This page contains all entries posted to Manufactured Environments in April 2002.

pulsating orbs.

Posted by Daniel Stout on Wed 24 Apr 2002 at 11:59 PM

thanks to everyone who emailed wondering where the blog had gone. it’s back up, and hopefully with the semester winding down i’ll have a little more time to blog a bit more.

i finished reading a biography of simone weil the other day. quite good it was. written by francine du plessix gray. my current reading is a psychological study of the internet and a book by christopher hitchens. i also watched “mulholland drive” tonight — the latest david lynch film. “blue velvet” is still my favorite lynch film. i’ve seen most (all?) of his films. he’s been a standby for me the past decade or so. i saw “wild at heart” in the video shop the other day, and was feeling like seeing that one again. i’ve also been in a “blade runner” mood lately. the mad max film “road warrior” is on my list to see again as well.

did i mention my brother is coming down to the city for a visit. it’ll be good to see him. he’s getting married. bravo!

i’ve got the headphones on and the computer is on ‘mix it up’ mode — from cocteau twins to steve reich to manu chao to freQ. i’ve ripped over 1,000 tracks from my cd’s onto this machine. even though they’re recorded at the highest mp3 bitrate (320kbit), they still take up shockingly little room on the hard drive — something like 11 gigs. this computer came with a 45 gig hard drive, and i’ve got plenty of room to spare. 80 gig drives are fairly common these days — what are people doing with this space? write me.

i haven’t listened to industrial music in some time but i was feeling like listening to some again (note “blade runner mood” above) and so i dropped by amazon and picked up a copy of “belief” by nitzer ebb for under $7. that’s one of my old favorites from the electro industrial era. it’s a fantastic album. i’ll see whether it’s stood the test of time. i can hear the songs in my head and i’m inclined to believe they have. what have you been listening to lately?

well, i’ve got a busy day tomorrow. adieu.

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two weeks later.

Posted by Daniel Stout on Sun 21 Apr 2002 at 11:21 PM

it’s been interesting to see how my rankings have fallen, risen, fallen and risen again in google. it seems they don’t know what to make of my site. they re-index my site and that seems to have some substantial influence in the amount of search engine traffic on the site. what do they want from me? blood money?

i’ve been working on some new material for the website. look for some new book reviews and 19 new listed books to appear in the near future. also i’ll be launching an essays section fairly soon. some of the most interesting search engine traffic came on my previous essays that i’ve since removed… people searching for “movie stars smoking cigarettes in leather” and “existentialists and drug use” and “photo of conservative.” the “search terms” report of my hit logs has been the most interesting and certainly the most amusing over the years that i’ve maintained this website. i will certainly have to re-add my satirical essays “how to buy a gun” and “how to buy an suv” at some point. they provided a great deal of levity. and this time i’ll add an email link so people can give me some feedback on those articles.

the music links have provided me with some good feedback — people wanting to trade cd’s and such. there seems to be a lot of people out there wanting to trade music. it’s mostly the obscure music in my collection that gets the most interest — the legions of chameleons fans for example. i’m working to improve the books section. i get a lot of hits from people searching for specific titles, but not a lot of feedback — what more could i be providing? specifically people are searching for reviews of particular books. and while the book may be listed in my collection, it may not necessarily have a review. so that remains a key focus of mine right now.

the photos pages are the most heavily trafficked on this site. it is the most cosmopolitan area as well with visitors from a whole slew of european countries esp. northern europe and the mediterranean region. i’m hoping to break into the arabic market, but as my pages are in english there hasn’t been a lot of traffic from arab countries despite pages on egpyt, tunisia, turkey, etc.

so those are the plans for this site. i’m pleased with the amount of traffic/emails that it’s generating at this point, but it could be better — it always could be better. i’m planning a redesign of this blog to make it more appealing and to add links to my various blog friends out there. some months ago i took off my links page and i’m feeling the need to resurrect that presently. no website is an island — to be linked from and to is a good state of affairs. more links, more content, more satire, more music, more human rights, more freedom to be.

take care.

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three weeks later.

Posted by Daniel Stout on Sun 7 Apr 2002 at 9:54 PM

three weeks later & what has happened? i’m still listening to “reich remixed” constantly. perhaps more importantly i’ve set about updating the manufacturedenvironments.com website. i’ve created a new front page [http://manufacturedenvironments.com/]. i’ve also updated the music page somewhat — adding some mp3 files and adding a few more albums in my collection. check it out here: [http://manufacturedenvironments.com/].

at any rate, things are well. my career as an adjunct professor continues. the end of the semester is starting to come into sight, and the students have some projects to work on before then. i’ve learned so much being in the classroom. i’m sure to improve things next semester.

i’ve been a little bad about correspondence the past couple of weeks. if i haven’t emailed you recently (and you’re a friend) be on the lookout for some email this week. i’ve forwarded a few emails lately, including one entitled “painfully bad analogies,” which positively tickled my funny bone. email me if you’d like to get a copy.

two things i’ve affirmed: 1) do not buy more house than you can afford and 2) buying a home is much more affordable than one might imagine. i’ve done well on this front and have been living in my own place for several months now. the early years of a mortgage are spent paying a lot of interest, and i’m curious to see how the tax deduction for all of this turns out next year. one thing for sure: owning beats renting.

the interesting thing to me about this website is the people that come across it. i’ve had old friends from high school that i haven’t talked to in 10 years email me because of it. i see lots of hits from local internet sources, and i wonder: are these people i know? the stats are kind of fascinating — one gets to see “referer” information. this is especially interesting from search engines because one gets to see what people searched for in search engines and ended up at this website. since the beginning of the year, people have searched for hundreds of things and ended up at manufacturedenvironments.com. in a future blog entry i’ll list some of the more interesting search terms. people seem to search for a lot of different stuff — some of it expected — and some of it totally odd and completely fascinating. what do they hope to find? does manu.envi.com fulfill their expectations? one hopes so — one hopes they find something a little unexpected and a little more interesting than the next site.

i’ve got a couple of things to do on the website. i want to add a few recent book reviews and also redesign my blog pages. and then? and then i’ll be ready to relaunch the site. with all of the areas of the site updated i’m looking forward to the relaunch. are you on my email list? email with a message of interest to get updates from this site. my mass-emailings are always looking for more recipients.

good day to you all. take care.

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