Author: Joey deVilla

[cross-posted to the Blogware blog]

Liz “I Speak of Dreams” Ditz pointed me to the BlogHer site, which has details about the upcoming BlogHer conference…

From the BlogHer

blog:

BlogHer is a network for women bloggers to

draw on for exposure,

education, and community. By holding a day-long conference on July 30,

2005, and establishing an online hub, BlogHer is initiating an

opportunity for greater visibility, learning and success for

individual

women bloggers and for the community of bloggers as a

whole.

BlogHer plans to achieve this goal by

providing three key items: exposure, education and

community:

• Exposure for women

  bloggers
  BlogHer’s goal is helping women

  bloggers identify, reach and grow the audience they seek

  by raising their visibility and searchability. Once women bloggers

  build relationships with each other — online and in person

  –- it will

  be easier for Web users to find more quality, relevant bloggers. A

  broader diversity of top-trafficked bloggers will follow.

• Education for women

  bloggers
  BlogHer’s conference schedule is being

  designed as an opportunity for

  women to educate themselves and each other, both technically and

  conversationally. Via scheduled talks, panels and applied training

  sessions, everyone who attends BlogHer’s conference, either online or

  in person, will have the opportunity to learn new technoilogies and

  best practives that help bloggers better express and market

  themselves.

  At the same time, participants will explore opportunities, challenges

  and key questions facing women bloggers, both those writing about

  professional sectors (such as journalism and technology) and those

  exploring issues fundamental to female identity online (such as

  motherhood and dating). An essential feature of BlogHer’s approach to

  these discussions is the “Room of Your Own” track, where women in the

  BlogHer community can host their own seminars.

• Community for women

  bloggers
  BlogHer’s conference and

  online hub are opportunities for women

  bloggers to develop a network of colleagues they trust and support.

  Only this kind of social network, steeped in shared interests and

  experience, will create a sustainable community capable of delivering

  ongoing, mutual exposure and education. That’s why the

  conference

  agenda and the site will afford plenty of time for discussion, formal

  meet-ups, ad-hoc conversations and fun. Because community begins at

  the

  conference, and we expect it to continue at BlogHer.org all year

  long.

For more information about this conference,

visit the BlogHer blog.

If Kim Jong Il can have a LiveJournal, Darth Vader can have a blog.

(Bonus: Enjoy this Eminem-inspired parody [640KB, MP3] while reading Vader’s blog!)

I’m not the only one who’s recently acquired a kind of interest in Superman. Jeff Rowland, artist/writer of the webcomic Wigu, recently ran a four-part series which melds the Superman story with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (right down to the name; in GTA:SA, the hero’s name is “CJ”, in this send-up, Clark Kent becomes “CK”).

The comics:

• Kal-El comes to the ‘hood
  (Note how faithfully the parody renders Superman’s parents — check out this comic about Superman’s origin if you don’t believe me)
• That’s one tough white baby
• Damn, it feels good to be a heat-vision gangsta
• Good thing he can peep with them x-rays

Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle, whose knickers are so often in a knot that she should really switch to AntiPantis (now there’s a mental image), is annoyed at the the differences between the way Disney runs the Hong Kong and American theme parks:

“By contrast, look at what happens in the United States. At the Epcot Center in Orlando, there is a dazzling display of how life came about, popping up from a single cell in the oceans’ pure chance-plus-time evolution. Why does it go to Hong Kong and respect local religions and then hit Christians in the face back home?

Disney has been resistant to all of the Christian protests about ‘Gay Days’ at its so-called family parks. And it has produced movies that are blasphemous, so much so that Southern Baptists have boycotted Disney World.

“So to Christians in this country Disney says, ‘In your face. We’re not going to pay any attention to you.’ But for Disneyland in Hong Kong , it redesigns the whole theme park ‘to ensure prosperity’ based on a kooky Eastern fad…”

We do have the similar, goofy feng shui-like approaches to construction here too — many buildings here still don’t have a 13th floor, and triskaidekaphobia’s roots are Christian…

Bonus reading

My blog entry, Sacrelicious! (with the formatting finally cleaned up), my look at the whole “7 days vs. 4 billion years” debate.

Yeah, while the Outback Steakhouse

is a bit on the cheesy side, it’s a restaurant that to which we can

take my nephews (ages 2 and almost-4). Besides, the “Bloomin’ Onion” is

pretty good, as is the “Chocolate Thunder from Down Under”, despite the

fact that it sounds like a colloqiual term for “explosive diarrhea”…

Click the picture above to read the full comic.

The above comic from User Friendly may seem silly, but similar incidents have happened in

real life. I know of at least two people who ordered a “grande latte”

in Italy only to be surprised when they got a large glass of milk.

Bonus reading material: An Aussie in America writes about her impression of the Outback Steakhouse.

Normally, I’m a pretty egalitarian guy, but I did major in applied sciences. Hence the current Dilbert online comic amuses me to no end. If only it were around when I worked at Mackerel Interactive Multimedia, where I was a computer science grad surrounded by people who studied underwater basket weaving graphic arts…

Oh, and I drank a lot of beer in University anyway.