The windy weather seems to have the “roulette effect” on my bicycling. Every direction I ride, it is blowing in my face. This perception comes from the sensation that around a campfire, you are always getting the smoke. It was a quiet day again, I wound up at the library not able to find a single book on programming controllers. But I’m still learning a lot about them from secondary sources. This picture is a Siberian Larch. Read on for the skinny.
I added another layer of data to my analysis of writing for a living. Over 7,000 readers have viewed my 35 product reviews, and produced (in revenue) about 1 cent each per year. But the figures show I have found a niche in reviewing products that are not leading edge or expensive. There is an element of snobbery in that the most prolific writers only want to assess the newest and trendiest items. Very few products under $50 are represented.These product reviews are easy, as my natural writing style (natural after decades of practice) is distinctly superior to the dehydrated babble that passes for prose. The catch is right now, I don’t have any more products to review. Still, I believe if I stick with articles under said $50 limit, I can get plenty more posts onto my account. I would need another 300 reviews to make that venture worth it. But all that is required other than time is planning ahead. At some critical mass, people will read me just to see what I have to say.
FireHow is barely creeping along. I have around 10% as many readers. Mind you, FireHow has no rating system and I an unknown on that site. Two weeks is not enough to judge. But I’m finding new articles have to be longer and are already taking inordinate amounts of time to write. I’m also seeing that many other topics are too short to impart useful knowledge. For example, there is one place that says how to improve your boot-up time that is just three paragraphs. A lot of good that will do anybody.
Right now it is only courtesy that stops me from re-writing short articles in direct competition with the others. I think the more complex the topic, the more detailed the instructions need to be. Many of the poorly written items seem to be posted just to up the author’s ratings. If so, I will figure that out shortly.
That means time for some trivia. How about trivia that corrects trivia I found out was wrong. Remember that tale that the Interstate highway system had to have straight stretches to serve as emergency cold war airports. Wrong. That legend got started because when the project began, a different government work program also built 26 airstrips parallel to some stretches of the Interstate.
For instance, look at Chernobyl. How many people died there? Ten thousand? One thousand? Actually, it was only 50, and all of them were inside the plant when the explosion occurred. As for the radiation scare, there was already an on-going epidemic of goiter in the area long before the accident. Animals have repopulated the surrounding land, including rare and endangered species.
Oh, and due to new discoveries in the wild, despite extinctions there are more large mammal species now than before the conservationists began marching. I know, we can’t afford even one more extinction due to man’s activity, but I found the statistic amusing.
Last, the most numerous tree on Earth is the Siberian larch. It grows slowly and by the hundreds of millions. Let's see how long that stays, since it is makes beautiful planks, which are waterproof and knot-free. I say Lodgepole Pine will take over,since it is reputedly useless for lumber, fuel, or paper, produces no fruit, and is too scraggly to be a windbreak.
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