Wikileaks awakes me from my blogmatic slumber

Oh hi there.

A little more than a year ago Izott went silent, partly because of a conscious decision to spend less time on the internets, but mostly because I had become disillusioned and bored with politics in general. I had always meant to write a conclusionary post to tie things up properly, but just never got around to it. So Izott has been collecting dust and the odd Chinese spam comment ever since.

Now, though, with this Wikileaks story, I'm motivated to write a few posts so that I can get my thoughts straight about the matter. It's a very important story, I feel, and one that deals with a pretty foundational basic right--freedom of speech--which is not a topic that has really come up in a serious or interesting way since I started blogging. For the first time in a while, there's something new under the sun in politics.

The internet: it knows

This blog-analyzing tool has been making the rounds. It rates Izott an INTP, just like me:

INTP - The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Sounds about right, for better or for worse. And they even correctly pegged me as a MacBook-using, cafe-camping hipster who is constantly thinking about intersecting rows of numbers and letters.

Temporarily Burning Manned

Yes, it's true: I will be at the weeklong hippie festival starting tomorrow. More izotts upon my return--assuming I don't perish.

New duds

Figured it was time to move away from the Blogger default template. I don't know if I've moved to something better with this sort of "rational grayscale" look. I would have liked to have made only the blog title and post titles red, but alas, the template I used didn't give me that kind of flexibility.

Ah well. Let me know if you hate it.

EDIT: Ok well now I've turned it into an American Apparel t-shirt, but I guess that's okay for now.

Temporarily Japanned

As anyone reading this undoubtedly knows, I am currently vacationing in Japan and so will not be posting again until about mid-June. Before I sign off, though, predictions for what will be the case by the time I come back:

• Hillary Clinton will be out of the race.
• McCain and Obama will be virtually tied in national polling.
  
• The Lakers will be NBA champions.
• I will have awesome shoes.
• I will have an awesome Batman shirt.
• I will have an awesome watch.
• I will have a newfound appreciation for how shitty public transportation in the Bay Area is.

Ok, well, bullets 4, 5, and 7 are cheating because they've happened already--but whatever.

1108-27

As the purveyor of a lightly trafficked, strangely titled blog, I don't expect much "internet presence". But I don't think it's too much to ask for my blog, humble as it is, to turn up as the first result when the search term is its explicit title.

And yet, when you Google "iz/ott", this humble space is second. This in itself isn't too surprising, though--the internet is a big place, and "iz/ott" is not all that unique an invention--you could imagine someone somewhere stumbling upon the same phrase in an article or blog post somewhere. So why am I complaining?

I will tell you why I am complaining. It is because "iz/ott" appears to be not some word typed by a human and used in a sentence, but instead the garbled result of a PDF's attempt to interpret the string "1108-27" in a scanned image of a typewritten document.

Ok, that's a little wild, you say--very improbable, and yet, still within the bounds of what we might expect from a vast internet filled with arbitrary strings. So really, David, why the fuss?

Oh, I will tell you what the fuss is, my dear reader. I will tell you why I shake my fist at the internet and wail at the injustice of the universe. It is because the typewritten document in question--the one that displaces my humble blog as the number one search result for "iz/ott"--is what appears to be a 1964 progress report by the Institute of Paper Chemistry addressed to the Fourdrinier Kraft Board Institute Rigid-When-Wet Committee as to the feasibility of a corrugated cardboard box that can remain structurally intact when wet to facilitate the boxing of chickens.

I shit you not. Go ahead an search within the document for "iz-ott".

Damn you, Project 1108-27! Damn you to hell!

The 100 + 1 milestone

This is post #101--huzzah!

I'm still feeling my way around this blog: trying to figure out what the content should be, how often I should post, etc. It's still in a beta-like phase: only a limited set of people know about it, and the quality of the posts can be sort of inconsistent. But I'm hopeful that eventually all the kinks will be worked out, and that Iz/Ott will then be ready to be unveiled to everyone I know.

So how are things going so far, traffic-wise? Since going semi-public on February 28, some analytics:

• 101 posts
• 224 visits
• 81 visitors (well, IPs anyway)
  

But really, the goal isn't to amass raw numbers of visits; it's to be a presence on the radar of people in my social network, a central spot where people I know can talk about and influence each other on politics and culture, in an enlightened but folksy sort of way.

We'll see how it goes.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled links

If you got 'em, send 'em, and I'll entertain the possibility of reposting them in this humble and lightly trafficked space. You can send them to the izott email or to my regular address.

Any subject matter is fine.*

*Hint: I'm always in the market for high-caliber YouTubes...

Departing words

The last thing my late grandfather ever said to me:

"If you want to learn, stand near someone with something worthwhile to say..."

That's why I started this blog--to stand near you guys, and to learn.

"Posts of Substance"

I realize that the overwhelming majority of my posts are of-the-moment bits of political drivel, and that these tend to bury the ones I actually put time and thought into. So, I've put a list of the good quality posts in "Posts of Substance" for easy read'ins.

Enjoy.