Blog Not Needed

Over the last few days there have been hundreds and hundreds of dead link reports. Many of them have been legitimate and I am very appreciative of those who have been doing this service.

A disturbing trend, however, has been cropping up. I haven’t figured out if its just a few people trying to “game” the system, or if its just the work of some poorly informed individuals or just those with terrible connections to their ISPs, but a huge number of working links have been reported to me as dead. I’ve just done a spot check of about two dozen of these and have found all of them to be working links.

I hope the person/people reporting these as dead links are either not aware of what they are doing, or have a terrible connection and are getting DNS-related or HTTP-related errors.

So, I’ve taken the liberty of re-setting all of the links report flags. If its someone trying to “game” the system, its laughable, really. Why? because they aren’t aware that by clicking the “report dead link” function they execute doesn’t actually remove the link from the system. I designed it this way to avoid exactly this kind of thing (whether its abuse or just mis-informed users). So, it takes me all of 3 seconds to fix the problem.

Calling all DIY projects! Because of the relaunch and subsiquent mass purgings of the last few days, the link database needs fresh new links.

What kind of things are we looking for? DIY projects of course! Independent record labels, unsigned bands, zines, small press, self publishers, artists, designers, hackers, independent open source projects, crafts people etcetera.

The index, which is now 10 years old, has been and is still going through a cleaning process (through automated link-checking systems and through the newly implemented “report dead links” function) and during this time we’d like to make sure we replenish the database with new entries.

So, if you haven’t done so already, create a user account. Once you do that you can add your links, file them into the appropriate categories and once approved your links will be in circuation.

Pass the word along, we are trying to get as many new links within the next month or so when we begin our promotion of the new site.

Well now, isn’t this interesting. I just noticed that this blog has a ranking in technorati. Currently its ranked 1,052,855, out of how many I do not know, but how about that? Out of how many blogs currently pinging Technorati, I don’t know, but that number has got to be scraping the bottom of the blog barrel.

Oh well. Instead of lementing this, I’m just going to own it. So, with pride, I will post the number clear for all (2 of you who read this):

1 , 0 5 2 , 8 5 5

I pwn the bottom of the barrel!

This project has always been like this. This has been a scrappy project from the beginning. Its almost comforting to see that hasn’t changed much.

Oh well. Such is the way of things. That’s been the story, an almost washed up has-been.

Of course the ranking leads me to question myself and ask the usual questions, like why bother keep doing this, and not just the blog, but the entire project itself. No one is actually using it - what kind of purpose is it serving? Why do I bother to put all of the work I do into something that goes unnoticed and provides no value? I sometimes feel completely ridiculous, like I’m playing some kind of role, that I’m supporting some kind of facade. I mean, I look around and I just feel like a fake, trying to collect a few scraps that fall from the internet dinner table in the hopes of being noticed by the cool kids.

Its not going to happen. Oh sure I’ll get excited about some of the new things, but the only reason I get excited is that it gives me something to do, something to produce. I know full well that the ego-satisifying goal of being noticed for a job-well-done or for providing some value or service just will not happen. I’m not smart enough, unique enough, clever enough to have what ever it is to achieve those laughable objectives.

So, here this project sits. At the bottom of the barrel. 1,052,855. Another forgetable waste of bandwidth drowning in a sea of forgetable wastes of bandwidth.

I’m not going to let this stop me though. No one may notice, and no one may actually get any value from this project, but I still do. I am still challenged. I still get excited over the prospect of building things and making them work. Does it matter that no one will use them? Perhaps not.

Did a code roll out last night to implement (finally) the report dead link functionality. Plus included a cleaned-up FAQ, tweaked some of the CSSs for the windows platforms and laid the ground work for some of the new functionality we are going to be introducing in the coming weeks.

The first iteration of the “report dead link” functionality will enable users to report links that are dead, which as I said before, will simply provide me an indicator. In the next iteration, there will be a count of how many times a given link has been reported as dead. I can see that now, but I will also be including this in the “link details” page.

What was nice though, is that this code roll out proved out and completely validated the architecture and design of the site. It proved that new functionality could be added with ease and roll out could be done in a phased manner without major impacts to the actual production site. Its raised my confidence level in the site and how it was designed. Yeah, in all my experience in developing complicated applications, I’ve learned that by decoupling each tier (user/display, business logic, data model) you create a system that can better scale, if you do it right. So far, looks like I did it right.

I have a day job. A day job is vital in that it pays the bills and enables me to do this diysearch stuff. Well, because I have this day job, which takes me through Harvard Square (in Cambridge, MA) everyday, I have been walking by something I simply haven’t been noticing. Paper Cut Zine Library. I actually didn’t know it was there until after I was looking around google for other zine resources and came accross the wikipedia page for zines, which had a link to the boston zine fair, which, as it turns out, is organized by Paper Cut.

So, I just find it quite interesting that there is a zine library right here. I haven’t been to a zine library since visiting Epicenter Zone back in the early 1990’s (in San Francisco). I have yet to stop in (well, in all fairness, I didn’t know it existed there till about 10 minutes ago) but when time permits I just may have to do that.

Anyway, if you do find yourself wandering around Harvard Square, you may want to stop by, check things out.