Dave Sifry (Mr. Technorati) has a State of the Blogosphere report online.

Interesting, with few surprises but some interesting insights (spam pings and other such deviations of blogs, which is expected but interesting).

The figure that stood out to me, however, was the staying power of blogs. Sure, blog creation/posts and so on are way up over a year ago, but the – as Sifry neatly phrases it – “there’s a reasonable amount of tire-kicking” with blogs going on.

While the number of blog has increased dramatically, the percentage of folks who stick with it is staying roughly the same:

• February 2006 Technorati tracks over 27.2 Million blogs; 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created (50%)
• October 2005 Technorati tracks 19 million blogs, about 10.4 million bloggers were still posting 3 months after the creation of their blogs (54%).

So – overall – while more blogs are created, the same percentage die quickly. While this means – overall – more blogs, it also means that the perceived value vs. effort has not increased, even as the blogosphere has expanded.

Interesting.

Had Thai food (takeout) tonight; I just love curry.

And for some reason, I like green curry better than the others (red, yellow, brown…). Why?

No clue. I think the difference between the curries is the blend of spices that make up the curry (curry is not a spice; it’s a blend of spices – much like “pasta” doesn’t mean much specific). But I could be totally wrong. Whatever.

The weird part – to me – is that curry is a kind of weird food for an American. Fairly common today, more so because more Indians and others from curry-friendly nations have come here as part of the dot.com boom/bust/Web 2.0, but not your traditional American steak and potatoes. Over a decade ago, it’d have been tough to find a restaurant serving curry in most towns in the US. Or – I’d guess.

And I was a picky eater as a kid.

How the hell did I develop a taste for curry?

I – oddly – am very adventurous with food. I’ll try most anything, and like a lot of the weird (ostrich, alligator, buffalo, jack fruit and so on).

And I have leftovers for breakfast. Excellent!

First trip on the company plane today, and – I’ve got to say – this is the way to go.

Get to the airport two hours before departure and all that? Take your shoes off and all that?

Here, drive up to the “terminal” (a building); park 10 spaces away from the terminal, walk in, walk out to plane and … that’s it. Two hours later you’re at the two-hour flight destination, not just getting ready for boarding.

Veddy nice.

WATCHING:
Million-Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood, director

I seem drawn to the not feel-good movies. This, the tale of a white-trash woman who dreams of becoming a title-holding boxer, starts depressing and goes downhill from there.

It’s an interesting movie – I especially like the way everything was not all wrapped up neatly at the end – but not as good as I expected. Three stars maybe – but maybe that’s because I’m not a fan of boxing. Solid performances all around, especially by Hillary Swank, but not a movie I’ll return to any time soon.

All movies

Well, this has been the mildest winter in Chicago since they first began keeping records a century or so ago (but there’s nothing to the global warming nonsense), yet I’ve still got – in early February – Spring Fever.

Wanna get out of the house and cut the lawn or something.

We’ve had very little snow this year, which my back appreciates, but it’s going to be bad for the plants this summer – need some groundwater. We had the same problem last year, which was almost drought-like (again, here’s nothing to the global warming nonsense). It has rained a bit (we’ve had more thunderstorms than snow storms thus far this winter, which is just freaky), which helps, but the snow pack also helps insulate the ground and protect plants’ roots, so that’s not happening.