The Phantom City

Analog has an interesting feature in which it shows the top search words people have used to get to your site. Search phrases are more useful, but the individual words have a beauty all their own. Here are the top 25 for the past month:

the
in
mose
amish
city
and
of
ariel
pictures
journeys
to
ranch
stoeckel
lee
ashwin
a
wallerstein
paxton
rick
melchionni
sood
durham
horse
break
arm

So, articles and prepositions are my main traffic drivers, huh? Well, knowing that, I’ll going to drop an “a” right here: a. Now, let’s watch that traffic soar.

Here’s one good lesson about the fruits of plagiarism, and the fruits of using someone’s real name and enough information to contact them on your site. Perhaps no one in this little drama should act surprised by the consequences?

Witness Reagan’s Raiders. But be warned…

There are two weird things in this review of Sin City:

1. Is the plural of “comic” really “comix?”
2. Is he actually insinuating that director Robert Rodriguez put in a swastika-shaped shuriken to appeal to a hypothetical Jewish media? (Fourth paragraph.) What the heck?

Personally, I’m conflicted over seeing the movie in the theater.

Pro: It’s directed by Robert Rodriguez. I like his El Mariachi series.

Pro: I like the look of the film. The B&W effect looks interesting.

Con: I haven’t read the series, but I really didn’t like Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Seriously, a dark Batman might have been needed at the time, but the story has the emotional depth of a Miami Vice episode from the later seasons. In other words, not that bad, but nothing earthshaking.

Con: Just not as much of a fan of the old ultraviolence since I got older. I’m not sure why. (Bigger screens, maybe?)

And is at peace, despite the continued conflict outside.

“And so his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment. This is not only a death, with all the sadness that brings, but this is a killing, and for that we not only grieve that Terri has passed but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again.” – Frank Pavone

“[The autopsy] will unequivocally show what we’ve been saying all along. What we’re seeing is the most extreme atrophy possible … the atrophy couldn’t be any worse than it is.” – Ronald Cranford

I guess it’s too much to ask that everyone just shut up for a little while.

This is just scary:

Who is Shane?

Looks like the official site for WordPress got caught gaming search engines, specifically Google. Not illegal — despite some talk about violating Google’s Terms of Service — but annoying.

The situation has now turned to questions of great ethical import, such as “How open do open source projects need to be about their funding” and “What responsibility does an open source community have in this situation?” You know, the kinds of questions open source folks agonize about every few weeks.

I understand the Open Source movement has a set of beliefs that go along with it, but how do these discussions turn into the Serious Questions every time something happens? Isn’t the whole point that if you don’t like the way a project runs, you can a) not contribute to it, b) harass it in open forums, or c) fork it? Do we expect every open source project that produces a tool we like to be run according to saintly values, or do we acknowledge that the people who run them may not always do so to our satisfaction? (If you want to see a good example, hang out on the Mozillazine boards and watch as random folks complain about Mozilla projects.)

For now, I like WordPress as a tool, and I hope the latest hubbub won’t hurt development. I may not be appreciative of what they were doing — “Hey, I use those search engines!” — but then again , since they don’t claim it as far as I know, I’m not going to hold them to a higher standard than, say, Toyota. (The Corolla version of which I like to drive.) So, On WordPress, On Firefox, On all of you other argumentative Open Source programs that just plain work better!

Update: Matt Mullenweg responds briefly, stuck on wi-fi at an airport in Florence, Italy. Lousy thing to have happen on your vacation.

Update, again: Matt responds at length.