mmm... ostrich
January 26, 2004 by Eric Richardson
Via Franklin Avenue, I just found out that Fuddruckers bought Koo Koo Roo. Unlike Michael, I have eaten Fuddrucker's ostrich burger and enjoyed it, so I'm looking forward to making my path cross Koo Koo Roo's and picking one up. Perhaps on Wednesday, when I head downtown to the LA Boat Show. Errr... Actually only certain Koo Koo Roo's have Fuddrucker's grill options on the menu. Looks like my possible targets are the Pasadena or Miracle Mile locations.
LA. blogs. controversy.
January 26, 2004 by Eric Richardson
Over the past few days a bit of a controversy has errupted in the ranks of LA bloggers. LA.com is a new big money backed city guide site, and part of their site is a blog LA.comfidential. LAvoice.org posted a pretty scathing review. This led to an article at LA Blogs. blogging.la got drawn into the whole thing too, formulating a linking policy in response to LA.comfidential pointing to several blogging.la posts in a row. Whew... What a web...
Particularly interesting to me are the comments to both the LAvoices.org and LA Blogs stories. I found the backlash against a corporation trying to enter the sort of LA blogging circle fascinating. If you read through the comments on LA Blogs, you'll find that in the midst of the thread the identity of the LA.comfidential blogger turns out to be Brian Flemming, a local indie writer, director, etc. Even though the bloggers up in arms have nothing against Brian, they still don't warm to his role as blogger for a corporate site. Because his primary objective -- whether he intends it to be or not -- is to drive eyeballs to his site's advertisers, the blogging community sort of eyes him at a distance and is reluctant to treat him as they would another blogger.
All of this matters to me because of a paper I'm writing right now. Instead of looking at a physical location, I'm examining "LA bloggers", by which I mean not just people writing from LA, but more specifically people who structure their online discourse around their location. When the Internet was in the exploding dotcom stage, I don't remember such an emphasis on geographical location as I see these days. Now you have GeoURL, LA-specific Buzznet galleries, and all of the LA blogging meta sites I linked to above.
Now my job is to put all of this together. What significance do LA blogs have? Why is it important to these people to tie their online experience to their physical locale? How is their interaction with the Internet framed by the audience they see themselves writing for? Is it solely an LA audience? So many questions...
wifi whu?
January 26, 2004 by Eric Richardson
I'm sitting right now at the Ragazzi Room, a coffee shop near USC. Near, but really not too near. It's at about Union and 23rd. USC's campus is about 10 blocks south, and "the Row" (where all the frats and sororities are) is about 5 blocks south. I'm making a big deal about pointing this out because I'm confused... Ragazzi Room is a wifi hotspot, but it's a pay one. I'm not all about that. But firing up kismet showed me coverage from USC's wireless network. Granted, it's between 20 - 40% on my signal graph, but it's perfectly usable. What I'm confused about though, is where it's coming from. Is it possible that I'm really picking up signal from the row? I can't believe that. But I don't know of a closer USC building with wireless. There has to be one, I'm just not sure what it would be...
if you need me, my office hours are...
January 22, 2004 by Eric Richardson
I was looking at my stats the other day and saw a referer that seemed pretty odd. http://www.iletisim.bahcesehir.edu.tr/gep1001/ Now, pretty much I don't get a lot of referers that aren't search engines, and especially not from .edu.anything domains. So I went and checked it out. It's a course page for the University of Bahçeşehir in Turkey. If you look at the URL for the January 8 reading, you'll find that it's a link to an essay I wrote, The Globalization of Hip-Hop Culture. A good essay, if I do say so myself, but I can't say I ever expected it to be the reading at a university in Turkey. This is why the Internet is a crazy thing.
breakfast
January 22, 2004 by Eric Richardson
Yesterday Magilla, Kathy, and I went to Grinder for the $2.99 weekday breakfast special (I got pancakes, scrambled eggs, and hash browns). Hitting up their breakfast special is my new thing. I love getting up a little early, heading over there, getting breakfast and a coffee, and getting a start on my day that way.
As we were sitting eating, some FBI agents walked in. Now, normally you see a guy with an FBI hat and you're like, "Somebody got an FBI hat." But I'm pretty convinced that wasn't the case here. About 6 of them came in a big Tahoe, several had combat boots on, and all were earing sunglasses.
Today I read about yesterday's pre-dawn FBI/LAPD raid at a nearby housing project (I saw nearby... maybe 10 miles). Over 400 total officers were involved, so I figure there's a pretty good chance that these guys were heading back to the office after that and stopped by to partake in the special. That's sort of crazy.