I decimated the blogroll from 125 to 103 blogs. Somehow I didn't attain my target of 99 (with one spot left for someone I haven't read enough in the past). Sorry but there were four blogs which link to me in the 22 I unlinked. And I won't hold my recent promise to give the reasons why I deleted a blog from the roll. But if you miss yours you can ask me via e-mail. Or in the comments if you are courageous.

Google's pageranking system goes from 0-10. Google.com and some other sites have a pagerank of 10. The question I ask myself. Would it be possible for a site to have a pagerank higher than Google with the current PR system? If not I'd have some serious doubts about everybody's favourite search engine.

i would like to promise to myself to give some reasons in my blog whenever i withdraw a link to another site. there are at least three blogs who are in danger of facing this fate in the near future. for completely different reasons by the way:

• dj martian: please redesign your blog, martin. i can't stand it anymore. for the last couple of years i spent hours in scrolling down twenty screens to arrive at the beginning of your posts (after all the links and crap). i don't have the time to do that anymore in the future. don't get me wrong. the contents of your blog, esp. the blog discoveries are ace.
• wood s lot: just too much. too time consuming. too many links, too few personal entries. no personal posts actually. and too much stuff i don't care about. maybe 5% are interesting but 95% are just about bush and his imperalism and crap. i can't take it anymore. yes i have exaggerated but still.
• rub: stop the whining, paul. posting a screenful of rub on jackson's breast and then complaining on getting too many hits because of that is pathetic. got me?

Seltsam, dass der bemerkenswerteste Abschnitt aus der sich in dieser Woche der Kriminalität widmenden ZEIT-Serie über die Deutschen, nicht online ist:

Bei mir in letzter Zeit immer häufiger bei Musik und gewissen Stimmen. Den Sänger von 16 Horsepower z.B. kann ich absolut nicht mehr hören. Der treibt mich zum Wahnsinn mit seiner Predigerstimme. Oder die gesamte Rockmusik der letzten zehn Jahre von Oasis über die Strokes, White Stripes bis zu Franz Ferdinand nun. Alles immer die gleiche Scheiße. Beschissene Kopien von beschissenen Kopien.

Ich nehme mal an, dass die Idiosynkrasie eine Alterskrankheit ist. Eine Art Vorgeschmack auf Alzheimer. Man ekelt sich nur noch vor der Gegenwart bis man dann nix mehr von ihr mitkriegt. Was ist nun erstrebenswerter? Das ist hier die Frage.

Nobody says nothing in such a clever and funny way as Brad Zellar: All The Stories Have Not Been Told, But Those That Have Not Been Told I Do Not Have

Two blogs which have made me start my own weblog thingy have disappeared or are on hiatus.

Firstly Jorn Barger from Robotwisdom (cannot find server?) who physically disappeared and didn't update his page for more than three months. His beard grew quite long according to the photo in this Wired article which gives details of his whereabouts now. Barger started his site in 1997 and was one of the first webloggers. I have always found his internet approach interesting and instructive. He constructed some useful flat portal pages with lots of links to his favourite writer Joyce and also to Joni Mitchell, my favourite songwriter. He also thought a lot about language, artificial intelligence and the internet as a meeting-point of the two. On the other hand he was a little bit of an obsessive. The end of the Wired article shows that his common sense does not seem to be extremely well developed:

Josh Kortbein was the first music blogger. He started his Josh Blog end of 1998, I discovered it about a year later and have been reading it since. It has always been a difficult read with few links to the outside world. Music was often analysed from a theoretical viewpoint. In the past years the blog has been leaning heavily towards philosophy, especially Wittgenstein. On Christmas last year Josh wrote something personal in his blog which has always been a very rare thing. It was on depression and touched me and I wanted to mention it as this is a feeling I know but I forgot about it. Now his blog is on hiatus with the message

on top of the screen. I hope he gets better and I also wish that he will start blogging again soon. Here is the personal post which I lifted from the Google cache:

I know that my English is crap but I prefer to write in English as my German is even worse. It's a way of hiding the fact that I cannot even write properly in my mother tongue. I am joking but there is a grain of truth in this.