Category: Aaron Brazell

  • The Fnord Project

    Today, I learned what a Fnord was from my friend Chris Bachmann who is somewhat of a sci-fi geek. He referred to it in a discussion and went on to refer to this Wikipedia entry that describes a Fnord in greater detail. A Fnord is a literary reference made famous by The Illuminatus Trilogy where…

  • Are People Talking About You?

    This article is modified and republished from the September 28, 2007 How Much Do People Talk About You?. In today’s day and age of “dog eat dog” and marketing and getting ahead and SEO and linkbaiting” – how much do people talk about you? Better yet, how often do you talk about other people. Picture…

  • Western Style Writing vs. Eastern Style Writing

    I have never been an english major, nor do I claim to be an expert in the topic of good, solid writing form. However, I’ve had some observations on how posts are written. On one side, most people will say, “I don’t really care if my posts conform to a certain writing style.” That’s perfectly…

  • How Has Social Software Changed Your Life?

    This is an open comments style post, so I want your comments. The thing about my “beat”, as they’d call it in the newspaper business, is that I’m not really all that interested in “the news”. I’m not trying to cover all the stories, nor am I trying to cover most of them. I’m not…

  • America the Beautiful

    I originally published this on Washington Hotlist. On this Fourth of July, I republish it here. Happy Birthday, America. Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. For purple mountains majesty above the fruited plain. America, America God shed His grace on thee. And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining…

  • Job Search: Define Your Goals

    A friend of mine just landed a job. Congratulations to her as the job market is shriveling up. I won’t mention her name for fear it could cause complications at her new job but many of you know her. She hasn’t worked for a company in 17 years, give or take, and has lived quite…

  • Brian Beutler, Washington D.C. Political Blogger, Shot

    I want to give a shout out to Brian Beutler of Media Consortium who was shot last night in Adams Morgan. I wrote on it over at Washington Hotlist a few minutes ago. I have never met Brian. I hope to some day and chances are good since he’s in stable condition and expected to…

  • GNIP Spells a Whole New World for Data APIs

    Allow me to get nerdy. It has been a long time since I got downright giddy about something developer-oriented. Lots of new APIs are coming out all the time and I usually take a once over look at them to determine if there is something cool there. A lot of time there are cool things…

  • Flamewars in the Blogosphere

    I don’t want to be the guy that shines a spotlight on the many varied and obscene warts that exist in the blogosphere. Far be it from me to hold myself up as an example of exemplary behavior. However, there is a disturbing trend in the world of blogs these days and it really needs…

  • 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6

    WordPress 2.6 is around the corner (sometime next week, it looks like), and as usual, there’s a bunch of changes, improvements, enhancements that have went into this version. In my opinion, this is an odd major release. While there are certainly major new changes that warrant a new major release, much of the release consists…