Difficult jobs

My job is always challenging and difficult but it’s nothing compared to what this guy does everyday.  I have no idea where this video comes from but it’s fascinating.

(via B.L. Ochman)

I was mortified. . .

I mentioned my reading at the Mortified show a few weeks ago but had no idea that we were going to get reviewed.

Dave points me to a writeup of the show today in LAist. While most of the details about my piece were a little off, it was great to see it written about at all.

Thanks LAist!

Navigating the web

I’ve found a number of cool maps online, most come from strangemaps.wordpress.com and I’m looking forward to the completion of LA City Nerd’s Los Angeles Neighborhoods and Communities map.

Something I saw today though is quite possibly the coolest map I’ve ever seen.

Information Architects Japan mapped out the 200 most successful websites on the web right now and orders them by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective. It’s also really great looking because it’s modeled after the map of the Tokyo subway system. It reminded me a lot of a graphic called “Linkology” that I saw in New York magazine in February ‘06 but I like this one much better. See for yourself: the clickable online version is here.

Fatigue 2.0?

A talk with Adam and a few days in Vermont with Alex and Michelle reminded me that I should update this space more often. I’m going to try.

Lately I find myself signing up for every new website I hear about. For the past few weeks that has included Pownce, ooVoo, and Spock. It’s getting a little overwhelming because you can’t really do very much on most of these sites unless a good number of your friends are signed up for them as well; so far none of the new services seem to be so great that I feel the need to truly evangelise them to all of my contacts. I came across Greg Verdino’s marketing blog from a random del.icio.us recommendation and I like how he articulates the overwhelming feeling of signing up for all of these sites.

Facebook seems to be a nice exception to the overwhelming feeling. It seems to finally be catching on with everyone I know. It used to be that all of my Facebook contacts were the same kind of people but now a number of my friends are the kind who don’t even know what to do with their Facebook pages but know that they should have them anyway.

Random but related — Twitter notified me today of a new follower but he’s someone I don’t know. I realize this is pretty common among regular Twitterers but so far I have only been watching (and have only been watched) by people I actually know. Who is Darius Jahandarie and why does he care what I am up to? I’m intrigued. . .