Pay attention to the Spider.

Fucking gay-ass motherfucking eustachian tubes...

Note: (While this link is namely for my benefit, you're welcome to read it if you're incredibly bored and masochistic.)

Happy Birthday to me...

I'm 31, officially at the time of this post.

It was a relatively uneventful birthday, with only dinner with my parents and general screwing around online. Oh, and watching Red Dwarf outtakes and stuff.

Search Engine Confusion.

After going a little over two months without blogging (even though there were several times which I wished I'd posted something) I've been struck with a new twisty little challenge. SEO.

I, myself, am not particularly concerned with optimization, making myself easier to find, give a rats ass about pagerank or any of that bullshit, but I know people who do care, and since the logic behind the great systems (like google) is all hidden and speculated upon, I thought I'd do a minor bit of investigation.

This blog is (as of this post) ranked #1 for "shawrkbyte" as well it should, considering the word is made up by me as the full moniker for my online persona. Oddly, it is ranked 4th for "shawrk" even with my handle featured in content and title exploded with spaces (that's right, "shawrk" never appeared in this blog). This is the SEO premise of how others link to you at work... but it isn't true. Checking Google's cache for ShawrkByte.com shows that even exploded, their system picked it up as a word. Fascinating.

But, the reason I'm posting is because of the previous title: Death to blogging. I searched for it, and this blog came in 9th. However, the intention behind the phrase isn't caught in the search term, and that is readily apparent by reading all the results.

1. Comment Spam solutions Kill Blog Search Indexing at ProtoTypen.com


2. Blogging as Competition to the Mainstream Media at BlindMindsEye.com


3. 404 Error at BlindMindsEye.com (dead link?)


4. The Golden Age of Blogs at FinlandForThought.net


5. Forged Passports at BloggingItReal.BlogSpot.com (you'll have to scroll or find)


6. Blogging is a Hobby at Asseptic.org (he didn't stop either)


7. Greek Island Hopping at Chrysos.TypePad.com


8. 404 Error at DaveCopeland.com (restructuring site)


9. Officially Tired of Blogging at ShawrkByte.com (I should search for that term in a couple of months)


10. Seepage Stain Reveals Image of God - NOT at WISIWUG.BlogSpot.com

So, for documentation purposes, I've grabbed these links. Eventually the content will die (as a couple already have), and some day this blog will too, but until then, we can see how others interpretted the usage of the phrase, and how at least one search engine tried to show me what I wanted to see.

Death to blogging.

I don't know what it is about me. Do I just get so burned out on things that I can't stand them after a while, or do they start feeling like a chore, and I don't want to do them because of that? Or is it once something "cutting edge" becomes mainstream I just want to get off the bus...?

Well, whatever it is, I'm officially tired of blogging. I'll keep it, of course, so that I can still post whenever the muse strikes, but it seems that most blogs I've read lately are boring as fuck, including mine, and that little insight into real people has finally ceased being interesting to me.

Reality TV, among other things, have probably fueled this feeling, as well as the heightened media awareness of blogs (and oddly enough how the media considers blogs competition).

Maybe I've just grown up. Having been online for nearly a dozen years, I'm an old man here (yes, i know some have been around longer) and though there is a bit of me that longs for the good-old-days, I realize that they aren't that much different than now - just a LOT more people involved. Maybe I should get offline altogether and re-pursue art and video.

Or maybe I should just smile and nod like everyone else and continue to enjoy little snippets of everybody's life. Except the Pope. He's dead.