Vidiocy OR::: 24fps (for pete's sake)

Watching one of my favorite films on a newfangled HD TV/ DVD setup the other week, I was (semi) mortified to notice that the "high-end" player was compensating for the Film-ness of the film, and was therefore doing some wonky things with the frame rate. I protested to my viewing companion that "the film doesn't actually look like this!" and, "This is weird, it looks like a British TV show." The film still worked, of course, and we had a decent enough time, but I remain(ed) bothered by the pomposity of this system changing the frame rate of something I knew very well should look another way. I started to gripe about frame rates: film vs. video, and the weirdness that occurs when trying to jump between the two, I had to stop short, however, of an explanation of how video actually worked, and/or why it was different.

Film makes sense. Film is alluringly and obviously physical. It is bound by all sorts of physical restrictions having to do with how much you can cram onto the strip, how fast you can pull the film through the projector or camera, and so on. It is one of those bewildering and elegant examples of arbitrary decisions in a design process like "QWERTY" or the width of train tracks, they're arbitrary decisions grounded in physical considerations.

Video was not as obvious to me. Again it is a physical system. Another analog format, but very different from Film. It converts and reads information as opposed to a direct transmission or capturing of a physical image (a cake vs a recipe). Film records and displays at a tight 24 frames per second. 24 images are displayed and shown in succession per second. Video (NTSC for us Americans) is either 30FPS (non-interlaced) or 60i (interlaced). Film is a non-interlaced format. Images are displayed one after the other in sequence. Interlaced video means that only half of the information of a "frame" (half of the scan lines) is rendered at a time. Alternate "fields" of scan lines are rendered in succession using half the bandwidth to display video image with much more fluid motion than Film. This type of motion we associate with TV and News Broadcasts (it is, after all, the standard for these formats, although the News is generally recorded at 50i).

As for video tapes, they are an analog format, same principles as audio tapes, pulled through and scanned diagonally by a play head reading an audio strip at the top of the tape, the interlace video information in the middle, and all sorts of stuff about tape speed and tracking along the bottom. The storage format is magnetic in principle, and information is encoded with electromagnets onto a layer of magnetic reactive coating on the tape (generally iron rust) that "remembers" its state.

There is all sorts of more information out there about display, encoding, interlacing, non-interlacing, converting, and whatnot, but this should suffice for now as a general run-down. In the case of this story, it sounds like the player was probably trying to pump it out at 60p (for progressive scan) but I'm still sore about it, so I'm not going to go into detail about that format. 24 Till Death!

DigiConform 24 vs 30

How many computations could the Universe compute if the Universe was a computer

...Which it could be. So if each atom in the available universe could register ONE BIT of information, which they all can as determined by its being "here" or "there", basically its position within the Universe, within the physical system. To compute, bits are flipped. Bits are flipped any time anything within the physical system changes. Any time anything within a system changes, it changes what the information about that system is. For a system to change, for a bit to flip, energy is required. The more energy, the faster a bit can flip. Seth Lloyd in his paper Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation shows that the maximum computational capacity of any system can be figured by running a function of the amount of energy available to the system and the system's size.

To calculate our Cosmic Computational power we have to take the Margolus-Levitin theorem that says that the maximum rate a bit can flip is proportional to the system's energy. So to calculate the maximum bit-flip rate we take the amount of energy available, multiply by 4, and divide by Planck's constant. This will yeild the number of possible bit-flips per second. We then need to find the total amount of energy in our system (E = mc2) E is energy, M is the mass of the system, and c is the speed of light (300 million meters per second). Taking the reasonable estimate of 14 billion years for the age of the Universe from expansion, and light being a finite speed, there is only a finite area of the Universe within it's "horizon" that we can have information about. The horizon grows with time, but will always be of a finite size, even within an infinite universe. To accurate calculations, the horizon of the universe is 42 billion light-years away. On average there is a mass of about one hydrogen atom per cubic meter throughout the Universe. Totaling the energy within the horizon we find that there is approximately 100 million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion (10**71) joules of energy in our Universe. Plugging this into our formula (E * 4 / Planck's Constant) we find that every second the Universe could perform 100,000 googol (10**105) operations. In the 14 billion years of the Universe's history it could have performed about 10,000 billion billion googol ops (10**112).

Compared to our efforts (and estimates) in the whole history of modern computing all the computers on Earth have only performed (according to Seth Lloyd) some fewer than 10 billion billion billion ops (10**30). To quote Terry Jones dressed as a woman whose husband is having his organs removed from him while still alive in The Meaning of Life "makes you feel sort of insignificant doesn't it?"

What a large Arthropod you have

I just stumbled upon an insane image of a coconut crab raiding someone's trash. I immediately thought it was some internet hoax since rudimentary searches yielded only that single photo. However increased searches turned up that it is in fact a real beast. The largest of land arthropods, so named because they live in the tropics (mostly the Philippines) and roam around cracking open coconuts and small dogs and feasting on their insides. Not really small dogs. They can get to be 19inches in diameter, but knowing nature, probably have pushed past that in a few specimens over the years. They are much less afraid of humans than they generally are of them, and, apparently, have been known to raid people's garbage. Basically just giant bugs filling the open niche left by raccoons in the tropics.

Think that's gnarly however, and I'll turn your attention towards one of the biggest arthropods ever to have lived. Slimonia of the family Hibbertoperus. It was a species of water scorpion 5 feet in length. It lay in wait motionless in prehistoric UK bogs some 330 million years ago. It is believe that this is about the absolute physical limits of what an arthropod can grow to. Horrors yesterday and today. What a world.

National Geographic

Unbearable Lightness of Peeing

Since I am traveling to Africa in June (Malawi specifically), and I made the mistake of informing my mother of these plans before I was already in the country, I have been the recipient of a steady stream of things that will undoubtedly try to kill me on my travels. The most disturbing was her insistence that I not pee into any rivers or bodies of fresh water, citing a parasite that will swim up you urine stream and root itself in your urethra. I immediately agreed that this was not something that I have any desire to mess around with, and it is a small sacrifice to give up peeing into water.

Something of this description begs investigation however, so here it is. The parasite is a fish called the candiru which (phew) lives in the Amazon. It is a type of catfish that feasts principally on the blood of other animals. It is nearly translucent in water, and lays in wait at the bottom of the river for prey to happen by. The disturbing aspect of its parasitism is that it makes straight for the exposed orifices of the unsuspecting host. It swims in, hooks in its barbs, and gorges itself on blood until it becomes so swollen that its own exit becomes difficult.



The candiru's legendary ability to swim up pee streams is a myth, but they are aggressive, and will leap for it if at close enough range. Because of their barbs, they are nearly impossible to remove without surgery. They are on average about 3 inches long but can get up to 7.

So it looks like I'm off the hook with those buggers for now, but I've still got bilharzia parasites to worry about. Or, more accurately, for my mother to worry about. Sorry Mom. I'll bring you back somethin nice.

SOURCES:
Associated Content
Damn Interesting

Learning V2.0

I've decided to revitalize this project and begin to learn things again. It has been almost an entire year with absolutely no new information contacting my brain. I would like to formally put a stop to that again. ...Starting tomorrow.

Horse Diving School

I first came across the concept of horse diving last evening when some friends brought up the movie "Wild Hearts Can't be Broken" about a horse diver who lost her sight in a dive, but continued to dive without it. It was initially described to me as somewhat of a sport where a rider rode a horse off a high dive, and into a small pool of water. Wild vision of uptight crowds, and harsh judges flooded my mind, evaluating the panicked fall of the graceful animals, that I don't imagine take to freefall too well. I was eventually calmed down, and came to understand that it was more of a sideshow attraction. Specifically on Atlantic City's Steel Pier.

The concept was allegedly invented by William "Doc" Carver in 1881 when his horse fell off a bridge in Nebraska into the water below. I guess he enjoyed it, so he developed it into an act. His son Al Carver built a large ramp for the trained horses to "dive" off of. His daughter Lorena Carver was the first rider, but was joined by her sister in law, Sonora Webster Carver in 1924. Sonora is the famed blind horse diver, who lost her sight when she hit the water with her eyes open in 1931 and detached both of her retinas. Sonora continued diving until 1942, when the spectacle fell largely out of favor with the public and various animal rights groups for various, but obvious reasons.

please take that rash to the doctor

in honor of the us' recent display of its complete inability to deal with infectious disease, among other natural disasters, i thought it might be nice to take a look at how we're doing on a global scale to keep ourselves alive. i am referring here to mr. andrew speaker, the gentleman infected with tuberculosis, who, due to his antibiotic-resistant form of tb, was listed as an international health-risk, and then subsequently was allowed to board a series of international flights from the united states, to canada, to the czech republic. if avian flu becomes transmittable from human to human, we're essentially fucked, but we can't keep one guy with tb from getting on a plane. somehow, this doesn't sound promising.

in any event, according to the World Health Organization, "With about 2.1 billion airline passengers flying each year, there is a high risk of another major epidemic such as Aids, Sars or Ebola fever." familiar as we are with acquired immune deficiency syndrome and severe acute respiratory syndrome, and perhaps even the ebola virus, we also seem to be simultaneously immune to awareness and/or logic on the subject, due to a constant saturation of fear-style propaganda from the media. this announcement, however, comes not from the media, but from the WHO, a slightly more reputable source.

what is more frightening, though, is not the fact that we are completely unprepared, but the increasing rate with which we are rapidly being confronted with new diseases; "In the report, A Safer Future, the WHO says new diseases are emerging at the 'historically unprecedented' rate of one per year." the WHO unfortunately seems to give us no solid explanation as to why this is the case. misuse of antibiotics is one factor, but that, of course, would not account for the viral epidemics. inadequate medical care in much of the world (to make no mention of the continual blockages to complete access even here in the united states) may also share in the responsibility.

keep in mind also that these are new diseases, and we are currently as a global nation unable to deal with the simplest and most curable infections on an international level. "More than 90 percent of the deaths from infectious diseases worldwide are caused by only a handful of diseases. These diseases - lower respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, malaria and measles - are also the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa". (http://web.globalhealth.org/view_top.php3?id=228). with the exception of malaria and aids, these are curable.

curable.



if this is not a problem of poverty, i don't know what is.

now, let's take a look at the numbers. in the us alone, defense spending for 2006 was 556,505 million dollars. that looks like a typo, doesn't it? it's not. spending on health, you ask? 56,489 million dollars. how about education? 39,688 million. the basic message that should be gained here is that the nation seems far more concerned with death than with the health or education of its citizens. at least 10 times more concerned. these figures can all be found here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/pdf/ap_cd_rom/27_1.pdf

anyone else a little scared about that cough?

W.P. Greene

The other afternoon, for lack of air conditioning and a better thing to do, a female companion and myself, snuck into a movie! Aren't we badasses? The primary attribute required of the movie was that it be starting as near to our arrival as possible. What we ended up seeing was well worth the metaphorical firebombing of the film industry by seeing a 10 dollar movie for free. It was Don Cheadle's new vehicle, Talk To Me. Now neither of us had any idea what this movie was, let alone cared, let alone that it was based on real people, and events, and even a real place: Washington DC, in a real time: the 1970's. Wow! I was just happy it wasn't a romantic comedy (as I had assumed based on the title). But anyway, it's a fairly decent film, with some fairly decent points touched upon.

More interestingly is the fact that this man, Petey Greene, played by Cheadle was a genuine human being. Prominent DJ for DC's WOL 1450AM. Ex-con, activist, loudmouth, and all around bad-ass mother-SHUT YO MOUTH! Anyway, Greene articulated a lot of the rage felt in the black communities of DC in the 70's. He also spun some most excellent funk and soul records. He eventually branched out into stand up comedy, and settled in on his own tv show, Petey Greene's Washington on WDCA-TV20.

Greene died of cancer in 1984 and an estimated 20,000 mourners turned out to show their last respect. I'll do my best to dig up some of this cat's more radical moments and shoot em back at you. Sounds like a righteous dude. Hat's off to ya Petey Greene.

Biological Myths Debunked!

Alright, so this isn't news to me (because I'm so smart, duh!) but apparently there are alot of you out there who still believe stuff like this. ...A LOT! Could have something to do with that fact that we came in 33 out of 34 surveyed countries in terms of our acceptance of EVOLUTION! So anyway, you don't have to stop believing in God or Leprechauns yet, but let's at least put two big myths about us humans in the ground.

First up, the assumption (ASSUMPTION! This CAN and IS proven every day) that men have two fewer ribs than women, since God had to take a pair from Adam to make Eve. But dig this, that's not true. Men and women BOTH have 12 pairs of ribs. Period. There is no argument to be made here, just the calm acceptance of the fact that you have spent you life under a false assumption. Link if you still don't believe me.

Secondly, lets address the less biblical belief that oxygenated blood is blue. It is not. It is certainly a deeper, more purple tinged color, but a far cry from blue. It is our veins that look blue through our skin, it is not a result of the royal blue blood that floweth through all of our veins.

Longer, redder wavelengths, though, can penetrate more deeply into the skin than shorter, bluer wavelengths before reflecting out. A vein looks blue because red light travels far enough into the skin to be absorbed by the blood in the vein. If the blood vessel is far enough below the skin, however, blue light--which would normally also be absorbed by the vein--reflects out of the skin before reaching the vein. So the light reflecting from tissue over the vein contains less red light than blue, giving the vein a bluish cast.

From the MadSci Network. Try this experiment if you still don't believe anyone.

So sleep soundly with a slightly better understanding of yourself tonight. Know your own body if nothing else. Maybe next week we'll get on to the widely held bullshit that there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. Yeah...we'll get on to that for sure.

Decoherrence

Quantum Decoherrence occurs as a particle becomes more entangled with it's environment; removing it from a quantum super position, and "forcing" the particle to behave in a "classical" manner. Dechoerrence is what prevents large objects from exhibiting quantum behavior. The more linked a particle becomes with it's environment (the more information it has given off in the form of photon radiation, or collisions with other particles) the more absolute it becomes. Larger objects cannot maintain a quantum super position because to much decoherrece will have necessarily occurred.

from Decoding the Universe

AF is short of water

"Af is short of water" turned the tide for the American forces battling on the Pacific Front in WWII. In the spring of 1942, Allies had already cracked the Japanese Navy cipher JN-25, and had intercepted Japanese plans to attack a US base on island "AF." Intelligence knew that AF referred to a base in the Pacific, but were uncertain which one. Backing up the wrong island would be catastrophic, so to narrow the field, the Americans sent out a fake transmission stating that the water distillery on Midway island was damaged, and the base was running out of fresh water. The transmission was intercepted by the Japanese and the communique "AF is short of water." was sent out, identifying Midway as the location the attack was planned. On June 4th, 1942 the Japanese lost 4 carriers to a fleet of American ships that had been ready and waiting for the attack. It was the turning point for the War in the Pacific, and all because a code was broken.

from Decoding the Universe

Under the Bridge

It's a bit embarrassing to admit this, having practically grown up on the internet, but until just now, I have remained in the dark as to what exactly an internet troll was. I had assumed that they were akin to a bot, but with slightly more malicious intent. Like an irritating automated friend request generator on MySpace, or automatic ad posts on blogs, and forums. But trolls, as it turns out, are humans knowingly baiting members of forums and communities with controversial, and insulting comments. They appear to be cousins to standard jerks, or a derivation of the common asshole, just with a more specific purpose and focus. But at least now I know what lurks under the bridges of the many byways of th internet. Macho assholes too meek to shake anything up in the real world, so they bait kids in chat rooms.

Hello Goodbye Public Broadcasting

I thought that since it has recently been under fire from the Bushies, we should take a moment to look into the history of our nation's public broadcasting program:

Public broadcasting in the United States is as old as broadcasting itself. Most early public stations were operated by state colleges and universities, and were often run as part of the schools' cooperative extension services. Stations in this era were internally funded, and did not rely on listener contributions to operate; some accepted advertising. Networks such as Iowa, South Dakota, and Wisconsin Public Radio began in this way.

The concept of a "non-commercial, educational" station per se does not show up in U.S. law until the 1940s, when the FM band was moved to its present location; the part of the band between 87.9 and 91.9 MHz is reserved for such stations. Educational television, the forerunner of modern U.S. public television, evolved in big cities in the 1950s; in rural areas, it was not uncommon for colleges to operate commercial stations instead.

In the United States, public broadcasting is decentralized and is not government operated, but does receive some government support. The majority of funding comes from community support to hundreds of public radio and public television stations, each of which is an individual entity licensed to one of several different non-profit organizations, municipal or state governments, or universities. These organizations often produce their own programs, but largely depend upon national producers and program distributors such as National Public Radio (NPR), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), Public Radio International (PRI), American Public Television (APT), and American Public Media. U.S. government support is filtered through a separate organization, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

And some more on the CPB:

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is a private non-profit corporation which is chartered and funded by the United States Federal Government to promote public broadcasting. The CPB was created on November 7, 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. CPB initially collaborated with the pre-existing National Educational Television network, but in 1969 decided to start its own network, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which signed on officially in October of 1970, after NET was forced by the CPB and the Ford Foundation, to merge with the New Jersey PBS station, WNDT-TV (now called WNET-TV) or face funding withdrawal. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides some funding for the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio (NPR), but much more of its funding goes to public television and radio stations that are members of PBS or NPR, as well as to other broadcasters that are independent of those organizations. CPB also funds some Internet-based projects.

The CPB has nine board members who serve six-year terms and are selected by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.

Presently (May 2007) the CPB board contains five Republicans, two Democrats, and one independent.

According to the Public Broadcasting Act, the White House cannot appoint persons of the same political party to more than 5 of the 9 CPB board seats. Thus, President George W. Bush may not appoint another Republican to the one vacant seat.

So listen to NPR, watch PBS, read the BBC, and think about how we could be doing way better.

via Wikipedia

the Battle of Lepanto

The Battle of Lepanto was the largest naval battle ever fought. Waged between the Holy League (an ungainly alliance of Venice, Pope Pious V, Spain, Genoa, the Knights of Matla, Duchy of Savoy) and an Ottoman fleet (at the time the possessors of the most supreme Navy in the world). On the 7th of October 1571 212 Holy League vessels captained by Don Jon (Juan) encountered an Ottoman fleet 300 strong on their way out of their naval base of Lepanto on the Ionian Sea.

The battle was a crushing defeat for the Ottomans who lost 210 of their 300 vessels (127 of which were captured by the Holy League). The League conversely only lost about 20 ships to the battle. They lost almost 13,000 soldiers and rowers but reclaimed nearly that amount in freed prisoners. The Turkish lost nearly 30,000 men by either death or capture.

It was a rousing victory for the Christians, by they proved to be too disunited to capitalize on their advantage. It is still regarded however as one of the most significant turning points in naval history.

So now I know that.

via Wikipedia

Resurrection Mary

I have been entertaining myself this evening reading up on local haunts and legends in and around the state of Illinois. One of the most intriguing (and from right here in Chicago on Archer Avenue) is one you've all heard before. A driver is headed down a dark stretch of road late one night. They notice a beautiful but forlorn and pale female by the side of the road and offer her a ride. She orders the driver to stop and let her out at the cemetery, and is gone before the driver knows what has happened. It that same old hitchhiker story that's been around since the horse and buggy days, but this one has some interesting peculiarities. First of all this "ghost" (using the quotes because I am not prepared to commit to the full usage of the term) who has been given the name Resurrection Mary, has been spotted hundreds of times, and by all sorts of people. Some poor fellas have even picked her up at dance clubs in the area only to have her vanish into the air around the cemetery. She is always a striking blond with a weathered looking white dress. One guy in particular, James Palus has a particularly thorough encounter to relate. There is also an alleged account of Mary bending and partially melting the bars of the cemetery gate with her ghostly hands, but the owners maintain that a sewer truck backed into it and left the marks while trying to heat up the metal with an acetylene torch to push the bars back into place. You be the judge.

via Wikipedia
Prarie Ghosts
and Weird Illinois

Great Walls of Fire

I was up late last night turning my home computer into a media server so that I could stream my music from anywhere (in theory) with an internet connection. After realizing how little I know and struggling to comprehend the first step of various Unix and php kernels, I finally tracked down a helpful explanation of what the hell to do. Thanks Hadley Stern!

Anyway one of the steps of the procedure involved opening up one of the "ports" on my computer as well as on my router. I understand what firewalls do in concept, but I had never had any reason to know their actual function until last night.

Firewalls were first put up in 1988 when the "Morris Worm" caused one of the first major internet security breaches in history. Firewalls are simply a means of restricting access to parts of a computer on a network. There a varying levels of trust such as the internet (no trust) versus an area or local network (high trust).

Firewalls have evolved over the years and have many different functions. Packet filters compare packets of information coming across a network and discard packets that do not comply with firewall settings. There are stateful filter which can analyze packets based on the type of connection they are connected with. A third type of firewall is an application layer or a proxy. These types of firewall can "understand" certain types of application (ftp, DNS, browsing) and determine if they are using non-standard ports. A port is a transfer protocol between computers. That is what I had to enable to open up my computer and turn it into a music server. And it works great, well kind of. All the music is there, and the concept is awesome, but the connection is a bit slow to handle the streaming (buffers more than it plays). But hey, at least I learned something.

via Wikipedia

Saturday Morning Commercials

I just put down an article on the soon to be unsheathed Transformers movie. An interesting fact that came up, of which I was previously unaware, was that the reason we had shows like Transformers, He-Man, Lone Star, Silverhawks, and their like is that in 1981 Ronald Regan eliminated many of the restrictions on children's programming that had been in place since the late 60's. The restrictions were put into play by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) and included limitations such as a shortened allotment for commercials in children's programming (nine and a half minutes versus sixteen) as well as regulating the content of shows to ensure they were not simply the half hour long commercials as my generation would come to know and love. They went so far as to cancel the show Hot Wheels under that same provision. They even considered banning the advertising of that blight of the nation sugar.


However, at the beginning of the Regan era, all of those regulations went out the window. The doors were opened to the market and the Children's Television Act (which would have reinstated many of these limitations) was vetoed. Companies were given unrestricted access to young minds. We, of course, all know the result. Our whole generation grew up worshiping and collecting (or forcing our parents to buy) every single object with a price tag these poorly animated talking advertisements touched. Because of television deregulation in the early 80's valuable space in my brain is occupied by every name of every character from Thundercats and He-Man. At least Regan lost his mind too.

Via Everything 2

Auto Alchemy

Though the press was all over it last month, I just heard today about Purdue University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Jerry Woodall's discovery that adding an aluminum + gallium solution to water yields hydrogen atoms. The is of particular interest for application to hydrogen fuel cells, and even more specifically to clean internal combustion engines. Previously no solid solution had been found for generating transporting and storing the hydrogen fuel. Woodall's process is safe, clean, and very efficient (two atoms of aluminum yield three atoms of hydrogen). It can be done on site with virtually any quality of aluminum and water (including salt water) and on the spot so hydrogen needn't be stored or transported.

The process is a simple chemical reaction. When water comes into contact with the aluminum pellets in the liquid gallium the hydrogen atoms separate and can be easily collected. Of course the implications are grand. It's clean, easy, safe, efficient, and the ingredients are plentiful. Keep you eyes open for developments.

A bit on the elements while I'm learning stuff. Gallium (Ga) is periodic element 31. It is a metal that melts just above room temperature, and will actually melt in your hands. In the form of gallium nitride and gallium arsenide, it is used as a semi conductor in LED's. It is not naturally occurring, but it easily derived from smelting.

Aluminum (Al 13) is a ductile member of the poor metals family of periodic elements. It is very lightweight and notable for it's ability to resist corrosion. Aluminum is nontoxic, nonmagnetic, and nonsparking.

Hydrogen (H 1) Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant element making up roughly 75% of the universes' elemental mass. It is odorless, tasteless, nontoxic, and highly flammable. It will also someday hopefully power our lawnmowers and transportation.

Meeting with Problems

I was sitting in on a meeting at work this morning, and the boss was speaking with an SEO specialist about the big redesign of our website which we will soon undertake. Anyway, SEO was all they ever said, but they said it a lot. I nodded my head enough to seem like I knew what they were talking about, and I kept up with the rest of the discussion, but that acronym remained elusive until now:

from Wikipedia

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevancy, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, and making sure that the content is easily indexed by search engines and also appeals to human visitors.

The acronym "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Additionally, I also found out about so called White Hat and Black Hat SEO, which means what you would assume. White hat is the good guys; playing by the rules and designing content for users and not resorting to deceptive tactics to improve their spot on the search engines. Black Hat is appropriately dark and deceptive, often using hidden text, and repeated word to lock in results and generate hits. Invent anything and people will exploit it. Trust me on this one.

And that's it. I'm going to be taking some training in it in the weeks to come, so I'll get more than my fair share of knowledge about it. But at least now I'll know what they're talking about. Just making sure your site is optimized as much as possible for web searching and trawling.

LOLcats

Now, I wouldn't consider myself a n00b by any stretch of the imagination. I have an avatar in Second Lie, although I forgot my password about a year ago and have yet to correct the matter. I'm on Flickr, Mog, Last FM, Skype, Veoh, Digg, Odeo, De.li.cious, all that newfangled web hipster 2.0 hoo-haa. But one avenue (well many, but this one for now) of the internet that I remain completely dumbfounded by is the explosion of LOLcats. I could try and put the craze into my own words, but I think I'd better let the experts speak on this one:


From Wikipedia

Lolcats, a compound of lol and cat,[1][2] are photos of cats with humorous captions. They are a type of image macro, and are thus also referred to as cat macros. Lolcats are created for the purpose of sharing them with others on imageboards and other internet forums, especially on Saturdays ("Caturdays").[3]

Lolcat images usually consist of a photo of a cat with a caption characteristically formatted in a sans serif font such as Impact or Arial Black.[4] The image is, on occasion, photoshopped for effect. The caption generally acts as a speech balloon encompassing a comment from the cat, or is a simple description of the depicted scene. The caption is intentionally written with deviations from standard English spelling and syntax[4] featuring "strangely-conjugated verbs, but [a tendency] to converge to a new set of rules in spelling and grammar."[5] These altered rules of English have been referred to as a type of pidgin[4] or baby talk.[6] The text is frequently in the form of a snowclone parodying the grammar-poor patois stereotypically attributed to internet slang.

Lolcats are similar to other animal-based image macros, such as the O RLY? owl and captioned pictures of walruses (lolruses [7]), elephant seals, dogs, hamsters, birds, and rabbits.[8] The format is popular enough to have spread to subjects as diverse as United States Presidents and tapirs.

So it turns out that I fully understood the concept all along, I just never fucking got it. I still don't think it's funny. But that certainly cleared up a lot. Thanks Internet, I'm glad we had this talk. Now I feel comfortable making a submission of my own to the fog of LOLcat hysteria:



Meez so smartz now!