Three Things Meme

Mathew tagged me with the Three Things Meme, so here goes.

The three things are supposed to be things that you would like to see occur in your lifetime. Some folks mention the important, serious things, like curing cancer, world peace and making the world safe for all children (which would be my serious three), but I’m going to follow Mathew’s lead and give my less serious three:

1) Wake Forest win a national championship in college basketball.

2) The remaining members of Led Zeppelin tour again and come to Houston.

3) XM and Sirius satellite radio merge so I can get Sirius channel 14 on XM.

I think the chances of the above happening are 3%, 60% and 75%

I’m tagging Mike Miller, OmegaMom and Rick Mahn.

A Sentence

I saw this on OmegaMom’s blog and thought it was cool.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Here’s mine:

Mitch crawled out on his porch.

From my copy of An Unfinished Life, which I just got back from a friend. Boring sentence, but a fantastic book.

Anybody else want to play?

4 Things, Revisited

Mike Miller tagged me for the 4 Things Meme. I really enjoy memes because they are a fun and easy way to find out about people. I enjoy Mark Cuban’s blog, but I disagree with him about memes. Those are some rock star-like statements from a guy I have always thought to be a (rich) man of the people.

Back to the meme. I answered these questions a few weeks ago, so tonight I asked Cassidy to answer them. Here are her answers:

Four Jobs I’ve Had

1) Secretary (for her 2nd grade class)
2) Tables (for her 2nd grade class)
3) Windows (for her 2nd grade class)
4) Pets (for her 2nd grade class)

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over Again

1) Twitches
2) High School Musical
3) Sky High
4) Kim Possible So the Drama

Four Places I’ve Lived

1) Texas

Four TV Shows I Love

1) Kim Possible
2) Lilo and Stitch
3) Tom and Jerry
4) Sponge Bob

Four Places I’ve Vacationed

1) Fort Worth
2) Galveston
3) Bandera, Texas
4) Florida

Four of My Favorite Dishes

1) Corn
2) Candy
3) Pickles
4) Popsicles

Four Blogs I Read Everyday

1) What’s a blog?

Four Places I’d Rather Be Right Now

1) With my friends
2) Fort Worth
3) Bandera
4) School

Four Things Meme

James Kendrick tagged me today in the Four Things Meme.

This is similar to one I got via email last month from a non-blogging friend of mine, but this is the first time (to my knowledge) I’ve been tagged via blog. Thanks JK!

Maybe I’m just new to the meme tagging business, but what a great way to find out a little about each other.

Four jobs I’ve had:

1) Bag Boy
2) Lifeguard
3) Heat Set Machine Operator
4) Lawyer

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1) Spaceballs
2) The Holy Grail
3) Raising Arizona
4) Up in Smoke

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1) Battlestar Galactica
2) The Amazing Race
3) Survivor
4) Lost

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

1) Bahamas
2) Cozumel
3) Santa Fe
4) Kamloops

Four favorite dishes:

1) Sushi
2) Poblano Chicken
3) Christina Fenrich’s gumbo
4) Arnie Fenrich’s garlic mashed potatoes

Four websites I visit daily:

1) Flickr
2) My Yahoo
3) Bloglines
4) Tech Memeorandum

Four bloggers I’m tagging:

1) Zoli Erdos
2) Doc Searls
3) Dave Wallace
4) Russell Limprecht

Counting the Birds

Steve posted the first report earlier tonight about his Memetracker exercise.

I participated in the exercise, and I noticed one interesting thing that I want to share.

First, the other participants that I could find:

(1) michael parekh on IT
(2) Life Is A Carnival And So Is The Blogosphere
(3) The Business Blogger | Leveraged Promotion
(4) Battle of the Memetrackers, or Breememe!
(5) Another attempt at tracking…Breememe.
(6) Breeereport, Breeememe and Bruuuhaha…
(7) Tech: Breememe – Battle of the Memetrackers
(8) Blog Design & Differing Value Of Visitors
(9) Breememe: Resistance Is Futile!

Now the Results

Tailrank
: 5 links (Steve’s original post, mine, 6, 7 and 4).

Megite: Picked up Steve’s original post and mine as discussion links to other topics.

Chuquet: I didn’t find any links.

Memeorandum: 4 links (Steve’s original post, 1, 2 and (here’s where it gets interesting) my post last night (before Steve even started the memetracker exercise) about Tailrank).

Somehow the Memeorandum algorithm filtered out my post today which was less substantive with respect to the topic of Steve’s post (memetrackers) and grabbed my earlier post which was much more substantive to the topic, even though my less substantive post linked to Steve’s post while my more substantive one did not.

Now one explanation is that this is just a happy accident. But another explanation is that the algorithm figured out that Steve’s topic was about memetrackers, found both of my posts about memetrackers (one very substantive and one primarily just a link to Steve’s post) and made the correct decision to grab the more substantive post.

If that’s the case then Gabe has some serious magic working over at Memeorandum.

Gabe left the following comment to both Steve’s original post and mine:

[G]lad you like the site. I should point out though that memeorandum almost does the opposite of what you want, by design. The software deliberately omits links to posts (“memes”?) that it discovers, in order to improve readability. The idea is that not every post that links to X deserves to be read as commentary on X.

So in that regard, you seem to want a different kind of service, one that definitely has its value, but not one I aim to offer right now.

That certainly sounds like the selection between my available posts was by design.

Today was a neat exercise that gave me a little more data I can use in my continuing efforts to find a pattern in the links and link management activities of my favorite memetrackers.

The Memetracker Hunters

Steve Rubel is sponsoring a memetracker safari, similar to Scoble’s Brrrreeeport Test.

Since I’ve been writing about memetrackers a lot lately, including last nights’ in depth look at Tailrank, I thought I’d join in the fun.

Now Kevin, to quote from one of my favorite movies, “I want a [screengrab] and I want one now!”

This will be interesting and it may help me in my quest to map out the patterns of how links are added and managed at the various memetrackers.

OK Steve, you be Marlin and I’ll be Jim.

4 Things

I’ve never done one of these deals, but someone sent me this in an email, so I’ll do it here.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:

1) Bag Boy
2) Lifeguard
3) Heat Set Machine Operator
4) Lawyer

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1) Spaceballs
2) The Holy Grail
3) Raising Arizona
4) Up in Smoke

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1) Battlestar Galactica
2) The Amazing Race
3) Survivor
4) Lost

Four places I’ve been on vacation:

1) Bahamas
2) Cozumel
3) Santa Fe
4) Kamloops

Four of my favorite dishes:

1) Sushi
2) Poblano Chicken
3) Gumbo
4) Garlic mashed potatoes

Four websites I visit daily:

1) Flickr
2) My Yahoo
3) Bloglines
4) Tech Memeorandum

Four places I would rather be right now:

1) Camping
2) Fishing
3) Ocean Drive
4) Sleeping

Four bloggers I am tagging:

1) Improbulus
2) Richard Querin
3) Dwight Silverman
4) Amy Gahran