the j. botter weblog

ufc, music, technology and the fun of affiliate marketing

links for 2009-04-16

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Written by J. Botter

April 16, 2009 at 11:56 am

Posted in 493

And Now, I Bid Goodbye To WordPress.com

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WordPress.com has served me faithfully over the years. It’s easy, it’s free and stable.

But recently, I’ve decided that I need more control over every aspect of my site. If I want to run advertising on my blog, I need to be able to do so. If I want to change some stylesheet stuff, I need to be able to. And since I already have a Media Temple server, I figured I might as well find a good domain name (since jeremybotter.com and jbotter.com are currently owned by squatters).

So, without any drama or tears whatsoever, I’d like to ask you to follow me over to my new home: thatjeremyguy.com.

You’ll get more of the same stuff you find here. I’m not re-inventing the wheel. But I do think that I’ll be able to present everything to you in a pleasing manner, not that 95% of you care about design. After all, most of you are looking for Brock Lesnar/Randy Couture fight information, MySpace codes, and OneRepublic, and two of those three things haven’t been seen around these parts in months.

Written by J. Botter

November 11, 2008 at 4:57 pm

Posted in General

Jumping Into Mixed Martial Arts

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As any regular reader of his blog (or even friends of mine) could tell you, I’m a huge mixed martial arts fan. I’ve recently decided that I actually enjoy the sport enough to try it, and I’ve realized that I’m horribly out of shape and I get very bored running on a treadmill, so I am enrolling at a local mixed martial arts school.

There are actually two schools I am considering: Miletich Fighting Systems and Westside Mixed Martial Arts. MFS is located in Houston, and of course it’s Miletich. Westside is located in Katy, about 5 minutes from my house, and has one of the finest MMA facilities in the United States (supposedly it’s only behind Xtreme Couture, Throwdown and the original MFS school in terms of facilities).

I have an introductory BJJ lesson in the next few days at both schools, and I’ll make my decision. Right now, I’m leaning towards Westside simply because of the incredible facility and the location to my house, plus the dedicated trainers for each art. Either way, I’ll simply be jumping into jiu-jitsu training for a long while before moving on to the other facets of MMA.

I’ll keep you posted. I will probably turn my experiences into a series of columns for Inside Fights, so stay tuned.

Written by J. Botter

November 10, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Change.gov

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If this site (the official site of the President-elect) is any indication of how this new administration will continue to use the internet to empower and inform, we’re truly entering a new area in Washington.

Written by J. Botter

November 9, 2008 at 7:27 am

Yes, We Did.

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Barack Obama, Portrait

President-elect Barack Obama

Written by J. Botter

November 5, 2008 at 3:57 pm

Posted in General

Off To New York

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I’m off to New York City through Tuesday evening for the 2008 version of AdTech. I posted quite a bit during last year’s trip, but I’m not taking a laptop and I’m not sure I have the patience to post from my G1. I will, however, be posting from my Twitter account regularly.

Written by J. Botter

November 1, 2008 at 5:58 pm

UFC Total Rankings: October 2008

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I typically publish these rankings after the major UFC event of each month, but the scheduling of major events on back-to-back weekends in October forced me to delay these longer than I’d like. As a result, there are three shows worth of changes included here: Fight Night 15, UFC 89 and UFC 90. The November rankings will be published after UFC 91 in just over two weeks.

Before we start, here’s a brief disclaimer:

I call these UFC Total Rankings because they are based on a bunch of factors: win-loss record, method of victory, competition the fighter is facing, and the push given to them by the UFC matchmakers. I try to picture each weight class in the same way that Joe Silva or Dana White would, which means I factor in marketability, current drawing power and other things that rankings typically don’t account for.

They are wholly my opinion and should be treated as such. Champions are given top billing because they are champions and regarded by the company and mainstream fans as the best in their division by the company, regardless of the skills or overall record. This means that if a fighter ranked #7 one month defeats the champ for the belt, he will automatically jump to the #1 ranking. If a weight class has an interim champion, that fighter will assume the second position, with everyone else following. 

A complete archive of my fighter rankings can be found here. These rankings are also published at Inside Fights and on my Houston Chronicle UFC blog.

 

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Written by J. Botter

October 31, 2008 at 9:24 am

Instructions Fail

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I’ve made lolcats before, but this is my first submission to Pundit Kitchen. My cousin Josh took the picture. As he says, “it’s almost tragic.”

Written by J. Botter

October 28, 2008 at 7:35 pm

T-Mobile G1 Thoughts

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I’ve had my G1 for a few days now, so I wanted to leave a few impressions. 

  • I really, really dig the UI. Obviously, it’s not as elegant as the iPhone, but it’s very nice and very functional. The screen looks fantastic and fonts are crystal clear and sharp. 
  • I love the OTA sync for Contacts and Google Calendar. I powered on the phone, entered in my Gmail account info and had all my contacts and events downloaded within 10 seconds. I’d gone through my phone and updated my Gmail contacts with all my numbers, and I set the phone to display only contacts with phone numbers entered. It even synced the photos I have for some of my contacts in Gmail to the phone for use as a caller image, including the Gmail pictures that my contacts had set for themselves on their own accounts. I wanted to add a caller image for my dad, so I went into Gmail Contacts on the computer, picked a photo in Gmail, cropped it in Gmail, and saved it. Within 3 seconds that image was my dad’s new caller image on my phone. I LOVE this — it might be my favorite feature of the phone. It makes managing a contact list soooo easy. 
  • I actually like the keyboard. There are plenty of people who have complained that you have to reach around the angled portion of the phone in order to type. Maybe it’s just the way I hold the phone, but it’s not even remotely an issue for me. The keys could be a LITTLE less flat, but I’ll get used to it. 
  • I haven’t really used the browser too much outside of going through the different sites that have iPhone versions (facebook, digg, etc), so I don’t have any comments on it yet. 
  • Android Market has plenty of apps so far, but I haven’t used that many. The Weather Channel app is very well done, but my favorite app by far (as I assumed it would be) is ShopSavvy. I can launch ShopSavvy, click scan to bring up the bar code scanner, scan the barcode and find the cheapest prices for that product both online and in local stores using the GPS. It works perfectly, is very fast and is very elegant in design. I can’t imagine that it would ever be an everyday app, but it’s fun. I also like the Pro Football Live app, though there are a few bugs in it. I haven’t downloaded the video player because I don’t really have a use for it, but the YouTube app is very fast and works well. 

Overall, I love the phone. I do like the iPhone a lot, but as I expected, for someone who does everything inside of Google software, this phone is a dream.

Written by J. Botter

October 28, 2008 at 6:40 pm

UFC 90: Quick Results

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SEAN SHERK D. TYSON GRIFFIN: This one went to a decision as I expected, but it was also the fight of the night. Just an all-out brawl from the two guys I’d least expected it from, with tons of great striking. Sherk’s standup game has improved 5,000% since he was picked apart by BJ Penn earlier this year.

JUNIOR DE LOS SANTOS D. FABRICIO WERDUM: I predicted Santos would win this one, but I didn’t think it would happen like this. Santos knocked Werdum out in the first round with a fantastic uppercut. 

GRAY MAYNARD D. RICH CLEMENTI: This fight was boring.

THIAGO ALVES D. JOSH KOSCHECK: Thiago Alves picked Koscheck apart for all three rounds. Alves is scary good, and he’s definitely the top contender to St. Pierre’s belt. He might even give St. Pierre a run for his money. 

ANDERSON SILVA D. PATRICK COTE: This was the worst ending to a main event fight that I’ve ever seen. Cote did a little jump in the third round and immediately went down with a knee injury. The fight was stopped and Silva won by TKO.

I’m exhausted, but I did want to point something out before I crash. I’ve been reading stories from lots of folks about how great Cote was for taking Silva to the third round, where nobody else had taken him in the UFC. Cote even mentioned it after the fight. That’s asinine. Patrick Cote did not take Anderson Silva to the third round — Anderson Silva toyed with Patrick Cote for two rounds. He ALLOWED Cote to get to the third round. Cote never touched Silva, and the few times that Silva decided to take action, he drilled Cote with knees and punches. 

That being said, I am not sure why Silva decided to wait around. His legend has been built on finishing people, and he’s been built up as a killer. Tonight, that killer never got a chance to come out. Would Silva have finished him? Probably. But the fact that Cote made it to the third round doesn’t mean he deserves a rematch.

Written by J. Botter

October 25, 2008 at 11:50 pm