2005-10-19
I will be so glad when I’m done with my Master’s program. The work itself isn’t that hard, but it’s just time consuming. This quarter is my capstone project. It’s basically a project to show I actually learned something from the various classes that I’ve taken and create a full blown “real” project. There are some discussions each week but they’re fairly straightforward, it’s the “project” part that takes time.
This, of course, means that my spare time is not spent at the poker tables. I am, however, planning on playing in the PokerStars tourney this Sunday. I have a strategy for this tourney and it basically involves getting a big stack early or busting out. As much as I’d love to win some of the great prizes that Stars is so generously offering I have to accept that I suck at MTT’s, therefore I don’t want to play for hours to get nothing. As the saying goes, “Go big or go home.” That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be reckless, but I will be looking to build a stack early, after all, I have to cook dinner at about the 2 hour mark (I’ve got burritos planned for that night, although I’m looking to branch out next week with a couple of new items).
Being a Professional Poker Player (TM), I have been asked to submit a review of Fox Sport’s “Learn From the Pros” TV show. To that end, I have setup my Tivo to record the episode that will air on Thursday at 1:30AM and will endeavor to watch it post haste and give an opinion on what my fellow Pros are teaching. I haven’t been watching it out of principle since I wasn’t asked to participate. I’m blaming it on the fact that I live in the land that football forgot instead of Las Vegas.
I’ve also got a couple of poker books in the queue to read (thanks publishers, keep ‘em coming!) which I will review when i get a chance to actually read them. These are kind of taking a back seat to class, RL, SL and the occasional poker play at this point in time. Not to mention the new TV season, although I am still pissed that Alias is on opposite Survivor (due to issues I must Tivo Alias, but could watch Survivor on another TV, but even so…).
General Blogging Thoughts
If you (*ahem* UFP) publish a half assed RSS feed, please see this article (thanks Heather) and help us out. You guys aren’t the only ones who do this, but you’re the only ones where I get frustrated by it, ie. I actually want to read you, but am pissed that I have to visit your site which means that I don’t do it often enough. Sorry, my time is in too short supply to go there when I can read everybody else’s via bloglines.
Unrelated to this, if you want to make sure that I don’t read your post, start it out by saying that blogger ate your post. As soon as I read that I move on. This isn’t hard people…Write the post in something else, notepad, Word, whatever, and then post it into blogger. Then if it does eat it, you haven’t lost anything. It’s not rocket science, plus that would give you an extra chance to oh, say, fix grammar and spelling issues.
Thank you. Venting done.
October 19th, 2005 at 11:30 am
I’m one who doesn’t publish full content in my RSS feeds and here are some reasons why…
1) Publishing full posts in an RSS feed makes it easier for the spammers to steal/republish your content.
2) Less people will actually come to the site since they can read the content elsewhere. Why have a site if everyone just reads the full feed?
3) People reading full content through a feed are a lot less likely to go visit the site to leave a comment.
4) By not visiting a post on the person’s site you are missing out on a lot of great content that gets added in comments.
October 19th, 2005 at 11:40 am
I understand the reasons, I just think they’re flawed.
1. “Screen scrapers” are exceedingly trivial to write, especially if you publish well formed HTML (XHTML or whatever). This really isn’t a deterrent IMHO. Yes, it may make the people require one more step, but it’s definitely not going to stop them. I also don’t think this is that big of an issue (dig up my previous posts on this).
2. Fewer people wil come to the actual site, but people will still read it. I, for one, go to very few sites who don’t have full feeds. The little blurb better be damn good to draw my attention otherwise I don’t go to it. I am not alone in this. If you’re a web designer or something, fine, but otherwise I couldn’t really care less if people visit my actual site. I just want them to read the content.
3. Again, if the posting is interesting to me, I will follow it to leave a comment. I don’t leave comments just willy-nilly, so the posting has to be interesting in the first place and I won’t know that unless I can see the whole thing.
4. Most software doesn’t show the comments by default unless you go to the actual “permalink” page. Therefore, you’re not seeing the comments anyway. I only really look at the comments if there are a number of them or if the topic interests me. Again, I won’t know that unless I see the whole article.
Does that makes sense? Obviously you can do whatever you want, but I think you’re limiting your readership if you do that.
October 19th, 2005 at 5:20 pm
Blogger ate my comment…
October 19th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Great point on the RSS, some of us work slackers like to read poker blogs at work, and when you have a mighty firewall it won’t let you see those ‘gambling sites’…. I have FlickRicious on the RSS and I can see bush at work…what a great concept
October 19th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
damnit, trumpjosh beat me to it.
October 20th, 2005 at 12:18 am
Well… I got raked over the coals by Heather already today. I’m going to look into it, but I can’t make any promises. As Nick pointed out, there are lots of reasons not to post full feeds. Although I understand your frustration. I just can’t promise I’ll end up relieving it
October 20th, 2005 at 6:52 am
When I was in the newspaper industry, there was a big controversy over “jumps.” A jump is when the story is continued on another page. They have 20 stories on the front page, and say “Continued on A12″ or something like that.
The research showed that people simply DO NOT READ JUMPS. As far as they are concerned, the story ends on the front page. Less than 10% of people follow the jumps, even on stories that they are interested in.
The abbreviated RSS feeds? They’re JUMPS. People don’t read them. I know I rarely do.
October 20th, 2005 at 8:08 am
Yes, your reasons make sense as well.
Except for #4…if you click on a post in a feed reader you are sent to the permalink page where the comments are. Except for Blogger sites…but Splogger is an entirely different topic.
October 20th, 2005 at 8:25 am
Alright, you guys convinced me. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages. I’m switching the feeds on most of sites.
October 20th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
Thats awesome that you have poker books to review. What Poker books do you consider to be top notch?
October 20th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
Sweet! I just got 15 COMPLETE entries in bloglines from “Up for Poker”
Thanks for bringing it up Chris! You rule!
October 27th, 2005 at 11:58 am
Now if only we could get Iggy to do the same. Blogger has been down so much lately it takes me 2 days to read one of his posts. That’s definitely an advantage of using full feeds…your readers don’t have to rely on your web site as much.