own the set. That’s more than the population of Iowa, the 30th most populous state.

Knowing the reality of that number takes the impact out of the next claim, but the motive is implied. Only a lucky few will own this set. Are you part of the lucky few? Text book snob appeal.

* * *

For those actually interested in buying a set of these quarters, street value $12.50, you can contact the Franklin Mint. If you catch a commercial while it airs, you can get the set for two easy payments of $19.95. If you order online, you’ll be paying $49.50.

Insert fool and money cliché here.

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That’s worth a thousand words, right?

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Don’t be thrown off by that explanation, 4D mapping is just a method used to equate space and time as measured by light. I can’t crunch the math on it, which is why Summer is safe from me taking her job, but the theory basically states that time and space are the same thing.

The video itself is stunning, and can easily impart a sense of interstellar loneliness on the observer. And it made me instantly flash back to a video that probably had a far greater impact on my childhood than anyone at Warner Brothers Animation intended. Of course, I speak of Yakko Warner’s Universe Song

That song does a fairly good job of driving home an existential crisis, doesn’t it? To think, this show was aimed at grade schoolers.

For those who prefer to feel insignificant with a more upbeat tempo, and loads more British thrown in to boot, there’s always Monty Python’s Universe song from the classic film “The Meaning of Life.”

And I suppose I should say something uplifting now like, even though you got a parking ticket today, you can take heart in knowing that at that very moment, a star, somewhere in the far off reaches of space, was born. But really, that’s not my style. Instead, I’m going to be logging of the Internet in a bit to get back to work on my book.

My current goal is to complete the first draft of Project Kingdom by February 14th. Valentine’s Day. How many stars will be born between now and then?

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Friend of the blog, Ryan Nobles

The Internet is nothing if it ain’t a powerful resource for pranks. And why not? It allows large numbers of people to exert minimal effort to create powerful inside jokes. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what local TV news anchor, and friend of the blog, Ryan Nobles appears to be doing.

For those not local to Richmond, the city finally succeeded the diamond-shaped hole that was left with the Richmond Braves baseball team left town by bringing in a replacement. There was a whole mess of news stories and controversy about this attempt hinging first on where to put the stadium and then on the mascot.

Richmond's Terror That Glides From The Trees

Let’s talk about that mascot, and the no-goodery I promised in the title, shall we? It’s a Flying Squirrel. Not exactly an image that strikes terror into the hearts of visiting teams, but the company is trying to make Richmond baseball a family-friendly event and I’m okay with that. What I am really okay with, however, is that apparently the local paper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is holding a contest to name said mascot.

Enter Ryan Nobles. Apparently Ryan thinks that the mascot should be named after another local-legend and friend of the blog, one Weather Dan. So, Ryan put out the call today to have everyone vote along those lines.

So, if you’ve got two minutes to have fun, to create a little digital havoc, and two support a couple friends o’ the blog, please go here and vote to name the Richmond Flying Squirrels mascot “Weather Dan.”

That's our Weather Dan!

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