Rui CarmoThree little things that caught my eye (and nose):
Hasta La Vista, Baby
Kottke says goodbye to Technorati Terminator-style, in a post that is sure to be quoted throughout the Internet for the next year or so, since he is not overly gentle about it.
Considering I never got the tags I added last month to appear and have similar problems regarding new links (whereas my internal referrer stats tell me there are a total of 3487 unique, non-Spam URLs linking here in the past three months), I'm looking at IceRocket too.
Abruptly, A Pear Tree Cried Out
Okaaay. One of the reasons I can't stand the Portuguese "bleurghosphere" is the TMWCE rating - or rather, the number of Tiny Men With Colossal Egos that started pasting their inane prose on Blogger forms over the past few years, all the while believing themselves to be on the verge of a "new cultural era" (and suchlike drivel), and shrieking with horror every time their Technorati or Sitemeter ratings were surpassed by someone else.
Every time it happens, it's not dissimilar to chipmunk mud wrestling - they crowd together in packs (tainted - and I do mean tainted - by political colors) and assault each other verbally for weeks on end. In the meantime, they pat their friends on the back for doing such risqué things as posting videos and calling it "breakthroughs in usage of rich media in the Portuguese blogosphere".
This time, however, they picked on a news story (in "dead tree" printed media) outlining the current (admittedly sorry, but that's my opinion) state of the Portuguese pico-blogosphere, but decided to make it personal.
Unfortunately for them, they picked a reporter that can fight back (in Portuguese, stick a fish in your ear), so I expect this to provide us with enough entertainment until actual issues (like, say, forest fires) need solving.
Burn, Baby, Burn
Oh, sorry, I must have meant debating. Because, you see, there are now around fifty-four forest fires raging in Portugal this very moment, and politicians have had precisely zero impact on lessening this scourge year after year, despite all their mutual back-patting and empty promises:
Instead of blogging their little egos away and preparing for the usual post-Summer political rentrée (during which the issue of whether burnt timber can be legally exported or sold - and other suchlike topics - never seem to arise), these people ought to have a sense of proportion and look out their windows.
I can smell the fire from mine.