Blogs as community

"...one of the most attractive social innovations enabled by virtual communities was the way members could "serve as information hunters and gatherers for each other."

From Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold

Hugh

John Kerry on the Daily Show

For those of you who missed JK and JS duke it out on The Daily Show...

-via boing boing, courtesy of Waxy

Gift shopping

Birthday dinner

Uncle Dale

Hardwood floors

My room tonight...

Pop Quiz

What did you name your kidnies?

All Music

I am borderline obsessed with finding new music that interests me. When I was little I would literally scan all of the titles at my local music store to see if there was something new. Later I turned to Amazon and their data-mined recommendations, which at times were surprisingly compelling. Then one of my co-workers showed me the All Music Guide. I immediately fell in love with it and spent the rest of the day exploring some of the more obscure connections to my favorite bands.

And that was the beauty of it. I could make these connections, and learn about them. AMG had something to say about almost anything I could throw at it. I started to evangelize. It was an internet resource second in importance only to Google and my .Mac account. And then the unthinkable happened.

They redesigned the site.

Rather, they took a usable resource and did everything they could, using Flash and JavaScript, to screw it all up. Actions that required three clicks now take six. Information is obscured. Load times are in the toilet. Its one of the most abhorrent steps backward that I have seen on the Internet.

Thankfully, someone has taken action. Adrian Holovaty has devised a plugin for Firefox that helps to undo AMG's mischief. I may even have to start using Firefox for a while to see if it works as advertised.

Thank you to Adrian and to Waxy for the link!

Hong Kong Phooey

Ok...so "Chop Suey" isn't a band; it's a venue

Who knew.

The SGM show is 8 bucks for advance sales. No word on prices at the door, which will open at 9pm.

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A/V Club

Cubed

Older

Pork chop sandwiches

Beatbox harmonica

Speak and Spell

Envy

We appear to have new neighbors; I can hear one of them through our open windows. She is standing on her new balcony and admiring the glory that is our apartment and it's architectural openness. It's "more zen" apparently.

Some of her other observations:
• We must be moving in too
• We must be students
• Three hour time changes suck
• The Space Needle is pretty cool because it lights up at night

She is traumatized by her current lack of HBO and misses Six Feet Under terribly.

Welcome to my nightmare...

Dad

Drowsy Culture

While I was surfing the net today, lamenting the lack of material I have to contribute to this digest, I stumbled upon some interesting news: Sleepytime Gorilla Museum is coming to Seattle in September! They're playing on September 16th with Chop Suey and Jackie O Motherfucker, whoever they may be.

So, I think I will try to find out where this is all supposed to be taking place and get me some tickets. If anyone is curious, they have some music posted on their site:

Sleep Is Wrong (9.06mb, mp3)
1997 (4.52mb, mp3)

Hippo 2.0

Will soon enter beta testing.

Launch

Welcome to the fold hensatc...

3-point turns

When I got here I made them all the time because I was always lost. I thought it was just me...