dogs on trucks blog: September 2005

Sunday, September 25, 2005

image by suzy nees

tags: pet, pet adoption, pet ownership, color science, color matching, palette, image bank, resource bank, closed loop, gracelander.org

Saturday, September 24, 2005

community internet spreading like a prairie fire

community internet is spreading like a prairie fire, according to this post from slashdot.

tags: organic search engine optimization

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Do not mess with Hurricane Rita

alert!
if you are in the path of Hurricane Rita please evaculate!
Rita is a category five hurricane and CNN is calling it the third most powerful storm in history.
please get out of the hurricane's path!

tags: texas, galveston, new orleans, hurricane rita, weather

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

photo by Mack Whatley

tags: Mack Whatley, Traces gallery, Floyd, Virginia, sprawl, sustainability, NOVA, suburbs, photography

microrobots that sort of move like caterpillars.

here is something from slashdot.com about a very very tiny robot. the tiniest ever, it seems.

tags: robot, nanorobot, microrobot, nanomachine, untethered, grid, Dartmouth, cell manipulation, information technology, Department of Homeland Security

notes from laney

Welcome.
You have reached Dogs on Trucks Dot Comic.
An organically certified Search engine optimization training station.

Also doubles as a carousel ride that makes static electricity.
Under construction.

---

dear dogs on trucks,
do they put weird stuff in The Internet to make it more addictive?
sincerely,
Laney

Dear Laney,
Yes. Good detective work.
Would you like to help build a robot?

---

Welcome to let the dogs on trucks chop shop. Here we get into the guts of robots. You might be surprised to learn how easy it is to modify a robot. Even when you know basically nothing about computers, like me.

We are currently building a robot dog on top of a monster truck. It is going to be the biggest, baddest robot ever and it is going to kick the a** of all the other robots. Pardon my asterisks.

Even though it is Herculean in stature this monster truck is completely Carbon Neutral! No coal, oil, methane, natural gas, ether, hydrogen, or fermented mashed banana peel is burned to power this vehicle.

Well, almost none.

Still, we will CRUSH the competition and that is really what matters.

hahahaha just kidding.

Anyway feel free to take a tour here but be warned that I am having the grazers chew on this site right now and the word order is very very messy in here, so don’t set anything down, especially your attention, or you may never find it again.

----------

A tip for smart shoppers - Buy your necessities from Green Star Farm.

Vegetables, soap, canned goods, herbal remedies, much more.

-----------

So I guess the first big news is that I got orated at today. The oration was intense but I can hardly blame the man for his passion. A survivor of a non-Katrina flood is organizing a benefit in which he is asking the Hokie Nation to give over a whole game’s worth of money to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

What do you say, “The Hokies?” I think that would be a nice gesture.

How much money is that, anyway?

----------

The more I think of it, the more I think that the city of New Orleans didn’t drown, like people got in the habit of saying during the flooding. She just got slimed really really badly. Slimed by bureaucracy.

Far too many souls perished during the flooding of New Orleans. But the city is, most assuredly, not drowned.

any lady who has been slimed knows: the first and the best thing you can do for yourself is to let the slime, and the shame of the slime, to wash off, and know that the shame does not belong to you.

Your dignity will grow back like a 10-ft pair of wings if you let the bitterness go. that is what I think, anyway.

anyway...I had a very nice coffee in town today with some friends. That is where I got orated at. (hold on a minute, I need to talk to the robots.)

Go Hokies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOKIE BIRD IS GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway at the coffeeshop we had a little meeting of the wish-we-had-a-bit-more-money club.

-----------

Interruption: If you vote “Yes” to the idea of The Hokies giving an entire game’s proceeds to survivors of Hurricane Katrina, please hop on the loop at www.dogsontrucks.com.

Get going as fast as you can on the loop and then at some random place jump off.

It may not make the Hokies notice but what the heck, its free, eh? It’s the Internet.

My story has no point, anyway. I am just rambling on. You won’t be missing anything if you leave.

In fact, I think I am done now. Thanks for the visit.

God Bless New Orleans.

tags: hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Virginia Tech, Sugar Bowl, search engine optimization, remediation, penance, carbon cash, carbon credit, carbon neutral, karma, discharge, debt, existence, excess, sport, dogs, trucks, robots, virtuality, football, impact, footprint, sustainability

Sunday, September 11, 2005

quick tips for new bloggers

dear dogs on trucks,
I don't get to spend much time on the computer, but I would really like to start blogging.
Could you give me some quick practical tips on getting started?
sincerely,
K in Houston
ps. is blogging free?

Dear K, thanks for writing!

First of all, yes, blogging is free when you use blogger.com, one of the most popular blogging sites.

Here is a quick ten or fifteen minute blogging lesson.

At the top of this page, in the left hand corner, you will see an icon for Blogger. Click on this icon. This will bring you to the Blogger.com page. There, you will see a button that says "take a quick tour". Click on that button and read through the little introduction.

If you are ready to create your own blog, you will find a button for that, but you might want to read some other people's blogs first to see what the Blogosphere (the blog world) is like.

Spending a little time at technorati.com is a good way to see what kind of blogs other folks are writing. Notice they way people use tags, or keywords, to summarize the subject of their blog posts.

These keywords are there so that search robots can help people find posts about subjects that interest them.

Now for your homework: what to name your blog? A good blog name is catchy, easy to spell, and easy to remember.

Blog names are sort of like CB handles. They identify you as a person, and let others know a little bit about who you are.

Since the whole blog thing is generally pretty informal and conversational, even bloggers who write about very serious subjects often choose funny names for their blogs. Don't be afraid to pick a name that is lighthearted and informal. Those kinds of names tend to put people at ease.

If you have pets, you might want to think about a blog name that puts the focus on your pet. This will also give you plenty to talk about on your blog.

The point here is to engage your readers, and to make them feel at home on your blog.

thanks again for writing, K. take care!

--dogs on trucks

tags: how to blog

Saturday, September 10, 2005

US won't ban media from New Orleans searches

from CNN.com.

Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans.

Joint Task Force Katrina "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts," said Col. Christian E. deGraff, representing the task force. More...

tags: censorship, zero access, media, katrina, New Orleans, investigation, journalism, death toll

Friday, September 09, 2005

SF Bay Guardian on censorship

Censored!
Project Censored presents the 10 biggest stories the mainstream media ignored over the past year.
By Camille T. Taiara for the SF Bay Guardian

JUST FOUR DAYS before the 2004 presidential election, a prestigious British medical journal published the results of a rigorous study by Dr. Les Roberts, a widely respected researcher. Roberts concluded that close to 100,000 people had died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Most were noncombatant civilians. Many were children.

But that news didn't make the front pages of the major newspapers. It wasn't on the network news. So most voters knew little or nothing about the brutal civilian impact of President George W. Bush's war when they went to the polls.

That's just one of the big stories the mainstream news media ignored, blacked out, or underreported over the past year, according to Project Censored, a media watchdog group based at California's Sonoma State University. More...

tags: mountaintop removal, oil for food, Bush, Iraq

techno-whati?

dear Dogs on Trucks,
please explain to me why you think this techronuti search program or whatever is better than my old favorites.
life is too short to bother learning something that's going to be useless as soon as you figure it out.
Sincerely,
Pam in Minnesota

Dear Pam,
Thanks a lot for writing. I agree with you! I have no patience for badly designed search tools. That is my point exactly.

Imagine if you were walking down a street one day and you saw a restaurant that had a sign on it that said, "Every possible dish you can imagine is in this restaurant, just tell us what you want to eat and we will cook it up and bring it right to your table right away!"

So of course, you go in there. And you say to the server, please bring me a goat cheese omlette and a glass of carrot juice.

And the server (who is a robot) goes to kitchen and comes back with a macaroni and cheese TV dinner. "Cheezy Food!" announces the robot proudly.

"No, robot!" you say. "This isn't what I wanted!"

"Yes, it is," says Robot. "Me know English real good. Me know what you want. Pop N' Moppy's Cheezy treat #1 most popular hu-mon food item. Low in calories and good for hu-mons. Also look! Cute picture on package. You love it."

So of course you are steamed and you leave the restaurant, and you are getting even hungrier, because you have already started thinking about that goat cheese omlette. Then you see another sign that says "RESTAURANT" in big letters and below that it says "we have a very wide selection of food and although we have robots for waiters we do have real humans working here!"

So you go in the restaurant and you order your omlette and pretty much the same thing happens all over again, only this time the waiter brings you a serving tray of Happy Rainbow heat-n-eat goat meat.

So of course you are really grumpy now and you complain about it to the robot and say, "I would like to speak to a real person, please!"

And the robot goes in the back and comes back with a photocopied feedback form that says "Thank you for choosing Happy Rainbow restaurant! So that we may serve you better in the future, please tell us whether our sevice was Exceptional, less than exceptional, or above average? Please mail this form to the Real Human department at Happy Rainbow world headquarters at such-and-such address."

So you tell the robot where he can stick his feedback form and you're off. You walk and you walk, your stomach growling madly.

Suddenly you hear the sound of kitchenware, and human voices. Could it be? You turn the corner and you see a little sign that says, "RESTAURANT. All our food is prepared by real humans. We do our best here to train our robot servers in the proper use of English, but since robots are not that smart you may wish to choose from our ten daily specials. "

On the menu you see a smoked cheddar omlette with parsley and ramps and even though you don't know what ramps are, you are curious to taste them and you think that the smoked cheddar omlette sounds delicious. So you sit down and order the omlette and when the robot comes back it brings you just what you asked for plus an interesting surprise: you find out you love ramps!

That is why I am such a fan of Technorati, Pam. Robots are ok for some jobs, but they make terrible information chefs.

I hope that sort of answers your question, and I hope you have a nice day.

Sincerely,
Dogs on Trucks

tags: information design, fuzzy searching, information architecture

Thursday, September 08, 2005

just for the record

just for the record: today is September 8, 2005 and at 8:48 am Eastern Time "Impeach Bush" is holding the #6 spot in the technorati top ten.

(I hear someone asking, what in the heck is technorati?)

Technorati is an up-to-the-minute search tool that tells you what other people are searching on. Technorati tracks blogs.

(Now I hear someone asking, I know this is a stupid question, but what is a blog?)

That isn't a stupid question at all. "Blog" is short for weblog. Many people who have lives outside the computer world do not know what a blog is, or why it is useful. They just hear the word "blog" and think, ick! that word sounds like it should describe some kind of garden pest, or something you would scrape off the underside of a cafeteria table.

(Now I hear someone asking, but what is a weblog?)

A weblog is just a tool for publishing your thoughts and ideas to the Internet. You can also use a blog to keep track of the news that you see and the things going on in your world. When something interests you, or when you have a bit of news you would like to share, you can post a little headline about it on your blog.

(Why bother? Who would read that stuff?)

You might be surprised! It all depends on what you write, how you write it, and whether or not you have a funny catchphrase or picture to go with your blog.

OK well this blog lesson is over now but more are on the way. If you are curious now about getting a blog, I hope you will keep reading the Dogs on Trucks how to blog lessons because blogging is a really great way to keep the media and the government honest. And everybody wants that, right?

tags: blogger, how to blog, beginner, Internet, citizen journalism, Impeach Bush, technorati, Hurricane Katrina, democracy, media ethics, accountability

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