Speed Link Sunday! – April 22nd

Time for our weekly round of linking to various interesting posts in the blogosphere. After I wrote this I realized how insanely long this week’s speed linking is. In fact, even though I skipped the fifth link in favor of recognizing everyone that gave me rice this week, writing it wasn’t speedy at all! However, I do have extensive opinions and comments on all the topics I’ve chosen this week, which is probably why I found them interesting in the first place. I probably should’ve split this into five separate posts and may elaborate on some of this later but…that’s later. Anyways, on to the link lovin’!

1. My friend Carl of k-rad.hk describes, in detail, how he ate testicles…with pictures! Carl is currently living in Hong Kong where there is no shortage of weird food. Personally, although the pictures don’t look very appetizing, I’d probably try it at least once. I’ve never been one to shy away from strange food. Carl mentions ox tongue, which happens to be one of my favorite dishes. Baked with some tomato sauce on top of spaghetti and they are delicious. I do draw the line at any sort of animal penis though. I’m rather sure I don’t want to eat anything that was once a wang.

2. Gdog from The Daily Kimchi, who is teaching English in Korea, writes about the national obsession with studying. The eleven year old kids in his classes have as many as TWELVE subjects to study for. That’s horrific! I complain about having to study for four! Or even three. This is a common theme in most Asian countries and Asian families. Most kids are pressured by their parents to study all the time. Most go to school and then to a tutor and then spend the rest of the night doing homework. Personally, I think it’s too much to ask of children to study that hard since I remember spending most of my days in elementary school doing…everything but studying. Then again, the culture is very different and, let’s face it, all school until you hit university is easy here in North America. Remember kids, regardless of what your parents tell you, school is not the most important thing in the universe.

3. Kelly Cho brings up the important issue of gun control, something that we should all be more aware of in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting. Kelly is going to hate me but I love guns. I don’t necessarily agree with all the uses of firearms but I love the precision and intricacy of a well-made weapon. Going to a shooting range is insanely fun. Personally, I believe the issue we should really focus on isn’t tougher gun control laws or whether or not the Constitution says you can have firearms. The real issue is responsibility. I’m never anti-gun, or anti-anything for that matter. I’m just anti-stupid. If someone can be safe and responsible with a weapon, there’s no reason they should be prohibited from owning one. There’s also the issue of…why on earth do Americans kill each other with guns more than any other people on earth? It boggles my mind.

4. Nate Whitehill writes on how to get traffic based on your site’s niche. What he says is quite true. While getting to the front page of Digg may send you a gigantic amount of traffic in the short term, many of those people won’t be interested in what you have to say on the rest of your site. You’re unlikely to retain many of them for return visits while targeting specific user groups for traffic may get you a larger number of return visitors and RSS subs despite the smaller amount of short term traffic. I got Dugg early on but since my site isn’t specifically about cars, I doubt I retained too many visitors. This is something I’ve been struggling with since I started in November. While I’ve been quite happy with my blog’s progress, I’ve yet to find a specific niche or focus here since I’m more of a “jack-of-all-trades, master of none.” than an expert in a specific area. Something I’ll have to work on.

5. Finally, I’d like to thank everyone that voted for me this week when Nice4Rice posted a review of my blog. A big thank you to Spud Oregon as well. I currently sit in second all-time but a distant second to all-time leader Culture Shiok!

fruityoaty
Kelly Cho
Danny Dang
Foximus
Fleeing The Social Scene
Hate The Grind
BlueFur
Michael Kwan
Ms. Danielle
Sha.tc
Geeks Are Sexy
Carl Pei
Leo Chiang
Can’t Coach That
Great Qanda
Michael McKinlay

Thanks for the love, everyone.

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