Steel Kaleidoscopes

The Blogosphere

Blogospheres, blog rolls, essential blogs — whatever you call them, are a tricky thing.

It's the blogger's address book made public, an online Rolodex of virtual contacts.

You usually find these in a blog's sidebar, a directory of wacky titles that provide little to no insight of what you'll find inside.

The conundrum is the maintenance of this list, as your blogosphere is reflective of your personal tastes and relationships.

Many times you'll add links simply for reciprocal purposes — someone has added you to their blog roll, so you add them to yours. Other times it's a personal contact you've met in the real world. And sometimes you simply stumble across a blog you truly enjoy for its voice and content.

In the end, your blogosphere is part of your content and is reflective of the brand you're building. It is essentially your template's wrapper, complementary content with your certifiable stamp of approval.

This is where it gets tricky. What do you do when someone stops writing? Do you link to a blog that hasn't had a post in three months? It's akin to having wilting plants in your house that haven't been watered.

Bad Feng Shui.

What do you do when someone steers uncomfortably to the religious right or starts posting numerous pictures of their kids on every post? And what do you do when someone puts user-unfriendly entrance criteria (registration, log-in, passwords) that makes it difficult to interact?

What do you do when someone never responds to your posts, even when you clearly show an effort to engage on their blog? Blogging should be, in spirit, two-way symmetrical communication.

That's when you need to make some tough decisions, altering your blogosphere landscape to be more reflective of your personal brand.

The blogosphere, after all, is your universe.

Bridge Collapse Photos

For photos from Minneapolis and St. Paul residents, check out this flickr blog post.

Sad.

John Henry Bonham

A little more than a year ago, I put together a list of the Top 10 Rock Drummers.

It's one of those pieces of content that struck a chord with music aficionados, and they have not been shy about telling me how right or how wrong I am. As of this morning, the post has received 69 comments, many of which are detailed diatribes about rock drumming relevance.

The one common thread that appears over and over is the groundbreaking innovation of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, who sadly passed away in 1980.

I have Bonham third on my list, behind Neil Peart and Ian Paice. Peart, to me, is on another planet when it comes to mastering the drum kit, and no one hits the skins faster than Paice in what was arguably the most talented rock lineup ever assembled in 1970s vintage Deep Purple.

My friend Scott used to tell me Bonham was the best because of his ability to create dynamics with his use of brushes and his hands. And my friend Mike told me Bonham was brilliant because of the difficult arrangements he anchored while always keeping the beat.

I always appreciated Bonham as well, and was amazed about how it sounded like he was playing the drums backward on "When the Levee Breaks." Really, it's a reverse time shuffle beat that is mindblowing to listen to when you isolate the drums.

A recent comment by Jerry, a drummer, tells me he still can't figure out how to play "Fool in the Rain." I immediately grabbed my copy of "In Through the Out Door" for a fresh listen and would have to agree with him. How does he do it?

John Henry Bonham was indeed an original and worthy of the No. 3 spot. But do I put him above Peart and Paice? Perhaps, but I'm still not convinced. 

What these comments have accomplished is giving me pause to think.

Bonham was damn good.

Blogging Governance

Can bloggers really create a formal code of ethics?

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all of the blogosphere can be a scary place at times. This is what has promoted a few high-profile figures in high-tech to propose a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Earlier this month, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

The major recommendation is giving bloggers the ethical OK to ban anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and to be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

Since the inception of blogs, it has been an unwritten rule that a true blog is a symmetrical two-way conversation. If the blogger doesn't appreciate a comment, he or she just can't remove it.

But what happens when people are downright nasty, leaving threatening or obscene messages?

O'Reilly and Wales are saying it's OK to delete it. Then again, who makes the decision on what is an acceptable or unacceptable comment? Should a blogger be his or her own gatekeeper?

Here are Wales' proposed guidelines.

Got a Light?

Fellow blogger Basic Juice, who writes a wonderful wine blog, isn't doing a lot of swirling these days.

Photo courtesy of Basic Juice.

The 1,000th Post

For what it's worth (with a nod to Stephen Stills), this is my 1,000th blog post.

It's a milestone, I guess, tangible evidence that I actually do get up at an insane hour or stay up late to say something, anything, even if it's sharing a quote, song lyrics or a photo.

My first post was Aug. 25, 2003, and I received a comment from blue-chip blogger Dr. Dave Weinberger, the co-author of Cluetrain and Small Pieces. That was kind of neat.

So, if you do the math, there's an 83 percent chance I'll post something new every day. Or, simply put, I'll share something in this space close to six days a week.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

If Dave Tomlinson wasn't away on business this week in South Africa, I'd make a toast.

Ben Roethlisberger's Blog

A lot of entertainment and sports celebrities have blogs, but you have to wonder if they're really doing the writing themselves (and, if they even realize they have a blog).

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has had a blog since April 2004 and appears to be somewhat active with posting his thoughts. To his credit, he admits when his agent, Ryan Tollner, actually does the writing, transcribing Roethlisberger's thoughts.

You see, Roethlisberger is very busy this week, preparing for the biggest football game of his career on Sunday.

While you wouldn't consider Roethlisberger a voracious blogger, the insight he does provide is unique. As he prepares for Super Bowl XL, his post from yesterday reveals that "the importance of this whole event will probably set in.  Not that I need to be reminded of the importance of the Super Bowl ...  I've been thinking about it my whole life!"

This is the beauty of blogging and the technologies available in 2006. How cool would it have been to read Roger Maris' blog in 1961 when he was chasing Babe Ruth's home run record? I wonder if Joe DiMaggio would have shared his thoughts during his 56-game hitting streak?

While Roethlisberger's comments are surely tempered, it's still kind of neat to hear from him during the biggest week of his life. His readers think so too, as the hundreds of comments attest.

Typepad's Bad Day

Boy, was I bummed Friday.

As crazy as my schedule gets, I try to post to this blog five to six days a week. Not everything is astute or comprehensive. As a journalist for eight years, I've done that bit. Rather, I use this space to pen random thoughts, rants, ideas and opinions. Sometimes I simply provide lyrics of a song in my head, a quote that resonates with me or a unique photo.

I always try to say something. Friday was different. I had been wanting to write about colleague Emily Baillieul for weeks. She had taken her vacation time to help Katrina victims in the bayou and I was compelled to share her story. After putting the final touches on my blog Thursday night, I set the publish date for Friday morning only to find that Typepad, the service that hosts this blog, was down. Technical issues.

Bad timing. I had told Emily, as well as some others, that she was the feature of my blog for Friday. Typepad, from time to time, has technical issues. To their credit, the management and technical teams communicate these issues well, but the outages are not usually very long.

This was all day.

Finally, early Friday evening, the issues were mostly resolved and my post was live. Problem was, the photo I had taken of Emily was missing. Typepad posted a large text message in its place, explaining that the photo would be restored over the weekend. Would this be Saturday morning? Saturday night? Sunday?

I couldn't take that chance and deleted the image code. The error message that Typepad used pushed my text too far down the page, making the entry unreadable.  Since I was traveling Sunday and Monday, I wanted the page to look good.

So now the images are restored but my photo is missing because I removed the code. I'll have to re-shoot Emily because I deleted the image on my hard drive. My choice, but frustrating nonetheless.

This is not a rant against Typepad. It's a good service. Everyone has bad days. Typepad had a really bad day on Friday. For me, the timing was bad.

Nothing can be perfect.

Wine Blogs

'Tis the time of year to try new wines and indulge in some old favorites while toasting family and friends.

The blogosphere is building quite a comprehensive volume of oenophile content, thanks to the voracious habitual drinking and writing of these folks:

Basic Juice

Dr. Vino's Wine Blog

Spittoon

The Wine Cellar

The Wine Chicks

Vinography: A Wine Blog

Browse and drink up.

James Keown

So this whack job radio guy who slowly poisoned his wife to death by pouring antifreeze in her Gatorade kept a blog (which Blogger just removed from its servers).

James Keown, a Missouri radio talk show host, clearly led a double life. His last post was Saturday, Nov. 5, just before his arrest.

How someone does something like this is beyond comprehension. And reading his blog (Boston Herald excerpts), it's clear he was enjoying his single status.

Creep.