The Weblog Dictionary

<drumroll>
For your b l i n g reading pleasure…
I present now…
The newest featurette…

blog dictionary

As an effort to make life easier on you, I have created this dictionary to explain some of the more obtuse aspects of things you may read on my blog, bling. If you find a word you don’t understand, let me know and I’ll add it’s definition here.

• 404
  1. the error code for “file not found”
  2. slang used to describe the error message displayed by a server when the error code 404 is returned
• acronymphomaniacs — people who are constantly horny and enjoy making and/or using acronyms; see TheBrad
• AFK — acronym: away from keyboard
• AoS — acronym: “Apartment of Sin”; the residence of Chris O’Brien, regardless of his physical location
• B-Dawg — a nick of Bryan
• BION — acronym: “believe it or not”
• bling
  1. the name of my blog
  2. short for “rambling”, which is what I do there
• blink
  1. short for “web link”
  2. a bookmark or URL
• blog
  1. short for “weblog”, anything on-line that is updated frequently by one or more people that is not owned by a major corporation; at least that’s my definition; good examples are re-run, /dan.el.ope/, and bling
  2. also called “on-line journal”
  3. to update or otherwise edit a blog
  4. from Follow Me Here…:
     Unlike a list of “cool links,” the links in a blog are “hot”, more timely and dated and, as one commentator put it, of “finer granularity.” Another maven describes a weblog as “kind of a continual tour, with a human guide whom you get to know”.
  5. a good essay on blogs
• blogger
  1. one who blogs
  2. the automated blog-publishing tool created by the pyramaniacs at Blogger
• Bloggerville — a term used to describe the blog community
• blogging
  1. to post
  2. blog
• #blogIRC — a secret gathering of bloggers; meets every Wednesday on the IRC server irc.turlyming.net; the blogger elite discuss drinking, computers, sex, relationships, blog news, and anything else that they want
• blogover — a weblog redesign; done by someone other than the author or with outside consultation; see also webloglog
  Thanks to Jish for the word!
• blogvana
  1. (n) – the state entered by a blogger when that person’s blog reaches a popularity level which is in direct proportion to the number of things needed to be blogged about its readers; the state at which the number of personal family, friends, or acquaintances of the blogger equals or exceeds the number of neuroses carried by the blogger in question; bloggers reach this state and either quit (become “losers”) or forge ahead (become “the blogger elite”)
  2. the state at which a blogger no longer tries to hide the fact that s/he is ego-surfing; a blogger who is in blogvana will click directly on their link from an ego-surf and not try to cut and paste or open new windows to hide the fact that s/he is ego-surfing
• Boing-y Boing-y Boing-y — the noise made by Wakko when he bounces around a room
• bookmark — web site addresses saved on your computer to make returning to them easier
• brb — acronym: “be right back”
• Bud — the name of my computer
• browser — software for viewing web pages
• cache — temporary storage space; web pages you visit are stored in your browser’s cache directory on your hard drive, when you return to a recently visited page, your browser displays it from the cache, not the web, saving you time and reducing traffic on the server
• cam — short for webcam
• cgi — common gateway interface; a method of handling forms on web sites
• cgi-bin — the most common web server directory that stores CGI programs and scripts
• cms — content management system
  any tool used to organize data; in bloggerville this generally means a web-based application such as blogger or greymatter which is used to organize journal entries (posts)
• dead trees — books, IRL
• derling — a superior; the opposite of underling (obviously)
• dink
  • acronym: “delving into naked kvetching”
  • acronym: “design is nifty, kids”
  • acronym: “doin’ it nekkid, kinda”
  • see also thinkdink
• eGads™ — the electronic form of regular gads; much faster than regular gads and a common method of communication, exclamation, or gyration in Bloggerville
• ego-surfing — to ego-surf is to use any search engine (especially blog search engines) to find other sites (particularly blogs) that are linking to you
• eMail whore — someone who will do anything on their blog to get eMail
• fauxcam — a graphic on a web site which appears as if it is being generated by a webcam but which is really just a static image
• faux html — writing something in contrived HTML tags to make a point or express a feeling which may otherwise not be conveyed through words alone; example: <exasperated>Stop it!</exasperated>
• featurette — a “special” item on a blogger‘s blog, usually relevant to Bloggerville residents and no one else; see also Appendix B – Featurettes
• fish fillet — see girlhero
• GBBC — acronym: “Gay Boy Bloggers Club”
• girlhero — see girlhero.org
• GOL — acronym: “giggling out loud”
• greyMatter — a cms similar to blogger; created by Noah Grey
• HDGM — acronym: “harmlessly distant gay man”; see TheBrad
• heh — a short laugh, exactly what it looks like
• hottie mchothot — a good-looking female
• HTML — acronym: “hyper-text markup language”; this is not technically a programming “language”; it is a sort of code which browsers interpret to present web sites to people on line
• hyperlink — a clickable item on a web page which will direct a browser to load another web page, or to move to another spot on the currently-viewed web page
• ICQ — an instant messaging system used by numerous bloggers to annoy one another constantly, see also IM
• IM — acronym: “instant message”, a pop-up message sent through any of several instant messaging systems
• IMHO — acronym: “in my humble opinion”
• IMNSHO — acronym: “in my not so humble opinion”
• IRC — acronym: “internet relay chat”
• IRL — acronym: “in real life” is a way to talk about things that are not on-line; things IRL happen at an incredibly slow pace and I can only rarely link to them
• linkslut — someone who does anything to get someone else to link to them
• LOL — acronym: “laughing out loud”
• LWLDROOTFOD — acronym: “Lethal Weapon Lisa Daly, Righteous Owner of the Fist of Doom”
• <MarthaWash> — Zaftig disco diva known primarily for her performance as one half of the duos Two Tons o’ Fun and The Weather Girls (“It’s Raining Men”). In the late 80s, Wash provided uncredited wails on dance hits for C&C Music Factory
  Thanks to Brad for the word!
• meme — any expression (usually the smallest/shortest possible) that can convey meaning; an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture
• meta — loosely, it means “about”; anything meta is not of itself, but about something else; thus a metablog is “about” other blogs. metacubed is about blogs that are about blogs; met4quad is only about metacubed
• metafiltered — to be linked on the website metafilter; often this creates so many web hits that a site becomes unbearably slow or unavailable; to be suddenly enormously popular
• m3tacubed — the metablog of Crazy Uncle Joe; m3tacubed‘s purpose is comedy, achieved by blogging only blogs
• MovableType — a cms similar to blogger; created by Ben and Mena Trott
• MuffinAss — my sometimes nick in #blogIRC
• nick — abbreviation of nickname
• NPC — acronym: “non-player character” is a term used to describe people who do not exist in the on-line world; most of my friends IRL are NPCs; the term is from old role-playing games where the gamers would act as wizards and warriors and such and the gamemaster controlled the NPCs
• OB — the oceanblog; a community blog at bling
• OSOD — oral sex on demand
• PING — computers do this to make sure another computer is listening; TheBrad does this all the time, for no apparent reason
• Pearl Jam — one of my favorite bands; I have a huge collection of Pearl Jam CDs and you can almost always find a track or two in my songs directory
• permalinks — a hyperlink on a blog which links to a specific post
• pocket jesus — see trenchant.org
• porch — my favorite Pearl Jam song
• post
  • a blog entry
  • to create a blog entry
• pounce — to jump on playfully, forcefully hug in an excited manner
  definition supplied by Master Pouncer
• puce — random interjection, appropriate at any conversational lull
• referral logs — files which can be viewed, usually only by a webmaster, which detail who has visited a website and/or how the visitor found the site
• ROTFGMAO — acronym: “rolling on the floor, giggling my ass off”
• ROTFLMAO — acronym: “rolling on the floor, laughing my ass off”
• RTFM — acronym: “read the fucking manual”
• sausage:box — the current male to female ratio of #blogIRC
• simulblogulation — (the pointless) act of identical content being posted to several weblogs simultaneously
• Spoon! — the battle-cry of The Tick
• sproink — a word I created for my permalinks; it doesn’t mean anything
• TheBrad — see The BradLands
• thinkdink — what happens when you send a sea otter to do a chimp’s job; see also thinkdink.com
• ultracrepidarian — a person who gives opinions beyond his scope of knowledge
• URL — acronym: “universal resource locator”; a web address. example: http://www.dolemite.com/pimpbuilder.htm
• URLDroppings — originally used to describe the flood of URLs in #blogIRC which appeared at the witching hour, the term has since come to mean any URL posted seemingly at random
• Wakko — one of the Warner brothers; an Animaniac
• weblog — see blog
• webcam — a camera which uploads a photograph of its surroundings to a web site at some predetermined interval
• witching hour — the time, usually near 9 pm EST, when #blogIRC suddenly becomes flooded with URLs
• wood — a good-looking male; also, “total wood”
• zip — To compress a file with WinZIP, PKZIP, or any other PC file compression program