Interesting Things

Freewheeling Spirit links to an article about one of my favorite beers, Dogfish. When I was visiting She Says in D.C. this summer, it was what I drank, although I can just cross the border into Wisconsin to find some. I wish by age 39 my achievements had included building a giant beer barrel out of palo santo wood at a cost that might have gotten me fired. That's much more interesting than any of my resume bullet points.

Speaking of She Says, she has a post up that identifies the gender of the blogger. I'm identified as 69% male. All that's left to question is that if it's 69% am I toe to head, or head to toe. Fortunately, you can spend a lot of time just screwing around with your blog "statistics" (quotes definitely intended. I suspect it's as much real science as astrology). Library Bytes links to a number of them. Typelyzer says I'm an ESFP Performer especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and sweet smells. Which begs the question, why am I then seen with Mean Mr. Mustard so much? Unfortunately, I also have, "qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions." Doh. The Blog Readability Test pegs me as writing like a high schooler. This can be attributed no doubt to my bad language and recommendations as to how Erik can keep his face warm. Wait...that was on Facebook, so it doesn't count. But I did check She Say's blog, and now I don't feel so bad about not being college level. Website Grader gives me all sorts of information, such as a grade of 75 (B- or C+?), my Google findable pages, and an interesting statistic that my Technorati rank of 368,739 puts me in the top 0.53% of blogs tracked by Technorati. That sounds much more impressive than just the number, which is what Technorati gives me, or the Alexa rank I get of just over four million (specifically 4,003,621 which is still in the top 13.03 % of all websites). It looks like I was once up to almost 2.5 millionth. Damn the bad economy and it's impact on my website. Finally, I can even examine individual posts at PostRank, although it seems to be about a month behind the curve. New cats seem to get the best ranking, at least on NodToNothing.

Adventure Cycling is on Facebook.

This bit was also in my Adventure Cycling e-newsletter. I protest. Scotts should not be saying things like this in case others who read Adventure Cycling mistake them for the rest of us and think we have PMS.
PTS SUFFERERS UNITE: A fellow named Scott weighed in earlier this month at the Adventure Cycling forums, where he coined a phrase for the state of mind he found himself in after riding cross-country last summer: Post Tour Syndrome, or PTS. As Scott infers, there could be worse maladies to have. Check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/6m4bn9

Boing Boing links to a Media Shift article interviewing John Scalzi about pulps, SF and the web.

Eyeteeth links to a story about MIT studying the impact of modern media on storytelling. Not what's told, but the very structure of the story. The focus is on Hollywood, but David Foster Wallace was questioning (and expanding upon) the structure of the story in The Atlantic (magazine) and Infinite Jest (book) before his death, so the impact is media-wide.

Per Cookie Queen, Gulf War Illness is official. Like anyone who knows a vet couldn't have guessed that.