Nat Arem's Blog

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is something that I never thought about much before my trip to Costa Rica. The guys at PSO and P5s really opened my eyes to the power of google as a traffic generation tool. Of course, I’d *known* that google could provide significant traffic, it was just never in the forefront of my mind. I was more focused on things like user interface, as I probably should have been.

However, at some point, once the product is doing well, any webmaster (being used as a generic term for someone who runs websites) should really look into SEO. So I decided to read up and get the guys at BLUFF into SEO as soon as possible.

Luckily for me, the guy who runs the websites at BLUFF (bluffmagazine.com, worldseriesofpoker.com, fightmagazine.com) instantly agreed to get on board. Not only that, he started reading as well. Soon we knew *most* of what we needed to know to really improve overall site SEO. And the results have been dramatic to say the least.

Here is a graph of our daily search engine traffic:

While I am leaving off the hard numbers for obvious reasons, you can see how our traffic from search engines has basically doubled in three weeks. That’s extraordinary. It speaks not only to the job that we’ve done fixing the website, but also to how incredibly bad our SEO was before. I expect it to keep climbing as we keep making improvements. Most notably, we still don’t have one of the big keys in SEO — an XML sitemap. Also, a number of our changes haven’t been indexed by google yet, so we haven’t really seen the results. And none of that has anything to do with our off-site SEO (ie, link building) that I plan on getting us involved in.

Edit: I also want to thank Steve Badger and his poker-seo website. Very helpful commentary, although he did say that some of the people at BLUFF are untrustworthy . At least I know he wasn’t referring to me as I’ve never spoken to him and the only contact I’ve ever had with him was via email in the last day or two. Nonetheless, his analysis provided a number of helpful hints.

I very rarely make “news” or “issue” posts, but this one caught my attention and I’d like to know what people think about the case.

I’m not sure how many of my readers know about what is going on, but a 61 y/o guy named Joe Horn in Pasadena, TX called 911 a few weeks ago to inform the police of a couple of guys breaking into the house next door to his. The entire tape has been released online (see this youtube clip). He grew pretty antsy as the call was going on basically saying he wouldn’t let the guys get away with it if they left the house and the police still hadn’t arrived. He also talked about bringing his shotgun if and when he did have to go outside. Sure enough, he saw the suspects leaving the house, the police hadn’t arrived, he went outside and that’s when it gets murky.

People on his side say that he did what he needed to do to protect himself.

People against him say that he acted as “the judge, jury and executioner” in the case and that he didn’t have a right to kill them.

A couple things to note.

First, Horn says the suspects came onto his property and were threatening him after he went outside. Second, he took three shots as can be confirmed by the tape. Two quickly, then another one a few seconds later (around the 7 min mark). Third, he either says “boom, you’re dead” or “move, you’re dead” and then fires just afterward. I’ve heard both being reported on the news (see 6:49).

It’s a pretty interesting story because of a law passed in Texas that basically says you can defend your property with deadly force. I don’t know the law, but I pulled this from a news release:

Under Texas law, people may use deadly force to protect their own property or to stop arson, burglary, robbery, theft or criminal mischief at night.

But the legislator who authored the “castle doctrine” bill told the Chronicle it was never intended to apply to a neighbor’s property, to prompt a “‘Law West of the Pecos’ mentality or action,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Wentworth. “You’re supposed to be able to defend your own home, your own family, in your house, your place of business or your motor vehicle.”

(See CBS article)

I don’t know if I really buy that argument. If you listen to the tape, Horn was hardly feeling like he was in personal danger during the robbery. Those guys weren’t coming into his house and Horn could have easily just let them run and hope the police caught them. But what if you voluntarily getting involved prompts them to enter your property? It isn’t like you could blame Horn for “provoking” them. We also don’t know where the robbers actually were even though Horn does say that they entered his property (or at least that they were coming towards him). To me, it sounds a lot like Horn is making excuses about why he had to kill them. Of course, he could also be very nervous in the wake of killing two people with police on the way (as anyone would be). Also, I don’t really think he had to kill them and, considering that he took a total of three shots, they were either at close range or he was a pretty good shot and he could have shot them somewhere that wouldn’t kill them (note that he says one is down the street, so he might have fired as the guy was running away — not a threat to his property).

On the other hand, the “vigilante” side of me says, you know what, those two guys got what they probably deserved. Sure robbery doesn’t equate to being executed, but people that rob like that are bad people. They don’t deserve to walk in our streets. I want them to either be in prison or be dead. I can’t say that I’d rather them be dead than be in prison, but I really don’t feel too bad for them.

Another issue that has been brought up in the media is the race issue. Horn is white. The two robbers were black according to what I’ve read. However, honestly, I don’t care about the race issue. If he was racially motivated, he didn’t really make it clear in the 911 call. He was ask to describe them and he did, but he really didn’t focus on their race what-so-ever. Considering how heated he got, I think some racism would have slipped through if that’s what was in his head. I don’t think it was race that made him shoot them, although, obviously, you’re entitled to your opinion on that.

Anyway, to wrap this up, I guess I’m really conflicted. I don’t think they deserved to die at his hands. I kinda wish he’d just shot them enough to incapacitate them from getting away (although I don’t really know if that’s the best idea, it’s better than killing them). But also, I’m glad he didn’t let them get away. I hate people getting away from a crime like that. It’s just so dirty to go onto someone else’s property, violate their home and take their possessions for your personal gain.

What would you do if you had a gun and someone was getting away with your family heirlooms? What about your neighbor’s possessions? Or just what are your thoughts on this whole thing?

See his post: Prop bet with N 82 50 24

It should be interesting to see if he makes it. Bad luck to him.

So for those of you who follow this blog, you’ll recall that I switched from the Serendipity blog platform to WordPress back on June 22, 2007 (blog software change). Along with that software change came a new database structure. Which meant that my posts didn’t come with me. I planned on doing something like natarem.com/oldblog and just putting the old posts in a subdirectory, but I really didn’t want to do that. I wanted them to be in WordPress and be integrated with this blog. The problem is, that isn’t really all that easy. There is not a good Serendipity to WordPress converter that I was able to find.

Therefore, I spent a few hours tonight basically converting the database over manually and adding the old database onto the WordPress structure with this blog. It was pretty painful actually. Tons of annoyances, but I think I finally got it working. You can currently click on the left to see archives going back to my first post.

One important note: Images from prior to June 22, 2007 won’t show up if I uploaded them onto my blog. I did not port over the uploads directory — at least, not yet. I will likely do it soon or, at least, at some point in the future.

EDIT: Oh yea, and comments haven’t moved over yet either. I’m not sure if I will or won’t move those, but I do have them if I decide to. They will be a huge pain in the ass, so I’m leaning towards not doing it.

LOL, this had me rolling on the floor.

What the hell kind of call is that? But wait! It has happened before.

What a great call. I wish that was called more often.

Okay, so, growing up, I went to a small private school for 14 years (pre-k, k, 1-12th grade). I think by graduation we had around 95 kids and that was the biggest class in the history of the school. When I started there in 1986, the class of 2000 was substantially smaller. I don’t really remember what year Doug Mand started, but I’m *pretty* sure it was relatively early on. I know he wasn’t a “high school”-only person and I’m pretty sure he started before middle school (some might call it junior high). Anyway, the point is, I met him a long time ago and we were in a small group interacting on a daily basis. And even though I don’t really consider myself to be a friend of his because we never hung out with the same crowd, I know one thing about Doug Mand: he is one funny dude. Even for the people who might not have liked him (I don’t know any, just theorizing), I don’t think anyone could possibly claim he wasn’t funny.

Also, for some reason, my class had tons of artsy people in it. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I just mean they like the performing arts. Everything from music to acting to writing. I was just waiting to start to see them turning up in entertainment because it’s just inevitable that talent will usually rise to the top.

So, getting to the point of this post. My friend/former neighbor Eric Strauss of thepokerfilm fame emailed me the other day with the College Humor “Brohemian Rhapsody” (just click the link, I don’t want to clutter up this post with an embed) video and said “do you recognize anyone in this clip? think high school” — I obviously immediately watched it and saw Doug Mand staring me in the face. Pretty cool to see former classmates making a splash. Here are a few screenshots of Doug in the film:

So I’m getting ready to write this post and I decide to see what else Doug has been in. Knowing his talent for comedy, I wasn’t surprised to find a lot more. Here are a few of his projects:

1. hammerkatz – horrible website and lots of messed up stuff, but a comedy group Doug is involved with
2. Chubby Skinny Kids production – I would link to them, but they have a truly awful myspace page and I don’t want to encourage the use of that shitty website that somehow became popular. That being said, there’s a blog post about them here. It has a bunch of videos linked up and some mention of a pilot for some networks, so hopefully that does well.

My high school was really filled with some sick talent – Remember this was a small high school where everyone knew everybody! Here are just a few of them:

1. http://www.nba.com/playerfile/hakim_warrick/index.html – Hakim Warrick: NBA player and former college star.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Shakur – I would have put his NBA player file but unfortunately it’s kinda empty. He was a McDonald’s All-American, a four-year starter at Arizona and has gotten a little interest out of the NBA. I get the feeling he’ll end up overseas, but he’s still going to be a solid pro.
3. Mike Cook. Senior Pitt guard. He’s averaging 10 points/game this season. The funny thing is, when he was in high school, everyone thought he was the next great player. No one would have picked Hakim to end up in the NBA over Mike. But things happen and now Mike will probably end up playing pro ball, but I’m not sure about his NBA chances. That being said, he’s playing for a high-profile and currently undefeated team, so anything can happen.
4. Evan Grove. Lead singer/songwriter/guitarist for The Anthem Sound. I know they aren’t famous, but they’re good. If they keep at it and get a lucky break or two, I think they have big potential. Also, Evan was in my class whereas the basketball players were all within a year or two, but not in my exact year.
5. Myself. Not to plug myself too much, but I might be behind Hakim as the 2nd most financially-successful graduate in the 2000+ time range. Tough to say considering that I don’t keep in touch with most of my high school colleagues. And not like money is all that matters, so it could also be said that I’ve done a number of things of substance in a niche community — and I have a lot more still left to contribute.
6. stevesbets. He graduated a year behind me and even though we weren’t great friends in high school, we’ve become much better friends over the last two years or so. For all of the bad things people say about him, he’s won a lot of money playing poker. He’s also a feared HU player — tons and tons of players will talk all sorts of shit about him, but when it comes to HU, they’ll sit out every time. Also, he’s just getting a good blog going, so check that out.

There are TONS of others too. I could go on naming them for a long time but I’ll stop here. And none of this would ever mention the people in Harvard Law (at least two from my class) and other great grad schools.

Suffice it to say that I’m proud of the accomplishments of my former colleagues, I can’t wait to see how everything develops.