It looks like SEB has undergone some sort of review or commentary by whomever runs a blog called Mr. B says NO! I only know about this because of a trackback ping to my entry on restaurant managers strip searching people I wrote the other day. The review I found at the other end of the trackback seems quite lengthy and includes a few snapshots of SEB including a close-up of my ugly mug in the upper left corner and a possible critique of my meager CSS design skills. I don’t know for certain, however, because it’s written in another language and being your typical American I never got around to learning anything other than English.
Well, not entirely true. I did take a year of French in high school and can still recognize a good number of French words as well as how to say “I go to the bathroom” in French. Oh, and I can also say “the cat is on fire” in Spanish, which is a fun way to answer the phone when you want to confuse people. I suppose I have mastered Pig Latin, but I don’t think that really counts. l33t sp34k probably doesn’t count either.
Anyhow, normally I’d shrug my shoulders and just move on, but in this case I was intrigued by the length of the article so I scanned it to see if I could make out anything at all. Other than an opening quote from me at the start and the name of this website the only recognizable text that caught my attention right away were the words “skinhead,“ “stereotyp,“ and “despot.“ As you can imagine, this piqued my curiosity considerably. Further examination revealed discussion of a couple of the categories I maintain with a focus on Don’t Be That Guy and a reference to my current job as an IT Planner. One part appears to discuss my piss-poor attempts at layout design (I admit I’m not anywhere close to being a master web designer) and there’s also links to some of the products in my Cafe Press store such as the hats and the house wares.
Needless to say I’m now very curious to find out what the article has to say. I’m not concerned about whether it’s a positive or negative commentary about SEB and myself as I can handle criticism pretty well these days and both forms can be useful in learning more about how others perceive me. As near as I can tell the language is Danish, or something close to it, and the only website I could find that would attempt to translate it into English only manages to convert half the text leaving you to do a lot of guessing. Based on that piss-poor translation it seems like this is a thoughtfully written review about what SEB is about and whether others might like it.
I’m thinking I’ll drop the site owner an email to see if I can get him to send me an English translation of the review, but if any of you folks who stop by daily happen to be literate in whatever language it’s written in want to try your hand at translating it then please feel free to do so.
Update: Neil T. from Neil’s World got ahold of a friend in Norway via IM who has kindly provided the following summary for us:
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his first impression is that jenkins was the evil bastard you see in the picture, but nothing concludes that this is jenkins himself, it could be a fictive persion, it could just be a stereotype
then how he discovered that it is jenkins himself and that it might be ironical then some more ramblings about why he would call himself that
then about the subject, irrational acts, stupid people, overnatural phenomenas, fanatical politicians and religious fundamentalists
“the language might be vulgar and sarcastic” high interactivity - 33 comments for one example etc. and that most negative persons probably use e-mail
then about how the author thinks the category “don’t be that guy” really means that jenkins thinks his readers shouldn’t be like that
some stuff about the layout etc, how blue is used when you want to look like an authority with lots of credibility, he thinks the date headers should be easier to read and how much of the stuff plays on “stupid evil” - stats, comments, etc. and about the merchandize
he wouldn’t really recommend the blog for everyhone, but those with a high level of critical thoughts, and interest in philosophy and politics would definetly benefit from it and that’s pretty much it.
I think that’s a pretty fair summary of SEB, though I didn’t realize the color blue could be perceived in that manner. As I told Neil I just like the color blue and that’s about all the thought I put into the color choice. I can see his point about the date headers and I’ll see what I can do to make them a little easier to pick up on. And, yes, I do get most of my negative feedback via email as most folks who want to tell me off seem unwilling to open themselves up to having some of my regular readers chime in on thier opinions. 
Posted on 04/02/2004 at 01:06 PM 
.no is the TLD for Norway so it’s more likely to be Norweigan. I know a couple of Norweigans so I’ll see if one of them can do a translation, or at least give you a better idea of what the article is about.