My gf flew out to Manila this morning, I’m off to L.A. in a couple of hours. We both return on the 12th.

My short attention span should be well-catered to on the flight, with about 25 gig of music on my iPhone, 20 or 30 hours of videos on my MacBook and a dozen or so books on my Kindle.

But I’ve barely slept in the past 24 hours, so I could end up sleeping most of the flight away. That would be a disaster as it arrives in L.A. at 9:15 local time and I’ll need to try to get into the time zone as quickly as possible.

Have just weighed my suitcase. It comes in at 25 kilos. That’s under the limit but pretty effin’ heavy to me. I’ve had to pack for two somewhat different climates. On Tuesday, L.A. will hit a high of 28 degrees (that’s Celsius). And on Wednesday night, when I arrive in New York, it’s gonna be 3 degrees. So a heavy jacket and a couple of sweaters in the bag.

Also, on the theory that used DVDs and CDs would fetch a higher price at Amoeba than in Mong Kok, there’s a few of those stuffed in that I’ll sell off (though odds are I’ll trade them off for a couple of things instead of taking the cash). While this might make my bag lighter for the LA to NY leg of the trip, I ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon in a kind of before-I’m-unemployed-spending-spree. That should all fit in for the trip home – though I’m dreading the physical size of that Time-Life Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 9 disc set, something else I ordered.

Anyway, the L.A. stop-over is primarily for a potential future job, so wish me luck! (And, no, don’t fear, said job would not be in the U.S.)

Christopher Walken “covers” Lady Gaga’s Poker Face on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Naturally done in the style that only Christopher Walken can do. Found here.

Note that the person responsible for managing me (as unmanageable as I am) for the past two and a half years was on a different continent from me. I have a theory that he may, either purposely or inadvertently, be responsible for the fact that I wasn’t one of the few chosen to stay. I could be wrong.

Anyway, last week, my final week at the company, I changed my voicemail message at work. “This is my final week at the company. Friday is my last day. I’m not checking voicemail too often this week. If this is urgent, please call me on my mobile phone, 9xxx-xxxx. Thanks.”

Thursday, my manager left me a voicemail message. “Hi Spike, wanted to have a chance to say goodbye to you, wish you luck. Hope your job search is going well. I heard your voicemail message so I’ll try you on your mobile. Or you try to call me when you have a chance.”

Four days have elapsed and not a call from him. Hell, in the time it took to leave that message, he could have dialed my mobile and had that conversation with me.

Perhaps I’m mistaken but it seems to me that the protocol of the situation demands that he call me and not vice versa. And there are times, believe it or not, that I do stand on ceremony.

So this really bugs me. But one is not supposed to burn bridges, right? I guess I’ll send him an email.

Or at least of the minute.

“In many countries, city planning is for people’s well-being, but in Hong Kong city planning is for money-making.”

– Winston Chu Ka-sun, founder of the Society for the Protection of the Harbour

If someone adds me on Twitter, I will generally take a look at their profile and their most recent tweets. If it looks interesting enough, I add that person. And if that person lists a web site on their profile, I’ll check it out.

This morning, I was added by charlesfrith. He’s got 1,173 followers on Twitter. I’ve got 116. He’s in Hong Kong and has a blog I’ve never heard of, Punk Planning. I’m not aware of any blog that I subscribe to that links to him. And I don’t subscribe to any of the blogs he links on his page; haven’t even heard of them.

In one of his recent posts, he publishes this chart of his recent Feedburner stats:

I rarely check my stats on Feedburner, but I did after seeing that. And here’s what I saw for myself.

• 67 subscribers (on average)

In terms of direct hits on my blog, I seem to average about 500-600 unique visits per day. So somewhat less than 10 times the number of people coming here in a browser as opposed to a reader. If that kind of ratio is universal (and I have no reason to believe it would be), does that mean that his blog is getting 10,000 unique visits per day?

Like my blog, his blog is all over the map in terms of subjects. Some stuff related to his occupation, some stuff related to t-shirts he’s wearing or stuff he’s lost in taxis, a bit of politics, some books he’s read, lots of links posted on del.icio.us with a couple of lines of commentary. Googling his name doesn’t reveal anything special.

So how is he drawing so many people to his blog? (For one thing, most of his posts are a lot shorter than most of mine.)

Okay, my blog is not a commercial enterprise (neither is his). In my 4 (or 5? or 6?) years of blogging, I’ve earned all of US$100 from AdSense. So in theory, I shouldn’t get too worked up over comparative numbers.

Of course, ego is involved. I write what I write the way I want to write it and I’m happy with that but of course I’m happier knowing that people read my ravings and droolings and sometimes feel stirred (or pissed) enough to want to comment.

And then again, now that I am unemployed, I find myself thinking more and more about the “Spike” brand and how I might turn that into a career with a reasonable rate of return. My blog, my column in BC, my investment in the PASM Workshop, a relatively good network of contacts across a broad spectrum – I think I’ve laid the architecture for something, even if I’m still not sure what that something is.

(And while I wish I had a more unique handle than “Spike,” the fact is that it’s a nickname I’ve been using since 1991, when it was bestowed upon me in a sarcastic fashion by a VP in the bank I worked for at the time, and I held onto it as a tiny act of defiance.)

I just downloaded to my Kindle the first chapter of a book titled Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk. Yes, a difficult to spell last name and a vaguely obnoxious title. I read that first chapter and it seemed like it was all surface, all pop self help superficial crap, all 160 pages of it. But it’s number 48 on the Amazon best seller list, not too shabby. And of the 89 reviews on Amazon, 74 rate it at 5 stars. And one of the quotes about the book on the Amazon page is:

“Gary was the first person to push me on the importance of personal brand and transparency – this was months before anyone was talking about it, he’s always two steps ahead of anyone else.” (Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg.com )

So maybe I ought to take this book a bit more seriously.

Well, I’m leaving for the US tonight. I’ll be spending much of the time sitting in my mother’s apartment in Da Bronx without much to do, which means giving this subject a lot more thought.

One thing I may need to do is to stop hiding behind this “secret identity.” It was convenient for years because I didn’t want people in my workplace to know about the blog or the column, as I frequently covered topics related to my industry in a way that people would have frowned upon. But now I don’t have a job, so that’s no longer a concern. And the Spike HK Facebook profile has 123 friends, while under my real name I’ve just added my 400th friend there. So that’s something else I need to think about.

Your thoughts on any of the above (or anything else that’s on your mind) are always appreciated.

I installed Amazon’s Kindle app to my iPhone and tried it out.

With the application installed and my account details entered, I was able to see all of the books I had purchased on my iPhone. The books remained “in the cloud” until I selected one, then it was downloaded to my iPhone for me to read.

On opening an eBook, it opened to the spot where I had left off on the Kindle. And when returning to the Kindle, the book opened to the spot where I had left off on the iPhone. This integration is the most powerful and useful feature.

On the other hand, I’ve taken advantage of the “free samples,” the free downloads of first chapters on more than a dozen books. I was disappointed to see that I did not have access to these on the iPhone. There’s also no access to the PDF files I converted and installed on the Kindle myself – but this is to be expected and is actually welcomed, proving to some extent that Amazon has no view into the items I’ve installed on my own.

Reading on the iPhone was actually better than I expected. There are three different font sizes and naturally you can read in landscape as well as portrait mode. With the phone about a foot away from my face, it was pretty easy to read the text and use iPhone’s “finger swipe” to change pages. But the experience is quite different because you’re seeing black text on a bright white background as opposed to the Kindle’s gray background. And I’m now convinced that this gray background is easier on the eyes for extended reading sessions – less bright light shining up at your eyes makes for less eye strain during reading.

My final Kindle test will come tomorrow night, when I have a 13-1/2 hour flight from HK to LA. I will not bring any physical books with me, but I will have 6 full eBooks, a dozen converted PDF files and a dozen “first chapters” on my Kindle – a huge selection of reading material weighing in at mere ounces instead of pounds.

As a postscript, I’ve now got the files coming to me from Amazon direct to my computer’s hard drive, allowing me to save the $1.99 wireless fee per purchase – not sure why I had a problem before but it’s working okay now. Based on the documentation, it should be possible for me to “decommission” this Kindle before I return it and transfer all of my purchases to the one I’ve just bought (and that’s waiting for me at my mom’s place).