Blag Network

2009-11-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

The happy family of inbred blogs that call themselves the "Blag Network" is growing again... kind of like the Duggar Family. There's eight of them now. Let's meet them all in alphabetical order...

DECAPITATION CLASSIC

Presently on hiatus, this is a (ohmigod!) poetry blog. I'm no poet, so there's a function of automatic writing here. I take classics of western literature, like, say, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", turn them into mush by translating them over and over again using Google Translate, and then assemble the results into a poetic shape. It'll never get me the Governor General's award, but... well, there it is.

HOROSCOPES MONKEY TRIAL

A new family member, this silly little blog offers slightly surrealistic weekly advice. It uses, however, all the methodology used by the greats of astrology. In other words, I make it all up.

IRONICALLY, YAHOO! ANSWERS

Another new edition, this rather useless blog dedicates itself to chronicling the strange ways that the word 'ironic' is being used in that great big world out there... using that great resource of meaningful discourse, Yahoo! Answers.

LOST IN GOOGLE TRANSLATION

Like "Decapitation Classic", this blog exists because of Google Translate. In this particular case, the source is song lyrics and the result is a game: take the chewed-up resultant lyrics and try to guess the original. Fun for the whole family.

PICTURES OF THEO

A blog dedicated entirely to taking a picture of Theo Huxtable from the Cosby Show and photo-manipulating it a million different ways. Because that's what the kids are into these days.

TORONTO THROUGH GOOGLE MAPS STREET VIEW

This annoyingly long-named blog is a response to Google Maps' recent entry into the streets of Toronto. It is, in fact, stuff that you can find in Toronto as it appears on Google Maps Street View. Toronto in pictures. Pictures supplied by a car with a strange thing on its roof.

THINGS WITH AWESOME NAMES

The art of the name... consideration of that in the world (people, places, things, etc.) that have noteworthy names: 'Noteworthy' as in awesome; 'noteworthy' as in heinous. It's all here, all muxed up together. Nomenclature-a-go-go.

UNDERSTANDING GOOGLE TRENDS

Google has two sister services, Google Trends and Google Insights (damned if I can see a difference between them). They're both cute little playtoys, valuable for people who love stats for stats' sake. So here, we consider some truths of life as presented to us by the kind people at Google.

Blag Network

2009-09-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

The Blag Network is a bunch of blogs that are all friendly with each other. Relatives, you might say. At the moment, there are five. Let's meet them.

PICTURES OF THEO

A 'specialist blog' by any definition, "Pictures of Theo" oves its very existence to the Cosby Show, and a certain iconic picture of Theo Huxtable in a moment of deep thought. This blog simply takes that picture and mutilates it or sticks it in odd places. Over and over and over again.

UNDERSTANDING GOOGLE TRENDS

"Google Trends" and "Google Insights" are two very similar sites that dedicate themselves to overanalysis of the world's Google usage. Believing that there is no end to the amount of pointless conclusions you can draw from useless statistics, this blog digs in the mud of both of these sites.

LOST IN GOOGLE TRANSLATION

Google has blown Babelfish and other machine-translation sites away with "Google Translate", which can quite effectively translate between 800 different languages. It keeps the weirdness that comes from machine translation to a minimum, unless of course you subject a piece of text to repeated translation across a variety of languages. This blog takes the lyrics to famous songs, turns them into nonsense via endless translation, and asks you to guess the originals.

DECAPITATION CLASSIC

Like the previous blog inspired by "Google Translate", this is a poetry blog. Of sorts. It makes poetry from Google Translate. More specifically, it takes classic of literature, subjects them to Google Translated garbling, takes the resultant chop suey and cuts-and-pastes it into poetryesque form. It may not be poetry, but Blag Network's no poet...

THINGS WITH AWESOME NAMES

Just like it says on the box. A blog that considers things, people and places with noteworthy names. Where 'noteworthy' can mean 'because awesome' or can mean 'because infuriating'. Often we can't be sure ourselves which is which...