Northman's Fury

Before I head out on the road for the last leg of my journey to where the family is gathering this year, I thought I should put up a Christmas post.

First, there is the list of alternative Santa's for those of us not into the whole jolly red greed machine.

Atheist Santa
Who's that coming down the chimney? Nobody -- that's ridiculous. Atheist Santa shows up in a gray Toyota Corolla and knocks on your door. Once you let him in and he has cookies and milk -- come on, even atheists love cookies and milk -- he will explain to your child that Santa may love all the children of the world, but he has never submitted his claims of flying reindeer and magical present delivery to James Randi, who would gladly pay a million dollars if presented with irrefutable proof of his wild claims. However, as a gesture of goodwill, Atheist Santa will leave your child with a set of wooden periodic-table blocks and a scale model of archaeopteryx.

And then there's what I still consider to be one of the best Christmas lights displays ever:



Enjoy the holidays.

Blogging turns 10 today.

Wired has the originator of the "weblog", Jorn Barger, give his Top Ten Tips for new bloggers. I rather think that what blogs are have changed quite a bit from his original intent, as is the case with most developing technologies, and it shows in his first tip:

1. A true weblog is a log of all the URLs you want to save or share. (So del.icio.us is actually better for blogging than blogger.com.)

I don't think I read any blogs that would fit that description, at least not very often. I look for personal opinions and thoughts on current events, which is also what I normally post.

2. You can certainly include links to your original thoughts, posted elsewhere … but if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility.

So I, and everyone I like to read, are apparently on the egotistical side. Of course, that doesn't change the accuracy of the third point.

3. If you spend a little time searching before you post, you can probably find your idea well articulated elsewhere already.

Yep. And it's really annoying when you find it just after you've done your post.