Bears on Wheels by Stan Berenstain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A classic. Lots of tension. Defies physics and logic. Great ending.
Author: Michael Janairo
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Today’s Internet victory: a retweet from @HBO
This just in #truedetective #signofakiller should I be scared? #hbo pic.twitter.com/h7lkeRle3c
— Michael Janairo (@mjanairo) January 6, 2014
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Twitter lessons from the NYTimes
The New York Times twitterers share some of their lessons of 2013 on the Nieman Labs:
During 2013, we began consistently scheduling multiple runs of tweets highlighting some of our best enterprise material, especially during weekend hours and overnight, when @nytimes is mostly automated. It goes without saying that if you tweet more, you’ll get more traffic overall. But what we found when we scheduled tweets on Saturday and Sunday was that the average click per tweet grew substantially.
One thing that this means is that Twitter users who follow all sorts of media accounts (and not just the national media), can expect to see tweets repeated.
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Thank you, Internet, for today’s victory
The problem: Remote-car starter appears nonfunctional after having my dead battery replaced
The solution: The remote-car starter company’s FAQ
Time on task: 10 minutes to look things up on the Internet; less than a minute to implement
Lesson: This remains one of the best gifts from my wife
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Review: The Cut
The Cut by George Pelecanos
My rating: 2 of 5 starsI’ve enjoyed other George Pelecanos’ books, especially The Turnaround, much better than this. The character Spero Lucas just seems too pretty/macho/lucky/wise/serious to feel real or to be seriously.
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Review: Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist
Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist by Bill McKibben
My rating: 4 of 5 starsBill McKibben opens up about his mixed feelings of turning from writer about the environment to activist. A heartfelt and compelling read.
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Top blog-comment spam on the Arts Talk blog
One of the blogs I help run is the Times Union’s Arts Talk blog, which gets a lot of blog-comment spam. The spam is a product of people trying to scam Google. Included with the comment is often a URL that links to some awful website, so if the comment is approved, then it appears a different web entity is linking to the awful website, thus raising its Google profile.
The thing is, the blog-comment spam is just so nice and positive and reassuring — though it often has nothing to do with the content of the post to which it is allegedly commenting on. I never approve these comments, but I like sharing them. Here’s the best comment of the week:
“I’m impressed, I have to say. Really rarely do I encounter a weblog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me inform you, you may have hit the nail on the head. Your thought is outstanding; the difficulty is something that not enough individuals are speaking intelligently about. I’m very happy that I stumbled throughout this in my seek for one thing relating to this.”
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Photos: Chichen Itza December 2012
Here’s a link to a story I wrote about visiting Chichen Itza just a few days before what others were calling the Mayan Apocolypse.
