I’ve just launched a long-overdue new site dedicated specifically to archiving and blogging about my musical output:
I’ve collected several hundred songs and recordings of same from the last fifteen years or so in one place, organized for easy browsing and quick listening via embedded mp3 players. It’s a work in process as I continue to do writeups about individual songs and collections, and I’ll be making music-oriented blog entries over there as well.
Nothing in like three months? I’ve been neglecting this more than I thought.
It’s been a busy, Metafilter-centric three months — after finishing up that trip (which was fantastic), we did a raffle (complete with wierd Paypal headache) that raised over $12K for charity, we ran an informal UI experiment with Metafilter favorites (complete with much arguing), Matt found out he had a great big pituitary tumor and scared the shit out of us, and said tumor has ended up responding very well to non-surgical treatment. Plus a dozen other slightly less landmark-worthy things I’m forgetting to mention.
And two mefites, newish member Bageena and long-timer and blogosphere-coiner Brad “bradlands” Graham, both passed away suddenly this last week. Sobering start to the new year.
I think I’m going to dodge the formal Resolutions thing again this year and just state a general intent to get my shit in gear.
Five days into my month-long jaunt, and things are going well. Sort of exhausted already, but in a good way.
Whole bunch of content up on Meeting Metafilter, more to come as the trip continues.
I’m getting on the first of many planes tonight, flying around the country for the next 30 days and meeting up with a whole pile of Metafilter members in more than a dozen different cities.
I’ve set up a site to track it all: Meeting Metafilter. I’ll be posting text, pictures, and even some audio and video as I can manage it.
I’ve recorded — and you can go and listen to — a song for fellow mefite bingo’s new project Revolving Floor. The whole project is pretty neat, and last month’s issue featured an essay by my mefi cohort (and birthday girl, happy 41!) Jessamyn West.
Five days to go before I start off on my crazy trip, and:
1. My wrist is feeling much better in general. Still taking it easy on it, but I’m basically pain free again and seem able to deal with moderate loads with it again. Rock.
2. Cat came back! She finally wandered in at some point last night; I found her when I got up at 3am to use the bathroom, just meowing in the kitchen. Yay cat!
I’ve been distracted the last week from what I thought would be some pretty hardcore trip-planning stuff by:
1. My right wrist (read: the one I do everything with — music, mousing, gaming) going all wonky. Doc says tendonitis. Brace, rest, ice, NSAIDs, check back in a couple weeks.
2. One of our cats, Freyja, has gotten out and has been missing for a few days. Doing all the things we’re supposed to do. Someone who may or may not be her has been eating food we’ve left out the last couple of nights. Waiting for her to show up at home or for her microchip to get scanned at a vet or shelter.
So, shit. Wind out of sails somewhat. But the show goes on, and I’ve got a week to get ready, so it’s time to get ready.
So there it is: I’m going to spend a month flying around on Jetblue and visiting an unreasonably large number of my fellow Metafilter members.
Thanks to Jetblue’s stuntish (and sold-out-early) All-You-Can-Jet promotion, I’ll be spending the month from September 8th through October 8th flying around the continental United Stated, hitting a new city just about every other day and partying my ass off with mefites.
It’s an aggressive schedule; I’ve never done anything quite like this before. I’m excited and a little terrified, and I think it’ll be a hell of a lot of fun.
My city-by-city itinerary looks like this:
NYC
Boston
Portland, ME
Randolph, VT
New Orleans
Philly
Baltimore
DC
Raleigh/Durham
Las Vegas
LA
San Francisco
Salt Lake City
Chicago
Denver
I plan on documenting the trip heavily as I go, and I’ll be documenting the run-up to the 8th as well as I figure out how, exactly, I’m going to pull this thing off.
Metafilter turns ten years old today. There’s no site on the web I love more, and I couldn’t imagine a better place to work.
I celebrate by recycling, so here’s two (among several) songs I’ve written about the place over the years:
Happy [8th] Birthday, Metafilter, from a couple years back, and
Metafilter’s Down, from our long dark downtime of the soul earlier this year.
In an age where websites are always hunting for the next great trick for keeping unruly commentors in line – voting mechanisms? User scores? Enforced real names? – MetaFilter seems to be held together by the sheer stubbornness of its culture.
From (mefi’s own) Ivor Tossell at the Globe & Mail, here’s one of the best short explanations of Metafilter I’ve yet read.
And I’m not just saying that because it quotes me.
