New Blogger Templates Offer Something a Little Different

Blogger has released what they call Dynamic Views. It allows the viewer of the website to switch between views and experience the blog in different ways.

Live examples:

• Undopaste.com (current) (mosaic)
• Fathades.com (current) (flipcard) (snapshot)

The only real drag is that you have to change your basic template to one of the set.If you have done serious HTML and CSS design edits to your Blogger site you're going to lose them. However, they mention that they will "be adding more ways to customize Dynamic Views int he coming weeks."

The current option list is:

• Classic (Gmail): A modern twist on a traditional template, with infinite scrolling and images that load as you go
• Flipcard (M loves M) - Your photos are tiled across the page and flip to reveal the post title
• Magazine (Advanced Style) - A clean, elegant editorial style layout 
• Mosaic (Crosby’s Kitchen) - A mosaic mix of different sized images and text
• Sidebar (Blogger Buzz Blog) - An email inbox-like view with a reading page for quick scrolling and browsing
• Snapshot (Canelle et Vanille) - An interactive pinboard of your posts 
• Timeslide (The Bleary-Eyed Father) - A horizontal view of your posts by time period

Read all about it on Blogger Buzz: Dynamic Views: seven new ways to share your blog with the world

Google's Ngram Viewer

Recently watched the following TED talk: "What we learned from 5 million books"


Neat!
So I did a few searches, and these are my results:

• fact vs. fiction: fact occurs much more often, but has taken a decidedly sharp down turn since the early 1970s. Also, fiction is on the rise.
• happy vs. sad: happy is on a serious decline. It bottomed out in the mid-late 1980s (a little cold war scare anyone?), but does seem to be on the rise again. Sad rose to a height in the late 1860s, but has been on the decline, except for a small rise in the late 1920s, ever since.
• ain't vs. isn't: these two words have an interesting relationship. there was a time just before 1900 that ain't was more prevalent. Then rightfully so isn't was used more often. Then just after 1940 they both enjoyed a wild spike in usage and both shared a huge dip in usage in the early 1960s. Also ain't remains in print, isn't has spiked beyond its 1940 era boom - thankfully.
• yes vs. no: is a most interesting graph. It seems that yes has never had much ground, and no was very famous. However no has been steadly decreasing since a peak around 1840.
• pencil vs. pen: it looks that the pen has had the upper hand for two hundred years, but both are in a steady decline.
• disco vs. funk: beginning in 1970 funk began in the lead and then there was a crutial tipping point in 1976 and disco soared while funk stagnated. However, funk enjoyed a resurgance in the 1990s, but by the time 1999 rolled around it was on the down beat again.

And contentious for grammarians is it email or e-mail ?? From 1980 - 2000 there has been a steady increase in the use of email!! yea, I win!

The homepage is http://books.google.com/ngrams/ - go explore.

One More Disembodied Foot Found in Canada

Well, here we are again, it's random, severed foot time. Place your bets! I've got ten bucks on left foot and male.
Everyone get your tarps and hacksaws.
I'll admit for the first few feet, I thought, 'No big deal. Feet fall off all the time; the world is an imperfect place.'
(See Breakfast Club quote)

Canada 7
USA 1

But now the count is up to seven (for Canada and only one for the US - sounds like the winter Olympics gold medal count). Normally, some consider that a lucky number, but in this case...nah.

Quebec farmer finds winter boot containing severed foot
Published: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | 5:56 PM ET
Canadian Press Andy Blatchford, THE CANADIAN PRESS

Dang, it's a right foot. Double or nothing on it being male, that hasn't been determined yet.

For a catalog of the previous six visit the Wikipeda article Discoveries of human feet on British Columbia beaches, 2007–2008 (yes, can you believe that there is a Wikipeda article on the number of severed feet that wash up on Canada's shores - tis a weird, weird world we have here)

And if you read the Wikipeda article, and I did, you'll see that four of the eight feet match two people, one man and one woman who was wearing New Balance running shoes. Also, there was a hoax foot - not funny.

The CBC is maintaining an interactive map of the locations of the found feet. They have pictures of some of the shoes. "What!" you say, "Yes, they do!" I say. Go look. Of course, they took the feet out, you sicko.

So the count is as follows:
New Balance (woman) 2
Nike (man) 2
Reebok (man) 1
Low-cut Hiking boot (man) (unidentified brand) 1
Unidentified shoe (man) 1
Unisex boot (sex as yet undetermined) 1

In addition to the source that brought this to my attention (credited below) I did some independent Google searching for more facts. Normally, no big deal but when I did there were some 'Sponsored Links' shown that I hope were auto-generated, because if someone planned them, EWWW! Gross! This is not Photoshopped; this is a genuine screen capture!


"Cut Feet Online" and "Low prices on severed foot." Someone needs to review their keyword auto-gen system. Please! You do a Google News search for "severed foot" and see what you get; I'd be interested to see yours.

Oh and to give total source credit, because a good English major hates plagierism and always quotes the sources; I got the articles from a tweet by Rachel Maddow. A news woman interested in severed feet - swoon...